New Web Site live - and Three Category Nominee for Bram Stoker Awards
10:29 AM PST, February 15, 2008
It's been a while since I posted anything here, but I figured it was about time. I've had a lot happen since my last "Connect". My novel, Ancient Eyes, was released by Bloodletting Press and sold out the limited edition run before it was even available for sale. Not bad. My short story collection, Defining Moments, was released and is now a finalist for The Bram Stoker Award (as is my short story "The Gentle Brush of Wings" from that collection, which can be read for free on my new website).
I have a novel due from Five Star in early 2009 - and at the same time that book will come out in limited collectible form from Bad Moon Books - it's titled Vintage Soul, and is the first in what I hope to be a lengthy series - The DeChance Chronicles. The new website is: Macabre Ink More to follow, but you can always catch up with me at my site in my real journal. -DNW The Mote In Andrea's Eye - June Release - Signings
3:01 PM PDT, May 17, 2006
I thought I'd drop by and mention my upcoming novel, "The Mote in Andrea's Eye," which is due out in June. If you click the title of the story above, it's linked to the first chapter of the novel - an excerpt to catch your attention.
This novel is pretty personal on some levels. My family lived through hurricane Isabel a few years back - it roared right over the top of our house. Among other things it ripped the handrail from our widow's walk and dropped it into our pool about twenty feet in front of my face -- and when I went up to secure the access door to the roof, I nearly did a Wizard of Oz flight through the storm, attached to that door. It was a frightening time. After that, we watched the tracking radar on storms more closely, and one night the love of my life asked a fateful question. "I wonder why no hurricane has ever disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle?" A novel was born. Andrea Jamieson is my protagonist. She was a little girl living in the Outer Banks of North Carolina in the 1940s when a huge storm swept the coast. In an attempt to rescue her neighbor, her father dies, and this leaves a mark on Andrea that never heals. She grows up to study storms - becomes a consultant for the government's program "Operation Stormfury," where they tried to control storms by dropping silver iodide into the clouds, and when that program is shut down, she opens her own hurricane center. When they think they are ready, Andrea, her husband, ex-Navy pilot Phil Wicks, and their team go out to try and stop a hurricane. What happens is far from what they expect. They send the hurricane careening out of control, straight for the coast....but then, right off the coast of Bermuda, the storm just disappears. So does Phil, who is flying high above it. Now, thirty years later in 2006, Andrea is just ready to unveil a new method of stopping storms. Before she can fully test it -- her storm comes back, right off Bermuda where she lost it. It's huge, it's headed for the coast, and they have barely enough time for a last-chance gamble to stop it. One other thing -- high above the storm, a very old plane is still flying. This is an odd story - part Science Fiction, part science fact - part romance, part thriller. There's a little bit of "Twister" in it for those folks who, like me, loved that movie. The last thing is the writing. I wrote this during the 2004 Nanowrimo challenge - I wrote the entire novel in 30 days. (Actually, I finished it on the 1st of December, but Nanowrimo only requires 50,000 words in November -- I wrote 86,000) I wrote it very "clean" so my 14 year old daughter could read along - so what I ended up with is far from the dark fantasy, horror novels of my past. Publisher's Weekly said: “Those who think of Wilson (The Temptation of Blood) as a horror writer may be surprised by the tender tone of this unabashed descendant of 1940s pulp tales. Tugging heartstrings with the expertise of a master puppeteer, Wilson, a former naval technician, adds plenty of authentic touches but never overwhelms the reader with details. The clean prose, romance and fantasy elements, heart-pounding scenes of man against nature, and topical currency (thankfully not overplayed) will appeal to a wide variety of readers . . .” Library Journal said: "Wilson (The Temptation of Blood) crafts a paranormal thriller that develops with cinematic intensity to its gripping conclusion. A good selection for sf thriller and Bermuda Triangle fans." You can preorder signed copies of this novel at www.shocklines.com -- or it's available more cheaply at www.bn.com (Barnes & Noble offers a discount, currently) I'll be signing copies of this book in Elizabeth City, NC and in Hertford, NC in June. You can find me spouting off more regularly in my own journal: http://deep-bluze.livejournal.com and once monthly at www.storytellersunplugged.com RICHARD STEINBERG - BEST-SELLING AUTHOR INTERVIEWED
