How To Wirte Your First Book by William Garner

How To Write Your First Book
A Simple & Practical Method For Anyone Who Can Tell A Story
William Garner
adagio
adagio
AN INDEPENDENT PUBLISHING CRUISE
est. January 1, 2001
William Dean A. Garner
Publisher / Senior Editor
Copyright 2014 William Dean A. Garner

All rights reserved
The author asserts his moral and legal rights.
Published in America by Adagio Press
Adagio and colophon are Trademarks of

William Dean A. Garner, Adagio Press
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013955167
ISBN: 978-0-9855362-5-1
Cover design and interior: William Garner

Adagio website: AdagioPress.com
Email: 69@adagiopress.com
B20140102
First Print Edition
for Olga Marie
My Mom, who gave me the gifts of trying a thousand different
things, even if only for the experiences, enjoying storytelling
and reading, and the greatest gift of all: exercising my liberty of
expression. I miss you. . . .
Dr. William D. Garner (Col., USAF, ret.)

My Dad, a brilliant poet, fighter pilot and businessman who always
ensured I had plenty of books to read. I hope youll write your first
book someday soon. . . .
Ms. Antonia Tinti

My English teacher at Bitburg Elementary School,
Bitburg Air Base, Germany, 1969-1971.
You taught me how to love language and paint with words.
Thank you. . . .
and for You, dear Reader

Contents
Advance Praise for How To Write Your First Book . . . vi
Introduction . . . 1
The Purpose Of This Book . . . 10
What This Book Is Not About . . . 13
How To Learn All You Can From This Book . . . 15
Dear Dean, What If I Do Not Subscribe To Your Inner CHILD Beliefs? . . . 17
I Want To Write My First Book Because. . . . 19
Characteristics Of A Good Writer . . . 22
Writing Takes Time . . . 28
Your Personal Space And Time To Write . . . 32
Your Conscious Self Will Take Dictation . . . 37
Your Warehouse Of Words (WOW) . . . 40
Writers Block . . . 43
Your Subconscious = Inner CHILD Will Write Your Entire Book . . . 46
Warm-Up Exercises For Writing Your First Book . . . 57
Hollywood Shorthand: Pitch Your Story To Yourself First . . . 65
One Word . . . 67
Five Bullets . . . 70
25 Descriptive Sentences . . . 73
Synopsis . . . 77
Outline . . . 81
Write Your First Book . . . 88
An Introduction To Editing Your First Book . . . 93
Summary . . . 99
Okay, Dean, Im Done . . . Now What? . . . 102
Useful References . . . 106
About The Author . . . 109
Testimonials For William Garners Work . . . 111
Acknowledgements . . . 115
Excerpt From Bloodsmoke, A Novel By Rio Ramirez . . . 116
Purchase Our Books . . . 128
Advance Praise For
The Best approach to writing a book Ive ever read. If you have ever
heard that little voice in your head, saying that would make a great
story. Or I need to tell someone about this. Or even just, I wonder if I
could.
Dean Garners book on how to write your first book is a must read.
It illustrates in detail the exquisite, sometimes painful, but mostly
joyous effort of putting your thoughts on paper. Mr. Garners passion
for words and the art of storytelling is wonderfully illustrated in how
anyone with the tenacity to do so, can write.
This book is a must read. Thanks Mr. Garner for the inspiration
and the direction.
Marilyn White
This is a five-star review, more because the book offers a new idea
on getting started on a book, be it fiction or non-fiction. An idea that
seems rather simplistic, but could actually work.
I have been using a similar approach with my students but I
have never thought about getting started on a book this way. I am
not going to get into many details. That after all is the authors job.
However, it is worth the quick read and why not try out the system
and see if it gets your creative juices flowing.
Another reason I believe it is worth the 5 stars, is the fact that
there actually are examples in this how-to book! Good work!
RainbowEU
Introduction
This makes me want to do my best work.

Alvin Sargent
W
elcome to How to Write Your First Book. My wish for you is
that this little gem makes you want to do your own best work.
Here, I introduce you to my process of designing and building
your first book. Its not biophysics, which I did for years, and its not
celestiophysics, which I study to this day. And its not a silly gimmick. This
method of writing your first book is tried and true and it works effectively
for many different types and styles of new and upcoming writers. Ive
used it to teach students individually and in groups, both privately and in
university settings.
This method details the art of sharing a story from your heart and soul,
and designing and shaping it into what will become your first book.
Trust me: if a regular guy like me can do it, so can you.
Im no genius, so its not about having a high IQ or EQ or [Fill In
The Blank]Q to understand my method or implement the exercises in
this book. You dont need a degree in English or Literature or Creative
Writing to do it. You dont need a literary agent or manager or a publisher
who has heard your great idea about your book and has decided to invest
in it. You dont need to be financially wealthy or have countless hours of
time on your hands.
And you dont have to be a Conan Doyle or Hemingway or Kipling.

You need one secret ingredient: YOU.
Heres another secret: you need a burning passion inside you and day-
to-day discipline to complete a rough draft of your first book.
Sounds simplistic, huh?
Its not. In fact, it is far from simplistic or even simple: it will take a
continuous input of strong, positive energy on your part to do this book
project. Hard work isnt hard unless you make it a drudgery. Hard comes
into play when you procrastinate or think negative thoughts or dread the
process of writing your first book, leading to little or no work done. There
are enough excellent resources here in this energy-packed book to assist
you in writing your first book.
Are you up to it? Do you have what it takes to dream a story or take
one youve already thought about for years, perhaps, put it into a logical
and telling and gripping format for intended readers, and get it out there
so people can enjoy the fruits of your artful labor?
This book is for those of you have or are interested in acquiring these
necessary tools and who are willing to use them to design and build a
beautiful story . . . your first book.
Every year, thousands of new books are published by many different
traditional New York and international trade publishing companies, some
small independent publishing companies, and also self-published authors.
According to the latest statistics on publishing, there are now more
books published independently by authors themselves than by all the
traditional trade-publishing companies combined, and only now are the
big trade publishing companies discovering this fact. They have instituted
their own self-publishing offshoots to attract people just like you. Face it:
they know you have the power to do it all on your own, but they prefer you
do it with them so they can earn the lions share of the profit. Your profit.
Oops, I dont want to discourage you from getting into business with the
big publishing companies, as they may very well be the ones that buy your
first book and make you a million bucks.
This is a significant metric, the one described above, and you should
take note of what it really says: more and more writers out there are doing
2
Introduction
whatever it takes to write their book(s) and getting them out into the
mainstream or to a select audience. And theyre willing to do it on their
own. At least at first, with some of them later allowing the big firms to
publish their artwork and take over all the marketing, advertising and PR
work, which is a whole different beast, especially for a writer/author.
The majority of authors Ive talked with tell me they started with an idea
and then simply got right to it, writing the first draft, editing it until it had
a high shine, then polishing it to a gleaming brightness. These authors are
in the minority, though. If youre not one of them, please do not despair or
fret. Not everyone is the same. Be patient; with persistence youll get there.
Just so you know: I wasnt one of those authors, either. I had to work
my buns off, pull out all my hair, lose the shirt off my back, spin my wheels
and go batty before I could write my first book, and that was back in 1992.
It paid off, though, and I ended up producing an international bestselling
coffee-table book, TOPGUN Miramar, printed in English, French and
German and sold in dozens of countries worldwide. It still sells for up to
$1,500 in some circles. Yes, it was worth all the effort.
My aim with How To Write Your First Book is to reach people who
already know how to tell a great story, whether among family and friends
in small settings or in front of a large audience doing stand-up comedy.
With one hitch: they have not yet tried to write it or have failed in first
attempts, because of stumbling blocks along the way, personal insecurities,
whatever. I wrote How To Write Your First Book as simple and as short as
I could, leaving out all the fluff that typically accompanies other writing
books because a publisher wants 300 or 400 pages and the author is
compelled to fill every one of them. I will not apologize for the repetition
here, though, because thats how we learn things best of all. Hopefully, Ill
not drive you nuts trying to hammer home the most important points of
this whole process. If I do and you need money for your visit to the insane
asylum, Ill refund your money 100%.
My aim also is to pack as much high-density information and intel
into one small volume that is friendly, conversational, readable and
accessible. Oh, and I use repetition to hammer home my points. Didnt I
mention this somewhere above? Same method as our teachers used on us
3
in kindergarten and grade school. Why? Because it works so well. Okay,

enough repetition on repetition.
Typical books on the subject of writing a book are often superfluous.
A textbook or self-help book should contain only the minimum amount
of information and material necessary to get the message across. Nothing
more.
Except repetition of key points!
I wrote this book in the spirit of another book I rewrote (edited heavily),
Sun Tzu The Art of War. Academicians and historians have their own 300-
page versions of The Art of War, all filled with superfluous insights and
interpretations of what Sun Tzu originally wrote 2,500 years ago. I used
the best possible translation from one of the original scrolls, and stripped
it down to its essence in only 50 pages. Thats what Sun Tzu preached:
less is more; the simpler, the better; anything beyond what is necessary is
merely a distraction.
How To Write Your First Book is The Art of War for aspiring writers and
authors.
If you can tell a story verbally, then you have the unique power to write
one or speak it into a voice or video recorder for later transcription. It
doesnt matter how you get the story onto paper, as long as you pull it out
of your head and get it into a computer or onto a ream of paper. Just get it
out and into the form of a rough first draft, something beautiful you will
edit and polish in good time.
Something to keep in mind, too: writing a book isnt about writing,
its about sharing your story and getting it down on paper, real or virtual.
When you actually write your first book, your conscious self is just the
typist, or as I like to say, the executive assistant to a six-year-old CHILD,
your Inner CHILD or subconscious. CHILD is an acronym Ill describe
in an upcoming chapter. For now, know that you are embarking on a
journey of self-discovery here, and diving into a whole new universe of
possibilities and probabilities that will take you further than you ever
thought, dreamed or fantasized. And it will be your subconscious that
leads the way. Be patient, because theres more to follow on this unique
and mysterious entity.
4
Introduction
Allow me to bring you back to earth for a moment: if your conscious self
has bones about becoming a great author someday, it is flat wrong. Theres
a whole different entity inside you that will become this great author, and
you will have the distinction of having assisted this other entity (Inner
CHILD). Again, more to follow on this subject, your subconscious.
First and foremost, this book you are reading right now was written
by me: I have used the methods described here for decades in my own
writing/editing, and have directly produced (as a ghostwriter) or assisted
in producing (as an editor) some excellent results: multiple New York Times
bestsellers for other people, plus some really good books that didnt earn
status on a bestseller list but made a lot of people happy.
Ive also taught formal classes and seminars on how to write your first
book, plus mentored other bestselling authors in their professional careers.
In short, I know my art and I know how to show others how to tap into
it, plus I have a unique method that gets strong, positive results.
There are dozens of good books out there on how to write a book,
and they sell well. Most people, especially beginning writers, dont actually
implement them because the techniques do not consider something we
have used all our lives: a simple building-block approach to writing. Not
one single book espouses this basic method, although some discuss it
using large brush strokes.
Those books currently on the market also show you all the ins and
outs of design and layout of a book, advertising, marketing, getting PR,
contacting agents and book publishers. In short, they seem to hand you the
whole enchilada in one little microwavable package. Quite overwhelming,
you ask me. Its all slick and it looks appetizing and it sells books and
makes authors a lot of cash. But does it really taste good?
Does it, in fact, work for beginning writers?
Not for me. I tried some of those methods a long time ago and none
worked for me, so I designed and built my own, based on what I knew
about how human beings learned things and gained knowledge about a
novel concept or subjectfrom the ground up, using small steps and lots
of repetition. Lots of repetition. Repetition. As an aside, when I was in the
US Army (Airborne Ranger) with the 1st Ranger Battalion, we used to
5
train endlessly, doing the same things over and over again. Repetition. So
when we finally got to the live-fire exercises, all our actions and behaviors
were automatic. Plus they were smooth and fast. Very efficient.
So if I offend you with my repetition, please ask for a full refund. If
Amazon or Barnes & Noble doesnt give you one, I will because I believe
in my approach to writing a book.
More about those other types of books: those authors already assume
you know how to start your book, that you understand how to write it,
or they just dont care at all. They make a lot of assumptions and, in the
end, first-time writers eventually give up before they actually start writing
their first book. Ive seen this countless times, read it in forums, feedback
from my classes and seminars, emails and other correspondence from my
students and from other instructors students. And people share with me
directly all the time when they learn Im a successful writer/author and
editor of many books.
By the way, the difference between a writer and author is simple: an
author is published. This is not meant to disparage the term writer at all.
We all start somewhere and, in this business of writing, we start out as
students, proceed to becoming writers, then go on to publish books as
authors.
Most beginning writers are frustrated at the fact that no one shows
them how to actually write their first book, how to start with a single
building block, add a few more in time, then build things up until they
have a completed first draft of their first book.
The greatest failure of all the other writing books out there is the same
failure of all the other philosophies out there: no one has considered the
human subconscious and the fact it is in direct contact with the Universe.
It is the subconscious that guides us and helps us make the right decisions
in life, and it is the entity that will write your first book. No, Im not
kidding so please do not dismiss me outright. Hear me out, please.
My philosophy of Subism is all about connecting and communicating
directly with the greatest entity in the, well, Universe and beyond via
celestiophysics, which is the physics of the Universal bodies and how they
6
Introduction
mediate and modulate all geophysical and biophysical events, actions,

behaviors on Mother Earth.
Dont worry, this book is not about my new philosophy or celestiophysics.
It is about how to write your first book, using the building-block approach
to writing and also encouraging your subconscious to assist in writing the
book for you.
We are taught that we use only a small percentage of our brain. Thats a
big pile of poo. While our conscious self, the bus driver in each of us, may
use a small part of different regions of its physical brain, our subconscious
uses 99.999% of our brain all the time, gathering valuable information
from the world immediately external to our physical bodies, processing
this intel, making sense of it, and ultimately using it to help us personally
in our daily lives.
Life does not produce things that are wasteful. Theres no such thing as
appendages that arent used for anything, like a third arm or leg, nor are
there biophysical systems within our bodies that are ignored, dormant or,
again, not used. There are some dormant enzymes and so-called junk
DNA that appear to be dormant, but these two items are the exception.
Besides, junk DNA isnt junk at all. It has a definite purpose and that
purpose is to support the human subconscious and its connections with
the Universe.
Weve been taught a pack of lies about the above subjects, but this book
is not about rebutting those lies. I will tell you this: our brain is the most
wonderful, beautiful and complex unit in our known Universe, and were
almost completely clueless about it.
You dont have to know how to build characters or a story to write your
first book. You will learn these steps as you go along, especially if youre
writing a novel. Other books, teachers, classes, etc. try to scare people with
the notion that writing a book is hard. Its not hard unless you make it
hard. Writing a good book is a challenge, though, especially if youve not
done it before. But writing your first book isnt like going to the moon, so
please see it as I and other successful writers and authors have: with the
right tools, it is doable.
7
All you need do is to get the story out of your head first and onto paper,
real or virtual. Everyone can tell a story of some kind, and if you can tell
a story that keeps peoples attention, you can learn how to write it down
in a reasonably coherent fashion so people will want to read it. Hearing
something is easy, because it takes less energy. All you do is open your
ears to a sound, a displacement of air molecules, and your ears receive and
channel the vibrations down to your eardrum, which is attached to a few
little bones that further the transmission that eventually gets transduced
into an electrical signal that goes to the brain for further processing.
Reading is a whole different beast: it takes energy unlike simply
listening to a story.
Heres another secret: writing isnt about writing.
Writing is about expressing yourself, whether its some deep, hidden
secret about something inside you or maybe some cool recipes for things
you love to cook. Writing is only a tool of communication to do what you
love or wish to do: share your unique information with others.
How To Write Your First Book is only one method of many out there. If
you are the type of person who likes to design things from the ground up,
first building a firm foundation then using sturdy building blocks to create
the remaining structure, then this book is for you. Letters first, then words,
then sentences, then conversation. We learn starting out small and then
building on the small, creating something larger and meaningful.
How To Write Your First Book uses just this type of approach.
If youve tried other methods and they didnt work for you, please try this
one, cover to cover, taking advantage of all the information and diligently
performing all the exercises. After all, you paid good hard-earned money
for it! Please see it as a sound investment.
If you quit halfway through, youll never know if it couldve worked
for you. Once you start How To Write Your First Book, please finish it. But
also please indulge yourself 100%, knowing you may just learn something
very important about how to write your first book . . . that you are, in fact,
capable of doing it, from first page to last and, eventually, from cover to
cover.
8
Introduction
How To Write Your First Book is for anyone and everyone, regardless
of age, gender, race, etc. but it must be read, understood, assimilated
and implemented to get the benefits. If youre not a reader, then please
make an exception here and read this book to gain the full benefits, or
have someone special read it to you. Think of this book as a short set of
directions for building something special to you, maybe a bookcase or, for
the truly adventurous ones, a new home.
Everyone has at least one book in them, probably many, and anyone
who can tell a good story can write a good, if not great, book.
For the moment, let me leave you with this thought, something that
sums up the entire process of storytelling and writing your first book:
writing is a million-dollar experience, shoved up your hiney bumper a
nickel at a time.
Im showing you how to write your first book, to bring you closer to
that analogy abovea million dollars. But its only there in concept. You
must do the work to earn it. Its not simply handed to you. I also like to
demonstrate this by showing the difference between freedom and liberty.
Freedom is like having a million dollars and never spending it. Liberty
is actually going out there, exercising your freedom, and spending that
million dollars. Liberty is freedom in motion. So is writing. Writing is
like having a chance at a million dollars. Authoring, becoming a published
writer, is actively using your power to make it happen.
9
The Purpose Of This Book
I
designed and built How To Write Your First Book as simple as possible
to reach as wide an audience as I could. This audience includes those
of you who do not normally read much, if at all. Everyone has at least
one book in them, and each of you should take the time to put story to
paper. You owe it to yourself, not to mention many others who surely will
want to read your story.
You really want to write that first book? Then you must make an effort
to read my book in its entirety, and take the time to do the exercises and
implement the lessons learned there. Writing your first book takes a firm
and complete commitment. You must promise yourself that you will do
whatever it takes to learn this method and to implement it until youre
done. In the end, if its not for you, then be proud of yourself for giving
it a good try. If you need to edit my method, please do so to fit your
personality and chemistry, keeping in mind that your subconscious needs
time to work on your behalf so please do not short-circuit this process.
Writing your first book is a cool and rewarding job. It is also some of
the most fun you will have sitting down, because the process will take you
on a grand journey that you had previously only dreamed of.
The Purpose Of This Book
I have built my method on the building-block approach, starting with

