A to X Writing Advice, Courtesy of Copy Chief Benjamin Dreyer

Benjamin Dreyer is the VP Executive Managing Editor & Copy Chief of Random House Publishing Group. Below is his list of the common stumbling blocks for authors, from A to X.

• One buys antiques in an antiques store from an antiques dealer; an antique store is a very old store.
• He stayed awhile; he stayed for a while.
• Besides is other than; beside is next to.
• The singular of biceps is biceps; the singular of triceps is triceps. There’s no such thing as a bicep; there’s no such thing as a tricep.
• A blond man, a blond woman; he’s a blond, she’s a blonde.

A capital is a city (or a letter, or part of a column); a capitol is a building.

• Something centers on something else, not around it.
• If you’re talking about a thrilling plot point, the word is climactic; if you’re discussing the weather, the word is climatic.
• A cornet is an instrument; a coronet is a crown.
• One emigrates from a place; one immigrates to a place.
• The word is enmity, not emnity.
• One goes to work every day, or nearly, but eating lunch is an everyday occurrence.
• A flair is a talent; a flare is an emergency signal.
• A flier is someone who flies planes; a flyer is a piece of paper.
• Flower bed, not flowerbed.
• Free rein, not free reign.
• To garner is to accumulate, as a waiter garners tips; to garnish (in the non-parsley meaning) is to take away, as the government garnishes one’s wages; a garnishee is a person served with a garnishment; to garnishee is also to serve with a garnishment (that is, it’s a synonym for “to garnish”).
• A gel is a jelly; it’s also a transparent sheet used in stage lighting. When Jell-O sets, or when one’s master plan takes final form, it either jells or gels (though I think the former is preferable).
• Bears are grizzly; crimes are grisly. Cheap meat, of course, is gristly.
• Coats go on hangers; planes go in hangars.
• One’s sweetheart is “hon,” not “hun,” unless one’s sweetheart is Attila (not, by the way, Atilla) or perhaps Winnie-the-Pooh (note hyphens).
• One insures cars; one ensures success; one assures people.
• Lawn mower, not lawnmower.
• The past tense of lead is led, not lead.
• One loathes someone else but is loath to admit one’s distaste.
• If you’re leeching, you’re either bleeding a patient with a leech or otherwise sucking someone’s or something’s lifeblood. If you’re leaching, you’re removing one substance from another by means of a percolating liquid (I have virtually no idea what that means; I trust that you do).

You wear a mantle; your fireplace has a mantel.

• Masseurs are men; masseuses are women. Many otherwise extremely well educated people don’t seem to know this; I have no idea why. (These days they’re all called massage therapists anyway.)
• The short version of microphone is still, so far as RH is concerned, mike. Not, ick, “mic.” [2009 update: I seem to be losing this battle. Badly. 2010 update: I’ve lost. Follow the author’s lead.]
• There’s no such word as moreso.
• Mucus is a noun; mucous is an adjective.
• Nerve-racking, not -wracking; racked with guilt, not wracked with guilt.
• One buys a newspaper at a newsstand, not a newstand.
• An ordinance is a law; ordnance is ammo.
• Palette has to do with color; palate has to do with taste; a pallet is, among other things, something you sleep on. Eugene Pallette was a character actor; he’s particularly good in the 1943 film Heaven Can Wait.
• Nounwise, a premier is a diplomat; a premiere is something one attends. “Premier” is also, of course, an adjective denoting quality.
• That which the English call paraffin (as in “paraffin stove”), we Americans call kerosene. Copy editors should keep an eye open for this in mss. by British authors and query it. The term paraffin should generally be reserved for the waxy, oily stuff we associate with candles.
• Prophecy is a noun; prophesy is a verb.
• Per Web 11, it’s restroom.
• The Sibyl is a seeress; Sybil is Basil Fawlty’s wife.
• Please don’t mix somewhat and something into one murky modifier. A thing is somewhat rare, or it’s something of a rarity.
• A tick bites; a tic is a twitch.
• Tortuous is twisty, circuitous, or tricky; torturous is painful, or painfully slow.
• Transsexual, not transexual.
• Troops are military; troupes are theatrical.
• A vice is depraved; a vise squeezes.
• Vocal cords; strikes a chord.
• A smart aleck is a wise guy; a mobster is a wiseguy.
• X ray is a noun; X-ray is a verb or adjective.

Ten Things Writers Do That Cause Me To Sigh Heavily

Originally posted on Penguin’s Book Country by Carl E. Reed, March 21, 2012

In no particular order here are ten things writers do that cause me to sigh heavily:

1.) Use words that sound like the opposite of what they mean: Puissant doesn’t sound mighty, powerful or potent to this speaker of 21st-century Anglo-Saxon dialect and noisome immediately invokes the aural, not olfactory, sense (for me).

2.) Misuse words: Penultimate is not a synonym for “ultimate” (it means “next to last”, as in the number nine in a series counting up from zero to ten), and a semi-automatic weapon (fires one bullet every time the trigger is pulled) is not identical with a fully automatic weapon; i.e., a machine gun. For that matter marines are never soldiers, troops or dog-faces (I’m looking at you Stephen King!), they’re marines, Leathernecks, Devil-dogs, jarheads or grunts. (That last word applies if your marine is also an infantryman.)

3.) Write mediocre, albeit serviceable prose: Has this ever happened to you? You pick up a book and begin to flip through it only to realize almost immediately that there’s no there there; the writer’s voice is as homogenized and ennui-inducing as vanilla-frosting-on-cardboard masticated by a muppet. For god’s sakes stop writing in a defensive crouch! Get out there and say something on the page with all those words you’re time-sharing with the rest of the human race. You may fall flat on your face but I’ll respect you for trying; I truly will. Bullet-proof prose is boring prose.

4.) Litter your text with untranslated foreign words and phrases: A word or two here and there is fine but entire sentences? Paragraphs? As Isaac Asimov once remarked: “I’m flattered that you think I’m fluent in every language ever spoken by humans, including the dead ones, but please—don’t flatter me that much.”

5.) Characters who are forever staring off into the “middle-distance”: I swear-to-Harlan Ellison, if I ever read again of a character who “stares off into the middle distance” in order to communicate thoughtful reverie to the reader I’m going to fling the book off into the middle distance.

6.) Characters who are described as looking like famous people: “She had a raspy, Kathleen Turner-like voice; he was beautiful and energized as Ernest Borgnine on a bender”. Lazy!

7.) Insult your reader’s intelligence: Everyone else is smarter than you are. I thought you knew that? Never write down to your audience—despite the bad advice you may have been given by demographic-obsessed marketers, burnt-out grumpy editors and well-meaning friends and relatives urging you to “dumb it down.”

8.) Stop your narrative dead in its tracks by injecting too much back-story too soon: If I want to read a history book I’ll read a history book. I bought Demon Balls & Lost Sabbaths because I thought something was going to happen here . . .

9.) Over-use adverbs while under-using evocative adjectives and vivid descriptive nouns: Kill as many adverbs as you can while polishing those adjectives and vivid descriptive nouns. In the first instance, trust your reader—kill as many adverbs as you can bear to live without. If a character has just shouted or ended a sentence with an exclamation mark I probably don’t need an “angrily” speech tag to underline that fact. In the second instance give us more vivid, picturesque speech: Writing “she walked inside the house, threw her purse on the table and bent down to kiss the dog” is not a better sentence than, “she walked into the mildewed cottage, threw her satchel purse on the table and bent down to kiss her beloved beagle Bacon-barker.” Stop worshipping at the altar of minimalism—it’s a false religion with a blank-faced idiot god.

10.) Then suddenly out of nowhere!: The use of the word “suddenly” always reads as the injection of cheap drama and comical, amped-up surprise to me: “She was walking along the winding cobblestone path when SUDDENLY a black-masked bear jumped out of the bushes and demanded her Odor-eater shoe inserts”; “He sat there smoking when SUDDENLY an angel of the Lord appeared and smote him about the head and shoulders with a kielbasa.”

What are the things other writers do that drive you crazy?

FIRST LINES

First lines should (obviously) suck the reader into the next line and launch the tone of the story.

“Alan Smith watched the man who had been shot through the brain.”
Serious.

“The home looked like any other on the street. But it hadn’t been there yesterday.”
Mystery sci-fi.

“Roy’s Reconditioning Camp for Cats was doing better than expected.”
Humor.

My favorite first line is from Catch 22. “It was love at first sight.”
Great!

Oh, and my least favorite first line:
“Since the publication of the eleventh edition in 1949, each new edition has been marked by a significant shift in publishing technologies, starting with the advent of phototypesetting in the 1950s, whereby text was rendered on photographic paper rather than as lines of metal type, the norm since the first edition.”
– The Chicago Manual of Style Gag me with a spoon.

Good first lines entice the reader to read on. What are some of your favorite first lines, including ones that you have used in your own stories?

