Posts Tagged ‘thriller’

Character Interview: Angela Murtz and Blake Harnist from “Snake”

Posted: May 10, 2014 in Character Interviews, Living and Life, Novel, Writing
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One month away.

One month away.

I may be in Europe right now, but that doesn’t mean I’m not taking a break! My novel Snake is coming out in a month, and I thought I’d sit down with Blake Harnist and Angela Murtz, two characters who are on the investigative team that is searching for the protagonist, to get their thoughts on the case.

Notes and Stats
Sex: Angela Murtz is female, while Blake Harnist is male.
Age: Murtz is 33, while Harnist is 29
Race/Ethnicity: Murtz is African-American, while Blake is Caucasian.
Birthday: Murtz is October 12 and Harnist is March 17
Eye color: Both are brown eyed.
Hair color: Murtz has dark-brown hair, Harnist is blonde.
Religion: Murtz is Baptist, while Harnist is Methodist.
Affiliation: Murtz is an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, while Harnist is a detective with the New York Police Department.
Special Powers/Abilities: Both are trained law enforcement officials with several years of experience. In addition, Murtz is a criminal profiler who has profiled numerous dangerous criminals, her latest being the New York Mafia Killer.
Notes from the Author: When I decided that I would have the viewpoint of the investigators hunting for the protagonist, I also decided that I’d like a Mulder/Scully pairing for my investigative team. So that led to the creation of Murtz and Harnist. They’re both two very different characters, but they make a good pair and work well together. Of the two though, Murtz is probably the one I placed more emphasis on because she profiles the Snake and is one of the first to really figure out who he is, though I did try to give them both equal time on the page.

RU: Hello! Welcome to London, Agent Murtz and Detective Harnist.

Harnist: London?
Murtz: How the hell we end up here?

RU: So you guys are currently looking for the New York Mafia Killer. His body count’s up to…what now?

Harnist: Three. Thomas Luiso was just found dead in his mistress’s home.

RU: What can you tell us about the killer?

Murtz: At this time we believe he may be former Russian military with ties to the Russian mob. He’s probably spent a number of years in or around New York, and he’s probably employed as a cab driver.

RU: If he has ties to the Russian mob, why is he going after members of the Camerlengo family?

Harnist: The Camerlengo family is probably the most powerful family in New York. He may be trying to destabilize the organization by killing certain members off. If he continues to do so, the organization might crumble from internal problems or from other organizations trying to muscle in on Camerlengo territory.

RU: And what if I told you I know who the killer is?

Murtz: You what?
Harnist: Who is it?

RU: I’m not saying. That’s all for now, folks. Join me in about a week when I’ll be in France and when I interview Allison Langland, who has a very important connect to the Snake.

And in the meantime, if you would like to learn more about Snake, you can click here to read an excerpt or see the book trailer. And remember, Snake drops June 10 on Amazon, and available for e-book and paperback. Get excited for it, because I already am.

And a reminder, Reborn City is still on sale throughout the month on Amazon and Smashwords. Get it now, because it’s the best time to do it.

Until next time. Cheerio!

Laura Horn: I’ve Reached Chapter Thirty-Five

Posted: May 4, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Some of you may recall a while back that I wanted to get to a certain stopping point in my work-in-progress Laura Horn before I went off on my study abroad trip. And last night, after a lot of work, some hilarious SNL skits, and just the craziness that is my life, I got to that point. Chapter Thirty-Five, the perfect stopping point at this point, has been reached. And it was over twenty-five hundred words, so when I was finished, I was frankly relieved.

Also, I would’ve written about this last night, but by that time I was thinking about going to bed. Which I did.

At this point, if I manage to get any more chapters written, it’ll be a miracle, as well as icing on the cake. The likelihood of that though is pretty slim at this point, because obviously I have a study abroad trip to prepare for. But if I do, then lucky me. I still have thirty chapters left to write. Anything that makes that remaining material a bit easier to handle is A-OK in my book.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ve got to get ready for my meditation class, so I’ll be signing off. I’ll write some more if I actually get my final grades back this afternoon (God-willing).

And to all my fellow Star Wars fans, May the 4th be with you on this most auspicious of days. Or as Chewbacca would say, “Graaaaaaaaaargh!”

