Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Author 911: The Authors' Writing & Medical Academy: Cheat Sheets forWriting Body LanguageTranslate emo...

Author 911: The Authors' Writing & Medical Academy: Cheat Sheets forWriting Body LanguageTranslate emo...: Cheat Sheets for Writing Body Language Translate emotions into written body language  Body language tells a story and body language is ...
Translate emotions into written body language 
Body language tells a story and body language is central to our writing. Sometimes, it's easier said than written. The cheat sheets below (www.writerswrite.co.nz) will help you show a character's state of mind. Obviously, a character may exhibit a number of these behaviours. For example, he may be shocked and angry, or shocked and happy. Use these combinations as needed.




The Top Five Tips For Using Body Language
  1. Use body language to add depth to dialogue. 
  2. Use it because more than 50% of human communication is non-verbal.
  3. Use it to show how your character's emotions affect his or her actions.
  4. Use it to help you show rather than tell your reader everything.se it in moderation.
  5. Overused body language can slow your story down.








Monday, July 27, 2015

A FEW GOOD FOLKS
Needed for
Judith Lucci’s Street Team


Hi Everyone!


I’m inviting you to be a member of my Judith Lucci Street Team (we need to pick a name) to spread the word about my books.
I believe the best way to sell anything is via personal recommendation. Just tell or email or post on facebook about my books – it’s as easy as that – and doing that would be fabulous. And the more people you tell the better.
If you become a member of my street team you’ll earn my love and appreciation forever and ever and maybe a few other prizes.  Here are a few of the perks!
*Membership in the Exclusive Judith Lucci Online FB Community!  This is a place where I’ll be happy to answers any questions about writing, the business of writing, or my books – or your books. We will talk about best ways to market my books and I will ask for help with Beta Reads and editing as well. I’ll be seeking your opinions and ideas for my books too.
Other Perks…
* A chance to name a character in my books.
* A chance to win autographed print copies in a monthly special drawing for Street Team members only. All Street Team members will be automatically entered.
* A drawing each release month for a $25 Visa gift card or an Amazon Gift Card!
 *Random insider Street Team e-letters and info that most readers don’t know and insider tidbits about my characters.

Here are things you can do to be a Judith Lucci Street Member. Please do whatever you feel comfortable doing. If you even do one thing, that’s all you need to do to become a Street Team member.
In-Person Team Spirit:
* Talk the books up and share promo materials with friends & family to spread the word. Ask others to share promo info too.
* Buy my books the first week of release, which helps them get on the bestseller lists.
* Ask your local library to order my books. Give the librarians the title, name and publisher.
* If my books aren’t on the shelves, ask the bookseller to order it.
* Take promo materials (bookmarks, postcards, rack cards) to your local stores, place them with the booksellers. You can leave them with libraries and even at coffee shops and ask permission in doctor’s offices.
* Take promo materials (bookmarks, postcards, excerpts) to your local reader group, writer group and share with other members.
* With the bravado of a saint, take all of my books and front them on the new release table in the front of the store! (Note, if you insist on slipping one or two in a few best seller slots it won’t hurt my feelings.)
* Find people to sign up for my email list on my webpage at www.judithlucci.com



Online Team Spirit
* Feature interviews, reviews, excerpts or my video trailer via your blog, site, Pinterest, Google plus, Instagram, Twitter and other social media groups.
* Visit during online appearances (workshops, blog tours, chats, etc)
* Share your (honest) review of the book via Amazon and Barnes&Noble.com
Remember, do whatever you feel comfortable doing, even if it’s just one thing – although I’ll be YOUR biggest fan if you do all of these. Joining is easy! Help promote my book using one or more of the above ideas to help promote my books.

