Leaving on a Jet Plane...well, Left & Landed by Now

By Brett

By the time you read this, I’ll be halfway around the world, in warm weather near the equator.

Travel is an important part of my life, and an important part of my writing. It is both my inspiration and a source of my research. I often set many of my adult novels in foreign locations, and being able to marry my loves of writing and travel is the best of all possible worlds for me (hat tip to Candide).

What I love to do when I travel is just find some place that I can sit with a book and watch the world go by. This is a great way of getting a feel for how the city or town works, how the people who live there interact, and what normal everyday life is like. Yes, I do sometimes visit the typical tourist spots, but I never do those on any organized kind of tours. I always go on my own. But most of the time I just wander, soaking in wherever I’m at, and observing. Observing is one of the biggest parts of being a writer, and, I like to think, one of my best talents.

I often travel alone, no matter what part of the world I go. Would I like to travel with someone? Sure, but I also enjoy going alone. It’s a great way of forcing myself to meet the locals and learn more about the area. And while I will be doing some of that where I’m going, it is a location I have visited before, so I actually have friends there now who I will be seeing at some point.

When my turn here at Adr3nalin3 comes around again in two weeks, I’ll still be there, but just about to come home. Maybe I’ll have a story to tell you then, or some pictures to share. We’ll see.

So, how about you? Do you enjoy to travel? Do you have favorite places to go? Are you willing to stretch yourself out of your comfort zone? And writers, what’s your favorite type of thing to do for research?

Ideas, TROUBLE, and a Gift for you

Ideas don’t always come to me at the most opportune of times. It would be great if, say, I was sitting at a table, my laptop or a pad of paper near at hand, when inspiration struck. HA!

I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, but more likely I’ll be in the shower, out for a walk, eating at a restaurant, or—and this seems to be a favorite spot for my muse to slap me upside the head—driving my car.

Case in point, my tween novel HERE COMES MR. TROUBLE.

There I was, minding my own business as I drove home from visiting my parents three Christmases ago, when out of the blue the title HERE COMES MR. TROUBLE flashed in my mind. Immediately on its heels came several possible ideas, then a half dozen other titles (such as the next Mr. Trouble novel, YOU’RE IN BIG, MR. TROUBLE). Did I mention I was driving? On the freeway?

You will seldom ever hear me say this, but thank God for traffic. Suddenly my car was at a stand still. I immediately grabbed something to write on and jotted down the list of titles and a couple of notes.

That was one of those idea moments I will never forget, the ones where you know you’ve stumbled onto something good. I don’t always remember where the germs from my stories start, but I do with Mr. Trouble.

Over the next few months after that inspiring drive, the concept for the story evolved and grew into something even cooler than I expected. And when I finally sat down to write it, the words couldn’t get through my fingers onto the keyboard fast enough. There’s nothing like that feeling!

Now here’s a little present for you: if you have a Kindle, HERE COMES MR. TROUBLE is FREE today through Thursday at midnight (March 13th-15th). That’s right, FREE. Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can download the free Kindle ap for your computer or other device. A click here will take you to the MR. TROUBLE book page, then click on the buy button and you’ll be charged zero dollars and zero cents.

For those wanting to know a little more, here’s a description of the book:

ARE YOU LOSING THINGS?
ARE PEOPLE YOU KNOW ACTING STRANGE?
IS SOMEONE CLOSE TO YOU MISSING???
DO YOU FEEL LIKE THINGS ARE BEYOND YOUR CONTROL?
ARE YOU IN…TROUBLE?

When Eric Morrison sees the advertisement, he doesn’t know which is more surprising—the ad’s sudden appearance or the fact that his answer to every question is YES!

Not only can’t he find things, but the bullies at school are suddenly picking on him for no reason, and, worse yet, his mother has disappeared but he seems to be the only one who’s noticed. Even his best friend Maggie thinks he’s only run into a little bad luck.

But if Eric thinks his life is upside down now, it’s nothing compared to what’s about to happen when Mr. Trouble and the Trouble family arrive to assist him in solving his problems.

One thing’s for sure—Eric will never see the world in the same way again.

So give it a try! You can’t beat the price.

Not Enough Hours in the Day

Well, sometimes timing sucks. Here it is my turn to post and wouldn’t you know it? I’m putting the final touches on my next novel because it has to get to my copy editor by the end of the day tomorrow.

So, yeah…I’m a bit swamped. Which means I need to put The Experiment on hold for a post or two. So, if you’ll excuse me, I'd like to throw out some questions to get a dialogue going, and get us all thinking today. Who knows, some of it may help me with the experiment, too!

Answer as many as you’d like, even if it’s just one.

What in a story will make you put a book down and never pick it up again?

Do you give authors second chances, or if they lose you in one book, that’s it?

What are some types of things that get you excited when you’re reading?

What are you looking for when you read a book, if anything at all?

Are there any books you’ve read that you went into with no particular expectations, but came away excited that you’d discovered it? If so, I loved to know titles!

Looking forward to your answers!

An Experiment | No. 2

by Brett

Before returning to the experiment, a quick note of BSP. My latest adult thriller, NO RETURN, hits bookstores today! Yep, today. Here's a quick description:

An F-18 Navy fighter careens out of the blue sky above the Mojave desert. A TV cameraman who grew up in a small town just miles away can see what is going to happen next. Frantically, Wes Stewart races to the downed jet and tries to save the pilot’s life. When the plane explodes, Wes escapes without harm—and plunges into a murderous conspiracy.

It’s been fifteen years since Wes has been back to the desolate land of his childhood. Now he finds himself up against the U.S. military, the local police, and someone who is tracking his every move. In the moments he spent with the dying pilot, Wes discovered something that could get him killed. But while he tries to untangle a web of lies and secrets surrounding the crash, another danger is stalking him. And this one he will never see coming.

You can read the first chapter here. Thanks!

I now return you to my regularly scheduled post:

Okay, a quick refresher...I've decided to use my posts here at ADR3NALIN3 to develop and write a YA novel using your input. (Read more here: An Experiment | No. 1.)

Last time we discussed genre, and I asked for your input as to which you'd like to see me work in. Now, as I hinted at before, this isn't going to be a complete democracy. I'll be taking in your thoughts, but will make the final decision (for the most part) myself. The majority of people who responded seemed to be leaning toward Thriller. There were several votes for detective, some for real world sci-fi, and a few for real world fantasy. The rest were scattered around.

So, after considering everything, here's what I'm thinking: I'm going to blend a few of these together. No, this isn't me taking the easy way out. I just think it would be more fun. So here's where I'm at.
• Thriller, check.
• Detective, semi-check (leaving this one open until the story develops some.)
• Real World Sci-fi, probable check.
• Real World Fantasy, probably not, but leaving the door open also.

A thriller with a mystery to it, that's first and foremost. Over this will be a real world sci-fi architecture, or, potentially, a real world fantasy architecture. (And, yes, there's always the possibility of those two combining.) Cool with everyone?

All right. So I'm not quite ready to start working out plot yet. What I need first is some characters to build around, specifically a lead character(s). While a book might have a good story, without good characters, it's going to suck, plain and simple. Character is everything, so that's where we're going to start.

To do that, I need to make some choices...rather, I need your help in making those choices. I have a few different questions that need your responses to. Unlike with genre, I'm going to go with the majority rule on these and see where that takes me. So, here we go. First:

1. What kind of lead is this story going to have?
a. Female
b. Male
c. Female and Male duo
d. Female and Female duo
e. Male and Male duo

Just so you know, I enjoy writing both female and male characters, so don't let that worry you. Plus I think there are some great stories out there that have dual leads—working as a team, or even coming at a problem from different directions.

Let's keep going...

2. Age? (can have two different answers if you went the duo route)
a. 16
b. 17
c. 18
d. 19
e. older (specify)
f. younger (specify)

3. Life growing up?
a. Single parent home
b. Dual parent home
c. Raised by relatives
d. Foster child
e. other (specify)

Let's give our lead (or one of our leads) something they're really into.

4. Obsession?
a. Music (specify type)
b. Movies (specify type: sci fi, comedies, james bond, etc.)
c. Manga
d.TV shows (specify type: obscure, cop drama, 70s sitcoms, etc.)
f. Other (specify)

I could keep going with these, but I think that's enough to get us started. Looking forward to what you have to say. And never be afraid to add any additional comments, too!

AN EXPERIMENT | No. 1

by Brett

Okay, I want to try something. I may fail miserably, or, who knows, maybe I won’t, but since this blog is dedicated to adrenaline pumping YA fiction, I thought…why not work on a story right here?

