Got Junk?

By Andrew E. Kaufman, author of psychological thrillers

I’m in the middle of overhauling my kitchen. I didn’t mean to—it was an accident, but really, it was one that needed to happen.

It all started when I decided I needed a new fridge. One by one, the shelves had been busting until there was only one left, and I found myself cramming everything in at the bottom. Each time I’d open the door, food would come tumbling out onto the floor, and in some cases, even spilling. In addition to that, Old Fridge was starting to make weird noises, and I noticed the chill factor wasn’t exactly, well… chillin'. I knew it was junk, that I needed to replace it, but for some reason I tolerated the inconvenience until I no longer could.

Then I looked at Tired Old Dishwasher. I’d been tolerating him for quite some time as well; in fact, each time I ran a load, although the dishes were—in theory—clean, a lot of them still didn’t look so great, and I’d end up having to re-wash them by hand. I also couldn’t ignore the fact that Tired Old Dishwasher would look like hell next to Shiny New Fridge.

Then I glanced at Sad Old Stove and frowned at my shameful neglect.

Before I knew it, I found myself at the appliance store, swiping the card, biting the bullet, and kicking myself in the rear.

Once the new stuff arrived, I smiled. I was excited. Then I eyed my dishes, and again, I frowned—so many of them had outlived their usefulness, many with chips, and through the years I had added to the chaos by purchasing more, only to have them end up in much the same condition.

I opened my silverware drawer and through weary eyes, looked inside. The flatware was akin to what one might find in a college dorm, some mismatched, some bent, and some Just Plain Ugly.

How had I let all this go for so long? In the back of my mind, part of the reasoning was based on financial concerns. I could also blame my neglect on the fact that I’ve been working too hard, didn’t have time—but it only took One New Thing to make it painfully clear that the Avalanche of Neglect had started tumbling long before then.

So, why am I telling you this? For good reason. Bear with me.

I’m all about finding the lessons in life—I even see them in the smaller and seemingly mundane things. What was my lesson here? Junk accumulates, and while it’s often right in front of us, we sometimes fail to notice it until we’re forced to. Granted, some people are better at taking care of things than I, but on some level, and to some degree, I think we all do it.

The kitchen project happened to be running alongside my writing project—I was working on the new manuscript, and all at once the parallels were difficult to ignore. How much junk was hidden among the pages? How much of it had I failed to see? Granted, this is why we have editors—to help us see what we can’t, and that in itself is a strong indicator of why they’re so vital. But even so, as writers it’s ultimately our job to find as much junk as we can before the work falls into their hands—not doing so only makes the job that much harder, forcing them to focus their effort and energy on smaller things when they need to concentrate on the larger ones.

In many cases I’ve noticed that some authors even skip that step. They don’t bother hiring an editor (and sadly, in some cases, don’t even bother proofreading their work) before sending it out into the world, junk and all. Sometimes I’ll read entire passages—even chapters—and think, “Why is this even here? It’s junk.” I guess the reason is much the same as the one that caused me to allow my kitchen to fall into such sad shape. I neglected it.

And really, when it comes right down to it, ultimately, the responsibility is ours to not only see the junk, but also to get rid of it.

How about you? Got junk?

PDF Perfidy--or Why PDF's and eBooks Don't Make Good Pals

Kimberly Hitchens is the founder and owner of Booknook.biz, an ebook production company that has produced more than 2,000 ebooks for over 1500 authors and imprints.

This week's blog article was inspired by both Liza Daly and editor Rob Bacon.  Liza, of Threepress, had written about the need for actual "PDF Conversion."  Rob wrote to me, saying, "but isn't this what you do?  Isn't she wrong?"  To which I replied,"Sadly, no; the only way to 'convert' PDF is with a great deal of manual labor."  Rob asked me for an article for his newsletter for his website, "The Perfect Write," and about the time this article appears, so will it appear in his newsletter.  I hope that some frustrated authors out there will find it useful.  It's a bit long--but it's covering a fair amount of ground, so please try to bear with me.

What's Wrong With My PDF→Word Conversion?  It Looks Perfect!

When people look at the results of automated "PDF to Word®" conversion sites, or software, different people see different things.  To an author, who only has a PDF copy of a book from her backlist, it looks like manna from heaven—a Word® file that looks perfect!  To an ebook professional, however, it’s like the movie Lake Placid—a serene, gorgeous surface, beneath which danger lurks.    

