The Hero: Confronting the Inner Saboteur

Our heroes often feel larger than life: Ian Fleming’s James Bond, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Daisy Buchanan, Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta or Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone.

But in reality, most heroes are filled with self-doubt at one time or another and many appear to fling themselves into self-sabotaging behavior. When we consider it in terms of book characters, there are people that allow themselves to be swept along by Fate while others attempt to mold or destroy—and sometimes, mold and destroy—everything around them.

A character that is swept along by Fate is someone that is searching for a peaceful, idyllic existence. They don’t want to rock the boat, but the boat ends up rocking them. We can see this in Melanie and Ashley Wilkes in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind: they are content reading their books, participating in polite society events and overseeing their fortunes. Their world is rocked, however, by a war that neither of them wanted but in which they were destined to participate, if for no other reason than precisely because of the lifestyles they both enjoyed at the expense of slave ownership.

A character that is intent on molding their world into something they want can be seen in the autobiographical The Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort. Once a teenager selling Italian ices, he became a stockbroker, earning thousands of dollars a minute through microcap investing. He saw what he wanted and he went after it with a single-minded focus, a tunnel vision that created an empire and made his name infamous.

But often the characters—in our books as well as real life—sabotage themselves. When they are at their zenith, they develop an almost pathological tendency to tear everything apart. In Jordan Belfort’s case, it took the form of excessive binges (including a $700,000 hotel tab), extramarital sexual excesses, drugs, money laundering, fraud and prison. (Belfort was both the protagonist and antagonist, because he turned out to be his own worst enemy.)

Often our heroes exhibit self-sabotaging behavior in more subtle ways: the mediocre businessman afraid of real success, the character that we’re begging to turn around and walk away but feels compelled to enter the dark, frightening house filled with ghosts or bad guys… The hero that destroys every relationship until they meet someone with equal strength that won’t allow him or her to walk away… They could be brilliant at what they do with their lives and then destroy it all through alcohol, drugs, gambling or simply poor choices.

It has been said that there are no truly good people and no truly bad ones; only those that have a mixture of both. Some move from one side to the other in subtle ways, while others careen like trains hurtling off the tracks. The best characters, the most memorable ones, are those that show us both their sides: Rhett Butler, in his tender love for his daughter Bonnie as well as his illegal blockade running; or Jesse Stone Novels by Robert B. Parker featuring Jesse as a top-notch police chief and investigator with a dark side battling depression and alcohol while still carrying a flame for an ex-wife who has moved on. (Made into a fabulous film series starring Tom Selleck.) Often we cheer for the hero that is acting outside the box but with altruistic motives.

Authors walk a fine line with these characters. The reader must be able to identify with them or place themselves in their shoes, so their foibles cannot be so off-putting as to turn the reader away. Sometimes it’s the character’s weaknesses that draw the reader closer, creating sympathy but also admiration for the way they carry on despite their personal demons.

And let’s face it: no one really wants to read about the perfect character living the perfect life. Do they?

Watch the video below or on YouTube at https://youtu.be/0h4GwCoajAk

The Heroine in Ireland: The Girl from Ballymor

There are many good books but only occasional great ones, and The Girl from Ballymor definitely is one of the great ones. It has reminded me many times over how it was books like this one that caused me to fall in love with reading, which later led to a lifelong love of writing as well. Because of that, I have decided to create a new playlist on YouTube containing book reviews as well as post reviews on my blogs. I am a notoriously slow reader; I prefer to read a scene and allow it to marinate, rolling it around in my mind until I can truly feel like I am there as one of the characters, allowing their circumstances to settle into my consciousness. For that reason, I will not be publishing many reviews each year, but those I do are definitely ones I recommend.

The Girl from Ballymor is told in two time periods as our contemporary Maria travels to Ireland to research her family history and specifically Kitty McCarthy, a grandmother several generations back. The plot grabbed my attention from the start because those that follow my blogs and writing know that I began a quest many years ago to find my ancestors in Ireland. Though my father and grandfather had amassed quite a bit of information, it was concentrated on ancestors in America and I wanted to go further back, partly to find out why I was so drawn to the Emerald Isle.

We discover Maria’s ancestor Kitty after she married and had six children, though her earlier years are told in vivid flashbacks. To say she did not have an easy life is a vast understatement. Her husband Patrick has died in a copper mine accident and several of her children have perished during the potato famine of the 1840s, which drastically reduced the population from eight million to lower than three million, between starvation-related deaths and survivors fleeing the island. The three survivors—Kitty, her eldest son Michael and her daughter Gracie—are slowly starving.

