Just thought I’d share a little bit of book 8 that’s made me chuckle to myself as I’m writing it.
* * *
“We’re so far from home…maybe it’s time to find a new one,” Chang said.
“Agreed. But let’s keep this between us,” Gunn said in a low voice. “I don’t need this lot attempting a mutiny and stuffing me down the trash compactor chute as a result.”
It was all Chang could do not to laugh. The thought of Meryl Gunn being overpowered in her own engine room was just too funny to even contemplate.
I recently published my crime novella, DEAD PRETTY on Amazon.
Far From Home 7: Balance is with my editor.
I’m writing Far From Home 8: Warrior right now.
Best-selling author Bernard Schaffer and I are collaborating on a cross-over between Far From Home and his own series, Grendel Unit.
I’m writing one half, and Bernard the other. We’re doing that now for a June/July release.
In June I will be writing Far From Home 9: Defiant, then I’ll be getting to work on some fan fiction for the third Kindle All-Stars anthology.
In July I will be devoting the month to writing a horror novel. I don’t have a title yet, only a working title I can’t reveal because it will spoil the whole project. It’s a story I’ve wanted to do for a long time.
I will spend the first half of August finishing it, then the second half of the month to Far From Home 10.
September will see me write Far From Home 11 and 12
That’s it for now. Plenty going on, self-inflicted of course….
For Thursday and Friday ONLY, Dead Pretty will be FREE on Kindle
We’re still going through edits, but DEAD PRETTY is now ready for beta readers.
If you’d like to read it (in .doc format) then please hit me up at tonyleehealey@gmail.com and I’ll send it to you.
Or you can download it directly from my DROPBOX!
In return for feedback and an honest review when it’s published I will send you the final, finished product and include your name in the Afterword at the end.
This is the first book I’ve read from crime publisher Exhibit-A, and the first from author Sean Lynch.
As I said in a tweet to the book’s editor, “It should have been called Relentless.”
In WOUNDED PREY, psycho killer Vernon Slocum is on the loose, murdering kids just as he did years before in the madness of Vietnam. Bob Farrell was an investigator during the Vietnam killings, and Kevin Kearns is a rookie deputy who’s just gone up against Slocum…andlost. With both men reeling from the realisation that they failed in their separate attempts to stop Slocum, they work together to finally put an end to his murder spree.
Slocum is smartly drawn for the reader, with explanations for his motives. The sickening reasons behind his psychosis are revealed throughout the book, and it never felt like an info-dump. In many cases his backstory was very cleverly detailed through the use of supporting characters. One example of this clever technique is when we visit Slocum’s brother Cole. Author Sean Lynch takes us from Cole’s traumatic childhood, all the way through to where he is now. So we not only learn about the kind of abuse Vernon Slocum and his siblings went through, but Lynch uses it to further propel the plot.
It’s first-rate, measured writing.
This brings me to something I really enjoyed: the interplay between Farrell and Kearns. The back-and-forth banter was so funny at times, it literally had me laughing out loud. They work well, the older, cynical cop and the young hot-head rookie. In Lynch’s capable hands, the duo bounce off of one another perfectly. It’s definitely a couple of characters I want to revisit.
WOUNDED PREY is a non-stop thrill ride of a book. Unrelenting, brutal, scary, and at times skin-crawling in its depiction of atrocious crimes. And yet it is also funny, warming and believable. Much like the excellent SUPERBIA police proceedural series, written by former Detective Bernard Schaffer, WOUNDED PREY feels realistic because its author knows what he’s talking about. Sean Lynch has seen a lot of stuff in his law-enforecement career, and that definitely comes across. True, anybody can write a police thriller. But few efforts feel as real as Lynch’s. Like Schaffer, he’s lived the life.
WOUNDED PREY is a great book, the start of a series. Now, Mr. Lynch…get to work on the follow-up. You have one very happy reader waiting for it!
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT WOUNDED PREY
PRE-ORDER WOUNDED PREY BY SEAN LYNCH
ORDER SUPERBIA BY BERNARD SCHAFFER
Far From Home fans!
I’m one third of the way through writing Far From Home 7: Balance. I need a name for an alien creature. I can’t go into any more detail than that, because it will spoil the plot. However the alien is big. And I mean BIG.
And very dangerous.
Best answer in the comments is the winner, and will receive a special acknowledgement at the start of the book.
GO!
So, I sometimes use an online service called editminion. You paste in sections of text, hit edit, and it highlights passive words, prepositions, etc etc. It’s not fantastic (I think we could do with a Word plugin that does this at the push of a button – and to a whole doc, not just a section of what you’re working on) but it is useful and I urge all of you to try it.
Anyway, I was using it and I thought “Why don’t I take a pesky word like ‘was’ and set Microsoft Word to highlight every instance of it? Then I had to google how to do that…
(I’m still learning the ropes when it comes to Word, despite over 10 years using it)
Then when I figured that out, I thought “Get a list of all the passive words that drive me, and my editor, nuts, and set it to highlight those as well.”
That’s when I stumbled across this page: http://ryanmacklin.com/2012/05/passive-voice-words/ detailing how to record a macro in Word that you run with one click. It highlights those passive words listed (you can add more).
I think it’s a great idea. It took some by-the-seat-of-your-pants experimentation, but I got it to work in the end. And once I’ve gone through the doc from start to finish, attending to every passive word (and the sentence they’re a part of, don’t forget) I then just de-highlight the whole doc.
I did a test run of this on a section of what I’m writing now, and I’ll be using this method when I do the second draft. I know my editor will thank me in the end.
Here is a sample of it at work. This is all highlighted by the macro.
Give it a try, let me know in the comments how you get on with it. If you don’t want to visit the page, here is the macro code:
Sub HighlightPassiveVoiceMacro()
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("be")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("being")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("been")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("am")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("is")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("are")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("was")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("were")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("been")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("has")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("have")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("had")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("do")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("did")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("does")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("can")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("could")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("shall")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("should")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("will")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("would")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("might")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("must")
HighlightPassiveVoiceWord ("may")
End Sub
Sub HighlightPassiveVoiceWord(sWord)
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.Highlight = True
With Selection.Find
.Text = sWord
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = True
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub
Sub DehighlightMacro()
ActiveDocument.Range.HighlightColorIndex = wdNoHighlight
End Sub
