Who are your favorite authors? I’ve got a bunch of them. Today, I wanted to write a little about a man named E.W. Hildick. Read on to find out more!
Ice Storm: 10 Days, 31,500 Words!
Today is Day 10 of my “open novel” experiment for Ice Storm, aka my “Development Hell” book. I do half days on the weekend, so I only edited 1,500 words yesterday, raising my grand total to 31,500. That leaves 58,500 words left to edit.
Before I forget, head on over to Thriller Central to check out my article, Writer’s Guilt. Thriller Central is a terrific site, devoted to thriller and adventure fiction. There aren’t a lot of sites like this one so make sure to bookmark it.
My Favorite Authors: The Great E.W. Hildick
My cousin Erik texted me last night. He wanted me to know he’d seen a lady reading Clive Cussler at the pool today. For those of you who don’t know, Clive Cussler was my first foray into the world of grown-up literature. One day, I’m gobbling up Hardy Boys books. The next day, I’m poring over Dragon and Night Probe.
It got me thinking about the other authors who’ve influenced me along the way. There have been a bunch of them. When I was a kid, my favorite author was E.W. Hildick. I read his books over and over again. One of my elementary school teachers once required our entire classroom to send letters to our favorite authors. Naturally, I chose E.W. Hildick. He never responded. I’ve always been a little suspicious that she didn’t actually mail it. Or maybe that’s just me hoping he didn’t throw my letter in the trash!
E.W. Hildick wrote a series about a junior detective agency, It was led by a young redheaded kid named Jack P. McGurk. McGurk was sort of like a young, mischievous Sherlock Holmes (he once held a “clue hunt” in his backyard…the other kids spent hours picking up candy wrappers and other trash before they realized he’d tricked them into doing one of his chores). The cases were a lot of fun. Many of them were adult crimes brought down to the kid level. So, instead of a typical kidnapping case, Hildick would present a case about a kidnapped doll, complete with ransom note. Over time, the cases got more complex but they always maintained a sense of youthful innocence. That made Hildick pretty unique, especially since so many other kid detectives were battling killers and Nazis at the time.
A couple of years ago, I hit E-Bay pretty hard and now I own the entire McGurk collection including The Menaced Midget, which was never released in the United States. If you get a chance, check E.W. Hildick out. You won’t be disappointed!
Drawing: Day 3 – Advanced-Level Spheres
I completed my third lesson from You Can Draw in 30 Days by Mark Kistler last night. It was about advanced-level spheres. Check out the photo to see my work. This one took me several hours to finish. Keep in mind I’m really just going through exercises now and doing a lot of copying of his drawings. Not that this is a bad thing. Copying is a pretty good way to learn how to do something.
Be that as it may, I’m still too stiff, too careful with my work. I erase a lot and do a lot of reshaping of individual spheres. It tends to slow me down big time. Anyway I hope to work that out of my system over the coming weeks. In the meantime, I start work on cubes today. I’m still a long ways from being able to draw out the characters and worlds I see in my mind. But I think I’m on the right track.
Other Stuff
I just gained my 100th Facebook follower (thanks Dena!). Good stuff. Also, I’m still thinking about making adjustments to my sidebar (that one on the right with Chaos in it). I might expand it to include international bookstores. I sell far more E-Books in Amazon’s UK store than at Barnes and Noble. I guess that shows how good Amazon is at targeting a book to the right audience. Unfortunately, the link to buy Chaos at Diesel (see sidebar) is still broken. Diesel has a revised version of Chaos in hand so hopefully, this will be fixed soon. Finally, the Chaos paperback continues to be on sale for $13.25 at Amazon. Get it and review it!
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