Yep, starting with this post, I’ll beginning pulling together a story and we’ll all see where it goes. Along the way, I’ll be asking you for opinions and thoughts based off of questions I ask and choices I give you.

I’ve been thinking about this for at least a week now, but the one thing I haven’t been thinking about is what the story will be. So, as I write these very words, I have no idea what direction things are going to go in. I don’t even know if this is going to be a short story, novella, or novel. My gut is that it’ll probably end up being either a novella or novel since those are actually easier for me (yeah, more pages easier…weird), but I’m leaving all possibilities on the table for the moment.

Now I won’t necessarily be blogging about this every time it’s my turn, but then again I might. Since I do only post twice a month, the process will be a LOT slower than I’m normally used to working, so I reserved the option of doing some of it “off screen” if the mood hits me. I can’t complain about the slow pace though, as it will help me given the fact that I’ll also be writing a couple adult novels over the next few months, too.

My usual process is to have a basic idea for a story—say…something like “a woman shows up who was supposed to have been dead for five years, and all eyes turn to the person who was supposed to have killed her.” Beyond that one or two line idea, I might have an inkling of how I’d like it to end, and, perhaps, an opening scene. From that point, I’ll just sit down and start writing a draft. I may or may not already have a title, and I definitely won’t know most of the characters yet (unless it’s part of a series.)

For this experiment, I want to plan things out more. The first thing will be to decide on a genre within the YA world. (Usually I do know ahead of time what genre a book is.) We’ll move on from there to picking a title, working out some plot points (though I may hold back on important things like the ending so those will still be a surprise), developing some characters, perhaps some research, then writing.

As I basically said above, I’m not 100% sure yet this is going to work, but it sounds like fun in my head. Hopefully it is, and also for you, too.

Okay, let’s get started.

Here’s the first thing I need your help on. Genre. There are as many (if not more) genres in YA as there are in adult fiction. What I’ve done is put together a list of ones that appeal to me…because, let’s face it, if it’s not in a genre I like, why would I want to write it?

What I need you to do in the comments section below is let me know which one (or ones) you prefer. Your suggestions will help me to decide which direction to go in. And please, I’d love it if as many of you as possible could respond…even if you consider yourself a lurker you can make a quick comment (I’m assigning a letter to each category, so your response could be as short as a single character. How easy is that?)

I should also say that no matter what the genre, I’m a FIRM believer that the best stories are stories about characters and how they interact with their world, not about the world itself.

Here we go, in no particular order:

A. Dystopian
B. Real World based Fantasy
C. Modern Day/Real World based Sci-Fi(ish)
D. Real World Thriller
E. Real World Detective Story
F. Full on Sci-Fi

Please do remember that I am male, so that undoubtedly forms many of my selections. (That BY NO MEANS is to say that females would not enjoy the very same list, I am merely pointing out my own deficiencies.) Plus, again, we’re all about adrenaline here, and those are all pretty adrenaline fueled genres.

Okay, have at it. Six choices. What do you think?

__________________

You can learn more about my tween novel HERE COMES MR. TROUBLE and my adult novels at my website:
BrettBattles.com

Yes! I Definitely Want to be a Contender!

by Brett

Reading Ilsa’s post yesterday got me thinking about my own path to a writing career, and how those rules she mentioned have worked in my life.

How? In a word, well.

I’d actually never seen them laid out that way before—despite the fact that when I was a young teen, Robert Heinlein was probably my favorite author. I remember devouring everything of his I could get my hands on…but I digress.

I’ve never made it a secret that I knew at the age of 10 that I was going to be, not only a writer, but, specifically, a novelist. Yep, I wanted to write books, and that’s all I wanted to write. Unfortunately, it took me a little while to get there because I—quite honestly—didn’t follow Mr. Heinlein’s rules (and Ilsa’s critical additional sixth rule).

A writer must write? Well, yeah, I did that…sporadically. And by “sporadically” I mean that there were probably whole years when I barely put word to paper (actual or digital.)

Finish what I write? Eh…eh…

Refrain from rewriting? That was easy since I wasn’t writing much in the first place, so…CHECK!

Put work on the market and keep it there? Decidedly, no check.

