Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Episode 16 – The Jeremy Robinson Interview

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http://www.jeremyrobinsononline.com/


Jeremy talks about the nature of marketing and why he had to change the Chess Team Adventures to the Jack Sigler Adventures.

We discuss The Last Hunter, Jeremy’s previous book - http://www.jeremyrobinsononline.com/books/the-last-hunter-by-jeremy-robinson.html

The difference between 1st and 3rd person in thriller writing.

We discuss how thrillers blur the lines through straight up action into speculative fiction, and how Jeremy’s books often explore the speculative.

This leads to a discussion of Jeremy’s sci-fi novel, Beaneath, an action-adventure novel on a moon: http://www.jeremyrobinsononline.com/books/beneath-by-jeremy-robinson.html

Jeremy talks about his journey from self-publishing through his own small press to traditional publishing with St Martin’s Press, and how his various sales are now.

We talk about Jeremy’s efforts marketing and promoting his first self-published book, The Didymus Contingency, and the success it generated.

Jeremy talks about his future projects.

Jeremy wraps it up with his advice for new writers and what’s happening with thrillers.



and Twitter - @JRobinsonAuthor

Stick around past the credits for a great out-take showing what consummate professionals Alan and David are.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Episode 015 - Writing Fighting and How Not to Fight with Reviewers

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An eclectic ThrillerCast today. We start with talk about fighting.

Alan talks about his new ebook, Write The Fight Right, about writing more realistic and convincing fight scenes.

Alan talks about his background as a martial instructor and fighter.

What’s the thing most often wrong with written fight scenes? Alan talks about the problem with writing a fight scene like a visually choreographed movie fight.

David talks about the problem of misunderstanding martial arts as some kind of magical skill. What’s really real in fighting?

How much is heart and hunger a factor in fighting?

How can we use these things in characterisation with our stories? Motivation and ability.

Streetfighting versus tournament fighting.

When Alan is talking about a great fight scene and he can’t remember which movie it’s from, it’s Bridget Jones’s Diary. The fight is between the Hugh Grant and Colin Firth characters.

You can get Alan’s ebook, Write The Fight Right, now for just $1.99 – all the details here: http://www.alanbaxteronline.com/write-fight

Alan talked about a competition to host a fight writing competition on his blog. That contest is now on and you can enter here to win free books: http://www.alanbaxteronline.com/2011/04/12/written-fight-tournament.html

From here we segue rather clumsily into a discussion about the Jacqueline Howett debacle that occurred recently, where a self-published author responded very poorly to a bad review.


Dave and Alan discuss what the problem is with responding like this to a review and how an author should respond to any review, good or bad.

Gaiman’s smackdown – the Dunning Kruger effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect


Friday, April 8, 2011

New Release: Write the Fight Right by Alan Baxter

ThrillerCast co-host Alan Baxter has releases his Write the Fight Right book. A career martial arts instructor, Alan has used his knowledge of combat to conduct a popular workshop for writers on how to write fight scenes. He shares this knowledge in his new ebook, which you can purchase on Kindle, or in multiple formats on Smashwords.