When Truth is Stranger Than Fiction: Author Jacqui Murray

I love techno-thrillers! Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October remains one of my firm movie favourites, and anything by Michael Crichton gets my vote. So, I was particularly interested when VBT author Jacqui Murray popped up on my guest list.

Tell us about yourself, Jacqui:

I was born in Berkley California to Irish-German parents. After receiving a BA in Economics, another in Russian and an MBA, I spent twenty years in a variety of industries while raising two children and teaching evening classes at community colleges. Now, I live with my husband, adult son and two beautiful Labradors and I write. I write how-books, five blogs on everything from the USNA to tech to science, and a column for the Examiner on tech tips.

What type of fiction do you write?
I call it scientific fiction. It continues my love of spreading knowledge to kids, but is geared for high school or college. I pick science topics and weave them into the plot so readers learn about them while they’re engrossed in the story. So far, I’ve covered DNA computers and Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak (oh yes, it exists and is a great plot twist).

After a background in technical and educational writing, what made you decide to try your hand at fiction?
I am a teacher by day. It is always a challenge to get kids interested enough in science to get through the technical stuff. I think complicated science-type stuff is much more palatable when couched in the traits of fiction--an exciting plot, appealing characters, a story arc filled with twists and turns. That’s what I do in my techno-thrillers. Lots of nail biting and it is all because of the sizzle of science.

You describe your fiction as 'scientific fiction' - it sounds fascinating! To Hunt a Sub is the title of your first novel. How hard was it to create a storyline out of what are essentially hard cold facts?

Not difficult. Fact is stranger than fiction. The problem with ‘fact’ is its perception as boring. That simply is not true. To counter it, I broke the science up into bits and pieces, presented it a little at a time, in different ways—i.e., different point of views, in scene as well as narrative, using all those wonderful fiction traits that make us unable to put down a good story.

Can you describe any amazing scientific things that sound made up but are actually scientifically proven? I mean things that we see in comics like rocket boots or little jet things one can wear on one's back to fly around. How about Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak? How you know that technology exists?
The Navy is researching the use of metamaterials as the foundation for an ‘invisibility cloak’ for submarines, tanks, military equipment. Holographic soldiers are not too far away. Look out drones! We will soon have another way to save lives. I also use a DNA computer virus in one of my plot lines—a virus that gets by firewalls and virus scanners on silicon-based computers because it is organic. I have lots more, but you will have to read the books!

Your next novel is To Hunt a Cruiser - did you already know this much about naval vessels or did this interest come about from writing your non-fiction book Building a Midshipman?
My daughter was the USNA Midshipman I wrote about in Building a Midshipman. Now she’s graduated from the USNA and serves on the USS Bunker Hill, which happens to be the most modern cruiser in the Navy thanks to its upgraded AEGIS systems. It’s an interesting fact that America has had no Naval battles since WWII so these wonderful offensive/defensive systems have never been tested under fire. That’s the kernel of my story: a foray into a 21st century Naval sea battle.

I discussed it with my daughter because it would require much collaboration on her part as well as the crew of her ship. Everyone on the USS Bunker Hill from the Captain to the XO to the enlisted engineers—and everyone in between--has gone out of their way to answer my questions, explain complicated systems (such as the degaussing coils and the AEGIS systems) to my layman’s level of understanding. I am very excited about how it’s all coming out.

I read how Tom Clancy began writing fiction based on his interest in various non-fiction topics. He has become such an expert that the US Military use him as a resource. Do you see yourself treading the same ladder?
I would never compare myself to Tom Clancy. He’s one of my heroes in the military fiction genre. What a cool thought, though.

You've been very successful with your non-fiction and educational books. Have you found your fiction road to fame a smooth ride or rocky in places?
Writing non-fiction is a much different animal than fiction. Where my background as a tech teacher can provide credibility to my tech workbooks and my legacy as the mom of a USNA Midshipman gives me authority in that realm, fiction is not the same. Publishers are primarily interested in how many books you have already published. I have two fiction books that I haven’t found publishers for. Since they are both along the lines of To Hunt a Cruiser with their focus on making science exciting for people, I’m hoping that once I find a publisher for one book, the rest will follow.

With my fiction choices, I love action/thrillers that show how people solve problems when under stress, and how they come up with unique solutions to never-before-solved problems. The human mind fascinates me. We’ve done so much no other species has managed to accomplish. Your words here prompt me to ask - are you a cerebral or an emotional writer? Do your characters’ feelings or actions come first?
My stories tend to be plot-driven rather than character-driven. I delve into my characters, but it is the plot that will keep people coming back. I have the usual amount of interior monologue and reaction scenes to allow my point of view characters to show their emotions and thoughts regarding an action scene, but I have to say, it is the action that drives things.

Anything you'd like to share with readers that I haven't asked you.

