Authors Electric

I've always hated CEOs, those brutal, heartless bastards, and would have laughed if anyone had told me I'd become one. Me, the bohemian who'd pursued the next big adventure in life and love and art? Me, the defiant one who'd never met  a convention he didn't want to beat? You can imagine my shock when I found myself forced to become, yes, a CEO to save the WIP I'd worked on for six years.  May I explain? Thank you. Lean in and try to imagine... The finale of my WIP is set in Tombstone, Arizona. For plot reasons, I needed one character to spend a single night in a particular spot on a major street. The more historical the setting, the better. I'd read several books and searched online, even bought a large detailed map of the quarter. Finally, I found the one and only hotel for my guy. The room photos I'd seen were as perfect as the hotel's history and location. And yet I faced a problem I saw no way around.  To wit: the hotel had only three suites, on...

  Only two things are certain in life, Ben Franklin said. But to death and taxes, a third can be added for most working novelists: sooner or later they're sure to encounter a heavyweight problem they must beat or abandon a book. And no matter how many lesser ton fights have been won in the past, the heavyweight variety can take the wind out of one's sails. This is a true account of how I succeeded in making 17k tons of metal and glass disappear. The problem shouldn't have been there at all. My work in progress had a strong outline and was rolling along toward the final section set on board a train speeding through the American Southwest. The desert setting was essential for the type of creepy karma that I had in mind. Though I'd never ridden a train on this route, I had ridden numerous Amtrak trains and felt confident that Amtrak would sponsor a trip in exchange for a travel piece to print in its on-train magazine. Thus I could nail my research for the setting and the u...