You’ve probably heard people talk about how they tried to upload a PDF at the KDP®, or tried to use a program like Adobe Acrobat® to "make" a Word® file from their PDF, only to have achieved wholly unexpected and dismal results.  This happens a lot, particularly to people who don’t have expertise in Word®.  When you use a program like Acrobat®, or one of those online conversion web sites, the file that you get back will often look exactly like you think it should.  And you’ll think it’s great, and be thrilled.  But, underneath, where it counts—where Word's invisible codes tell text what it is and how to display—lurks an unholy mess waiting to bite you when you try to actually use that file, rather than just looking at it.  

Let’s look at one real-life example, to kick off the discussion.  This prospective client came to us, having exported his “Word®” file from PDF, and then uploading the file to Amazon®.  As he ended up coming to us, you can already predict (plot spoiler ahead!), that the results weren’t good.      

When a display or layout program like Acrobat® tries to export a Word® file, it tries to “tell” Word® what it thinks it is seeing.  Because a PDF is not a word-processed file, it’s using a completely different set of codes, and different types of codes, to achieve the layout that you see when you view it.  This is because Acrobat® is a layout program, not a word processor.  Acrobat® and other layout programs only care about how the end product looks; word processors care about what the elements (words, sentences, paragraphs) in a document are.  Do you remember the old parable about three blind men and an elephant?  Well, the Acrobat® conversion to Word® format is a bit like that; Acrobat® tells Word® based upon what it thinks it sees; what it interprets as your intent—not what Word® actually needs to “hear.”  Let’s look at how Acrobat® “sees” a page of text, to the naked eye:

Figure 1:  This is a page from a PDF, exported by Adobe Acrobat to Word. Looks great, right? Perfectly normal?

Figure 1 is one of the pages, in Word, that was the result of an “automatic” export from Adobe Acrobat® to MS Word.  (You can see full-size copies of both images used in this article at:  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zz18q9jdls181xa/RHDMacY0Qc )

This small section looks fine, right?  But those of you with eagle-eyes may have noticed that something isn’t quite right—why is the first word in each line underlined with the dreaded squiggly-green line?  Why does Word® think that’s a grammar error?  To see why that’s happening, let’s look at this exact same page with “reveal codes” turned on (what you see if you click the pilcrow icon ¶ on your Word® 2007-2010 Ribbon, or in the main toolbar for older editions):  

Figure 2: Holy Pilcrow, Batman!  What are all those ¶'s, and what do they mean? 

Now you can see what’s really going on.  When Acrobat® exported that file into Word®, it “thought” that every line was its own paragraph.  That’s right—if you tried to upload this file at the KDP, every single line you see there would come out, in Kindle, as its own paragraph, not words inside a much larger paragraph.  That’s what Word® is trying to tell you, with those squiggly green lines—it’s trying to say, “Hey, you didn’t capitalize the first letter of this new sentence.”  Word® thinks that those first words on each line are actually the first words in a new sentence. 

Why does it think that?  Because immediately before those words, Word® obeys a pilcrow command (at the end of each line, over there in the right-hand margin).   That pilcrow instructs Word, “I am marking the end of a paragraph.”  Word® knows that the very next word is the first word of a new paragraph, so it must be the first word of a new sentence, and therefore, should be capitalized.  That’s what those little pilcrows, and the little squiggly green lines are telling you:  Here There Be Dragons!  

But:  Won't It look Fine, Anyway?  Without Those Cruddy Pilcrows?

When this file was exported to Kindle by the prospective client, what he saw, to his horror, was this (I’m simulating the actual output, starting with the first line of the “paragraph” near the bottom of the section shown that starts with, “Some of the nuns…”):

Figure 3:  Obviously, not what he expected!

Obviously—this was not what he’d had in mind.  This was prose, not poetry or some type of experimental Haiku.  He’d expected his Kindle book would look like Figure 1…but what he got was far, far different, making the book unreadable and thus, unsaleable.  Why did this happen? 

The way a word processor works is actually pretty simple.  Every single element in a word-processed file, whether it's a paragraph, or an italicized word or phrase, or smallcaps, has invisible tags surrounding it that identifies it to the program and tells it how to display.  More importantly, those codes (tags) tell the program what it is. (A word, a paragraph, etc.)  An example of how this looks in code (HTML), which is what actually runs word processors, and is used to make eBooks, is this: 

<p class=”indent”><i>This is a paragraph in italics, in HTML</i>, which is the “language” used to create Kindle books.</p>

What this looks like, on a Kindle device:

This is a paragraph in italics, in HTML, which is the “language” used to create Kindle books.

A word or phrase in italics, for example, is surrounded by tags like this to start italicization: <i>.  The program is told to stop italicizing the words by a closing tag, which looks like this: </i>.  This is true whether it’s Word, Wordperfect, Open Office, Libre Office…well, you get the drift. 