9:37 AM PDT, April 19, 2006
From time to time I pull out my notebook and pen some questions for one of the amazing people I'm privileged to know, and bring their answers to my "blog" or on-line journal. Recently, I had the distinct pleasure of presenting one of the most unique interviews I've ever conducted. I thought I'd share it here... Bestselling Author Richard Steinberg – A Deep Blue Interview New York Times & International Best Selling author of The Four Phase Man – soon to be a Warner Brothers miniseries Nobody’s Safe – soon to be a major motion picture from the Producer of X-Men The Gemini Man – winner of 21 literary awards around the world . . . is published in 32 countries on every continent around the globe. He has been many things, fought many wars – personal, public, for God and Country, and for sanity’s sake. Some have been acknowledged; others covert, hidden . . . denied. He has been a counter-terrorist for a private corporation . . . with the United States government as its only client. He has been a high priced bodyguard in the land of swimming pools and palm trees . . . where threats sometimes come clothed in $5,000 suits or the finest diamonds. He has dug ditches, sold women’s shoes, managed Rock bands, worked as a small business consultant, and casino parking lot attendant. . . been a hero and a victim. But he has never stopped believing in the dream . . . of an America as honorable, as caring, as committed to liberty and democracy and true soul greatness as its people. This is My Blood & The Gospel of Judas Oddly similar
10:55 AM PDT, April 7, 2006
The sudden surge of interest brought about by the release of the translated text of the controversial “Book of Judas” has sparked a keen and sudden interest in a text of a very different kind -- my own novel, This is My Blood (or as it has recently been retitled and re-released, "The Temptation of Blood") In the late 1980s, I wrote a story titled “A Candle Lit in Sunlight,” which was published in STARSHORE Magazine, and reprinted in “The Year’s Best Horror,” edited by the late Karl Edward Wagner. This novelette inspired me to expand my thoughts into a novel, which was first published in 1999. That novel, “This Is My Blood,” has some uncanny similarities in theme and content to the newly translated Coptic Codex of the newly translated Book of Judas. One of my earlier goals in life included the ministry, and I have since become ordained, so I wove this story in and out of patches of time and missing events in the original four gospel accounts, doing little to change the flow of the narrative, or Christ’s message, but creating a compelling alternative tale. In “This Is My Blood,” recently re-released as “The Temptation of Blood,” I added the temptation of a woman to those offered Christ in the desert. Mary Magdalene, in this tale a fallen angel, is raised in the flesh to tempt Christ, but instead loves him and yearns to find her way back to Heaven. Christ promises her that there is a place for her in his Father’s house. Satan, infuriated, curses her to follow in the footsteps of the Messiah, drinking the innocent blood of his followers. While this might seem to be the point where this novel and Christianity diverge, in fact what is created is a new perspective. As one of the Fallen, Mary is able to observe the apostles, men, the Pharisees, and the world from the eyes of a being who KNOWS the truth of Heaven, Hell, and redemption. Frustrated by the inability of the apostles to accept the wonder of what is offered to them, and tormented by Christ’s continued offers to set her free, despite the discrepancy this creates in prophecy, she follows him through Jerusalem and Galilee, haunting his disciples – in particular Judas Iscariot – and forced to feed on blood when her willpower fades. This is woven into the parable of the King’s daughter, and the raising of Lazarus. Throughout this novel the reader will find excerpts from The Book of The Gospel According to Judas Iscariot – and will come to see this apostle as the best of them, the strongest in his faith, and the most willing, in the end, to lay down his life and very existence for the Lord who has promised him salvation. Also included in this novel are new interpretations of other myths, including the Creation, and Lilith – who actually has a face to face meeting with Jesus within these pages. As the controversy rages on, you can follow my take on it at: http://deep-bluze.livejournal.com About "This is My Blood" -- -- “Religious ecstasy and vampiric bloodlust blend to potent effect in this horror oriented alternate history of early Christianity.....Wilson's prose is smooth and powerful, carrying its allegorical weight with grace. His first novel is one of the most unique vampire stories to appear in recent years, balancing themes of damnation and prophesy against those of faith and redemption." -- Publisher's Weekly Where do you get your ideas? Essay Live..
