The Best Writing Advice

"Dawn...Get up and bite the nail!"

I've been doing a lot of interviews lately about the best writing advice anyone ever gave me. One such interview I did (if you want to call it that) was for my rock star agent, Chip MacGregor or the MacGregor Literary Agency. Chip has just put the finishing touches on a "very nice" 7 book deal for me, which includes two new ones, Blue Moonlight and Murder by Moonlight for the Dick Moonlight series and five of my back-list titles, the top ten and top twenty Amazon Kindle bestselling  The Innocent and The Remains among them.

In his newest blog post at MacGregor Literary.com, Chip asks me and several other authors in his stable, what's the best writing advice anyone has ever given you. Here's my answer:  "The best writing advice I ever got came from Ernest Hemingway in the form of his memoir, A Moveable Feast. If writers are worried about one thing, it's the ability to keep a story moving from day to day. To avoid the 'block,' as some people call it. Papa wrote slowly and methodically in the early morning hours, and trained himself to stop at a point where he knew what was going to happen next. That way he could be sure of getting started the next day -- and it left him the afternoons to play, exercise, fish, drink, or do whatever he wanted."

Taking this a step further, I want to talk a little about mornings.

My band mates in The Blisterz used to get so frustrated with me. Whenever we'd have a gig, I'd request we play the earliest spot possible...You know, when nobody has shown up yet...so that I could get myself home at a decent hour, get to bed, and get up to write. If you're in a band, you don't want to play the early spot. You want to play the late, late, late spot, when the bar is major league packed and everyone is pretty well lubed up. Lubed up audiences are very forgiving. Even when they're shouting out for FreeBird, and you start playing Beat the Brat instead.

But I digress...

As a writer, mornings are precious. Like Hemingway suggested long before me, the morning is the time when you're are most alone and isolated with your thoughts. The dawn is peaceful and the daily rigors of every life like emails, snail mail, needy kids, grumpy spouses, telephone calls, uninvited guests, and more get in the way of your work.

But hey, that's life!

If, however, you can manage to get your page quota in by noon, you then have the rest of the day to deal with said life, and all the adventures it promises to bring your way. Somehow a phone call from the wife telling you she just rear-ended the guy in front of her while she was texting doesn't sound as painful as it might otherwise be if your pages are completed. If you receive an IRS bill for unpaid taxes, it becomes more like water rolling off a duck's back so long as you have gotten your daily quota of words in.

Your writing is your shield and your sword and your rock. It is what you have in the face of uncertainty. It is surety and stability when the earth beneath your feet is splitting open, and about to swallow your home with the dig still asleep inside it. And it all begins in the dawn, when you are the only person awake on earth.

GET ZANDRI BOOKS: WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Blue Ray Edition of Moonlight Falls, Errrrrrrr.....

Are your one of those movie fans who can't get enough of the same movie?
Do you rush out to by the Blue-ray version of your favorite flicks if only to get the extra special features like alternate endings, deleted scenes, and director commentary? When the "new" old Star Wars movies come out, did you pluck them off the shelf as soon as they arrived? Did you buy The Beatles Anthology or the MTV "Unplugged" music performance series???

Now the same "Uncut" experience is available in books.

Before you ask the obvious question: well, isn't that the same as an unedited version of a manuscript?
The answer is more no than yes. Often times novels run too long, or head in a direction that eventually the author decides not to go through multiple rewrites. Sometimes the ending is different from the one he inevitably decides to go with. More often than not, entire different points of views will get cut from the finished product.

Such is the case with my bestselling thriller, MOONLIGHT FALLS. The version published by RJBuckley in 2009 represents the sum total of a dozen drafts and edits. Also, three solid years of work. But now, two years later, I realize there is another version of that same book that is just as, and in some cases, even more exciting than what was eventually published. It's now been published by StoneGate Ink. It offers the reader about 100 new pages of material, most of it in the form of different points of view from many of the novels main characters.

As far as I know, StoneGate Ink is the first indie press to traditionally publish a novel like this, and I can bet you dollars to jelly doughnuts, it won't be the last.

Hope you check out MOONLIGHT FALLS UNCUT EDITION and see precisely what it is you are missing!

Get more Zandri novels: WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

MOONLIGHT RISES Reviewed in Denver Examiner

Writer Zack Kopp reviews Moonlight Rises...



