Tag Archives: shawn inmon

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

New release: Second Chance Love, by Shawn Inmon

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This novel, originally released as five serial short stories, is now available in a compilation volume. At various points, I was substantive and/or developmental editor.

If you never had a look at any of the individual stories, and you like romance, you’re in for something good. Shawn likes romance and isn’t afraid to present it with a gender-balanced point of view. He also isn’t afraid to bust stuff up. I had not known, until this series developed, just how willing he was to knock a storyline onto its side with a major event. This is someone who could and would kill off a major character. I love that.

I’d always figured Shawn would eventually compile the parts into a whole, and it made sense, because Shawn did a good job of developing interesting characters throughout the work. Layers kept coming away as familiar characters gained more nuance. Even the arch-villain, in the end, was revealed in part as a pitiable figure.

If you bought some of the stories and didn’t get around to others, Shawn often runs deals. At this writing, it’s $1 for Kindle. For 244 pages, that’s a lot of reading for your buck.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

New release: Second Chance Wedding, by Shawn Inmon

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Let’s ring in the new year with a new release.

This novella is the fifth and concluding piece in Shawn’s Second Chance Romance series. I was substantive editor.

I don’t recall the point at which Shawn decided to make this a series, but it’s a good one. All along, I have been urging him to resist the temptation to let the story be too derivative of his first book, a non-fiction true romance. While this is inarguably inspired by that story, it’s pleasing that he has diverged a great deal from its concept. He has built up a number of interesting supporting characters, and shows a gift for seeing the comedy in everyday things that are ridiculous when we consider them.

When he sent me the plot digest, I responded by asking (paraphrased): “So are you changing the title to Second Chance Wedding Planning? Because that’s about all you have here.” Shawn is an exceptionally coachable author who gets fuller value from my services than any other client I have, and he went back to work. In so doing, he expanded the story by 50%, though I brought that down to about 30% in editing. The outcome is a very clean conclusion that introduces new players, has conflict and suspense, and does a nice job of setting up a sequel novel if Shawn decides to go that route. I hope and suspect that he will.

Lastly, I want to thank you all for your readership in 2014. I enjoy a thoughtful, kind, and intelligent reader base here at The ‘Lancer. May your 2015 be the best year yet for you all.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

New release: Second Chance Thanksgiving, by Shawn Inmon

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This short story/novella is now available. I was substantive editor. It is the fourth installment of Shawn’s Second Chance series. Though one can read it as a stand-alone without difficulty, I recommend the three previous editions as a good lead-up.

I believe that when Shawn hatched the idea to align the series’ release dates with holidays, that was in the category of ‘seemed like a good idea at the time.’ It has proven challenging for him, and by extension, for me to a lesser degree. Our earliest discussions of the storyline centered around how to portray and unfold the events foretold in Second Chance Summer, and those happen to fit well with Shawn’s professional knowledge, so I was confident he would handle them well. He definitely has.

Since romance is the name of the game in this storyline, the reader who returns to it for matters of the heart portrayed with unabashed confidence will not be disappointed. Of course, when he sent me the first editing candidate draft, I didn’t pull any punches. There were a few twists that I felt made no sense, and a few possibilities unexploited, and I suggested he address both situations. Shawn is coachable, and he got back to it. The result is a somewhat different type of story than the previous books, which I believe readers will find refreshing–and it will close up some threads while opening others. As always, I enjoyed the project, and working with Shawn.

Editing/writing life

The fiction writing advice most people are too tactful to give you

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If you always dreamed of writing fiction, okay. Great, I like fiction.

Then do not do some things, and do other things. I feel like going with the don’ts first.

Please, DO NOT:

–Keep tweaking it forever. At some point, your book needs to be done. It’s done when it’s ready for copy editing, then proofreading, then typesetting, then publication. If you get back the edited and proofread ms, and then go back to work on it, you undid its doneness. Tweak it for decades if you wish, but just don’t ever call it done until you can think of nothing more to do yourself that will improve it.

–Show people your work as you write it. “Because I just want to see if I’m on the right track.” No, you should not. I believe that you should create, and keep it to yourself, and start showing it around when you’re done. I believe that serializing the chapters to your friends will wear them down, whereupon they will eye-glaze and begin to avoid you.