Laura Horn: Making Some Wonderful Progress

Posted: April 27, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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You may be familiar with my WIP Laura Horn, which I started last year and which I’ve had a heck of a time just trying to get halfway through. Between school, work, and other projects, it’s been a struggle to work on this novel, which is sad because I think it has a lot of potential. If I can only get through the first draft, I’d be able to test that theory about its potential!

But as I’ve spoken about before here, my study abroad trip will be in a little over a week (my, how time flies!), and I’ll be taking a break from blogging, writing, and most computer-related activities to go explore England, France, and Germany. This includes working on Laura Horn. Most likely I’ll kill some time in the airport on it while waiting for my flight to Heathrow, but after that it won’t be till late May that I’ll be able to work on it.

The good news is that since I took my finals, submitted my final papers, and now only have the distractions of work, trip preparation, and whatever’s on TV/in theaters/on my bookshelf to keep me from writing, I’ve been able to make a lot of progress on Laura Horn. In the past couple of days, I finished one chapter that I’d started on about two weeks ago and wrote about three more chapters. This has me elated, and I’m planning on getting more done before I go off on my trip. I hope to at least get three more done before I leave, because I’ll be a little over halfway through the novel then and when you know you’re well beyond the halfway point, the process of writing a novel becomes a bit easier and you find yourself being less intimidated by the amount of writing you have to do.

In any case, I plan on making some wonderful progress with this novel, and hopefully when I get back from Europe, I’ll be able to finish it by midway through July at the very latest. If I can do that, then I will probably feel less regret that I took so many breaks with writing the novel and look forward more to the editing and publishing process. That’s the hope, in any case.

In the meantime, I’m going to head to bed with the hopes that, after having watched a couple of scary movies these past couple of days and with the possibility of watching one more tomorrow (Oculus, to be exact), my twisted imagination cam come up with something really fun and creepy to write. In fact, I’ve been playing with this idea in my head for a story. I know how it’d start, but I can’t seem to figure out how to get the story to go beyond the first scene. Here’s hoping I can come up with something in my sleep!

And with that, I wish you a good night, my Followers of Fear. Pleasant nightmares, one and all!

Some Good News, Some Bad News

Posted: April 11, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Reflections, Review, short story, Writing
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Good News: Somehow I managed to get several articles written for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors, all of which will come out in the coming weeks leading up to my study abroad trip. The next one comes out tomorrow, if I remember correctly.

Bad News: As the end of the semester comes closer, I’ve got a number of exams and papers to prepare for, including a 25-30 page paper for a research seminar! Oy vey! So as much as I’d like to focus on making progress in Laura Horn before I go abroad, I doubt that with my workload I’ll make it to Chapter 35, which would be a nice stopping-point before I go on my trip.

Good News: A short story I wrote for a class assignment got an A+ from the teacher, who “cried at the end of the story” and wanted me to publish it, along with some suggestions on ways to edit it. I plan to submit it somewhere this weekend, as well as submit a couple other short stories to other magazines.

Bad News: Another short story I wrote got rejected from a magazine this morning. I’ll try submitting it somewhere else, but I worry. Some of the criticism the editor gave me made me wonder if this short story is as good as I thought it was.

Good News: Reborn City got another five star review. This, along with a sale I plan to hold next month and the possibility of making it to the next round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award make me hopeful.

Bad News: I won’t know about the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award until Monday most likely, and I don’t want to go into more detail about the review or the sale until I have that info. Plus, RC‘s my first novel and I’m up against 399 other books in my category, all vying for 100 spots at most. I hope the excerpt I gave them is good enough!

Good News: I’ve found a camcorder that is within my budget that I can get after I get back from my trip. Creating book trailers and maybe starting a YouTube show or improving my YouTube channel might get easier with one of those camcorders.

Bad News: My local theater isn’t playing a movie I really want to see, a horror film with Karen Gillan of Doctor Who fame. Well, that’s not as bad as it could be. I might know a certain woman (my mother) who’ll want to go see it with me, even if we have to drag her fiancee with us to do it. Forget I mentioned it.

When you get right down to it, a self-published novelist’s life is never easy, especially when you also happen to be a student with a part-time job and a lot of homework. Sometimes, like when I get criticism from magazine editors, I feel a little down. But there’s always opportunity for improvement. There are people who enjoy what I write and let me know when they get the chance to do so.