Paean to the Assault Rifle

Ave, Armaments Industry!

or, Paean to the Assault Rifle

By Carl E. Reed

Written after the July 4^th, 2022 Highland Park parade mass murder (one of five mass shootings that occurred that day in the US) that killed seven people and wounded dozens. Among the dead: an elderly man in a wheelchair and a married couple who left behind a bloodied 2-year-old who was found wandering the deserted, debris-strewn street in dazed incomprehension after the massacre.  

___________________________________

Darts, spears, arrows, quarrels, bullets— 

long centuries a beast of killing heart 

penetrated prey via projectile. 

Behold—the refinement of his art! 

___________________________________

A rapid-fire instrument of war: 

wicked-looking polymers & steel. 

How comfortably it nestles in the shoulder! 

How rightly pistol grip & barrel feel! 

___________________________________

Blam! Blam! Ka-pow! Ker-blam!

Blam!-blam!-blam!-blam!-blam!

___________________________________

An itchy finger twitches: thirty bullets 

explode from orange-stutter muzzle-flash; 

stunned victims scream & scramble, duck for cover

spurt-wheel, totter-tumble—join the past.

___________________________________

Kalashnikov, Armalite, Smith & Wesson 

Sig Sauer, Colt, Remington, et. al.  

market wares to glazed-eyed, grim psychotics— 

ensure our homicidal have a ball! 

___________________________________

Blam! Blam! Ka-pow! Ker-blam!

Blam!-blam!-blam!-blam!-blam!

___________________________________

Author’s note: Remember, it’s not the gun that kills people, but . . . hold on! It is the gun. It is definitely the gun that kills people at ever-increasing numbers of American assault rifle massacre sites. (Perhaps this should be an acronym now: ARMS.) It certainly isn’t hard stares, morbid ruminations or nihilist wishes that are killing countless scores, is it? Or butcher knives, brass knuckles or shuriken. In these ever-more-unhinged, violent times we routinely sacrifice our people to Gunsmoke Moloch whose sacred text is the 1791-ratified 2^nd Amendment. Amendment! Perhaps this one could be un-amended or otherwise amended again by people of conscience sickened at the ongoing incarnadine carnage? Such massacres occurring with numbing drumbeat regularity “from sea to shining sea” in 2022. I suggest repeal or revision of the 2nd Amendment since nowadays well-regulated militias bearing muskets seem to be in vanishingly short evidence amongst the increasingly desperate and alienated masculine electorate itching to get their hands on their “man card” . . .  

PS. Though I am grateful to any who read this post (yes, even those who disagree with my sentiments) I will not respond to any comments made here about this poem. Res ipsa loquitur. The debate around this issue has grown tiresome, tedious, nauseatingly feckless and exhaustingly over-tread/familiar. The pro-assault-rifles-for-everyone argument has degenerated into nothing but an exercise in cynical sophistry, “Look! Squirrel!” misdirection and sophomoric trolling by sociopathic gun zealots. (Details of the latest bone-chilling assault rifle mass murder? Yawn. Shoulder shrug. I mean, whatta ya gonna do? ‘Cause white-wigged, infallible, far-seeing forefathers; the-people-are-the militia; fetishistic impulses; legions of gun lobbyists; record profits for a problematic industry and freeeeeeedom!—or sumthin’. ‘Murica!) Meanwhile, the body count grows. (How long until the next mass murder? Or has it already occurred?)

FYI: This blog post was written by a former US marine well-acquainted with the M16 assault rifle. If you want to play with one I suggest you raise your right hand, swear allegiance to the Constitution, and vow to defend this country against all enemies foreign and domestic. Then shave your head and get your feet on the yellow footprints . . .              

Should writers care?

While complaining to my lady about the quality of successful TV shows – one of my common complaints she commonly ignores – it ocurred to me what I was really complaining about. The protagonists are complex; they have depth of character and they become easy to identify with. But the antagonists are cartoons.

The easy formulas grow stale. I’m bored by antagonists still damaged from childhood trauma. Antagonists fighting others because they want something only one can have are maddeningly repetitive. Antagonists who can’t get along with others who are different from them annoy me. And don’t get me started on stupid conflicts arising because the antagonist simply misunderstands reality. It’s time for better antagonists.

Obviously, real world conflicts arise from all of the above situations. But conflicts also arise when good people in opposition to one another are both right. The new antagonist should have all of the depth and the likeability of the protagonist. That lends the story a background of realism right out of today’s world. The reader is presented with three choices: Choose a side, toss the book for not being escapist, or learn from the ambivalence.

