Writer's Saturday Night

Pics of the day...

Mean Pete and his ex-wife are going through our old photo boxes and divvying up pictures.  So I decided to post a pic or two here fairly regularly--between writing tips and book promos and my other sundry writing-life nonsense.

That pic above, taken in '99 on our farm in western Minnesota, is Thor and Bill.  Those two were buds.  I don't think Bill ever really knew he was a cat and not a dog.  Or maybe Thor never really knew that he was a dog and not a cat.

Anyway, Thor is 15 now, and three-legged, but he's still kicking.

Below is Buck, who passed away two years ago at age 13 from cancer, Bill, and Thor again.

Thor today.

Speaking of Beginnings--Lou Prophet Rides!

I just finished going over the galley proof of my next Lou Prophet book, due out in June.  Since I wrote about how to start with action and weave in background information as concisely as possible so as not to stop the action or even slow it much, I thought I'd show you how I did it in this book.  Here, I try to mix action, dialogue, and background information as craftily as possible, drawing the reader into the tale.

HELL'S ANGEL

Lou Prophet, Bounty Hunter

Chapter 1

“Dios mio!” the senorita said through a gasp. “Lou, you must go! My husband is home!”

“Husband? Ramonna, you’re a whore!”

“Not anymore, Lou!”

The senorita gasped when another sound rose from the hotel/saloon’s first story, and clamped her hands to Lou Prophet’s face. She stared up at him, chocolate eyes wide and bright with terror. She squirmed beneath him. Her full breasts raked warmly against his chest.

“Lou, vamonos! He is an angry man! Very jealous! If he sees us together, he will keeel you!”

Lou Prophet stopped bucking against the lovely puta, Ramonna Oscuro, whom he’d met a couple of years before, here in the little border village of San Simon, when he’d been on the run from the federales. He stared down at her, incredulous.

It was deep night, but downstairs, in the hotel’s little cantina, boots thudded. A contented whistling sounded. It stopped.

The man’s burly voice barreled up the stairs in Spanish, echoing off the mud brick walls--“Hola, my hot little chili pepper--your husband is home!”

“Shit!” Prophet said, scowling down in disbelief at the frightened puta. “That ain’t Colonel Campa, is it--commander of the local rurale outpost?”

“Si,” Ramonna said, nodding, as boots tapped slowly, heavily on the stone stairs. “He is very jealous man, Lou! He married me to keep me pure, though I have it on good word he still tumbles with any girl he gets heated up for!”

Prophet cursed again and rolled off the bed, climbing to his feet and looking around on the scarred wooden floor for his underwear. “The son of a bitch was dogging me for three days through Chihuahua. Accused me of holdin’ up a stage on the old Comanche Trail. Knows damn well I didn’t. That was Missouri Charlie Black and Pancho Scudder. Campa just soured on me after I cut his ear off in a fair knife fight in Juarez, two years ago last Christmas.”

“That was you?”

“Didn’t mean to. Meant to cut his throat, but I was too drunk to see straight. He said if he ever saw me in Mexico again he’d see me shot down in front of the nearest adobe wall.”

Prophet stepped into his balbriggans, drew them up his legs, having to squat and wriggle around to get the skin-tight, threadbare garment up his thick, brawny, six-foot-four-inch frame without ripping out the seams. “Lost him two days ago. Didn’t figure on him thinkin’ to look for me here--in the same little village he’s headquartered in!”

The Colonel’s deep voice, slurred from drink, shouted, “I have brought you a present, my little mountain flower!”

Prophet glanced at Ramonna skeptically as he scooped his denim trousers off a chair back. “Mountain flower?”

“He’s quite a poet, the bastardo! I only married him because I was tired of going from man to man, and I was drunk. I’m not as young as I used to be. I’ll be twenty next month. The years catch up to us all. Hurry, Lou--he’s in the hall!”

Mean Pete on How to Write Kick-Ass Action--Tip #1!

MEAN PETE’S DANDER IS UP

(and bad writing’s to blame!)