10:56 AM PST, February 28, 2006
"There are a lot of levels to writing, shades of gray and layers of expression stain every word. Don't ask where the ideas come from, though, because the very act of asking is a form of denial. You know where they come from. The key is in finding the courage to set them free. " That quote is from the new essay / column I have over at www.cemeterydance.com - they have a section called "The Writer's Corner," and they asked me, along with several other authors, to contribute an essay that would be of use to aspiring authors, and of interest to readers of my own fiction. Here is the link to the essay. Enjoy.... DNW
The Orffyreus Wheel - A Serial Novel on Amazon Part One Live!
10:15 AM PST, February 17, 2006
I'm now part of the new, on-going test of marketing books directly through Amazon.com. My novel, "The Orffyreus Wheel" has begun its serial, on-line journey today. Literary Fiction - A Genre? Another author weighs in...
5:45 AM PST, February 15, 2006
I’ve been involved in a couple of quick and fairly interesting discussions on the topic of “Literary Fiction,” and whether or not it’s a genre. If it is, of course, then there are whole new questions to answer and boundaries to set. My own take is simple. You write what is important to you. You write the words that build up inside until they have to come out. If this means you write angsty gothic melodrama, so be it, but if that is your thing and you write a fluffy-alien story to get published in a particular market, don’t expect me to consider the fluffy-alien piece literary, regardless of quality. What I’m saying is that literary isn’t a measure of quality, but is a quality unto itself. It is the great “I am” of the author spread across the page (or screen) with windows and doors opening back into the mind of its creator. The bottom line of it, for me, is integrity. There is writing you do because you are a writer, and it’s what you do. There is writing you do because you are a writer and you know you can fit some pre-conceived niche with just the right filler and get noticed. The thing is that most of us use the latter to draw people’s attention to the former. I don’t believe there is any such thing as a genre of literary fiction, and I don’t believe there’s any single group with sufficient qualifications to decide what would fit in, and outside the boundaries of such a genre if it existed. Genre, to me, is a commercial division used to slice up books for general consumption in bookstores. Literary is one of those indefinable qualities that you know when you sense it in writing, but that you can’t necessarily explain to someone in a way that they could quantify, outline, or reproduce the essence of in their writing. You can tell someone what comprises a mystery, or science-fiction, and though the boundaries can be pushed and pulled, molded and changed, they still exist. If you want to argue that something is, or is not SF you have grounds from which to start the debate. The same is true of horror, fantasy, mysteries and western fiction. What would you use for similar grounds in defining literary fiction? What would make you put one book on that literary shelf and remove another, and more importantly, what would qualify you to make that decision? Academics? Experience? A bookshelf of angst-ridden prose and poetry trade paperbacks with circles and arrows and highlighting throughout the text, explaining what each phrase is in the context of literature? A mailbox full of “literary” magazines? Literature is a broad spectrum of thoughts, memories, discoveries and insight, and its promulgation is a rich, diverse spectrum of talent splashed across myriad forms of media. The odds are that within your circle of influence and taste, you know what you mean when you say literary fiction, and you know that others have a variety of other opinions on the same subject. The key is in keeping it all in perspective and not making the same mistake religious leaders have made throughout the ages. Don’t proclaim your answer as “the truth” and use it as a bludgeon to dislodge the answers of others. If you do what will follow is debate, dogma and heretical prophets, and none of us want that… DNW
The Bearer of Bad Shoes - A Cautionary Olympic Tale...FREE
11:06 AM PST, February 11, 2006, updated at 11:57 AM PST, February 11, 2006
Last Summer Olympics I wrote the story of Mephistopheles Doufis of Rozinia and his bid for Olympic Glory and Red-Dot Keds. It was met with such enthusiastic laughter that I'm offering it - free of charge - in honor of the Winter Olympics...you can read the story for free.
