No Peace, A Steve Dancy Tale

Honest westerns filled with dishonest characters.

My new Steve Dancy book takes place in 1885, three years after Steve and Virginia took off for their honeymoon in San Diego. A lot has happened off-page. You'll soon be able to catch up with Steve and all of his friends in his latest adventure titled No Peace.

Maybe soon is the wrong word. I've finished the second draft and now two of my beta readers are spreading red ink all over the manuscript. When I finish incorporating their notes, it will be ready for my professional editor. Then she'll send back another red ink-stained manuscript. After I incorporate her changes, it will be ready for the book designer, who will format the word files for print and electronic versions. Simultaneously, my son will design the book cover. (As I've mentioned before, I'm getting back his Art Center tuition one book cover at a time.)

If everything goes without a hitch, No Peace, A Steve Dancy Tale should be available sometime this summer.

In the meantime, if you haven't tried Deluge, download a sample onto your Kindle or buy the paperback. Deluge is the most adrenaline you’ll can experience while reclining in a Barcalounger. 
And if you haven't tried them yet, there are two Steve Dancy Short Tales in Wanted and Wanted II.

Selfish San Francisco

Water Source for San Francisco

San Francisco supports denying water to the Central Valley so a tiny fish called the Delta Smelt has a pristine habitat. Except San Francisco gets its drinking water from the other side of the Central Valley. If the O'Shaughnessy Dam below Yosemite was demolished, the Sierra runoff would flow naturally into the Central Valley.

To further explain the source of San Francisco water, here is an excerpt from Deluge.

“The TV.” She pointed to a television mounted high on the wall. The sound had been muted, but the agitation of the newscasters was obvious. The chyron read, “O’Shaughnessy Dam collapse harms San Francisco.”  In smaller letters below, it read “Water and power at risk.

Smith grabbed the bottles and said “Come on. Let’s get back.”

When they entered the flat downstairs, Wilson and Ashley were chuckling like a couple of teenagers. Baldwin had the impression that if they hadn’t returned when they did, they might have found the flat locked, with a man’s tie hanging from the door handle.

Smith immediately went to the remote and turned on the television.

The newscaster was saying, “San Francisco receives eighty-five percent of its water from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, which sits behind the O’Shaughnessy Dam. A dam that no longer exists. This dam also produced over seven hundred million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year for the city. The mayor has declared an emergency, and water as of this moment is severely rationed. It appears that for the first time in a century, San Francisco will be forced to pump and filter its water. The question on the minds of nearly three million people in the Bay Area is, how long it will take to replace the water supply for the city? Our sources said months. The irony, of course, is that after over a week of nonstop rain, how can the city be out of fresh water … and potentially short of electricity?”

“Oh, crap,” Smith said. “The Restore Hetch Hetchy activists got their wish. They’ve hated that dam since John Muir fought its construction early in the last century. Now we’ll see how Sierra Club members with a 94123 zip code like rustic living.”

“Don’t fool yourself,” Wilson said. “The rich always live comfortably. It’s the peons who’ll suffer. If need be, the rich will have Perrier home-delivered in quantities large enough to shower whenever they want.”

Ashley pointed at the faucet. “This water comes from the Sierras? That’s hard to believe. Why? The Delta always has water.”

“It’s pure mountain water,” Wilson said. “We’re one of the few major cities in the world that doesn’t filter its tap water. It’s uncontaminated … and delivery is gravity fed. The city moves it from the mountains to that tap without fossil fuels.” She stroked the faucet spout. “Our pristine mountain water is a matter of civic pride.”

“As well as the pee on the sidewalks,” Smith said. “Gravity fed, pure, and one hundred percent organic.”

“Guys, quit squabbling,” Baldwin said, pointing at the television. “The Don Pedro Dam just below Hetch Hetchy also failed. Modesto and outlying areas are in the flood path. People are dying, and you’re worried about showering.”

Storms, politics, and gangs pummel California but that isn't the scary part.

New Steve Dancy Tales Book Trailer

I'm not sure if book trailers sell books, but they seem to be the rage, so here is a new trailer for The Steve Dancy Tales. Comments welcome.

I beg to disagree

Writer’s Digest is not my favorite source for writing advice. Actually, the magazine and companion website are not even on my radar. I have found Writer’s Digest articles arcane or commonplace. Sometimes they are downright wrong. Recently they published “5 Mistakes to Avoid When Writing a Fiction Series” by Rachel Randall, the managing editor for Writer’s Digest Books. Since I write a fiction series, I looked up this article. It pulled off the difficult task of simultaneously being arcane, commonplace, and wrong.

The “5 Mistakes” were commonplace, but the advice on how to avoid them was often arcane. Like everything in this magazine, it is writing by formula. It’s all about the mechanics. This may work for their readership, but not for me.

Calling the article wrong is probably an overstatement. The content is correct. The problem is omission. The “5 Mistakes” have nothing to do with why readers adopt a fiction series. Readers pick up the next installment of a fiction series because they want to learn what happened to the characters in the story. Readers must be invested in the characters. In fact, I believe characterization is the sole key to a fiction series.

Writers need to know their characters. Thoroughly. If a writer truly understands his or her characters, many of the “5 Mistakes” will be avoided automatically. Characters have a personality, a backstory, and a network of friends and acquaintances. They do not behave inconsistent with these characteristics. Like real people, fictional characters don’t change willy-nilly—they constantly change and/or grow, but the reader must witness this challenging process. (Breaking Bad is a good example.)

The “5 Mistakes” article misses the greatest mistake in fiction series—poor character development. A great deal of series fiction puts too much emphasis on technological wizardry, relentless quests, or slow revelation of a mystery. These authors forget to populate their plots with characters that readers care about. And in the end, that is what matters most.

http://amzn.to/29oDRbQ

Honest westerns filled with dishonest characters.