Last night, Mean Pete was sitting in his favorite chair near two snoring curs and a frothy beer, a Rocky Mountain snow ticking against his window, trying to read a book--a recent western novel published by a major New York City publisher.

The emphasis there is on trying. 

Pete found the sentences--one after a-freakin-nother--as limp as over-cooked spaghetti noodles, the plot as moribund as mules mired in quicksand, and the characters about as compelling as a wild Saturday night with tea-totaling, Yahtzee-addicted in-laws.

Mean Pete would have thrown the mass-market paperback across the room and against the wall, hard, if it hadn’t been on his Ipad. 

Now, if you follow his blog or read his books, you might have already gotten the idea that Mean Pete can be a crotchety SOB at times.  No, it’s true!   Just ask his ex-wife.  But nothing gets him crotchetier than poor writing--especially when so much of that poor writing is being published these days--and not just self-published, either, but printed in both mass market paperback originals as well as hardbacks by the Big Six big-city publishers...

And sold for eight bucks and more!

So Mean Pete, who has published over 70 books over the past fifteen years, has decided to forsake the pretense of humility and offer his own writing tips to those who might see some value in them and even employ them in their own writing.  Now, Mean Pete is not proclaiming absolute mastery of the subject at hand, but...ah, well, okay...

Yes, he is.

These tidbits are mostly geared for folks writing pulp-style action novels and romance novels, but Mean Pete contends in his own stubborn way that if the thin-lipped, high-brow literati would use these techniques, more novels touting themselves at lit-ra-chuh would be more than mere print-substitutes for Ambien.

Read on for Tip 1 and stay tuned for weekly writing tips brought to you on a take-‘em-or-leave-‘em basis but at no charge (though beer is greatly appreciated) from Mean Pete Press!

HOW TO WRITE KICK-ASS ACTION

Mean Pete’s Writing Tips #1

Start With Action And Stay With Action!

            One of the problems with the book that Mean Pete was trying to read last night, and that caused him to grind his molars to a fine powder, was that while the writer started with dialogue and some fairly nifty action, he didn’t stick with the action.  He treated the action like a common whore and set it out with the morning trash!

            For some reason, writers--even writers who have gone way beyond their freshman year creative writing courses (the writer of this tepid yarn supposedly has published over 70 books!)--have more faith in exposition than they do in action.

            In TELLING more than SHOWING.

            Mean Pete asks through a frustrated whimper--WHY? 

            We are a cinematic people.  Unless we’re big fans of Henry James or Jaqueline Susann (yes, Mean Pete couldn’t groom her gravel but she was a shitty writer) we don’t read novels to get a voice in our ears droning on about what happened BEFORE the action of the book takes place. 

            We read novels to have movies acted out in our heads.  And we don’t go to movies to have the screen go dark for long stretches of time and for a voice to come over the speakers telling us a bunch of crap that the actors should be showing us on the screen.

            And I don’t mean in flashbacks, either.  But more on the dastardly flashback in another catty post...

            The scribbler of last night’s book (which had a damn nice cover, by the way) opened with dialogue and action, which itself could have been much better if he’d stayed in the lead character’s point of view instead of bouncing around all over the place, but more on point of view in coming tips...but after only a few paragraphs of action, the writer gave up on the action and went into several long paragraphs--long, dense, tedious pages, even--of background information on how the lead character got to where he is when that first scene opens.

            Yada-yada-effing-YADA!

            What this writer should have done to keep the reader riveted instead of yawning was stuck with the action and folded that background information into the scene in much the same way a baker folds an egg into his cake batter--with quick, deft strokes.

            Readers should get all necessary background information almost subliminally, semi-consciously, so they don’t even realize they’re getting it much less getting it choked down their throats on a long spoon, or watching in shock and awe as the writer walks out from behind the curtain to give a lecture. 

            Ways to do this “tucking” are:

            Through quick cuts to the point of view character’s thoughts.  (Though please don’t write a sentence like: “...he allowed his thoughts to wander back in time, back, to when he first became part of the John Anryn Institute, to when he had become the enforcer...”  I swear on my beer fridge--that’s an actual line!)