a single word and building on it to achieve an entire story, your first book.
You must work at your own pace. If this means you take a year to complete
your first book, then go with it. Do not force yourself to complete your
story if your subconscious isnt prepared do it right away. You must find
your own pace and rhythm, and stick to those each day, week or month.
Theres one special book of mine I have been working on for eight years,
rewritten it completely six times, and Im still not satisfied with it. Thats
how it goes sometimes. In this case, the cake bakes itself so let your
subconscious do all the work.
If you cannot work each day, then please find a comfortable time each
week to work on your first book. You cannot normally work only once a
month, because your subconscious will probably get bored meantime and
may not cooperate with you. You must put in the effort each day, at best,
and several times a week, in the least.
First, you must allow me to show you how to structure your first book
so it meets your needs and goals. By structuring, I mean starting with
One Word that defines your story, then moving on to Five Bullets, 25
Descriptive Sentences, the Synopsis, the Outline and ultimately the First
Draft of your book.
The word structure in literary terms actually means something a bit
different and is not my focus in this book. It has to do with laying out
your story in a particular way or using a certain formula to produce, say, a
mystery or thriller or even childrens story.
In one of the final chapters, I will introduce how to edit your first book.
If your goal is to produce a good book, then editing is absolutely essential,
either by you or someone else, hopefully a seasoned professional. Please
do not see this as a chore. Editing is nothing more than reading your own
work, then carefully adding and subtracting words, sentences, paragraphs
until your first book takes the shape you like. For some, the task of editing
may be more involved, sort of like my own work on that book Ive been
working and reworking for the past eight years, off and on. Like I said, Ive
completely rewritten it six times, done dozens of edits. Hey, some great
things just take time.
11
The purpose of How To Write Your First Book is to provide you all the
necessary tools to write your first book. Duh. All you need do is provide
the 100% commitment, the time and the energy. Sound like a lot? It is.
Like I said earlier, its not simple. But its not hard, either. As soon as
you get started, youll wonder why you didnt start writing your first book
years ago. Something that looks daunting in the beginning, especially if
you look at the whole thing all at once, soon becomes quite doable when
you start from scratch and build on your project, little by little, until it is
complete.
While its great to dream about the end product, your first book, I
suggest you simply dream about that First Word. . . .
12
What This Book Is Not About
W
hile Id love to take your hand and guide you the entire
journey, I cannot. You must come up with your story. I cannot
dictate or suggest to you what to write about. Im here to help
you pull your story out of your head and get it onto paper. But you must
first have your story in your beautiful mind.
This book is not about showing you how to produce a final, polished
draft of your book. This book shows you how to write a first draft, then
introduces how to edit your own work.
If you choose not to edit your own work, then you must find an external
editor experienced in editing your type of book, e.g. narrative nonfiction,
historical fiction, childrens story or comic book. This book is not about
helping you find an editor. You can find a suitable editor on the worldwide
web by searching for book editor or story editor, going to the library
and asking a research librarian how to find a book editor, or going on
forums for book writing and asking people to refer you to book editors.
There are many other ways to find a suitable editor for your book, and the
chapter near the end of this book, Useful References, lists helpful sources
to find a good editor.
This book is not about showing you how to submit your book to a
literary agent for representation. Doing a search on the worldwide web
will yield dozens of suitable literary agents. Therere also several good
books that list literary agents. Again, the chapter Useful References offers
some help here, especially Literary Marketplace and Jeff Hermans book.
I do not show you how to submit your book to a book publisher. Therere
other good books out there that show you how to do this. Please see the
chapter, Useful References.
While my book is not about many aspects of writing, editing, polishing
and submitting your first book, this book does provide the groundwork
and foundation for you to create something from scratch, a first book you
will be very proud of when its done.
14
How To Learn All You
Can From This Book
T
he first item to focus on when writing your first book is that this is
your project, not someone elses. No one is watching you, so please
relax. Youre free to dive into your project whenever you wish,
because youre not on anyone elses timetable.
Feel comfortable knowing youre with a large group of people whose
goals are largely your goals: to write that first book and get it out in the
mainstream reading audience. If you choose, talk with other like-minded
people who will support your endeavor. Some people need the support
of others when taking on such a big task. Its fine to share your work
with others, but its not necessary. If youre someone who likes to work in
the dark, without anyone knowing about your work, then thats cool too.
Whatever makes you most comfortable, please do it.
If you need to write external notes and scribbles based on what youre
reading in this book, please do. Writing by hand is another way to get your
ideas and thoughts inside your subconscious. If youre someone who talks
into a voice recorder, then use that method. Please use whatever methods
work for you while youre engaging in this project.
When reading this book, please write down questions. Chances are,
youll find the answers as you read further, as I have introduced some
concepts early on, and then explained them further in later chapters. Its
important not to allow questions that pop into your mind to go unanswered,
so please address them as they come up. Hey, you can always ring me via
email, if you do not find the answers youre looking for.
If you need friends and supporters to assist you along the way but dont
have any, then start a network on your own. Every other network and
support group out there started with one persons idea, which was then
implemented to create the network or group. By doing it on your own and
your personalized way, you ensure youre getting what you need. One of the
most important items in work and business is having an excellent network
of friends, colleagues, advisors and mentors. If you examine the traits
of successful business people, youll see they have several characteristics
in common, not the least of which is having an excellent and extensive
network of the right people in all the right places. No one can do it all on
her own. You need assistance from good experienced people. But you must
ask for it or create it on your own.
Thats an important point I cannot belabor: when you need help, find
it or ask for it.
The best way to learn all you can from this book is to read it several
times before you even begin writing the One Word that launches you into
your book-writing project. Understand what Ive written in each chapter,
and let it digest over days or weeks. When youre ready to begin, then you
can use all the tools I suggest here and produce a finished first draft of
your first book.
16
Dear Dean, What If I Do Not Subscribe
To Your Inner CHILD Beliefs?
Y
ou do not have to believe anything I say about your Inner CHILD
or your subconscious to write your first book. There are no
penalties if you are incredulous and think my hypotheses about
the subconscious are silly.
I introduce the Inner CHILD and the subconscious because I feel its
important to share my views about how I see the whole process working.
It is my hypothesis. For me personally and others Ive taught and worked
with, it is absolute fact. Whats more, those of us who have adopted
the concepts of the Inner CHILD use them in everyday life. The Inner
CHILD will write your first book for you, but it also does so much more.
So when doing the exercises and actually writing your One Word, Five
Bullets, 25 Descriptive Sentences, Synopsis, Outline, you dont have to
consider your Inner CHILD or subconscious. Just know that you will
need to allow your artwork to sit alone inside your computer or a notebook
for a period of time before you can revisit it and expand it.
It doesnt matter what you believe helps you write your first book. What
does matter here is that you actually do the exercises and, of course, write
your book.
The only thing you must be religious about is being passionate about
what you do and then going out and doing it . . . writing your first book!
18
I Want To Write My
First Book Because. . . .
W
hen I have asked people over the years why they want to write
their first book, everyone has told me something slightly
different, but the main reason is because they feel they have
something important to say. Some extend this reason to include they think
others will want to read what they write about, that it will somehow be
important to a reader and will help them in some way.
Some folks write a book because they want to make a million bucks.
Some write a book to gain fame.
Others write a book for professional recognition or career enhancement.
To share old family recipes . . . memorable stories they were told when
they were children . . . preserving family history . . . sharing new and
innovative ways of doing something we all take for granted in our daily
lives . . . getting something bothersome out of their head . . . sending a
message to someone important in their lives. . . .
The list is endless.
Why do you want to write a book?
Theres always a reason, perhaps many. Please sit down and write all
the reasons you can think of why you wish to write your first book. This
is a great starting point that will launch you into the process I will share
with you in this book. Its a simple exercise I would like you to do over a
week, allowing each day or nights iteration to sit untouched for a day or
so before examining it again. At the end of a week, the results may surprise
you.
Since this book takes an age-old, building-block approach to writing
your first book, its important to know your personal motives and
motivation for writing your first book. This first exercise, writing down
all your reasons for writing your book, will be your first attempt to tap
into your subconscious, that mysterious space inside your mind where
everything is stored and most of which is seemingly inaccessible.
Im a strong believer in knowing all the underlying reasons why I
want to do something. Im not some hopeless romantic who buys into
the untouchable mystery of things. I want to know stuff, and what makes
things tick and function the way they do. The more I tap into the source
of things, the better I understand them and the more I can manipulate
them to my advantage. Its a great tool to have, this kind of curiosity and
understanding. It allows for implementation of new-found secrets. Who
wouldnt want that kind of personal power?
Theres always this little itch in the back of my mind that tells me to do
things. And when its a book, I ask my subconscious, Why do I want to
write this particular book? And so I write down those reasons, let them sit
for a week, then come back to them and add more reasons. I do this until
I feel I have all the answers, at least the important ones. With each pass of
writing things down, I uncover hidden motivations and reasons that tell
me more about myself.
I analyze each reason and try to break it down further, forever asking
why? My insatiable need to know stuff and figure out everything I do
in life drives me to do this with each book. When I did my first book,
TOPGUN Miramar, which was a coffee-table book, I had lots of pretty
airplane pictures of US military jets splashed over the pages. But I also
wrote a narrative for each chapter that introduced readers how the US
Navy Fighter Weapons School functioned, how the pilots and support
personnel worked together to produce some of the finest fighter pilots in
the world.
20
I Want To Write My First Book Because. . . .
Thinking back on it, I also wanted to show these people and those
magnificent fighter and attack aircraft in a new light, an artistic one. I
also wanted to fly in all these cool jets and shoot beautiful photographs
from the back seat or from the bays of cargo aircraft or helicopters. And
I wanted the world to see them, to appreciate them as I had when I lived
among the men and women of TOPGUN. It was such a rush to re-live
the movie, TOP GUN (spelled differently from the school). I wanted to be
a fighter pilot and live the life . . . if only for a few weeks. It was the kind
of vacation from my reality that any man on the planet wouldve killed for.
And all I did was dream it up . . . figure out how to do it . . . then
implement my ideas.
Being a kid all my life has pushed me into projects like that one, where
I actually became one of the players in the story. Sometimes my part in
the story was very short, sometimes quite long and involved. But my inner
motivation came from a deep-seated need to be a part of it all. It wasnt
for the glory or fame. More for the romance, experiential experience and
knowledge.
Ive always been a romantic at heart, wishing to experience everything
in life, make some sense of it, then share those experiences with others.
That first book allowed me to do that. My reasons for writing other books
are simple: I love to write and share my artwork with others. Oh, and the
money isnt bad, either.
Your reasons for writing your first book may not be important to others,
but Ill betcha people will care about your story. And theyll pay money for
it if its well written and presented.
My job here is to help you figure out how to get your story out of
your head and onto paper, real or virtual. To begin, though, please do that
exercise I mentioned above and discover for yourself why you want to
write your first book. It should begin like this:
I want to write my first book because. . . .
21
Characteristics Of A Good Writer
W
riters write. And they write every day they can. Period. No
argument there. Good writers know it takes years to become
a good writer, so they are patient, master the basics, and ply
their trade as often as they possibly can. For me, I write every day, even
if its one chapter, say, 10 pages. I write because I have something to say
and so I go out of way to get it down on paper. Ive also been doing this
for decades and have done well at it, so Ive seen in myself what works
and doesnt, plus Ive talked with other good writers about their habits.
They tell me that they write each day, as well, and its because they have
something to say each day. One of the rewards is that we good writers also
get paid well for what we do.
Please do not allow the promise of good pay to become your primary
motive for writing your first book. It should only be a side effect, at best.
Love what you do, and the money will follow.
Im lucky: I get to earn a living as a writer and editor, and I take advantage
of it each and every day, unless of course, Im on vacation. Truth? Even then
I have a laptop and Im writing. It may be an idea for a novel, or maybe an
actual chapter for a book, but I am definitely writing. Its as if I cant get
away from it, even though Ive tried to let it go sometimes. Writing is in
my blood and DNA and when I dont pay careful and sufficient attention
to this fact, my subconscious lets me know.
I am cursed: I have to write. I wish this wonderful curse on you, too,
because if you love it like I do, then youll always be a writer and eventually
will get published and do well. Maybe we should call it a spell, not a curse.
Once again, I wish the spell that affects me every single day to come over
you and bless you in a very special way.
Not everyone has the time to write every day, but good writers make
it happen somehow and they maintain a good consistency, a ritual of
writing and honing their skills. The only way to become a good writer is to
implement the lessons and tools that make all writers good at what they
do.
A good writer reads voraciously. She reads the works of other good
writers, both entertainingly and critically. Other writers and authors
provide us new ways of thinking, new ideas and tools that we use in our
own writing. To say we steal the work of others is probably accurate,
although there is a fine line between using devices of other writers and
plagiarizing their work. If you come across a clever word or phrase written
by someone else, its okay to use it in your own work, and thats what good
writers do, explaining that they were influenced by someone elses good
writing. If a good author shares her influences with her audience, I ask you
to study the works of those influences and then re-read that particular
authors works. Ill bet you will find some gems in her writing that were
stolen from the works of those who influenced her. Youll also discover
how her work evolved from the combined works of others. It takes time to
study this, but if you do youll find it.
Its amazing to see how we are influenced by the beautiful artwork of
other people. People just like you. Hey, theres another good reason for you
to write your first book: it will become influential in the lives and artwork
of other good writers and authors someday.
Ive been influenced and inspired by dozens of writers, even those
whose work I didnt care for. Ive always taken away a little something
from everyones work and, even though I may not have actually used it in
some small way in my own work, I keep those little gifts for the future.
23
I write down and store these words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs I
like from the works of others, and sometimes Ill just read them, one by
one, letting the brilliance of someones artwork seep into my subconscious
where it somehow becomes my own work and paints new vistas for me.
Thats how the work of other artists influences us: it moves us enough for
us to record it and keep it someplace safe so we can enjoy it over and over
. . . and even use it in our own work.
When someone elses artwork makes you tingle inside, theyve inspired
you and have given you a booster shot of usable energy. Take that energy
and channel it into your own artwork. Someday you will pass it on to
someone else.
When we write, we do not necessarily reinvent the wheel, we capitalize
on the lessons and tools we learned from other people, those who have
been successful. In many cases, too, we use the work of writers who have
not been successful, because they have a unique voice or choice of wording
sentences and phrases, developing and expressing characters, using clever
dialogue to advance a particular character and, in the end, the overall
storyline.
Good writers feed their subconscious daily with many powerful active
ingredients: art, conversation, face-to-face human interaction, traveling,
eating great food, watching great films, storytelling with friends and
colleagues. Since our subconscious is the entity that writes our story, its
most important to nurture it. This is the topic of a future chapter on the
subconscious.
Since I dont punch a time clock or work for anyone else, I get to set
my own schedule. I rise each morning when it feels right, have breakfast
and lunch when my body says its time, go for long walks and hikes, take
long drives along the coast where I live, or visit some cool shop, museum,
bookstore or . . . anyplace that suits me in that moment. Sometimes, too,
I just hang out under the duvet and watch movies all day. Its part of my
work, part of the whole process of creating something special, so I never
feel guilty about it. Neither should you, if this becomes your way of life.
A special sidebar note about this process: you must be surrounded by
people who support and respect you, those who know what it takes for you
24
to succeed. For them to fully understand the process and what you wish
to accomplish, you absolutely must share with them what your dreams,
wishes, desires and needs are. Please do not keep them in the dark as you
go through the process of writing your first book. Why? Lets consider the
passage below. It tells a great story.
All disappointments are due to either unexpressed

communications or unfulfilled expectations.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Well said. Interestingly, the Maharishi studied physics in the early
1940s before founding the practice of transcendental meditation. I think
he understood the power of the Universe and celestiophysics, and founded
quite a movement based on this universal power.
So, using the Maharishis quote to support my assertion, I feel you
should express your desires to your family and supporters, so they fully
understand and appreciate and respect what youre doing. The more they
know and understand, the better they can support you. Also ensure you
express your personal expectations and goals as you further your artwork.
Look at it this way: if both you and all your family members knew
exactly why you want to write your first book, and they knew all your
and their own expectations for your success, then everyone would be on
the same page, the same frequency. Theres a certain power and symmetry
when many peoples dreams, wishes and desires are on the same page. The
power isnt just additive, its exponential. That, my dear Reader, is another
unique power of celestiophysics. Makes me want to write a book about it
right now, but my immediate obligation is to you. . . .
Ahhh! Where were we? The subject of communicating what we desire
and then communicating our expectations to those important to us. To
those of you who have families and significant others, this could be the
most powerful tool you learn from this book.
I treat myself to good food, and find it so inspiring sometimes that I
have to write about it, describing in great detail how it looked, smelled,
tasted, the whole time wondering if Id use it in some future story. Good
entertainment is just as important. As Ive said previously, I may spend all
25
day watching some cool films and tv shows, entertainment that fills me
with sizzling inspiration, or just observing animals and insects in the wild,
or maybe the clouds drifting over from Antarctica. Im sooo inspired by
everything around me, I want to study it, make sense of it, write about it
and then share it with everyone.
That, in itself, is a powerful feeling. And it gives me incentive and
otherworldly energy to write write write!
Its as if I cant stop writing until that energy is spent and my body
stops tingling and then goes into a relaxing detumescence. Its very much
like making wild passionate love, having an unforgettable orgasm, then
coming down slowly and deliciously. Wow!
Point is, I get out and enjoy the world, because this is where stories are
designed and built, from experiential experience and from being inspired
by the artwork of exceptional and innovative people who arent much
different from you, darlin. I also get out there and practice my social skills
of interacting and conversing with humans and engaging the environment.
Without these skills, I am a slug.
Good writers are also good editors. Once done with a draft, they let it
sit for a certain period of time, then go back and change, or edit, whatever
is necessary to make the story better. Editing takes time. The easy part is
to get your story out of your head and onto paper. Then the real fun begins.
Reminds me of a quote from a Louis LAmour novel, to the effect: Just
when you think youve reached the end, that will be the beginning. Its
the same with writing that first draft: just when you think youre done,
you then get to have even more fun editing your first book. Editing is the
subject of a future chapter.
Good writers take breaks and vacations when needed. Sometimes its
necessary to step away from your work, allowing your subconscious to
distill and analyze what youre written. At a later time, you then go back
and let your subconscious edit your work for you. When I need a real
break from writing, I go somewhere where my laptop doesnt want to be,
like the side of a mountain or under water. Taking a break means just that:
a break from the typical pace of everyday life. Its good to get away from
doing just one thing. Variety is necessary. Plus, its an excuse to let your
26
subconscious take a break from you, something that can be as important

as your going walkabout in the wilderness for a few days.
I used to be a first-draft writer, never getting beyond that first draft,
until I realized that to be a good writer I would need to keep working on
my story until I got it just right. I couldnt just let my cake bake itself, after
Id only added the mix and an egg. I needed to continue working on that
cake until it was a masterpiece. To me, at least.
Good writers never stop learning. They are always on the lookout for a
new lesson or tool that will enhance their work. They continually practice
their skills just like athletes do. If youre a sprinter and dont sprint and
do supplemental exercises, eat well, stay away from harmful things, then
your muscles atrophy, they go slack. A sprinter cannot perform at top level
without daily workouts and treating herself well. Like a seasoned sprinter,
a good writer hones her skills and stretches beyond her boundaries without
fear or trepidation.
How do I treat myself? First, I let my imagination run wild, like that
six-year-old child who sees the world with wide curious eyes, soaking
up everything around him. I absorb all I can from every possible source,
asking questions along the way, meeting new people who teach me new
things and introduce me to new concepts and ideas. I fill my mind, heart,
soul with all life has to offer, then channel what I learn into my work.
When you master the good habits of good writers, you will be well on
your way to becoming a good writer. You owe it yourself to do whatever
it takes. Use this building-block approach, stay on track, do the exercises,
follow through to the last word of your first book. Then go back and read
it all again.
Repeat as necessary.
27
Writing Takes Time
S
ome people can pick up a guitar and play Clapton and Hendrix
from day one. Its in their DNA. They didnt study it. They didnt
learn it from someone or in a class. They just did it; it was gifted to
them. And the rest of us stand around watching and listening, admiring
them, wondering how they do it. Again, some people just have it from day
one, built into their genetic code. And they make it look so easy. Mostly
because it is easy. For them.
But heres a problem with naturals: they have no idea how they got
their gift and they didnt actually earn it. It was given to them, written
into their DNA. They didnt acquire it through years of pain and failure
and hard work. Im not slamming naturals, because some of them go on
to great careers in all fields. What Ive seen in my life, though, is that
the people who earn their success are far better people than those who
acquired via some genetic gift.
Ive yet to come across anyone who can write from day one. Babies,
toddlers, teens do not have a program inside them that immediately
makes them a writer. Thats the strange thing about writing: it takes time
to do it. And to do it well. Youd be hard pressed to find a child prodigy
who can crank out good stories. Again, writing takes time and, of course,
Writing Takes Time
a certain maturity. This is what I love about authors and writers: they earn
their success through years of persistence and hard work, and they dont
give up, regardless of how badly things get in their life. The best authors
and writers out there know they have earned their gift and they could lose
it at any time, maybe through blindness or some other physical disability.
Or death.
When I was in kindergarten, I told these lofty stories in front of the
class, but I didnt know how to write them all down. I had to learn the
alphabet first. Then they taught me penmanship, which I flunked in a big
way. Next came putting those letters into meaningful combinations to
form words. When Id learned how to write down the words I knew, they
taught me how to write simple complete sentences. In time, using this
building-block approach to learning, I learned grammar and syntax. And
I read voraciously. Even as a precocious child, I read the newspaper. No,
I didnt understand politics or economics or science then, but I did read
each article as a story and I picked up words, phrases and sentences that
helped form my skills as a young writer.
Most people have to work at writing, so work at it and dont envy those
who are talented right out the gate; youll get there. I did, and Im no
genius. I simply started at the beginning, used the tools good teachers and
my parents taught me, and started writing. I was fortunate, too: my father
is a brilliant closet poet. His poems moved me in deep, spiritual ways and
I retained his lovely words, phrases, sentiments. His words became my
atoms and molecules. And my mom always read to me, showing me the
importance of taking the time to pick up a good book and get lost in it.
Good writers love what they do. Some have told me its cathartic, getting
those stories out of their head and splashing it onto paper. Others have
said its the whole process of creating something beautiful from scratch
that makes them love the process of writing. You must see writing not as
a chore but as a self-fulfilling action you perform each time you write that
eventually produces a finished story.
Writing takes time, so you must be patient. If youre looking for a quick
buck and are doing it without passion, writing may not be the right area
to place your energy and time. This is not something you do in a weekend,
29
like flying an RC model aircraft at a park. It takes time to form just the
right words into captivating sentences, and those into paragraphs and
chapters that grab a reader and hold her from page one to the end.
Now that you understand that writing takes time, please take the time
to do what is necessary to become a good writer. Apply your passion to
the art of writing. I believe you will not be disappointed with the results.
You must be motivated to share your story with other people, so they
in turn will have the pleasure of experiencing your passion, feed off it and
take away something memorable. You have the power to influence people
with your writing, but it must come from your heart and soul. Ive read
hundreds of textbooks that bored me to tears. Ive also read novels and
narrative nonfiction that made me go back to the bookstore and demand
my dollar back. Its because the authors of those works didnt inspire me.
Its as if they wrote perfunctorily, maybe just for a paycheck. I guess thats
okay for them but it didnt do anything positive for me. Still doesnt. In the
least, they showed how not to write and express myself. Plusand this is
hugethose commercial New York trade publishing senior editors often
take the passion out of an authors story, forming it into a rather stiff and
lifeless mannequin. Yes, its commercial acceptable and salable, but it lacks
the punch and passion I so crave in great artwork.
When you share your inner motivation and passion with others, you
stimulate them in unaccountable ways, you move them and inspire them.
Please note that stimulating and influencing another human being should
not be a goal, it should be a side effect of what you love doing: sharing your
art with other people. And doing it selflessly.
Writing takes time: and Im talking years of time, effort, energy and
money. When you embark on your career as a writer, if this is your passion,
its fine to see the end resulta printed book that is commercially viable
but I suggest you concentrate on taking your new project and career a day
at a time. Nothing needs to be rushed when youre learning the art of
writing. Each story you design and build should have a life of its own and
grow slowly, like a child, until it becomes an adult, a polished product from
your heart and soul.
30
Writing Takes Time
Writing anything worth someone elses hard-earned money takes time

to produce and get out there to a big audience, so please do not immediately
strive for commercial success, as I mentioned previously (more than once,
for effect). If you write from your heart and soul, people will find you and
your book, and will want more. Yes, of course, there is the small matter of
marketing and advertising, but this is after youve completed your artwork.
Writing your first book takes considerable time so please be patient.
Take small steps, maybe only a few each day, and learn to walk, then
move to jogging, and finally when you find your balance, start running.
Remember: babies dont run right out of the womb. Even Superwoman
had to learn to crawl before she could fly faster than the speed of sound
and kick major butt.
31
Your Personal Space And Time To Write
W
riters are like bus drivers and fighter pilots: they do their job
sitting on their tush all the time. A bus driver doesnt get to
choose his seat. Its provided by the company that owns the
bus. A fighter pilot doesnt have much choice, either. The US Department
of Defense decides what he sits on and its usually the one from the lowest-
bidder defense contractor. At least he has a rocket under his butt to eject
him from his office when things go really wrong up there in the rarified
air, wild blue yonder and heavenly pillow-clouds.
A writer has many choices: she can sit on an old wooden chair with no
padding, or on a $2,500 ergonomic highback office chair, done up in top-
of-the-line memory foam and ultrasoft upholstery.
My choice wasnt really my choice at all, because my happy bottom told
me what to buy and that was the $2,500 variety from Relax The Back.
Sometimes its good to listen to your fanny. If youre from South Africa
and are reading this, please excuse my use of the term fanny. For you folks,
I meant derriere. And if youre from the US and are wondering what Im
talking about, all this fanny business, please talk to the nearest South
African girl you can find . . . and watch her blush.
Location, location, location. Having your writing office at a busy street

intersection may get you noticed, not to mention possibly run over by a
distracted bus driver, but youll be challenged to get any work done. A
good writer needs a quiet, peaceful setting that allows and encourages
free thought, reflection, studying and, of course, writing. If you live in a
houseful of high-energy children who play at 120 dB just outside your
door, even a good pair of aviation-quality earplugs and over-the-ear
headphones wont bring you peace. The music of children, played on high,
seems to slip around the earpieces of noise-cancelling headphones, so Id
nix those, too, and just find a comfortable and quiet space, put a sign
outside your door that reads:
DO NOT DISTURB UNLESS YOUR ARM OR LEG FALLS OFF

AND YOURE NOT SURE HOW TO PUT IT BACK ON
If you love libraries, coffee houses or dive bars to do your work, then
cool. Atmosphere, other than a traditional office, can enhance the mood
of your artwork, so take advantage of it. Thing is, youll need a good
laptop with at least one external backup hard drive to accompany you. I
sometimes write in restaurants while Im munching, and always bring an
extension cord and backup hard drive. The owners and managers always
accommodate me. Hint: tip well, especially after you sell something you
may have written in a particular venue. Its also a good idea to make the
owner or manager one of your characters, even if you kill him off in the
end.
Music is everything. If you can listen to heavy metal and write your
first book, then go! If I had head-crasher acid rock blasting through my
headphones, Id be, well, dripping acid and picking up the pieces of my
fractured peach. Nope, I need soft, smooth, soothing music for most work.
Sometimes I drop hours of reiki music on iTunes and let it massage my
mind for the day while I type away. If Im writing an action sequence, I
may invite a cool Hollywood soundtrack into the room, something written
especially for a film, no vocals, just kick-ass mood music.
33
The tone of the sounds must fit the sequence Im writing, otherwise Ill
wind up cranking out an action-adventure comic book. How you listen
to your music makes all the difference, too: full surround-sound speakers
that fill the room with as much mood as air; over-the-ear headphones that
send just the right tones through your skull; or in-the-ear phones that
shoot the juice directly to your eardrums.
Whatever you use, please experiment with all the above until you find
just the right fit for you. Music changes your chemistry like a pill, shot,
snort or injection of a drug, and it also had side effects, so try to avoid
bringing on a hangover from the wrong music riding into your brain on a
hundred-foot rogue wave.
Like music, lighting can make all the difference, too. Light creates a
certain mood that affects you when you write. I love to have a darkened
room when writing novels, because I need to channel the characters
directly into my room and give them sufficient space to tell their story.
If I have beautiful paintings and pictures of the love of my life all around
me, causing unnecessary distractions, it adversely affects my writing. With
just the glow of the computer monitor, I can focus directly on the words
that need to flow from my mind to paper. Again, your subject matter will
determine the type of lighting to immerse yourself in. In writing this
current book for you, I could go from bright daylight to pitch-blackness
and not be bothered by it, but my best writing days were under bright
natural light.
When I wrote the book Who Really Owns Your Gold, which has a lot of
historical information in it, I listened to some Peter Kater and R. Carlos
Nakais How The West Was Lost, which took me back 150 years, or Peter
Katers Essence album. Wow, all the moody notes in that beautiful piece!
Also tuned into some classical music, mostly adagios, when writing about
periods even further back. I love adagios because theyre slow and glorious,
very tranquil. Mozart is my fave composer of adagios. My music library
has every type of mood music to suit the scene Im writing, and I plan the
music carefully to match the scene. Sometimes, too, I put on a rainstorm
or ocean waves, both of which are very soothing to me. When its raining
34
every cat and dog in South Africa, I turn everything off inside and open
all the windows and doors to let natures own symphony fill my senses.
Now that your lovely hiney-bumper is sitting comfortably in the perfect
chair, in just the right office setting, with soothing or head-bangin tunes,
and great mood lighting, its time to consider what kind of computer
to use. Ive used both desktops and laptops, depending on where I was
writing, but I prefer being in my office using a desktop. My machine is
a late-model Mac Pro with a killer engine, maxed-out memory, lots of
internal and external data storage, plus two 30-inch monitors that provide
me plenty of landscape to do whatever comes up. I also have two other
computers as backup, because its not a matter of if your computer will
crash, but when. They all do. Even my beloved Apple Macs.
I back up my data as I write, storing manuscripts, notes, research
materials and books on six different hard drives, four internally, two
externally. It sounds like overkill and I like the over because it ensures
I never lose anything, even when a hard drives crashes. There were times
in the waaay distant past when I wrote something that flowed like delish
creamy fudge onto paper and then the system crashed without my saving
it. Thank goodness, that was way back in the days when I was dumber than
I am now. Nowadays, I also do DVD backups each month, and archive
those in a storage unit off site. If your artwork is important to you, then
please protect it, especially with DVD backups because hard drives will
fail. Newer solid-state drives havent been tested over tens of years, so I
cant advise on those yet. My rule is, if its electronic in nature, then it will
fail at some point, usually when you least expect it, so save your work to
some hard device like paper, CD-ROM and/or DVD and place it in a safe
and secure storage area or off-site facility.
Yes, I still use pens and real paper. Great for fast notes, flashes of
inspiration on Post-Its, or just doodling while my WOW (Warehouse of
Words; I explain this in an upcoming chapter) charges up to full capacity
again.
Timing is everything, just like music and lighting. Do you love to
write in the morning because your rhythm is optimal? Or maybe youre
a vampire who prefers the darkness of the evening? Do you write on a
35
long commute to work? A car, if youre fortunate to have a driver? Or the

train? Write whenever you feel like writing and when you can do your best
work. If you have a primary job, and most of you will, then you must take
advantage of the time whenever you can conjure it up.
The more time you can devote to writing your first book, the better. If
all you need is an hour, and you can get that anywhere, then great. If you
need four hours a night, then find it when everyone else is asleep or out
partying. While theyre getting toasted, youll be writing your first book.
If everything is just right and you still cant write, then your problem
lies elsewhere. This will not be the subject of a subsequent chapter,
unfortunately, as I am not a qualified physician who can diagnose writers
ailments, let alone perform any manner of deep-brain stimulation.
However, I do discuss Writers Block in a later chapter.
36
Your Conscious Self Will Take Dictation
T
he human brain is divided into two distinct parts, the conscious
and the subconscious, with the latter occupying the majority of
all things neuronal. The conscious works on the surface, while
the subconscious does its work deep inside your mind as the ultimate
controller, the head chef who designs your meals and serves them up to
your conscious at the surface.
This chapter discusses what these entities really are and defines each in
some detail, and shows that each entity plays a very important and distinct
role in your everyday life.
Remember, the things you will learn about these two entities within you
can be applied not only to writing your first book but also to everything
else in your life. This is indeed a powerful concept. And if you choose not
to subscribe to it, you may be missing out on something important to you.
When I use the term bus driver, I do not mean it in a derogatory sense.
I simply use it because it is the best example of how your conscious self
works. Lets look at it another way: your conscious self is an executive
assistant to a six year old, the subconscious or your Inner CHILD. More
on that one later. No, lots more.
For the purpose of writing your first book, the bus driver is an obedient
typist: he just takes dictation while your subconscious is designing, building
and writing your first book.
You know how you see someone special for the first time and you try
to talk to them? And you fumble with the words and what to say and
do? Well, some of us do. I get tongue-tied sometimes and I look quite
foolish. Its the bus driver trying to do what the Inner CHILD should be
doing: expressing your deepest feelings, but theres a wall between the two
that is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to cross or somehow diffuse
through.
Your conscious self has a limited Warehouse of Words (or WOW; Ill
discuss this in the next chapter) and has to think about what to say most
of the time, especially in times of stress. When the stress subsides, thats
usually when he comes up with the right thing to say, and it comes from
the subconscious, the Inner CHILD.
People who speak fast and furiously, and do so with wit and passion,
accuracy and intelligence are in touch with their Inner CHILD, even if
they dont know it and even if theyre not actively trying to communicate
with their Inner CHILD. It just comes naturally to them.
Our bus driver gets us from point A to point B in life. He doesnt ask
questions about the time or the route, he just follows directions from the
subconscious. You dont have to subscribe to this line of thinking, although
I am gently nudging you in this direction, just know that there are parts
of your mind that work independently all the time to get you through life.
And one of those things is writing your first book. The bus driver will take
dictation while your subconscious does all the hard work: designing and
building your story. This is not to say that the bus driver is not important;
he is. But he has his place and that place is driving the bus and taking
dictation from a higher power (your subconscious).
Its important to keep your bus driver in good shape, so he can ferry
you about each minute, hour and day. If the bus driver is drunk or high,
or otherwise incapacitated, youll not get too much work done that day.
Or week, if youre on a lengthy binge. Daily exercise is important, even if
its a long walk outside your house. Variety of surroundings is important
38
Your Conscious Self Will Take Dictation
because the bus driver can get bored easily and so needs breaks once in a
while. And he needs time off, giving the subconscious time to digest the
days events and plan for the next day.
I could easily have labeled your conscious a valet or executive assistant,
but bus driver was just too good to pass up. Ive driven a bus and so I know
what it takes. Theres a huge responsibility, all those passengers who are
relying on the driver to get them to their destination safely. Your bus driver
has the most important job in the world: to take excellent care of your
Inner CHILD. You should celebrate this distinction.
39
Your Warehouse Of Words (WOW)
E
ach time you sit down and write something, theres a finite number
of words that will spill onto the paper during a session. Its not
always the same amount, because you may be more inspired one
day than on other days. The fact that this fluid number exists is proof that
there is some invisible barrier between your conscious and subconscious
selves that prevents further continuous flow of words onto paper.
The maximum number of words your conscious self, the typist, can put
to paper at any one time is called your Warehouse of Words, or WOW.
And even though this is a fluid number that can fluctuate day to day or
week to week, it can be nurtured and, with practice, greatly improved.
The first exercise you should do to test the volume of your WOW
is to sit down in your comfortable office, in your optimum atmosphere,
and pick a subject. Any subject will do, but it should be something that
interests you. Set a timer nearby and start writing. Write for as long as
you can without stopping. When done, count the number of words you
wrote. That will be your WOW. For that subject, at least. If you already
are working on your story, this is better because it will give you a good
idea about the maximum number of words you will write in a day. As you
progress through your project, your WOW may very well increase, and if
Your Warehouse Of Words (WOW)
you make a diligent effort to tap into your Inner CHILD, your WOW
will increase significantly.
I used to write short pieces like articles for journals and magazines,
and my WOW was about 3,000 words a day. When I got into writing
novels and nonfiction, my WOW expanded with practice, and I wrote up
to 10,000 words in a day. But then I felt drained after spending all that
time on a single subject each day, so I defined an end point each dayI
stopped cold turkey and went on to something else, even if it were taking
a long drive along the coast or having dinner out with friends.
After years of writing, I trained myself to write no more than six hours
each day on any one subject or project, sometimes breaking this rule when
I felt especially inspired or had some self-imposed deadline. Normally, this
came toward the end of a book when things flowed so well that I couldnt
stop. Didnt want to stop. It was like having a grand adventure, riding in a
futuristic aircraft that took me through the story, and I didnt want to get
off or stop it in any way. I was dying to see as many sites and experience as
much as I could in that short period. It can be addictive after you do it a
lot, so be careful not to overdose or get burned out. Remember, too much
of one thing, even a really good thing, can be hazardous to your health and
detrimental to your writing. Lets hope you dont experience this unusual
phenomenon of overindulgence.
So, as I said before, my general rule is not to write for more than six
hours a day, allowing me time to do other supplementary exercises and
actions that feed my subconscious, that nourish my Inner CHILD with
great food and drink. Its very important to have a wide variety of things to
do each day and week, so you dont get bored or tired doing just one thing
all the time. By taking necessary breaks and vacations, you expand your
subconscious in unaccountable ways. While Ive studied the subconscious
in me for many years, I have not detailed all the inner machinations of it.
Some, but not all. I just know how it works well for me and I know how
to nurture it to my advantage, and not just in writing stories.
The more you get in touch with your subconscious, the larger your
WOW becomes. And the more you write, the more you will be able to
write at any one time. And with more time and practice, you will get in
41
better touch with your subconscious and further expand your WOW. Its
a strong, positive feedback cycle that reinforces itself.
Just knowing this should blow your mind and serve as incentive to
carry on with your work. Im excited just explaining it to you!
42
Writers Block
I
n all my years of writing, Ive suffered from several different maladies
and conditions but never the one we all fear and loathe: Writers
Block. This doesnt mean I dont understand it, though, because I do.
And Ive studied it in other people over the decades and have formulated
my hypothesis about it and what causes it.
Ive done experiments on myself to artificially induce Writers Block,
and have been overwhelmingly successful. Those results were a dubious
success, of course, because no one wishes to suffer from this dreadful
disease of the subconscious, let alone for any extended period of time.
But at least I saw it first hand. When I stated above that Ive never
suffered from Writers Block, I meant it while I was actively writing, not
experimentally inducing it for the purpose of intensive study.
What are some of the probable causes of Writers Block?
There is no one cause, because Writers Block may surface slowly or all
at once at any point in the writing process. If youre at the very beginning,
with not even a storyline in mind, and you cant write even that One Word,
then the cause may be lack of passion, direction or drive. Of course, one of
the worst causes is wanting desperately to write but not having anything
to write about. The next is having too many distractions that cloud the
whole dreaming, designing, building and writing process.
If youre not passionate about what you do, then the art of writing
becomes a chore, a drudgery. And youll likely not write much, or even
finish your first book. You must love what you wish to write about, be
absolutely passionate about it, because this is a story that you will share
with other people. Writing becomes a chore when youre simply writing
for money or a reason other than for passion.
Ive read published books by authors who seemed to be doing it for the
money, and its reflected in their work. Ive also talked with authors whove
told me their prime motivation was to earn lots of money. Some did it
well, but their work wasnt as good as others whose artwork was based on
a deep-seated passion that underlies and fuels it.
Passion is a deep, often hidden desire to express yourself and what you
have to say, what you believe in so fiercely that it must come out in some
artistic form. And when it surfaces, its in the form of a book, your first
book.
If youre in the middle of actually writing your first book, and Writers
Block creeps up on you and your work grinds to a halt, then the cause is
more likely your not being in sufficient contact with your subconscious,
such that when your Inner CHILD needs to connect with your typist
and it cannot, the Inner CHILD gets pouty or just plain angry and closes
down for a period of time.
This is the time you need to take a step back from your work and ask
yourself, How am I not in good contact with my Inner CHILD now?
What happened such that I lost contact? And how do I get back on track?
You could be stressed out at work and this is impinging on your
writing at night or on weekends. Your family may be undergoing a crisis,
something that takes you away from your work and your Inner CHILDs
working for you on your book project. You must notice what the cause is
and do whatever it takes to assuage the negative effects so you can get back
to the fun business of writing your first book.
Another important question to ask: Am I still passionate about writing
this book? Could be that you initially started your first book because
44
Writers Block
you were inspired by a lover who came into your life, turned it upside
down, and you fell in love so deeply that you got lost in all that passion.
You began writing about it and then, out of the blue, your lover suddenly
disappeared . . . along with the fiery passion that had driven you to embark
on the journey to begin with. This happens sometimes. Its not the end
of the world, although the pain is often unbearable, not just the loss of a
loved one but also the loss of your passion for writing a book you thought
you would finish and get out there for all to read and appreciate.
Again, if you succumb to Writers Block, start asking yourself the
questions above and listen carefully to the answers that bubble up from
your subconscious. It may be a good idea, too, to write down the questions,
say them aloud before you go to sleep, so your Inner CHILD will hear
you and come up with some sort of answer. If your CHILD isnt paying
you much mind for whatever reason, you may consider taking a long break
from your project, say, a month, then returning to it with a fresh look.
If you still suffer from Writers Block, even though youve tried all the
suggestions above, go back to your One Word, Five Bullets, 25 Descriptive
Sentences, Synopsis and Outline (if youve gotten this far in the writing
process) and see if each step still conjures up strong, positive thoughts and
passions in your mind, heart and soul. If you have somehow lost interest,
or if your passion has waned even a little, then you might want to consider
trying another approach to writing this particular book, or choose another
idea altogether. This doesnt mean you should quit your current project. It
may need to ferment a bit more, so put it aside and try something else,
another story idea.
45
Your Subconscious = Inner CHILD Will
Write Your Entire Book
O
ne of the greatest creations in the Universe, besides majestic
planets like Earth and powerful energy sources like our sun, is
the human subconscious. It is in direct communication with
the Universe, which suggests it also communicates collectively with the
subconscious of others. You do not have to believe in this line of thought
to write your first book, even though I have injected small hints that you
should consider it. Whatever you choose to believe, the plain fact is that
you must give your first book sufficient time to develop. Time comes in
days, weeks and months.
Ive studied the human subconscious, mostly in myself, since I was a
child, wondering what inner engine drove me to do the things I did. I
didnt have to think about doing certain things, I just did them. Sometimes
they were rational and positive; other times, not so.
One item I discovered over the years was that there was a clear
line between what I did consciously and how my mind functioned
subconsciously. There was no argument on that point, not from me. And
when I went to sleep each night, I knew there was a whole different creature
that came alive and took me on endless journeys through space and time,
Your Subconscious = Inner CHILD Will Write Your Entire Book
introducing me to new thoughts, ideas, beliefs and ways of doing things

in my life.
More than 10 years ago, I woke up one morning and scrambled out of
bed to write something down. Whatever was in my head at that moment
had to come out and it wasnt going to wait for my bus driver, my typist,
to take dictation. It was coming in a flood and that was that. When I got
to my notepad, my hand started scribbling things down. I wasnt paying
attention to what I was writing, I just took it on faith that I had to do this.
After I was done autowriting, I looked at what had emerged: a single
word, along with details about each letter of the word. It was an acronym,
CHILD:
C: the little Child in you, the curious wide-eyed being that looks at the
world without filters and preconceived notions about anything. A little
sponge that senses things with wonder and awe.
H: the true Heart in you, the purely subjective part, filled with every
conceivable emotion known.
I: your Intuition or information-gathering system, the sensory
apparatus that receives every possible stimulus in the Universe, much like
a radio receives radio signals to produce spoken word and songs.
L: the cold, stainless-steel Logic that sees the world purely objectively,
like a robotic computer that takes in and analyzes things in a totally
impartial and neutral way, without emotion of any kind.
D: the little Demon in you, that mischievous entity that plays pranks
and does impish things. Can sometimes be very destructive and hurtful.
These entities all comprise the human subconscious, which is the true
engine that drives each and every one of us in our daily lives. They all work
together and, depending on how ones DNA is wired, sometimes for good
and sometimes for evil. I will not get into the moral implications of good
and evil, only stating that they exist in all of us to some extent and, in
others, they comprise their whole being. Sociopaths and psychopaths are
an example.
Okay, so we have this subconscious being inside us. Now what? Well, we
can make an effort to communicate with what I term our Inner CHILD,
or we can sort of ignore it and just float through life, going wherever it
47
takes us. I contend that we do have a destiny. Each of us, when we are
conceived (not born), have a certain imprint from those celestial bodies
that mediate and modulate our behaviors; in fact, everything we do in
life. This imprint is kind of zapped onto our DNA when it first forms
chemically in that single cell that will later become an individual being.
When we are first zapped by the Universe, using celestiophysics, we are
then given a map of destiny that propels us through life. Some of us follow
this map without much thought. Others, like me, question it each day and
consciously make a choice whether to follow that map or go off-map and
do something that we were not initially programmed to do. Again, most
people do not pay much if any attention to their map of destiny. They
simply live life and go with the flow.
There is nothing wrong with this approach, but wouldnt it be cool if
you actually knew how it worked so you could use this invaluable tool to
your advantage?
These thoughts bring me to my personal philosophy, Subism. It holds
that the human subconscious is direct communication with the Universe,
and that celestial bodies (planets, stars, whatever) directly and indirectly
influence all life on earth. The philosophers of old werent familiar with
celestiophysics, so they formulated their own ideas about how humans
operate and function, and what makes us do the things we do. I suggest
that we do all the things we do because of the strong, inexorable influences
of celestiophysics.
This book is not about my hypotheses on the Inner CHILD, getting
zapped celestiophysically at or around the time of conception, our map of
destiny, or Subism. I will write another book about all these phenomena.
Relax, if you dont subscribe to my hypotheses, you can still write your
first book. I simply wanted to share with you another reason how I came
to do what I do and how I formulated the thoughts that went into writing
How To Write Your First Book.
I have often wondered why we spend so much time trying to read the
minds of other people when we should be learning how to read our own
and get in touch with our own Inner CHILD. Ever thought about this?
Again, thats the subject of another book.
48
How do you use your Inner CHILD to help you write your first book?
We can start with something we all agree on: we dream a lot. Sometimes
you may not recall each or any dream, but your subconscious is actively
dreaming, sending little (and giant) messages up to your conscious self to
do certain things, avoid other things. Dreams are one method the Inner
CHILD uses to communicate with your conscious self.
Interestingly, when your Inner CHILD presents a dream to you, it does
so in very rudimentary language, in the language of a child. Duh. We dream
in metaphors and symbols and motifs, not in complete film-like visions.
Our Inner CHILD only knows one method of talking to our conscious
self, and that is in the language of a child, a small voice that expresses itself
using little vignettes that represent small words and actions. Ive never
heard of anyone dreaming in the language of an adult. Never. If someone
tells you that they do in fact dream this way, its not a deep-sleep dream
but a lucid dream, one you actually control because youre partly conscious.
During a very difficult time in my life some years back, I had a recurring
dream: a was sitting in a bus filled with other people. I wasnt talking
or interacting with those people, just sitting alone and minding my own
business. Then the bus suddenly filled with water, as if wed just plunged
into the middle of an ocean. No one around me moved an inch or spoke
anything to me or to each other. They all just sat there as the bus filled with
water. I looked around, saw stone-cold faces on my fellow passengers, and
tried frantically to get out.
And then the dream went lucid, where I could actually manipulate the
dream in a semi-conscious state. I changed the dream so I got out of that
sinking bus.
Since I had already known that my Inner CHILD was responsible for
communicating with me, I then figured out a way to interpret what my
CHILD was trying to tell me. I didnt get it at first, so the dream stayed
with me each night for a week or so, until I woke up and listened to my
Inner CHILD. To interpret my dream, which was in the language of a
child, I used the thoughts, ideas and words of a child, say, of about four
years old.
49
When I used this method, interpreting the dream in a childs voice, the
dream became clear: I cant get out and no one will help me.
Simple.
The very day I made this discovery, my life at that time changed
dramatically. Allow me to share with you what actually happened to bring
on the dream: I had just gotten divorced and was destitute on all levels.
The friends we had together when we were married all became only her
friends and I was left with no one to talk and share my thoughts with. To
grieve with, let alone get some help from.
The dream told me that I was in a world of hurt and no one was coming
to my aid, even when I actively asked for help. In the real world, I was
on my own. I have a term for that: yoyo, which means youre on your
own when things get really tough for you. I was yoyo for a long time,
until I realized what was actually happening, then when I figured out my
temporary predicament, I was able to change how I thought, how I acted,
and consequently the actions I took to climb out of that dark hole, from
inside that sinking bus.
My Inner CHILD knew what was going on all along and it tried to tell
me, using the only language it knewthe small, yet significant, language
of a child. Im happy report that Im doing very well now, having listened
to my subconscious and followed through with its suggestions.
So, now that we know we have this unusual and special gift inside us,
what do we do with it? How do we use it?
The first thing I recommend is to learn how to feed it properly, to
nurture it. You would do this with a human child, wouldnt you? Your
Inner CHILD is even more important. Its the entity within yourself that
guides you through every moment of your entire life. How could you not
want to nurture such a being? Really?
Your Inner CHILD is energetic and rambunctious, has a voracious
appetite for new adventures and actions, so get out in the world and do
stuff. Travel to new places, meet new people, eat new foods, explore new
vistas. If you cannot afford to go to Europe or Africa, then explore your
own town or city, or maybe drive to the next state and see whats up there.
If those things are not in your current budget, then find a way to make it
50
happen, now that you know your Inner CHILD needs these things. You
need these things, too, dear Writer.
Your Inner CHILD loves to run and jump and play around, so get out
and exercise your body, even if its a long walk or hike. If youre going to be
a sedentary writer, then your Inner CHILD will eventually rebel. Yes, I do
know some overweight writers who do well, but they dont last too long.
Unfortunately, they die young and the being that dies first is their Inner
CHILD. This explains how people sometimes grow cold and distant, and
they lose their humanity. In reality, theyre losing the most important part
of themtheir subconscious.
The CHILD inside you needs stimulation, and the world around you
provides just that, so please take full advantage of your atmosphere and
make it a daily routine to get out of your office and home and see different
and stimulating sites, absorb what you sense all around you, roll in the
grass, get dirty and make mud pies . . . something. Theres a new movement
out there that is telling all of us to ground ourself with the earth. Actually
get down on the bare ground and let it touch your skin. The earth is one
giant healing mechanism, so find out more about grounding and then
implement your new-found knowledge.
What else? Take trips to local stores, shops, museums, businesses that
produce something interesting to see designed or in the process of being
built. Feed your imagination til its cup runneth over. There are no penalties
for overfilling that cup. When your Inner CHILD has had enough, it will
tell you.
Go to shows, films, performances and watch the beautiful artwork of
people who are just like you: they have a dream, they design and build it,
then they do whatever it takes to implement it. Seeing the art of others is
inspiring on all levels, especially when theyre actually creating it. Go to
the local hardware store and look at all the tools and items that are used
to build things. Visit a restaurant and see how they prepare their meals. I
feel it a grand experience to observe artists designing and building things,
because its not unlike what I do when I create my own stories. In fact,
watching other artists may be the most inspiring thing you can witness for
yourself when you go out on these little excursions. I love watching glass-
51
blowers! Especially the truly great ones who produce the worlds finest
artisan glasswork, those Murano artists in Italy! Wow, theyre amazing to
watch. When Im done witnessing world-class art in motion, I leave with
an all-body tingle thats right up there with the best orgasms ever. Now
that is a powerful thought, huh? What an inspiration!
The point is to experience how people outside you and your world of
friends and acquaintances conduct their lives and do what they do. When
you do, you become a part of their work, too, and you fuel their own desires
and passions. You become a part of their artistic process. Let these artists
do the same for you.
If your story is set in a beachside resort, go find one and write from
there. If you cant afford to be there, then find a nice area at a beach where
you can write and be inspired. Maybe your story takes place in a cool dive
bar. Find one and soak up the atmosphere for a few hours. Try not to
drink too much or you may not get as much work done. Oh, and please
remember: beer all over a keyboard is major notgoodness.
Considering all the nourishment I suggest above, one item is very clear:
it all feeds your Inner CHILD with new stimuli that will aid you in your
writing your first book. Grounding yourself to the earth also will stimulate
you in ways you never imagined. Like the other subjects I mentioned,
grounding will be a future book of its own.
People make the world go round. And round. When I sometimes forget
to get out of my office, which I love, I find that I miss the company of good
people. So I jump out of my chair and go find someone to say hello to,
ask questions about them, take an interest in another human being, share
my own thoughts and experiences with them. Connecting with another
human being is one of the most important acts we should perform on
a regular basis. When we dont, we get lonely and grumpy. Your Inner
CHILD does not make a good companion when its idle, lonely, cranky
and without proper stimulation from the outside world. Use is or you lose
it.
Eat something different each day. It doesnt take much to break up your
diet, so try a new cuisine on Friday night, share it with friends, savor every
52
bite. Your Inner CHILD will be as joyful as your conscious self, I promise
you.
How do you listen to your Inner CHILD when it speaks to you?
First, lets consider when your CHILD is actually trying to tell you
something. An example: youre sitting in a chair, writing away and you
get this nagging voice inside your head that says you need a small pillow
at your lower back. Dont ignore it. This is your Inner CHILD telling you
something: I want to feel comfortable when I tell you this cool story to
write. Thats like a message from the highest power in the Universe. No,
Im not kidding. Listen to it! Please and thank you.
Those little voices that creep up at all times of the day and night are your
Inner CHILD trying to tell you something. You should listen to those
voices. Now, if they tell you to go out and run over the first pedestrian you
come across, I would think really hard before carrying out that command.
If you listen to voices like that, someone will probably have you committed
or take you out back and tie you to a tree. Hows that for grounding?
When you hear the calling of your Inner CHILD, please take a listen,
pay attention to what it is trying to say, then, provided the command is
a reasonable one, please act on it. Once you start listening to your Inner
CHILD, it will say, Aha, shes finally listening to me! Way to go, girl! Lets
give her some more information to use. And, from that point forward, if
you continue to listen to your CHILD, it will give you more and more
great knowledge and information that will not only enhance your life, but
also write your first book.
Communicating with your Inner CHILD is not that challenging.
Again, if it tells you to do something and you do it, then youre effectively
communicating with your CHILD. Keep doing it. And when you go to
bed at night (or during the day, depending on your lifestyle and schedule),
ask out loud and write down some questions or topics that you want your
CHILD to mull over while your typist and bus driver are passed out for
eight hours. When those guys are comatose, your Inner CHILD is hard at
play on its own eight-hour vacation.
The more you listen to your Inner CHILD, the more it will talk back
and provide the information you need. You can train it to give you more
53
and more information by asking questions, writing them down, then

sleeping on them. Keep asking the same questions over and over until you
get what you want. When asking questions or asking for help, please be
kind to your CHILD. Remember: it is a child and understands when you
are being impatient or downright tedious. You know how people say to
treat yourself kindly and gently? Theyre really saying you should be kind
and gentle to your Inner CHILD.
The reason I suggest you say what you want out loud is because when
you speak it and hear your own words, your brain stores and processes that
information in different areas, which work in unison to come to your aid.
When you physically write it down, that too is stored and processed in
another part of your brain. When you read your own words, that is also
stored and processed in yet a different part of your brain. These working
areas are also complex computing centers that help to enhance what you
desire and wish for, and they help your Inner CHILD make those wishes
and dreams come true.
Training your Inner CHILD involves all the above steps, plus actively
talking to it, and not just before you go to sleep. You can have meaningful
conversations with your CHILD, not only asking questions but also asking
for guidance and assistance. The more you communicate with it, the more
it responds and with better and more relevant information that will help
and guide you accurately.
Friends have told me that I talk to myself. Well, not exactly. Im
communicating with my Inner CHILD, and we have fascinating
conversations that aid in my daily living. Please note: this is not the same
thing as a schizophrenic talking to himself, although it may appear so to
the nave observer.
The only time my Inner CHILD has failed me is when I have ignored
it. That fact, in itself, I find fascinating and compelling. My CHILD has
never steered me in the wrong or in a negative direction. Ever. When Ive
chosen to go off-map, then sometimes Ive gotten into trouble. Yes, Ive
learned a lot from those experiential experiences, especially when off-map,
but Ive also paid a steep price for venturing off my Universal path.
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You also can talk to the individual components of your CHILD. It

takes time and effort, but you can do it. Ive often consulted my Logic
element to get an objective view on a particular subject. And when Ive
needed to discuss something about my love life, Ive talked to my Heart.
Having five separate ultra-complex computer modules inside your head is
like having a team of experts of the Universe at your beck and call. Thing
is, you must treat that team nicely and with great respect or it will ignore
you and your queries. Your Inner CHILD will never be vengeful and send
you down a wrong path; only your conscious self does that. The worst you
can expect from your CHILD is silence, and that is the most crushing
thing that could happen to your beautiful mind, not having the backing of
one of the mightiest beings in the Universe.
When your Inner CHILD fails to talk to you or communicate with
you, something is very wrong. Remember that your CHILD is just that,
a child, so it needs special attention. Like I said, it will never steer you
wrong, but it may ignore you. If it does, ask whats up. Really. When you
go to bed, write down that question, plus a few others: Are you okay? Have
I done something really dumb to make you ignore me? What am I doing
wrong here? How can I get back on track? Will you please help me?
The times Ive had my Inner CHILD go silent, they were when I was
not treating myself well. Ive had some challenging jobs in my life
scientist, Army Ranger, corporate security specialistand each one has
brought on a host of problems and challenges that drove me bananas at
times. Sometimes after very difficult days, I would drink one too many
beers, which is a great way to shut down ones Inner CHILD. Duh. Point
is, I abused myself and I paid for it, not only externally but also internally.
Be kind and gentle to yourself, and your Inner CHILD will thank you for
it in ways you cannot even imagine now.
Your Inner CHILD will write your first book. All you need to do is
nurture it and treat it like its the most precious thing in the Universe. It
will help you design your story, build it up from One Word to completed
Outline, then guide your typist to get it all down on paper, virtual or
real. You must first master the inner workings and machinations of your
CHILD before you can begin. Even if you do not believe in the Inner
55
CHILD, you still must somehow feed your mind with all the ingredients
I have discussed previously. If you wish to call the part of your mind that
writes your first book something else, fine with me.
Again, regardless of your belief system, my approach to writing your
first book still can be accomplished. I am simply sharing with you what
I have seen and discovered to be 100% true and accurate in decades of
writing and living a grand life.
56
Warm-Up Exercises For
Writing Your First Book
S
ome of the information here in this chapter is redundant but
necessary. Repetition is good, long as its not a klaxon ringing at 130
dB in your good ear. I dont do anything at 130 dB, so nothing in this
book could possibly be bad for you.
Youve now been introduced to your Inner CHILD and my general
philosophy about how it communicates with your conscious self and
the Universe. Again, you dont need to subscribe to my line of thought,
although Id appreciate your considering it carefully, see if you see what I
have seen all my life, perhaps even use it to your advantage. Ive learned
in my travels out and about that everyone is searching for some spiritual
connection with a higher power, those entities that seem to control and
encourage our behaviors. I have found that having some kind of accurate
and benevolent belief system helps you in your writing and maintains
focus. It encourages you to follow your path.
Tapping into your Inner CHILD is much like waking a sleeping giant:
sometimes you never know whats going to happen. And thats cool,
especially if you dig surprises. Personally, I have a blast with my Inner
CHILD. It shares with me intimate details about myself, other people,
places, things and the Universe. I just sit back and listen a lot, asking
questions when they pop up. And I am richly rewarded each time my
CHILD responds. After all, I do not have the capacity to store and process
all the valuable and fascinating information I encounter every day of my
life. Without my Inner CHILD to take it all in and make sense of it, I
would miss out on a lot.
Listen to that little voice in your head when it tells you something,
e.g. put a pillow behind you to feel more comfortable, go out and take a
walk in the rain, or make yourself a new dish instead of cheeseburgers all
the time. When you listen to your Inner CHILD, that child will say, Aha,
she hears me! Lets take her on a wild, charged-up ride to the ionosphere!
The more you listen to your CHILD, the more youll hear back from it.
Ive found that I can best communicate with my CHILD during sleep,
because my conscious dude is knocked out and cant interfere with the
grand adventure my CHILD sometimes takes me on. Before I sleep I write
down and say aloud a question or two. I focus on it for a few minutes, kind
of like tamping down a big bag of black powder, a blasting charge into the
business end of a cannon. When I fall asleep and my bus driver drops into
lala land, the charge fires off and rockets me into a whole different world,
a world where anything can happen.
There are other ways to tap into your Inner CHILD, but theyre
often difficult if not impossible to find and use. One time, I went to a
special ceremony where ayahuasca was served. If youre not familiar with
it, look it up sometime. The active ingredient in ayahuasca is the spirit
molecule or dimethyltryptamine, DMT. It allows you to tap directly into
your subconscious while awake, although the ayahuasca itself has some
undesirable side effects. Once was enough for me. I found that the side
effects werent worth the overall result. In the end, I felt that summoning
my Inner CHILD was best done during sleep, which is the natural state
for communication with my subconscious.
When you talk to your Inner CHILD, remember its a kid youre talking
to, so dont complicate things. Keep the questions simple and to the point.
An example: How can I quit my current job and just write full time?
So Your CHILD will mull it over during the night and come up with
some kind of answer by morning, depending on how well youve talked to
58
Warm-Up Exercises For Writing Your First Book
it in the preceding days, weeks or months. As Ive said before, it takes time
to tap into your Inner CHILD, so please be patient. It may take weeks
or even months to get an answer, so dont give up. If stress is a big part of
your life, it may take you longer to tap into your subconscious. Again, be
patient and persevere.
Soon as you awaken, write down or voice-record the first things that
pop into your head. Usually Ive found that I forget these answers if I do
not write them down or record them. These precious gifts are evanescent,
like a faint puff of aerosolic scent that wafts up from a flower, so please
treat them gingerly and respectfully. Theres a reason why were given this
small window of opportunity to record them: our Inner CHILD wants to
communicate with us and wants us to understand what its trying to tell us,
so it gives us a short period of time to write or say the results of dreams or
thoughts after a nights slumber.
Other exercises you can do: take a nap during the day when you
normally would not. Before you siesta, seed in your Inner CHILD with
whatever issue, thought, idea or topic you wish for your Inner CHILD
to consider and give you feedback on. Have a pen and paper or voice
recorder ready when you awaken or are in lucid dreaming, so you can
record everything that pops out of your mind. Again, these answers you
will receive are short-lived so take full advantage of them while theyre still
in some tangible form to see.
This is a bit off the wall, but what they hey. Oh, and its strictly for
grown-ups and adults: have a few drinks (or something else) to put
your conscious self, your bus driver, to rest or to numb him up for the
evening. This state of mind will allow your Inner CHILD to surface and
not be bothered by the pesky bus driver. I dont recommend this approach
every day as it may lead to some kind of alcohol addiction (or addiction
to something else). Also, please do not drink and drive or be obnoxious
or harmful to others. The point here is to numb the conscious self so it
doesnt muddy up your communicating with your Inner CHILD. If you
do not naturally use alcohol, then disregard this suggestion.
Anyway, just a thought.
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Carry a voice recorder and/or notebook and pen with you wherever
you go and record whatever pops into your head about your first book. If
anything floats from your subconscious into your conscious, write it down
or speak it into the recorder. Make sense of it later. Just get it out of your
head.
More on dreams: the human mind lives a good portion of its life in
a subconscious realm, where dreams come and go at regular intervals,
providing us with much-needed information about us, our lives, our
surroundings, and even our future. And to think that most people
completely ignore all those hours, all that great knowledge thats dying
to get to the surface and share with them in a conscious state where the
lessons learned become lessons implemented. Having a beautiful Inner
CHILD and not using it like having a million bucks and never spending
it. Worse, folks dont even know all that money is in the bank for them to
play with.
One of my fave authors is Dr. Michael Newton, who wrote the books
Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls. Fascinating man! His are must-reads,
period. Hes a certified therapist and hypnotherapist who has worked with
hundreds of clients, especially in afterlife work and past-life regressions.
The results of some of this work suggests that our spirit guides come to us
in our dreams, and help us figure things out when were stuck.
This is similiar to what I believe, in that our dreamstate is in direct
contact with the Universe and its entities, and so were able to communicate
directly with these entities via our subconscious self. I encourage you to
explore more about this by reading Dr. Newtons books and practicing the
exercises I suggest in this chapter.
If youre new to the process of tapping into your own dreams, then lets
try this: keep a diary of dreams for 30 days, writing down everything you
can remember when you awaken. Dont necessarily analyze whats going
on in these daily exchanges between your conscious and subconscious
selves, just record them. Your Inner CHILD will see what youre doing
and start to give you more and more information. It first needs to know
youre actively listening. When it discovers this revelation, it then will send
you little gifts. For now, please write it all down.
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After 30 days, start seeding into your Inner CHILD what you wish to
accomplish or think about each night. Write it down, say it aloud, read it
again five times, say it again five times, then go to sleep.
When you awaken, record everything you can remember. If necessary,
use a voice recorder. Just remember to store your recordings in a safe place.
The iPhone is great for this, because you can then download the mp3 files
directly to your desktop computer or laptop, and listen to them in iTunes
or VLA. I love it this way, as I can listen to my thoughts while I read or
write.
As you get fluent in conversing in a new language with your Inner
CHILD, you will learn more about yourself and your behaviors, thoughts,
wishes, dreams. All these new tools will help you write your first book.
I wish this book focused only on dreams, because I find them fascinating
and captivating and they hold so much valuable information about me
and my life. My dreams are vivid and focused, examining those details that
my Inner CHILD tells me are important. And I am a better person for
listening to it and talking with it.
But therere so many other exercises we must explore here, so onward.
We channel the great authors and artists of the past and present,
provided we have allowed our subconscious to train us to listen to its
gifts. You can do this easily enough right now: take your favorite book
and type it verbatim, word for word, into a whole new manuscript that
you call your own. This will take many hours and will be well worth the
time and effort. The artwork of your fave author will flood you with new
energy, enthusiasm and purpose, showing you that writing your first book
is doable. It can and will be done, and you will be the one to do it. Its
similar to watching one of those super-talented Murano glass-blowers in
Venice. Mindblowing! And when you get home, youre filled with a new
level of energy and enthusiasm for your own artwork.
Back to your fave book: as you type each word, sentence, paragraph and
chapter, you actually see the entire process of designing and building and
sharing a great story, as if you were standing over the shoulder of that great
author and watched her write it, one chapter at a time, from beginning
to end. You see how she uses little turns of phrase, just the right words to
61
describe character and place, and how she weaves subplots among each
other intricately right up to the denouement.
I feel this is one of the most helpful exercises you will ever do. Ever.
When I did it, it was well after I had begun my writing career and had
published articles and books. I took one of Doug Preston and Lincoln
Childs books, The Ice Limit, and typed it out as I suggested above. It was
a grand journey that helped me become an even better writer and author
than I already was. I never couldve predicted how much it helped until I
just sat down for a week and did it.
When you do this exercise, you will absorb the brilliance of someone
whose work you admire, and have made it your own. Sort of. You will
feel like youre the one who created it, and youll admire it for days, pat
yourself on the back for having produced a bestseller. Its a great feeling
and I strongly encourage you to do it. I only did it once in its entirety, but
I have done it in small chunks with other great authors works, especially
those whose books I didnt normally read for fun. I simply wanted to
channel them and see how they went about what they did for a passionate
living. I felt like they were mentoring me through their process of writing
a great story, sharing with me all their little singing details and nuances,
their tricks and tools, and it didnt cost me a dime. Only my time, energy,
enthusiasm, passion and effort.
How can you beat that arrangement? You couldnt pay an author any
amount of cash to take that kind of time to teach you like this, sharing
what makes them tick-tick-tick and go BOOM!
Okay, on to the next adventure!
Pick a book similar to your planned first book and read it. Really read
the thing. Not fast, but for fun and enjoyment. Dont try to edit it or make
it better in any way. Just read it for the sheer pleasure and enjoyment. This
will immediately tell you that some other writer, a published author who
shares your interest, took the time to write that book. This exercise does
not require a whole lot of explaining, so Ill keep this one light and breezy.
If they can do it, so can you. Now go out and prove it, Miss Writer-
Soon-To-Be-Published-Author.
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Now for the challenging exercise, as if the ones above werent exciting,
stimulating and inspiring enough: take a book by an author you admire
and like, and edit it. I know, we havent discussed editing as a valuable tool
you will need and use after you produce your first draft, so this will be an
introduction. A trial by fire. But its not a fire that will burn you. Rather,
it will inspire and motivate you, plus teach you the beginnings of how to
edit your own artwork. I love this exercise, because I do it every single time
I read another authors book. I read for fun, yes, and I also read critically,
always making little notes in margins or on pieces of paper that I feel
would make this book much better.
Interestingly, I have done this so many times and actually shared my
edits with some authors, which earned me editing credits in their novels
and books, or perhaps a spot on their Acknowledgments page. It also got
me some great subsequent business with some authors.
Fun story: I did this with one of Dan Browns novels, back when he was
a no-name author who sold maybe a total of 2,500 copies of his previous
books, including Angels & Demons. He then rang me out of the blue one
day and invited me to read his latest book and do a critique of it, especially
his character Silas, a Jesuit assassin. He sent me an Advanced Reading
Copy (ARC) of the book in late 2001, as I recall, and I went through the
entire book and made a lot of suggestions. It was a great story and went
on to become the greatest-selling novel of all time: The Da Vinci Code. Did
the same with Angels & Demons.
That exercise wasnt planned by my conscious self; my Inner CHILD
encouraged me to do it, and it has paid off in a huge way. What a fantastic
surprise!
As you type your edits, say them out loud so your own artwork seeds
your Inner CHILD with your contributions. Tear it apart and make it the
best it can be, and please do not be meek here. You need to be brutal but
accurate in what you suggest as edits. Make it a much better story than the
one you started with.
If youre feeling really bold (or stupid), organize your edits well and
send them, along with a cover letter, to the author of that book you just
63
made a whole lot better. In your follow-up letter, ask the author of the
book you ripped apart if you can be the editor of her next book.
I was teasing when I said stupid above. Its not a stupid thing to do. Its
cool and it not only will teach you a lot about you and your own artwork,
but it will also show others that you are good at what you do. If they like
your work, as Dan Brown did mine, they may even hire you for future
work or ask for further input on their work.
Strange things happen every day in our beautiful world. Make it happen
for you, dear Writer.
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Hollywood Shorthand:
Pitch Your Story To Yourself First
B
efore you begin the process of writing your first book, get yourself
excited about it. Think about it all the time. Take it to bed with
you, like a delicious lover you savor for hours, days, weeks. Go
slowly and let it make love to you. No, Im not kidding. Your first book
is like your first passionate love and lover: sizzles and sparks and mind-
blowing dynamite-sex that seemingly last forever. And then some.
Again, no kidding. Remember that reckless abandon? When you just
devoured your lover, suspending that demon we know as time and all in it?
Getting lost inside their mind and body and soul, coming together like two
warm bodies of salted and spiced water, never knowing where one ends
and the other starts. A fertile miasma of rich and provocative thoughts,
ideas, beliefs, and wishes and hopes and dreams. Grand fantasies, all.
That, dear Writer, will be your first book. And if youre a great lover, it
wont be your last.
See your story in your head before you start writing anything. Maybe
its a grand movie or film. If so, how would you describe it? Try using
what movie writers and producers use all the time to pitch their work,
Hollywood shorthand. Two different movies whose plot/characters
are similar to your own, so you can meld them together into one gift to
yourself.
Jaws meets Star Trek: alien creatures that invade earth from space; they
fly in without ships.
James Bond meets Jurassic Park: the cool guy who fights flying Jaws-like
aliens.
The Da Vinci Code meets Independence Day: smart team that investigates,
finds a terrible conspiracy at the highest levels of humanity, and ultimately
destroys the flying aliens.
Hollywood shorthand was designed to be a 30-second elevator pitch
that conjured up a vivid scene in the mind of the beholder. When fusing two
cool films into one, you give the audience a simple yet powerful measure
of the magnitude of your intended earthquake-of-a-story, something that
will rock their socks down to their ankles, little donuts of desire, mystery,
intrigue, all designed to stimulate them on deep, subliminal levels.
This, of course, works well for you, not just another person or audience.
You can influence your own emotions by doing this exercise, using many
different films and movies or tv shows. Try it many times until you find
just the right combination of entertaining visuals that resonate right down
to your very DNA.
And if youre especially creative, you can try using this approach with
songs instead of movies and tv shows. I havent tried it, so please ring me
with your results.
These exercises are meant to be done over many days, allowing these
images to seed your Inner CHILD with lush, fruitful and provocative
visions that will eventually morph into a grand story. Your grand story.
You must be able to turn yourself on to your artwork first, long before
you unleash it on the public. Now get out there and stimulate your beautiful
mind.
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One Word
T
his is another critical task, coming up with One Word that will
tell your entire story. I do this to encourage you to focus on a
theme that represents your entire book. Please think about what
your story represents, write down in free-flow a list of many words, then go
back and look at each one, asking yourself, Does this One Word tell the
essence of my story? When youre done editing and picking and choosing,
this One Word should be the absolute distillate of all your thoughts about
what you propose to write.
The reason why I ask you to start with One Word is because it compels
you to reduce your entire story to its bare essence, a tiny molecule, a kernel
of matter packed with enough energy to rocket you to start the writing
process and then maintain it to the last page of your book.
If you were preparing a lovely dessert, say, a cappuccino mousse
cheesecake, youd have several key ingredients that, when blended together
just right, baked at the perfect temp, and splashed with a delicate mousse
topping, yielded the most yummy creation ever.
How would you reduce this wonderful sweet to One Word?
I mean, really, what would you call it? Think about it some, savor the
whole, and come up with One Word for it to tell your family and friends.
SweetHeaven.
Okay, so I cheated a bit.
DelishLove.
Oops, I did it again.
Or just Love.
Point is, your One Word reflects how you see your own artwork, not
what others tell you. Love says it all, especially when youre pouring your
love into this deliciously artful creation. Love. I like that one.
Doing this exercise also seeds in your subconscious this One Word,
allowing your Inner CHILD to conjure ideas that you never even thought
of. Its e = mc2 here: one tiny word, when digested by your subconscious,
yields a huge amount of energy, i.e. more words that are strung together
meaningfully and artfully. You may have great ideas for your first book, but
your subconscious will add many more that will blow you away. And your
readers, too.
Write it down on one piece of paper and let it sit for a week. Dont
think about it, read it again for the whole week or even think about it. Get
lost in other activities.
At end of one week, read your One Word and see how it resonates
within you: Does it conjure up your story? What does it say to you? Is
it representative of what your story says? Do you feel you need to find a
better One Word?
If youre satisfied with your One Word, then press on to the next step.
If you come up with a new One Word, then repeat steps above until youre
satisfied with it and what it says about your story and how it makes you
feel when you read that One Word.
Examples:
Gold: may be a book about the history of gold and how its been abused
by the powers that be.
Love: could be a book about the biochemistry that underlies what we
know as LOVE.
Happiness: a book about what it takes to be happy, using a cool story
about a couple that struggles daily and suffers many losses, but still has a
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One Word
happy home and each is a happy person who shares their happiness with
others.
Redemption: a man gets divorced, falls into a deep depression, gets a
DUI and almost kills himself. In time, he meets someone special who helps
guide him back to reality and places a mirror in front of him, allowing him
to see his inner beauty and worth.
Regardless of what your One Word is, take the time to think about
it and do it knowing it is one of the first major building blocks that will
serve as the foundation for the remainder of your first artful creation, your
delish cappuccino mousse cheesecake.
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Five Bullets
A
fter you settle on a suitable One Word, its time to think more
deeply and develop and expand your theme. Start dreaming about
your story in terms of a beginning, middle and end. Thinking in
this way breaks down your story into its most simple parts, much like you
did when distilling your entire story down to just One Word.
When considering a beginning, middle and an end to your story, write
down those first three bullets, but label them 1 for the beginning, 3 for the
middle, and 5 for the end of your story. Bullet 2 will serve as a transition
from the beginning to the middle, and bullet 4 will be a transition from
the middle to the end.
An example of a fiction piece or novel, based on our One Word, Love:
1. Boy meets girl, has a blast for two years in a blissful relationship.
2. Things start to go awry when one of girls friends tells her the boy is
cheating on girl.
3. Girl believes her friend, confronts boy who is in a state of shock,
denying the whole accusation, and so girl leaves him in a flash, goes home
to parents.
4. Boy is distraught, falls into a depression, then suddenly comes out of
it when the girls friend visits him and spills the beans about what she did
Five Bullets
and why. She has been in love with him the whole time, and even tells him
so, hoping the boy will be with her.
5. Boy rejects girls friend and runs to the girl at her parents home, begs
for an audience, shares with her the evidence, and all is forgiven. Life is
blissful once again for the couple.
Remind of you those ninth-grade romances? Painful, huh? Sorry to
bring up the storyline; it popped into my head. Besides, it reminded me of
ninth grade and made me smile the whole time I was writing this.
Nonetheless, only you can determine what the elements of your story
are, so please think carefully about how you wish to structure your story.
If youre not sure about structure, it is the mechanical and physical way
you lay out the entire story. For a novel, it may be as described above,
with a beginning, middle and end, plus the two transitions. For a narrative
nonfiction book that tells a tale of a disaster at sea, like The Perfect Storm,
you may follow Sebastian Jungers work and tell it chronologically,
weaving various scenarios into the storyline that describe what may have
occurred during the entire ordeal aboard the Andrea Gail. No one survived
the disaster, so Junger had to make good sound guesses about how it all
unfolded. He structured it as a chronological story, peppered with many
hypotheses about how the men acted during various parts of the fateful
journey, how they reacted to the vessel overturning, and what they went
through in their last minutes of life.
My book here is not showing you how to structure your story; you must
do this on your own, after careful research and reading other peoples work
that is similar to your proposed book.
The five elements, your Five Bullets, are the foundation of everything
else you write, so take two weeks to design these Five Bullets, set them
aside periodically, and allow your Inner CHILD to stew over them,
consider them from all possible angles.
When done, set these aside for two more weeks. Do not consciously
think about your Five Bullets. I know, dont think about pink elephants:
youll likely think about them every day unless you get lost in other activities
important to you. Its critical to allow your subconscious to carefully
consider these Five Bullets. Your Inner CHILD needs time because its a
71
child, and children sometimes dont take in a lot of meaningful information

all at once; they must consider things slowly and methodically.
That statement isnt entirely accurate, because your Inner CHILD
does, in fact, absorb a large amount of complex information in a short
period of time, especially during a crisis situation, but please allow me this
seemingly contradictory point for the purpose of asking you to set things
aside so your Inner CHILD can stew on them.
At the end of those two weeks, read your Five Bullets carefully. Read
them over and over again, picturing your entire story based on what you
read. Do these Five Bullets adequately tell the story you wish to convey?
If they do, then move on to the next step.
If they do not, then start over and repeat the steps above until you are
satisfied with your Five Bullets.
While Ive kept this chapter short and simple, the process itself,
formulating Five Bullets, is quite involved, though, because you must
think carefully and logically about each bullet point, from the beginning
to the middle to the end. The success of what you do next, writing 25
Descriptive Sentences, will depend entirely upon the quality of your Five
Bullets, so make them the best they can be. And if you need more time,
please take it and make the absolute best of it.
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25 Descriptive Sentences
B
y now, youve stewed over your Five Bullets for a few weeks,
allowing your Inner CHILD to digest, analyze and break them
down into discrete units that have their own unique characteristics,
and generate a distillate that will be used to construct the 25 Descriptive
Sentences.
This chapter is short on narrative and long on examples, so please pay
close attention to how I have taken the Five Bullets from the preceding
chapter and expanded them. I will take only the first bullet of the Five
Bullets and expand it as a good illustration for you.
You will expand each of the Five Bullets into five longer and more
descriptive elementssentences. When you originally wrote the Five
Bullets, you constructed them with a beginning to your story (bullet 1),
a transition from beginning to middle (bullet 2), a middle (bullet 3), a
transition from middle to end (bullet 4), and the end of your story (bullet
5). As you take each bullet, say, number 1, and expand it further, you will
not necessarily have for each new set of bullets a beginning, middle and
end as you did before, but rather a continuation and expansion of the
preexisting bullets. The idea here is to build more detail into your ever-
expanding book by fleshing out each of the Five Bullets into 25 Descriptive
Sentences.
This progressive and logical expansion will allow you to create more
detail and depth for your story, and to examine the characters and setting
more closely and accurately, drawing out each element until it is in full
bloom.
Each sentence should be a complete illustrative statement that is
accurate, brief and concise and yet should contain as much information
and energy and passion as you can pack into it. This is not the time to hold
back, to be modest. Be creative when you write these sentences. Practice
the art of writing, if only in simple sentences. Remember, you are allowing
yourself the liberty of expression, which is one of the greatest gifts you can
give yourself. It is a full release of your inner creativity.
It may sound contradictory, but try to include only the very basic
information about the five new elements of the beginning, the five new
elements of the middle, and five new elements of the end of your story.
The transitions should be carefully thought out, as they stem from and
give rise to the other elements.
When done with your 25 Descriptive Sentences, do not go back and
edit it in any way. Set it aside for about one month. As with the other
elements of this method, please do not think about the 25 Descriptive
Sentences during that four-week hiatus.
Get lost in other work or play.
Do not think about pink elephants!
At the end of the period, read your 25 Descriptive Sentences carefully,
see how they resonate within you.
Do they make your DNA sing a pleasant melody?
Do the five new elements of the beginning describe it vividly?
Do the five new elements of the middle describe it vividly?
Do the five new elements of the end describe it vividly?
I use repetition (vividly) here for good reason: your words should
convey a rich, colorful and fully textured vision of your story.
Are the transitional elements smooth and vivid?
Can you see the general story from reading all 25 Descriptive Sentences?
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25 Descriptive Sentences
Are you happy with the results? If so, press on. If not, start over until
youre 100% satisfied with your work.
Now lets revisit the previous Five Bullets and show an example of how
to expand the first bullet point:
1. Boy meets girl, has a blast for two years in a blissful relationship.
2. Things start to go awry when one of girls friends tells her the boy is
cheating on girl.
3. Girl believes friend, confronts boy who is in a state of shock, denying
the whole accusation, and so girl leaves him in a flash, goes home to
parents.
4. Boy is distraught, falls into a depression, then suddenly comes out
of it when the girls friend visits him and spills the beans about what she
did and why. She has been in love with him the whole time, and even tells
him so, hoping the boy will accept her.
5. Boy rejects girls friend and runs to the girl at her parents home,
begs for an audience, shares with her the evidence, and all is forgiven. Life
is blissful once again for the couple.
Lets take the first bullet and work our magic on it.
1. Boy meets girl, has a blast for two months in a blissful relationship.
The five new sentences, your expansion of the first of those Five Bullets,
may look something like this:
1a. Paul returns from a tour of duty in the Army and, as he runs through
a park, spots Caitlin sitting on a bench, reading a book, meets her.
1b. The early week of their relationship are spent in each others arms,
rarely going out of each others sight.
1c. Caitlin goes against her parents wishes, moves in with Paul.
1d. Both have now created that elusive third entity that is bigger than
both of them combined, and marriage is now in the air.
1e. On a balmy May evening, as the sun sets over the Gulf of Mexico,
Paul proposes to Caitlin, she accepts his offer, and they buy a home on the
beach.
This short example illustrates the process of taking the Five Bullets and
dilating their content so you can see your story more clearly and in greater
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detail. And the more you expand the content, the more you see your story
unfolding right in front of you.
Since this particular step is much bigger in scope and will take longer
to write, I suggest that when done, put these 25 Descriptive Sentences
aside for about one month. As before, do not even think of what youve
just done. You must tell your bus driver and typist to take a vacation or pay
more attention to whats cooking in the present, rather than consider all
the hard work your subconscious put into constructing the 25 Descriptive
Sentences.
At this point, your Inner CHILD will take the reins from your conscious
self and start to absorb and comprehend all this new information. This
step takes a lot of time, so please allow yourself that one month of time
away from your writing and let your Inner CHILD do its intricate and
clever thing. During that time, your subconscious will further design your
story and start delving into the options and possibilities.
Oh, the possibilities.
No, the probabilities!
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Synopsis
W
ow, youve completed the 25 Descriptive Sentences! Good for
you. No, good for your Inner CHILD, who deserves much
of the credit here. And good for your typist who slaved over
the keyboard for hours. And good also for your bus driver for driving your
typist to work each day. Woo-hoo!
Its a team exercise and youve done brilliantly thus far.
Now its time to take those and expand them even further, this time
into a form that is less short and choppy and more of a narrative, a free-
flowing story that will give you a fine glimpse into what your story really
looks and feels like.
The Synopsis is a mini version of your book, written as a narrative, not
bullets or a sentence outline. Weve all read in books and articles that a
synopsis is the summary of your book, something you write after the book
is done, a piece to send out to literary agents and publishers.
The Synopsis I speak of in this book is a summary of your first book,
but you will dream it up before you actually write your first book, not after.
After youve actually written your first book and need to conjure up
a synopsis for those literary agents and publishers, if youre going this
route, your new synopsis will likely have changed because your story will
now be fleshed out and contain elements that you did not have when you
wrote what I term your Synopsis.
You will now take the 25 Descriptive Sentences and, perhaps just a
few sentences at a time, feed those into your Inner CHILD, let it digest
them overnight, then write the appropriate sections of your Synopsis the
next morning. Sometimes youll need to have pen and paper or a voice
recorder on hand as soon as you wake up, because the recently digested
information will all come tumbling out upon awakening. This process is
a good sign, as it tells you that your Inner CHILD is providing you a lot
of great information all at once because it trusts you and wants to share.
You are probably already saying to yourself that this is very encouraging,
because it also gives you a glimpse into what your WOW may be: a large-
volume flood of information from your subconscious. Thats fantastic news!
Again, each night before you go to bed, feed your Inner CHILD with a
few sentences you wish to expand to a part of your Synopsis. Write them
down again, say them aloud, read them again a few times, then go to bed.
But, first things first: the first section of your Synopsis. . . .
Using the example from the chapter on the 25 Descriptive Sentences,
I suggest you start with the first five sentences, which comprise the
beginning of your story. Remember that these five sentences represent an
expanded version of the first bullet of your Five Bullets.
After your Inner CHILD has provided you with new information that
youve written down, you will then see the combined five sentences of your
storys beginning as a lengthy free-flowing narrative that takes the shape
of a story.
To save time and space, I will be using only those first five sentences, the
beginning of your story, to illustrate how to expand them into one coherent
section, the beginning of your Synopsis. You will use the same procedure
for the other sections and ultimately construct the entire Synopsis.
1a. Paul returns from a tour of duty in the Army and, as he runs through
a park, spots Caitlin sitting on a bench, reading a book, meets her.
1b. The early week of their relationship are spent in each others arms,
rarely going out of each others sight.
1c. Caitlin goes against her parents wishes, moves in with Paul.
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Synopsis
1d. Both have now created that elusive third entity that is bigger than
both of them combined, and marriage is now in the air.
1e. On a balmy May evening, as the sun sets over the Gulf of Mexico,
Paul proposes to Caitlin, she accepts his offer, and they buy a home on
the beach.
Okay, this is where were starting, with the first five sentences of your 25
Descriptive Sentences. When writing the Synopsis, imagine your taking
each sentence above and letting it run wild in a wide and expansive field.
Dont hold back; just let things happen.
So, lets begin by taking the first bullet (1a) and expanding it into a
short narrative that has just enough description to hold your interest and
further the story a bit. You can write all you want in these exercises, but
I caution you to use restraint. Why? Because its best to start out small
and short, rather than exercise your new-found legs and start sprinting.
Somewhere down the line, you may tire of writing so much all at once and
then stop working altogether.
So please take it slowly and in small blocks and chunks. Youll see how
much (or little) I have written, taking each bullet point and expanding
only so far and only so much. Its not because Im being lazy as I write this
book. Its because I am illustrating the importance of starting out small.
Example (short Synopsis):
Pauls back from his four-year tour in the US Army as an Airborne
Ranger. Even though its only been a few years, his hometown has
changed somehow, gotten much smaller. He feels too big for it, needs a lot
of space, so on his first full day back in town he takes a long run through a
large park and spots a presence sitting on a bench just ahead and off to his
right. The path toward this inviting presence is out of his way, so he angles
off and moves toward her, stopping in front of her, says hello and asks
what shes reading. Something about synchronicity and celestiophysics,
she says, and how odd and mysterious the Universe is, how she wishes she
could put her hand in it, stir it up and fingerpaint her future.
No one couldve predicted it: they spend the entire week in each
others arms, rarely going out of each others sight, choosing to remain
in Pauls apartment, eating crisps, drinking chardonnay, and watching
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downloaded movies on his little laptop. Both are smitten with each other;
this is clear. Each is a young kitten, drunk on afternoon sunshine and
eating and playing with shoelaces for days.
Caitlin goes against her parents wishes, moves in with Paul without
having given it much thought. Theyre in full freefall now, two beautiful
bodies of water . . . where you cant tell where one ends and the other
starts. Everyone around them is concerned about Caitlins sudden fall
from practicality and convention, but she ignores all and is oblivious to
any danger that may be present.
Over the days, Caitlin shares with Paul her views on the Universe
and synchronicity and celestiophysics, and how we are all influenced by
the unknown entities lurking out there well beyond Planet Earth. She
explains her hypothesis that when two soulmates come together, they
create an elusive third entity that is bigger than both of them combined.
Marriage is now in the air, drifting effortlessly and inexorably toward
them, and will soon envelope them in a blissful and intoxicating warmth.
After a long evening walk on the beach in front of Pauls apartment,
he stops her. They admire and absorb the fiery red and orange sunset over
the Gulf of Mexico, he kneels down in front of her, takes her hand, places
a small ring on her finger. Before he can even say anything, Caitlin takes
his face in her hands, gently pulls him up, say, Of course Ill marry you . . .
I painted this scene the moment we met . . . its been in the stars for weeks
. . . what took you so long?
See? All I did was to take a single bullet, densely packed with energy,
and blew it up into a lengthy narrative, the beginning of this little story.
80
Outline
Y
our final Outline is THE most important part of this whole
process up to now, as it leads directly to your first book. If the
Outline is off in some way, the effect will be magnified and your
first book will be off even more. And when your Outline is right on in
every way, your first book will be grand. . . .
It may seem funny to be starting off with a One Word, in time moving
to an outline-like Five Bullets and 25 Descriptive Sentences, retreating
back to a narrative-style Synopsis, and then back to the Outline. Yes, it
seems strange, but theres a method to this apparent bouncy madness and
Ill explain.
First, dreaming up your One Word encourages you to find the theme
of your story. Doing the Five Bullets takes that One Word and expands
it to a logical skeleton of your story: the beginning, middle and end, with
transitions. So what if theyre kind of like an outline at first? Doesnt
matter. It just happens that way. Your Inner CHILD needs these elements,
in their exact form I have developed, to assimilate and digest and analyze
all the information youre seeding into it. As we already know, its your
Inner CHILD that is doing all the magical work here, so when I say youre
seeding the CHILD with all this great information, I really mean youre
simply telling your Inner CHILD what it already knows, but its coming
in a very logical, building-block shape and form from your conscious self,
encouraging further communication between both entities.
Your subconscious needs the One Word to get some grand idea of
whats to come; again, it was the one that came up with it to begin with,
but it still sees the One Word as a wonderful gift. Seeding it with that One
Word, be it Love or Gold or Redemption, sends it on a wildly adventurous
ride. When it receives the Five Bullets, it then has an even better notion
about what will transpire. The 25 Descriptive Sentences then will flesh
out those Five Bullets and start to paint a vivid set of images with color
and texture and sound. Your CHILD will see these further gifts and run
wildly with them.
The Synopsis will be the first true start of your story, mostly because it
is in a narrative form that is easily read from beginning to end. It lacks the
abbreviated and compressed nature of the One Word, Five Bullets and 25
Descriptive Sentences, and fills the Inner CHILD with a strong, radiant
warmth that portends the future, your final first draft of your first book.
The Outline is a necessary step, seemingly a backward one to the short,
choppy bullets and sentences, and by doing it in outline form, it essentially
allows you to formulate all your thoughts about your first book and write
your entire story in a capsule. By doing it this way, you write the story
nearly in its entirety, but because youre doing it in compressed format,
you will write it faster. Thats one of the purposes of this exercise: to get to
the final story as quickly as possible . . . without actually writing the first
draft just yet.
Make sense? I certainly hope so. I cannot belabor the points Ive made
above, because they all have a logical, defined purpose and are in a clear,
well-organized format. A building-block format that maximizes the
potential and output of your conscious self and your subconscious.
Now, there are two ways you can actually write the Outline: you can
directly use the 25 Descriptive Sentences and simply flesh those out much
further, writing an even more expansive, narrative-style Outline. Or, you
can abbreviate those sentences in a true roman-numeral outline format.
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Outline
My example below focuses only on the longer narrative-style of Outline

development. While it is fine to use, I do not recommend switching to the
short, choppy roman-numeral Outline style, as it means you must convert
your long sentences into shorter sentences or bullet for the Outline. I
mention it as a possibility, so you have the option of trying it if this is more
your style.
Personally, I would take the 25 Descriptive Sentences and run with
those, i.e. further expand each one and use the same style of writing.
You also can inject short, choppy bullet points when fleshing out the
finer details of certain sections, like making descriptive remarks about
a particular character or setting, and then return to the long descriptive
sentences. These little bullets can be thought of as supplementary notes
or musings. So, in effect, you would be using the longer, narrative-style
Outline, peppered with little bullets of comments, notes about characters
and settings, etc.
Further examples of what to add as additional Outline information:
if you come up with cool quotes and passages and dialogue, add it to
the relevant areas of your Outline immediately. Dont leave that valuable
information inside your head or on some pieces of paper. Your head is
the most polluted and most dangerous place on the planet. Never trust
valuable information to just sit there unguarded.
If your subconscious tells you something, write it down, because it will
probably drop that thought in favor of the next one. Remember, youre
dealing with a child here, one that easily gets distracted, loses interest in
what is going on, because the world has so much to offer in the way of
prime stimulation. Get that information onto paper, real or virtual. And
do it right away. If you wait, youll probably lose it.
A final note of encouragement before we begin: by the time youre done
with your Outline, your first book will all but have written itself. Woo-
hoo!
So, how to start your Outline: first, take your Synopsis and read it
aloud. How does it sound to you? Does it tell your story in a nutshell? Are
you excited about it? Does it have any holes that need filling? If so, youll
83
need to go back and work on those shortcomings before moving on to the

Outline. If it reads well and tells the story in a short format, then proceed.
Before you go to bed, read the Synopsis aloud. Seed what you all (bus
driver, typist, Inner CHILD) have concocted as a team, let it ferment
overnight or, if necessary, for a few days. It might be a good idea to ask
your subconscious which form of Outline to use. Hey, this might be a
stretch for your subconscious, but please ask anyway. You never know.
When you awaken, youll be ready to start your Outline. If you must
go to a primary job first, please write down or voice-record anything you
can remember about your dream or message or . . . anything upon waking
up. When you return home from work later, find a relaxing time and get
crackin.
Please and thank you.
Herere some explanations of the different types of Outline I suggested
earlier:
Sentence Outline: use your 25 Descriptive Sentences and further expand
the story and fill in as much information as possible for the Outline. If you
do it this way, like I always do, then your first book will all but write itself.
No kidding.
Ive written 100-page Outlines for 400-page books in this way and,
when it came time to write the first draft, I was overwhelmed by how easy
the writing of the actual first draft went. It felt like a roller-coaster ride
that started at 6 am one morning and didnt end until three weeks later.
Wow! Is that a wild rush or what?
Also, you may even look at the above method of constructing your
Outline as a highly expanded Synopsis.
Traditional (roman numerals) or bulleted Outline: you can certainly
use the valuable information in your 25 Descriptive Sentences, but in
this case youd be converting them to short, choppy bullets that may be
easier for you to understand and work with. Plus, you can power through
the Outline in very short order, writing very short bullets that adequately
describe your entire story and all the characters and settings in it. You
really must discover for yourself which works best for you, and you can
only do this by experimenting with different methods.
84
Outline
Over the years, I have done just that, experimented with different
methods. Nowadays, since Im working with a new author, Rio Ramirez,
on his short novels (69-Minute Novels, or novels you can read in about an
hour), I have him go through all the steps in his mind and dive right into
writing a first draft. Weve found this process to be excellent, but it was a
very slow evolution getting there. Im grateful that I took the time early on
to study what works for me and my personality, my chemistry, then shared
it with others. Had I not done it this wayslowly and methodicallyI
may still be sitting in the same hard wooden chair, staring at that old
computer monitor and wondering when I was gonna start writing the first
draft of a book.
That wont happen to you, though. You will read this book carefully, do
the exercises, find what works for you, write that first draft, and then sit
back and smile.
Trust me: I see it happening just this way.
But, first things first: your Outline. Please note that I am taking only
the first paragraph from the Synopsis, as there is little time and space to
include them all. I pray that I am able to get my message across using only
this one example.
Lets take first paragraph of the story example from the Synopsis
chapter:
Ranger. Even though its only been a few years, his hometown has
changed somehow, gotten much smaller. He feels too big for it, needs a lot
of space, so on his first full day back in town he takes a long run through a
large park and spots a presence sitting on a bench just ahead and off to his
right. The path toward this inviting presence is out of his way, so he angles
off and moves toward her, stopping in front of her, says hello and asks
what shes reading. Something about synchronicity and celestiophysics,
she says, and how odd and mysterious the Universe is, how she wishes she
could put her hand in it, stir it up and fingerpaint her future.
The first paragraph introduces both Paul and Caitlin. We see that Paul
has grown up as a man, having served in an elite unit in the Army, and
now that hes returned home, he feels claustrophobic, maybe even lost. So
85
Paul steps out and does what he loves: running. As hes running through
a park in town, his sensors zero in on an eerie presence and, like a good
Airborne Ranger, he sets off to investigate it. And there he meets the love
of his life, Caitlin, who is enjoying a great read under the warmth of the
sun and sky, perhaps hugged by the trees in the park.
When expanding a paragraph like this one from the Synopsis, you
do not necessarily have to use the same wording, although it is an easy
trap to fall into. The words and sentences in the above paragraph are just
placeholders for much bigger and more detailed ideas that will comprise
your Outline.
A first step toward expanding the paragraph were using as an example:
Take the first sentence alone, write or type it out.
Think about what it says, then imagine it getting larger in size and
scope.
Start writing things that come to mind, thoughts that improve and
expand the information already present.
Keep writing until you have essentially expanded that first sentence by
about five times.
An example, further expanding the first sentence from the Caitlin and
Paul story:
Ranger, where he was a machine gunner and then team leader in a rifle
squad. He saw combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and led his men
on many a mission deep into enemy territory. Paul saw the ugly side of
humanity and quickly learned how to adapt to it, never once losing his
own humanity and descending into nastiness and depression. Missing
home each day, Paul longed for the moment when he would hang up his
spurs, say goodbye to his brothers-in-arms, and return to the place of his
birth, the only place in the world where he truly felt safe.
I took the first sentence from our story on page 85, and painted it in
many colors and textures so you could get a better and deeper feel for who
Paul is. We now see Paul has seen horrors of war, yet he has not lost the
boy inside his heart. Hes a good person who searches and strives for peace
and tranquility.
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Outline
You can take this newly developed paragraph and expand it even
further, adding Pauls famous funny lines and quotes he was known for
in the Army. Paul was the comic relief for his platoon, and often brought
smiles to the faces of his fellow Rangers during the darkest of times.
My personal feeling is that, if you can and wish to expand your initial
thoughts greatly, then do it. Youre not constrained by my suggestions
about increasing it only five times over. No way. I suggested this because
I felt it was adequate enough to use when you write your first book. And
I didnt want to discourage anyone by saying they should be expanding
things by, say, 10 or more times. When you read something like that, it can
appear daunting: He wants me to take one simple sentence and blow it
up to 10 times longer and more detailed? Is he crazy?
With this said, you can and should add as much valuable detail as you
feel. The more you write and share in your Outline, the easier it will be
when you actually write your first book. Like I said before, I often have
written 100-page Outlines. The first draft pretty much wrote itself.
Theres also something else to be said for writing extensive Outlines:
you place your notes and comments and bits of dialogue within the
Outline, so you can add them to the first draft or consult them when you
need information about a character, the plot, a certain setting. The Outline
is the place to store everything you will need to write that first draft.
Soooo, back to the Outline: for as long as it takes, you now will use
each sentence from your Synopsis to construct a highly detailed Outline
for your first book. I used the first sentence I created as an example for
you. Please study how I did it, what elements I used and how I expanded
it from a simple sentence to a long and detailed paragraph.
When youre done, youll be amazed at how much information you
actually had stored inside your subconscious even before you began the
Outline. Thats the magic and beauty of your subconscious: it will surprise
you to no end and provide you gifts you never dreamed possible.
87
Write Your First Book
D
rum roll here: this is what youve been waiting for, planning to
do, writing the first draft of your first book. Im excited for you!
Ive been here before, having written many an Outline, and have
had those butterflies swimming around in my tummy, dying for a light
wind to alight for points yet to be discovered.
Please believe me: I know how you feel. Its exciting and adventurous
and even a little frightening. Youre asking yourself: Okay, Ive gotten this
far, but can I really do this? Am I capable? Will it all turn out okay?
The answers are simple: Yes. Yes. Maybe, who knows?
The first two answers are definite, because, well, you have brought
yourself this far and you can and will write your first book. As for how it
all turns out, I cannot say. You must do the absolute best you can, bring
in other people to assist you, and then go from there. Of course, there are
many other steps you must take before you see your baby in print, real or
virtual. But lets not get ahead of ourselves here. We have one task to do
and that is to take your Outline and, being very patient, write each day
until the first draft is done.
I see were procrastinating here, so lets break that bond and get crackin
on your first draft, okay?
Using your Outline, you will slowly and methodically write your first
book. When you write, wear blinders: dont worry or be concerned about
other people who are writing their books in a fraction of the time you may
be writing yours. Youre not like those people and theyre not like you.
Besides, its YOUR first book, and your first book is not their book. Its
YOURS.
Write something every day, even if you feel like crap. At your regular
job, you still have to show up for work and get something done, even if
youre not 100%, right? Writing is your job, too, so treat it respectfully and
get the work done each day, and be happy for, and proud of, yourself for
having done it.
Do not edit your work as you write it. Put everything down on paper
until the entire first draft of your book is done. Remember: the first draft
of your first book is just a brain dump of everything your subconscious
has ordered your typist to put to paper. The next chapter will delve into
editing your first book, because this is what writing is all about: editing
and polishing and making your first book the best it can be.
Before writing the next days topic, look over the part of your Outline
to seed it in your mind. Read that portion of your Outline before you go to
bed, write it down by hand, say it out loud. Let your Inner CHILD know
whats coming and that whats coming is very important to you.
Now that we have the ground rules, lets start with another example,
using the previous story about Paul and Caitlin.
Heres the expanded Outline version of the very first sentence of the
very first paragraph. It marks the beginning of your story:
squad. He saw combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and led his men
on many a mission deep into enemy territory. Paul saw the ugly side of
humanity and quickly learned how to adapt to it, never once losing his
own humanity and descending into nastiness and depression. Missing
home each day, Paul longed for the moment when he would hang up his
spurs, say goodbye to his brothers-in-arms, and return to the place of his
birth, the only place in the world where he truly felt safe.
89
Please read it over again. And over. Yes, again.

Once your subconscious has digested this little piece and made sense
of its content and details, it will send the results back up to your conscious
self and store it in your Warehouse of Words, your WOW. Cool?
The time has come to take these elements and turn them into a flowing
story of narrative and dialogue. This book, How To Write Your First Book,
is not about how to show you all the creative, artistic and literary steps in
performing this particular step, but I will give you another example of how
you might go about it. I hope and pray that my examples here will give you
a great idea of how you will proceed when its time to write the first draft
of your first book.
So here goes, using only the first sentence:
The air was different somehow.
Soon as we touched down and I deplaned onto the jetway, I could tell
it was different. What was it that stirred me so? The humidity was a thick
coat of paint over my skin. The rising temps almost unbearable.
Before Id left four years ago, Id hated it. No, I hated the whole place.
Really.
Walking out into a typical, boring summer day in a clean and freshly
pressed shirt was an ordeal for me. In less than a mad minute, I would be
soaking wet, wondering why I had even bothered to put on a dress shirt,
let alone anything at all. I just wanted to be all nudnik at the beach, under
the waves, on top of the waves, anywhere but in the damp, hot air that was
the baking-oven of south Florida.
So here I was again, tossed like a cheap, frozen burrito back into that
same old roaster.
And I suddenly loved it. Trying to recall my last thoughts about being
home, that is, before I signed my life away to the US Army for four long
years in a combat zone, I could no longer remember feeling anything but
happy and proud and just . . . well, content.
Do you see what I did with only that first sentence?
Lets look at the sentence once again:
90

squad.
I did not use the exact wording of the sentence to create the beginning
of this particular book. I took the essence or theme of it and expanded it,
creating a character in Paul that shows that he used to hate home and took
it for granted. Then when he returned home, he found that he suddenly
loved it. Wow. How dramatic a change hed undergone in those four years
away, and it was influenced by what he saw and did in combat as an Army
Ranger.
You will do the same with your first story: take each sentence or bullet
from the Outline and flesh it out, building up a story from scratch, using
small elements of each sentence or bullet to create a whole new atmosphere
that conveys much more to the reader and gives the story a starting point.
Please do not get bogged down trying to write The Great American Novel.
Concentrate on writing your own story based on what your subconscious
encourages you to write. It is a long and sometimes arduous process, dear
Reader, and its one you will endure with all your heart, mind and soul. It
takes time, so please be patient. Remember how you started this whole
process . . . with One Word? Then you took that One Word and expanded
it to Five Bullets. And so on.
Remember how patient you were when you began? Good. Because you
will employ this same level of patience and diligence when you actually sit
down and write your first book.
Please forgive me if I am oversimplifying all this. I am not doing it
intentionally. If you have paid careful attention throughout these pages,
done the exercises, and started with your One Word and continued
through to this current point of writing your first draft of your first book,
then youve already proven to yourself that you can do this.
You may feel daunted still, so try this as well: as you read your Outline
and take each sentence or bullet, one at a time, try speaking the story out
into a voice recorder. This may be quite new to you, so be patient. It may
be an alternative to actually writing it the first time. Who knows? It may
just be the way you go.
91
Just a thought.
Now lets move on to the next step, editing your first book. . . .
92
An Introduction To
Editing Your First Book
Books arent written, theyre rewritten. Including your

own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially
after the seventh rewrite hasnt quite done it.
Michael Crichton
I
like this quote by Mr. Crichton. It echoes my sentiments about
actually writing a book: when you do the first draft, its a fantastic feat
but still only a point of departure. Your first book, and all subsequent
books, will materialize as a giant block of marble that has most, if not all,
the necessary ingredients and elements of your story. Now all you need do
is take a bunch of hand tools and start chiseling away the stuff that doesnt
matter.
I used to be a first-draft writer. That is, I would never write a second
draft, let alone take the time to edit the thing to a high shine. And I
was pretty good at writing those first drafts, too. Most of my articles for
magazines and journals were accepted as is, with minor exceptions. That
process encouraged me to remain a first-draft writer and, in effect, kept
me from growing into a great writer of many drafts, edits and polishes.
My growth had been stunted first by my own laziness and insecurity,
then by the editors of those magazines and journals who saw my work as
commercially acceptable and thus didnt take the time to make my work
better or encourage me to do rewrites. It wasnt their fault, mind you. It
was all mine, coupled with a certain ignorance and arrogance that took a
long time to overcome. But when I finally got the message that my work
wasnt really that good, I took a decidedly different approach to it: I began
to scrutinize my first drafts, see them very critically and visualize all the
flaws, then made a concerted effort to make my work much better.
It wasnt until I got the idea to edit a bestselling authors book I loved.
When I say edit, I mean I actually read the book for fun, then re-read it
and made it better, using my skills as a writer and taking bits and pieces
from my various experiences in other jobs and travels. When I was done,
I emailed the edits to the author. And guess what? He loved them. In
fact, he hired me to edit his other books, plus I got to write small sections
of a few books and even created some new characters for him. I actually
created one character in my own name, Dino Garner, for one book, and
the main character in another book, based in no small part on my own life.
It was a rush to do this for him. His name is Mr. Steve Alten, New York
Times bestselling author of Meg, Domain, The Shell Game and many other
great novels. I am forever indebted to this wonderful author and human
being. Thank you, Steve.
With these successes, I did it more and more for other authors. The
latest one, Rio Ramirez, has a new line of novels published in November
2013, starting with Bloodsmoke. What a blast it was riding on those
adventures with Rio! Check them out on all the Amazon stores and at
AdagioPress.com.
My point is simple: I became an editor when I learned how to edit
someone elses artwork and do it professionally and passionately. And then
I started doing the same for my own manuscripts, and soon as I did, I
saw a sea change in the quality of my own work. It wasnt the drudgery I
thought it would be; it was a magical experience, being able to dive further
into my own work and see how to rearrange little threads at first, and later
major connections and moving parts of a story.
It was a little like doing underwater welding on some new all-glass hotel
under the Pacific Ocean, being in a beautiful environment, surrounded by
life-giving water, and gluing and welding things together that soon would
materialize as a work of art and wonder of the world. I use this analogy
because I was in a beautiful environment that was also daunting at first,
not to mention dangerous, but the more I did the work, the better I got.
94
An Introduction To Editing Your First Book
And as soon as I saw my work improvedramatically, I tell youthats

when the feeling of being in a daunting and dangerous environment just
floated away.
So, onto this little introduction about editing your own artwork.
Rule #1: Never fall in love with your own

writing, no matter how cool you think it is.
We all suffer from this affliction every so often, especially in the

beginning. I did it all the time, which is why I was a first-draft writer and
author for a few years. I would come up with what I thought was a very
witty or cool bit of dialogue or description of something, and would flatly
refuse to let it get chopped off and end up on the cutting room floor. Yes,
there were times I clashed with editors, and I ended up paying for it in the
end: they ultimately rejected some of my work. It was crushing at times,
and thats also what led me to becoming an editor, not just remaining a
first-draft author.
If you need to edit something you fell in love with, simply cut it out
and put it in a new file you can go back to and perhaps use another time.
Im not saying that you must cut it out and forget it about forever. Not at
all. I have many folders of those very cuts I made to novels and nonfiction
books I wrote, and theyre full of all those little things I thought were so
cool but ultimately didnt work in a particular story. And the good news is,
I have used some of those items in other books. You will, too.
Rule #2: When you write something, its

only there as a placeholder until something
better comes along to enhance your story.
I truly believe that our first drafts are a brain dump of what is in our
subconscious at that very moment, but it doesnt mean it cant be improved
upon. It can and it will be improved . . . with proper editing and polishing.
95
And with sufficient time, allowing your Inner CHILD to come up with
something better.
You know those cool manuals and textbooks for design software
programs like Adobe InDesign and such? If you pay close attention,
the text they use in their examples are whats termed Lorem Ipsum, or
made-up Latin. The text is there simply to fill space so you can see what
your final design product might look like.
When you think of your own artwork as a kind of Lorem Ipsum, then
it paves the way for you to emplace beautiful words, paragraphs, chapters
and, ultimately, your entire book later on, especially during the editing
phase. This is not to say that your beautiful work is some made-up language
of words from a fictitious lexicon. Far from it. Im just using this Loren
Ipsum as a wild example to suggest that what you first write is merely a
placeholder for what you will ultimately edit, polish and make fantastic.
That first draft you wrote is only a partially sculpted block of marble.
You need to keep cutting here and there, refining, even adding some parts
where needed. In the end, you polish it to reasonable perfection. Or at
least make it commercially viable.
Right now, lets take a look at the first part of the story I wrote in the
previous chapter, and how we might improve upon its content and detail.
Heres the piece again:
The air was different somehow.
Before Id left four years ago, Id hated it. No, I hated the whole place.
Really.
Walking out into a typical, boring summer day in a clean and freshly
pressed shirt was an ordeal for me. In less than a mad minute, I would be
soaking wet, wondering why I had even bothered to put on a dress shirt,
let alone anything at all. I just wanted to be all nudnik at the beach, under
the waves, on top of the waves, anywhere but in the damp, hot air that was
the baking-oven of south Florida.
96
An Introduction To Editing Your First Book
So here I was again, tossed like a cheap, frozen burrito back into that
same old roaster.
And I suddenly loved it. Trying to recall my last thoughts about being
home, that is, before I signed my life away to the US Army for four long
years in a combat zone, I could no longer remember feeling anything but
happy and proud and just . . . well, content.
As I re-read the first sentence, The air was different somehow, I like it.
It says a lot, not the least of which is, something has changed for Paul. I
like it so Im going to keep it and not do any editing on it.
So lets take the next paragraph and see how I feel about it:
When I read this one again, I immediately see room for improvement
and will take you through what Im feeling about it, step by step.
I like to use short, choppy sentences sometimes, because it accurately
reflects the way we think about things when we encounter them. For
example, when I see a beautiful painting, I dont go, Wow, that is truly
one beautiful work of art! Wish I could take it home with me and throw
it up over the fireplace. Cool!
No, I think more along the lines of, Wow. Cool. Brilliant colors.
Orgasmic.
My thoughts arent in sweeping complete sentences. Theyre little
bullets that pack a helluva punch, and they allow me to use more bullets
to comment on whatever Im admiring or thinking about. This is the same
style of dialogue screenwriters use in their screenplays: short, choppy
sentences and phrases that mirror how we talk and act.
So, considering the next paragraph again, I would change it slightly,
because the word deplane bugs me. Its so . . . mmmmmm . . . technical.
And the use of such a harsh and stiff and technical term among a pool
of soft, warm terms irks me. But it was the first thing outta my head, so I
used it initially. Its okay to do that in your work, too: come up with a term
that doesnt sound quite right but at least works for the moment. Youll
change it later, so dont worry.
97
And, again, please do not edit your work as you write your first draft!
Just write and write and write until the story is done. Youll edit things
later. If you get bogged down editing as you write your first draft, youll
probably never get it done. I have suffered from this disease, too, so trust
me when I say this (again): write your first draft from beginning to end
and do not edit it along the way.
Also, when I wrote, . . . I could tell that it was different, I dont like the
word that in there. It breaks up the sentiment and distracts me from the
true essence of that part of the whole sentence.
So how about this for a complete sentence, considering my feelings and
thoughts above:
Soon as we touched down and grabbed our carry-ons, I felt myself
pulled down an impossibly long tunnel by some invisible hand, my fellow
travelers following in my wake. As the new vibe bathed me in unfamiliar
colors and sensations, I felt a definite contrast. What was so different
about this place now, a place I called home?
I could go further with this short introduction to editing your first
book. But I wont. What Ive done is give you a flavor of what youll do
on your own. Yes, it takes time and effort, and youll get there. Promise.
Provided you follow the steps outlined in this book.
98
Summary
I
f you havent subscribed to my notion about your Inner CHILD and
the subconscious, you still can write your first book. Long as you take
breaks in between each part to allow your subconscious time to think
about things.
So, a brief summary of all weve shared here:
Find your One Word, something that embodies the theme of your
story. Let it sit about for a short time.
Take your One Word and expand it to Five Bullets, outlining the
beginning, middle, and end of your story, with transitions in between. Let
it lie about for some time.
From Five Bullets, blow those up to 25 Descriptive Sentences. Your
story is now taking shape, so run with it. When done, leave it on the table
for a while, let it grow ripe and tasty.
Design your Synopsis from your 25 Descriptive Sentences, allowing
the words to flow more freely and openly into a full narrative of your story.
Then itll be time to design and build the true skeleton of your story,
your Outline, with all the necessary moving parts and articulations. Take
your Synopsis and let it dissolve into all these parts and things. If you
need to write a lengthy one, please do so. Add all the little spices, too, like
cool quotes and dialogue you dreamed up or discovered, helpful notes

about your characters and places and atmospheres, and whatever other
supplementary materials you need to write your first draft. When done,
put it aside so it can ferment into a fine vino.
Your Outline will be used to construct your first book. If youve written
a highly detailed Outline, then the book will all but write itself. Go slowly
and allow yourself all the time you need.
The first draft of your first book will sit about for a long period of
time. Itll need to, trust me. The longer, the better. Because when you start
editing your first draft, youll see it more objectively. Actually, I dont mean
to say that you should engage in editing on a purely objective level. Not at
all. Its just that you need to see your own work from a detached point of
view so you can add and take out what is necessary to make your baby the
best you can make it.
Writing your first book is one of the most rewarding experiences you
will ever have. Its the ultimateso farmeans of expressing yourself and
your thoughts, ideas and beliefs. But so many people dont know where
and how to begin. Thats why I designed and built this book: to give people
a meaningful starting point along with some hope and faith that they can
indeed write their first book.
Again, you do not have to believe in my philosophy or personal notions
about the Inner CHILD, the subconscious and Subism. Those are my
personal constructs and they work for me and a few others who have
subscribed to them. Always have. We do know that our minds work in
clever and mysterious ways, and that when we undertake a challenging
task, we must give ourselves time to mull it over, to think about it on a
deeper level than what exists only in our conscious self.
For now, I shall leave you with this little thought: you have the personal
power to do just about anything you wish and dream. Okay, maybe you
cant be an astronaut because of bad eyesight, but you can write your first
book. Please use the same old building-block approach to this project as
you did when first learning to read and write. Its a familiar, tried-and-true
method that works. When you use it, youll see for yourself the power that
lies within.
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Summary
When youre done with your first book, youll look back and wonder
what the fuss was all about.
And then youll wanna dash off to the computer and write another one.
I wish all the best one human being can offer another.
Cheers,
Dean
P.S. When youre done, please email me a copy of your first book:
editor@adagiopress.com. Thank you kindly.
101
Okay, Dean, Im Done . . . Now What?
T
his is where new writers think theyve reached the end. Yes, its
the end of the first draft and an edit or two of your first book. Yes,
youve accomplished a lot. And I mean a lot! Congratulations!
Remember that quote Just when you think youve reached the end,
that will be the beginning? Good, because this will be the beginning.
This is where you set aside all your great work, something that may have
taken a year or more, and just let it rest a bit. Youve come off a marathon, a
project youve worked on continuously for a long time. Maybe you werent
consciously working on it, but I promise you that your Inner CHILD has
been at it full time, in addition to taking care of your life in all other areas.
When I complete a first draft and an edit, I am drained and exhilarated
at the same time. Like feeling wide-awake drunk, giddy with pleasure and
excitement, spent from having marched over rough terrain for months at
a time with little rest. At that moment, I need a break from everything so
I put aside the project and go out and celebrate. Maybe a little vacation
somewhere, even to a nice hotel or spa in town or up the coast. Or down.
In South Africa, we have some wonderful options for getaways.
You too will need a vacation, so please take it. Hopefully, it will coincide
with your normal break so you can in fact take off and go somewhere,
reflect on what youve done, relax in some sunshine and under the warm
waves. Whatever you do, make sure its a true break from your normal
routine. Your Inner CHILD will need this break as much as you, so reward
it with something special.
After about a month or two, you will want to return to your newborn
baby, see what its up to. And at this point, it will be begging for more.
More in the way of improvements here and there. In short, it will be time
to do some serious editing. Thing is, dear Reader, this type of editing may
need to be done by a professional editor who has done this type of work
for many years. If you wish to see your first book in print, whether an
ebook or a printed book, you will need to take your game to the next level
and that requires commercial assistance. It also will require some cash.
How much? Good editors start at about $2,500 to do a once-over of
a 400-page manuscript, with perhaps three additional passes. That means
that they will take your baby and edit it as necessary, depending on how
much you can afford and what you two agree on. Then they will return the
edited manuscript to you for additional work by you, unless you pay them
to edit it completely. If youre a good writer out of the starting gate, your
editor may not have much work to do. This is rare, though.
Most manuscripts by new writers require a lot of work by a good editor,
and this may entail doing what I term a scorched-earth edit. This also
can mean ghostwriting or a considerable rewrite. This is not always the
case, so please dont fret over this possibility. Make your work the best it
can be with all the tools you have, then send it out to a good editor, see
what they think.
Most manuscripts need some degree of work, both from a good editor
and yourself. Yes, your editor may not do all the work for you, but she will
give you excellent instruction on what you need to do to make it better.
She may suggest you describe your characters in more detail and show
their actions and inner motivations, which will flesh them out more. She
may suggest rewrites of your storyline to make it more compelling.
If you cannot afford a good editor, then theres always the option of
joining a writing group where students and an instructor critique each
103
others work, provide good feedback and make suggestions, much in the
way an editor would.
You also should consider taking a class on creative writing at a local
community college or university. Most colleges and universities offer
extension courses for adults and non-students, and they almost always
have a creative writing course that is affordable to all.
Regardless of which method you choose, you most likely will need to
employ one or more of these suggestions above. When I started out, I did
everything myself and usually I got it right. But that was only because I
was deeply passionate and motivated, so I would spend considerable time
editing my own work. That was, of course, after I learned to become my
own editor. I highly recommend your doing the same as I did, because it
made me a much better writer and author. The more you do on your own,
the better a writer you will become, but there will be times when you need
outside assistance, so please take advantage of it. There is good assistance
for most any budget. You just need to figure out what is available to you
and what you can afford.
If you stick to this program, I can promise you this: you will succeed
. . . eventually. It took me a long time to get it right, and it has been
worth all the effort, time, money, heartache, and getting to know my Inner
CHILD. Please be one of those people who continues on and never gives
up. If you quit along the way, then youll never know what you could have
accomplished. Never. Heres an interesting statistic: most people quit near
the end of something, and they never really knew how close they were to
the end. Its a fact.
Dont give up, even when things are not going well for you in your life
outside writing. I know its tough when youre a single mom with two
children and a job you dislike. Ive seen those women slug away at life, but
they also had a dream like you do and they kept at it and eventually got
published in a magazine or had their book formally published by a New
York trade publishing company.
Another fact of life is this: if you keep at something long enough, you
will succeed. I have to invoke one example where you will not: if your eyes
are bad and youre too old, you will never get into NASAs space program.
104
But thats an extreme. If you follow the guidelines in this book, do all the
exercises, write your first book, learn how to edit that book, and stick with
it until its in excellent shape, you will succeed in getting it published.
I refuse to listen to naysayers, those who will tell you its impossible
to write a book when you have no skills at this game. Baloney. I used to
tell those people, Your statistics dont apply to me. Nowadays, I simply
ignore any naysayer and their silly words.
When I started writing this book, I knew it would take a lot of my
time and pull me away from writing novels, which is my fave thing to do.
I knew it would be a chore at times, because I dont really dig nonfiction. I
love to invent stories and splash them onto paper. Thats what gets me up
in the morning and makes me hot and bothered. Good sex does, too, but
thats beside the point. I wrote this book because I wanted to let everyone
in the world know that if I can do thiswrite a bookthen so can anyone
else who takes the time to do it.
As I stated early on, Im no genius. I just stick with something until I
get it right.
Please stick with it, dear Reader. Do so and you will get it right. If you
quit along the journey, you will never know. That thought alone would
drive me insane, especially knowing that so many other people in the
world have done thiswrite their first book. Just get out there and do it.
Please and thank you!
105
Useful References
LiteraryMarketplace.com
This site is the reference bible for all things literary. Their book
Literary Marketplace is in two separate editions. Before you buy, just so
you can see all the value in it, please take a look at it at a local library.
This comprehensive volume (two, if you get the International Literary
Marketplace, too) features publishers, agents, ad agencies and PR firms,
associations, book distributors and, of course, all the cool party events and
book fairs in the US and around the world.
Heres a tidbit in their own words: When it comes to books, you can
reach the people who publish, package, review, represent, edit, translate,
typeset, illustrate, design, print, bind, promote, publicize, ship, and
distribute.
I personally use these volumes and always find them to be indispensable.
Jeff Hermans Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents 2013,
23rd Edition: Who They Are! What They Want! How to Win Them Over!
This long-running book is also an excellent resource to find publishers,
editors and agents.
Useful References
John Gardners The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers
I love this book for its simplicity and high value. If you get only one
book on the art and craft of writing, please buy this one. Itll be a lovely
companion to How To Write Your First Book.
Jodie Renners Fire Up Your Fiction - An Editors Guide to Writing

Compelling Stories
Absolutely fantastic reference and learning tool, packed with short and
powerful examples. Its detailed enough to include sufficient pointers for
you but also short enough so youre encouraged to read it several times.
You can also hire Ms. Renner as an editor for a very reasonable fee.
Jodie Renners Writing a Killer Thriller - An Editors Guide to Writing

Compelling Fiction
Another excellent resource, but targeted to those writing that killer
thriller, mystery or suspense. Again, like her other book on editing, Style
That Sizzles & Pacing For Power, Ms. Renner packs a lot of energy into
this volume.
Steve Harrisons National Publicity Summit

Steve and his brother are world-class experts in showing you how to
get great PR for your book. Please subscribe to theirs different newsletters,
plus view their other websites that feature special programs for getting
maximum exposure for your first book: NationalPublicitySummit.com,
SteveHarrison.com.
Copyright.gov
This is a very helpful site that explains the ins and outs of copyright
law. Theres also a very informative manual, Copyright Basics, which can
be found on the home page under the section About >> Copyright Basics.
Your work does not have to be submitted to the Copyright Office, nor
does it have to be formally published, for you to own the copyright to your
own artwork. Please consult this manual and read more about copyright
law before you begin your journey into publishing.
107
Jutoh.com
Jutoh is every writer/authors dream: a WYSIWYG program for both
Mac and PC that produces a great, clean, accurate ebook (epub forApple
iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Kobo; mobi for Kindle). We use it for all our
ebooks and couldnt be happier. In less than one day, you can learn how to
format your MS Word or other file and convert it to epub and mobi. Plus,
Dr. Julian Smarts customer service is world class. To start, we recommend
the $39 version. If youre publishing many ebooks at once or in a short
time and wish to do extensive HTML and CSS coding, then buy the $80
PLUS version.
108
About The Author
Dean Garner was a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter and editor of
many books. He also mentored and consulted to several New York Times
bestselling authors.
He is currently Senior Editor of Adagio Press, a small indie publishing
firm that specializes in the line of 69-Minute Books and 69-Minute
Novels, books you can read in about an hour. He is the editor of Rio
Ramirezs new action-adventure novels, featuring Tommy Darlington.
His recent books include Who Really Owns Your Gold: The Intended Global
Meltdown of 2012-2014 and a contemporary rewrite of the 2,500-year-
old masterpiece Sun Tzu The Art of War. Both ebooks are available from
AdagioPress.com.
His first book, TOPGUN Miramar, published in London in 1992, was
an international bestselling coffee-table book in three languages, featuring
the US Navy Fighter Weapons School, TOPGUN.
Before devoting full time to writing and editing, Dean was a scientist
(biophysics), US Army Airborne Ranger with the 1st Ranger Battalion, a
corporate security specialist with international private military companies
he designed and assisted in building, and a commercial and military
aviation photographer. He flew in US military high-performance attack
and fighter jets (A-4, A-7, F-4, F-14, F-15, F-16, F/A-18), helicopters
and cargo and refueling aircraft, and photographed from the back seat of
jets and from various platforms on other aircraft.
In his free time, he paints mushy stuff he calls tranquil impressionism
(TranquilImpressionism.com), travels the world over, hikes whenever
possible, and reads voraciously.
110
Testimonials For William Garners Work
The Best approach to writing a book Ive ever read. If you have ever
heard that little voice in your head saying that would make a great story.
Or I need to tell someone about this. Or even just, I wonder if I could.
Dean Garners book on how to write your first book is a must read. It
illustrates in detail the exquisite , sometimes painful, but mostly joyous
effort of putting your thoughts on paper. Mr. Garners passion for words
and the art of story-telling is wonderfully illustrated in how anyone with
the tenacity to do so, can write. This book is a must-read. Thanks Mr.
Garner for the inspiration and the direction.
Marilyn White, via Amazon.com (Amazon Verified Customer)
Dean Garners version of The Art of War confirms for us that for the past
2,000 years the fundamental principles of special operations in battle have
not only remained true, but they apply equally to todays boardrooms and
bedrooms. When on the hunt or holding ground, success can only be
had by the precise application of disguise, deception and diversion, and a
genuine appreciation for angles, inches and seconds.
Ranger Garner masterfully shows us how.
Dalton Fury, New York Times bestselling author of Kill Bin Laden
Soldiers and scholars have struggled for decades to extract the nuggets of
wisdom contained in Sun Tzus classic work on war, strategy and tactics.
Deans most recent consolidation of the major points made in the original
is handy, helpful and valuable for all students of the art of war.
Dale Dye (Captain, USMC, ret.),
Hollywood film and tv actor and military advisor
Dino, THANK YOU! When I listen to someone speak in a class or make

a presentation, I take notes on the key points, draw little lightning bolts
when the speaker suggests actions, and use the left side of the paper (and
draw light bulbs) when something theyve said triggers some interesting
idea or concept that Id like to explore further. In your class, I spent a great
deal of time scribbling on the left side of the paper.
You have a positive, passionate spirit that comes through loud and
clear, a flexible approach that probably made most feel that they got
something valuable out of the class, and an intelligent, nonthreatening
style for someone so accomplished.
Thanks for a great experience and the willingness to keep lines of
communication open!
Jonathan Canger, PhD, Vice President,
Global Talent Management and Organization Effectiveness,
Marriott Vacations Worldwide
Sun Tzu for the Modern Warrior and the Modern Battlefield. Easily
understood and to the POINT!
Ranger Joe Mattison, Command Sergeant Major (US Army, ret.)
Just finished a 3-week course How To Write Your First Book at Ringling
College of Art & Design with NY Times bestselling editor (Angels &
Demons, among other NY Times bestsellers) William Dean Garner.
Fascinating person, amazing class. Am now torn between Dinos mantra,
Everyone has at least one good story in her and Fran Lebowitzs Not
everyone should write a book.
112
Testimonials For William Garners Work
Highly recommend his class if it is offered again.

Jo Ellen Silberstein, Attorney at Law, Sarasota, Florida
Before I turned pro and floundered without direction, it was Dean

Garner who became instrumental in organizing my first two books. Since
discovering my travel journals posted on my website, StrikingViking.net
more than 10 years ago, he has been as inspiration and often editor of my
work. Because of his encouragement and fine-tuning, my first book is still
a continuing success, currently back-ordered in fifth printing, and was a
National Geographic Channel documentary.
Through his personal writing skills and marketing expertise, Dean
knows how to connect with readers as well as coaching authors. A
remarkable man of incredible intelligence and unquestionable integrity,
without Deans assistance, Id likely be staring at publishers doors slammed
in my face.
With utmost gratitude.
Glen Heggstad, bestselling author of Two Wheels Through Terror
and One More Day Everywhere, featured on
National Geographic, Discovery Channel, 48 Hours
Literary agent, Particle Physics Illuminatus, and former Army Airborne

Ranger. With respect for everything you do!
Dan Brown, New York Times bestselling author of
The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons and Deception Point
My name is Steve Alten, I am the NY Times bestselling author of Meg,

The Loch, and six other novels, including the just-released The Shell Game.
My books tend to be fast-paced thrillers, and the hero often relies on
technology. War has also played a part in my storylines.
It is imperative that I get my details right, and so I take great pride
in writing this recommendation for Dean Garner. Dean edited four of
my best novels and assisted two others. He is an outstanding editor and
author in his own right and is a very valuable part of my team. You would
113
be wise to hire him as a ghostwriter . . . but I expect his services shared

with me on my ninth novel.
Steve Alten, New York Times bestselling author of
Meg, The Shell Game, Domain and Goliath
When I first embarked on my single-title writing path, I had already

published approximately 30 category romance novels for Harlequin Books.
I had decided I wanted to write about former military special-operations
warriors and develop bigger, more relevant action-adventure storiesstill
romance, but much grittier. While browsing the web doing research, I
ran across Dean Garners website. Among other things, Dean had posted
amazing photos of his time spent in Ranger Battalion. I literally accosted
him in cyberspace by introducing myself, explaining that I was in a virtual
drought of information on Ranger procedure and asked if he would be
willing to answer a few questions.
Dean was open, forthcoming and generous with his responses to
NUMEROUS questions and even went so far as to graciously share some
of his journal entries with me, a virtual stranger, from his time at Ranger
Bat.
For his generosity and patience, I will be forever grateful. The
information he provided was essential background for the writing of that
first single-title book, To The Edge, which subsequently sold and launched
a strong of novels featuring former Spec-Ops warriors. That book
kickstarted what ultimately became a series of 12 books, the last seven of
which have landed on the New York Times Bestseller List.
Cindy Gerard, New York Times bestselling author
114
Acknowledgements
No one writes a book in a vacuum. Im no different. Therere several people

who contributed to this book, and all had excellent comments on the
manuscript, giving me ideas on how to improve it and make it the best
it could be. Other people dear to me served as inspiration and gave me
needed energy to do this project.
Lindy K. was the first person to give feedback on the first draft. As
always, thank you, Lindy.
My friend and colleague Dr. Gillian G. shared insightful thoughts on
various issues. Thank you, Gillian.
I thank my clients and students over the years, especially at Ringling
College of Art & Design, for sharing their inspiration and work with me.
My Inner CHILD did all the work except the small task of typing the
manuscript drafts. I cant thank my CHILD enough so Ill just say . . .
thank you.
I sincerely thank you, dear Reader, also for serving as a great source of
inspiration to me as I wrote each word. I greatly appreciate your spending
your money on my work and making it your new-found investment. Youre
the reason for this books existence.
Excerpt From BLOODSMOKE
A Novel By Rio Ramirez
Bloodsmoke is Book One in a new series from Adagio Press: action-

adventure thrillers by Rio Ramirez. The series features Tommy Darlington,
a small-town hitman who reluctantly climbs the ladder of success in a
shady global industry run by well-heeled thugs with infinite resources,
and backed by a secret cabal of dynastic men thousands of miles from the
action. Along the way, Darlington discovers the nature and identities of
the powerful men behind the black curtain, and begins questioning their
methods and motives, leaving a trail of warm bodies in his wake. The more
this sinister cabal tries to control Darlington, the more they lose their grip
on him as he gradually reveals and unravels their carefully laid plans.
Cell phones suck. They annoy me more than no-see-ums.