Start working on something else. Now that wasn’t a problem. I probably wrote hundreds of first pages to different “novels.” CHECK again!

You can see where this was going, though. There was no way I was going to come close to having a writing career at that pace. The ten year old in me finally forced his way into the front of my brain and yelled, “This is unacceptable!”

He was right. I had to get serious or give up, only I knew that giving up was not an option.

At the point of this realization, I had a stressful full-time job (executive producer at E! Entertainment Television in the graphics department), so time was an issue. The only way I was going to be able to make it work was discipline. To finish a novel, I knew I needed to write everyday, which meant I needed to carve out time wherever I could. I looked at my life and made two choices. One, I moved close enough to where I worked so I could walk everyday. This meant I didn’t have to leave home until fifteen minutes before I had to be at the office. Plus the stress of driving in traffic? Eliminated! (This, of course, has made me a rare breed in Los Angeles.)

My other choice was in the time I would carve out to work. The best time for me, when my mind would be the freshest, turned out to be first thing in the morning. I adjusted my schedule and began getting up every day at 5 a.m. I didn’t like it at first, but if I was going to achieve that goal ten year old me was demanding I do I had no choice. I would write for at least two hours, then head to the office, and, on nights when I had nothing else I needed to do, I would write for one or two more hours. Three years into this experiment I had three novels done, the second of which ended up selling, and becoming my first release, THE CLEANER. I didn’t stop this schedule, though. I kept it up and wrote the two additional novels I was under contract to deliver. One was THE DECEIVED, which won the Barry Award for Best Thriller of 2008.

I would have achieved none of this without being discipline and (unconsciously) following Heinlein and Ilsa’s guidelines. No books, no publish contract, no award winning novel.

I wrote, I finish, I did rewrite but only after I’d finish a draft (I wouldn’t send out anything I wasn’t happy with whether under contract or not), I put manuscripts in the market and kept them there (receiving nearly 100 rejections on each of those first three novels before finally catching on), and I always started working on something else as soon as one project was done. (By the way, in my mind that last part cannot be overstated.)

Let me tell you somewhere else being discipline and sticking to those guidelines has taken me—since the fall of 2008 I have been able to write full time. That’s even more surprising, I think, given weird convulsions the industry has taken since then (something we will discuss later). Once again writing discipline has played in my favor, and helped me find ways to use my talents to keep from returning to an office job.

Discipline did not stop once I was writing full time. In fact, it’s probably even a bigger part of my life than it was before. Instead of sitting at my laptop for a couple hours a day like I did when I worked at E!, I now write for 6 to 8 hours a day (sometimes more), five, and often, seven days a week. I don’t take months off. In fact, I will only occasionally take a week or a day. Even if I go “on vacation,” I will usually spend some of it working.

What has this gained me? Last year I wrote four novels from scratch. I heavily rewrote three other novels I’d finished drafts on in previous years, and I wrote two short stories. Yeah, that’s a lot, but two things are in play here. One, I naturally write pretty fast. Two—perhaps even more significant—I stick to my schedule, am very discipline and follow the guidelines. Plans for this year: 5 to 6 novels from scratch (and I don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean shoddy stuff, quality is very important to me), and 4 to 5 short stories. I do have two other novels I might go back and rewrite, but each will take some pretty extensive work and I’m not sure I’m mentally ready for that, so they’re not on my list.

I’m not saying any of this to brag or get people to look at me sideways and think I’m a freak. The only reaction I want is for you to see that discipline is a critical part of being a successful writer.

So am I working on the next thing? You bet I am. Just started it yesterday. I also know which project I’ll move onto after that, and the one after that. At most, I’ll take a day or two off between them, maybe a long weekend, because writing is my job, my career. It’s the best job I’ve ever had, and the one that I do better than anything else. This is my life, and to continue it I need to be discipline, and I need to write…Every. Single. Day.

I’m so excited to be part of ADR3NALIN3, and glad you’re along for the ride, too! It’s going to be a lot of fun!

Hey, if you haven’t checked out any of my work, you might be interested in my tween novel HERE COMES MR. TROUBLE. It was a ton of fun to write, and I’ll probably be talking more about it in the future. Here are some links:

Mr. Trouble Trade Paperback
Mr. Trouble Kindle
Mr. Trouble Nook

More info at my website: BrettBattles.com