Please email me at JudithLucciwrites@gmail.com and tell me what you would like to do on my team and join my email list at JudithLucci.com. Please remember I am always open for suggestions in all areas.
Thank you for your interest and support!
All best,
Judith


Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Writing Fight Scenes: The Real Deal with Eric Gates

Up for a Fight? – Writing the Real Deal
With Amazing Thriller-Writer Eric J. Gates



Hello Everyone!  I am happy to welcome the amazing Eric J. Gates back to Author 911 today to discuss the best ways to write a fight scene.  Eric is the author of the incredible Cull series, Outsourced, and the must have book on How NOT to be An Aspiring Writer.  I just finished reading his fourth book in the Cull Series, Blood Demon and is was Extraordinary....




Recently I have been chatting with a friend and fellow author about writing fight scenes in her novel. Unlike most writers, this is an area that doesn’t give me too many problems, or at least, not of the same kind that they experience.
Let’s lay down a few antecedents: I have been trained in 26 different fighting systems, holding black belt degrees in 14 of these, and a host of weapons during a long and interesting life. But my knowledge is not just theoretical. Unfortunately, I have had to use those skills on occasion… and I’m still here, so they must work. I also have an encyclopaedic knowledge of many other fighting styles and weaponry. Oh, and with two exceptions, none of that stuff was oriented to competitions (with rules and regulations etc).




I love to read thrillers and there are many written by ex-soldiers. Whilst most get the details of the ‘conventional’ fighting right (using weapons issued by their army/navy etc), many have little or no experience of ‘unconventional combat, particularly the close-quarter variety that their protagonists display on the pages of their books. So as a source for a writer attempting to produce a convincing fight scene, studying them is not always the way to go. As for Hollywood, well forget it. Bruce Lee once commented on the difference between real combat and theatrical representation of combat – in movies you only ever see the latter.



Now I’m going to try the impossible here (those who know me well, will recognise the trait that gets me into trouble more than any other). I’m going to give you, the potential writer of fight scenes, a few pointers for making your combat more realistic. This will give you a good foundation which you can then embellish at will. So this post isn’t too long, I’m going to stick to unarmed fighting – maybe, in a hypothetical Part 2, I’ll talk about weapons, although they will get a mention or three here. The following will be Fictional-genre generic; I won’t be speaking about magic spells – never used them – you’re on your own for that.
There’s a huge difference in the way a trained fighter and Joe Public react to the threat of a fight. It all starts in the amygdala. This beastie sits at the base of our brains and associates stimuli with emotion. It’s the thingumajig that stops you holding your hand over an open flame (once you’ve done it the first time, of course). It’s a primitive part of our brains responsible for the fight or flight reaction. Joe Public will usually go for the flight option, if available. If it isn’t, then the submission option is next up. It’s only when Joe Public tries for the fight option that trouble occurs. A trained fighter is, of course, also subject to this process. The difference is analysis. Someone who has fighting skills (not just an experienced bar brawler) will take in a series of factors which will enhance the decision the lizard brain chooses.
These factors include:   

Product Detailsa  Number of assailants – even a large group is limited in how they can attack one person. I’ve fought more than ten at once, successfully, because I used the other factors below to restrict the number that could interact with me at any given time. Almost all group assailants will not have practiced their attack, so they will get in each other’s way naturally, something your protagonist can help with.

b Space and terrain – it’s a very different thing fighting in water, on ice, on sand or loose dirt, on a hard surface, on an incline or uneven surface, in a narrow area, on a moving vehicle (think cars, trucks, trains, aircraft, or even horseback). The area you have to operate can be used to limit what your opponent(s) can do, and it can limit your protagonist’s options too. Hollywood took this to a ridiculous extreme in the second ‘Kill Bill’ movie with the fight in the trailer. As a master swordsman, I teach my students to draw a metre long katana in a space the width of their bodies, in less than a second, and most get the hang of it very quickly. The trick is in the use of your waist and the way you ‘manage’ the sword scabbard. The scene in question, where the swords couldn’t be drawn because they kept hitting the walls, was hilarious, for all the wrong reasons! Using the terrain as a weapon (Hollywood again tends to limit itself to throwing dirt into the eyes of the fighters) is important. Many of the older fighting systems that use throws are based on this. When a human body is thrown onto a hard floor, against a streetlamp, railing, wastebasket, parked car etc, the terrain becomes the weapon. It’s not about using a kerbstone to hit the bad guy, just the opposite in fact.