In the above example, you see me tell the program that the paragraph starts with the word “This,” after the opening paragraph tag, and ends with the period after the word “books.”  The italics styling starts with the word “This,” and stops after the word, “HTML.”  In most word-processors, most of this happens invisibly to you, and can only be revealed using either Word’s Styles menu, or by working in the actual code, as most ebook conversion companies do.  This is the “black box” effect; magic happens behind the screen that makes stuff “just happen.” 

Exhibit 1 and the result shows just one very simplified explanation of how things go badly wrong when exporting PDF files to Word.  I used it because it’s the easiest to demonstrate.  Far larger, and harder to find and fix, land mines await the unwary. 

Much text formatting, like italics, can go horribly wrong.  One such case is a client that came to us because no matter what she did, when she uploaded her “Word” file (made from her PDF) to the KDP, none of her italics showed up.  It turned out that Acrobat® told Word® that the italics were in a special italic font that isn’t available on Kindle—so of course, the italics never showed up.  Sometimes, Acrobat® tells Word® that a symbol exists, but uses a special symbol font to create it—and again, that symbol’s font may not be on your computer, and it’s certainly not on Kindle devices.

It’s important to remember:  PDF is all about layout, and how text looks; word-processors and eBooks are all about what elements are (words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, sections), and then how they are displayed.  In eBooks, the structure (what something is) takes precedence over how it looks.    

All real paragraphs must have that pilcrow code at the end; that instructs Word® that the paragraph is where it should be, and that the next paragraph starts immediately.  But again, most of the chaos caused with “auto-magic” convert-PDF-to-Word® programs is not visible to the eye in Word; the problems only surface after the document is converted into code.  Even I, after five years of making ebooks, can sometimes not see the problems that are hidden deep in the code of a “faux” Word® file until I export the file into code, and then find the hidden Dragons waiting for me. 

If you can, it’s best to leave conversion from PDF to Word® or eBook to experts.  Yes, I know that sounds self-serving, as I own an ebook-making firm, but it’s true.  If you have a lot of expertise in Word® (or another word processor); if you have a true command of Word’s Styles, macros, etc., you can absolutely do all the clean-up yourself, but whether you do it yourself, or pay someone else to do it, all that “cruft” that is put inside a PDF-exported/created Word® file must be cleaned up before you can make a successful, clean, beautiful-looking ebook. 

The “paragraph” problem can be cleaned up with time and some effort, even by those without a lot of expertise in Word.  You can go through and delete all those unwanted paragraph codes, but you have to do it one line at a time.  Don’t do what one of our clients did:  she thought it would be “faster and easier” to use search and replace.  She chose “all” on the search and replace menu—and ended up with a book that was one giant paragraph long!

***

Remember:  you can see full-size examples of today's images and examples at this link:  CLICK HERE.   You'll want to see them larger size in order to view them clearly.   This is "stuff" worth reviewing, and worth knowing about before you decide to take on PDF→Word→Kindle conversion for yourself.  As I said above:  it can be done by a determined beginner, but do know and understand what you're getting into, upfront, and don't be easily discouraged.  Good Luck!

Not a Typical Mystery

The Burning Air by Erin Kelly (Pamela Dorman Books hardcover, 21 February 2013) .

Reviewed by Marlyn Beebe.


Erin Kelly's third novel is an atypical mystery in that it doesn't begin with a murder, the solution of which is investigated throughout the story and solved by the end of the book.  Instead, it explores complex themes like obsession, love, hope, and desperation. 

The story opens with MacBride family matriarch Lydia discovering she has a fatal illness, and deciding not to share this information with her the rest of the clan.

Fast forward to the following autumn.  Lydia's three adult children Sophie, Tara and Felix meet their father Rowan at their weekend home in Devon, where they plan to scatter Lydia's ashes.  Sophie, who had been nine months pregnant with her fourth child when her mother died, is accompanied by her husband Will and their three sons, as well as infant Edie.  Tara brings her son Jake and her fiancé Matt, and for the first time youngest brother Felix brings a girlfriend, a quiet young woman called Kerry.

The family drives into the village one night for a bonfire, and Kerry offers to stay with the baby so that Sophie can join her family.  Returning home early with her youngest son Charlie, who is overwhelmed by the crowds, Sophie finds an empty house.  Sophie is understandably frantic, no less because she's unable to call for her:  cell phones don't work in the area, and the house phone is inexplicably dead. 

The distraught family searches for Edie and her kidnapper, and in attempting to determine why Kerry would have taken the baby, they discover all sorts of secrets their mother has kept from them. 

