New books out today

Some new novels out today, including one of our very own:

Murder for Choir by Joelle Charbonneau: Yep, our very own DSD writer's newest book is out. Here's the description:

Even as a struggling opera singer, Paige Marshall has never seen anything like the cutthroat competition of the Prospect Glen High School show choir. Coaching these championship-hungry students may be her toughest gig yet...

Especially when her best young male singer is suspected of killing the arrogant coach of Prospect Glen's fiercest rival. To clear his name, Paige will have to sort through a chorus of suspects, and go note-for-note with a killer who wants her out of the spotlight for good.

The Dark Earth by John Hornor:


The land is contaminated, electronics are defunct, the ravenous undead remain, and life has fallen into a nasty and brutish state of nature. Welcome to Bridge City, in what was once Arkansas: part medieval fortress, part Western outpost, and the precarious last stand for civilization. A ten-year-old prodigy when the world ended, Gus is now a battle-hardened young man. He designed Bridge City to protect the living few from the shamblers eternally at the gates. Now he's being groomed by his physician mother, Lucy, and the gentle giant Knock-Out to become the next leader of men. But an army of slavers is on its way, and the war they'll wage for the city's resources could mean the end of mankind as we know it.

Can Gus become humanity's savior? And if so, will it mean becoming a dictator, a martyr . . . or maybe something far worse than even the zombies that plague the land?


Also out today, The Last Minute by Jeff Abbott:

Sam Capra must commit an impossible assassination--or he will lose the only person in the world who matters to him . . .
Sam Capra has one reason to live: to rescue his baby son from the people who abducted him. An ex-CIA agent, Sam now owns bars around the world as cover for his real mission-working undercover for a secret network as mysterious as it is powerful, while using his skills to find his child.
Now the kidnappers have offered a deadly deal: they'll surrender Sam's child...if Sam finds and murders the one man who can expose them. Teaming up with a desperate young mother whose daughter is also missing, Sam tracks his prey-and his son-across the country in a dangerous race against time, and must unravel a deadly conspiracy if he's to rescue the only person in the world that matters to him.

And finally, if you haven't picked it up... wake up!

Drift Away by Jeff Shelby: The Noah Braddock series is great, and Jeff is back with a new epsiode:

Forced to leave San Diego after his life is destroyed by tragedy, Noah is hiding and trying to heal on the Florida Panhandle. Paralyzed by fear and the pain of loss, he’s isolated himself and given up everything that meant anything to him. When a young boy comes to him on the beach, unable to find his mother, Noah is pulled into both of their troubled lives. As he reluctantly works to protect them from local thugs, he must confront the memories that continue to haunt him. Those memories come to life when shadowy figures from his past show up in Florida. While he grapples with this, a new threat emerges that will forever change the lives of the boy and his mother and compels Noah to make a choice - keep running or face the consequences of his shattered life.

Picking up where the critically acclaimed Liquid Smoke left off, Drift Away exposes a new Braddock – introspective, lost, confused…but not yet broken.

Starting Points

Last month, I shared that on the first Monday of the month, I would share writing (and publishing) advice to those with specific questions. I've been privately tutoring writers for some time, and I'm familiar with just how wide the range of questions can be. With that in mind, I picked what should seem like a simple topic to kick off this monthly feature.

Where do I start? This is a question that could apply to so many things, and I'm going to break it down into some main subcategories, referencing things I've been told or asked.  

Ideas You have to tell me what to write about.

No, I do not. A lot of people tell me they want to be a writer but don't know what to write about. To put it bluntly, it's nobody's job to tell you what to write about. Not even your college professor if you're in a MFA course, or your spouse, or your writing group, or anyone else.

I'm amazed by the number of people who want to be freelance writers, but say they need someone to tell them what to write about because they can't think of anything. Ideas are everywhere. If you can't come up with ideas on your own, you aren't meant to be an author. You could be a ghost writer. You aren't meant to be a freelance writer, although it's possible you could work as a journalist.

That said, journalists need a nose for news and the ability to see a story without nobody telling them, "Go write about this." If you're starting out writing, and feel it's something you want to do, you should be able to come up with your own ideas. Read the newspaper, look at people around you, let your mind create scenarios.

Coming up with an idea isn't hard, but it is critical. A lot of writers think that writing is easy, and all they need is the next million dollar idea, and they'll be rich; typing it out is the easy part. Anyone who thinks that way is in for a rude awakening. Writing is work, and it's harder than people realize. It's your love for idea, your passion for the story you want to tell, that will sustain you when you hit a wall, when you don't feel motivated, and when the entire plot shifts sideways on you and you have no idea where to go next.  