CLICK HERE FOR: THE BEARER OF BAD SHOES DNW Connections, Intensity and Cloning Your Muse
7:37 AM PST, February 9, 2006
I am currently kicking myself in the butt over an old truth that I thought I’d pounded firmly into my head. It seems I may have pounded it in good and tight, but that it’s still possible to navigate my mind without tripping over it, if that makes any sense. The thing I’m talking about can be boiled down to relevance and intensity. I think everything I write – everything that anyone who is serious about writing writes, in fact – should reach a certain level of either relevance to the world, or intensity of vision. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be humor, or that it’s wrong to just tell a story for the story’s sake, but I am saying that to write in that sort of matter-of-fact, mundane manner for any length of time can derail you. In an interview I did a while back at www.popmatters.com I talked about writing “what hurts.” You can’t always do that, of course, but it applies to other emotions as well as pain. If something makes you incredibly happy, or scares the white bejeezus out of you, you should be able to channel that into your work. It’s not a matter of pain, then, but of connection, and the intensity of that connection. It’s not just telling stories, but a way of “feeling” them on a level where the connection between what you think, what you see in your mind, and what – eventually – flows through your fingers is strong and palpable to the point that if someone interrupts you while you are working on it you feel a snap of release, or if someone absolutely doesn’t get it when you are done the frustration bubbles up like an emotional fountain. Over the centuries I suppose this frustration and intensity is what burned out so many great artists, authors and musicians, drove them to drink and use drugs (probably searching for that lost connection and mistaking the muddled mindset of the addicted for what they’d lost). Don’t get me wrong. I hold no illusions that I am one of those great luminaries, nor do I intend to burn our or go crazier than I already have. Still, it’s the only way – I think – to reach the goal of writing things that are memorable. A good story will entertain a reader while they are reading it. A great story will haunt them for the rest of their life. The latter HAS to be the goal, usually falling short and landing somewhere in between. The best way to never fall below a certain level is to always reach several levels above it. Writing can be like a maze if you take it seriously, and a good 2/3 of the paths lead straight into brick walls. Let’s look at modern examples. Themed anthologies beckon. These can lead to the best and the worst of your talent with equal facility. If you fall into the trap of taking the easy way through, you can just write a clever story meeting all the criteria in the guidelines, be careful of your grammar and a little clever in your dialogue, and get by for years and volumes and pages. If you take the theme, bend it, examine it, toss it up and down a few times and stare at it until it melts into something … different… you can sometimes create that one stand-out story in a book of stories sharing a single theme that will catch the eye of critics and readers. You may fail to come close enough to the pattern the editor envisions, or you may expand it for him/ her. If you do, you will almost certainly accomplish two important things. You will write a story with actual meaning to you as an artist, and you will write a story that has a hell of a lot more potential to sell elsewhere if it fails to make it into the anthology. Magazines can do the same thing for you. If you try too hard to fit the “theme” of the magazine itself, you can lose yourself and become an extension of that editor, or the magazine’s readership, catering to muses you don’t recognize or even get along with that well. It will drive you nuts, and though it might work out okay for a while, it isn’t as fulfilling as sneaking a few of your own muses out into the world and infiltrating. That’s my advice. Do everything you can to clone your muse, and implant him/her in every nook and cranny of the writing world you come into contact with. You may make readers and editors nervous, but even that nervous reaction will bring them back to read, and if you reach that connection with your words often enough, it becomes a connection to the world. Others see it, feel it, and follow it, and one day some small snippet of what you create – some image, or passage, story, poem or book, may find its way into the great “I Am” and stay there…fleetingly. GOD, this guy just rambles on and on… I think maybe I’ll connect with some coffee and get some writing done…
PROMOTING YOUR BOOk - How much and ... how much?