–Worry too much about your grammar and punctuation problems as you create. Just know that you have them, that a competent editor will address them and teach you what you did wrong, and that you’ll improve. They are the least of your worries, because a great story told awkwardly can be fixed, while an insipid story told eloquently is just well-written insipidity.

–Mistake your self-editing for what a professional editor would do, because it is not. Of course you will modify, edit, change, fix, rip out, add to your own work. Excellent; improve it all you can. But understand that it’s different than what I, or someone like me, will do.

–Ask people like me for advice, then ignore it. The reason I’ve come to dislike the phrase “I want to pick your brain” is not because I’m unwilling to help. It’s because, quite often, the person asking plans to heed only those reactions that confirm his or her pre-existing notions and plans. You could get that from your personal cheerleaders. Pretty much all writers have them, and they serve valuable purposes, one of which is to tell you that all your ideas and plans and adverbs are excellent.

Seriously. Have a heart. If you are just looking for confirmation, and will ignore anything else, why go to an objective source? Just ask your personal cheerleaders, like your mom and your spouse and so on, who are guaranteed to endorse everything you need them to. “But that won’t mean anything!” Of course it won’t. But if it’s really all you seek, go where you will find it, without self-deception.

–Get needy. A needy author is irritating to those close to him or her. A needy author needs praise. He or she asks for critique and claims to want honesty, but deep down, wants only honest praise. People run like hell from needy authors, so this is bad for you. It’s one thing for me; I get paid to deal with writers’ emotions, at least to some degree, including neediness. (I mostly ignore it.) People who do not get paid to put up with neediness should not have to: friends, co-workers, family, corporations.

–Use your personal cheerleaders as your ‘first readers.’ Anyone who would never say to you “I’m sorry, I can’t even get through this; it’s terrible” is not objective enough to be classified as a first reader. Sure, your first readers mainly like your work, but if they’d never criticize a thing you did, they are no help to you, because their praise means nothing. My wife can be a first reader for me, because she is willing to say things like: “This makes no damn sense at all.” “I don’t get it. How was this Höss guy different from Hess?” She’s not a personal cheerleader. She likes my good writing, and doesn’t like my bad writing. She is the one who will intercept my worst tendencies.

–Use the term ‘beta readers.’ Beta is a term that applies to programming and electronics. To apply it to literature is to fart in church (or in a dignified museum of natural history, if you revere that instead). They are early readers, or first readers.

–Start out with something semi-autobiographical, a common shortcut. I see a great deal of this; it may account for over half the first-time fiction I see. It poses a number of problems:

  • We all think our lives have been very interesting. In reality, your life is mostly interesting and exciting to you and your mother. That’s one sale. You will need rather more. Okay, your spouse. Still only one sale, since  your spouse gets to read it on your computer.
  • Your editor will view your work as fiction, but you may reject worthwhile changes because your knowledge of the real persons will conflict. “No. I–I mean, he–would never say that.” The first time your editor refers to your protag as if he were just another character, it will likely impact you. And when your editor points out that what you have the main character doing is idiotic, you may take it personally.
  • You could find that you are too sensitive and defensive about the content, especially if the semi-autobiography covers traumatic events in your life. You may give them words that don’t make a good story. “But I have a right to say that! Those are my feelings! She hurt me bad! That’s why I wrote this! Damn it, I get the final say and I say it stays!” You’re too close to it. Negative reviews might sting you more than they should. You may tend to take any form of rejection too personally–as a rejection/invalidation of your personal story, rather than a fictional tale. That’s tough, because rejection is going to be part of the experience, and reviewers just don’t give a shit.
  • It isn’t as creative as original fiction. When you write semi-autobiographical fiction, you still haven’t really conceived a story. You’ve only lifted a real one and spiced it up. What if it succeeds, and you then have to come up with something new? You will not have proven to your own satisfaction that you can.

–Let that discourage you from incorporating aspects of life you know. It’s okay to write about a fictional molested child and draw upon your own experience of molestation, for example. Just give yourself some distance from the child: gender, background, personality, whatever, so that if someone criticizes the character, it’s not an invalidation of your personal experience. It’s fine to write your autobiography, even, though this is advice on fiction writing, thus only selectively germane.