Maria is there to discover what happened because Michael survived, immigrating first to America and then returning on his own quest to find his mother. He had become a famous artist, and many of his portraits featured the same young woman, his mother, often wearing a Celtic brooch; yet there are no records of her death.

This is a book with so many layers that it's worth reading again and again, a classic for the ages. There's the realization that both then and now, a person’s existence is often determined by where they live, the social class they were born into, and how they handle problems and challenges, some of which are life threatening, that ultimately will decide their fate. In a time that has become increasingly more complex, the reader steps into a completely different world as we travel back to the 1840’s when the only goal was to find work to survive just one more day, even if that work is breaking rocks by hand in the Irish rain, hour after hour, for a cup of warm broth or a bite of cheese or bread.

Kathleen McGurl is a fabulous writer, her style reminiscent of authors I fell in love with so many decades ago, authors that expanded my horizons, broadened my understanding of the world, and have always caused me to want to be a better person. McGurl deserves to be listed among the greatest of them, her words carrying weight, the characters alive in my soul, long after reading that last page.

Watch my video review of The Girl from Ballymor here, or on YouTube at https://youtu.be/KUGCxgE_xIM

The Hero's Trauma and Life-Transforming Journey

We’re continuing with the hero’s journey, and today I want to tell you about the trauma that awakens the hero and catapults him or her along their journey. The trauma can be a death (especially one that is unexpected or sudden), a divorce or split, job loss, illness or a move—especially one that is necessitated by financial burdens. These traumas comprise the most stressful events an individual can experience in their lifetime.

In The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King, Andy Defresne’ journey begins when his wife is murdered and he is tried, convicted and sent to prison though he is an innocent man. It is one of any man’s worst nightmares, because all he has known is gone and he is left powerless, often victimized in a tough prison where there is no escape—or so we think. Andy embarks on the reluctant hero’s journey because it is not one of his making, but as we turn the pages we discover that Andy finds traits within himself that will not only keep him alive but eventually turn the tables on the corrupt prison management.

All great books show us characters that are transformed by their journeys, whether it is Andy Defresne, Scarlett O’Hara or Oliver Twist.

I try to remember the life-altering traumas when I write my own books. In Vicki’s Key, for example, the book begins with a recurring nightmare, a memory buried in Vicki’s consciousness when a CIA mission failed, resulting in innocent children’s deaths. It is that mission that so traumatizes her that she leaves the CIA and embarks on a new life—only to have the CIA catch up with her. She is transformed through the series as she gains strength and ultimately faces her demons.

The Tempest Murders begins with a different type of trauma when Constable Rian Kelly’s lover dies at the hands of a killer during one of the worst storms in Ireland’s history. We then switch to the present day to find Kelly’s great-great-nephew, Detective Ryan O’Clery, investigating a string of murders identical to those Kelly had been investigating—and Ryan discovers his nightmares are actually the memories of his ancestor. He, too, is transformed as he must face inner demons that have haunted him since childhood.

In A Thin Slice of Heaven, we encounter another type of trauma that leads our hero on her journey. Charleigh arrives at a remote castle in Northern Ireland anticipating a romantic anniversary celebration when she receives a text from her husband telling her he is leaving her for another woman. Stranded at the castle, she first wallows in her grief before pulling herself together and moving on—and in the process, discovering things about herself.

Great books thrive on conflict: they move the plot forward, they keep readers guessing at the outcome, and they ultimately change the main characters forever. A great book leaves you feeling like you know the main character as if he or she were a close friend; long after you’ve closed that last page, you find yourself thinking of them. 

It was like that for me as I read The Girl from Ballymor by Kathleen McGurl, the haunting story of a young woman experiencing the Irish Potato Famine in the late 1840’s. Kitty McCarthy had six children by the age of 30 and within a three-year span had lost her husband to a copper mine accident and five children to famine and disease. I found myself awakening during the night thinking of her life and how similar it must have been to thousands of Irish.

A life-transforming journey not only changes the main character but also has the ability to change the reader, our views of history and our world, and of mankind—where we came from and where we are heading.

Join the discussion on my Facebook page. Let me know which books and characters that have remained with you over the years, and their life-transforming journeys.

Pictures of staged crime scene and Ireland courtesy of FreeImages.com. 

When Fact is Stranger than Fiction

For authors of suspense, the political landscape has posed some interesting challenges. It has always been a popular theme to select an enemy government that our hero must infiltrate and take down, even if it’s done in bits and pieces. Consider Ian Fleming’s James Bond, who during the Cold War came up against the USSR and the KGB time and again. Or Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan whose espionage themes set during and after the Cold War involved enemies such as the USSR and later Russia and China. The USSR/Russia comprised targets that Americans seemed to agree on; to speak out on behalf of communism was tantamount to treason.

