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Anxiety at the highest level!

Review of a couple new TV shows, are you a Person of Interest?

It has been a couple of weeks now and this is a good time to talk about some of the latest shows on TV.  I will admit that I’m not a big TV watcher of shows; I’m very picky with shows that I stick to.  I don’t watch “CSI” or “NCIS”, because I think those shows are so over the top, they are funny.  However “Persons of Interest” and “The Walking Dead” are two shows that I’m into right now.  I say right now, because TV shows have a habit of changing after a couple of weeks and sometimes not on the good side.  Let’s start with Persons of Interest.  This show stars two underrated actors, Michael Emerson and Jim Caviezel.  These are names that don’t jump off the page when you see them, because you probably don’t even remember what they have been in.  Michael Emerson starred in “Lost” and “The Practice” in great roles.  Jim Caviezel is probably best known for his role as Ashley Judd’s husband in the movie “High Crimes” that also starred Morgan Freeman.  Both actors are perfect in their roles in “Persons of Interest”.  I think the dynamic between on screen is very intriguing, because of the mysterious past that surrounds them both.  The premise of the show is that Michael Emerson developed a computer system that scans NYC for potential victims or criminals before the actual crime takes place.  Michael needed a partner and hired the services of Jim Caviezel, an ex Special Forces military solider.  Jim is a mystery man that was a homeless person when Michael found him.  However, the NYPD detective Taraji Henson views him as a threat, since Jim’s fingerprints and DNA has showed up at numerous crime scenes.  This is the side story, where she is after Jim, as he is out in the field trying to figure out if the Person of Interest is the victim or the criminal.  Each episode also has an underlying moral aspect, speaking of the last show where the person chosen, Linda Cardellini a doctor, was out for revenge against the man that raped her sister, which made her commit suicide years later because of the trauma.  Jim was able to talk down Linda after she kidnapped her man and locked him into a van.  It is the secondary parts of a TV show that I like, because it shows the writers are willing to expand beyond the main idea and give the viewers and overall great experience.  We are only four episodes in, but I can see this show having some staying power and would recommend you all to check it out.

The Walking Dead is another story.  The first season was very short, only six episodes, so it is easy to catch up since the season premiere just came out on Sunday, October 16^th.  I know that many people don’t like to watch zombie shows, because of the horror aspect, but this is more about the survivors than about the zombies’ just killing people.  Why I have reservations about TV shows like this, look at Lost, is that what happens to the show once the cast reaches their goal of finding a safe zone?  In Lost, it was all about getting off the island and when they did, the show took a serious downhill turn.  The reason is because what do they do now?  How can the writers continue a show once the endgame is met?  It seems that they don’t think about this, unless they come out saying, this show will only be 30 episodes and that’s it.  But no TV show will do that, because if it is very popular, TV executives and advertisers seem to keep the show going, even though it is not very good.  While the show is entertaining right now, and according to IMDB, they have a total of 13 episodes in the second season, I feel that the moment where the show loses its way is right around the corner.  In watching the premier, I feel the writers are already at the moment where they are struggling to find that shocking moment, to keep viewers coming back.  I won’t spoil anything here, but let me know what you think after you watch it.

A quick note, two shows that I’m very interested in is “Grimm” and “Once upon a Time”.  I wonder which show will survive, if either will, since I think this premise has been far overlooked and just seems very fun.  I love the idea of mixing fantasy with reality.  I’ve always wondered why some authors never thought of taking their character into the real world, chasing a real world killer.  How great would it be to see Jack Reacher or Alex Cross chasing after Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy.  So, we will have to wait and see and I’ll put something out after they both premiere and see if the mirror on the wall sees a future for either show.

You can send in your comments to editor@suspensemagazine.com

The Beginning or The End?