–Accept Oxford’s lamentable ruling that ‘literally’ can now mean ‘very.’ No. No. No. We needed that word, one that helped us separate exaggeration from reality, and Oxford has surrendered to barbarism. In my eyes, the institution has forfeited its moral authority over the English language, used its prestige for evil. I need to retrain myself to refer to ‘the comma formerly known as Oxford.’

 

However, please DO:

–Read Stephen King’s On Writing. I am a non-fan of King’s fiction. In fact, I can’t get through a page and a half of it. Doesn’t matter. His level of success dictates that anything he has to say about the craft of fiction deserves attention and consideration. If you’re writing fiction and have not read this, now’s the time. If you read the whole thing, sniff “Sorry, that’s just not my creative process,” and disregard it all, never ask me for free advice on writing again, because I tried and you blew me off, which means my guidance can not benefit you.

–Answer this self-honestly: is it a vanity book or a commercial book? Unless you’re willing to develop a getting-published plan beyond ‘luck out with agents and New York,’ and a marketing plan beyond ‘wait for my genius to be discovered,’ it’s a vanity book. Just accept that and give yourself permission for it, if it’s the truth. Of course marketing is icky. So is diapering. Just think of marketing your work as changing your baby’s diapers, and that if you refuse to market your work, you leave it laying there in a soiled condition. Also, the soiling won’t stop just because you decide not to market it. It’ll just get deeper until you change the diaper or stop feeding the baby.

–Check out a writers’ group or two. It’s a great way to learn how not to handle yourself (that is not a typo), and you might even find one that you like.

—Invest time and energy in grasping how the opposite sex tends to think, feel, and approach life. There are those who insist that gender identity is an artificial construct, a set of chains supplied by a small-minded society. While they might be right, in the meantime, you have readers who are of both genders, are comfortable with that identity, and know when characters don’t ring true.

I do not think this is more difficult for either gender, because it is my opinion that most people don’t exert an honest, compassionate effort to understand how and why the other side thinks. They may just fall back on stereotypes, comfortable perceptions with bases in reality but which cannot safely be assumed. If you’re a man, your female characters will not be credible until you learn to see the world through feminine eyes. If you’re a woman, you’ll have the same issue with male characters until you remedy it. There is no expectation that you change your own world view, but you will create and storytell better characters when you can extend yourself far enough to perceive opposite-sex actions as reasonable and rational given the acting character’s perspective.

–Read some writers’ message boards. They’ll show you all the self-assured, egotistical, bon mot-dropping pretension I hope you’ll choose to avoid. You might even meet some down-to-earth fellow travelers who are more interested in writing than in showing off wit, or talking about how cool it would be to write.

–Decide whether your approach will be plotted or situational, and go with it. In general, fiction is either planned out (Dean Koontz, I am convinced, uses a bracketing system like the Final Four) or flows like a good D&D game, with the story unfolding based upon how the characters would behave (King’s method). Either can work well, so it’s a matter of what best flows your creative process while avoiding the tar pit of contrivance.

–Write something daily. If your day sucked and you cannot bear to write, just do one sentence that introduces a misfortune for a character, then call it a day. Break her nail. Spill his coffee. Have him almost throw up while brushing his teeth, like I do each and every morning. Take it out on your imaginary people. If you cannot even manage that, write “Today sucked and I cannot bear to write.” Tomorrow, you can delete it and write something more pertinent. Thus, there is no excuse for not writing at least one sentence. Today, one day after drafting this, I had a day of infuriated non-writing frustration. I nearly went to this very spot and took my own advice. 90% of the time, when I sit down to do that, I come up with something more worthwhile.

–Your research. If you are putting fiction into a historical backdrop–what we might call Michenering–great, but research it well enough to give your milieu the ring of reality. Going to tell the story of a Roman legionary in Caesar’s army as it invested Vercingetorix at Alesia? (Someone do it. I want to read that.) Know the full story of the campaign and battle, the various Gallic tribes opposing Caesar, how legions were organized, how they camped, how legionaries were equipped, what sorts of men actually comprised Roman legions of the period, and how battle unfolded in the era. If you know all this, you will get the details right, and your writing will feel informed and authentic. (And I will buy that book.) “No way! I don’t want to read about all that! I just wanted to write about some Romans!” Then don’t. Not if you aren’t willing to do a little work. Go back and write what you do know.

