D is for Dumb Ass

"So you're a new writer huh? Wow, good fuckin' luck. You're gonna need it."

Sue Grafton is the latest in what's basically a handful of dinosaur writers who try to crap on indie and self-published authors. The famous "Alphabet"author believes that if you are self-publishing you are not willing to put in the hard work required to be published by one of the antiquated Big Six publishers. In other words, you're not willing to be a slave.

I've put in the hard work and earned hundreds of thousands in advances from the Big Six. I've also put in the hard work and earned hundreds of thousands in real sales from indie and small publishers. I've put in the hard work and just recently self-published my first book: Permanence, a literary thriller/novella that was first published traditionally by a small press back in 1995 and went nowhere fast. Now it's doing very well and sold more in the first week in e-book format than it did in its entirety as a small press offering.

I put in the hard work everyday. I write up to 2,500 words per day. It often leaves me exhausted. It gets in the way of my spending time with family and friends, and I am often alone. I work even when I travel. And I travel a lot. But I make sacrifices in order to put that word count out day in and day out. Its because of those sacrifices that I make sure never to attach myself to only one kind of publishing. Be with a major, an indie or via my own Bear Media label.

V is for Vincent but it's also for Victorious.
S is for Sue and for Simply so arrogant some poor young writer out there will no doubt listen to her garbage and end up never publishing a single book. Not because it isn't good but because Sue said no to publishing with anyone but the money changers on the hill in NYC.

Don't allow other authors, critics, editors, agents, or anyone else dissuade you from your dream. R is for Readers. Let the readers of the world decide if you have what it takes to be a great writer. They're your audience after all. You will live and die with them. Not with Sue Grafton.

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Does Size Really Matter?

I was recently asked by the ITW Thriller "Roundtable" if, as a an author, I thought a thriller had to be played out only on a large canvass or if an intimate setting might suffice. Here's my neither right or wrong answer:

I believe an intimate story can thrill as much as a story played out over a large canvas. As always it's what the author brings to the story...the tone, the pace, the setting (even if it's a cafe table occupied by a man and a woman in conflict), the dialogue, the ability to use flashbacks as a devise to shift the setting from the intimate to the large.

I'm reminded of that famous writing exercise in which the student is asked to write a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an ending and the only character will be a piece of fruit. But the trick is, the true identity of the fruit can never be revealed (You can't start the story out by writing, "I'm an orange"). It can only be described. I'm also reminded of a movie I watched recently on Netflix about a contractor working in war-torn Iraq who has the misfortune of waking up inside a coffin buried in the earth. All he has on him is a cell phone and a lighter, and it's either call for help or die. The story in particular was far too claustrophobic for me to endure the entire ninety or so minutes, but it was certainly thrilling.

There are no real rules for writing thrillers (Okay, who disagrees with this statement?). Traditionally speaking, as both a writer and a reader, I prefer a pile-driving plot with an eclectic and rich cast of characters, and a story that takes my protagonist on the trill ride of his or her life. I have some novels, like the forthcoming Blue Moonlight, that has my main character, detective Dick Moonlight, chasing after a zip-drive that contains sensitive nuclear secrets in New York, Florence, Italy (Yup, there's a Hitchcock-style chase scene between Moonlight and a leather-clad Russian thug on top of the Duomo), and back again. But I also have a new offering called Permanence, that although taking place also in the US and Italy, involves only a man and a woman in serious, if not dangerous conflict. I consider both thrillers, but while the former might please a large variety of readers, the latter is more suited to an audience that might enjoy a more ummmm, gasp, literary style psychological suspense read.

In the end, if an author really wants to break out of his shell and come to realize his true story-telling potential, he needs to experiment with different types of stories, different forms of writing, different POVs and certainly, different canvas sizes.

As an author, what kinds of risks are you willing to take?

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

How My Books Are Born

"Awww, I've got so many stories to tell..."

A prominent lit blogger has asked me to pen a guest blog that details the-story-behind-the-story so to speak of all my books. Talk about an intimidating task, and considering this is a blog and not paid journalism, I'm more inclined to lean towards brevity and my humble wits than get into something that could arguably take a few days and cover an expanse of at least twenty thousand words.

So the question looms large. How are my books born?

My first novel, Permanence, a literary romantic/suspense/thriller (did you get all that?) is a fictional recounting of my my honeymoon to Italy and something I overheard about a psychiatrist who entered into what would be a fatal love affair with a disturbed client. "Wow, I gotta write that one," I remember telling myself as I wiped the peach fuzz from my chin. It was the spark that lit the fire. I was a young literary neophyte and convinced I would set the world on fire with my words.

Course, it took a while for the fire to start. But it's still burning and I'm still stoking it with my follow-up novels like The Innocent, Godchild, The Remains, The Concrete Pearl, Moonlight Falls, Moonlight Rises and the whole kit and kaboodle Moonlight Collection. More traditional gumshoe novels with quirky and sometimes brooding protagonists...anti-heroes...who on occasion find themselves doing some pretty bad things in order to do what's right and to uncover the truth behind a series of lies and injustices. Characters inspired by the authors who came before, like Robert B. Parker, Jim Crumley, James Patterson, Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben and others.

The Innocent is derived from the real-life story of a prison escape that occurred at Green Haven Prison and also the Attica uprisings of the early 1970s. The Moonlight stories, however, are mostly made up. The product of my vivid imagination and love of over-the-top plot lines. They are inspired by Charlie Huston, one of the contemporary noir greats. Also, Boston Terrain, another contemporary great.

I'm currently working on two more novels. Moonlight Sonata...again, entirely made up...and Aziz, a fiction based upon a truth I overheard about an American officer who becomes a casualty in Afghanistan after ordering an airstrike on a Tajik village. Now in Venice with his fiancee nursing his wounds, which also include unexplained bouts of temporary or hysterical blindness, he finds himself in the desperate position of having to find and rescue his future bride when she goes suddenly missing.

I guess Aziz means I'm back to combining the literary with the thriller and romantic suspense genres. Which means I've come full circle. But then, that's what writers do. Invent and reinvent and steal from what's happening in the world around us. Capturing a portrait of the truth and reinventing it for the page like Monet reinvented a garden scene for the canvass, and in doing so making it more real than than God intended.

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

 

Ass to the Chair, Fingers to the Keys

The Prolific Master

The New York Times published a story this weekend about how authors, in this the digital age, now find themselves writing not one book every couple of years (or in the case of our namby pamby literary MFA professor cousins, one book every five to ten years), but because of increased consumer demand, two to four or more. I've been writing about this exact topic for close to two years now and I've spouted off in numerous interviews about how this is indeed a new golden age for writers and readers.

Here's the article URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/in-e-reader-age-of-writers-cramp-a-book-a-year-is-slacking.html?_r=1&ref=ebookreaders

Wow, it's really insightful. 

I've said before also that writers should maintain a variety of publishing options. Major deals, indie deals and self-publishing ventures. I currently am engaged in all three. I've hit a few home runs over the past year with The Innocent and The Remains most notably, but so long as writers produce good books, there's no reason they can't begin to make a very good living eventually.

How can you too take advantage of this the new Golden Age of writing?

By placing your ass in the chair and fingers to the keys.

All it takes to write a book of sixty thousand words in six weeks time is five pages per day. And that's with the weekends off. I can write five pages in about two to three hours which leaves me with plenty of time to work on a second or even a third book. James Patterson has been doing this for years and so has Stephen King.

We're professional writers.

Writing novels is what we do for a living, and there's no reason we shouldn't be putting in as much time as a lawyer does at his or her firm.

Remember, it's all a matter of ass to the chair, and fingers to the keys.

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

So I Finally Went and Published It Myself!

A lot of people...readers especially...associate me directly with Indie Publishing. There's good reason for this since for the past two years I have been publishing with arguably the hottest indie-based publisher in the country, StoneHouse/StoneGate Ink (Get the full story on my indie journey here at SUSPENSE MAGAZINE). And I've done very well with them. So well, I've landed a major deal with Amazon's Thomas & Mercer imprint. But that doesn't mean I won't continue to work with the StoneGates.

Not by a long shot. 

But it also means something else too. For ages now I've been preaching that for an author to be successful he or she needs to engage in a variety of publishing methods. Those methods are, and I repeat: Traditional major, indie-based small press, and self-publishing. I've engaged in the two former methods sometimes successfully and other times dreadfully. But the latter of the three, self-publishing, has eluded me for some time now, even if a whole lot of people out there assume that's what I've been doing for a while now.

But now, I have gone and done it with the re-publication of my literary psychological suspense novel, Permanence, first published in 1995. For my first venture into the world of DIY, I wanted to make sure I did it right, so I hired the best editorial and conversion pros I could find. I also hired a great cover artist, and just one look at the stunning woman-in-the-water book cover might make you realize this is not going to be your everyday thriller.

I also rewrote some of the book, having added a brand new plot point towards the end. I know some fans might consider this cheating, but to be perfectly honest, I'm a better writer now and I wanted to give the reader his or her money's worth. That includes well written sentences and a well developed plot.

This is not your everyday Vincent Zandri thriller. It's a bit of an experiment and the narrative relies heavily on image. Something I was very into at the time. Through the years, some of my fans who read the original version have called this my best, most powerful book. I'm not sure about that, but who knows. Like I said, it was a departure when I wrote it and now, in this second edition published by my own Bear Media label, it remains a departure. But a good read nonetheless and an important stepping stone in the evolution of my noir career.

I hope you think so too

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM