Ray Bradbury's ZEN IN THE ART OF WRITING

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury is the best book on writing I have ever read.

The advice Bradbury gives? Sit down and start typing. If you don't have an idea, just tap the keys at random. Sooner or later, you will form words, sentences, and paragraphs.

Get in the flow, the zone. Eventually, you will have written a short story or a novel. It's simple, but it works.

Writer's block doesn't have to happen. Engage the gears in your brain, and good things will happen.

All the time. Really.

The Ghost of Richard Brautigan by William Hammett

I love the works of 1970s counterculture icon, port, and novelist, Richard Brautigan.  Brautigan (1935-1984) wrote short, quirky, surrealistic novels.  The best-known is his 1976 Trout Fishing in America.  Others include In Watermelon Sugar, A Confederate General from Big Sur, Sombrero Fallout, The Hawkline Monster, and So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away.

Over the years I've used many different prose styles and written in several genres.  I've always been partial to what literary agents call quirky fiction and really love the offbeat novels of Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, and yes, Richard Brautigan.  Several years ago I had a rather outrageous idea for a novel and decided to use Brautigan's short chapter format and incorporate Brautigan himself into the story.  Agents failed to sell it, but a small press eventually published an earlier, shorter version of the novel, called Salamander Illusions.  I'm happy that Word Wrangler Publishing has given the work a second chance under the new title of The Ghost of Richard Brautigan.

The ad blurb is as follows.

"Lamont Bistro, a writing teacher married to Bourbon Street exotic dancer Jaguar Montaigne, receives regular visits from the ghost of Richard Brautigan, novelist, poet, and counterculture icon of the 1970s.

In this short, quirky, fast-paced novel reminiscent of Brautigan's dark humor and satire, Brautigan challenges Bistro to write a novel about his sexy young wife, snake-handling evangelicals, a swamp monster, Babe Ruth, a gaudy theme park named Gatorworld, Mount Kilimanjaro, the Gulf War, a deity named Bob, and a planet diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

As Bistro writes, however, he wonders if he himself has become a character in a surrealistic novel by the late great Richard Brautigan."

The book is available through Amazon.  All books recently published will also be available through the Word Wrangler Publishing online store.  Click on the book cover in the right sidebar to be taken to the book at Amazon.

Thanks for stopping by!

~William Hammett

STREET MAGIC by William Hammett

My novel Street Magic is now on sale at Amazon's Kindle store.  You may see the cover and click to purchase the book in the right navigation column.  It is horror/suspense.

I wrote the novel many years ago after reading Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.  It's Bradbury's best, in my opinion, and unlike his other novels and short stories, it isn't really science fiction, although some might say it has that kind of flavor.  Regardless of the genre, I was amazed at the prose style Bradbury used.  Its sentence parameters are loose, and the style is highly lyrical, almost poetic.  The words flow effortlessly from beginning to end in Bradbury's classic tale of good against evil.  That's when it occurred to me to write Street Magic, my own humble effort to pen a lyrical tale of good against evil.

It was fun to write.  I let the first draft flow without any revision and then went back over it many times over the years adjusting various sentences.  There comes a time, however, when a writer has to give birth to his child, and so I decided, thanks to the good people at Word Wrangler Publishing, to put Street Magic out there, where it will now have a life of its own.  Like all parents, I hope that life will treat my offspring kindly, but we'll see.  There's a time to let go.

The book description is as follows:

The people of Pace, Indiana are jolted from their routine small-town lives when a street magician, Lark the Magnificent, begins staging one incredible show after another.  There is seemingly nothing that the man in an electric-blue suit can't do, from levitating above the sidewalk to making it snow on a sunny day.

But Joe Bailey, meek bachelor and town archivist, notices that things in Pace aren't quite right.  People are going missing, stores are closing, and some one--or some thing--is living in a row of abandoned homes on River Road.

In this homage to Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, William Hammett has written a chilling tale in lyrical prose about the evil locked behind the doors of small-town America, an evil that Joe Bailey will have to combat with his own brand of street magic.

The book was published by Word Wrangler Publishing on March 24, 2015.  Thanks, Barbara, for all of your hard work on this one.

And thanks as always to my readers and friends for stopping by.

~William Hammett

contact wmhammett@aol.com

Promote Your Books with Short Stories and E-book Singles

Both indie and mainstream authors have discovered a powerful promotional tool: short fiction.  From Stephen King to aspiring authors, writers are tapping into greater sales potential by giving readers samples of their prose and genre by writing short fiction in the range of 25 to 50 pages (and sometimes slightly longer).