–Be cheerful, unless your entire personality and motif involve Poeish, dystopian gloom. Laugh at yourself a little without cruel mockery. You ripped out a part that introduced a character, then realized later that you did this, orphaning later references? Laugh at how that would have looked to the reader, fix it, and move on. You wrote something that could have been a Damnyouautocorrect moment? Let yourself laugh. Take the process seriously, but not without light moments. It’s writing a story, not planning a lethal injection or having an intervention for a meth addict. Work out your humor muscles. “A mandrill of below average literacy would reject that sentence.” “That joke would silence a pack of hyenas.” “If I publish that paragraph, a reviewer will think I wrote the ms in old crayolas.” “Archaic construction much? I can see the review now: ‘Must surely have read better in the original Sumerian cuneiform.'”

–Overcome bad habits. Too many adverbs, too many ellipses, too many em dashes, too many italic emphases, too many exclamation points, too much tell and not enough show, all the new writer addictions. This is a work in progress, so get started. If all those are your style, then your style has room for improvement. Doing it wrong doesn’t make you a gutsy avant-garde rebel; it makes readers put down your book.

–Read the infamous Village Voice blog entry by Josh Olson titled ‘I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script.’ This is a concentrated summary of what first-time writers need to understand goes on in many literary professionals’ minds. It will help you understand why your author friend doesn’t want to read your ms. She can’t win; from the moment you bring it up, all her choices are unpleasant, and further infuriating her, she knows that she will come off as the ogre in a situation she did not instigate. It’s somewhat different than asking your friend the plumber to come over and look at your toilet tank on the weekend, because you aren’t asking the plumber to evaluate your months of work and perhaps tell you it’s a mess. Also, you will probably make the plumber lasagna or cookies or something, whereas you won’t do that (or anything else nice) for the literary professional. And if she does it and gives you helpful feedback, she opens herself to the possibility that you might rewrite it and expect her to look at it again. And again. It’s not as bad as asking her to read your child’s work and critique it–the ultimate lose/lose–but it’s close.

In case you were wondering, no, that article is not a neat summary of what goes on in my mind every time I’m asked. For one thing, I don’t read or edit screenplays. For another, I’m nicer (and it works to my detriment). But have I ever, at one time or another, had most of the thoughts he describes? Yeah. Honestly, I have. I think the worst time was when I went to interview to volunteer at my local library, and the guy made clear early on that the library had no use for me unless I wanted to baby-sit. But it wasn’t pointless for him, because his reason for inviting me in was so he could pitch me his autobiography. (“But it’ll be a really interesting story!” “Okay. Where’s your nonfiction book proposal?” “I don’t have one, but it’ll be a really interesting story!” “When you come up with one, let me know.” “Yeah, but it’ll be a really interesting story!”) Of course, his vision was that I should ghost it for a share of royalties. He saw absolutely nothing strange about what he’d done, nothing impositional. He heard the word ‘writer’ and his brain cramped up.

There are, of course, fictional forms to which some of this guidance may not apply. That’s okay. You decide.

And if this blog entry makes me sound like Sauron, please consider that I devoted three hours of my life to writing and finishing a bit of pro bono work meant mostly to help people I’ll never meet.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

New release: Second Chance Summer, by Shawn Inmon

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This novella, now on sale at Amazon in Kindle format, is the third in a love story series that began with Second Chance Christmas, then Second Chance Valentine’s. I was substantive editor.

For this story, as I saw it, Shawn was at a decision point with the series. Okay, they’re together; now what do they do together? Do you break them apart and bring them back? Do we expand from love into mystery, action, drama? Shawn introduced a pair of captivating new characters in SCV; where to take them?

