Tuesday, December 14, 2010

It's Coming!

Let me tell you about my latest book. I’m excited about it. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited about any book that I’ve written. It took me some time to settle on a title, but once I did, I don’t think there could be a better title for this book. And the cover—I’m excited about that too. I love the bold colors; there are no pastels here. Thomas Nelson, Zondervan, Abingdon and everyone else take note; this is how I think you should be doing covers. But more than the colors, what I excites me about this cover is that no matter what you do with it, the title is readable. Scale it down to the size of a postage stamp if you like. Convert it to grayscale or even black and white. Whatever you do to it, it still looks great.

Okay, so I don’t think anyone is going to buy the book just to look at it; let’s talk about the important stuff, the story. As our story begins, we find a mother and daughter who are on their way to Fort Worth, but what we quickly discover is that the woman is not really the girl’s mother and the reason for this trip is for the woman to hand the girl over to her real family. The woman is trying to do the right thing, though she’s not at all certain what that is. Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, the girl’s grandfather, Fox, is preparing for a business merger and the opportunity to retire. It’s been a hard year. A tragic accident took the lives of all of the grandchildren only a year earlier. So when the woman and girl show up, the family is eager to latch onto the hope that she brings. But the woman with her is not desirable. She is a con artist by her own admission. Not only could she be lying about who the girl is, she could be a threat to the plans the family has been making. But just as Fox is able to eliminate her as a threat, an even bigger threat threatens to divide the family and bring them to financial ruin.

For you romance buffs out there, there’s even a little bit of romance in it, though the Romance Writers Association won’t be giving me a card any time soon. The romance is actually secondary to the main story. As for What is it?, it is a buddy love story. I suppose that’s true of nearly every story about a parent learning about a child he didn’t know he had, but in this case it isn’t the child and the parent who are at odds with each other.

I’m looking for people to review this book. Perhaps you will be one of those people. Following Thomas Nelson’s lead, I’ll ask that reviewers post their reviews on their blogs and on a review site, such as Amazon.com. And just like Thomas Nelson, I promise not to TP your house if you don’t like the book, or however it is they word that. I’m primarily interested in reviewers who have the ability to tell several people about the book.

Unfortunately, the book isn’t yet available for sale, so please stay tune. It should be out next month.

About The F-Bomb

If the number of comments is any indication; the most controversial topic in writing is the use of the F-bomb. On a blog I follow, one of the writers brought up that topic and there were several times the comments they usually get. Though I don’t think we can completely divorce the word from the pornographic connotations, I think the reason many writers feel comfortable using it is because much of its usage in common language is to express frustration upon the realization that something isn’t going the way one might hope.


I choose not to use the F-bomb and a number of other offensive words in my writing. Some authors have the idea that we use it because it adds realism to our dialog. Personally, I think that’s utter nonsense. The author who writes truly realistic dialog writes boring dialog. Compare reading trial transcripts with reading a novel about a trial and you’ll see that they are far different. One is completely realistic while the other communicates the information and a way that is easy to read.


I think that the reason some authors are so adamant that the F-bomb should be used is that they use it themselves and they don’t like feeling guilty about it. I was talking to a co-worker the other day and he said something about a couple of different types of beer. I told him that since I don’t drink I wouldn’t know anything about it. While I think everyone would be better off if they wouldn’t drink, I don’t go around making an issue out of it and yet my colleague told me that he felt compelled to tell me that he doesn’t drink a lot. I wasn’t trying to make him feel guilty, he did that to himself. I believe the same is true of authors. They don’t like hearing that it is possible to write without the F-bomb because it makes them feel guilty when they use it.