Winter Territory (Get Jack Reacher, #2) by Scott Blade

 This is a Reacher story that one could mistake for a young Jack Reacher although he might appear a bit naïve and immature. The series is an attempt to copy the style of Lee Child but falls short. At times the sentences are short and sharp but for the most part they revert to normal information. Parts of the story are inconsistent, the author forgetting former remarks. Some sentences are just plain silly while others are absurd.

The story behind how Oprah and CBS got the Harry & Megan interview. That's an easy answer - a big fat cheque.

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"Escape From Five Shadows" by Elmore Leonard

As a western you would expect a story of cowboys and Indians. It is, but with a twist.
"Escape From Five Shadows" is a story that recalls movies from the 50's. Instead of a town and a rancher's daughter, it's a prison and a stage depot manager's daughter. You would expect the hero to be rugged and good looking and he is. To escape prison and run away with the manager's daughter may be  the gist of the story, but it is also a story of justice and injustice, western style.

Everyone has secrets and most should remain that way.

One of my favourite writers is C.J. Box

You Can’t Write What You Wouldn’t Read for Pleasure

The most important thing is you can’t write what you wouldn’t read for pleasure. It’s a mistake to analyze the market thinking you can write whatever is hot. You can’t say you’re going to write romance when you don’t even like it. You need to write what you would read if you expect anybody else to read it.
 And you have to be driven. You have to have the three D’s: drive, discipline and desire. If you’re missing any one of those three, you can have all the talent in the world, but it’s going to be really hard to get anything done.

NORA ROBERTS

Writing Is An Act of Courage

I strongly believe that writing is an act of courage. It’s almost an act of physical courage. You get up and you have this great idea. Maybe you were hanging out with your friends—you guys were having beers and you were talking about something. You had this idea and they said, “Wow, that’s brilliant! Someone should go write it.” And you sit down to write it and almost always what was brilliant before, when you were sitting around talking, is somehow not so brilliant when you go to write. It’s as though you have a certain music in your head, and trying to get that music out on a page is absolute hell. And so you fail. If you’re doing it correctly, what happens is, the translation of what you hear in your head, what your idea is in your head, will almost always come out really badly on the page when you first write, okay? But what you have to do is you have to give yourself a day, go back, revise over and over and over again until you get something that is at least maybe 70 percent of what you wanted to do. You try to go from really bad to okay to acceptable. Then you know you’ve done your job. I never really get to that perfect thing that was in my head, so I always consider the entire process about failure. I think that’s the main reason why more people don’t write. It’s very depressing in that way.

TA-NEHISI COATES

Completing A Book is Like Having a Baby

Completing a book, it’s a little like having a baby. There’s a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

Some Books Refuse to be Written

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written—it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.

MARK TWAIN

Cinderella

What's in the Vietnamese version of Cinderella (Tam Cam)? At the end, Cinderella dismembered her step sister, put the body into a jar of food and sent it to her step mother to eat, which she enjoyed until she found the skull at the bottom of the jar and died of shock.

Novels Are Never About What They Are About

But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it. A novel’s whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what a novel is about, and the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening what is already written. That is finding the theme.

DIANE JOHNSON

The Hollywood Totem Pole

In Hollywood, you’re dealing with a power structure where the writer is really at the bottom of the totem pole. Actually, I think that the writer isn’t even at the bottom of the totem pole—they’re at the part that they stick in the ground, and then there’s the totem pole.

BRUCE JOEL RUBIN

Character is the Very Life of Fiction

Character is the very life of fiction. Setting exists so that the character has someplace to stand. Plot exists so the character can discover what he is really like, forcing the character to choice and action. And theme exists only to make the character stand up and be somebody. 

JOHN GARDNER