We did this one a little differently. Substantive editing has an inherent balance: where is the crossing point between editing the writer’s work and imposing one’s own solutions? As a general rule, I don’t believe that I should insert too much of my own identity into any book I edit. The ideal result is that it sounds like the author, but better. However, that takes more time in a couple of ways. It requires more cautious treatment, but it also means that major plot issues are referred back to the writer for resolution. It’s not that I couldn’t solve them; it’s that I would prefer to defer to the writer’s vision.

We had two issues this time, their combination heavily impacting the schedule. Both were tied to a planned release of July 4. Shawn only got the ms to me about two weeks prior to release date, which would require us to step on the gas. However, he was also dealing with some family health issues serious enough to monopolize anyone’s mindshare and emotional strength. When an author can’t focus, it is likely to impair the work product. Not only would it be difficult for him to handle me coming back with a sheaf of questions, his ability to process them was at issue. And there wasn’t time to wait out the personal matters, which presented me with the question of how to suggest we handle this. Hard part about being an editor: it isn’t acceptable to answer ‘hell, I don’t know’ about a question that concerns achieving a good book. What did they hire an editor for in the first place, if not to supply those answers?

I thought about it, wrote to Shawn, and said: ‘Why don’t we do it this way: I’ll just take the governors off and see it to completion, answering any questions myself by implementing what I think is a smart solution. No comments, no teaching, no feedback, no questions for you–just do it. If I don’t know what to do, I’ll do something I believe is intelligent.’ Shawn liked the idea, so the result was what you see in the published book. Which is my way of saying that if you feel it slipped up in any way, it’s more on me than usual.

That made clear, I’m confident that SCS has the most interesting story concept of the three books in the series to date. I like Shawn’s developing skill at satire, and his readiness to break some eggs in the literary kitchen. When you see an author daring to do that, you cannot predict what’s coming next, and it makes his future work more appealing. Shawn Inmon is on the rise as a storyteller.

About the only problem with it is that in his Author’s Notes, Shawn has once again given me excessive credit. But he’s that kind of a man, and that generous spirit comes out in his storytelling as well as his marketing. Shawn has learned what some authors never will: better to focus on writing something worth pirating, than to worry so much about piracy that the thing turns out not worth pirating.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

New release: Second Chance Valentines by Shawn Inmon

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The e-version of this short story is now available. I did the editing.

What impressed me about the ms on the cold read was Shawn’s ability to generate new characters. Most of his work so far has had an autobiographical lean, and this is neither rare nor necessarily unwelcome–but one day, it comes time to fledge. I see him doing that as he gains confidence in that ability.

My part of the work was relatively modest, because with each new ms I find myself doing a little less surgery. He learns and grows, which some authors do not. We had to work over a few plot issues, seeking to avoid contrivance and create an effective and credible event flow. Those are sometimes hard for editors, or at least for me, because there is a continuum ranging from proofreading (you just look for errors) a full rewriting (few sentences may remain intact, and one may add or remove significant content). The various editing modes fall somewhere between those two, but for me the question is never far away: if I alter the story too much, will it cease to be the author’s story? There is no answer that fits all situations, but the author is the author, and I am the editor, and I have no fundamental yearning to encroach upon the author’s purview.

My usual method is to do a cold read, assess the ms and come up with some feedback and commentary prior to proceeding. There can never be two most current copies of the ms, so Shawn and I refer to it as ‘handing off the football.’ On the cold read, I think it essential to identify story inconsistencies, contrivances, credibility issues, or anything that I think a reviewer would one day pan. I would rather offer the author the opportunity to address those with his or her own ideas, so that the story remains as much his or hers as possible. I’ll offer suggestions if I have any (and I consider it my duty to arrange to have some), discuss ideas back and forth, evaluate ideas the author presents.

It went that way this time. Shawn’s a hardworking author, and was still taking time to work on the ms while he was supposed to be enjoying an idyllic getaway at the coast. I found some stuff that I felt he should rethink, and he did so. I got the football back and went to work, and I believe he accepted most of my edits.

The result is, in my opinion, a deft short story that has Shawn starting to fledge. The experience of reading his work is growing richer, and I foresee that growth continuing as his mastery of the storytelling art increases in breadth and depth. It is a pleasure to work with him and watch him succeed.

So what’s the lesson for aspiring authors? The guy is selling a lot of writing. If you want to do that, there are things you can learn from him.

  1. He isn’t touchy, either during the process or with the public. The gracious, approachable Shawn you see responding to his readership is the same Shawn I deal with. I’ve never had to tell him something sucked, but if it was the only honest way to convey my opinion, I could safely do so. He would ask the right questions: why does it suck, and how should it be fixed? Because if I’m saying that, I had better have some ideas, or I’m not much use. Shawn’s a friend, but this is business, and he’s a client who deserves to be treated like one.
  2. He takes full advantage of every service I’m offering him, which gets him the best value I can offer for his money. I told him to get in touch any time he wanted to discuss anything, from a potential project to a character that isn’t quite clicking. He believed I meant that. I want to help him, and he gives me every opportunity to do that. When you stop to think about it, I’m also helping myself, because my work will be easier later.
  3. Growth. It gets better each time. I may never break him of a few habits, but I have a few of my own I may never break. He incorporates feedback, and I see the results next time around.
  4. Marketing. Your work will not sell itself; that’s only true of endcap auto-sellers, whose series tend to jump the shark after a time. (W.E.B. Griffin, got my eye on you.) I’ve read dozens of excellent books that never sold well. If you think marketing is yucky, and you want to imagine that you can stake it all on your epic writing talent, you’re standing in your own way. Shawn can and will market his work, and that causes more people to buy it. A good product is the beginning; the next step is to bring the product to the attention of people with the power to click ‘Add to Shopping Cart.’

If you commit to those things, your chances leap skyward.

Editing/writing life

New release: Christmas Town, by Shawn Inmon

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Shawn decided to release two new Christmas-themed short stories this year. Christmas Town is the second.

Now, working with Shawn is a little different than working with most writers. A Falstaffian figure and somewhat of a mad-literary-scientist idea generator, he has a great deal of self-confidence. He also likes marketing, and does it very well. His storytelling skill is catching up to both of those important qualities. It is beginning to feel very much like working with baseball great Bill Veeck–and those who know me very well, and who don’t throw up at the mention of sports, will know what a compliment that is. Like Veeck, Shawn knows that it’s all about the public. Veeck didn’t watch baseball games from box seats or owner’s luxury seats. He used to sit shirtless in the bleachers with the fans who had bought cheap tickets. He would drink beer with them, talk baseball and boo the umpires. If Shawn drank (which he does not), and if he owned a baseball team, I suspect he’d do the same.

As an editor, I tend to evaluate a writer by how s/he reacts when you tell him or her of a serious flaw. The less confident and successful writers aren’t sure whether to cry and give it up, or fire me and seek someone to tell them how great they are in all areas. If I tell Shawn that something just doesn’t work, he fixes it. Sometimes I don’t know how to fix it, but he will figure it out. This is why he is making major strides as an author.

His newest release is a winner because, in addition to a good story, Shawn is developing an excellent sense of the moment–and how to handle it. With every new work, there is more show and less tell. Endings become much more difficult to predict. My job is getting more involved, because most of the low-hanging editorial fruit is going away. The task before me grows more invigorating. With most of Shawn’s books and short stories, my initial feedback is qualified praise. Not this time. Christmas Town came to me with great fundamental merit and no tremendous issues to resolve. I trust I helped a bit in resolving the minor ones, but I had good material to work with. If you have a dollar to spend on a very worthwhile Christmas story, this is an excellent choice.

Editing/writing life

Newly published: Both Sides Now, by Shawn Inmon with Dawn Inmon

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Shawn is the author of the true-life romance Feels Like the First Time, the story of his lost-and-found high school romance. I was his proofreader there, and he asked me to edit the sequel Both Sides Now, available for sale today. This book examines the same events from his sweetheart’s perspective.

When Shawn first contacted me about the project, I thought it had potential, but I also saw him facing some powerful challenges. This was to be Dawn’s story, not his. It should be told in her voice, not his. Shawn is extroverted and given to a lot of superlatives, whereas Dawn is more laconic and introverted, with no tendency to exaggerate. What would jump out at Shawn, Dawn might not notice, and vice versa. Shawn’s basic character runs counter to the gender stereotype of masculine emotional stolidity, so he was well equipped to consider some differences in how she might see the world, but it was still going to be a hard go.