For Love or Money? Another starting point for aspiring writers involves establishing your motivations. Be honest with yourself. If you have an idea and want to develop it, the love of the idea is going to motivate you, and your motivation for writing (at least at this point) is clear.

A lot of people say they don't care if they make money, or if they're traditionally published. Most of those people are lying. Most secretly want to complete the story they're in love with, have someone in the publishing industry fall in love with it, and be able to walk into stores a few months later and see their book on store shelves. If you're in love with the idea and proclaiming it's all about the art but secretly want to see your book traditionally published, then you need to at least be secretly realistic enough to research the publishing industry.

Figure out the genre, or subgenre, and find editors who champion those types of stories. Make sure you fit their guidelines and tailor your story to a workable form so that it can be published. If they only take manuscripts up to 70,000 words, don't send them 100,000.

 If you want to be a successful author, make enough money to quit the day job and write full-time, then you need to learn the business of publishing. You'd be well advised to spend as much time learning about the industry as you invest in the craft of writing. Go to conventions and conferences, meet authors and agents, and humble yourself enough to assume you don't know everything and actually listen to everything they're willing to tell you.

And then, get it right. Easier said than done, but that's a whole other blog post. However, I couldn't resist sharing this photo. Some idiot actually put this in print, and reproduced it on thousands of calendars. They may be nameless. I can't publicly humiliate them, or I would.

Sound cruel? As a Canadian, I'm totally offended at such an appalling error. It would be the equivalent of Canadian stores selling calendars that marked July 5 as Independence Day. What does that have to do with writing? If you make a factual mistake, be prepared to own it.

There are days I feel like I've heard it all. Getting it right doesn't matter because this is my art. Fine. Then I don't need to pay for it, compliment you, or indulge you. The writers I respect treat this like a business, they act professionally, they invest time in research, and they work hard to produce clean material. Anyone who wants to be published, particularly anyone who wants to have a traditional publisher, needs to treat their writing seriously and recognize that it's their job to get their material right. God bless the editors who take error-ridden material they'll edit, and the typesetters who have time to fix things when files are completely messed up. Bless 'em, but don't count on them.

For every author who'll see their book published this year, there are thousands who received rejection letters. If you seriously want to know where to start, writing is as much about acting like a professional and presenting the best possible material to publishers as it is about telling a story.

Submitting your manuscript is like going on a first date. If you showed up at my door with ripped, dirty clothes, bloodshot eyes and a green hue to your skin from the hangover you haven't quite shaken off yet, breath smelling like stale beer and a cigarette hanging from your fingers, the first date would have been the last before it even happened. As a writer, submitting your manuscript is like wooing an editor. You'll have a much better chance of winning their love if you show you've made an effort to get to know what they like, and give them exactly what they're looking for.  

Have something specific you want me to tackle next time? The comments are open.

Ready, set, launch!

by: Joelle Charbonneau

Happy July.  I’m not sure how it is already July.  I mean, I understand the passage of time.  Seconds turn into minutes.  Minutes turn into hours.  Hours into days.  Etc… Etc… Etc…  But despite knowing how it happened, I am still protesting the fact we are halfway through this year.  My to-do list for the year hasn’t gotten shorter, which is the reason I’m totally freaked about the turn of the calendar and this new month staring me in the face.

The month of July also makes me feel nervous for another reason.  MURDER FOR CHOIR launches in 2 days.  I’m excited and panicked and thrilled and about ready to throw up.  (Don’t I make publishing sound totally awesome?)  These are all emotions I’m used to feeling on the opening of a new show and thus far every book that I have published has come with its own set of butterflies. 

Launching this series is particularly nerve wracking because it has so much of me in between the jacket covers.  My heroine, Paige Marshall, is a classically trained singer hoping to land her big break.  To make ends meet, she takes a job as a high school show choir coach and finds a rival choir director strangled with a microphone cord—dead. 

Ok—I’ve never tripped over a dead body, but I know what it is like to go to audition after audition and not land that break you have worked so hard for.  I’ve also taught voice to lots of high school students.  So, while Paige is in no way me, I know her.  I know what kind of drive it takes to face those auditions.  To keep hoping and dreaming.  And how frustrating and rewarding it can be to work with the next generation that are looking to take that same career path.

So, while everything I write has bits and pieces of me in it, this one has a great deal of my soul.  (Probably an odd thing to say about a book with a large standard poodle intent on making the heroine go hungry!)  I hope readers pick up the book.  I hope they enjoy the story enough to read the next one. 

I hope.