Let’s Turn The Page

Larry B. Gildersleeve

In print and online, 2020 has been referred to as Annus Horribilis, an intentional twist on John Dryden’s 1667 poem Annus Mirabilis (year of miracles). Queen Elizabeth first coined the term in a speech marking her fortieth anniversary as Britain’s monarch when she said: “1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. It has turned out to be an annus horribilis. I suspect that I am not alone in thinking it so.”

Why did she think she’d had a horrible year back then? In March, her second son Andrew separated from his wife, Sarah Ferguson. In April, Elizabeth’s only daughter, Anne, separated from her husband, Mark Phillips. In May, the book Diana: Her True Story in Her Words documented for a voyeuristic world her fractured marriage to Charles, the queen’s oldest son and future king. In succeeding months, the tabloid press recounted in excruciating detail the alleged infidelities of both Charles and Diana. On November 20th, four days before the queen’s speech, a fire destroyed a portion of Windsor Castle, the historic royal residence in London.

Follow Your Dream (Part 2)

Larry B. Gildersleeve   @LarryBGAuthor
Christian and Inspirational

Part 2 (Part 1 April 21)

The familiarity of Bowling Green from my high school and university years easily enabled my home town to become the setting for all of my novels, either partially or entirely. Certainly not unique, many of my imaginary characters have a basis in people I’ve known over the years. One example. A character in my first two books is Kentucky’s Chief Justice. The character’s fabric is based upon my late father, who was not a lawyer, and my understanding of the work of a person in such a position came from our current chief justice who has been a friend since my college days.

Hearing Ann Patchett speak brought so much into focus for me. She said that while there is no one formula for success, worth considering is that most books are purchased and read by women. She went on to say that writing books about women, for women, with strong women characters not defined by nor dependent upon men, and a happy ending, would be worth considering. I didn’t just consider, I embraced all of it.

I know when I begin how my book will end, and work backward to create a chapter-by-chapter outline of the story and the arcs of my characters. My style has been carefully evolved into short, fast-paced, dialogue-driven chapters with page-turning endings to draw the reader onward to the next chapter. My first two books each had over fifteen named characters. My third and future novels will only have four or five.

I write in the Christian and Inspirational genres. Regarding story ideas, Follow Your Dreams was inspired by my lifelong commitment to journaling, and The Girl on the Bench touches upon the travesty and tragedy of human sex trafficking. The novel I’m currently writing has a character beset by early-onset Alzheimer’s, an illness that disproportionately plagues women over men.

I read once that “Vision without discipline is a just a dream.”

With that in mind, I discipline myself to invest substantial time and effort six days a week – writing, publishing and marketing. I’ve gone well beyond the 10,000 hours, and regard this pursuit as a journey, not a destination I’ll ever reach.

Now that I’m a thrice-published author, albeit self-published, my dream is to cross the threshold to become a legitimate bestselling author. As my female protagonist says in Follow Your Dreams:

“Dreams never come true for those who never dream.” 

Larry B. Gildersleeve is a father of two and grandfather of four who turned to writing after a four-decade career as a corporate executive. He lives in Bowling Green, Kentucky with Kathleen, his wife of 30 years. www.larrygildersleeve.com

Follow Your Dreams (Part 1)

Larry B. Gildersleeve   @LarryBGAuthor

Christian and Inspirational Fiction

There’s no way of knowing how many people dream of being a published author. What we do know is that relatively few invest the time and resources to see the dream through to fruition. That was almost me.

Compositions I wrote in high school English classes received A’s. I know because I saved them to inspire me to one day try to become a published author. My mother, the town’s librarian, encouraged me to pursue that dream after university graduation. I didn’t, succumbing instead to the lure of corporate America.

But over the years, as I moved from the East coast to the West, and travelled around the world, I filled journals with story ideas and character descriptions, saving them for the day when writing would become a priority in my life. It took almost forty-five years, and happened when I wound down my late-career entrepreneurial ventures and returned home from Seattle to Bowling Green, Kentucky. The lessened business demands, the slower pace of life and the welcoming feeling extended by new friends and old created an environment that sparked my desire to finally begin to write in earnest.

I didn’t just ease into a comfortable chair in front of a keyboard, rather I attacked my new profession with an all-in commitment. I had read it takes a minimum of 10,000 hours to become truly proficient, but not necessarily successful, at a new endeavor, be it a different career direction or playing golf. Or becoming a novelist.

I invested a lot of time and quite a bit of money studying my new craft. I purchased more “how to” books than I care to recall, and studied a variety of resources available online. I attended a few writing conferences and seminars, but departed more disappointed than fulfilled. The kindling to get the fire burning happened when, on a referral from an author friend in Seattle, I engaged a wonderful writing coach/editor in California – Lynda McDaniel – who was a successful author and journalist in her own right.

Lynda and I have never met. She taught me to write fiction through the exchange of countless iterations of the manuscripts for my first three novels, and she will be receiving the first draft of my fourth in June. Since I began in 2015, I’ve been creating my own MFA program in a Word document in which I record the best thinking and most useful guidance I’ve encountered about the craft of writing, and I will happily share it with anyone.

My first novel, Dancing Alone Without Music, came to life with KDP in 2016. The sequel, aptly named Follow Your Dreams, was a 2018 KDP release. Sales of both have been underwhelming because (I hope) I still haven’t figured out how to effectively market self-published books online. But I’m investing a lot of time trying to figure it out. My third novel, The Girl on the Bench, was published by Book Locker and released in late 2019.

Larry B. Gildersleeve is a father of two and grandfather of four who turned to writing after a four-decade career as a corporate executive. He lives in Bowling Green, Kentucky with Kathleen, his wife of 30 years. www.larrygildersleeve.com

A Word …About Words

By Larry Gildersleeve

When I began writing fiction five years ago, I read that readers, agents and publishers all required 80,000 to 100,000 words for me to have any chance at success. 50,000 would be a minimum; anything less was somewhat disparagingly referred to as a novella. My first two novels are 65,000 each. My about-to-be-released third is 53,000, and I’m happily heading toward Novella Land. 

Since it ranked #1 on the NY Times bestseller list for over a year, and sold more than 50 million copies worldwide, I doubt the late singer/songwriter/author James Robert Waller agonized much over The Bridges of Madison County being a novella. 

Stephen King has published 58 books, including several under his nom de plume Richard Bachman, yet a reviewer of his 2018 novella Elevation derided it as “A mere slip of a book.” Really? That critic likely never authored a book and forgot or never read Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Of Mice and Men or Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.  

I understand James Patterson, arguably the world’s most prolific successful writer at work today, has said his future releases will be around 125 pages. His reason? The shrinking time people are willing to devote to reading, as well as the proliferation and popularity of reading on electronic devices like Nook and Kindle, even cell phones.

The best-selling book of all time is the Bible. In it, the account of creation in Genesis is told in only 400 words. The Ten Commandments needed just 179 words; the Lord’s Prayer a mere 66 words.

I believe country music songwriters, especially those in years gone by, are some of the world’s greatest poets and storytellers. Their few words capture a listener in seconds, and unfold an entire story of wonderous joy or painful heartbreak in less than three minutes. Oh, and the brief lyrics of Bob Dylan’s songs won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Literature.

Just sayin’.

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Larry B. Gildersleeve is a father of two and grandfather of four who turned to writing after a four-decade career as a corporate executive. He lives in Kentucky and is the author of Dancing Alone Without Music and Follow Your Dreams. His third novel, entitled The Girl on the Bench, is scheduled for release in mid-2019.www.larrygildersleeve.com