Sparkplug

I haven’t posted in quite a while because I have been busy with my other writing. However, I do feel compelled to say a few words on the passing of special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen.

Ray first came into my life when I was a very young boy. I was sitting wide-eyed in wonder near the front of the Geneva Theatre in Orillia watching THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD on a cold winter night. This was a seminal experience in my life. Not that things before SEVENTH VOYAGE were a gray wasteland or anything, but after seeing the film a whole new world opened up for me.

It was a world of monsters and fantasy, of imaginary creatures lovingly rendered and brought to life by this humble man who spent his career mostly in isolation meticulously moving his actors one frame at a time.

In 1977, ironically on the same weekend that STAR WARS was released, I got to meet Ray in person at a small convention in Michigan. He showed us a reel of animation tests and rare footage.  He even brought along some of his creations including one of my favourites - the fire breathing dragon from SEVENTH VOYAGE. What we didn’t know at the time was the the winds of change were swirling around Ray and that his next movie THE CLASH OF THE TITANS would be his last. The age of artisan special effects was coming to an end, replaced by the new era of digital wonders.

There was a continuity however and that was the influence that Ray had on all those filmmakers who would soon rise to dominate the box office. Everyone from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to James Cameron and Peter Jackson acknowledge Ray’s inspiration on their careers.

While Ray did not receive an Oscar for any of his films he was awarded a special technical award from the Academy. It was presented by a very excited Tom Hanks who was also a big fan.

Amid the bombast of today’s special effects extravaganzas Ray’s films still stand out. They have a heart and soul that defies definition. There is a quality about them that still captures the very young and transports them to magical lands populated with mythical beasts.

So long Ray, you deserve a very special place in the land beyond, beyond.

A list of Ray Harryhausen’s Feature Films

• MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949)
• THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1952)
• IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955)
• THE ANIMAL WORLD (1956)
• EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956)
• 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957)
• THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958)
• THE THREE WORLDS OF GULLIVER (1959)
• MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961)
• JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963)
• FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1964)
• ONE MILLION YEARS BC (1966)
• THE VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969)
• THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1973)
• SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER (1977)
• CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981)

Just a little under two years ago I embarked on my lifelong dream of being a genuine, full time author.  To finally get to this point I had spent thousands of hours writing copy for everything from hotel chains to life insurance.  Over the twenty five years that I toiled in the corporate trenches I wrote hundreds of thousands of words and got paid a lot of money for doing essentially what I loved.

But there was always this itch to write a book.  Finally, four years ago, I achieved this and saw the publication of two travel guides — Toronto and New York City — which I was senior writer.  These were turned into successful iPhone apps and eventually morphed into Tripilator.com a leading app for all things travel.  We now feature numerous cities and continue to add content on a weekly basis.

It was a real trip (to use my hippie lingo) to see books that I had written on the shelves of bookstores around the country.  I felt an enormous sense of pride at what our team had achieved.

And still . . .

I yearned to tell my own stories and eventually have my name above the title.

I have always loved mysteries since my earliest days reading the Hardy Boys.  Outgrowing Frank and Joe I discovered Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allen Poe, and then Ian Fleming and Donald Hamilton and John D. MacDonald and Ross MacDonald and Lawrence Sanders.

Today mystery is still my favorite genre. So it was natural to try my hand at writing one. The result after a year’s work was DARK SUNSET a mystery set on Lake Michigan’s Sunset Coast. I circulated it to a number of friends and acquaintances for their input and comments. While I had some things to fix the general consensus was good. Everyone who read it really liked it. I got comments back like “haunting”, “vivid” and “terrific”.

I spent the next four months working with Amy Mark my editor preparing the final manuscript for publication. Today, it’s not enough to merely write a book you have to build a platform to promote it. The sad truth for new authors is that you can’t depend on your publisher to promote your work. You have to do the job yourself.

Fortunately, we are in an age of social media. I started building buzz for the book by creating a website called Sunset Michigan which is the fictitious town where the story is set. I really enjoyed the process of creating the website content and allowed myself to think wildly out of the box — heaping absurdity upon absurdity when writing about the everyday happenings in Sunset. These included a feature on the on-going struggle between local Star Trek and Star Wars fans, the annual Wolverine Fry, the strange story of the downfall of The Happy Train, and how the ferryboat came to be named after Charles Manson.