c Natural weapons – in traditional Japanese fighting philosophy it is recognised that the human body has 16 natural weapons (obviously including items such as hands, which can be used in a huge number of ways, feet, head, elbows etc). Learning how to use these effectively is the basis for the world’s unarmed fighting systems. But there is another natural weapon that trumps all of these – your intelligence. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen people in casts because they threw a punch and broke bones in their hands or feet (of the 206 bones in our bodies, more than half are in our hands and feet). There’s a Golden Rule in striking – never hit something hard with something soft (an untrained fist against a jawbone is not recommended).

d  Acquired weapons – there are so many everyday objects that can be turned into effective weapons that you would be surprised. In the average room, in an average house, there will be over fifty! In your car, probably about another twenty (I once took on three assailants, as part of a demonstration, while sitting behind the wheel of a stationary car. After a few seconds I had trapped all three using everything from the driver’s seat belt, steering wheel, window frame, and handbrake, left the vehicle and walked away). No I’m not superman, or Jason Bourne, but by using imagination tempered with a little knowledge (primarily of anatomy and physics) you would be surprised just what can become a weapon if needed. What’s the weirdest weapon I’ve used? It’s a tie between a banknote, a cardboard drinks coaster and an ice cube. Newspapers, magazines, umbrellas and walking sticks are almost conventional. It’s all about being flexible …in your thinking.





e  Attitude – I always advise my students (bodyguards, police, military, Joe Public) to act if attacked. The puffing out of the chest, bluster approach could get you killed or seriously hurt. It’s tantamount to incitement. I recommend making yourself smaller (than the attacker), stepping back at an angle (better defensive position as it allows offense while reducing target area), relaxing your whole body (it makes for far quicker reaction time), and slowing your breathing (deep breathing increases oxygen flow to the brain and muscles which helps think clearly, react faster and control the adverse effects of adrenaline). I also strongly insist that (in a mugging situation) nothing you have on you, NOTHING, is worth your life – just hand it over and forget about violence, even if you are confident in your abilities. Only if your assailant is clearly bent on doing you harm no matter how much you collaborate, should you react.
f)     Offense/defense – many Martial Arts taught as Self-Defense are based on allowing your opponent to make the first move. Whilst legally this allows for justification for your defense, one blow etc could be all they need. The old adage of ‘a good offense is the best defense’ may be applicable. When faced with multiple opponents, often the bluster-boy is not the leader. Scan the group, identify who’s in charge (eye contact between them can be a dead giveaway) then going on the offensive against them can be a good strategy if your protagonist has the skills. Don’t know who’s the leader? Go for the biggest. That scene in the Tom Cruise Jack Reacher movie where he explains his defense to the four thugs (something you should never do – explain, that is) is strategically accurate, believe it or not. In the herd mentality, when a leader is taken down, the herd usually is unfocused, needing time to find a new leader – time your protagonist should not allow.


h  Adrenaline – I’ve already mentioned this several times. I hinted at its adverse effects too. One of these is that it’s an exceptional natural anaesthetic. I‘ll give you a fr’instance: a few years ago, one of my students saw a bunch of some 30 skinheads beating up a single individual in the street. No cops about (cowards generally choose their terrain more carefully than their victims). So he intervened. Finally the cops turned up… and arrested everyone… including the victim and my student.  They were in a police car on the way to the cop shop when someone remarked that my student’s white shirt was bright red at the back – he’d been stabbed during the fight and was unaware of this due to the adrenaline coursing through his body. (As I’m sure you want to know - he did get released with no charges and he put 6 of the attackers in hospital before the cops arrived).

