Do you have to force yourself to read books?

I posted about this over on the writing blog today.

Check it out.

Thank You Veterans

I never had the opportunity to serve. I did have to sign up for the Vietnam draft just as the conflict was ending, but never got called.

I had friends that were in the ROTC program during college, and went on to fly F-4’s out of Rammstein AFB in Germany. They tried to convince me to join, and I would have loved to fly planes, but I also wanted to be an electronics design engineer. In fact, I wanted to be an engineer more.

I’ve often thought about whether the prevailing image of the military soldier of the time had anything to do with my decision. I would hope not, but I can’t say for sure.

During that time, Vietnam soldiers were persecuted by a public that didn’t want to be in that war. A soldier was not someone to look up to, but someone to look down upon. It was truly a sorry time to be a soldier. Could I have endured the ridicule and shame thrown on them? Probably, but I’ll never know for sure. I’ve never kept up with my friends, who had to live through that time, but someday, I would like to. I’d like to see how they feel about their decision now.

I’m just glad that the prevailing opinion of our military is a positive one once again, as it should be. These are the people that are putting their lives on the line every day for our freedom, and to me that is the ultimate sacrifice. Nothing gets me hot under the collar faster than a liberal minded individual who blasts a soldier on the street for the problems in Afghanistan, or Iraq, who proclaims that young men should be doing other things than volunteering for military service, who smugly decries the military while not realizing the very reason that he has the freedom to say what he feels is because his father, uncle, or someone their parents knew died in a war to protect them.

Veterans, I thank you for your service.

Reading Sully’s Book

I got to meet Captain Sully Sullenberger a few days back at a book signing. I am lucky enough to live close to him, and he was doing book signings at the local Costco.

I went about an hour early, and there were already 50 people in line, armloads of books in their hands, the atmosphere one of waiting for a hero to arrive. Just before the appointed time we heard a bunch of clapping and the message was passed down that Sully had entered the building.

It didn’t take too long for me to get up to Sully, and I had him sign a book for me, my brother, and my brother-in-law.

I also had something special for him. I brought along one of my books personalized to him. I had written the following inside the front cover

Wishing you clear skies and smooth landings

and of course I signed it. I told him that the story had some parallels to his flight and that I had written it before it happened. He said “Great, I’ll check it out” and seemed happy to take the book.

I started reading Sully’s book, Highest Duty, and the beginning chapters have brought back so many of my happy early flying memories, that I had long since forgotten. I’m really enjoying it, and I think you will too.

If you are a flying buff, you have to pick one up. If you are not, I still think you will enjoy it.

Windows Scareware

I’ll admit, I’ve been living under a rock when it comes to Windows software for the last few years, a rock of ignorance. That’s because I switched back to an Apple laptop back in 2005, and never looked back. Once in Apple OS, I haven’t had to deal with viruses (of the computer persuasion anyway), I haven’t had to deal with adware, spyware, and the latest thing I just happened to bump into, scareware.

Scareware is downright, well, scary. I remember the bad old days when stupid popups used to appear when I surfed the web, trying to sell me airplane tickets, hotel accomodations, etc. I don’t know anyone whoever actually clicked on one of those and bought something. I also remember the popup loops that you would inadvertently get into from time to time when you navigated to a site that wasn’t too nice. (Not that I ever did, *snirk*) But those weren’t scary, they were just annoying.

There are some sites that download viruses and other infections to your machine, some of which allow remote control of your computer, but most of those seem rather innocuous when it happens, and it’s only later that you realize after your computer is running slow, that you’ve been infected. It’s sucks when it happens and for most people it’s either new computer time, or maybe a trip to Geeksquad.

Scareware on the other hand, tries to extort money from you, through scare tactics. What happens is that you inadvertently download a small program onto your computer that takes over the machine. It automatically starts when your computer starts up, and hides itself from your view. You cannot edit the startup area to stop it, it’s hidden. You cannot simply delete the directory where the software lives, they intercept the action and tell you that you need “permission” to do that. Instead it presents you with a very scary looking report when it starts that tells you your disk is full of nasty viruses. You must go through the process of paying them money if you want the viruses to be removed.