6:22 AM PST, February 6, 2006
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the many hoops authors jump through to promote their books. I have twelve novels out now, and I can honestly say that the ones I worked hard to promote didn’t do much better than those I pretty much ignored, and that is the focus of what I want to cover today. It’s an exciting thing to sell a book. Even after a dozen, selling another is almost the same thrill…sometimes it’s even better, if the stakes rise on each successive contract. What comes next? The immediate urge is to find rooftops to shout from. I see new authors scrambling to put together flashy web pages (often paying people to do the design) without really understanding how long it takes to build up traffic to a web site, or how few sales (in general) are generated in this manner. I see people buying mailing lists, printing bookmarks, setting up book-signing tours, and fighting over the same three or four feet of interview space – it can be very addictive. It can also be deceptive, and that’s what worries me, currently. Let’s talk about these things one at a time, from my perspective, and we’ll see where we end up. Keep in mind, my experience is not everyone’s experience. I’m not trying to look down my nose on anyone’s honest effort to push their work, or claiming to know how things work for everyone, but here’s what I’ve learned. Web sites. First off, for someone to be looking for your web site, they already know your name. If they want your book, it is likely they have searched your name on Amazon.com already and bought it, or not. The web site is nice to connect yourself with readers after the fact, and might actually, over time, become something that will draw them back and help convince them to purchase further works, but for a first time novelist it’s just not necessary to have anything elaborate or (read this as the most important part of this entire essay) expensive. If you want people to visit a website often enough to make a difference in book sales, then there has to be more to the web site than yourself, and the book in question. You have to have rapidly changing content of interest to a large group of surfers. You have to be more interesting than the million other places they might click on. In other words, if your website isn’t absolutely remarkable in some way, people may come once to look – friends will look – readers who already bought your books might look, but the traffic beyond that will not be large enough to create much of a ripple in sales. What do I suggest in lieu of the fancy web page? Start an on-line journal or Blog. Use the free service provided through www.amazon.com/connect or sign up with Publisher’s Marketplace where professionals will see what you write, and what you do. Use live journal or blogspot where you can put up a professional looking web site in a few minutes, even if you have little experience, and then find something worth reading to put in the journal. While you are blathering on about whatever you blather on about best – promote your book. Leave links to where it can be found. Publish an excerpt. It will do as well, or better, than your average web site and you don’t need a designer with a hefty price tag to make it nice. Advertising. If you really put your mind to it you can find some places to purchase advertising at a reasonable price that will reach a new readership. If the readership of the publication / web site / whatever you are thinking of advertising with is deeply mired in the same group of readers / fandom / writers where your book is already known, it’s pretty much a waste of time. The cost of advertising is generally pretty steep, and the number of folks who actually buy books because of it can be staggeringly low. Do your research. Find others who have used the same advertising source and talk to them…see if there was a noticeable rise in sales. Try to find a way, if you DO advertise, to link sales to that advertisement so you can actually gauge the difference it made. Don’t do it just because you want to see your book cover in a magazine, unless you have money to burn. Think outside the “genre” box you work in and try to find a way to spend that same money that will reach people who have never heard of you. Bookmarks and direct mailing. I’m undecided. I can tell you they aren’t cheap. I have never gone this route because to do so in a professional manner is very expensive. It’s an uncertain return. I, personally, have NEVER bought a book from a direct mail solicitation, and I suspect very few people DO. You’ll hear statements like “get your name out there,” and “sell yourself,” bandied about regularly in self-promotional circles, but I’ve yet to have anyone show me a concrete set of numbers showing how they made money or increased their circulation by any considerable amount by a direct mailing, and while bookmarks are very cool and look good in the bookstores next to the cash registers, I think they are unlikely to make a significant difference on book sales. Keep in mind, I’m not talking here about self-published or POD published books that have no other publicity machine behind them than the author, or that have such a small circulation a dozen sales doubles the print run…I’m talking about commercially published novel promotion. The bottom line is you need fact-finding to be the first order of business. Weigh the cost of what you plan to do against your advance against royalties and your likely sell-through. Decide whether splashing yourself and your face out there is your real goal, or selling books is the bottom line, and proceed in whichever direction the mood shifts you. I know one person who is planning on holding an on-line seminar to tell people to do all the things I just suggested might not be the good deals they seem, and she’s charging a fee for it. I hope new novelists won’t believe that they have no chance of making it if they don’t attend something similar, or spend huge amounts of time on self-promotion. The best way to sell a lot of books is to write the very best books you can produce, get them into the hands of editors and publishers who agree, and then into the hands of reviewers who also agree. The time for book signing tours is when you’ve reached the point that the publisher pays for them. The time for bookmarks and mailings is when the publisher does them as part of the promotional package, and your book signings work best when local TV covers your arrival. My experience of most other book signings is that if you sign 20 or 30 it’s a huge success –and you don’t get the money anyway. You get, what, a quarter a book? The bookstore gets the money – you pay for gas, maybe a hotel, and get to meet a few fans. It can be fun, but don’t watch the New York Times list to see how it launched you to the top… The bottom line of my advice on this subject is pretty simple. Write. Write well. Be conscious of everything you produce, and be proud of it. Talk about your writing every chance you get. Seek good reviews. Research every option brought before you for book promotion carefully, weigh profit and loss and consider how much writing time it will take up. Be prudent, frugal, and forward-thinking. Onward… DNW
|
Bio
I was born in a very small town in Illinois. Clay County has less people in it than your average large city, and Flora , Illinois , is so tiny it barely hits the map. That's where it happened, though. My grandparents lived there, and I spent a lot of happy times with them in my youth -- particularly my grandfather, Merle Cornelius Smith, who was likely the most amazing man I'll ever claim association with. But that's another story, and this one is about me.