This absolutely absorbing and somewhat spooky tale  (definitely not horror), should appeal to fans of Debra Ginsberg and Emily Arsenault.   Make sure you set aside a block of time to read this, because once begun, you won't want to put it down.



FTC Full Disclosure: Many thanks to the publisher, who sent me a copy of the book for review purposes.

Do You Stand Alone?

by L.J. Sellers, author of provocative mysteries & thrillers

Sandra Parshall, who happens to be a terrific blogger, posted yesterday about standalone suspense fiction and how she likes it better than crime fiction series, but that few authors are writing it. I'm not sure that's technically true. Many of us are writing it, but often, one of two things happen. Either the standalone doesn't sell as well as our series books, or it's so popular that readers want more, and it ends up launching a new series.

There are exceptions of course. Gillian Flynn writes popular standalone thrillers and grows her readership with each one. And some series writers have expanded their readerships by writing standalone thrillers (Laura Lippman, Harlan Coben). That's what I hope to do with my new thriller.

Yet, I love the character, and I know I'll bring her back for more stories. Her setup as an FBI agent who specializes in undercover work is perfect for a series that has a lot of flexibility.

I introduced Agent Dallas in Jackson #8, Crimes of Memory (which will release Oct. 15!). I had so much fun writing her part that I knew she needed her own story. And I had an idea that I really wanted to write about and she was perfect for it. My beta readers loved the story, and I'm still waiting to see if my publisher does too.

More important though will be if readers like it. Especially new readers. I know some of my Jackson fans will pass, just because it's not a Jackson story. But I hope enough new readers will be interested in the novel to justify the five months I put into researching and writing it.

Here's a quick description: Agent Dallas goes undercover to find a missing woman who is likely being held captive in an isolated prepper community. What she finds is a lot more terrifying.

Readers: Do you read the standalones of your favorite series authors?

Writers: Do you write series, standalones or both? And what is your experience?

Well, NOW who am I?

By Gayle Carline
-Author of Mysteries, Humor, and ???

Andrew's post last week, about writing the story you want to write resonated with me in a big way. While most of you are reading this, I am in my 200-year-old minivan, heading 400 miles to Sacramento to attend the Western States Horse Expo. I've been invited to be part of their Book Corral and sell my books... but not my mysteries.

I released a new book this week, which I would love to recommend to all of you mystery/thriller readers, except it is not a mystery or a thriller. It's not even strictly humor.

It's my horse's memoir.

Stop laughing. I own two Quarter horses, a mare, Frostie and her son, Snoopy. When Snoopy was three years old, he won an AQHA show championship. (I got a pretty saddle as a prize, that still sits in my bedroom.) When he was four years old, he broke his leg. Two years, a fused joint, metal plate, and six screws later, I was riding him again. Now he's nine and we compete together at AQHA shows.

Although I'm uber-excited about this book, told in Snoopy's voice, about his rise and fall and fight to return to the arena, I'm a smidgeon worried. Up until now, I've been "Gayle Carline, Mystery and Humor Author." Now I'm adding another genre to the mix.

Am I diluting my brand?

Michele Scott is truly savvy about this. Her lighter fare, her cozies and YA books, are all Michele Scott, but her dark thrillers are written as A.K. Alexander. Readers should never get confused and buy Daddy's Home, expecting a Wine Lover's Mystery.

I locked myself in with my real name on my mysteries and my humor books, but when I wrote From the Horse's Mouth, I toyed briefly with the idea of using another name. Technically, the book is written "by Snoopy as told to Gayle Carline." I could have used G.S. Carline, or my maiden name, I suppose.

In the end, I decided to be who I am. No matter what genre I'm writing, my stories have things in common. Lightness, hope, and whimsy, to name a few. I try to group my cover art together so you always recognize a Peri mystery, or a book of my humor essays.

Time will tell if this was a good choice or not. Readers, are you annoyed by an author who can't stick with one genre? And what do I use in my by-line now?

Rating system for books

By Jenny Hilborne
Author of mysteries and thrillers

Reviews are a hot topic. Another hotly debated item right now on many social media forums is the Amazon rating system and its usefulness for both readers and authors. I just wanted to share some thoughts and throw out a few questions on the subject:

When you're looking for a good book to read, you might go by recommendation (my preference) or by the overall ranking of a book. For the higher ranked books (those in the top 100), the star rating might not matter or even factor into your buying decision (it rarely factors into mine). After all, each rating is only one person's opinion. Lots of excellent books have a slew of low star ratings, which kind of skews the whole system if a star rating is designed to give readers an insight into a book's popularity.