            Through dialogue, though you have to make the dialogue seem plausible and not heavy-handed--“Hey, Duke, how’s that girl doing--you know, the busty blond from Texas you met at Hooters and who’s only twenty-four years old and has a black belt in tai-kwan do...?”

            And through very brief strokes of exposition that are so deftly written and so closely aligned with the point of view character’s consciousness, that the reader can’t even distinguish them from the main, colorful, rousing action of the scene.

            If you do it like that, and not take the lazy way out, the reader will be riveted all the way through the scene.  And when he gets to the end of the chapter he’ll be cussing you, the writer, for making him continue on to the next chapter to see what happens next when he should be getting his beauty sleep!

            (You just gotta hope the feller’s not an airline pilot...)

Gidyup!

Come on back soon for another crafty tip from Mean Pete, His Own Mean An’ Nasty Self.  Till then, we'll be hangin' 'em high here at Mean Pete Press!

Lola Locked & Loaded Now Available!

“This is a nasty little humdinger of a yarn.  Mean Pete rides!”

--Tabor Evans, author of Longarm

IN THIS E-EXCLUSIVE SHORT STORY FROM MEAN PETE PRESS, FIND OUT HOW SARADEE JONES CAME TO START HAUNTING ROGUE LAWMAN GIDEON HAWK’S DAYS AS WELL AS HIS NIGHTS!

Lola Hammond was just a simple girl from the little New Mexico town of Genesis... until her father, the sheriff, was killed during a bank robbery.

Now, because no one else seems able to do it...and because she finds herself, inexplicably all too able...Lola hunts her father’s killers. 

But what she meets at the end of the bloody trail is not just Vernon “The Butcher” Belcher and a pair of saddlebags filled with loot, but her own dark fate staring her in the eye.

And what Lola will soon discover is that the lonely, tortured soul of the man known as the Rogue Lawman...the man who will become her lover as well as her hunter...is a dark shadow sliding like an approaching storm along her backtrail...

Go on over and pluck your .99-cent copy off the virtual spinner racks at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Lola-Locked-Loaded-ebook/dp/B00BAIL3G6/ref=sr_1_6?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1359984803&sr=1-6

Or go on over and give the racks a spin at Barnes & Noble:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lola-locked-loaded-peter-brandvold/1114295764?ean=2940016364155

Gidyup,

Mean Pete

Lola: Locked & Loaded

Coming in a couple of weeks to a virtual spinner rack near you.  

Read on for a sneak peek of Mean Pete's next short, mean and nasty western thriller:

I.

LOLA’S FATHER, THE SHERIFF, was dying hard and fast.

     “Lola,” Dick Hammond said, lying on his bed in the little, frame house that he shared with his only child, “you don’t spend no money on a pine casket, hear?”

     The sheriff rasped through gritted teeth as blood oozed out the hole that the gang of Vernon “the Butcher” Belcher had drilled through his belly less than a half hour ago, when they’d shot their way out of the Genesis Bank & Trust.  “You just...bury me in that suit...that...I married your ma in...an’ wrap me in my saddle blanket.  That...that’s good enough--all right, Lola?  Good enough for this old miscreant.”

     He smiled at that last, trying to make a joke even out of his dying.  That’s the kind of man the sheriff was.

     He squeezed his daughter’s long, pale hand and looked up at her, sweat dribbling through the two-day growth of beard on his ruddy cheeks.

     “I love you, Lola.  After your mother, you’re the only girl I ever loved.”

     “I love you, too, Pa,” Lola said through taut jaws, trying to be strong.  She was dabbing a cool cloth at the sheriff’s forehead.

     “You be good.  Wouldn’t hurt ya none to act like a lady now and then.  And you marry up right--you hear?”

     “I hear, Pa.  I’ll do my best.  For you.”

     “I’ll be lookin’ down on ya, so you behave yourself.  You make me smile, not frown--you hear me?”

     He chuckled at that.  The laughter was too much for him.  He groaned, gasped, and then he lay his head back on the pillow, and his pale eyes lost their focus.

