Description:
LIGHTS!
In the annals of Hollywood cinema, the name Gregory Kincaid is as synonymous with Jack the Ripper as Bela Lugosi to Dracula. He portrayed the infamous serial murderer in half a dozen films, spanning a five-decade career filled with monster movies and sci-fi schlock. Twenty years ago, weary of celebrity's harsh spotlight, he withdrew from public life, never to be seen again -- until now.
CAMERA!
After a wartime accident seriously injures journalist Jenny Pearce, she turns her attention to reporting entertainment news. More comfortable on the frontlines than the red carpet, she jumps at the opportunity to track down the notoriously reclusive Kincaid.
ACTION!
The damaged pair forges an unlikely friendship, working together to write the actor's memoir. Except someone doesn't want Kincaid's tell-all all told, somebody who aims to protect secrets best left buried. Fighting for their lives, Kincaid and Pearce are forced to unravel a murder mystery gone unsolved for over seventy years.
GUEST POST
TRAIN YOUR BRAIN
The key to being a good writer is to keep at it. Like any skill, the more you do it the better you get. I wrote my first novel in 2003; I'm currently midway through my eighth. That first book, while a trunk novel, was very important in terms of setting a structure to my writing regime.
When I wrote Blood Money, I aimed to start small. I'd been writing for five years prior to that (and had been published for three), but any novelist will tell you a book is a different beast than a short story. Because I wanted to see it through to the end, I tasked myself with writing three pages per day, Monday through Friday. That was fifteen total each week.
With every subsequent book, I pushed myself a little harder. First I pumped up my schedule to six days per week, then finally seven. Next I increased my page count from three to four to six to eight. The goal was finding that nexus between quantity and quality, pulling the most material out of myself without allowing the work itself to suffer.
Flashback has been the fastest I've written a novel. Through experimentation, I've discovered the high end of my daily output is about 2,500 words. I can write beyond that, but the results are not up to par. Some authors produce five (or ten!) thousand words in a day. I'm leery of people who make such boasts, not because I think they're lying but because their results are less than ideal. At some point writing gives way to typing, and that's to be avoided.
Dashing off a rough draft too quickly ensures the author will be stuck writing multiple drafts. I'd rather write fewer pages of publishable material than more pages of rewriteable content. By the time I reach the end of a book, I know it's in fair shape. I'll still put it through multiple rounds of edits, and I may end up rewriting a scene or chapter here or there, but I know the final product is solid.
I can do 1,000 words in two hours, so I utilize two two-hour writing sessions when I'm in the midst of a manuscript. On a good day I can blow through that workload in three hours. On days when my mind's a bit drifty, it could take up to five.
Never could I have started out producing that many pages. I had to work up to it, book after book. The brain is like any other muscle, and it can be strengthened if you challenge yourself incrementally.
Jared Sandman
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Jared Sandman was born in Canton, Ohio, in 1985. He began selling his first stories professionally while in high school and wrote his first novel upon graduation. (That book, BLOOD MONEY, sits in a desk drawer where it will never see the light of day.)
LEVIATHAN was his second attempt at the long form, which he wrote two years later. This was followed by THE WILD HUNT, DREAMLAND, THE SHADOW WOLVES, BLACKSTONE and FLASHBACK. He's currently working on his eighth book.
Jared lives on Florida's Gulf Coast and can be reached through his:
other books by Jared Sandman
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