The site took on a life of its own and continues to serve as my foundation for all the marketing efforts for the book. I also participated in the Suspense/Thriller Writer’s Group on Facebook.  This allowed me to start promoting the book months in advance.  Facebook also features both my SUNSET MICHIGAN and DARK SUNSET pages.  Finally as the book neared publication I set up an Author’s site on Amazon to feature all my books in one place.

I decided early in the process that I wanted to create a teaser trailer for the book. There were several versions — one for pre-release and the other for release. The trailer has a simple elegance that creates just the right amount of intrigue and menace. It got DARK SUNSET a lot of attention.

Finally, I was blessed with a fantastic cover by Lesley Stodart. It perfectly reflects the tone and mood of the book. A great cover makes the job of parting people from their hard-earned cash so much easier.

The book has been out for just over a month and has been selling well beyond my expectations.

Two years ago DARK SUNSET was still locked inside my head and now it is between two covers. And that is really, really cool.

I have completed the sequel BLOODY SUNSET which will be published next fall. I also wrote a third book HAIR TRIGGER which is a lighthearted romp through Detroit in search of the proverbial white whale. It will be published in April. Currently, I am writing the third Sunset book FOGGY SUNSET which will be published next year.

I started out to scratch an itch and ended up causing a rash.

Funny how that happens.

Four months ago in the wake of the Aurora, Colorado movie theater tragedy I wrote about gun killings in America.  I thought after that atrocity that discussion about gun control might be put on the table during the Presidential election.

It wasn’t.

Read the rest of this entry »

The recent spate of mass killings in the United States has renewed a call for stricter gun control.  That’s probably a good thing, however, easy access to firearms isn’t necessarily the entire solution. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night Nik Wallenda walked a tightrope across Niagara Falls in a stunt that hadn’t been done since the early 1960s when Gilbert Roland attempted it in the exciting climax of Irwin Allen’s The Big Circus. Read the rest of this entry »

Sparkplug’s Arizona correspondent Ted Rushton comments on the recent passing of Ray Bradbury.

“It was a pleasure to burn,” is the opening sentence in ‘Fahrenheit 451.’  Read the rest of this entry »

The Woman in Black comes out on video today.  I loved Susan Hill’s original novel and the earlier television version of it but the new version made by Hammer Studios and starring Daniel Radcliff is a superb ghost story and is filled with old-fashioned chills. Read the rest of this entry »

The Sunset website is starting to produce results that I hadn’t expected.  The most interesting thing is I have had people ask where they can buy DARK SUNSET and my other books. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I launched the website for Sunset, Michigan, the fictional town where I set my mystery novels.  My original idea was to use it to house some of the material I had to cut from the books, and to fill in gaps in the stories. Read the rest of this entry »

My novels are set in the fictional town of Sunset, Michigan.  For those of you who know Michigan the exact location of the town is just north of Traverse City and south of Petoskey, on the Lake Michigan shore.

During the rewriting of the first novel DARK SUNSET, I had to cut a fair amount of background story out of the book to keep it flowing along.  It was really good stuff and provided some historical perspective and color to the novel.  However, I had to kill these children as they just slowed the story down too much. Read the rest of this entry »

An effective query letter is an important second step to having your book published (the first step is writing a fantastic novel of course). Read the rest of this entry »

I just finished writing the outline for my next mystery — Hair Trigger, which will be the first book in a new series.

My first two mysteries — Dark Sunset and Bloody Sunset — are set in a small town of Sunset, Michigan.  For Hair Trigger I thought I might give Sunset a rest and go in a different direction. Read the rest of this entry »

As a writer I have never had a problem generating ideas.  My biggest issue has been organizing them.  Over the years I filled numerous notebooks and scraps of paper with thoughts and concepts.  Most were titled ‘What If’.  However, few of them ever seemed to make it into a finished narrative.   A huge percentage ended up tucked in drawers or filing cabinets stagnating and forgotten. Read the rest of this entry »

For all those of you who are specifically interested in reading and writing fantasy fiction (the darker type) the annual World Fantasy Convention is being held right here in Toronto at the beginning of November. Read the rest of this entry »

You may have noticed that I haven’t been keeping the blog up to date lately.  Thanks to Ted Rushton for helping to fill the gaps.

I have decided to re-up the site and take it in a new direction. Read the rest of this entry »