If you make that window go away, a short time later, another popup comes up and warns you that “bad things” are happening to your computer. At one point it even displayed an image that looked like the computer had gone into the “blue screen of death”. Nice, to most neophyte users, that’s darn scary looking. It looks like your computer has been completely compromised, and might not even boot.

The scareware that I ran into, on a friend’s computer, was called Cyber Security. That’s really a laughable name, because it does anything but provide online security. What it does is effectively hold your computer hostage.

It would be as if you had all your family photos, music, and documents in front of you on a desk, and these jerks are standing on the other side with a flamethrower ready to burn it to ashes unless you give them money, right now. It’s really a despicable way to do business.

I searched on the web to see if there was an easy way to remove it. Turns out there are lots of other vendors that will sell you a tool to remove it, but they want your money as well. So let me get this straight… I can either pay the assholes that put it on my computer and hope it goes away, or I can pay someone else and hope that they don’t put something just as bad or worse on my computer. Hmmmm… maybe they are the ones that came up with this crappy stuff in the first place. Sort of like a tire repairman dropping nails on the road in front of his shop.

I suspect that there are some software vendors the are trustworthy, but which ones? How do I know that I can trust them?

Given that my friend wasn’t exactly rolling in dough, I decided to see if I could take out this piece of crap software in a brute force manner. If you search for Cyber Security on the web you will find a couple of websites that have instructions for removing it from Windows XP, but my friend’s computer is the fabulous(sic) Windows Vista, so the instructions don’t match. However there was enough information to allow me to get rid of it.

What I did, was bring up the Windows Task Manager, by hitting ctrl-alt-del, and kill the cs.exe process. Once that was dead, I deleted the CS directory under C:\Program Files\CS. That is the directory that contains the offending software.

I restarted the computer and voila, it was gone.

I did a full rescan of his computer using Macafee, Norton, and every other virus scanner I could find, and everything seemed normal. I gave him back his computer and warned him not to run anything unless he knows exactly what it is, and not to open any attachments unless he knows exactly who sent it, and why.

I hope he’s learned his lesson, and me, I’m going back to my Mac. I know that someday soon when the Mac platform is popular enough I will probably have to deal with similar things on it as well, but for now, I happy to be in my little walled castle, lobbing taunts at all my Windows friends.

There are no free tickets

I got a special offer in the mail that stated, if I charged my debit card as credit between this date and that, I could qualify for a companion ticket on the domestic airline of my choice.

OK, that sounds interesting, so I charged some computer hardware and other expenses, and waited to see what would happen.

Sure enough, in the mail last week, I received a letter stating that I had a companion ticket coupon, and here is the number to call to redeem it.

Cool. The wife and I have been talking about going back to my hometown to visit the parents, so this seemed like a good opportunity. I dialed the number and “Dave” answered. Never mind that Dave had a strong Indian accent, he seemed very nice and seemed very willing to help me. I can’t imagine what time in the morning it was in India, but that’s another story.

I told Dave that my wife and I would like to go visit my parents the second weekend of November. He told me to wait a moment, and put me on hold. He came back 5 minutes later, though it seemed more like 20. He told me that there wasn’t any flight available for that weekend, because the minimum cost of the companion ticket had to be $359 and my tickets were $329. He told me to call back in a few days.

OK, so I called back a couple of days later, and moved the trip up a weekend, to see if that would solve the price issue. This time I talked with “Charlie”. I explained the issue, and he put me on hold again, but didn’t come back for at least 10 minutes. This time it felt like an hour.

It turns out he had some bad news for me. The dates that I specified there were no tickets that would work.

“But, but, but, two days ago there were plenty of seats.”

“I’m sorry sir but that’s what the computer shows.”

“How about you try a few days before and after.”

He put me on hold again for half an hour, or maybe 10 minutes.

“I tried 4 days either way, and there are no seats.”

“So just what are these tickets good for then?”

“We have awarded over a hundred flights over the last few days.”

“And where were those people going?”

“Mostly to San Francisco.”

“I can drive there in about a half an hour.”

Silence.

I proceeded to try to go to Omaha, which would put me 3 hours drive time to my parents house, and he did have tickets for that. The companion ticket was $659.

