Reads like a movie

If I had a dollar for every time I was told that my writing reads like a movie, I could retire to the mountains. No, wait. 😊 This no doubt reflects a lifetime wasted watching movies and television, or maybe something even better.

I’ve heard several well-published authors say that good fiction (at least of the thriller variety) should have readers watching the movie playing in the author’s head. There may be minor differences in how individual readers perceive characters and scenes, but the major elements should be the same. Evidently, I have a lot of movies playing in my head.

Over the past week, press releases for Project Suicide have gone out to Southwestern Ohio, Detroit Michigan, and Eastern Tennessee. Yesterday, the national release went out to several major venues, including some in the entertainment industry. I know picking up a movie deal is a long shot, but it would certainly be a great way to expand readership.

Wish me luck and stay tuned.

National Press Release

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/debut-thriller-novel-project-suicide-by-john-bukowski-turns-alzheimers-cure-into-political-assassins-ideal-weapon-301548236.html?tc=eml_cleartime

What if a thief hit the jackpot while waiting to rob a casino?

About twenty years ago, I was in a hotel lobby in Las Vegas waiting to meet some friends for dinner. As one is want to do while waiting anywhere in Vegas, I was feeding dollars into a slot machine. I’d allotted myself twenty dollars to blow on slots that day (it’s amazing how casually you toss money around in that town.)

I was looking around for my party, not really paying any attention as the machine ate three bucks for every two it returned. I looked up from checking my watch and noticed that there were jackpot symbols in the first three rows, the last row just a cherry. So close. But wait. This was a special machine, one that hesitated after the wheels stopped before moving the last wheel one space randomly up or down. Just above this last wheel was another jackpot.

For a moment, my heart was in my throat. A fortune hung on the flip of a coin. The last wheel quivered; I held my breath. Then my heart sank as the wheel rose to replace the cherry with a bell. It was a progressive machine, with a jackpot payout of close to three-hundred-sixty-thousand dollars.

What if the coin had flipped heads instead of tails? What would have happened then?

I thought about this through the years. The magic “if” of writing. What if, an ex-con was waiting to rob a casino, one of those smaller joints in Laughlin or Bullhead City. Or maybe one on an Indian reservation. What if that thief was waiting for his partners to show, anxiously passing the time with another bandit--the one-armed variety? What if he hit the big jackpot?

That’s the plot of my next short story, entitled Wheel of Fortune. Hopefully we’ll see if published somewhere in the not-too-distant future.

Stay tuned!

Checkout Time!

A few years ago, I was in a hotel room. While lying in bed, I saw that there was a trap door in the ceiling. I remember thinking that someone could hide anything up there--maybe a bomb. As I thought further, I realized that you got metal detected and body scanned boarding a plane, but that you could check into a hotel room toting a backpack nuke. That was the genesis of Checkout Time, a novel I hope to get published in the next year.

I’ve included a jacket blurb below if you’re as intrigued by the idea as I was. Stay tuned!

Checkout Time

Handsome scientist Thomas Tomacinski’s easy-going style has the ladies talking, but beautiful FBI agent Sally Butterworth doesn’t want to join the conversation. Not until they land in the same hotel where an extortion bomber with the mysterious pseudonym Conrad Hilton sparks their romance with a bang. Conrad is looking to make a killing from a consortium of hotel owners -- and is not above killing to make a point.

It won’t be easy stopping Conrad, a genius with a method actor’s ability to assume new identities and personalities. And when this chameleon takes a special interest in Tom and those he cares about, nobody gets much sleep. Tom-tom and Sally Pancakes, as they are affectionately known, are led a merry chase through the scenic backroads of Kentucky and Tennessee, with more plot twists than a country lane. They fall in and out of danger while falling in and out of bed, learning tough lessons about love, loss, and themselves.

Project Suicide will be out soon!

Well, I’m back after a long hiatus and will be posting regularly from now on. You know what they say about bad pennies. 😊

The big announcement is that my debut novel, Project Suicide, is set for general release May 1. Should be on Amazon at that time. You can order it in hardcover, paperback, or kindle version. So please check it out.

Don’t know the exact price yet, but it should be reasonable--especially the electronic version. But if price has you turned off, drop me a line and we’ll work something out.

Once you read it and like it, I’d reeeealy appreciate a review, at least on Amazon and maybe GoodReads if you’re of a mind.

Anyway, stay tuned.

Reading Papa is always a pleasure.

I’m currently reading Islands in the Stream, Ernest Hemmingway’s posthumously printed novel about Caribbean life before and during World War II.

I have always hesitated to read posthumous works, suspecting that they represent a way for relatives to cash in on a partially completed trunk draft. But I was intrigued to learn that this was a completed novel that was edited by his widow and Charles Scribner. The rough draft was smoothed, but nothing was added. So, I picked up a used copy online.