iAttacker’s weapons – In my experience, most attackers when wielding a weapon, tend to focus on that weapon to the exclusion of anything else they could do. This means that often, when you ‘remove’ that weapon from their control, psychologically you’ve won the battle. There’s something I also teach my students about using ‘recovered’ assailants’ weapons – if you know how to use it, keep it; if you don’t, throw it away where the assailant can’t regain control of it.
  Finally, don’t be too specific. This was the mistake I made. Compare these two short fight scenes (the first is from ‘2012’ my first novel, is technically correct, and makes this mistake; the second is from ‘the CULL – Bloodstone’ – see I’ve learned something too!):

2012

The CULL - Bloodstone

I can’t (and shouldn’t) write your fight scene’s for you; it’s your novel after all. I will however put my knowledge at your disposal. Write to me via my website (www.ericjgates.com – contact Eric page) and ask specific questions please. I’ll do my best to help where I can. You don’t want to fight about that, do you?


Check out Eric Gates! He know just about everything!


check out  www.ericjgates.com to read extracts and discover the inside secrets...

follow me on Twitter: @eThrillerWriter  and on my Blog http://my-thrillers.blogspot.com/
   

Friday, May 15, 2015

Let’s Talk Blood!


Let’s talk about blood…the marvelous red, magical fluid that carries oxygen to our brain so we can think, pumps quickly through lungs so we can breathe and provides a quick, ready source of cash for college students.  Blood is the magical potion that British Rakes and Vampires lust after and many a folks have paid big bucks for legally and illegally to live.

A FEW BLOOD FACTS…

Scientists estimate the volume of blood in a human body to be about 7 percent of body weight. An average adult body with a weight of 150 to 180 pounds will contain approximately 4.7 to 5.5 liters (1.2 to 1.5 gallons) of blood or about or 5 ½ pints.  The average woman has 6-7 pints of blood and the average man has about 8 pints.  Children, of course, have less blood. 




HOW MUCH BLOOD CAN YOU LOSE?






Usually, 40% or greater blood loss is considered the maximum amount of blood an adult can lose before the body can no longer compensate. In an 80 kg or 176-pound adult, this would be about 2.24 liters.

WHAT ABOUT HEMORRHAGE?

Hemorrhage is best defined as a blood loss and often occurs in traumatic injury that may be due to a car accident, gunshot wound or stabbing.  Other injuries can also facilitate serious blood loss

A Class I Hemorrhage occurs when a patient loses 15%, or less, of their blood volume. In an 80 kg person (or about 176 lbs.) this would be about 0.84 liters. At this level there are almost no signs or symptoms so in essence, your victim would be asymptomatic.

Class II Hemorrhage becomes evident when a person experiences a 15 to 30% loss of their blood volume or about 1.68 liters in a 176 lb. person. At this level of blood loss, the heart will start to beat faster, and the person will start to look pale and feel cool. When this occurs, the patient is in the beginning stage of hypovolemia shock so if action isn’t taken quickly, the patient will become worse.

Class III Hemorrhage represents a 30 to 40% loss of blood. In an 80 kg person this would be about 2.24 liters. At this level the heart will be beating very fast (tachycardia) as it works hard to keep up with the oxygen needs of the body. Remember, the heart always shuttles blood to the brain first, but the person will look very pale, and may appear confused, dizzy or may have nausea or vomit. The patient’s respirations or breathing will increased but ineffective. The lower extremities will feel very cool and may begin to discolor as will the upper extremities. The nail beds may discolor and appear a greyish-blue.  The victim is in shock and will be in severe trouble in a matter of a couple of minutes. If the patient is bleeding externally, a large amount of blood will pool around the wound onto the floor or wherever gravity takes it.

Class IV Hemorrhage occurs when there is a greater than 40% blood loss.  In an 80 kg adult this would be more than 2.24 liters. The body can no longer keep up with the blood loss and the person, without immediate care (IV fluids and wound compression) will die.