When I first started writing this blog nearly three years ago, I was just some freshman with one publishing credit to my name, a novel in need of some serious editing, and no idea how I was going to build a following or get my novel onto the printed page. Nearly three years later, I have a few more publishing credits, I’ve got two books out, a third on its way, and two more in various stages of writing/editing. I write articles occasionally for another website to help other self-published authors out, and I’ve made some friends who’ve been invaluable assets in helping me get this far.

So is my life as a writer ideal? I don’t know a single writer who can say that their lives are ideal. Even the biggest names in the industry are wracked by the usual anxieties, wondering if their work is up to scratch or if people will think their manuscript is sh*t or if they’ll ever live up to their childhood idols or if they’ll sell any copies.

I think for where I am at this point in my career, I’m at a pretty good stage. Would I like things to be better? I don’t know a single writer who wouldn’t want that. But I’m a lot better off than I could be, and I have plenty of space to improve, and the resources and friends to allow me to do that.

So as the weekend creeps nearer, I’m going to work to improve, to write and to publish and be the best I can be.

Good News: The future is open, and my Tarot tells me fortune is headed my way. I’m heading to meet it.

Snake: Two Months Away

Posted: April 10, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, Writing
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Two months away.

Two months away.

It’s hard to believe. So much time has passed by, but you lose track of it and then these things just sneak up on you. I’m a little in shock. My youngest sister Liat is fourteen as of today. I remember when she was an itty-bitty baby, and now she’s a teenager with a really dark sense of humor. What happened in fourteen years?

But in all seriousness, two months from today my second novel Snake will hit the digital bookstores, where people can download it to their e-readers or order a print copy should they choose to do so. It’s been a very exciting process getting Snake ready for publication, and I’m looking forward to putting it out and hearing what people think of it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Snake, here’s the blurb I’m using to advertise it:

How far will you go for love and revenge? When a young man’s girlfriend is kidnapped by the powerful Camerlengo Family, he becomes the Snake, a serial killer who takes his methods from the worst of the Russian mafia. Tracking down members of the Camerlengo Family one by one for clues, the Snake will go to any lengths to see the love of his life again…even if it means becoming a worse monster than any of the monsters he is hunting.

Sounds interesting, right? Either that or kind of twisted and creepy. I’ve gotten both reactions before. Anyway, I hope you’re looking forward to reading Snake as much as I am looking forward to you reading it. And if you want to read an excerpt from Snake, you can click here and do so. Or you can scroll down a little and watch the book trailer for Snake. I promise you, it’s veeery creepy.

Have a good day, my Followers of Fear! I know I am, and so is probably my sister. Happy Birthday, Liat. Don’t go too wild on your birthday, okay?

Laura Horn: Part II Done

Posted: April 6, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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One of the creatures I think represent Laura Horn. It definitely captures her spirit.

I was starting to doubt I’d get this done before I left for my study abroad trip, but I got through Part II of my novel-in-progress Laura Horn. This brings me a bit closer to finishing the entire novel, and I’m happy to say it’s really starting to take shape.

Laura Horn is a story of a girl who is a victim of sexual assault but never told anyone about it. When she gets her hands on something belonging to elements within the American government, she becomes the one person who can bring down to stop a plot against the United States of America. At the same time, she must also face her past and learn to walk to the future. That was the concept that I started writing with, but since then it’s also morphed into a very different story than the one I originally envisioned. Along with being a story about overcoming the past (with a political thriller plot in the background), LH has also become a story about learning to trust again, about being a true friend in times of crisis, and about being courageous in the face of overwhelming odds.

If this book were written by any other author, it might make for great YA fiction. But since it’s me, I’m not sure it could really count as YA fiction. Heck, Reborn City has plenty of elements of YA, but I doubt you’d call that YA either, given the thematic nature of the novel. And Snake? No way in hell can that be called YA. That’s straight thriller with elements of a slasher film.

So now for the page and word counts. And remember, when I say “page”, I mean 8.5″ x 11″ paper with twelve-point Times New Roman font. That’s the thing with doing these counts: there are those who care more about the page count, and then there are those who measure with word counts, usually other writers who distinguish the differences between short stories, novels, and everything in-between using word counts. It’s a weird dichotomy, and one of these days I’ll write a blog post about it. But now is not the time for it.