Not only does a reader get to sample a writer's work, but the author can also create short stories around existing characters in his or her published novels, whether stand-alone or those that are part of a series.  This marketing strategy not only gives an author greater exposure and additional royalties, but publishing short fiction, such as Kindle Singles, enables writers to provide backstory for characters that might disrupt the flow of a novel-length works.  Such stories make characters more three-dimensional, believable, and leave the reader wanting to know more about the people they fall in love with in the pages of novels.  If a reader hasn't read the novels yet, however, these short stories can serve as teasers that are as effective (if not more so) than ad copy or jacket blurb.

When an author publishes a "single," Amazon and other sellers will recommend the author's other works more frequently.  It is free and highly successful targeted advertising courtesy of Amazon's algorithms, and when you kick-start Amazon's algorithms, good things happen.  You pull in new readers who become hungry for more of your work.

The bottom line is that short fiction that uses established characters or demonstrates an author's genre, style, locations, or backstory from a novel develops and reinforces a writer's brand.

~William Hammett

Contact: wmhammett@aol.com

Circling Goes the Wind by William Hammett

Circling Goes the Wind is a middle reader (ages 8 to 12) that I published with Word Wrangler Publishing (Livingston, Montana) on January 31, 2015.  It is available in the Amazon Kindle store.  You may also purchase the book by clicking the book cover in the right column of this blog.  The promotional fee is currently $0.99.

The book description is as follows:

Ten-year-old Nathan Caulder thinks he might be going crazy.  He can't remember his childhood, he hears voices when alone on the Nebraska prairie, and a mysterious woman he encounters on the road tells him that he will soon learn dark family secrets.

But there are clues that guide Nathan in his search to unravel these mysteries: a gypsy fortuneteller speaks to him in a trance while gazing into her crystal ball; he has recurring dreams of touching the winter moon; and his eccentric grandfather begins calling him Jake.  Ultimately, the secret to Nathan's past lies in a steamer trunk in the attic, where the family retreats during one of Nebraska's worst natural disasters of the twentieth century.

Circling Goes the Wind is a book that speaks of magic, forgiveness, and the quiet inner voice that guides us when we strive to learn what is lasting and true in our lives.  It is a coming-of-age story in which Nathan not only confronts his past but also encounters a power beyond human understanding that seeks to guide him towards a destiny enabling him to heal the wounds of others.

Another middle reader under my own name will be published in the summer of 2015.  Literary and adult genre fiction under my own name will be published in March, April, and May of 2015.  A book on the art of writing is scheduled for publication in 2016.

Enjoy the book!

~William Hammett

Contact: wmhammett@aol.com 

New Books by William Hammett

I'm happy to announce that out of print and previously unpublished books under my own name will now be available to purchase in the Amazon Kindle store.  The books will range from children's titles (middle reader and Young Adult) to novels in many different genres I have written over the years.  A minimum of six titles will be available in the next few months.  The books may be purchased by signing into the Amazon store or going straight to the Amazon site by clicking the covers in the right navigation column of this blog.

The titles are published by Word Wrangler Publishing (Livingston, Montana) and will be available on the publisher's new online store (coming soon).  The titles may also be reviewed on Goodreads starting on Monday, March 9, 2015.

Circling Goes the Wind and Rimsky Rises are now for sale.  Street Magic (thriller, suspense, horror)and The Ghost of Richard Brautigan (literary) will be available in March, 2015.

I hope you enjoy the books!

~William Hammett

Contact: wmhammett@aol.com 

The Rewards of Being a Writer

I published John Lennon and the Mercy Street Café in 2007.  It's still in print and still sells.  It wasn't a blockbuster by any means, but it sold moderately over the years, and that was good enough for me.  It is a novel of magical realism in which John Lennon finds himself standing in Grand Central Station in the twenty-first century, unaware that he was assassinated.  The book had a profoundly metaphysical slant, and I always described it as a rock and roll Field of Dreams.  W. P. Kinsella brought back Shoeless Joe Jackson; I brought back John Lennon.

Over the years, I have received email from people who said that they either enjoyed the book or that it spoke to their hearts and inspired them in various ways.  The book also sold in Eastern Europe, where Beatlemania is still alive thanks to the fall of Communism.  The book was even required reading in a few college course in magical realism.  Cool, huh?

I didn't get rich from the book, but as I said in the previous post, I believe I was supposed to write the novel.  Something wanted to be said, and I was its instrument.  The fact that people found the book and emailed me to say that it meant something in their lives was very gratifying.  I file it under "nice work when you can get it."  Thanks to those who read my humble offering.

~ William Hammett

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