Types of Bleeding

 

Arterial Bleeding

With arterial bleeding, the blood is bright red and under pressure from the pumping heart. Therefore, blood is spurted from the wound in time with the heartbeat. A severed artery may produce a jet of blood several feet high and can rapidly empty the circulatory system of blood.

Venous Bleeding

With venous bleeding the blood is dark red in coloration. It is under less pressure than arterial blood, but since the vein walls are capable of great distention, blood may pool. Thus, blood from a severed major vein may gush profusely.

Capillary Bleeding

This type of bleeding can be characterized as oozing and occurs at the site of all wounds. Although capillary bleeding may at first be brisk, blood loss is generally negligible.
Need More Info About Blood
http://anthro.palomar.edu/blood/blood_components.htm
http://redontap.com/all-about-blood
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2263/




Until next time, take care and stay safe!

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Broken Bones

Let’s Talk Broken Bones – Ouch!






Hello Writer Friends,
Ever had any characters break a bone in your books?  Well, I am expecting several villians to break a bone or two in my next Alex Destephano medical thriller.

Fractures can be tricky things and can also be hard to treat.  They are also extraordinarily painful with bone pain considered one of the most difficult types of pain to treat. If you witnessed any broken bones or suffered a few yourself, you know they can look pretty bad.  And I do mean bad and they can be very, very painful.




Just last summer, I slipped on a wet floor in my garage and broke both bones in my wrist and several bones in my hand.  My hand was literally on top of my wrist and covered part of my forearm. The ED doc took pictures. It was so awful and I’ll try to upload one for you.  In truth, it’s an image I’m trying hard to forget. 

Anyway, two surgeries later, one steel plate and 5 screws (the steel plate for my wrist cost $5,000 and one screw was $2,500) I can use my hand about 70% since surgery resulted in three numb fingers (yeah, bad news for a writer!) but it’s how I explain all of my typos.

Anyway, WebMD offers lots of great  medical info about any number of maladies and is a trusted source.  Check it out and see for yourself.

Until next time,
Judith





Monday, April 13, 2015

Michael James Gallagher

 talks about his new release
Diamond Rain









Bet you all want to know what I spend time doing when I am not writing or dancing? Amazing stuff like building snowmen with my two amazing grandkids or hiking and cross-country skiing in the National Park right on my doorstep. My other passion is making Internet-ready Learning Capsules for my students of English as a Second Language.

Sort of always wanted to change the world! That's why I worked on the frontline with recently-arrived people, single moms and high school drop outs. My magic wand would spread the idea that there is a silver lining in every cloud. Sometimes we focus too much on the clouds. When I was thirty-four, I lost the use of my right arm for two years. After hard work and lots of yoga, acupuncture and a special diet of pig's feet, I started dancing tango to strengthen the muscles around my spine. A really bad experience spawned one of the best things in my life. Tango did wonders for our couple life too. So my injury led me to tango.

Why do I write? Since reading “The World According to Garp” by John Irving many years ago, I have been intrigued by the effect of childhood tragedy on grown-up relationships. My first book inadvertently ended up being an exploration of just that problem. Without knowing it, all of my characters lost parents in childhood and their behavior reflects various shades of that reality. What's weird about it is that I didn't plan to do that. It just happened.

In my 20s, I wanted to be a serious writer and I travelled around the world carrying a guitar that I couldn't play and a diary full of, I hate to admit it, constipated prose. Did reading those stilted lines stop me from writing? Not at all, it just made me want to improve. I wrote my first novel at 32. It is still sitting in a drawer covered with scratched out sentences. I love to look at it because it shows me how far I've come.

So what made me write Tsunami Connection Book 1 of the Spy Stories and Tales of Intrigue Series? Two things did it. First, when I was listening to the news coverage of the Boxing Day Tsunami in Aceh Province, Indonesia, I had a flash. Really, the story came to me in an instant.  Before I begin, I mean no disrespect for the lost lives, broken families and suffering experienced by Indonesians by using this idea. It is all fiction. The tsunami was a catalyst.