As you know I have many questions that swirl around in my head and today is no different.  I’ve wanted to write this blog for some time, but really had to think about this topic, before I put my thoughts down.  We review hundreds of books each year, along with short stories.  That is a lot of reading.  Now I don’t read that many books, for one simple reason, I get bored very quickly.  We are Suspense Magazine, not Oprah, so therefore I want to read suspense / thriller / mystery / horror stories that catch my attention.  If you write one of those genre fiction stories, maybe not so much with mystery as those stories have to build to a climax with the murder and then build back up to solve the mystery, you better bring it in the first chapter.  So the question I pose is The Beginning or The End, which is more important?  Many of you will say, they are both equally important, but I disagree.  I feel that with some stories where the ending IS the story, in thriller / suspense, the ending should be the icing on the cake not the entire story.  The beginning of the story should set everything up and put the reader front and center and on a collision course into the unknown.  How many times do you read and put the book down, because it didn’t grab your attention?  You could have the greatest ending ever in a book, but I will never know because you bored the hell out of me to get there.  Finally when I get there, I’m like oh good you wrote a good ending, so why didn’t you put that much thought into the beginning of the story.  A book is not like a record album, where you can skip over the songs you don’t like and put on your IPod the songs you do like.  You have to sit through the entire book to get the whole story.  I think that too many authors say, “I have the best story and the ending will surprise you.”  That’s good, but instead why not think of how to get the readers excited to read your book, that you grab them by the throat and won’t let them go.  That is how you will get readers to stay with you, because you started the book out with a bang and were able to continue this throughout.  I know that it is very popular to write a book backwards, by knowing the ending because that is arguably the most exciting part of the book that authors forget they need to readers along to get there.  The beginning of the book is also probably the hardest part to write, and takes the most thought, which is why it is the most important.  Can’t wait to hear what you think about this, so send me your thoughts either here or email me at editor@suspensemagazine.com

Does it make a difference to you where you get your books?

I’ve talked before about the closing of book stores and predicting that Barnes and Noble in the next year will be just a shell of what it is now.  As I’ve said before, I think that BN will be more of an online store, challenging Amazon, than brick and mortar.  Borders couldn’t handle the publishing chain and you can say all you want about mismanaging the company, but if you peel back the layers, you will see that EBooks and Amazon are the real reason for the Borders collapse.  However I ask myself the question, does it really matter to me if these stores collapse?  Let’s put some perspective in the situation.  As a reader and fan as long as I have the ability to get the latest releases, why should I care who takes my money.  The downfall from losing brick bookstores is that people will lose jobs.  While that is devastating, I can’t worry about big business.  Business changes every day, just look at the stock market.  If Amazon and BN continue to expand their online store, that is what I care about.  I know that I have to wait a couple of days to get what I ordered, but that is a small bump.  The other argument I hear is that you lose that ability to walk into the store and talk to the workers.  It seems that just because someone works at a bookstore, people think that they are experts in books.  While that might be true of the independent bookstores, it is not of the big chains.  Those workers are there for a job.  The one thing that I got over was my local record store closing.  I used to visit it at least once a week, and the owner was in the business.  He always helped me out knowing what I like to listen to, and recommend new music, music that I would probably have never heard of.  However I got over that.  So when I hear that argument, I feel it holds no water.  Everything changes and you can either embrace it or challenge it, but most of the time you are just putting yourself further and further behind the times by challenging it.  Business does not care about the emotion of the consumer; they only care about the profits.  EBooks right now are generating tons of profits, because of the low overhead to produce it.  The bottom line is that I don’t think readers or fans should really care about what is happening in the publishing world all that much. Print books are never going away. Where you purchase them might, but like a gas station, you fill up at the cheapest place, so now you will just have to do the same with your books.

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We are moments away from Troy Davis, convicted of killing an off duty police officer in Georgia, from being put to death by lethal injection.  Hundreds of supporters have camped out outside the jail to protest the execution.  Davis has already been denied appeal and a new trial, and now the board of pardons has said no.  This case has interested me after reading the aftermath of the original trial.  In reading what happened after his conviction, it seems that there are some stones that should be overturned and re-examined.  Many of the eye witnesses, which are not reliable, to begin with, have recanted their statements after their testimony.  The supporters of Davis have claimed that this is racially motivated, since the victim was a 27 year old white man and Davis is black.  Davis has claimed innocence this entire time.  While that does not sway my mind, it does seem that the Justice System should really look into the evidence and make sure everything is correct before they put a man to death.  Now I must confess that I was not at the trial, and didn’t hear all the evidence, but you should be 100% certain that this is your man, before you act out the final sentence.  In fact in every case you should be 100% certain, before you take years from a man’s life.  According to the AFP, Davis’s case has drawn support from high profile people like US President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI.  French foreign ministry said Georgia “would be committing an irreparable error” if it executes Davis, in light of “serious doubts” over his guilt.  A German rights minister and the Council of Europe issued similar statements.