     “I hear you, Pa,” Lola whispered, placing a tender hand on her father’s cheek.

     “I hear you, Pa,” she repeated, feeling grief well up like a large, dark and snarling beast inside her.

     She sucked a sharp breath and pressed it down, down.  All the way down until only a mere scrap of it remained.  She replaced it with a bitter fury.

     “Oh, god!” sobbed the Hammonds’ neighbor, Dorothy Westenskow, who had come over to help out when the sheriff had been carried back to the house by several townsmen.  The stout, gray-haired woman stood back by the open bedroom door, still wearing the apron she’d been wearing to cook lunch when the gunfire had erupted in the heart of Genesis.

     Lola bit her bottom lip and spun around to face the woman.  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Dorothy!  You’ve never known anyone to die before?”

     Lola strode past the woman and into the crudely, sparely furnished parlor around which milled the somber townsmen who’d carried the sheriff home to die.

     Lola stopped and looked around at the five men, all middle-aged shop-keepers, sitting on the horsehair sofa covered with a couple of ratty horse blankets, or in the sheriff’s rocking chair, or the upholstered armchair.  One, Matthew Kelly, the Wells Fargo agent, was holding up the frame of the door leading to the kitchen.

     The cuckoo clock ticked woodenly, loudly.  Outside, birds in the lilac bush flitted shadows across the sunlit parlor window.

     “What are you men doing here?” Lola asked crisply, scowling at each man in turn.

     They looked at each other skeptically.

     Kelly blinked behind his round, steel-framed spectacles.  “Lola...is he dead, girl?  Has the sheriff passed?”

     “Yes, he’s passed, as we knew he would.  What’re you doing here?”

     “Why, we were concerned, Lola,” said Silas Adams, the saddle maker, sitting on the couch beside George Applegate, who owned the Applegate Hotel.

     Lola threw her shoulders back, drawing a heavy breath.  “The sheriff and I both appreciate your concern.  The sheriff has passed.  His killers are on the loose.  Deputy Ulrich is forming a posse.  Don’t you think you should join it?”

     She said this last as she strode across the room to the gun rack above the small, brick fireplace in the corner.  A pair of revolvers lay on the fireplace mantle--both Smith & Wesson .44s.  A holster hung by its shell belt from a bottom corner of the gun rack.

     “Lola, we aren’t joining the posse,” said Applegate.  “Why, we’re old.  We’d just hold Ulrich up!”

     Lola was checking the loads in one of the .44s.  “Shade Ulrich is going to need every man he can get--able-bodied or not.  Your sheriff has been killed by Vernon ‘The Butcher’ Belcher and his coward cousin, Victor Bannack.  On their way out of town, the gang kidnapped the schoolteacher, and they’re heading for the border, Miss Clements in tow.” 

     Lola clicked the Smith & Wesson’s loading gate closed, spun the cylinder, and shoved the revolver into the holster.  As she wrapped the shell belt around her slender waist, she added in a voice quaking with pent up emotion, “Now, you owe it to the sheriff, to Miss Clements, and to the entire town whose money they stole from the Genesis Bank & Trust to get your sorry asses off my sofa and out of my father’s rocking chair and throw in with Ulrich’s posse!”

The Western Shorts: Volume 1

No, Mean Pete ain't hocking his underwear for beer money.  He's hocking his first six short-stories (actually five short stories and one novella) in one handsome e-volume for beer money.

This is the first of what Mean Pete intends to be a long list of short story volumes to come, as the individual stories are selling so fast that Mean Pete is having a hard time keeping the virtual presses churning out the virtual paper and ink!

And his two canine employees seem to have no qualms at all about sleeping on the job!

It's up at Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AVBETUK/ref=s9_simh_gw_p351_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=01HND92AQ4KN3KB8F0PF&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1389517282&pf_rd_i=507846

and Barnes & Noble
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/brandvold-leslie-peter-brandvold/1114053223?ean=2940016137087

for $3.99--that's six yarns for under a buck a piece!

Go ahead and pull Mean Pete's pockets inside out, consarn ya!

Mean Pete