According to thinkers, philosophers, and mathematicians like Marshall McLuhan, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, the greatest invention of the 20th century is the art of suspended judgement. We don’t seem to have much of that these days. Important issues are divisive and everybody is urged to takes sides, to become an automaton.

So, the question is, should we give our readers whatever side we think they want, avoid real world conflicts altogether, or encourage them to get along with those with whom they disagree?

Howdy Stranger

In the early days of online gaming, people tended to trust one another. We visited each other not as strangers so much as acquaintances willing to be friends. We were excited to be on the interface of something breathtakingly new, a gateway that eliminated physical distance between people.

Those days, we played over long-distance phone lines. And we paid by the minute. The people you met in online games in the mid 1990s spent hundreds of dollars a month to be there. I remember sitting up at 2:AM talking to an architect in Belgium about raising kids (he had six.) I especially remember the evening many of us spent with a woman D.E.A Agent who had that day shot and killed a man. She logged online, understandably upset. But she felt comforted by talking to us quasi-but-friendly strangers. One evening, I returned to my home in Colorado to find two unexpected guests, an independently wealthy lady from Florida and a businessman from California. They were vacationing by traveling cross country, separately, and had independently dropped in for a visit. I was delighted.

That general feeling of trust was founded in self-confidence. And when prudent, it was confirmed. When I wanted to meet a woman in another state, she had three people from the game – who were local to me – invite me out to lunch. Only by the grace of their report was I then permitted to visit her. I sent her my photo and requested one of her but herself only replied, “You won’t be disappointed.” I wasn’t. We are still together but that was 26 years ago and a different story.

One insight into online gaming relationships was revealed to me by a woman about to “get married online.” (I had made an avatar that was a monk who performed Wiccan hand fastings. Heretical, I know, but hey, it was a game.) In real life, she traveled around the country selling instruments to music stores. He was an extremely shy acoustical engineer. She was vivacious. He was geek personified. She explained to me, “Here, you get to know the real person before you see them. You don’t judge on anything else.” She and her shy engineer eventually did marry and live together until she died of Lupis. Something he knew about from the beginning.

Those were the days, my friend. But that’s retro. Today, we meet on WordPress. And the future, well, the future is the metaverse. See you there soon.

Blending facts into writing fiction

I’ve been invited to submit a 1000-1500 word post on the topic: “The importance of blending reality and fiction in thrillers” for an online magazine that focuses on crime, suspense, and thriller books. I have some ideas about this but they are not well formulated. I would be grateful to have you share some of your thoughts on this topic.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Thriller readers want compelling and believable fiction. If readers are presented with some information they know to be true, along with fictional information, they will tend to also believe the fictional elements. For instance, if I was writing a novel with a plot element that included discovery of one of Sir Isaac Newton’s hidden journals and I wrote the following: “Sir Isaac Newton, in addition to discovering scientific principles such as the law of gravity, was also an accomplished alchemist. Given his Christian background and interest in the occult, the Archbishop of Canterbury secretly organized an assassination plot. When the attempt failed, the Archbishop denied any involvement.” How much of this is fact and how much is fiction?

In this example, the scientific accomplishments, interest in alchemy and the occult, and Christian background are all true. The assassination plot by the Archbishop is fictional, but it is believable when embedded among other factual details. The credibility is further enhanced if a reader is aware of the factual elements but didn’t know about the Archbishop of Canterbury fictional detail. A reader would be inclined to believe this given the known truth of the other elements.

From reading Dan Brown, I’ve observed that he is very skilled at blending fact and fiction; he is able to craft excellent fictional stories by doing so. Any other authors come to mind?

Some research is difficult to ascertain as fact or fiction. Many “facts” uncovered when researching a book do not include the source documentation and are therefore difficult to verify. If I am writing a book that portrays a character who claims to have been abducted by aliens, I can include many “facts” about alien abductions, UFO sightings, government coverups, and the like. Yet, even as an author doing research into these details, how many represent actual facts. Often, these “gray” details are not black or white. The more spectacular the supposed facts are, the more believability gets called into question. Statistics sound very factual, but numbers can be manipulated. Scientific research sounds factual, but conclusions are frequently based upon various scientific biases and methodologic flaws. Do these become facts? partial truths? opinions? subject to interpretation?

As I consider what goes into writing a thriller, I can think of multiple ways to weave reality into plot, characters, and storytelling. At the end of the day, it is a work of fiction. Still, truth is often stranger than fiction.