Now, Aceh Province is known for its radicalized stance on fundamentalist issues. Let's set the scene here: Remember it's not long after we all watched the Twin Towers falling on September 11th.  What if some big power believed that Osama was in Aceh, training insurgents and wanted to get access to him? What better way than to inundate the place with a tsunami and then be responsible for rescue?
The US had the only helicopters in the area for two weeks after the disaster. My hypothesis or premise held water. All I needed was a weapon. So I invented one and put it on a rogue Russian Akula submarine. A book was born that day. Now the problem remained of how to make my work different from the mass of stuff out there?  I studied the market and decided that a woman Mossad agent that headed up an ultra-secret group of sleepers would fit the bill.

Kefira, meaning young lioness, danced onto my pages. Oh! I forgot to mention something. I am a tango maniac. Dance with my wife 15 hours a week and have done so for 16 years. My secondary goal was to write about Argentinean tango. Giving Kefira the role of professional dancer left her free to travel, perhaps not inconspicuously, but nevertheless free to be a spy, a sleeper.

An amazing thing happened when I wrote a thriller. The genre freed up my creativity. When I wrote pure fiction, I always got caught up in personal issues because the characters became fragments of my entourage and me. Espionage thrillers freed me up. I no longer had to think about whether or not the people in the story came from my life. I had no military experience and knew no spies. Why write about spies then? After all we should write about what we know, shouldn't we?

For 35 years, I have been a voracious reader of espionage fiction. The cold war lived in my mind constantly, even when I travelled in the East Bloc in the late 70s. My experience was vicarious and enchanted. The technology, the action and the characters in books by Le Carré, Deighton, Clancy and Lustbadder among others, animated my reading life. As I said earlier, I wanted to differentiate myself from the crowd so I wrote a woman protagonist, made her a serious dancer, and stabbed at writing a post-cold-war espionage novel. I must have succeeded because I have just signed with a publisher to translate Tsunami Connection to be released in Turkey and Germany. It's only a small run of books. Who knows, my wildest dreams are coming true.

My new book, Diamond Rain: Adventure Science Fiction Techno Thriller (Book 2 of The Spy Stories and Tales of Intrigue Series), hot off the presses, takes my writing journey in a familiar but new direction. What if a paradigm-shifting nanotechnology changed everything? Would the world of spies change and how would those changes unfold? The book started as a series of flashbacks roughly inspired by the Sci-Fi great Robert Heinlein's Starship Warriors film.  To my pleasant surprise, the words in the first draft flowed onto the page with fun and pleasure. Oh yeah! I forgot to mention that I learned I desperately needed an amazing editor if I wanted to continue in the writing game. Why? 'Cause it takes me at least six drafts to get it right. After some rough starts with Internet-based editors, I lucked into someone who filled the bill. Chris Roper, my editor, has 30 years of successful writing experience, using various pseudonyms and has just released his first novel, The Gyrfalcon File: An Edward Morgan Novel. . By what stroke of luck Chris decided to work with me I am not sure, but I am very happy he has. This game is all about collaboration. I start the idea but it is a group effort of writing, editing, beta-reading and proofing that makes the final product.
Since Diamond Rain is in pre-order to be released on April 10th 2015, any clicks on the pre-order link on the Amazon page would be really appreciated. In fact, any reader who takes the trouble to email me a link with an honest review of Diamond Rain on Amazon will get a gift card for Tsunami Connection (and vice versa if you read and review Tsunami Connection first). So here's the email to get a free book: tsunamiconnectionmjg(at)gmail(dot)com.  Enjoy!



Ooops! One more thing please take the time pick up Diamond Rain before the pre-release sale price at just 0.99 cents US  runs out.

Michael James Gallagher