The second full-length novel in the continuing Richard "Dick" Moonlight series by Vincent Zandri has been released by StoneGate Ink in Kindle, Nook, and all e-Book forums, available via your Tattered Cover and other retailers. Private eye Dick Moonlight is really dead this time, see. Three thugs in black wearing Obama-masks and communicating with hand-held voice synthesizers pressed against their voice boxes appeared from nowhere and beat him to death in a dark alley in downtown Albany, NY. But why? And forwhat reason! They demanded a mysterious box, see, of unknown proportions the likes of which he’s never heard about. WHAT box?!! They insist he cut all ties with his latest client: a disabled nuclear engineer of Russian heritage by the same of Peter Czech. Is he really from Ruissia? Moonlight can’t be sure, see. It hardly matters, now that he’s dead. Private Eye Dick Moonlight has a blissful out of body experience, his soul floating above his ruined mess of a body inside the Albany Medical Center I.C.U. whereon his one true love, Lola, is standing by his bedside, see.

But then something happens, see. Something bad. This young punk rambles into the I.C.U, see, he takes Lola’s hand, and draws her into a loving embrace over the limp Dick Moonlight. What seemed at first like a sweet peaceful death now causes Moonlight to struggle to reenter his body so he can stare down Some Young Guy and avenge himself, see. The pain of his battery is worsened by the pain of his breaking heart. Even so, as a hardened private dick, Moonlight wants to find out the true identity of those thugs who killed him, see, and decides his bruised and broken body is the perfect place to lay low for a while and pick up information. Yeah, see. Surely he’s not really dead, given the title. Does he come back to life? Will he spring into action, clubbing down attackers with balled fists? And what about those crazy masks? Is this is a political book? Hah. Life sucks, then you die. But Moonlight Rises

To read original review: http://www.examiner.com/books-in-denver/book-review-moonlight-rises-by-vincent-zandri-review

To grab Moonlight Rises: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B005HB16Y6/ref=nosim/theplanningsh-20

All Your "Moonlights" in a Row

The DICK MOONLIGHT SERIES...in ORDER


















My publisher brought up a good point: Since all the Moonlights take place in sequence but can still be read as stand-alones, perhaps it would be a good idea to give you an idea of the order in which the Moonlights should be read thus far. That is, you want to read them in order. So here goes:



1. Moonlight Falls: In MOONLIGHT FALLS, novelist and photo journalist Vincent Zandri asks the question “If you knew your life could end at any moment, how far would you go to prove you murdered your lover? ” Albany, New York, is the setting of Zandri’s paranoid thriller (in the Hitchcock tradition) about Richard “Dick” Moonlight, former APD detective turned private investigator/massage therapist, who believes he killed Scarlet Montana, his illicit lover and wife of his ex-boss Chief of Detectives Jake Montana. The dilemma ... Moonlight doesn’t remember what happened!
1.25...COMING SOON: MOONLIGHT FALLS (UNCUT): The extended and expanded edition of the bestseller, including dozens of unpublished chapters, interviews, reviews, videos links, A Dick Moonlight's Albany Walking Tour, pictures, and more.

1.5 Moonlight Mafia: In this digital short, the too often unemployed private detective is hired by an anonymous client (“John Smith”) to bring down a Mafia wise guy who’s using a used car lot as a front for illegal gambling activity. At least, that’s what Moonlight is led to believe. According to the job description, he is to answer a want ad for a salesman position at the same used car lot and thereby secretly infiltrate the illegal operation. Sounds like a piece of cake.

Problem is, when Moonlight heads over to the used car lot to answer the ad, he decides to pay a quick visit to the bar next door and have a couple of quick “Jacks” to loosen himself up. But when he opens the big heavy door on his late father’s pride and joy 1978 “Cadi” hearse, it gets away from him and dings the passenger-side of the brand spankin’ new black Dodge Ram parked beside it. What Moonlight doesn’t realize as he pretends to ignore the Ram’s damage is that the door he just dinged belongs to his new would-be boss. And his would-be boss is not only in the Mafia, he’s no stranger to torturing and killing people for fun!

2. Moonlight Rises: Dick Moonlight is dead.

Really dead this time, now that three President Obama-masked thugs dressed all in black and communicating only with hand-held voice synthesizers pressed up against their voice boxes have beat the life right out of him inside a dark, downtown Albany alley. What are the thugs after? A box. Size, weight, description unknown. They also want him to stay away from his newest and only client: a handicapped nuclear engineer of dubious Russian heritage by the same of Peter Czech.

But then, now that they’ve killed him, Moonlight’s problems seem to be over. In fact, as he undergoes an out of body experience, his soul floating above his train-wreck of a corpse inside the Albany Medical Center I.C.U., he feels pretty damned good. Great in fact. To make death all the more sweeter, his one true love, Lola, is standing by his bedside. With her long dark hair draping her chiseled face and big round Jackie O sunglasses hiding tear-filled eyes, she appears every bit the grieving sig other. Nothing could make the dead-and-gone Moonlight prouder.

