LOVE
“I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.”
Arthur Rubenstein
February might be the best time to edit our New Year’s resolutions. Oh, my! Where does one begin?
Editing is our topic for this newsletter, and where would any author of good repute be without an editor? We have met authors who, although never having read a book, think they have written a best seller. We always are skeptical of those authors. Upon examining their first drafts, we determine if it is worth our time to edit or to reject the project outright. We have done both.
Quotes about editing:
As Emma Hill says, “The first draft is black and white. Editing gives the story color.” – Emma Hill
“To write is human; to edit is divine.” – Stephen King
“Writing without revising [editing] is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear.” – Patricia Fuller
NEW BOOK RELEASE
Matson’s Case No. 6
New York City Detective Robert Matson receives the complex case of an ex-Russian agent walking into a hospital and saying someone had killed him. At first, skeptical of the man’s claim, Matson learns that the Russian is a CIA informant who has been spilling the beans about KGB operations. Matson and his partner, Harvey Smith, have their work cut out for them to shift through the characters that have swirled around the man and the unexpected physical evidence they uncover. The case becomes more complicated when one individual or group tries to assassinate both detectives, forcing them to relocate their families for protection. Matson’s Case No. 6 has more twists and turns than the rollercoaster at Coney Island.
GUEST AUTHOR – THE LATE JAMES EDWARD ALLEN
Big ‘n’ Nothin’
Big n’ Nothin’ was the credo of Pepper Hotwell, a professional gangster who specialized in armed robbery. Set in Gary, IN, and Chicago’s South Side in the late 1960s, Pepper moves through a culture that oscillates between extremes of poverty and wealth. Money is made and lost in an instant. Self-indulgence competes with loyalty to family and loved ones.
His story vividly depicts the lifestyle of people on the underbelly of society, using every means possible to claw their way to the top. Drug addiction, greed, and violence are shown naked and unromanticized, yet the roots of Pepper’s risk-seeking attitude are also laid bare, lacing his self-aggrandizing trajectory with an implicit social critique.
The late James Edward Allen penned this fictionalized chronicle of his life and criminal escapades during an eleven-month lockdown in the Indiana State Prison, where he was serving a life sentence for murder. Allen was a rare breed, a career criminal with a code of ethics and modus operandi that set him apart from ordinary street thugs and made him feared and respected by both his peers and law enforcement agents.
Allen grew up gifted in art and music but found the flash of the streets more thrilling. During his final incarceration, he acquired a respectable measure of remorse. “I would rather live on beans in freedom than dine on prime rib if the side dish was more time behind the walls,” he said.
The cover art is one of many collages he created in his prison cell, using a straight-edged razor, pictures clipped from discarded magazines, school paste, and water-based house paint.
For more about James Edward Allen, read BONGO by Susan Giffin.