“Are you nuts? I can get two round trip tickets on Orbitz to Omaha for $217. Why would I pay an extra $225 for a free ticket?”

“I don’t know sir.”

Loving Books by Greg Iles

It’s my latest kick. I found “Dead Sleep”, I don’t remember how, got the audio book version, and absolutely loved it. It’s been a long time since an author truly made me care about a character, and with “Dead Sleep” he has done it.

His descriptive style is captivating. His dialog is spot on. His characters, as I mentioned already, really tug at the heart.

I’m in the middle of “True Evil” at the moment, and it’s great so far. I again picked up the audio version, and the narrator, is awesome. He makes the evil genius downright creepy.

As a writer I am attuned to small editing mistakes, and I have found a couple of scenes that had issues. For instance in Dead Sleep a guy is shot in the leg, barely able to move, yet a few scenes later, he is running. With some books this is the type of thing that will make me toss the book against the far wall in disgust, but because Greg’s overall writing is so good, I simply say “woops”.

If you like creepy medical based thrillers with a great underlying voice, and interesting characters, you can’t go wrong with Greg’s books. I can’t wait to read the next one.

Close But No Cigar

I have finally started receiving some of the rejections from Thrillerfest. The bad news is that I am getting rejections. Yep, they always hurt, no matter how softly delivered.

The good news is that I am getting feedback, and it is outstanding feedback. It’s the kind of feedback that I can use to make the book better.

Here’s the short blurb for the book:

It’s about a trophy wife who’s trying to get away from her overcontrolling husband, even though he’s just restored her sight.

The problems with the book right now are twofold. First the descriptions don’t evoke enough emotion. Yeah, I get that. I am a very analytical person (engineer) and sometimes I can talk details to death. I’m working on that. I’m working on including the “right” details and trying as much as possible to include the emotional effect. And, it’s working. The last couple of chapters that I updated were much better than before.

The other problem is that the protagonist is boring. She too nice, she’s too good, she doesn’t feel real, and therefore the reader cannot relate to her. The reader doesn’t feel like rooting for her. This is tougher to fix, but I feel like I have a pretty good handle on how to do that.

Some agents and writers say “you have to make her flawed”. Yeah, again, I get that, but I have also found that making her too flawed can make her useless. It’s a balance, and a hard one to implement. But I also feel it is what separates mediocre writers, from good or even great writers. Striking the right balance between flaws and strengths is key.

The fact that I got agent feedback means that I am close, but something is still not quite right. The fact that more than one agent gave me feedback says that I am very close.

I working on the next one, and letting the current one sit on the shelf. I have found that putting the work away for a while allows me to see it using fresh eyes, and I will see more flaws.

Add emotion to your descriptions and keep your characters real, and you too can write a great book.

Jeff Herman’s Guide

For those of you who are writers you have come to understand that Jeff Herman’s book is “the bible” when it comes to getting an agent. He gives you way more information about the agent other than just what they are looking for, and how to contact them. So I picked one up.

The book is HUGE. And that is what kind of made me wonder. You see, there is a lot of information about publishers, editors, and the entire writing process, that I really don’t need right now. I don’t need the publisher information because they want you to go through an agent. I don’t need the editor information, because they say the same. The only part that’s relevant is the literary agent section, and that’s really small in comparison to the entire book.

So it feels like I paid way to much for this little teeny section of the book, until I realized, that I really didn’t pay that much, and if it helps me find an agent, it will have been worth it.

I hope to send out a new batch of queries this weekend.

Religious Writing Experience

Every Monday you can find me at Adventures in Creative Writing. A freak storm came through Northern CA creating a lightning show that was pretty spectacular.

You can read about it here.

Another Rejection

Yep, got another one today. The bad news is that it is another rejection. The good news is that I am getting some personal feedback. It’s either that or their form rejections are getting really good. In this case I don’t think it was a form rejection. There were enough details about my submission that wouldn’t have been appropriate for a form letter. Not really any feedback that I can use, but it felt like the agent really had spent some time considering it.

So if I’m looking at the glass half-full, then I’m getting there.