I’ve been on a jury where the defendant was accused of murder and attempted murder.  It was an experience I will never forget.  This case was also a death penalty case.  The pressure that we were under was excruciating.  With the amount of doubt that seems to be present, there is no reason to continue this execution.  Davis is already in prison and isn’t going anywhere, so why not make sure everything is in place before they carry out this sentence.

Anyway, reasonable doubt is something that needs to be explored fully.  They always say where there is smoke there is fire, and there seems to be a bonfire going on right now.  I guess we will see how this ends.

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Every day I scan Amazon and Barnes & Noble .com to search for the latest book releases, well the ones that we didn’t get in the mail.  But what I’m really looking at is the price.  I can’t figure it out and maybe you can help me with this.  I know that on a hardcover book, the prices have been going up and up every year.  There is a new book out that has a retail price of 36.00.  Really??  Now the EBook price is still 16.99, but the list price on that is 35.00.  Now we understand that printing costs have been rising and that is the need for the higher book costs, but where will it all end?  You can tell which authors, and some of them very big names like Barry Eisler, are publishing their book on their own, because the price point is 5.99 for his latest book “The Detachment” in EBook form.  But when the price is over 12.99 for an EBook, does that out price many readers?  I know that if a book is 5.99 and under I’m more incline to take a chance on it, and then put down 13.00 or more on a book.  What about you?  What is your limit on pricing?  For example, if you have never read Lee Child but heard great things about his writing, will you take a chance on him for 14.99 if you are an EBook fan, or move to something else?  Is the EBook market more author driven or publisher driven?  The only thing that publishers have over those that self publish is the legitimacy of their work.   Readers are more incline to read an author published by Penguin, Random House, etc than one that is self published, unless that author has made a name for themselves.  The person that couldn’t get their book into a publishing house has options now, but struggling to find readers.  What do they do?  Well they do all the same marketing as other authors, and they price their book in the 2.99 range or under to get an audience.  John Locke is one of those authors.  However don’t be fooled that you will be the next John Locke.  Amazon has over 950,000 books available for the kindle.   You are talking over 250,000 authors that make up that library.  This raises the biggest questions in the publishing field right now, how do we find readers and set yourself apart from the masses?  I wish I had an easy answer for you, but I’m with you on this one.

Email editor@suspensemagazine.com with your answers and post your comments here.  Anyone that emails me will have a chance to win free books from this post.  Maybe free books are the way to go!  Looking forward to hear from you.

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Explore your dark side or are you too afraid?