But then something happens. Something bad. A man enters into the I.C.U. Some young guy. He takes hold of Lola’s hand, and pulls her into him. Together, the two share a loving embrace over Moonlight’s dead body. Now, what seemed like a peaceful death is anything but. Moonlight wants back inside his body so he can face-off Some Young Guy and find out if his true love has in fact been cheating on him. At the same time, he wants to find out the true identity of those thugs who killed him so he can exact his revenge. No doubt about it, Moonlight needs to live if he’s going to uncover some pretty painful answers and take care of business.

Like a little kid dropping down a playground slide, Moonlight slides right back inside his bruised and broken body. Opening his eyes the white light blinds him. He feels the pain of his wounds and the pain of his breaking heart.

Life sucks, then you die.

But Moonlight rises.

3. COMING SOON... Murder by Moonlight

4. COMING SOON...Blue मूंलिघ्त

MOONLIGHT RISES is RISEN!!!

"The long awaited second novel in the Moonlight series!"


“Life sucks. Then you die. Or, if you’re Dick Moonlight, first you die and then you live.”



The second full-length novel in the continuing Richard "Dick" Moonlight series has been released by StoneGate Ink in Kindle, Nook, and all e-Book forums: MOONLIGHT RISE.

The Story:

Dick Moonlight is dead.

Really dead this time, now that three President Obama-masked thugs dressed all in black and communicating only with hand-held voice synthesizers pressed up against their voice boxes have beat the life right out of him inside a dark, downtown Albany alley. What are the thugs after? A box. Size, weight, description unknown. They also want him to stay away from his newest and only client: a handicapped nuclear engineer of dubious Russian heritage by the same of Peter Czech.

But then, now that they’ve killed him, Moonlight’s problems seem to be over. In fact, as he undergoes an out of body experience, his soul floating above his train-wreck of a corpse inside the Albany Medical Center I.C.U., he feels pretty damned good. Great in fact. To make death all the more sweeter, his one true love, Lola, is standing by his bedside. With her long dark hair draping her chiseled face and big round Jackie O sunglasses hiding tear-filled eyes, she appears every bit the grieving sig other. Nothing could make the dead-and-gone Moonlight prouder.

But then something happens. Something bad. A man enters into the I.C.U. Some young guy. He takes hold of Lola’s hand, and pulls her into him. Together, the two share a loving embrace over Moonlight’s dead body. Now, what seemed like a peaceful death is anything but. Moonlight wants back inside his body so he can face-off Some Young Guy and find out if his true love has in fact been cheating on him. At the same time, he wants to find out the true identity of those thugs who killed him so he can exact his revenge. No doubt about it, Moonlight needs to live if he’s going to uncover some pretty painful answers and take care of business.

Like a little kid dropping down a playground slide, Moonlight slides right back inside his bruised and broken body. Opening his eyes the white light blinds him. He feels the pain of his wounds and the pain of his breaking heart.

Life sucks, then you die.

But Moonlight rises.

Where to grab it:

MOONLIGHT RISES in Kindle
MOONLIGHT RISES in Nook

ITW: Day 2.67

"Now on the conference schedule..."





Stole away this morning to grab coffee and fresh bread in Grand Central station. In typical Vin manner, the more things get organized and feel like lemmings being led to the slaughter, the more I break away from the heard and do my own thing (ok, the slaughter thing is a bit dramatic and fictional, but this is ITW after all...).

Today however will feature an exciting opp for yours truly while I join a panel of fellow international thriller writers about researching foreign locales. Should be cool. I've not only worked as a foreign correspondent but I spend a couple of months in Florence, Italy every year working on my novels. I've also traveled all over Europe and Asia as a Ghost Writer, a part-time gig I no longer engage in. One person's aesthetic never ever matches up precisely with another's. My ghosting experiences always ended up in a fist-fight or the very least shit storm of slanderous accusations, screams, threat of lawsuit and eventually, only two-thirds of my promised payments.

Some writers have trouble taking orders...

Anyway, I'm off for a run, and a quick subway ride downtown, and then back up to the conference for the panel. Later on, the formal cocktail reception and awards banquet. I've never won an award. But perhaps if I were more of a team player I might win something (the author, thinking about it for a second...Nahhhhh, I'll keep doing my own thing)...

Ciao Ciao

V

High Royalty Rate Vs. Big Advance

"Get that little son of a bitch Zandri on the phone right now!!! You hear me people?!!!!"





My friends and colleagues, the cats over at StoneGate Ink, put up a post on the their FB page asking this simple question: As an author, do you prefer a high royalty rate or would you prefer a big advance?