My first really clear memories start around my third year of life, when my father left. He took me out for a drive, let me sit on his lap, then went back out for milkshakes and never came back. Things blur quite a lot during that period, but after a period of living with my grandparents, my brother and I were whisked away to Charleston Illinois , where our mom had a job working in one of the cafeterias at Eastern Illinois University , and had married a barber named Robert Leland "Bob" Smith. I could write volumes about good ol' Bob, but I won't. If you really want to meet him, look between the lines of the bits and pieces of Deep Blue where Brandt talks about his father. Think Seagram's 7, Ballantine beer, cheap cigars, Hank Williams, Sr., and Archie Bunker and sort of squash it all together into a 6'4" 270 or so pound frame -- that was Bob. Formative? Yes. Important here? Nope. I escaped Charleston , family, Bob, and a number of other things in 1977 when I left in June and joined the United States Navy. I headed for San Diego , where I went to boot camp, headed next to Groton CT for submarine school (which I dropped out of because my ears wouldn't equalize) and ended up in North Chicago attending Electronics Technician "A" school. I learned guitar, got engaged, unengaged, taught Bible School , got excommunicated, and moved on to San Diego , California once again as part of the crew of the USS Paul F. Foster. My time in the US Navy would fill a dozen books. In fact, parts of it can be found in almost everything I've written. Many of my novels were typed on US Navy computers (later on my own, but still on board) and the first two issues of my magazine, THE TOME, were printed and published on board the USS Guadalcanal (thank you Uncle Sam for supporting the arts). I was stationed on a lot of ships, went on a lot of cruises, lived in Rota , Spain for three years, and wound up retired in Norfolk , Virginia . I've worked as a contractor ever since, a variety of computer, networking and database related jobs, and all that time, I've been writing. Now I live in the historic William R. White house in a tiny place called Hertford , NC , where you buy your hardware from a man named Eerie Haste, and you can still get an ice-cream cone for fifty cents. I have a woman who loves and supports me, Patricia Lee Macomber, two great boys by a previous marriage who live in Virginia, but visit us every couple of weeks, a beautiful, talented teenage daughter named Stephanie who sometimes seems to be the only adult in the family, a taller-by-the-day video game and sports loving son named Billy whose biggest failing is he likes the Oakland Raiders, and a beautiful, way-too-smart little girl named Kathryn Mary -- Katie Bug, for short -- all of whom I adore, and who appear to have looked past my faults to love me in return. I've sold twelve novels to date (though hopefully by the time many of you read this that will be a larger number. I've published over 150 short stories, been in 32 or so anthologies, countless magazines, year's best collections, won awards -- notably The Bram Stoker Award for poetry, which I share with co-authors Mark McLaughlin and Rain Graves. I've been President of the Horror Writer's Association, and I'm an active member of both SFWA and the newer International Thriller Writer's Association. DNW
Scaled by popularity
Topics
Books
Entertainment
Film
Food & Cooking
Home and Family
Insider
Music
Technology
Video Games
|
|
| ||
| ||
| ||
| ||
| ||