The book is divided into two parts of roughly equal length. The two are so different, that it is a wonder they did not create a series of two 200-page books. But evidently, that’s not what Ernest wanted, and they followed his wishes.

The first half is relatively close to the movie of the same name, which I rather enjoyed. This is the part featuring the joy that Thomas Hudson feels living on Bimini with his visiting sons. I’m only halfway through the second part, which describes life and sub-hunting activities off Cuba. But I have read enough to know that the second is the weaker of the two halves, focused more on circumstances than emotions. Even so, it is a joy to read.

The writing represents a mature Hemmingway who has fine-tuned his craft to its ultimate expression. The prose is so crisp it snaps. The emotional intensity brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion. Love and loss are vividly felt through dialogue, with just enough exposition to paint a vivid picture.

As usual, reading him is a pleasure.

Theory of Everything and English Patient: Great movies or just great acting?

I watched The Theory of Everything the other evening. Actually, I watched half of it then went to bed. The acting was fantastic. But the story was so depressing and deliberately paced that I felt both bored and repelled. I got a similar feeling while watching The English Patient—great acting but such an actionless downer that it wasn’t worth the considerable time.

This reminds me of an old acting axiom. Make your characters and actions as realistic as possible. But never ever make them boring. For me, the same applies to movies – and writing.

There must be some out there who want to see the step-by-step progression of debilitating illness. I guess I’m not one of them.

They don't call him King for nothing.

Hemingway once said that some places were better for writing than others, or perhaps it was that he was a better writer when at those places. I feel similarly about reading-- some places demand certain types of books. Airplane travel requires a good thriller. Home in bed, it’s Elmore Leonard or military history. When I’m at our place in Tennessee, it’s Stephen King.

Last month in the Smokies, I reread The Body, the King novella that was turned into the movie Stand by me (recently aired on cable). I noticed a couple of things. First, the movie closely followed the book, although the relationship between Gordon and his brother was not as close as in the movie. The second thing I noticed was that Stephen King is even more prolific than I thought.

In the introduction, King states that this novella was written immediately after one of his gimongous novels (maybe The Stand?), adding that he usually has room in him for a novel plus something else before he takes a break. Are you freakin’ kidding me? If that wasn’t amazing enough, the novella itself includes two complete multi-thousand-word short stories, written in different styles. So that’s a large novel, novella, and two short stories during the time that most of us struggle to crank out half a mediocre first draft.

They don’t call him King for nothing.

Jeez, I hate novel revisions!

I just started reading Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the updated title for Jack Finney’s 1955 serialized novel, The Body Snatchers. I decided to read this more than sixty-year-old horror/scifi novel because I’m reading another old book, Stephen King’s Danse Macabre (1982). I was about two thirds of the way through DM, when King began discussing Body Snatchers as one of the classics in the genre. Well, since I’ve seen this movie a hundred times (at least), but never read the classic from which it sprung, I decided to avoid King’s spoilers and first read the Finney novel. The retitled paperback was available for cheap on Amazon (the original was much more expensive), so I plunked down my two bucks (plus $3.99 shipping) and had it in a few days. I’m just fifteen pages in, and almost wish I hadn’t bothered.

It’s not that I dislike the writing, Finney’s writing is pretty good. It’s also fun to revisit Dr. Miles Bennell, Becky Driscoll, and crew, after seeing them so many times on screen. The problem is that the title was updated in 1978, to coincide with the release of the remake. Unfortunately, an attempt was made to revise the text to fit within 1978 as well. Evidently, we poor, dumb readers couldn’t deal with ancient writing from twenty years ago (dum dum dee doh, Shazam! Golly Sgt. Carter!).

The problem with such revision is that fiction is a creature of the period in which it is written. There are hundreds of phrases, idioms, and historical aspects that flavor the writing, which is part of the fun. For each one you change, you miss a bunch. So you end up with dozens of anachronisms that pull the reader out of the narrative. It’s like seeing that fictional 555 area code they used to use in movies. You cease suspended disbelief and say, “Jeez!”

For example, Miles describes the life of a young (he’s 28) doctor. But this description is for a mid-1950s doctor, not one in 1978. He talks about house calls and all-night answering services to wake him for emergency appendectomies, etc. By the late 1970s, hospitals and emergency rooms had sprung up throughout even rural America, so that the house call was a thing of the past. He describes his training as four years of med school and one year of internship, but by the late 1970s, a general practitioner would have at least a two-year residency in family medicine, with ‘GP’ designating older docs that only had a general internship.  Finney seems to realize some of this, so he adds expository narrative such as “Yes, I still make house calls.” But such padding detracts from the flow, waking the reader from the nightmare Finney’s weaving. After a while, you find yourself looking for these “Jeez!” moments, instead of immersed in the tale.

Well, enough bitching. Time for me to go back to reading Body Snatchers, hoping that the story is strong enough to withstand a revisionist flogging. At least it should be a nice walk down memory lane. Jeez!