If this were ten or even three years ago, I would have said, "Advance" without evening thinking about it. In fact, my reaction would have been more automatic then breathing. But all that has changed in the past year since having signed on with the Inkers for a 50% royalty per E-Book sold rate.

I come from that generation that for ages believed you went to writing school, then got an agent, then nailed a major contract with a legacy publisher. All of which has happened to me. In fact when I signed a contract with Herr Bertlesman worth close to a quarter million bucks back in 1999, I thought my life was set. The publisher would take the time to develop me, I would eventually sell out, and be offered a new contract every other year or so, all of which would boast more and more zeros.

But what I didn't know at the time, was that a first novel usually sells only moderately well. There are exceptions of course, but I ain't talkin' about Harry Potter here or Kitchen Confidential. I'm talking about the other 99.9% of us lucky enough to have landed a major contract or two. So when THE INNOCENT (As Catch Can), sold only so-so, and then GODCHILD its follow-up the did the same, the big boys in the Bertlesman Tower decided to pull the plug on Vincent Zandri, thriller writer. Lucky for me I was able to keep my advance without having earned it back. However, all marketing of the books ceased, what were left on the shelves were remaindered, and the bastards even hung onto my rights for eight more years, pretty much putting me out of business. In the words of my then editor: "They are preventing you from selling books!"

I had to head back to full-time freelance journalism.

Then came my new agent Janet Benrey (now retired) who beat my novel rights out of Random House. She wanted to strike up a deal with a new upstart publisher who was making its mark on the publishing world by re-publishing back-listed novels by some heavy hitters in the industry, and publishing some new novels as well. There wouldn't be an advance but the royalty rate would be staggeringly high and what was even better, the novels would come out within a couple of months instead of the usually one to two year wait.

Still, despite 5-plus tortuous years without a new contract, when Janet urged me to sign with this publisher, I honestly thought she might have been smoking a little too much of the Chinaman's pipe. But what the hell, I signed anyway.

Fast forward to a year later, and I've sold close to a couple hundred thousand E-Books, and well over 100,000 Kindle copies of THE INNOCENT alone. GODCHILD is a close second. THE REMAINS a close third. The past three months were so staggeringly good I got calls from The Wall Street Journal and USA Today ran a small piece about "Innocent's" success.

What's this mean for me?

It means the six figures I'm earning this year is real money. It means I am operating in the black. It means I am now involved in responsible publishing. It also means that there's a good chance that if Mr. B had believed in me and what I could potentially sell, instead of showing me the door after only two books, I would not only have earned the advance back, I would have made him a nice profit.

But instead the money I've earned is all mine. Sorry Random House, you had your chance. Serves you right for holding my rights hostage for 8 years!

Hmmmm, wonder if I should go for the 4 bedroom villa in Tuscany or the three bedroom with the in-ground pool? Decisions, decisions, decisions....

Amazon Tags: The Good News & The Good News

Some of us took it on the chin last week. Us authors published by indie outfits like StoneHouse/StoneGate Ink and some of you self-pub'd authors, that is. Amazon decided to remove the tags that can lead readers to our books whenever they search for a certain type of read, be it hard-boiled or romantic suspense or a book that's a lot like James Patterson's books for that matter. Combine that with some sales reporting glitches and a summer special concocted by Amazon in which they selected 600 novels (most of which are published by the major houses in New York), discounted them to $2.99 or less to make them as attractive as indie books, and it all came together to create a major slowdown in our sales.

I did some blogging on the tag topic last week and received more comments than ever before. Tagging, although not essential for selling novels is nonetheless, a valuable tool in helping potential readers and hopefully would-be fans find your work. One of the comments by a fellow indie pub'd author was quite revealing and came as a bit of a relief. He pointed out the fact that the tags are not gone at all. They are just no longer posted beneath a particular book's product description. Which means Amazon has decided that only books that you purchase can be tagged. What this will do for them is cut down on the amount of "gaming" abuse that can occur with tags, and perhaps put a halt to what they and the the Big Six Legacy Pubs consider the worst tag of all: "Boycott $9.99" Kindles."

So, if you want to find your tags, here's what you do:
-Go to your Customer Account (not your Author Central Account)
-Scroll down to "Improve Your Recommendations"
-BAM! Your tags will appear for you in the form of books you have purchased.

So that's it, for now.
Word on the street from some of my other blog readers is that Amazon Support has promised that the tags are to return to the main Kindle E-Book pages and that what's happened is in fact, a glitch in the system. But considering the timing of the "600 Kindle Titles Special," I don't know if I'm buying it.

