The Book Cove

  Life is full of hidden perils. Some you can see coming; smog, rabid dogs, visits by your in-laws. Some you can’t; El Nino, UV radiation, and the Hanta virus. Some you don’t expect at all. Thank goodness for Andrew Shaffer and his handy guide to threats you never even knew existed.   Why bother breaking a sweat over global warming or Thanksgiving with Uncle Dwayne when a greater danger lies in wait from a sharknado? For those not in the know a sharknado is a tornado that forms over the ocean. Its whirling fury sucks up several hundred sharks and then flings them out in a random pattern over the nearest city. Needless to say, this agitates the sharks and causes them to chomp away on people with happy abandon. SyFy Channel movies have been warning us to duck and cover for years, but no. You wouldn’t listen, would you? Now sharks are falling from the skies and you have no idea what to do. Luckily Andrew Shaffer does. He has put all this useful information together in on...

    Before I get into it, I want to give a huge thanks to Jessi and The Book Cove for allowing me to take over the blog this week.  I had a blast.  This is a great website and blog and I feel some remorse for ruining it for seven days.  I was once told to always leave things the way you found them, but I just remembered that a minute ago and now it's too late.     I put on my website's bio page that I live in the mountains and fight bears, but really that's just because I have no interest in writing an actual bio. While I do fight bears, I actually live near Chicago, am a special educator, and have two pre-school aged daughters. (I know every single word to Ariel's Part of Your World.)     My writing is highly influenced by writers liked John Swartzwelder and Richard Stark.  I read a great deal and I try to read a bit of everything.  My all-time favorite books include, in no particular order, The Forever War, The Art of Fielding, ...

Justin Halpern has probably taken advantage of Twitter more than anybody since it's inception.  He is the author of the popular handle, @shitmydadsays, which has almost 3 million followers.  He turned this into a best selling book as well as a television show.  If you aren't familiar with it, Justin posts things that his mostly angry old father says that have a kind of hilarious, bitter, and sideways wisdom to them. Certainly part of the reason that the blog is so popular is that many people can in at least some way relate.  Our own parent's ramblings may be different from from Mr. Halpren, but to us it seems crazy just the same. So on that note, I'm going to pay homage to Justin's popular work by sharing with you some of the wisdom that the late, great Mr. Tory shared with me.  140 characters or less. - "You can be anything you want to son." - "You owe it to yourself to give 110%" - "A man is measured by how he treats others."...

        I hope you enjoyed my tips for connecting with your readers.  In the second part of my series about effective writing I'm going to talk about deeper and hidden meanings within a text.  For centuries authors have been hiding and disguising their true intentions and literary scholars have loved to pour over what these underlying agendas might have been.  Almost every piece of writing from a classic like Catcher in the Rye  to a simple children's book like Goodnight Moon  has gone under the microscope.         The key to weaving a hidden meaning into your writing is subtlety.  You might be talking about the need for political action but you write it in the form of a fairy tale. You might be writing about how you hate your neighbor Tom and you disguise it in some other form.  The literary classic Animal Farm  is one of the most obvious examples as it very keenly tells the story of the Russian revolution...

No matter what format you are writing for, as an author it is your job to find a way to connect with your readers.   It's your job to tear down the natural divide and invite them into the world that you have created.  Without that connection the reader will simply move on to something new, as there are no shortage of options to them, especially in today's world. I offer up to you these tips to better connect with your audience. 1. Appeal to the reader's emotions.   If the reader is emotionally involved they will not lose interest. 2. Answer questions the reader might have.  If you can anticipate the questions the reader might have, then make sure you provide them with those answers in your work and the piece will be more complete. 3. Have a consistent voice. It's easy for an audience to tell when you are not authentic.  Be yourself throughout your writing. 4. Evoke curiosity. Give your reader a reason to keep turning the pages or moving through the arti...

Tonight is MLB's annual All-Star game.  I will loyally watch, as I love baseball.  I love to watch it, I love to play it, and I love to talk about it. It's in my blood in the sense that as a child I rubbed a baseball into a cut hoping that was possible.  I have a tattoo of a baseball, in the sense that it's a temporary tattoo, because who gets a real tattoo of a baseball?  It's my destiny in the sense that I completely overuse the word destiny in my daily life. Writers love to write about baseball. The most famous piece would probably be the 1888 poem by Ernest Lawrence Thayer called "Casey at the Bat." Most of you are probably familiar with it in some way. If not, it can be found  HERE .  The general idea is that the home team in Mudville is down to it's last out and down 2.  A couple of bums who the crowd hates get on base, bringing up Casey.  Casey is beloved in Mudville.  He watches the first two pitches go by with a sort of arrogance, b...

Hello, It's really a pleasure to be able to commandeer The Book Cove blog this week.  I can't recall exactly what it was that I wrote in my entry to the competition, but I'm sure it was stunning and inspirational, because I am really due to write something that has those characteristics. My name is Nick Tory and I'm the author of a recently released pair of books that are part of a new humor series.  The books are Johnny 12 Steps and Johnny Vegas, and they follow the self-centered and dimwitted, but lovable Johnny Tee.  The first book follows Johnny as he tries to turn his life around by following a twelve step program and misinterprets the steps along the way. The books are goofy, oddball, dry, and dark, but not vulgar. In today's blog post, I'm going to put up a sample chapter so you can get the general idea. To help you out with your expectations, I've reviewed my own work. "Review: Johnny 12 Steps by Nick Tory Review by: Nick Tory This book h...

It’s tough to find a good villain nowadays. I blame it on psychology, muddying the waters with motivational and emotional issues to explain away actions. Enough of that nonsense. I want my villain to be bad all the way through. Discovering Voldemort had been the abused child Tom Riddle tainted his death at the end. I’ll even admit to a cheer when Dumbledore plummeted out the window. With Tom's tragic past evident, Dumbledore became an arrogant ass who should have been banned from being around children decades before. After all, he had also allowed Harry to be raised by tormenting sadists who kept him in a closet. If only he had gotten Tom counseling at the start, none of the resulting mayhem would have happened. Frankly, I would gladly have pushed Dumbledore out the window myself. I don’t want my villains redeemed, either. They should be bad all the way through. Once redeemed, they evoke sympathy and teeter on becoming a hero. If they’re punished, I don’t get that gleeful feel...

One of my biggest peeves when reading reviews of a book is when a reader disliked a book because the book didn't pan out the way that the reader wanted and they felt "gypped", or "betrayed by the author", or a sense of being "owed". This is ridiculous. And it is a serious problem! (Links below) Let's just get this newsflash out of the way -- the world owes you nothing. The people in the world owe you nothing. It's just better to accept this simple (yet sometimes unfortunate) fact. As much as you may feel connected to an author/series/character(s), their outcome isn't your choice. Their fate is the choice of their creator. And if you don't like it, sorry. It's a good thing that pass-time-reading is a free choice. Can endings be upsetting, unjustified, and/or of no sense? Yes. If that's the case, then the book may simply be flawed in that sense. Does it mean the readers should raise pitchforks, start petitions for re...