Anyway, the page counts for the Prologue, Part I, and Part II were 10, 43, and 107 pages respectively, for a total of 160 pages. And the word counts are 2,190 for the Prologue, 12,019 for Part I, and 29,634 words for Part II. That puts the total word count at this moment at 43,843 words. Wow, that’s quite the increase in page and word count since I finished Part I. We’re well into novella range, which I define as between forty-thousand and sixty-thousand words (60,000+ I define as a novel).

Anyway, I might take a break from fiction writing tomorrow and just veg out on TV. Then on Monday, assuming my homework isn’t trying to bury me, I’ll start Part III, which I’ve entitled “The Ringleader”. Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll finish it before I leave for Europe. Not likely, but I can hope.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’m going to bed, so goodnight to you, my Followers of Fear. Pleasant nightmares, one and all!

Getting Reacquainted With Laura Horn

Posted: March 20, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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I just finished going over what I have so far of Laura Horn. I honestly thought it wouldn’t take this long to get through less than twenty chapters, but at least I got it done sooner rather than later. Now I can start working on original material.

For those of you who are not very familiar with my WIP yet, Laura Horn is the story of a girl who inadvertently becomes the one person who can save the United States from forces within its own government. However Laura is a damaged soul, a girl with a traumatic past that often paralyzes her in the face of danger. So in order to save her country’s future, she has to confront her painful past. I came up with the idea for the story by wondering if I could write a genre story where a character with a seriously damaged past could grow in spirit throughout the story and become a hero at the same time. The rest of the story came from that.

I started LH last July but had to put it on hold in October because of an increasing amount of homework and because I was working on Video Rage, the sequel to Reborn City, at the same time. It was just too much to cope with, so I had to cut back (which may have actually added to my stress levels, but that’s a story for another time). When the semester ended in early December, I focused on getting Video Rage done first. Then when I finished that back in January, I worked on several short stories and articles, and finally during spring break I began looking through Laura Horn again.

My first impression going through the first twenty chapters was this: I remembered writing much better prose than what I encountered going through those chapters. Then again, this is a first draft so it’s supposed to suck a little. Anyway, while reading through the early chapters I found myself doing a lot of editing work so that the story would flow better and so that I could continue without obsessing over this or that mistake or inconsistency. At the same time, that extended my rereading of the early chapters so that I ended up needing a few more days to get through the first twenty chapters.

Well, I’m here at this juncture in the writing process now, the point where I can contribute some new original chapters to the manuscript. Better late than never. And now I’m going to reread the outline for the book, and then I’m going to see about starting on the next chapter before I get ready for bed tonight. With any luck, I’ll be able to get a few new chapters of LH done before I leave for my study abroad trip in May (trust me, I won’t be doing a lot of writing or blogging during that time).

Well, wish me luck, my Followers of Fear. I’m going to get back to work now. Have a good night and a great weekend.

Dear Alice: Finished

Posted: March 2, 2014 in Living and Life, short story, Writing
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It’s rare that I begin a short story and that I finish it within a day. It’s even rarer when I finish it a few hours after starting it. But that’s what happened tonight. And my God, was it amazing.

You remember in my last post I said I was trying to rewrite the science-fiction story I’d started on Sunday. Well, I’m still trying to figure out where it should go from here and how to make it exciting. So while I’m working on that little problem, I decided to devote my time to a different short story. What resulted was Dear Alice, a story of a woman in England who writes letters to her childhood friend (Alice, obviously) about how as children they were kidnapped by a farmer who used them as slave labor. It’s a very interesting story, and I rather liked how it turned out, especially the twists near the middle-end portion of it.

The whole story is about 3,600 words (give or take a few), and I somehow wrote it in only a couple of hours. That’s a personal record for short story writing. It also shows what happens when I really get into a story and I eschew most distractions that I can really amaze myself. I think I’ll send this to a friend or family member within the next couple of weeks to get some feedback on it. I seriously hope that they like it, and that they can offer some good suggestions on it.

In the meantime though, I’m going to head to bed and get some rest. Tomorrow may be Sunday, but that doesn’t mean I get to rest (being Jewish, Saturday is the day I rest, and sometimes not even then). I may even start another short story if I’m unable to figure out what to do with my short-story-in-progress by then. Wish me luck.

