Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune featured me the other day in an article about mid-list authors and their unfortunate demise.

It’s not a bad piece. I mean, there’s kind of a backhand in it about my writing the equivalent of Jason Stratham flicks, but hey, there are worse things in the world, and people do seem to like em. And the author arguably conflates “mid-list” with “literary fiction” in the closing comments, but everybody’s a pedant, right?

What unfortunately gets lost in these articles is that my production speed is a function of the hours I work, not some freakish desire to vomit forth the equivalent of literary comic books. I mean, I fully understand that what I’m writing is not going to be taught in high school English class or gazed upon fondly by literature professors. It’s entertainment, and cheap at the price.

But in my defense, I strive to balance the sheer, unbridled joy of an over-the-top action romp with a certain literary flair, particularly in the vocabulary and the descriptions. There’s a fine line between purple prose and evocative language, and I try to edge right up to it and dance on the razor’s edge, rather than taking the safe route and crafting what to me are plodding, sophomoric sentences. And I’d wager I spend, in total, about the same number of hours on one of my novels as many of the big names do – I just cram six months of an hour here, an hour there, into a month of fifteen hour days. If it takes 200 hours to do a first draft, that could be 100 days if your muse only dances a couple hours a day. If you drag her kicking and screaming to the table and force her to perform for 12 hours a day, you wind up with a book completed a hell of a lot faster. No trick to it.

That’s not to say that my oeuvre is in any way important work. If you look at my biggest sellers, they’re the pure adrenaline rush series: JET, and to a lesser extent, the Assassin books. I personally like both, although it depends on the time of day which I’ll claim are better. I do like the grittiness of King of Swords a lot, but it’s also hard not to love Jet’s breakneck saga.

My standalone novels tend to tackle more challenging subjects, but they don’t sell as well. Upon A Pale Horse takes on a very difficult topic – the likely lab origin of certain viruses – and Silver Justice attempts to inform the uninitiated about what really took place in the financial crisis. They’re both good reads, and a lot of fun, but they aren’t as popular. Some of the negative reviews, and even some of the positive ones, allude to not being able to understand the “technical” details, which is fair enough. But then again, sometimes I write things that take a little work on the reader’s part. Many don’t want that – they want a fun, fast, furious read to make the time go by and transport them to a different world for a few hours. So I don’t invest a lot of time in writing anything but what readers clearly desire.

But the article’s point is a valid one. I write what readers want to read, not what I in my lofty wisdom have determined they “should” want. I don’t pretend to be the arbiter of the public good, nor evolved enough to dictate to the masses what they ought to read. I write what readers pay to read, nothing less. It’s my job, really. If I write works nobody wants, it’s not because the world sucks or everyone’s a moron or nobody understands just how ferociously clever I am. It’s because I lost sight of my primary mission: to keep the reader entertained.

As authors, we all dance at the pleasure of the king: the reader. Fortunately my readers like their heaping dose of ass kicking with some literary flair. I’m grateful they indulge me – I like to think it makes it more interesting for everyone, author and reader alike.

That’s all I have, folks. I’m busy editing away at BLACK To Reality, the fourth BLACK book, which should be ready for release in March, and then will be penning another JET, slated for June. I was going to write an Assassin book for June, but it will have to wait for Q3 – the JET story is more intriguing to me right now, so I’ll go where the muse takes me.

BTW, my co-authored romance series with Melissa Foster is shaping up. We’ve batted around some concepts and have a good one, I think. I’m very excited about this – she’s burning up the charts and becoming a mega-name in romance as we speak. If you haven’t checked out her work, you should. The Braden series, especially, is selling like hotcakes. She’s like the #50 author on all Amazon. Yay, Melissa! You go, girl!!!

Oh, and here’s a cover reveal for Fatal Exchange. While I love the old covers I developed for this novel, I really dig the new tone of this one. Check it out.