Another challenge for him: pry the details out of Dawn.  Shawn can and will talk one’s ear off (and it’s usually insightful, puckish and entertaining). Dawn isn’t a Vulcan or anything, but she learned in life to keep things inside–if you read the book, as I hope you will, I promise you’ll learn why–so she is not prone to waste words, and unsolicited elaboration does not come naturally to her.

I felt very handicapped by not having met Dawn, and both of them saw the potential value in a meetup, so they graciously invited me to their home. I also felt somewhat of a duty. I’d seen sensitive parts of both their lives close up, yet neither had yet had any chance to size me up in person. Dawn in particular had not; to her, one presumes,  I was this eastern Washington guy Shawn worked with on the first book and his novella. Shawn turned out to be just as advertised: as Falstaffian and fun-loving as one might expect of a fifty-year-old man who still participates in a KISS tribute band and would have to look up the word ’embarrassment.’ Dawn was a lady of relatively few words and a steady gaze. Her natural shyness was easy enough for me to accept, because I’m similar. So, my task: in limited time, sit down on the couch and begin asking my hostess about the events of FLTFT as she remembered them, posing very personal questions of a woman I had just met about some of the most painful and difficult times of her life. No pressure.

That isn’t easy for me, because it’s not my nature to pry even with longtime friends. If all my posts about privacy issues tell you nothing else about me, that would be your one sure takeaway. I had to force myself. This was work, my job; without knowing Dawn’s voice, how could I edit it? So, with Shawn whipping up spaghetti in the kitchen, listening in with an invigorated smile, I began to ask Dawn to tell me about her life. One suspects that watching me gave Shawn some interviewing tips, but I had a natural advantage. I hadn’t been emotionally involved in anything that had occurred, nor had I seen it firsthand, thus I didn’t have my own memories intruding. I had no first-person perspective to break out of. I’d obviously read FLTFT exhaustively, to the last comma and loose space, but that’s not the same as living the story.

When one considers that she was speaking to a stranger about life events of the sort that most people would like to forget, I found Dawn a very calm, candid subject, even brave.  What she was feeling inside, I didn’t know and didn’t ask; maybe I should have, maybe I did rightly not to. I also got an answer to one question I didn’t pose, but that lurked in my mind: would she be shy about having her story printed to stand before the public? Dawnconically: no. I also saw strong hints of how she had gotten through a lot of life’s trials. As I said to Shawn over spaghetti, “there’s steel in there.” What Dawn made of me was difficult to say, though before the visit was done, I saw signs that she’d warmed to me. For the record, Mr. and Mrs. Inmon are wonderfully kind hosts, accommodating without hesitation my need to perform physical therapy exercises which somewhat disrupted their home arrangements. Anyone who gets the chance to hang out with them should take it.

I’d also like to drive a stake through one ill-begotten comment I saw in a couple of reviews. Anyone who imagines that this story is embellished or invented can take it from me: while I didn’t suspect that at all, I was doing my mental due diligence by force of habit. There is no way Dawn could have answered me so readily and frankly about the story without having lived it. Often–and especially when I got a brief reply–I’d ask a quick follow-up question for more details; a deceptive subject trips on those, which is why all police use the technique. Dawn did not trip. The historian in me is satisfied that events in both books are accurate to the best of their recollections and note comparisons.

The resulting ms impressed hell out of me, because my biggest question had been whether Shawn could Dawnninate his writing voice. He could and did. The voice read like the lady I’d interviewed. I had to fix some wordiness (which I think was far more Shawn than Dawn, as ‘wordy’ isn’t how I’d describe her), and I took a few firm stands on what content best fit where. If you read the prologue and find yourself yelling “That’s all I get? Damn you! Now I have to read it!” then I guess you can thank me. Or cuss me a little.

