When I first met Tom Kendrick, he had been writing on and off for eight years. An avid surfer and retired sea-urchin diver, he had e-mailed me some wonderful stories—but he didn’t have a book. “What do want to do with this?” I asked him. “Write a book,” he answered.
“Are you prepared to work hard and move things around?”
“I’ve always worked hard,” Tom answered. “What kinds of things do you want to move?”
And so I told him. I laid out several changes regarding voice, structure and pacing. “Think of it like a good movie,” I said. “It needs a hook, and a beginning and an end.”
Tom nodded yes.
“One thing you might consider,” I suggested, “is to use the chapter about the shark attack on your friend Weener as the opening to the book.”
This idea was obviously more difficult for Tom.
“I’ll think about it and get back to you,” he said.
Two days later, I got a phone call: “OK, lets work together,” Tom told me. “I want my book to be the best it can be.”
After a year of rewrites, “Bluewater Gold Rush” found a home with the small, nature publisher, Azalea Creek.
Was my suggestion to move the chapter to the prologue the right suggestion? Does Tom have a distinctive voice? Here’s what the reviewer in “The Bohemian” wrote about Tom’s book.
“Kendrick, a first-time author, has no reservations about taking us along for a perilous dive: before we’ve even reached chapter one, we read about the vicious shark attack that kills his friend and fellow diver, Weener.
Once Kendrick has caught us up in the deep-sea drama, he goes back to the beginning...[his] salty, surfer’s voice plunging the depths of a profitable industry.”
Brett Ascarelli, “The North Bay Bohemian,” 10/18/06 - 10/24/06
Like Tom Kendrick, other writers have their work well in hand before we meet face-to-face. Washington D.C. area resident Charles Johnson had mailed me his complete mystery memoir before traveling to Sonoma County for vacation. Over lunch at Korbel winery, I gave him my assessment. Part of what I said was: “It’s a good story, but you are too removed from what is going on. Try a rewrite in the first person and see what happens.”
A year later his e-mail read: “I have been meaning to send you a note for several months to again thank you for your in-depth advice on how to restructure my novel. I have just sent my novel off to a publisher.
Aloha, Charles.”
Karen Batchelor had already found a publisher for her ESL novel, Murder at Ocean View College when she asked me to read it and offer advice. Published by Houghton Mifflen as a “custom” book for sale to college bookstores, the book was not available through traditional outlets and could not be found using the “search” function on the publisher’s own website. I suggested a few changes in the story for clarity and areas where a decision needed to made to either tackle or avoid some hot button issues regarding gang colors and multicultural parenting. Karen quickly made choices and made the changes. After investigating a half dozen publishers, we made a 3-book deal with BookLink, a New Jersey-based distributor of ESL materials. This is BookLink’s first ESL novel and they are implementing an ambitious marketing campaign featuring the Ocean View College ESL novels for its September launch.
Dick Burns died nearly 40 years ago. But he struggled back to life, overcame crippling and life-threatening challenges, and wrote a journal about his thoughts long the way. Several years had passed since we met at the Asilomar Writers Conference, and I was surprised when he called. “I’ve written a book,” he said. “It’s for people who have survived a major medical crisis I think it may help them cope with things.”
“It’s not a book,” I told him after I had read his first draft.” (Sound familiar?) “But it could be if you are willing to work hard and reveal more of yourself.”
The ex-advertising executive who dreamed up the idea of dressing grown men up as fruit for an underwear commercial and had an airliner paint smiles on all its planes to sell more tickets grinned at me.
“Let’s do it.”
Live or Die: a Stroke of Luck was selected to launch the co-publishing venture between Universal Press and the Redwood Branch of the California Writers Club and has a December release date.
Ed Hinkelman’s World Trade Press (Here) publishes books for international business travelers. As I just finished writing about the business cultures and customs for 30 of the 95 countries covered in his famous Global Road Warrior travel guide, CDs and webpages, and Ed was under pressure to finish a book in his “Short Course In...” series for an advertised publishing deadline. But the success of his business had robbed him of time to write. “I need someone to research all the documents required to import and export materials for 50 of the world’s busiest shipping nations,” Ed told me. “And you may need to write the rest of the book as well.”
As it turned out, after my first draft, Ed held on to my introduction and the last third of the book (the 50-Country documentation requirement sections). He then completed the other chapters himself. “I don’t write as well as you do,” Ed told me, “but with my analytical mind, I like doing it this way.”
