News – updates on books, events, appearances, etc.

  • Calendar updates

    ByJohn Brown

    I’ve added a number of entries to the calendar, including three conferences I plan on attending.

    I know I’ll be presenting at the first two. The title and description of the League of Utah Writers presentation are:

    TITLE: The Secret to Getting Story Ideas

    DESCRIPTION: How to stop generating great story ideas by accident and start generating them on purpose, whenever you need them.

    I don’t know what I’ll do for LTUE. I might do a repeat of the “The Secret to Getting Story Ideas,” or I might do something on how to write scenes or how genre is the key to plot. Stay tuned!

    Date & Time Event Location Notes
    Right now Writing Office It’s all for you, Dear Reader
    2015, Summer Release of Awful Intent, a Frank Shaw novel All major online retail venues The date is not firm.
    2015, Aug 28-29 League of Utah Writers Fall Conference Logan, UT League of Utah Writers
    2016, Winter Release of Hard Target, a Frank Shaw novel All major online retail venues The date is not firm.
    2016, Feb 11-13 Life, the Universe & Everything Provo, UT LTUE website
    2016, May LDStorymakers Conference Provo, UT LDStorymakers website
    2016, Summer Release of Glory: The Dark God Book 4 All major online retail venues The date is not firm.

  • Awful Intent Update: Chapter 26

    ByJohn Brown

    I have now moved from the struggle into the resolution. It’s all down hill from here.  I expect the novel to be 70-80k words. The shortest novel I’ve written yet. But I always seem to add on most of my revisions. I hope to keep it shorter, but we’ll see.

    Now you may ask, hey, how does that compare with other thrillers? Well, here are the lengths of a few of James Patterson’s.

    Title Words
    Honeymoon 65,572
    4th of July 68,000
    Lifeguard 71,634
    Mary, Mary 72,426
    Judge and Jury 74,288
    Doublecross 70,753

    And here are some more by some other authors.

    Author Title Words
    Lee Child Gone Tomorrow 146,000
    Lee Child One Shot 124,000
    Lee Child Killing Floor 162,000
    Lee Child Persuader 164,000
    Michael Connelly The Brass Verdict 145,000
    Ridley Pearson Cut and Run 114,000
    Robert Crais The Watchman 82,000
    Robert Crais Taken 84,000
    Robert Crais The First Rule 76,000
    Robert Crais The Sentry 82,000
    Brad Thor Full Black 117,000
    Brad Thor Athena Project 102,000
    Dean Koontz The Good Guy 93,000
    Dean Koontz The Husband 94,000

  • Awful Intent Update: Chapter 23

    ByJohn Brown

    You’ll notice that the progress meter for Awful Intent is slowly rising. I just finished the first draft of chapter 23. The meter says I’m almost 75% of the way done. But I’m thinking I might need an extra six chapters to finish this tale. We’ll see. The number of chapters I estimate I’ll have is always, well, an estimate. But we are moving forward.  The next chapter is where we get the next step in the mystery which leads to the big twist in the chapter after that which ratchets up the stakes.

    And for those of you wondering about the Far-Fetched Fables production of “From The Clay of His Heart,” they usually do two stories in an episode. But my story was too big to be paired with another big story, so they have moved the story “to the June 2nd (the first available spot on our schedule).”

  • Awful Intent update: Chapter 20

    ByJohn Brown

    Just finished chapter 20. It’s been a rough month for writing, but I believe life has settled down a bit, and I should be able to get the time in that I need. I hate giving targets publicly because the last time I did that I just missed and missed and missed. So we’ll stay with the progress gauge. Although I have to say that I might go over thirty chapters. I normally write chapters about 2,500 words long. But these are averaging 2,000. We’ll see. The outline always changes during the first draft.