“Presidio,” a novel I may have to read.

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“Presidio,” a novel I may have to read.

September 5, 2018September 10, 2018 410

We have written lots of novels since we put this business together in 2002. All of them for other people. Our clients have been happy with our work, as you can tell by visiting our Client Comments page. And who doesn’t love a great story that totally locks up your attention? I generally read biographies and autobiographies, memoirs, business books, historical books, and books about filmmaking. And, yes, a great novel for relaxation and excitement.

My recent reading choices:

The book I finished a few days ago is: Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece. It’s recently released and tells the true story of how “2001” came to be. It’s been my favorite movie since I first saw it, way back in 1968.

My current read is Fat, Drunk and Stupid: The Inside Story Behind the Making of Animal House. That was one insane movie and it’s still making college kids convulse in laughter. (But studio executives didn’t like it from the moment it was pitched by the producer. Those who passed on the opportunity, or were shaking in fear about financing it, changed their minds when the $3 million comedy grossed over $141 million, in 1978 dollars). The author is the film’s co-producer.

My next book may very well be a novel, Presidio, by Randy Kennedy. I found out about it in today’s New York Times when critic Lee Child published his review. A paragraph from that review:

…A sentence late in the book…describes wrecks in a junkyard: “Seeing the damage to each of the cars it was impossible to keep from imagining what had happened to the people riding in them at the time of the calamity.” That “calamity” is a triple-play word choice. It nails the period, the location and the halting country-polite tone. No other word in the English language would work better there.

Go read Mr. Child’s review. Sometime in the next week I’ll head over to B&N and buy a copy (Amazon shouldn’t make all the sales).

Oh, one more thing. If you’re stalled with the novel you’re writing, call me. I will have one of my very qualified writers contact you and we’ll get it done. And then, it’s off to a publisher!

You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.

Stephen Leigh

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Jim Morrison

A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.

Robert McKee

The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

John Campbell

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

Jeanette Walls

Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.

Michael Crichton

Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.

Michael Burke

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

Harlan Ellison

Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.

M. K. Simmons

It always comes down to characters, and individual stories about courage.

Steven Bochco

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.

C. J. Cherryh

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Joseph Conrad

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

Lisa See

Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Alice Munro

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer. You’re a waiter.

Dan Poynter

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman