Popular Book Reviewer discusses reviewing books, plus Jim is now on Twitter

Check out how popular book blogger Shauna Wheelwright discusses her process for reviewing books: http://www.jimhaberkorn.com/?p=575 Shortly Shauna will be posting a book review of A Thousand Suns on her website here: http://ilovetoreadandreviewbooks.blogspot.ch/ Also, I've recently joined Twitter thanks to the encourement of my work colleague Ashwin Kumar Shetty from Bangalore, India and fellow author Terri Lynn Adams from Utah who together are slowing bringing me kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Follow my exploits on twitter here: https://twitter.com/JimHaberkorn

Thanks for A Thousand Suns

 Today A Thousand Suns was officially published, and I wish to thank all those who read the manuscript at various stages and suggested helpful edits. In no particular order:

·         Grey Titmus, my long time Boise friend and resident expert on all things Idaho. 

·         My agent Donna Eastman whom you can thank if you liked the fight between Rulon and Boris in the Rockin’ Rooster. Originally I had planned to cut off the scene right before the fight started and leave the actual fight to everyone’s imagination. But Donna encouraged me to actually write it out, and I did. Good call, Donna!

·         Margaret Habelt-Pattison, my Zurich editor, who not only has an excellent eye for detail, but gives helpful suggestions on plot and characterization. She was my sounding board while writing the book. Everyone needs a Margaret when they’re writing a book – an editor who is detailed oriented and unfailingly honest in their feedback but never tries to take the book away from the author.

·         John Franklin, an old high school friend with whom I’ve reconnected after many years. By the way, John has a couple of extremely talented daughters who can sing up a storm. They’re called The Franklin Girls and have just recorded their second pop album.

·         John Solosabal who owns a ranch near Glen’s Ferry and John Butler who ranches several thousand acres in the Owyhees are both longtime Idaho ranchers who were immeasureably patient in answering all my cowboy related questions. Having been born in Brooklyn, New York, all I knew about ranching before I talked to them, was, well, actually, I didn’t know anything. And certainly nothing about the vagaries of Idaho ranching.

·         Melissa Caldwell, my editor at Cedar Fort, who did her job professionally and made the editing process so very, very easy. Also, she did a great job of laying out and setting up the book for publication.

·         Martin Bingisser, American hammer thrower, now living in Zurich, who I once plied with Mexican food at Tres Kilos, Rulon’s favorite Zurich restaurant, and who suppled all the hammer throwing details in my books. Over that meal and in subsequent communications, Martin taught me lots about hammer throwing including the fact that world class hammer throwers don’t ‘pull’ the 16-pound ball through their spins as one might expect but rather ‘push’ it. That little fact pops up in ATS out of Rulon’s dad’s mouth.

·         Google and my laptop’s backspace key, without which I would still be working on the first chapter of Einstein’s Trunk. 

·         And finally, last but not least, Kimmy, my loving wife, who reads my chapters, always gives honest feedback, listens to me working out scenes while on our walks to the gym, hands out my bookmarks to all her business acquaintences, and keeps my feet planted firmly on the ground.  

My most heartfelt thanks to all of them, 

Jim 

Boston, Mass.   

Where did the title "A Thousand Suns" come from?

      The other night a friend asked me how I came up with the title A Thousand Suns.  Here’s the background: The title is not taken from the Linkin Park album ‘A Thousand Suns.’ And it’s not from the Iron Maiden song ‘Brighter than a Thousand Suns.’ Both of those musical creations got the phrase from a statement by Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the Manhattan project, who, after seeing the first atom bomb go off at Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 15, 1945, said that it reminded him of these words from the Bhagavad-Gita: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendor of the Mighty one…”
     And then a minute later when he saw the mushroom cloud rise high above the earth, he said it made him think of the rest of that poem: ”Now I am become Death, the destroyer of Worlds.”
     But this is how it came to be in my book. Just as they were ready to fall asleep, Yohaba asked Rulon how much did his enemies hate him. This is the rest of the scene:
     
     Half asleep, without opening his eyes, Rulon mumbled, “Oh…I’d say with the heat of a thousand suns. Yeah, that sounds about right…”
     After a few minutes, Yohaba propped herself up on one elbow and looked at Rulon sleeping like a baby. Moonlight breaking through the clouds streamed in the window and made moving shadows on Rulon’s face. Her love for him stirred and her heart gave a leap. She looked around the room and up at the ceiling trying to focus on something, anything, to keep from crying. She managed all right except for a single tear that ran down her face into the corner of her mouth.
     The salty tear mixed with the lingering feel of Rulon’s lips acted like an Oracle’s potion. It set her mind to racing and conjuring up memories of their life together, the love and violence they had shared so far in equal doses, as if a cosmic scale needed to stay in balance. Yohaba gasped, suddenly overwhelmed with a portent of the future – this will not end well. She knew it without a doubt: There will be blood.
     The moment of realization quickly passed and was replaced with a terrible calm. Looking down at Rulon’s kindly face, she whispered into his ear, “What a coincidence. A thousand suns. That’s exactly how much I love you, Cowboy.” She rolled over onto her side away from Rulon and now the moon shadows spilled across her face. “But mine burn hotter,” she said into the night.