The one next to my head on the nightstand buzzed and vibrated.
Thought it was a mosquito so I slapped at it til I figured out it wasnt the
State Bird of Florida strafing in for breakfast.
It was Alfred: Tommy. We have a job for you. Trail Motel, room 204
in the back. Single occupant, male. One seventy-five.
Excerpt From Bloodsmoke
He went on for another minute, filling me in on my next bulls-eye,

then the usual: no goodbye and a cut connection. Hell, at least the guy
paid on time. And in heady, dirty cash.
Drove to the motel in between fares since there werent many calls I
felt like taking. They were all local gigs out to SRQ, the airport between
Sarasota and Bradenton. Didnt like that place. It ferried people on their
way to their dreams, while I was stuck in paradise.
Did a coupla 360s around the parking area and neighborhood, parked
about half a mile off Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Why is it that every town in the US with a sizable Black presence had a
Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. . . . in a rundown section of town? No, never
in the posh white neighborhoods. Could you imagine thatBeverly Hills
with a Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard?
Sarasota was no different, but the towns power council ensured it was
well away from the good white folk across the tracks.
I disliked the name on several levels, not the least because it was too
long to pronounce and use in everyday conversation, it was a screaming
insult to The Man Hisself, and it was saddening that no one had made an
effort to find a suitable diminutive of Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Me? I called it King.
Simple.
Parked somewhere along The Boulevard Dedicated To The Man Hisself
and walked back to the motel, passing a few street prostitutes who, even
at a freshly harvested 16, looked a haggard 50. At least I knew what theyd
look like in 30 years: much the same, except gray in the skin and low in
everything else. Sadder still was knowing these streeters half-lives were
about five years on the long side, six months if they were really unlucky.
Their pimp was their handler, mentor and slave-owner, and he was the
one who determined the early or late grave. I came to know every pimp in
Sarasota and Manatee Counties by name, face and demeanor. There was
always only one type: rotten-mean.
Mean assholes who demeaned girls into a very short life of pussy for
profit, then sold them to some john or cop or local state representative
who put them up in a small house north of town for $500 a month, and
117
visited them a few times a week to fuck them silly, then return home to
their Catholic lives in upmarket Osprey or on Longboat Key.
Every full moon or so I made those assholes one of my pet hobbies,
when I couldnt sleep or got tired of watching Banshee or Hawaii Five-O.
Many a pimp spent the last minutes of his life wondering what 510
and 180 lbs. of cruel fate had dumped him inside the gaping maw of
a Dumpster. Everyone I knew said I had a calming demeanor and was
pleasant to be around, so those pimps at least received a sympathetic send-
off en route to their next life.
Cell again. It was Rachel. I let it go to voicemail, then listened in:
Tommy, you better be making some money, you loser. Im writing my ass
off today and I wanna celebrate in Margaritaville next month, so get off
your lazy
Enough was enough: I folded Rachel, stuffed her back in my pocket
and hoped she might suffocate in her self-important, one-way rage til I
got back home.
Great sex revives the dead, she once told me.
Wished Id come up with that one, but at least I could implement the
thought and fuck her into little submissive sighs.
Room 204 was at the back of the building and it faced a stretch of
King that had a long line of 60-foot palm trees and six-foot-high bushes
along the street. I moseyed through an opening in the bushes and up to
the motel where several partiers were laughing and pissing in the pool.
Looked inviting enough, especially since they were all girls, about 19 or
20 years old, and obviously not from here. Once again focused, I moved
upstairs and walked past 200 . . . 202 . . . and 204, stopping the briefest of
moments to sense what was up inside.
The curtains were open a crack:
One man sitting on the bed . . .
Watching World War Z on the flatscreen . . .
Drinking a Heineken . . .
Freshly showered, wearing a towel around waist . . .
Smoking a cigarette . . .
Several lines of pink blow on a small pocket mirror just to his right . . .
A/C running on max at 68 degrees . . .

Warm exhaust streaming under the window, betraying a recent meal:
Little Caesars Meat Mania, lotsa crushed peppers. . . .
Didnt notice me go by.
At the end of the walkway, I stopped in front of a door, room 212,
looked back toward 204. He wasnt curious enough to step outside and
look up and down the walkway.
Down the stairs at the other end, then underneath the walkway, back to
the other side and up again. Slowly this time.
Got to his room and stopped in front of his door, waited. Nothing. The
tv was still on and he was still sitting on the bed, the coke field now down
to dust particles. My presence there didnt register.
Most people stumbled over the obvious and kept right on walking into
the next moment. I noticed everything, even surveyed the air molecules
in front of me over and over as they floated past on journeys to who-
knows-where. We all have this thing we call the subconscious, which is the
quantum motor behind everything we do in life. Mine was audible and
abuzz full throttle here inside my skull where the gray mattered.
Rachel fancied herself the clever one, but she really had no clue what
drove her own behavior. I smiled at that and reminded myself to mention
it to her sometime. In passing.
The guy was oblivious to my presence, so I just stood there in front of
his door, sensing where he was, what was on the tv, and anything else I
could see, hear, feel or taste in some way.
He got up from the bed and dropped his empty beer bottle in the trash
can outside the bathroom, got another beer from the reefer, sat back down
again in the same spot as before, not one inch to the left or right.
Creature of habit.
All I needed to know for today.
Ever seen air flash-freeze between a man and a woman?

I blinked once, taking a snapshot of her expression.
119
Eight seconds passed as she hovered there in front of me, all those
once-soulful dancers of air now forming a solid block of ice between both
of us.
The love of my life and me.
Blink two.
Another eight seconds.
Blink three.
Then she drifted closer to me, right in my face: Fuck you, Tommy.
Rachel was my only real pain in the ass. If only this woman knew what
I really did for a living.
Past girlfriends had little problem sharing emotions, and thats why I
did whatever I could to keep them in my closet world, the unadulterated
Tommy I kept hidden. Each girl with her characteristic slap, kick, jab.
One with a punch that grounded me in a whole new way, a solar-plexus
punch that rolled my eyes like ball bearings across a marble floor. Each as
different as the palette of an artists protovision, my women defined my
entire miserable life . . . guiding me down paths I never wouldve listed on
my To-Dos, running the errands of love.
Since high school, Rachel had scientifically experimented with every
offensive maneuver on the map, til she came up with what worked best
against me. The stinging verbal assault. Her simple little fuck-yous were
hollow-point bullets, machine-gunned so fast at the center of my face
that I only had time to react to my own pathetic response to her volley,
never once addressing my actual intended target: each painful dismissal.
Even if I actually had the necessary reaction time, I wouldnt know what
to do with it: how to execute a low-flying missile that always evaded my
operational radar.
Mine was always a wide-eyed look of shock. Despair and heartbreak
mashed in my mind. Too busy wrestling with fright to be angry at her,
by the time I got around to where I was supposed to be pissed, Id melted
again. The fear of losing her. The lust of having her.
All rushing to gain first tracks, my emotions kept missing their
designated mark. Stunted and bruised growth in many ways. Over the
years, I struggled to redefine each feeling. Anger was no longer anger. Hurt
was something altogether different, a welcomed misery. When I felt what

I thought was madness, I dismissed it as something else entirely. I did feel
and deal with things. In an unexpected and seemingly surgical way. In my
job, I wasnt allowed the luxury of normal feelings, you might say.
Heart on a hard, I pressed on.
Rachel, someday Im gonna tell you a little story. Im sorry, Rach. It wasnt
my fau
The very moment you own your actions, Tommy
Got it the first time you said it, Rach. Like, years ago.
She had no problem sexing me twice a day and giving me the most
heavenly releasers Id ever felt, but when her thunderbolts unleashed on
me, I was still the little kid from down the block, the guy she used to
laugh and thumb her nose at, while she dated guys four and five years
older. I was the little brother figure she taunted yet still loved in some odd
way that haunted me for many years. And defined those paths into the
wretched unknown.
Who could blame her? She was intelligent and thinking, 57 and
then some, about 125 firm pounds, sexy banana-blonde hair, with richly
sculpted Italian slash Russian features.
She was clean and untouched, even by a single probing finger, until
she was 23. I know this fact because Im the man who unzipped her
Levis and released her from virginal chains and all that Jesuit chastity
her mother preached like Matthew from the age of 18 months on. Shed
been programmed like a PlayStation, but somewhere along the way had
hijacked her mother-written code and reworked it into her own vision,
something even she struggled to define.
Rachel wasnt simply the love of my young life, she was my life, long
before old age set in, washing away other, mostly insignificant, childhood
memories and the little horrors of adolescence and puberty.
If you got it years ago, then why are you such a fuck-up, TommyBoy?
TommyTaxi. What a joke. Youre an animation, a cartoon, Tommy.
Like Ive been trying to tell you for a while, Rachel, theres a little more to me
than youll ever know. Cartoon.
Her insults were always delivered piping hot, with an ironic smile that
121
said maybe she was half-kidding. Or not. The enigmatic smirk said it could
go both ways but I secretly knew which way it always played out.
I wasnt destined to make old bones with anyone, Rach.
Dont go there. Her head rotated slowly toward me, eyes scanning my
face for signs of weakness.
Were there, Rachel.
You always do this. Still trying to find a chink in my paper armor.
No, only lately. This time I looked her dead on. Youre looking for
excuses. Again.
Always putting the blame on me, Tommy.
Thats when she backed away a foot or so, turned her head to the wall,
seemed to continue the conversation there instead of with me, soon as she
saw that look slide over my face, a look that said, Dont fuck with me right
now, Rachel.
Regret was a constant companion these days: out of fear and anxiety
from my real job, the one I hid away from Rachel, I often said or did
something to piss her off, then Id get just a little defensive and that hidden
monster clawed ever so closer to the surface.
I dont know you anymore, Tommy.
My dry smile, curling my lips with coat-hanger hooks, said it all. I
mumbled something to my own distant wall: You have no clue, MyLove.
With that, she slipped away. . . .
I hate nice guys who do stupid things. Really stupid things.

Something sooo stupid that yanks them outta that Nice Guy category
and stuffs em into Bad Guy territory, a dark place where unforgiving men
with a lotta money and no heart make one call that trickles down to my
cell phone and wakes me up at some odd hour.
Nice guys dont deserve what I have to give them. But someone out
there thinks they do so I carry on and try not to think too much about it.
Nice guys dont always finish last, but they almost never finish first, usually
a distant second at best.
Room 204 had won the lotto, though, inventing some software
that could hijack a persons computer, sit there like an invisible glacier,
undetected by virus hunters, and continually suck up all the data on a hard
drive or any external drive attached to the computer. Whatever software
and hardware lived on 1s and 0s, this program could swallow it all and
surreptitiously send it over to servers in India, Pakistan or some Fill-In-
The-Blank-istan.
Hed rented a midsize at the airport, left it parked out back by the
pool, nothing inside except the smell of new used rental car. This guy
was conservative, though, and even had a bottle of ammonium cleaning
solution and some paper towels in the back seat. Clean freak? Probably
not, just someone who knew he could get MRSA or AIDS from touching
a contaminated steering wheel. Or arrested for having cocaine dust on the
dashboard.
You coming in or not!? One of the daisy-brain bikini-teens.
Even behind the anonymity of oversized sunglasses, her sparkling blues
zeroed in on my muscled forearms and did a slow finger-walk all the way
down to my crotch.
Looked over at her and nodded imperceptibly, and kept on walking.
Ill be here all day, mister, she said in a lower voice, a little sultry spiced
in. Didnt work well on her, but the effect was cute. Made a note of it: the
cute, not the girl. Wasnt into 19-year-old kids. These girls couldnt touch
the love of my life on any levelexcept maybe in kindnessso I never
gave them a second look. In my line of work, I hoped they would do me
the same courtesy. I prayed she hadnt read too much into that little nod.
He was still on the bed, probably hadnt moved all night, watching tv.
New lines of coke on the little mirror.
In my old flips, I padded up the stairs near his room and again stopped
in front of his door. This time, though, I knocked four times.
The door opened and he peeked out and said, Hey, whats up? You the
pizza guy?
Damn, he was even smiling. A nice guy, no cares at all, just in town for
a few days, not sampling the stale bikinis downstairs, just a nice guy. Who
did a very bad thing to a lot of bad folks.
123
His coming-out party was sliding into servers at Facebook and ripping
off every square nanometer of data over a month, and then presenting
tidbits of it to the Board of Directors at their annual meeting, which he
also crashed as a waiter carrying around bottles of champagne. When he
managed to squeeze his way to the head table, he dropped small gift-
wrapped flash drives in front of each Director. If hed done his own due
diligence, he wouldve discovered that the majority of the Directors all
worked in the intelligence community, mostly for the CIA.
By the time he reached the loading dock, alarm bells and klaxons
were sounding throughout the Agency, not to mention a hundred other
intelligence and security firms across the globe. Word was out that one
man had managed to sneak in and steal priceless data from Facebook, but
also from every single DoD entity in the US government, plus hundreds
of other clandestine organizations, departments and sections, and private
companies and firms. He couldve created a website that made WikiLeaks
look like a grade-school kids blog, but his motive was entirely different:
he wanted the recognition and he wanted a very high-paying job in the
security industry.
While hed correctly calculated his escape route, he inaccurately
estimated the power and depth of the worlds intelligence and security
apparatus, which was led at the very top by men in dimly lit cellars and
spread throughout every government and state.
And so here he was, holed up in a medium-rent motel room, good cable
and firm bed, plenty of beer in the reefer, and some young sex at the pool
if he so chose. Slice of heaven to most nice guys.
Brandon Parrish?
Not the pizza guy, are you? Clearly resigned, he opened the door all
the way, let me in.
Broke my heart I had to do this. Almost wanted to wag my finger in
front of his nose and lecture him. You werent very careful.
How did you find me? Sitting on the bed again, in his favorite spot,
staring at the tv, now mute, he absently grabbed an empty beer bottle and
upended it like it was full.
Someone got a call, they called a someone, that someone called me.
So really youre
Your last option.
He looked at me, perked up. Option?
A nice guy who didnt just pull the tigers tail, he had the CO Jones to
tie a ball of fire to it. Nice guy who thought he would get off easy, get paid
for having invented something cool and useful to a large organization,
retire to Belize or Costa Rica, work from some designer hut on the beach.
All the while never once considering the domino effect his route would
have. His was a dream world and my job was to shatter that world.
Nice guys always thought they had a plan, a way out. Brandon was
no different and, like Rachel, never once considered the consequences of
selfish action. If only they had some degree of introspection, but they were
too afraid of what lurked beneath.
Look, man, I can make you rich beyond anything you every imagined,
he told me, now pleading.
Just looked at him.
Dont kill me. Please dont kill me. Im only 23. Im a fuckin kid, man.
A kid. I know what I did was wrong, but then he looked away and a
smile spread across his entire face, a fatuous smile.
Pride.
Satisfaction.
Disbelief at having kicked all their asses, made them look bad, forced
some higher-ups into retirement. To a McMansion in Sarasota, probably.
Just stood there for a moment, not answering him, then: Brandon,
youre a sweet kid, but you messed with all the wrong people. And if you
cant see this, then youre sweet and stupid.
Each nice guy, regardless of how stupid he was, when he saw a break,
a way in or out, made the mistake of jumping at it without thinking, a
monkey blindly swinging in the dark from one branch to the next, taking
for granted it would be there at his call.
See? I told you, man! I can get you wealthy quick. Just let me go, dude.
Please.
I wasnt heartless, especially with nice guys. I felt sorry for them. They
were the ones who got picked on in school, shunned in college, ignored
125
by the beautiful women at those big corporations they slaved at. They
attracted flies like honey does, like shit does. More like shit, though. Nice
was worse than shit because everyone wanted to be nice but couldnt
because they were all wired to be assholes. So when nice came around,
people crapped all over it, tore it down to its basic elements, and rebuilt it
in their own image: shit.
Little voice in some deep recess of my subconscious reminded me that
sometimes nice wasnt so nice and it had to be dealt with. That justification
made the butterflies in my stomach start a small riot, because I had always
focused my energy on bad guys. Not like I had some special code like
Dexter. I just liked taking out the trash. Good people were not trash.
But hey, I didnt always get what I wanted in life and sometimes my
choices werent really my own. They were made by the men who paid me
to do a job. Someday I would have to rewrite their rules, but not on this
beautiful day in Sarasota, Florida, US of A, Incorporated.
When I left the room, I made sure the tv was tuned to HBO, which
had non-stop movies; ensured Id cleaned all horizontal surfaces with
ammonium and paper towels, after brushing down the walls with a broom.
DNA, especially from freshly sloughed-off skin cells, can stick to walls as
easily as any horizontal surface. I wasnt gonna leave behind even a strand
of mine. If so, it would be lost forever in the putrid fibers of the hotel
carpet.
At the pool, I smiled at the young lipgloss lolly in her thong bikini.
Shed not only seen me but noticed me in a carnal way that wrote an
indelible something on her reptilian brainstem. My careless nod cemented
it in place.
Not cool at all, this loose end.
Ready for me, are ya? she said, trying to imitate some starlets crooked
smile.
As I walked away from NiceGuys final resting place, moving toward
his rental car, I hoped the loose end in the pink bikini would forget me.
Took a few more steps . . .
Turned around . . .
Soon as I saw the tall, gorgeous, young stud approach her, bend down
and kiss her all sloppy-like, put his hand inside her bikini bottom, I knew
I was a distant memory.
Wondered if Rachel would soon see me this way.
127
Purchase Our Books
BLOODSMOKE
Book One in a new series of action-adventure thrillers by Rio Ramirez,
featuring Tommy Darlington, a small-town hitman who reluctantly
climbs the ladder of success in a shady global industry run by well-heeled
thugs with infinite resources, and backed by a secret cabal of dynastic men
thousands of miles from the action. Along the way, Darlington discovers
the nature and identities of the powerful men behind the black curtain,
and begins questioning their methods and motives, leaving a trail of warm
bodies in his wake. The more this sinister cabal tries to control Darlington,
the more they lose their grip on him as he gradually reveals and unravels
their carefully laid plans.
Paperback available from Amazon.com.
Please visit AdagioPress.com for details.
DEADLIGHT
Book Two of the Tommy Darlington series of action-adventure thrillers
by Rio Ramirez. Reeling from the loss of his beloved Rachel, Tommy
needs something to kill and Tyreese the Pimp provides just the target. But
the brutal pimp isnt enough to satisfy Tommys bloodlust.
Purchase Our Books
A distant friend sucks Tommy deep into a hurricane of illegal

machinations that test his physical, moral and emotional resolve.
Who Really Owns Your Gold: How The Jesuits Use Gold Economics To
Control Humanity
The power that controls your gold, your assets and your life is a dynastic
group of men in Rome, and its not the Vatican. They control every
government on the planet and, using celestiophysics, manipulate to their
advantage all actions and behaviors in law, politics, economics and finance,
business, law enforcement, military and defense affairs, science and high-
tech, entertainment, medicine and healthcare, education, etc.
New York Times bestselling ghostwriter and editor William Dean A.
Garner takes you on a journey into a labyrinth where up is down, black is
white, yes is no . . . and nothing is what it seems.
This revelation is for everyone, not just those who own gold or precious
metals.
Sun Tzu The Art of War: Ancient Wisdom . . . Modern Twist

New York Times bestselling author Dalton Fury has this to say about
William Dean A. Garners updated version of The Art of War: Dean
Garners version of The Art of War confirms for us that for the past 2,000
years the fundamental principles of special operations in battle have not
only remained true, but they apply equally to todays boardrooms and
bedrooms. When on the hunt or holding ground, success can only be
had by the precise application of disguise, deception and diversion, and
a genuine appreciation for angles, inches, and seconds. Ranger Garner
masterfully shows us how.
129
VA Disability Claim: A Practical, Step-By-Step Field Manual for Active-
Duty Servicemembers and Veterans on How to Prepare, File, Maintain,
Win and Appeal a Service-Connected VA Disability Claim Without Going
Insane
VA Disability Claim by Jon Macintosh is the first and only comprehensive
book that details the necessary steps to take when preparing, filing,
maintaining, winning and appealing a VA disability claim. The books
contains prominently numbered steps, much like the Betty Crocker
method of cake baking, to file a claim, and also detailed information
about the entire appeals process. The Resources chapter contains 100
helpful books, reports, manuals, articles and blogs, plus useful contacts to
aid service members and veterans in their own research. The companion
website, VADisabilityClaimBook.com, also lists all these resources in
digital format for easy retrieval and use. Before VA Disability Claim, there
were only two others that dealt directly with how to file a VA disability
claim, both by John D. Roche: Claim Denied! and The Veterans Survival
Guide: How to File and Collect on VA Claims, Second Edition. Sadly, Mr.
Roches information is now at least eight years old and will never be
updated, due to his death in 2012.
140 pages
100 useful references

How To Wirte Your First Book by William Garner

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How To Wirte Your First Book by William Garner

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How To Write Your First Book

Copyright 2014 William Dean A. Garner

The author asserts his moral and legal rights.

Published in America by Adagio Press

Adagio and colophon are Trademarks of

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013955167

Cover design and interior: William Garner

Dr. William D. Garner (Col., USAF, ret.)

Ms. Antonia Tinti

and for You, dear Reader

This makes me want to do my best work.

And you dont have to be a Conan Doyle or Hemingway or Kipling.

in kindergarten and grade school. Why? Because it works so well. Okay,

mediate and modulate all geophysical and biophysical events, actions,

I have built my method on the building-block approach, starting with

All disappointments are due to either unexpressed

subconscious take a break from you, something that can be as important

Writing anything worth someone elses hard-earned money takes time

Location, location, location. Having your writing office at a busy street

DO NOT DISTURB UNLESS YOUR ARM OR LEG FALLS OFF

long commute to work? A car, if youre fortunate to have a driver? Or the

introducing me to new thoughts, ideas, beliefs and ways of doing things

and more information by asking questions, writing them down, then

You also can talk to the individual components of your CHILD. It

child, and children sometimes dont take in a lot of meaningful information

My example below focuses only on the longer narrative-style of Outline

need to go back and work on those shortcomings before moving on to the

Please read it over again. And over. Yes, again.

Pauls back from his four-year tour in the US Army as an Airborne

Books arent written, theyre rewritten. Including your

And as soon as I saw my work improvedramatically, I tell youthats

Rule #1: Never fall in love with your own

We all suffer from this affliction every so often, especially in the

Rule #2: When you write something, its

cool quotes and dialogue you dreamed up or discovered, helpful notes

Jodie Renners Fire Up Your Fiction - An Editors Guide to Writing

Jodie Renners Writing a Killer Thriller - An Editors Guide to Writing

Steve Harrisons National Publicity Summit

Dino, THANK YOU! When I listen to someone speak in a class or make

Highly recommend his class if it is offered again.

Before I turned pro and floundered without direction, it was Dean

Literary agent, Particle Physics Illuminatus, and former Army Airborne

My name is Steve Alten, I am the NY Times bestselling author of Meg,

be wise to hire him as a ghostwriter . . . but I expect his services shared

When I first embarked on my single-title writing path, I had already

No one writes a book in a vacuum. Im no different. Therere several people

Bloodsmoke is Book One in a new series from Adagio Press: action-

Cell phones suck. They annoy me more than no-see-ums.

He went on for another minute, filling me in on my next bulls-eye,

A/C running on max at 68 degrees . . .

Ever seen air flash-freeze between a man and a woman?

was something altogether different, a welcomed misery. When I felt what

I hate nice guys who do stupid things. Really stupid things.

A distant friend sucks Tommy deep into a hurricane of illegal

Sun Tzu The Art of War: Ancient Wisdom . . . Modern Twist

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