What an idea!

Photo by Tracy Lee, Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Some years ago, after rejecting an author’s short story for the Book a Break Anthology, I received a reply in which she acknowledged that a weakness in her story was the idea itself. In actual fact, her idea wasn’t bad; there followed a discussion in which we agreed that while a poor idea brilliantly executed will always be better than a brilliant idea poorly executed, it’s better yet to have a brilliant idea brilliantly executed.  

I’m not sure how or when an idea strikes me as brilliant enough to be developed. The more that development proceeds, it will at some point, inevitably, stop seeming brilliant and turn into a struggle to find the words that will do the original vision justice. For that to happen, though, it had to come through all the previous stages of development unscathed – which means it must have been brilliant enough in the first place, right?

I currently have 72 files in the Ideas folder on my laptop, but the number of actual ideas is much higher because most of them are in a single document. They might run to a couple of lines or a paragraph; often they’re just a few words. Those that emerge from this survival of the fittest are rewarded with a document file to themselves; eventually, they may even get a folder.

The folder stage is reserved for the elite. By that time the text may run from 3000 to 20000 words. I currently have 16 folders, but half of them are gathering the substantial amount of dust that lands on my keyboard. That still makes eight active ideas to keep an eye on, by which I mean that any article I spot related to that idea will be read, sorted into the folder, and may lead to an addition or amendment to the text. But that’s a matter of minutes; at any given time there’s really only one idea bubbling away at the front – the others gently simmer further back.

Whether any of these ideas is brilliant is obviously debatable. And the point remains that it isn’t having ideas that’s hard, it’s doing something decent with them. But brilliant or not, all ideas start with a little spark in the brain that either gathers strength or fizzles out. Putting them in my Ideas folder means that some at least have a chance of surviving, sometimes emerging many years later, like Brood X (though rather less numerous).

As to where they come from, the sources are multiple, but I’m currently drawn to the zaniness one regularly comes across browsing the news. A few examples:

French police say they are building a case against an international gang of toy thieves specialising in stealing Lego – and they have warned specialist shops and even parents to be aware of a global trade in the bricks.

A mafia fugitive has been caught in the Caribbean after appearing on YouTube cooking videos in which he hid his face but inadvertently showed his distinctive tattoos.

In the flesh, Jeanne Pouchain appears very much alive and well. Convincing the French authorities of this has proven another matter. After being declared dead by a court, Pouchain has spent three years trying to have herself officially resuscitated.

A Welsh man has issued a public call to help find two Irish men who helped him return home from Australia in 1965 by packing him up and mailing him in a crate.

Whether any of these will be developed remains to be seen. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jeanne Pouchain eventually makes it past the next couple of stages, reaching the point where the hard slog begins.

And you? How do you handle your ideas?

Yes, I’m at it again –

I haven’t gotten around to taking photographs. This isn’t my bookshelf. My shelves are worse. And I have plastic tubs on the floor holding additional books. It’s rather depressing, I do admit.

_________________________________________

At what? Being annoying? Sure, that’s a given, right?
But, actually, attempting to organize my bookshelves:

>Literary fiction v. genre fiction v. time-tested classics

>Favorites of any stripe, to lay hands on easily and read again

>Hodge Podge 1: Vetted, yet to be given a permanent home.

>Hodge Podge 2: Yet to investigate. (Keep or chuck?) I have a double-wide shelf of those.

____________________________

My house is a mess. I wish I could call it a glorious mess. No, it’s just a mess. I like to think workmen who enter think, charming disorder. They probably think, Who can live like this? Everywhere you look, books and more books. Shelves, piles, boxes of books.

I have a floor-to-ceiling shelf devoted to theater, film, graphics, history of costume, style, and performer bios. I’d better not acquire anything more in that way because it’s packed tight. I’ve made a rule: anything new, something has to go. That shelf is my arts real estate, period. I’m not hitting the library sales these days, because of my bad back and knees, so that rule hasn’t been tested yet.

My history is broken up. I have general history downstairs, and sixteenth-century history upstairs. I have a used-to-be linen closet of nautical-related fiction, history, biography. (Research for my pirate adventure in book two of Sly.)

Fiction sits here and there. I’m exasperated with myself. I’m trying to see if I have Sometimes a Great Notion. I have Cuckoo’s Nest; I know that for sure. Getting the fiction in one spot–I finally feel up to it. My back finally shows signs of recovering from an operation of a year ago. The pain of standing–I’m OK for five-ten minutes, then I have to sit–is suddenly diminished. So I’m in a clean-this-dump state of mind.