It’s a better book than FLTFT (which was quite good), and I wasn’t even close to the main reason for that. The ms came to me more polished than had the former’s edited version. Shawn Inmon is one of the quickest studies I’ve had the pleasure to work with. If I don’t keep upping my game, I’ll become less useful to him throughout his career, so that pushes me to improve. If you liked Feels Like the First Time, it’s a lock that you’ll like Both Sides Now, and you may well like it better still.

I did. I do.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

Newly published: Lucky Man, by Shawn Inmon

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My most recent editing project was Shawn Inmon’s spanking new short story, Lucky Man. The Kindle version is available as we speak. While I categorized this with book reviews, that’s just for organizational purposes, since obviously no one can purport to present a review of a book on which he worked.

Upon my initial read, I liked Shawn’s story concept. One thing that really gripes me in fiction is predictability, and the story remained unpredictable all along. Shawn is growing rapidly in the craft of writing, because this is my second go-round with him on a project, and I didn’t have to deal with any of the stuff I caught last time. We were on to new, subtler changes and storyline considerations. Most writers just don’t absorb things as fast. It’s like a baseball coach teaching someone the virtues of opposite-field hitting, and the hitter starts knocking doubles off the opposite field wall. Well, yes, in fact, yes, that will do nicely.

If you don’t have a Kindle, Amazon will happily let you download emulation software for your machine. Thus, if you can read this post, you can read Lucky Man. I think you will find it of value well out of proportion to the $0.99 Shawn wants for it.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

Recent project: _Feels Like the First Time_, by Shawn Inmon

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Inmon’s first foray into print (if that link doesn’t work: http://www.amazon.com/Feels-Like-First-Time-Story/dp/1479258946/ ) is deeply personal, telling about how he lost and later rediscovered a true love. I was his proofreader, for which he has lauded me way out of proportion to my contribution, Shawn being a fundamentally generous and thoughtful guy.

I came to the project in a very interesting way. As some of my dear readers know, I cut my comic writing teeth at Epinions (a product review site) just after the millennium. One fellow I met there, I sort of stayed in touch with him and spouse, in part motivated by a mutual small-town-Washington-1970s upbringing. A few years back, I happened to touch base with the lady I did not then know was his widow. She caught me up. I tried to provide what inadequate support I could to her, and in the process, met some of their high school friends. One was the author of this story, Shawn Inmon.

So, when Shawn had a book he wanted proofread, I was glad to sign on. I liked him and his attitude toward life, and was pretty sure I could help him achieve his goal. He wanted to publish a book to a higher standard than the avalanche of self-published dubiousness that is the rage today. How could that not resonate with me? I quickly found Shawn a very coachable and soulful fellow, with a lot of guts to put this very personal story out before the world. I probably did a little more than your standard em dash and comma police work, but I’m glad I did. He was dead serious about publishing the story and I was glad that the final set of eyes would be mine, because proofreading is something I can do. We had a rollicking good time, bantering and discussing passages as I sent the chapters in.

I believe that Shawn’s book will succeed because its fundamental honesty will resonate with the readership. For one thing, I’m not a big true-love story enthusiast, and I found myself wanting to know what happened next. This is remarkable. For another, yesterday I handed my wife the printed, red-spattered, sticky-noted manuscript with which I worked. (I really needed to get it off the office floor, where I had stacked up the pages as I finished dosing them.) Today I asked her how she liked it. “I can’t put it down! This is great! I want to find out what happens!” (And, be it noted, that was the unproofread version, which may have improved before printing thanks to Shawn’s tolerance and endurance of my dry, occasionally caustic notes.)

The reason Shawn’s book jazzed my wife is easy for me to see. Honesty. If you read love stories, you want honesty, candor, the real deal. You want the author to damn well come across, be s/he overjoyed, embarrassed, bored, frustrated, furious, whatever. For what do you read love stories, if not for authentic emotion? As I proofed the ms, my most common sentiment was: “This will ring honest. Readers can spot a phony or a candy-ass, and they would and do barbecue those kind. They will feel the reality here, and it will grab them as it grabbed me.”

Link posted earlier is to the print version, but Shawn’s with the times, also providing a Kindle version (search Amazon on ‘shawn inmon’). If you resonate with honest love stories by a man unafraid to share what he truly felt, you’re going to like Shawn Inmon’s writing as much as I liked working with him.