I don’t write disclaimers before my blogs, but this one has one.  I’m going to tell you right now that this blog will be dark and maybe frightening.  However I feel that I need to get this out there, because I really want authors to explore themselves and put more emotion in their writing.  Every day we read story after story and book after book.  I will say that many of them, while written well, lack the emotion that I feel should be in a good thriller / suspense story.  I read these types of stories because I want to be scared and suspended in a state of disbelief that puts my soul in an uncomfortable position.  What the hell do I mean by that?  Well I’m glad you asked, and if you didn’t you should have so go back and read that statement and ask the question.  Anyway here is the answer.  Fear is a very interesting word and has many different meanings.  When you ask people what are you afraid of what do they tell you?  Snakes, spiders, tall buildings, drowning and so on are the most common answers.  I always wondered why people are afraid of these things.  For people afraid of snakes, how many times have you been bitten by a snake or do you know someone that died from a snake bite?  Probably not, however they still scare you because of the known danger that some snakes have a reputation of.  When I think of fear or being afraid, I don’t think of things that I should be “Cautious” about, but more things that I would have to have a serious recovery time getting over, if ever.  Losing my family to a tragedy would be at the top of my list.  This is the dark side of my fear that If I were to write a book, I would explore.  Now I could only speculate what my emotions would be, since I’ve not been put in this situation, but that is what exploring is all about.  Sitting down and having to think about something that would put your “soul in an uncomfortable” situation is a hard thing to accomplish.  However, if you were to be able to use that knowledge, you would find yourself giving the reader the raw emotion that you feel.  Your writing would be more than just words on a page, but a part of yourself.  I wrote a little about this in a previous blog posting, if you didn’t read it shame on you.  This is the main difference I feel between being scared and actual fear.  We feel what we don’t know, or never experienced and probably don’t want to.  But to really be able to express your feelings about your fears is a bigger challenges then writing a book about a serial killer taking victims or some other suspenseful theme.  I’ve expressed many times that the hero in the book, is simply there to be the good part of the story, but the villain is the person that MAKES the story.  Think about this scenario for a second.  You wake up to a knock on the door saying that someone in your family was killed in a tragic way.  Your body turns numb, not being able to comprehend the news.  You’re frozen in a sea of emotions, until your body gives way and you break down.  How long would it take you to be able to think straight?  What if that tragedy was something that you feel guilty for?  Can you imagine the feelings that you would feel?  It would be at this moment that you have the raw emotion of a person’s soul.  This is what you need to put in your story.  Put the reader in the same state of mind you are in, so they can ride that same wave of emotions.  Any writing class can teach you how to put the words out with grammar, expression and so on, but no one can teach you emotion.  I like to use sports analogies and will here also.  You can teach a kid to throw, catch and hit a ball, but you can’t teach them heart.  How does someone respond when they face adversity?  That is the big question and one you need to ask yourself.  I don’t give out homework, but I strongly encourage you that want to write or have written, to search the inner depths of your emotional well being and show us what you have inside yourself.  Make us laugh, cry, be scared, etc just like you did.  If you write a cozy mystery about a loveable cat or dog that help you solve a crime, this does not apply to you.  We love cozies and love to read them, but they are not meant to extract an emotional reaction.  Suspense / Thriller writing is much more in depth than having that conflict unfold in your book.  So you want to write a book?  Have fun!

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Most of our blogs stay with the publishing and book industry, but when a story like this hits the scene, sometimes you have to step out of the box.  Ozzy Osbourne just announced that the original lineup of Black Sabbath is getting back together.  They will have a new album and tour to showcase this monumental event.  Music is one of my first loves, first listening to Kiss back in 1977 and then seeing them in concert two years later when I was nine years old.  From that point I’ve been a music fan, especially hard rock / heavy metal.  However I love all music, except country, hip-hop top 40 and rap.  A lot of the bands that I loved back in the 80’s are back and sounding just as great as ever.  It always makes me think what concert never happened that I think would be great to see.  I thought that I would spend any amount of money if Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd did a concert together.  I would also have loved to see Iron Maiden and Metallica share the stage, even though I’ve seen both of them separately many times.  I was too young to see Zeppelin, and now that John Bonham is dead, that will never happen.  However the one band that I didn’t see and would love to catch is AC/DC.  For some reason I’ve not been able to work that one out. I’ve seen over 250 concerts in my time and seen so many great bands, but I would have to say that when I shared a special moment with my wife Shannon in Las Vegas to see the G3 tour (Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen) was the highlight of my concert life.  I still love catching the old acts and live in Southern California where a lot of those bands still come.  I took my 12 year old to see her first Kiss concert two years ago before Thanksgiving and she fell in love with them and that music.  My wife and I felt it was important to take our kids to concerts and let them experience the joy of live music.  Some of the bands we went to as a family are: Boston, Queensryche, Dream Theater, Fates Warning, Great White, Maroon 5, Train, Kiss, John Mayer and others.  We are planning to see Cinderella in September.  I think that all families should include their children to some of the concerts that come around, so they can explore the music we grew up with.  The crap that is hitting the airwaves now is all they have to listen to.

What concert experiences do you have?   What band or bands would you like to see that you haven’t?   Looking forward in hearing your responses!  All forms of music are welcome!