So what does an author do when the lines are blurred?

Often books have been written after world-altering events and not during their height; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck was published in 1939 and though it was set during the Great Depression many Americans were still trying to recover from it—and many never did. When Gone with the Wind was released in 1936, the American Civil War had been over for more than seven decades and only the youngest from that era were still alive. All Quiet on the Western Front was written by a German veteran of World War I, Erich Maria Remarque, published in 1929—11 years after the end of the war, and A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway was also released the same year.

During the height of conflict, the enemy was encountered on posters, in news stories and even in comic books, such as Captain America during World War II. We had common enemies during times fraught with war and conflict, from the British in the Revolutionary War to the Yankees or Rebels in the Civil War (depending on which side of the Mason-Dixon you happened to be on) to the Central Powers of World War I and the Japanese, Germans and Italians of World War II. During the height of the Cold War, scores of books were released that also painted the common enemy against whom Americans and its allies were always victorious.

Today’s political environment poses challenges for the author of fiction very similar to those faced during a civil war. Unlike a common enemy on the other side of a clear dividing line, we may face neighbors, family members or even friends with decidedly different political views. Russia is an enemy to some and trusted ally to others. Conflicts in the Middle East have no clear enemy that Americans have united behind; even those that attacked on 9/11 came from a country that today some prominent Americans embrace. The fingers are pointed in all directions and to choose one path guarantees the author of fiction the loss of 50% of their audience.

The characters in my Black Swamp Mysteries series have hit an interesting dilemma; the latest in the series, Cloak and Mirrors, written before the Russian scandal that plagues our country today, centers around Russia’s new stealth technology. The main characters—Vicki Boyd and Dylan Maguire—are CIA operatives. At one time an employee of the American Intelligence Community was respected; today half the American population trusts the Russians more than our own Intelligence agencies. At the end of Cloak and Mirrors (spoiler alert) Vicki and Dylan must go dark—deep undercover to escape capture by the Russians. Should the next book pick up with the next chapter in their fight against Russia? Or do I play it safe as an author and depict them in a picturesque little village where they get caught up in a local murder investigation? Or perhaps I should simply wait things out and write the next installment after America decides which way she intends to go?

While trying to decide my characters’ fates, I delved into the past—all the way back to 1608, when my ancestor William Neely left Scotland for Ireland (Checkmate: Clans and Castles). There is something comforting about slipping into the past, knowing that things turned out; the world is still spinning and humans somehow survived. It gives us an illusion of progress when we realize that Americans are not ruled by an autocratic monarch that can upend our worlds in a whim. When we read of the formidable odds we faced in times past—the seemingly unstoppable British Empire, Nazi Germany, Japan—we know when all the chips were down, we came out swinging and victorious.

Books of fiction are often a means of escape to our readers. They take us around the world to exotic locations we might otherwise never visit. They place us in someone else’s shoes that we will never actually meet. They give us superpowers; the will to continue, the determination to succeed. They take us out of our present-day news cycle, away from the sadness and hostility of our current politics, away from economic woes and crushing responsibilities. Books are often savored because of their unique ability to transcend time and space and circumstance.

Are you reading now? What are you reading? Chances are your book depicts the world as having some semblance of normalcy despite any odds the hero may face. And it’s precisely that normalcy that we all need right now.

p.m.terrell is the internationally acclaimed author of more than 21 books, include the award-winning River Passage, award-winning series Black Swamp Mysteries and award-winning Ryan O’Clery Mystery Series. She is the Founder of Book ‘Em North Carolina Writers Conference and Book Fair and the Founder of The Novel Business. For more information, visit www.pmterrell.com.

The Best Time to Write Your Fiction Book Blurb

Today I am very happy to welcome guest contributor Glenna Mageau. Glenna is the award-winning author of suspense/thrillers and a fabulous mentor for up-and-coming authors. I recently took her course, Mastering the Art of Writing the Catchy Fiction Book Blurb, and loved it. I highly recommend it for authors of all levels of success.

The Best Time to Write Your Fiction Book Blurb

By Glenna Mageau

What if I told you that only 8% of self-published authors, get it right when writing their fiction book blurb?

I know that I wasn’t one of the 8% for a very long time. I just wanted to run from having to write the thing.

Almost 90% of the authors, I surveyed, waited until they were finished writing their novel before they started writing their fiction book blurb. It’s something that many authors seem to want to avoid. I don’t blame them, I did for a long time, too.

It’s one of those things that seems to be a mystery as to how to make it interesting and compelling and what to choose out of 90,000 words. And many believe they have to have the story written to be able to write their fiction book blurb.

