WRITING WITHOUT A NET

Back at the beginning of the 2020 lockdowns, a reader wrote to thank me for the few hours of distraction my latest book had provided (love to get those kinds of e-mails!).  She concluded by saying “You are an essential worker, too.”  I was deeply touched and flattered, then somewhat astonished as more letters echoing that sentiment began to come in.    We all know what an important part of our lives books are, but essential on the same level as groceries and UPS deliveries?  I’d never really thought about it before. As the global crisis wore on…and on…and on , I came to understand for myself just how essential books, and the people who write them, are.  They provide more than an escape when life spins out of control.  They provide engagement in times of isolation, friends in times of loneliness, hope in the face of despair.  They give us something to look forward to when it sometimes feels as though there is literally nothing else. I recall a...

Order Here Looking back on previous launch-day posts, I realize that they almost always begin with “Finally!” or “At Last!” I always feel as though I’m making my readers wait too long for the next book, and, according to the e-mails I get, they feel that way too.   This book is no different.  It seems as though I’ve been working on Flash in the Dark forever , but it’s actually only been a year.  The fact that the year was 2020 may have colored my perception, but I can honestly say it was the longest year of my life. One of the basic tenets of mystery writing is to maintain suspense.  Always keep the reader anxious to find out what happens next, whether it’s in the next paragraph, the next chapter, or, sometimes, the next book.  The downside of this is that when you leave readers wondering what happens next, you eventually have to tell them. In Flash of Brilliance an evil character is introduced and the suggestion is made that he may be related to our ...

Perhaps the most often repeated advice to a new writer is "write what you know".  I'm sure that whoever originally came up with this meant well.  Maybe he meant,  Don't try to write about the life experience of an African-American street orphan if you are a white suburban housewife.   Or,  Don't set your book in the glamorous, high-stakes world of the Milan fashion industry if the closest you've ever gotten to couture is the sale rack at Target.  Possibly he just wanted to take some of the scariness away from sitting down in front of a blank page.  Write what you know.  It'll be fine. The main  problem with writing what you know is that what most people know is boring.  You know your job, your town, your family, your friends.  You know your experiences, which, on the whole, are probably pretty ordinary.  The purpose of fiction is to take the reader away from the ordinary, or to take the ordinary and to somehow make it seem...

Welcome back! If you are a writer, a wannabe writer, or just someone who likes to know how writers think, this is the place for you.  In upcoming posts we'll talk about how stories are born, how ideas  translate into words, and how words bring thoughts to life -- among many, many other things.  I hope you'll check in often. This blog has been dark for--hard to believe!--9 years, and a lot has changed since then.  It's not that I didn't want to reboot it, it's just that I didn't know where to start.  And the longer I put it off, the harder it became to find that starting point.  Kind of like writing a novel. So you've got this great idea for a book.  You more or less know what happens in your story, you've chosen the characters who will tell your story, and you know what you want to say.  But where do you start?  As a general rule, there are three places to open your book: at the beginning, the middle and the end.  It's up to you ...

This is the first time since December 2010 that I have not had a deadline looming within the next thirty days. I have written, formatted, designed, marketed, promoted, and published four books in the past eight months. Seriously. So that’s why you haven’t heard from me in awhile. I currently have 18 books under the Blue Merle Publishing logo, and I am finally beginning (and I do mean beginning ) to feel like a real publisher. And let me tell you something: it’s hard. There are people who have been doing this far longer than I have, and who have far more claim to expertise than I do, so I don’t pretend to set myself up as an authority on the subject of independent publishing. However, with all the rockets buzzing around the internet about what traditional publishing has done wrong, my recent experience in indie publishing, juxtaposed against twenty-plus years in traditional publishing, has pointed out to me that there is a reason why traditional publishing has survived for over a h...

Now available at Amazon.com Before Harry Potter, before Twilight, before the hundreds of thousands of vampire , wizard, demon, zombie, angel, fairy and just-plain-strange books that proliferate the marketplace today, I wrote a book about werewolves. It wasn’t, in my humble opinion, just an ordinary book, and these were not ordinary werewolves. It was at that time the best book I had ever written. Believe it or not, I wasn’t the only one who thought it was pretty good. The Passion (and its sequel, The Promise ) sold after a ten–day auction for a phenomenal amount of money (to be strictly accurate, it was not quite one million, but by the time sub-rights were sold the difference was negligible, to me, at least). Within the week, offers for audio, foreign, and large print rights were pouring in. James Cameron and Stephen Spielberg were both interested in film rights. And then it all went to hell. For reasons I still don’t entirely understand, the publisher abandoned the book. Possibl...

Tell me a story.   Hold out your hand, take me on a ride.  Entertain me, transport me, amuse me, inspire me, educate me, uplift or enlighten me. Engage me. Tell me a story.   Don't waste my time with pretentions of grandeur.  Save the world on your own dime.  I'm here to be delighted, enraptured, moved and transformed.  I want to believe.  I want to be transported.   Make me angry, make me weep, make me afraid, but for heaven's sake, make me care . Tell me a story.   Keep me awake at night, turning pages. Haunt me through the day. Draw me in to your world, wrap me in the shimmering, glittering colors of your imagination, let me drown in your words. Make me never want to leave.   Take me, I'm yours. Tell me a story.   --Donna Ball