John Raab

CEO / Publisher

Suspense Magazine

What would you do faced in this situation?

Growing up I loved reading the “choose your own adventure” books.  I found myself making the dumb move almost every time and having to go back and pick the other way to get through the book.  Well let’s bring back this situational book and see where it leads.  I decided to write something and hopefully you will find it funny and entertaining.  Let’s set the scene.

“Crash”, the sound of glass breaking wakes you from a dead sleep.  You sit up in bed wondering if you are going to hear another noise or maybe your cat jumped on the table and knocked the glass vase over.  You spend about 15 seconds and realize that everything is silent.  You decide to walk downstairs, slowly, to see what happened.  When you flip on the light over the staircase, you can’t see anything broken.  You slowly continue down the stairs trying to look over the banister to see if you can see around the corner into the living room.  As you continue further, you see your cat, Dixie, walking in front of the bottom of the stairs.  You continue down to check Dixie out, thinking that maybe she knocked something over and cut herself.  Instead, you find that she is in perfect health.  As you take another step to go to the kitchen, you hear a creaking sound coming from upstairs?  You freeze in place wondering what the hell is going on.  You race to the kitchen and grab the house phone to call 911, however you get no dial tone.  You bought a gun over a year ago, because of the rash of break ins people where having in the neighborhood, however that gun is in your bedroom, along with your cell phone.  You find your flashlight in the kitchen junk drawer and shine it around.  You continue to listen to see if you hear anything else coming from upstairs, but there is no doubting that you are in danger, you just don’t know where it will come from.  You look out of the kitchen and into the dining room and notice the scene of the breaking glass.  However, you see something strange, because the glass was broken from the inside, as there is very little glass lying on your floor inside the house.  The sound you heard from upstairs you’ve not heard again and you can’t be sure if the sound came from the inside of the house or the outside.  Now comes the time for your decision:

1. You can leave the house, not knowing what or who is out there and try to reach a neighbor’s house to call the police?

2. You can grab a weapon and go upstairs to get your gun and cell phone?

Which path do you choose??  Read the correct numbered paragraph with the path you picked.

1. You decide, because you have watched many horror movies and leave the house.  You exit out the backdoor from the kitchen, cat in hand, and go in the back yard.  The moonlight is bright and you don’t see anybody lurking around.  You make your way to the side of the house, to exit from your fence to the front yard.  As you grab the handle Dixie hisses and jumps from your hand, scratching your arm.  As you grab your wound, you feel a hand grab you and the cold steel of a knife on your throat.  The end is quick as the knife cuts open a deep wound and the warmth of the blood leaving your body make you slump down on the grass.  You never see your attacker, as you land face first in a pool of blood.  Before you breathe your last breath, you feel Dixie licking your at stretched hand.  Your attacker watched the movies also. THE END!

2. Not knowing what is going on outside, you feel it better to arm yourself with a butcher knife and head back upstairs to grab your gun and cell phone.  You make it half way up the stairs when you hear a sound from the side of the house, coming from outside.  You rush upstairs, grab your cell phone and get your gun from the lockbox under your bed.  Since you live alone, you leave the box open and the gun loaded.  You dial 911 and tell the police what happened.  You look out your bedroom window and see a figure running to your backdoor.  You hear the sliding glass door open and you decide to get a better look at the stair case and get on one knee in your bedroom doorway, gun stretched out ready to fire.  In a split second you see the figure on the bottom stair and you aim.  You have to remember exactly what to do, as you went to the range about 10 months ago learning how to fire.  You aim for the stomach, knowing that the gun will probably shoot a little higher than normal.  As the attacker reaches the third step you see his eyes and he see yours.  You don’t hesitate, you fire one shot and knock the attacker backwards from the stairs, one shot in the lower chest.  You stand up and go to the top of the stairs looking down.  You see no movement.  You cautiously walk down a couple of stairs, gun at the ready.   It was about 1 minute of watching later, that the police arrive at your house.  You didn’t sustain any physical damage, but the mental wounds cut you deep.  You pick up Dixie and give her a big kiss.  THE END!

How far will you go?