So what are the 8% doing right?

They’ll start writing their fiction book blurb when they start writing their novel. Not many people really think about this but it can make all the difference.

 

But what if waiting until the novel was completely written was what was making the fiction book blurb all that much more difficult to write?

The truth is that if you start writing your fiction book blurb when you start writing your novel, it will make it so much easier.

I do get asked, why would I start writing it when I don’t even have my novel written?

There is a concern that if you don’t have the whole story written then how can you know what to include in your novel.

Think about this, as you’re writing, you probably get quite into your story and into your characters (or at least I hope you do). You’re right there with them with each step they take, each wrong move, each devastation, each happy moment. I know that when I write, I laugh with my characters, I cry when something bad happens, I talk to my characters to find out what is going on for them. The reason I bring this up, is that when you are in the midst of writing your story, you are immersed in it – the feelings, the intensity, the suspense, the sadness, the journey...

Guess what is naturally going to come through in your book blurb, at this point in time? That emotion, that tone, that feeling that grabbed you, will also grab your reader. And there is no better time to know that feeling than when you are in the midst of feeling it.

You will also know what those key moments are that you need to include in your book description. You’re focus is on only a part of a story not the whole thing so it makes it easier to pull out those key moments. You’re not overwhelmed by the full story.

The fiction book blurb isn’t about telling the whole story, it’s about bringing to life the essence of it - the protagonist, the journey, the hope, the despair…

So join the 8% and start writing your fiction book blurb as soon as you start writing your fiction novel.

To learn more, join me on my FREE webinar, 5 Steps to a Compelling & Interesting Fiction Book Blurb on November 9. More information is coming soon. The best way to keep informed is to sign up for my FREE ebook: 3Keys to Writing a Compelling & Interesting Fiction Book Blurb

 

 

Glenna Mageau

Glenna Mageau an award-winning suspense/thriller author, who works with Indie/Self Published authors to create attention grabbing fiction book blurbs. Her first attempts at writing fiction book blurbs were dismal, time consuming and very stressful. Finally figuring out how to write attention grabbing ones, she created a course – Mastering the Art of Writing the Catchy Fiction Book Blurb – to help all Indie/Self-published authors do the same. Learn more here: www.glennamageau.com

Her motto: Escape to read… Read to escape… and Write for the Freedom!

 

 

 

The Changing Face of the Publishing Industry

Bowker released its annual Self-Publishing in the United States Report, and it’s worth noting even for traditionally published authors because it underscores the changes that are taking effect in the publishing industry.

Bowker is the official ISBN Agency for the United States, US territories and Australia, which means that all ISBN’s are issued through Bowker for these jurisdictions. Bowker was once known as R. R. Bowker and got its start way back in 1872 when they founded Publishers Weekly. It first published Bowker’s Books in Print in 1948, and in 1968 they became the official ISBN Agency for the United States.

When my first book was published in the mid 1980’s, around 75,000 titles were published that year. Compare that to 2015 in which 727,125 ISBN’s were issued to self-publishers according to Bowker’s Self-Publishing in the United States Report. This does not account for titles published by traditional publishers such as Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins and Hachette.

Of those 727,125 ISBN’s (which represent a 375% increase over books published in 2010), 573,965 were printed books. To give you an idea of the increase in printed books as a result of changing technology, in 2010 only 114,215 titles were printed. By far, the biggest increase has been due to the rise and popularity of CreateSpace, who is owned by amazon and who printed 423,718 titles in 2015. Their nearest competitor—Lulu—printed 46,972 in that same period.

When we add ebooks into the mix, the field becomes even more cluttered. In 2010, only 38,763 ebook titles were generated. In 2015, there were 153,160—which actually showed a decrease from the year before, in which there were 172,511.

Self-publishers and small publishers (printing less than 100 books per year) are changing the face of the publishing industry. They are driving the growth and in an age in which almost anything can be sold on the Internet, they are changing the way in which books move from the author to the reader. 

Some years ago, there was a record store in every shopping mall. Today, they are increasingly harder to find. Some experts predict that books will go the same way: readers will browse and purchase online. 

As a reader, where do you buy your books? Do you still browse the shelves of a brick-and-mortar store? Or do you turn to an online source?

How do you find a new author? Is it through the recommendation of a librarian or physical bookseller, or is it online in social media? Or is it through advertising or other means?

p.m.terrell is the author of more than 20 books in several genres. A full-time writer since 2002, her first book was published in 1984, launching her computer business. It would take nearly 20 years for her to circle back around to her true love: writing. Take a look at her books, view the book trailers and read free excerpts at www.pmterrell.com.