The system is open to and ripe with abuse. We all know that "trolls" and "haters" exist who slate good books and drag ratings down with their bogus 1 and 2 star ratings. And the bogus 5 star ratings exist as well. We can also vote down or vote up star ratings by agreeing or disagreeing with what another "reviewer" says about a book. This also leaves the system open to abuse from those gaming the system. Nuff said on vitriolic ways in which the system can be used.

Properly crafted and genuine reviews often take a long time to write, which may be the reason so many readers don't write them. A genuine star rating is fast, takes only a second, and gives a snapshot of the popularity of the book. But it seems a pretty pointless exercise without a review to back it up and tell others what the reader did or did not like about the book. Doesn't it? How useful is a star rating without an explanation of why it got that rating (especially when rated 1 or 2 stars)?

Reviews are helpful to readers and authors. Would you (as readers) prefer to leave reviews and no star rating? And do stars aid at all in your buying decisions? Should Amazon reduce or remove the 20 word minimum for reviews, leaving readers free to write shorter critiques? If you could leave a star rating without a review, would you do so?

What about authors? Which would you prefer to see for your books? Do we need both?

For those opposed to the star rating, what would you have in its place?

That Metallic Taste

Tom Schreck writes the Duffy Dombrowski Mysteries

I was doing some editing and I came across something I wrote.

My character Duffy took a shot and got knocked out. When he came to he noticed the familiar metallic taste of blood in his mouth.

I stopped for a second and reread “metallic taste.” I’ve fought for years and have bled in the mouth. The  most recent time was two weeks ago, though I took a shot far less dramatic than Duff.

Why did I describe the taste as metallic? I gave it a little thought and came to the answer quite quickly.

Because I read that blood tastes metallic.

I’ve never sucked on a steel lozenger or licked a metal pipe like the kid in A Christmas Story, so how did I know blood tasted metallic.

I’ve also read about the smell of cordite after a gun has been shot. I’ve written that too and am embarrassed to say I have no idea if that happens or if it has a distinctive smell. In other words I was bullshitting.

Stephen King says you can write about anything as long as it is true. Neither of these were true for me. I’m at my best when I take the time to come up with my own descriptions not what has been ingrained in me from others.

I should be original and authentic and I should work on my own descriptions even though it takes more work. The writing will be better.

Am I alone here? Do you sometimes phone it in because you can? Do you really on tried and true descriptions of things that you've never really experienced?

Does it cause problems?

I'd really like to know.

Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules for Writing Fiction

I'm madly trying to finish my updated, expanded (tripled in length) Writing a Killer Thriller, hoping to get it out in print on time for Thrillerfest in NYC in July, where I'm on a panel this year,so I thought I'd bring you some words of wisdom for writers from bestselling thriller author Elmore Leonard.
- Jodie Renner, editor and craft-of-fiction blogger and author

This list is excerpted from Leonard’s well-known article on writing, published July 16, 2001, in the New York Times and available in full here online.

Leonard, as most of you know, is the author of gritty westerns, crime novels and thrillers.  Among his  best-known works are Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Freaky Deaky, Hombre, Mr. Majestyk and Rum Punch, which was filmed as Jackie Brown. Leonard’s short stories include ones that became the films 3:10 to Yuma and The Tall T, as well as the current TV series on FX, Justified.

Twenty-six of Leonard's novels and short stories have been adapted for the screen (nineteen as motion pictures and another seven as television programs).

(I’ve condensed Leonard’s explanations under each rule a bit, for the sake of brevity.)

WRITERS ON WRITING;

Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle
by Elmore Leonard

These are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

1. Never open a book with weather.

If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people.

2. Avoid prologues.

They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.

3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with ''she asseverated,'' and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”...

. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs.”

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”

This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories “Close Range.”

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's ''Hills Like White Elephants'' what do the ''American and the girl with him'' look like? ''She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.'' That's the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.

9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.

Unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

And finally:

10. Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.

A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)

If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character – the one whose view best brings the scene to life – I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what's going on, and I’m nowhere in sight.

I especially love that last paragraph of Leonard's. Right on! - Jodie

Readers and writers - what do you think of Leonard's 10 "rules"?

Jodie Renner has published two books to date in her series, An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: Writing a Killer Thriller and Fire up Your Fiction (Style That Sizzles & Pacing for Power), which has won two book awards so far. Look for the third book in the series, out soon. For more info, please visit Jodie’s author website or editor website, her other blogs, The Kill Zone and Resources for Writers, or find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. And sign up for her newsletter.