The good news is that all games aside, the indie titles are slowly gaining back the ground they lost last week, and even re-entering the "Movers and Shakers" list. Which means that no matter what kind of battles the head honchos of the Big Six and stores like Amazon decide to wage against us indies, the overall war will be won by us.

Why?

Because we can offer great work for an affordable price and we can do it forever and ever, Amen.

To buy Zandri's Top 100 Bestselling Kindle E-Books like THE INNOCENT and GODCHILD (both only $.99 for a limited time) head on over to WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM or click on the title.

GODCHILD! A Thriller for the Broken Hearted!

"Papa, before he became 'Papa," and not long after suffering his first of many broken hearts, all of which he would attempt to mend through his writing and his psychiatrist, Smith Corona."



Have you ever purposely set out to write a novel based upon your own broken heart?

I understand what it is to find solace in writing. I know what it is to find peace and escape. But at times, I also find writing better than even the best therapy session with the most expensive shrink in town.

What did Ernest Hemingway refer to as the name of his psychiatrist?
Smith Corona.

When I set out to write GODCHILD in early 2000, I not only wanted to pick up the story of Jack Marconi and where it left off in the THE INNOCENT, I somehow wanted to exorcise the demons that had been tormenting my soul for more than a year. Since the success of the sale of THE INNOCENT under a Random House imprint (It was published under the title, AS CATCH CAN), I'd been able to buy a new house and support myself and my family while writing full-time. The problems came about when my then wife decided that my writing was not just a means of employment and passion for her husband, but serious competition for her attention.

Said wife hired a personal trainer to help chisel out a new body and she eventually started sleeping with the personal trainer. Of course a tortured separation followed and divorce became immanent. Now instead of having the world by the horns, I was suddenly faced with living apart from my kids.

What did the cheating spouse get out of all this: Naturally she got the house, the kids, the friends, the money, ...the whole works. Because in New York State, doesn't matter who cheats on who. It's the one making the money who's got to pay.

So I found myself living in two room apartment, with no money, yearning for my kids, angry as all hell at my now ex-wife, and desperately dependent upon the success of my next novel, which would become GODCHILD. But sometimes, it's desperate, if not broken-hearted circumstances that can bring out the best in us as writers, and just plain human beings. So, in the opening pages of the manuscript, when I found my character Jack Marconi gripping his trusted 1918 Colt .45, emptying an entire clip into the rows and rows of booze stacked on the shelves of his favorite bar, tears streaming down his face, his fiance now having left him, I knew I had discovered a story that didn't mirror my own necessarily, but that did reflect my state of scary mind. A state of mind that had not only been shattered, but was dangerously close to doing something entirely stupid.

But then, that's the good thing about writing stories: you can live vicariously through your characters. You can suffer with them, do desperate and stupid things with them, you can love and lose with them, you can grow with them. But most of all, you can heal with them. I think by writing GODCHILD, I not only learned how to deal with a broken heart. I learned how to move on from it.

GODCHILD... a newly released novel from StoneGate Ink. A story for the broken hearted that takes place where THE INNOCENT leaves off....Check out the product description and some reviews below:

"A classic detective tale."
--The Record (Troy, NY)

"[Zandri] demonstrates an uncanny knack for exposition, introducing new characters and narrative possibilities with the confidence of an old pro....Zandri does a superb job creating interlocking puzzle pieces."
--San Diego Union-Tribune

"This is a tough, stylish, heartbreaking car accident of a book: You don't want to look but you can't look away. Zandri's a terrific writer and he tells a terrific story."
--Don Winslow, author of The Death and Life of Bobby Z

"Satisfying."
--Kirkus Reviews

-- Review

Product Description

He wanted justice, truth, revenge...whichever came first.

Prison-warden-turned-P.I. Jack "Keeper" Marconi understands the criminal mind. And he knows what it takes to break a man. His own life came apart the day a black Buick broadsided his car--and his wife died horrifically in the seat beside him.

Years later, on the eve of his second marriage, Marconi catches a split-second glimpse of the driver who killed his wife. Suddenly hurtled back into the past, he is determined to take one last shot at hunting him down. That is, until he is offered a job he can't refuse: to bust a beautiful woman out of a hellish Mexican prison. Now Keeper's chase through Mexico follows a trail of bodies and lies back home: to the truth about a woman on the run, to a man sitting behind the wheel of a black Buick, and to a story that someone will kill to bury....

MOONLIGHT FALLS By VIncent Zandri

A very cool review from the very cool Lit Fest Magazine!

MOONLIGHT FALLS By VIncent Zandri




GET MOONLIGHT FALLS for your KINDLE or for your paper library!