Learning to Write Fiction

 

I spent the last twenty years of my fifty years in the business world writing technical documents. For years I prepared a detailed outline of the book before I started to write the text. I knew where I was going at each point in my writing. When I started Total Annihilation I prepared an outline and then started writing the story as usual. A funny thing happened after I had written only a few pages - the characters started doing things on their own and the story took on new plots and new characters. Jesta, as an example, was not part of the original story. But she was there, in Comrix, and I had to include her in the story – she made too many contributions to leave her out just because I didn’t know about her before I started writing.

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Another thing I learned to do was make up names on the fly. Each time I introduced a new person or entity I literally typed out the names of the Armont natives, one character at a time on my keyboard.

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I wrote the first version of my first novel, Total Annihilation, in 1992. I titled it 5th Millennium. It stayed in the drawer for over 20 years before I found it and edited and rewrote it and titled it Total Annihilation. The ending I came up with required another book and it was then that I decided to write a trilogy, Saving Armont. By the end of Tyranny Brought to a Halt I was in to story telling too much to stop so I wrote Return of the Assassin, a totally different kind of plot, and in many aspects true. For instance, the first two chapters really happened, but not in a school auditorium, but a church. The man who stopped the killing was the minister. And he didn't kill the gunman.

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When I started Total Annihilation, I didn’t know the taboos against mixing literary genres. But as the story progressed it became a mixture of science fiction and fantasy - a big no-no in the publishing world. But to tell this story demands the intertwining of the world of high technology and the world of myth and magic – or so it seems until you learn the truth in the third book of the trilogy.

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As I said, the first two chapters of Return of the Assassin  really did happen. When I was getting myself settled in my dorm room at Warner Pacific my roommate came in and we started talking and he was from that church where the gunmen came to kill a man. And that man was my roommate's father who did indeed own a used car lot and had sold a car to one of the men.

 

When I  completed Assassin I came up with the idea of twins who were different in looks and personality. But one wanted his brother to be with him and the young man's fate could only be saved by Owen Stanley's team.

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Then I addressed evil and those that follow Satan as their God. You don't want to miss the action when Satan's Princess meets the Stanley Team.

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Click on the links below to read more about each of these novels.

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My Non-fiction Book

 

Credit Management Desk Book

 

Is your Credit/Collection Program Killing Your Company Profits? As a accounts receivable administrator you must understand the true role of both the debtor and the collector. You see what your relationship, as the collector, should be to the vast majority of your company's customers. We will give you insights that will change your perception of the role of the collector, and as you start changing your perception, your actions will also change. In doing this, many of your debtors may unknowingly also change their character in dealing with you. You are an important part of the sales team. That much you should understand up front. This may seem to be a contradiction of everything you have been told about your role in the company, but it is a fact. While most credit/ collection departments have no direct reporting lines to sales or marketing departments, they are involved in very important segments of the sales cycle. Obviously, the members of the credit department cannot work with customers effectively if they do not know who the customers are, what they do, and why they should deal with your company. And, you need to know more about the customer you regularly contact each month than the one you talk to only occasionally. You must be able to speak the jargon of the customer's particular industry. It is important to know your customer's business if it's a commercial account.

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To get the style of your choice for the book, click on one of the buttons below.

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