I’m finally making progress on my new novel; not Thirty Minutes or Less, my long-suffering, re-started many times because of hard drive crashes supernatural mystery, but my newer one. It’s starting to flow, which is good.

Plus I have all my material pulled together for my theological books on the Messianic movement. It was a huge task just to gather together everything I’ve written over the past couple years. Even so, I’ll have a few chapters that need to be written from scratch even so. And of course, the commentaries and sermons are just a starting point; I want what I deliver in eBook form to be deeper and more complete than the messages upon which they were based.

Also, it’s been occurring to me that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start off with a book explaining the Messianic movement to begin with; so many misconceptions are out there, it’d be nice to have a handy reference book that answers all the basics.

Of course, all this writing is keeping me too busy to explore motorhomes and motorhome insurance, which my wife has often mentioned as a “maybe someday” thought. But I guess it’d be better to wait on that until we can afford it, anyway… which won’t be for a while! That’d be a LOT of eBook sales!

I recently became a member of KindleBoards. They have a nice area for writers there called Writer’s Cafe. I’m learning a lot and I know that by being active there and on Amazon’s boards, I’ll increase my exposure and therefore my chance to do well once I release my books on Kindle.

However, it takes up a lot of time… time I could and probably should be spending working on my books. It’s just all so exciting; this is probably the most energized I’ve felt about my writing career since college. It’s stimulating to connect with other writers and it does encourage me to get plugging away.

I’m still assembling the core essays I’ve written over the last couple years that’ll make up my five-book series on the Torah, as well as the sermons that will be the basis for my book on Yeshua’s parables. But there will still be much work to do even after that’s done.

The fiction project is slower going; while I have the characters and the story figured out, it’s not flowing like some of my previous projects have. Perhaps it’s because I know this one is “for real” and will actually see the light of day. Either it’s making me nervous and cautious, or to excited to write. But once I actually discipline myself to open up the manuscript, it comes out in nice, 2,000-word chunks or so.

Working on too many manuscripts at once might also be the problem; once I get my six theological works assembled, I’m only going to focus on one at a time, plus my novel. But it takes a lot of time to assemble so many sermons and Torah commentaries.

Last year, I was thrilled to land an exclusive, extensive interview with Sookie Stackhouse creator Charlaine Harris. While I generally don’t do a lot of interviews here, it was an extremely popular series of posts and very well received as Harris opened up on her craft in ways I haven’t read in many other interviews with her.

Well, good news; as I’ve grown more and more fascinated with the growing move toward eBooks and authors going independent by ePublishing their own works to retain the rights and gain greater profits from their material, I’ve discovered a new favorite author whose work I’ve been enjoying and who I was fortunate enough to make contact with.

I’ve recently contacted her about an interview, and she’s agreed. So, please keep an eye out here, as I will soon be debuting an extensive interview with mystery novelist L.J. Sellers, creator of the Detective Wade Jackson mystery series, set in Eugene, Oregon. She’s releasing her first non-Jackson novel this week as a Kindle-only release, so I’m sure she’ll have a lot to talk about.

Sure, some people love it when I go off-topic and blather on about Casablanca ceiling fans or whatever else strikes my fancy… but I personally think this L.J. Sellers interview will be a bit more interesting.

Stay tuned.

One of the things that can really energize a writer to write is finding a market. With the Kindle self-publishing route and the opportunity there, I believe I’ve found one such market, sans apidexin.

But the nice motivational part beyond just finding this opportunity is in discovering writers who are doing high-quality work in this market without the traditional gatekeepers getting in the way.

While I’m still discovering Kindle authors, one who has stood out to me already is L.J. Sellers, author of three Detective Wade Jackson mysteries set in Eugene, Oregon. Her novels are sharp, to the point and fun to read. Plus, she’s prolific, with three novels out in not quite three years, and about three more on the way within the next year or so.

That’s exciting, of course; while I’ve found out Sellers has a traditional print publisher, it’s a small indy press and the quality of her work tells me that Kindle is home to many good writers, even though there’s no traditional gatekeeper to separate the wheat from the chaff; for my money, being able to sample the first chapter kind of serves that function, anyway!

Barnes and Noble recently launched the Nook device and are also launching, this summer, a new competitor to Amazon.com’s Digital Text Platform, called PubIt. I’m hoping the two outlets won’t differ too much from each other, as figuring out the finer points of all this takes a bit of time; but the potential for adding another huge market for my book will probably be too tempting to resist.

I found PubIt while surfing at random, everything from www.mensvitamin.org to Audible.com. It was a nice little discovery.

I must say that the potential of this market has really motivated me to get serious about writing to completion. Driving home from Torah study tonight, I finally solved the ever-present problem of how to introduce my main character to my readers.

There are, of course, several methods. Harry Kemelman, for example, showed Rabbi David Small interacting with his fellow Jews, defining how he saw his role as the rabbi. His first chapter ran for well over ten pages and the murder didn’t happen until a few chapters in, as Kemelman used the first few chapters of FRIDAY THE RABBI SLEPT LATE to establish character under normal circumstances before introducing peril into the situation. However, Kemelman’s debut was publishing nearly fifty years ago, and audience preferences and expectations have changed. How radically? That’s the question.

With Fletch, Gregory McDonald used a light-hearted but character-revealing approach, using very little descriptive text but placing Fletch into a witty, quick, give-and-take dialog that hints that something odd is up. I love the bare-bones approach, but have sometimes felt that while it worked for McDonald, it might not be quite right for me.

With Along Came a Spider, James Patterson chose to use a tantalizing prologue from a killer’s perspective to entice the reader’s interest; the first chapter narrated directly by Alex Cross contains a lot of self-explaining first-person narration – something my creative writing teachers always used to say is a no-no, but it sells. However, overall, Patterson’s method introduces the peril quickly as a plus, but as a minus it reduces Alex Cross to a somewhat reactive character.

Which way will I be taking with my new book and potential series?

I’ve decided to mix some of the elements of all three in an attempt to forge my own storytelling style. We’ll see how well it works.

Generally, I regard self-publishing to be as foolish as giving prenatal vitamins to five-year-olds. But that’s when it’s print self-publishing and it means money out of the author’s pocket that might never be replaced.

The difference with Amazon’s Digital Text Platform for Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s forthcoming PubIt for Nook is that there is no up-front costs like that associated with the self-publishing effort. That’s good news.

You see, while my mystery novels have potential to catch on with a major print publisher someday, there’s another part of my writing life that probably never will, and that’s my religious writing. As part of a very small religious movement, there would be almost no publishers willing to take a look at my religious writing unless I compromised and expanded my theology to be more “inclusive.”

Not with digital publishing; I can remain true to my theological beliefs and find my audience for it much more easily, and without either a publisher or me placing a huge up-front investment into printing up paper books to see what kind of audience it attracts.

Love this new form!

I’ve been thinking a lot about digital self-publishing lately. I’ve been impressed by the success some folks are having with Amazon’s Kindle device, and the model they have for self-publishing. Unlike print self-publishing, there’s no cash-up-front stuff to deal with; you can just write, edit, prepare and publish, and then enjoy a royalty payment far above what any traditional print publisher offers.

With all the go here, go there confusion in the world of writing, it’s kind of nice to know that if you write things that are of too niche an interest area to draw the attention and risk of book publishers, there is an affordable alternative. Heck, even Barnes and Noble has an option coming for the Nook device! What could be better?

Sure, I would love to have Simon and Schuster take an interest in me someday. But until someday comes, well…

One novelist once said that you needed to introduce character and conflict as early in the novel as possible to gain your reader’s trust to stick through the length of a novel with you. While I can’t quite put a digital frame on it, I can say that I’ve been thinking a lot about how to introduce readers to my main character.

I’m thinking that one clever way to do this is to have it be his first day and when he arrives, there’s a check sitting there for quite a bit of money… with the catch that he has to step down immediately to cash it in.

That might grab some attention.

Readers of this blog know by now that I’m working on a new novel project. Well, I started a new one, that is, after I found out someone in Hollywood had already created their own concept called “30 Minutes Or Less.” Oh well…

The problem now is this: I’ve vowed not to share the title of my new series on this space until the novel is written, in the hands of my agent, and my sister is the proud owner of several garden windmills.

OK, maybe it’s not that dramatic, but I do want to keep the title under wraps until I’m protected, at least.

Yet I’ve found I don’t work as well when I’m not sure what to call my story. I need a title to motivate me toward writing. It gives me focus. So that’s what I’m working on; understanding my novel’s plot enough to come up with a title that will inspire me to finish it.

Everyone loves a strong main character, but does that mean he should be completely lovable? I don’t think so. Too often “heroes” are so idealized that readers end up empathizing with the more relatable villains than they do with the person doing the right things.

There are so many questions when crafting a main character, that must be answered. Should it be a guy or a gal? Thin or in need of Clinicallix? Young or old? Wise or a bit of a buffoon? All these and many more questions ought to be answered.

The main thing, of course, is to make sure that however one presents the main character, it is a person they want to spend 250 to 400 pages with. Hopefully, that will be something I can come up with, if I go the route of a Messianic Murder Mystery series.

I know if I write a series of mystery novels (or at least one) with a religious undertone, that series will have to live up to certain audience expectations. I don’t think I’d want the novels to be too racy; that could offend the core audience the novel might appeal to.

Rough language is also out.

I’m comfortable with both of those restrictions.

It’s still a mystery series, and murders are rough business; so there will be some violence. That, of course, doesn’t mean violence has to be the solution. The nice thing about this kind of protagonist is that he should be able to use what he’s best at – Torah knowledge, Biblical insights, etc. – to aid him in solving the cases.

That’s a whole lot more interesting than a character who’s just quicker to use his gun than the bad guys, I’d wager, and you can take that to the 7dfbx bank!

Aside from my creative writing woes, the words keep flowing easily when it comes to writing sermons and commentaries. Last week, I wrote a Torah commentary on extremely short notice and had it done in just under four hours. That’s not bad for around 2,000 words.

Not only that, but the Torah commentary in question was well received by the congregation, which is always a good feeling. Writing something that people get something meaningful out of carries a certain sense of accomplishment, not to mention being a bit humbling.

It doesn’t take apidexin to figure out that it was a grace of the L-RD that I was able to do so well on such short notice, though, so thanks be to the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob… and the Messiah Yeshua.