Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

A Shot to the Heart

Posted: 2nd July 2012 by Richard Hacker in Creativity, Life, Uncategorized
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I have my dad’s 1911 Colt .45 semi-automatic pistol, the very one he wore in a leather shoulder harness as a B-17 bombardier in the Pacific doing low level bombing of Emperial Japanese warships. I’ll bypass the whole “low level bombing in a B-17” thing for another time. The last and only time I ever […]

I’m excited to have Angelica Hart and Zi in the blog house for an interview.  To say these two authors combined, have been prolific, is a bit of an understatement.  Between them they have thirty seven titles published and over five hundred shorts in various magazines and newspapers.  And the awards! EPPIE finalist for three […]

When writing a scene I also work to bring the tension up.  Falling off a curb and spraining an ankle?  How about falling off a cliff and breaking your back? You get the idea.  But I’ve also found that I have to use some judgement about how far I take things or they begin to […]

Read a story today about the author of Ready Player One, Arthur Cline, is giving a prize away for any reader who can find a clue in his novel, then successfully navigate three challenges in an online video game at a specific web address. The contest sounds kind of cool. Much more skill based than […]

As I may have mentioned, I’ve got a novel coming out in August published by Champagne Books.  TOXIC RELATIONSHIP is a thriller with a humorous twist set in the Hill Country of Texas.  My protagonist, Nick Sibelius, moves to the small Texas town of Pflugerville, turned Austin suburb, to set up a private investigation business, […]

A friend who is in the process of writing a non-fiction book asked me what it takes to get published.  I thought I’d share what I told her.  Call it another data point for anyone in the hunt for working with a publisher.  I also think most of this applies to self-publishing as well. 1. […]

A Boy and His Dog

Posted: 30th April 2012 by Richard Hacker in Creativity, Dogs, Life, Novel, Uncategorized
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I have a constant writing companion who keeps me in the present, offers positive support day and night, stands by me on the good days when I’m writing like a demon and on those days where I just can’t seem to shift into gear, hangs out with me while I work, takes walks to clear […]

Fear Is The Door To Possibility

Posted: 18th April 2012 by Richard Hacker in Creativity, Uncategorized
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William Kenower spoke at a recent Pacific Northwest Writers Association about the myths that keep us from writing.  He’s a very good engaging, fun speaker.  And he has been blogging about writing for a number of years now, regularly interviewing writers of all genres and measures of success.  The bottom line of his presentation is […]

As an author writing a YA novel I face the conundrum of determining how much graphic sex, violence and profanity my characters will experience in the course of the story.  YA presents a challenge because you’re dealing with a broad spectrum of intellectual and emotional capacity to understand what is being presented.  The distance between […]

I recently caught the movie Jumper on cable (2008) — a bit of Hollywood fluff. One of those movies you tell people to wait for it to come out on DVD. Then out of curiosity, I picked up the novel used as the basis for the movie screenplay, Jumper by Steven Gould. Actually, the word […]