In the wake of the family tragedy that we are going through, it made me think how far an author should go to include real life into fiction.  Most authors will use stories that they read or things happening in the news to get their ideas.  Andrew Gross just put out “Eyes Wide Open” and he used a personal real life tragedy to conduct his story.  It was very emotional and charged throughout with the feeling that he had left part of him in the pages.  I believe that every author needs to explore the depths of their emotions and write about something that happened to them or a family member, to give that type of emotion.  I was watching the BIO channel and a behind the scenes look at “Saturday Night Fever”.  Not only was it fascinating to see what happens and the struggles that cast and crew had to go through, but I didn’t know that during the middle of filming John Travolta lost his first love to breast cancer.  He flew back for a couple of weeks, leaving everyone wondering if he would be able to come back.  As you know the answer was yes and he used that emotion in his acting.  There was one scene where John was sitting on the bench looking at the Verrazano Bridge with his co-star.  She could see that John was hurting inside and lend over and kissed him on the cheek, and this made John break down on film.  This was not acting but real emotion in the wake of his loss.  Fiction is just that, but should still have a sense of real to make the reader or audience feel the emotion that the writer was feeling, or touching the reader’s soul in their life.  If an author can do this, they can do anything.  However this is not easy and you could end up making your family unhappy by bringing something so horrible to a fiction story.  Andrew was lucky in the fact that his family was behind him (you can listen to his interview about this on Suspense Radio www.blogtalkradio.com/suspensemagazine) and he was able to give the reader a look into his eyes and feel his pain.  This does lend to the question, how far should you go as an author or how far will you go in your writing.  I would love to see more of this in books and from authors.  Not only will you have to search the depths of your emotions, but it will help make you a better writer by getting in touch with yourself.  Only you can decide how much is enough, but never think that being too emotional is a bad thing.  The more you give, the more you will get back.

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Chapter 3 in this series comes with another fun question we get a lot.  “Do you have any marketing tips?”  I really wish I had a magic wand and make every author a bestseller but I can’t.  Marketing is a very difficult, maybe the most difficult part of being an author.  Almost every author I’ve interviewed as said that writing a book is much easier than marketing it.  Marketing has changed a lot in the past couple of years.  The integration of Social networking sites, blogs, radio shows and more have given authors more avenues to sell books, but made the research and work getting on a platform even more time consuming.  There are two types of marketing:  Free and Paid.  That’s it!

Free marketing is just that, free.  However your time is not free and this way will eat up a lot of your time.  You need to do a lot of research in finding places to market your book.  There are a lot of places to go to in order to find people, but keeping track of all of them can be a nightmare.  There are over 75 active social networking sites set throughout the world that have a lot of members.  There are hundreds, maybe thousands of blog sites from small to large that you can contact.  Again, you need to keep track of every place you contact and you will receive about 10% response back.  I’ve talked with many different publicists at the largest publishing houses in the world and they all have an extensive database of media outlets to market their authors.  If they send out 100 books, they are lucky to get 10 reviews or responses back.   This means you need to stay very patient and persistent.  Join writing groups like ITW, as you will get support from other writers that have been and are in your position.

Paid marketing takes on many forms.  You can hire an outside publicist, which can be just as difficult as finding an agent.  Publicists are very busy and can only take on so many clients.  You want a publicist that doesn’t have a lot of clients, so you get more personal treatment.  Publicists at the large publishing houses are overloaded.  They can only really work on your book for about six weeks.  This includes three weeks before the release and three weeks after.  Then the rest is up to you.  You can buy advertising on certain sites marketing your book.  Attending conventions are a great way to get your book in the hands of fans.  Buy promotional material and take these with you.  You can spend thousands of dollars, so make sure you have a clear plan of attack and not just throw money against the wall.  You still need to research what other authors are doing and copy them.

Marketing is not easy and there is no easy answer, if there was everyone would sell millions of books.  Just remember that writing and publishing your book is only the beginning of your journey.  The real race is getting yourself known in today’s world.  More and more books are being published every day, more than ever and you need to stand over them and be seen.  Use every resource you can find and keep going.  If you have any comments or questions, email me at editor@suspensemagazine.com