And, as you can see, I’m talking about it because that’s what’s on my mind right now, and it doesn’t take a lot of thinking. The burden of keeping this site going shouldn’t be entirely on GD’s shoulders.

There are topics we’ve talked to death. Fine, let’s move on. We all have our personal relationship with books. There’s an easy article. For instance: who are your major influences? What directions have they pushed you in? That would be very interesting. Also, if you were to read entirely outside your genre, what would you read? I’ve started (not gotten too far) with Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy. And Reading Jane Austen inspires me to read her novels in the order in which they were written.

But, know what? What I’d really like to hear is, why are most of you not contributing a piece now and then? You have nothing to say? I don’t believe it. Too busy? This shortie took less than an hour to write. (Neither was thinking-about-it time burdensome. I combined it with other activities.) You’re not interested in putting that much energy into this site? Maybe you’ve given up on your publishing dream. That I understand all too well.

Recommend a title I might be glad to know about. Ten years ago, Atthys Gage suggested I read E.T. A. Hoffmann’s The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, and I’ll thank him forever for it. Another intricate take on a wiseacre cat! It’s nothing like mine, but the flavor is embedded in my brain and will eventually color my approach in small ways. (I am not asking for books about cats. I am asking for things with exceptional style.)

How do we handle reviews? JoeTV, a screenwriter, the guy who gave Sly its first review, trashed it up and down, in and out, then, in subsequent reviews, walked that back. He used to have a page on Wikipedia. I can’t find it now. Do I have his name wrong?

That first horrible review sent me into a deep depression, for half a day. Then I reread a few of my chapters, and said to myself: This guy is full of shit. This is good. I don’t care if he’s a big, successful screenwriter. He’s wrong.

Good reviews I discount. It’s the bad ones I pay attention to. But you have to not let yourself be intimidated by them.

Courage, mon ami, le diable est mort!
(Courage, my friend, the devil is dead!)

I’ve had the phrase in my head for years. I’ve made it my mantra. I’d thought it’s out of Don Q. No! It’s from a work sitting on my ‘Favorites’ shelf for thirty, maybe forty years: The Cloister and the Hearth, by Charles Reade.

Does anyone think paying for a Kirkus review is a good idea? Is the name as respected as it used to be? I used to get that Kirkus catalogue–it doesn’t come anymore–and drool over many more wonderful books than I could afford to buy. They probably make more money selling their reviews. The question is, do the paid reviews carry the same weight?

I wish I had something meatier for you, like last week’s post on Surviving Trauma. At the moment, I don’t. Will you give me points for trying? I promise to do the same for you.

PODCAST INVITATION

• by Joseph Carrabis

This is a wonderful opportunity to help trauma survivors get their stories and work out to a wider audience.

For those who don’t know, Katie Koestner was on the cover of TIME Magazine at the age of 18 as the first person to speak out nationally and publicly as the victim of “date” rape. She is now the Producer and Host of the Dear Katie: Survivor Stories podcast.

My function is two fold. One, to find any creatives (not just authors) whose work deals with trauma and healing, and engage them in podcast conversations regarding their work and their lives post trauma. Two, to help find trauma survivors who’ll share their stories for the main Dear Katie podcast, review episodes before they go to air, edit, and make suggestions as necessary.

Please leave a comment if you or someone you know has written a fiction or non-fiction book, article, or story about surviving trauma. Include the title of the published work, the publisher, a synopsis of the story, and a link to where I can find it online.

Thanks.
– Joseph Carrabis

My own work in this area can be seen in the material listed below. Your work doesn’t need to mirror or echo my subject matter to be considered; it only needs to be well-written and deal with survivor issues.

• Published novel: The Augmented Man (graphic violence; sexual trauma; child abuse; PTSD; emotional, physical, spiritual, and psychological abuse)
• Published short story: “The Boy in the Giant” elsewhere in this blog and in Harvey Duckman Volume 6 (myth/folktale about overcoming childhood abuse)
• Published short story: “The Settlement” (violence, child abuse)
• Unpublished series: Recovery Triptych available on this blog starting with “Recovery Triptych: The Echo” (you name it, it’s in here)

Post Title – Producer, Dear Katie: Survivors on the Page Book Club; Editor, Dear Katie: Survivor Stories I joined the Katie Koestner organization as Producer, Dear Katie: Survivors on the Page Book Club, and Editor, Dear Katie: Survivor Stories.