 Blog Alert!! Someday soon I'm going to stop posting on this blog and post only on my author's website at  www.jimhaberkorn.com   In fact, I've already started posting there. The post below is an exact copy of the post on my new blog.

Jim
Zurich  

Getting published

     Occasionally I'm contacted by aspiring authors asking what it takes to get published and how the publishing business works. The short answer is that writing a book is an enjoyable exercise if you love to write, but that getting published and successfully selling a book can be pretty painful even under the best of circumstances. Though, I suppose, selling 50,000 copies would dull the ache!
     The rules of the publishing game have changed thanks to Amazon. I recently read that no one really knows how to sell books anymore. For example, when Borders, the second largest book store chain in the U.S., went out of business, normally Barnes and Noble, the largest chain, would have benefitted. But it didn't. Amazon did. Nowadays, the strategy seems to be for publishers to mainly focus on the potential 'mega block busters' hoping for a  million-book bestseller. Most of the rest of the books are left to scramble for themselves and authors must do a lot of their own promoting. Thankfully there is Facebook and internet websites!

Exactly one month from today A Thousand Suns hits the bookshelves and approximately 100 internet web sites around the world - including Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
    
Best regards,

Jim
Zurich

Can a thriller be humorous?

     Can a thriller be humorous? This question came up because of the trouble I have whenever I see a short description of A Thousand Suns. If the description doesn’t mention the humor, I’m bothered that they missed something unique about the book. If it does mention the humor, then I’m worried people wil think the book is funny, light, and not a real thriller. So, with this post, I’d like to set the record straight about humor in my thrillers.
     My books are not humorous, but they have characters who have a well-developed sense of humor and who tend to see the humorous side of most situations. For my characters, particularly Rulon, humor is a safety value and a way of dealing with unpleasant outcomes. In fact, this humor is part of what makes ‘A Thousand Suns’ a realistic book.
     In researching A Thousand Suns, I read the book On Combat by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a former army Ranger and West Point psychology professor. In it he talks about how men and women in life and death situations use humor to, in a sense, escape from reality.
     A Thousand Suns is a thriller. But it’s not a downer. It has a few laughs, thanks to my characters innate natures, but it also has scenes of courage, loyalty, love, hate, violence, disillusionment, and revenge. I don’t want readers to be crying at the end of it or laughing. I’d like them to put the book down when they are done and simply sigh, “Good story.” 

     On a different note: I have a new website design at: www.jimhaberkorn.com   I've also started using Facebook to publicize my upcoming book A Thousand Suns.  http://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Thousand-Suns/433298710075276?cropsuccess&success=1

     Please free to visit those sites, and, if you feel so moved, let me know what you think. This blog post is also found on my website. I'll be making a decision within a few days about whether to keep this blog or to simply transfer the activity to my website.

Best regards,

Jim - from Zurich

A Thousand Suns

     In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that the sequel to Einstein’s Trunk was complete and titled World of Hurt. I thought the title was somewhat clever as it was a nice play on the hero’s last name as well as an accurate portrayal of what the book was about, i.e., Rulon Hurt’s somewhat painful world. Roughly 40% of the book takes place in the Twin Falls area of Idaho and the last 60% takes place in and around Zurich, Switzerland.

     But now I’ve changed the title to A Thousand Suns. The title comes from the expression ‘heat of a thousand suns’ – which Rulon uses to describe how much his enemies hate him and which Yohaba uses to describe how much she loves the big cowboy.  Can’t say more without giving away the plot, but I will add that Yohaba’s suns burn mighty bright, in fact, she dominates the book. The new title does a better job of capturing the human heart beating within the story - much more so than the old title. And besides, World of Hurt is a better fit for the third book in the series, which I'm starting on now.

     Speaking of Switzerland, I was having a conversation the other day on why some countries are more prosperous than others. Reasons were given. Opinions were shared. And then someone brought up Switzerland and mentioned that almost every negative condition raised could likewise be applied to that small country nestled in the center of Europe. Switzerland has limited natural resources, is landlocked, is split by multiple cultures and languages, has an expensive social safety net for its citizens, a lot of immigrants for its size, and is surrounded by countries with large militaries who have a history of going to war with each other. And yet it thrives. The longer I live in Switzerland, the more I appreciate its special place in the world. 

     My next post will cover a few tips I've learned on writing powerful descriptions.

Best regards,

Jim

Zurich