Anyone interested in my books, here is where you can find them:

• My six technology workbooks are available on Amazon.com and the publisher's website. The ebooks are available on Scribd.com.
• My two computer lab toolkits are available on Amazon.com and the publisher's website. The ebooks are available on Scribd.com.
• Building a Midshipman is available on Amazon.com and the publisher's website. The ebooks are available on Scribd.com.
• If you’re interested in To Hunt a Cruiser, leave a comment on my WordDreams blog and I’ll let you know when it’s out.
• My Building a Midshipman site is USNA or Bust.
• My Computer Lab Toolkit and Technology Workbooks site is Ask a Tech Teacher
• My writing tips blog is WordDreams
• I also write a column for Examiner.com. I invite everyone to read that, add comments, follow me!
• Oh—my Twitter handle is @askatechteacher

Thanks for all this info, Jacqui. I'll be interested in reviewing To Hunt A Sub when it's out!


 

Enid Blyton lingo gets an update | theBookseller.com

Enid Blyton lingo gets an update theBookseller.com

This is a fascinating article and I am sure will elicit both 'for and 'against' responses. I grew up with Enid Blyton, and also taught my illiterate foster (later adopted) child to read starting with all my old childhood favorites (Secret Seven, First and many other terms at St Mallory's, Naughtiest Girl in the School, Famous Five etc). I loved Noddy and Big Ears, and Miss Kitty, and wanted a car like Noddy's to drive myself to school.

The question is: should one 'update' or 'modernize' books written in a different era to accommodate new, modern audiences? One could say yes, because it makes great stories of yesteryear fresh and accessible to new audiences. There are children's versions of sometimes difficult classics like Treasure Island, The Water Babies, and Wind in the Willows. One could on the other hand say no, because many classics remain untouched. Dickens is still sacred, and no one messes with Shakespeare, with even modern film versions still using the bard's sometimes laborious language. I am wading through Macbeth with my daughter and can attest to the number of Forsooths and other incomprehensible stuff! We watched Roman Polanski's Macbeth with a superb Jon Finch, Francesca Annis and Martin Shaw, but had the textbook on hand to work out the meaning of the actors' speech every now and again. It's a great story, a great tragedy of greed and hubris, and no one has said, "Hey, let's make Bill a bit more modern!"

I love anything from the BBC Classic drama series and we collect the DVDs. My now teenage daughter adores the cobblestones and corsets brigade. It seems strange that a modern young person would find that appealing, but she does. She says she loves the stories and seeing the past come to life. So, maybe kids don't need to be led by the nose to books and stories of yesteryear. Maybe we should let them make up their own minds. How come no one has 'freshened up' The Lord of the Rings, or said, "Hey, this Jane Austen stuff should be made really modern - how about rock chicks and boy bands in these stories?"

I am all for leaving a good story told as it is.

How Many Times Your Book Is Sold

PUBLISHED ONCE, SOLD FOREVER AFTER

Successfully articulating the publication of a big book is the test of good publishing, involving the ability to keep in one’s head not only the numbers and their daily fluctuation but the harmonious synchronizing of publicity, manufacturing, advertising, and sales departments often run as independent fiefdoms. —MICHAEL KORDA 

As publishers shepherd books from writers to readers, they face the challenge of sustaining the enthusiasm of the editors who convinced the house to buy the books. Your book will be sold many times as it makes its way to your readers.

• You are the first person to sell your book. First you sell yourself on the idea for it.

• Then you pitch the idea to your professional networks for feedback.

• Then, assuming you want an agent, you send your proposal or manuscript to prospective agents.

• Your agent sells your book to a publisher.

• To buy your book, editors must first sell it to others in the house whose support they need.

• The editors use that support to sell your book at the house’s weekly editorial meetings. Depending on the makeup of the editorial board, your editor may need to convince the house’s publicity people, sales and marketing staff, and executive officers to take a chance on your book.

• Your editor meets with the sales and marketing departments to decide on the size of the first printing and the marketing plan that will be presented at sales conferences and in the catalog.

• Your editor presents your book to the publisher’s sales rep at a sales conference. This may be done via a Web conference to save the cost of bringing the reps and in-house staff together.

• The sales reps return to their territories and use the publisher’s catalog to sell your book to independent booksellers. Special reps sell to the chains, the two largest wholesalers—Ingram and Baker & Taylor—and other large customers.

• Pre-publication reviews in periodicals such as Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews sell your book to libraries.

• The art director decides how best to create your book’s hardcover jacket or paperback cover to sell your book to bookstore browsers.

• The production department creates or farms out the design of the interior of your book. The goal is to come up with the most effective design, paper stock, and typeface for selling your book.

• The subsidiary rights department tries to sell the publisher’s subsidiary rights, such as book clubs, first- and second-serial rights, and film and foreign rights. If your agent has retained any of these rights for you, your agent, usually helped by co-agents, will try to sell them.

• The publicity department decides how they will publicize your book to the media, which helps to sell your book to the public.

• When your book is published, booksellers sell it to their customers. Where your books are stocked in bookstores and whether they’re shelved face-out or spine-out makes a big difference. Independent booksellers use shelf-talkers—handwritten notes taped to the shelf below the book—to push the staff’s favorite books.

• For literary books, especially novels, the eagerness of independent booksellers to hand-sell books can make the difference between a failure and a best-seller. Competition from the chains and online booksellers is destroying this path to success by putting independents out of business, at the rate of three a week.

