Juliette Turner Reads my Essay on the 27th Amendment

Juliette Turner, Youth Director of Constituting America

Selling Your Books on Amazon

I'm conducting a webinar today at 2:00 PM PST at Book Street Cafe. This is a new membership site for publishers, authors, and publishing vendors. It's a fun virtual cafe hosted by terrific people dedicated to the book industry. This webinar, as well as all the others, will be posted to the site to be viewed at any time.


Book Street Cafe
Webinar Page: Selling Your Books on Amazon

Western Writers of America Conference Book Signing

The WWA Conference sponsored a huge book signing at the Albuquerque Barnes & Noble. Fun event with loads of fans of Western books, both fiction and non-fiction.

Tonight is the big finale with the Spur Awards dinner.

The week had flown by and it will be a disappointment to leave for home tomorrow. The WWA is full of great people who are also great writers.

Western Writers of America Conference

The Western Writers of America will hold their annual conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico on June 12-16, 2012. I'll be attending with my wife. Ought to be great fun. There will be a book signing by all the authors at Barnes and Noble, Coronado Mall from 4:00 to 7:00 on Friday, June 15. This will be a great celebration of the centennial for New Mexico and Arizona. By the way, New Mexico became a state on January 6, 1912, while my home state of Arizona became a state on February 14, 1912. New Mexico beat us by a month, but we get to claim to be the last contiguous state to join the union.

Fun USA Today Site for Summer Books

USA Today has published their Summer Books Previews. They cover almost every genre. No matter what type of books you like to haul to the beach, they make three recommendations. Happy reading.

Book Industry Gossip

Laura Hazard Owen has written an interesting piece about BookExpo America titled

5 things the book industry will be talking about next week

Read the article at paidcontent.org

What to give for Father’s Day?

How about travel—to another place and time

Books are great gifts. For a few dollars, they provide hours of entertainment that can be enjoyed anywhere. A good book sheds life’s tensions as it transports the reader to another place and time. Of course, I’m biased. I write books and hope you’ll pick one of mine as a Father’s Day gift. But even if you don’t, all books bring unique pleasure. 

Here’s a tip on how to give a really appreciated gift. Think about the interests of your father or grandfather. If you give a book that matches their hobby or genre preference, then it will show that you have put thought into the gift to make it personal.

What about books in this age of e-Readers? First, a Kindle or other e-Reader is a great gift in itself. If your father already owns an e-Reader, you can gift a specific book. Actually the recipient is not restricted to the selected title because the amount of money can be used to buy anything. I buy so many books for my Kindle that I personally appreciate it when my kids send me an Amazon gift card. Since they live across the country, it saves them money because shipping has gotten expensive. To many it may seem impersonal, but except for writing, reading is my greatest pastime. Besides, I’ll get the personal touch from the phone call.

Heroes and Villains

Part 6: Resolution with Redemption

It doesn’t always have to end badly for villains. Some great stories conclude with redemption. This doesn’t mean the protagonist doesn’t still have a fight. Stories without a struggle don’t attract readers or viewers. This is why redemption usually comes at the very end of the story. The most well-known example is Darth Vader. Up to the very last moment the audience believes Vader will kill Luke Skywalker. The outlaw Ben Wade in the movie versions of 3:10 to Yuma is another example of an action story where a villain finds redemption.

Antagonist redemption is tricky to pull off because the protagonist needs a bitter foe right up to the climax of the story. This is why redemption is used more in literary fiction. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe is an example of redemption in a literary work, except it would be more correct to say that Flanders was an antihero rather than an antagonist. Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is another antihero who is really a bad guy until he fesses up to his misdeeds. Edmund in Shakespeare’s King Lear is rotten almost to the very end. In my mind, these are really stories where the antagonist has the leading role and the protagonist is the inner self constantly being pushed down until it finally struggles to the surface to award redemption to our antihero.