Goodnight, my Followers of Fear. Or good morning, depending on what time you’re reading this. I’m sure some people are a few time zones behind me, some are just having their morning coffee while they read this, and maybe one or two are insomniacs or staying up late. If I think about this more than I have, it’s going to get weird. Anyway, goodnight (because it is for me at this point).

Snake: The Official Book Trailer

Posted: February 6, 2014 in Novel, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, Writing
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Snake

I swear, this is the last Snake-themed article for a while. Honestly, even the Snake is getting tired of all the articles about him (and if you can figure that one out, then you win a prize). And I’m going to try to keep this short, so don’t click away yet.

Today I had some time on my hands, so I took some photos I’d scoured off the internet, a song I’d always associated with the Snake for some reason, and compiled them all using iMovie into a very scary video for a book trailer. A book trailer for Snake, to be exact. It’s probably my longest and most complex book trailer yet, using a variety of techniques I learned from a class I took a couple of semesters ago. Honestly, I had not used iMovie in a while, so it took a while to figure out how to do some things I’d forgotten. But I guess it was like riding a bike, because before I knew it I was making the video and had it done in almost an hour.

The video uses images I associate with the character of the Snake, who has an extreme love for scary movies and knows quite a bit about famous fictional serial killers and a few real ones (gee, I wonder who that sounds like?). And the song I use is “Before I’m Dead” by metal band Kidney Thieves. For some reason it’s a song I’ve always thought should be put at the beginning of a movie adaptation of Snake. Since I don’t think that’ll be happening any time soon, I’m using it in this trailer.

Oh, and the people in this video whom I identify as characters in Snake are actors from some shows I’ve seen. They came the closest to how I imagined the characters in Snake, so I used their images. I hope nobody minds that!

So without further ado, here’s the official Snake book trailer. Tell me what you think when you’ve watched it. I love feedback (I think I’ve mentioned that before).

Oh, and good news: I’ve sent Snake to the copyright office. Hopefully they won’t take their sweet time processing it. I hate it when that happens!

Snake: The Second Cover

Posted: February 4, 2014 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Looks like I get to do a post again with a snake at the top again. You may remember my previous post about the cover for Snake that I created (if not, you can read it here). I got some feedback on it, and most of the people who commented on Facebook said that they wanted more of the painted Lilith’s face and less of her legs. Well, I kind of went with the choice to hide her face because it meant that I could hide her bare breasts. The last thing I wanted was someone to flag Snake as abusive or offensive because of a little T&A.

But I decided that my friends had some very valid points. So I changed the design of the book cover to Aspen, and made the color for the background burnt sienna. The result got better reviews than the first cover. Okay, one guy thought it was “too racy”, but to be fair he’s Orthodox Jewish, so I guess to him a sleeveless shirt on a young lady might be crossing lines. Still, I see his point: Lilith by John Collier, while definitely a work of art in the style of the old Renaissance masters, is pretty sexual. Given the references to the Genesis story though, I think it’s important to keep the theme there, and that’s part of why I chose the painting (along with the obvious snake wrapped around her Britney Spears-style and the red hair which is also upon the head of an important character in this book).

So to recap here’s the previous cover I created:

Snake

And here’s the second version:

Snake

Is it much racier? Yes, it really is. Might it get me in trouble? Possibly. Am I going to change it? At this point, I’d have to say no. I kind of like it, the painting entered the public domain ten years ago, so there’s no copyright issues, and it looks like something I might pick up and at least consider at Barnes & Noble. And I hope people who come across this book on the Internet won’t be embarrassed by the naked woman on it to buy it. Then again, that is what made Kindle and Fifty Shades of Grey such great bedfellows: nobody felt embarrassed reading the book on a tablet on a train or bus. We’ll see.

And yes, that “bedfellows’ thing was intentional. I wasn’t going to do it, but I put it in anyway.

Anyway, unless anybody gives me some objection or some feedback that makes me change my mind, I think I’ll go with this cover. Tomorrow I’ll send it off to the copyright office and possibly start on a book trailer if I have the time. I already have a song I’m going to use, and several images I plan to put into a rather interesting slideshow. I’ll post it here when I’m done.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’m heading to bed soon. Goodnight, Followers of Fear.

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