• The first group of readers reads your book, and if they love it as passionately as you want them to, they sell everyone they know on reading it. Through the comments they write for online booksellers, your readers can also help sell your books online.

The ultimate challenge your book faces is arousing enough passion in your readers that their recommendations cause whoever hears them to buy your book, swelling the size of your unofficial but unstoppable word-of-mouth sales force.

Best-selling authors have an army of such readers. That’s why they’re best-selling authors. The most clever, heavily financed promotion campaign can’t make a book sell if it doesn’t provide the benefit—whether it’s information or entertainment—that book buyers expect.

If your books don’t require revisions, you only have to write them once. But because of the endless book chain between you and your readers, your books will continue to be sold.

Even after books go out of print, libraries continue to lend them, and used bookstores and online booksellers continue sell them. Print-on-demand publishing can continue to make books available around the world until a better technology comes along.

Reprinted from "Rick Frishman's Author101 Newsletter." Subscribe at  http://www.rickfrishman.com/  and receive Rick's "Million Dollar Rolodex."

The Story of a Heart: Author Susan May

When Susan contacted me about featuring a heart-warming story, I had no idea it was a book about a real heart: her son Nick’s new heart. What an amazing journey this family took in order to give new life to a little boy who was surely doomed.

Susan May’s love affair with books began when she was in the sixth grade and made a bad grade on her report card in math. (She still doesn’t like math.) Not allowed to watch TV for six weeks she filled her extra time with reading. Her first book, Nick’s New Heart about her son’s heart transplant experience is available now. She is currently working on a her fifth romance novel about a strong, rich man and the woman that loves him, a nonfiction about a WWII flight surgeon and another about her summer trip to Europe with her four teenage children. She often speaks to nursing groups, civic groups, and high school health classes about the importance of organ donation. She leads workshops on promotion, rejection, time management, finding the right writer’s conference, collaging and memoir writing. When her head isn’t in a book, hers or someone else’s, Susan is traveling, cross-stitching or watching chick flicks. Visit her at http://www.susancmay.com/.

Nick May was one of the first successful heart transplants in the United States, performed on a one-year-old baby, as told by his mother. Most people associate heart problems with old age. However, many children also suffer serious heart, kidney, eye or other medical problems that once were insurmountable. In the past, infants with the heart defects that Nick once had invariably died. However, with surgical and medical advances, this sad situation has changed, providing not only life for these children, but a good quality of life. The story of Nick is similar to a roller coaster ride without seat belts or safety bars. Here is a true story that is often more dramatic than fiction, as excellent doctors worked together with a caring, intelligent family not just to save a life, but to provide a good life. Great experiences, deeper understanding, hope, love, faith, and steadfast support from friends, relatives, nurses, staff, and doctors have been the result...along with a wonderful book. Author Susan May skillfully weaves a story of strength, ability, determination, faith, teamwork and inspiration in her book, as she recounts the story of her baby Nick and the overwhelming odds he faced. Although his birth at first seemed normal, Nick's worried mother asked, "Is my baby fine?" Her question either went unanswered or was met with a simple, "I do not know. More tests are needed." She did not realize then that the adventure had only begun, as tests revealed that this baby had a catastrophic problem potentially more deadly than cancer. The author describes the brilliant care and dedication of the highly-skilled doctors and staff who were able to turn the life of a dying baby from a tragedy into a triumph. Often touching, sometimes sad and scary, sometimes funny, this story demonstrates the extraordinary results of doctor/family teamwork, positive attitudes, and the needed support of others when a serious medical condition strikes any child.
 
Book Extract:
 
There was a pause in the conversation, and then Dr. Kanter asked, “Susan, are you sitting down?”



“No, but I can be.” I moved to the kitchen table and sat on a chair. Nick reached his hands up to be held from where he crawled on the floor. I situated him in my lap. “I’m sitting now.”


Dr. Kanter calmly asked, “How do you feel about a heart transplant?”


“I think they’re nice things if you need one,” I told him after a full minute. I said the first words that popped into my head. I was being flippant to cover my surprise. He was serious, I knew. We never thought that Nick might be considered for a heart transplant so young, maybe later in his life, but not then.


“I think we need to consider it. Can you and Andy come to the hospital to discuss it?”


“They say it is supposed to snow tomorrow. We’ll be there if it doesn’t,” I said. My mind spun. It required effort to think.


“What are you going to do if it does snow?” he asked.


“I’m going to play in it with my kids.”


I immediately called Andy and asked him to come home early. I only told him it was in regard to Nick, not what Dr. Kanter had asked. Andy was as surprised as I was at this turn of events. We decided that we would hear the doctors out and try not to close our minds to the idea. It did snow that night, so I phoned Dr. Kanter’s office the next afternoon and made plans to meet him two days later.


“Nick will need to have an antibodies test. So come early enough to go to the lab,” Dr. Kanter said. “If he has a high amount of antibodies it will be hard to find a match.”

Nick's New Heart is available on Amazon.