My free (for a few days) Kindle novel on amazon.

[valerief]

Last edited Sat Oct 31, 2015, 06:47 PM - Edit history (3)

If you're interested.

http://www.amazon.com/Hunny-TV-Man-Tales-Repairman-ebook/dp/B013LBB1A2

(Not sure if it's okay to post this here. I posted it in the Writing group too. I'll self-delete if it's not appropriate to post here.)

April Fools' Day, 1961, leaves Gil "Hunny" Hunnicutt stiffed on a TV service call, and he'll be damned if he doesn't get paid. His mission nearly kills him at the gun-toting hands of a crazy lady, but she isn't the only lady who pulls a gun on him and isn't the only crazy lady in his life that month.

While he envisions an unappealing future and has a slippery hold on a new-found love, he's still tethered to his two polar-opposite sisters and isn't sure, at his core, which one of them he's more like. His wandering "antenna" has had a chokehold on him for much of his life, but now he's ready for love's chokehold. However, first he has to free himself from the chokehold of the Albanian Mob, which he's stepped in like dog doo-doo.

His journey leads him to Judy Garland and Carnegie Hall, a hitman in drag, questionable deaths, FBI spooks, and his very own felony—courtesy of the Mob—all while juggling family demands, true love, homophobia, racism, and the curse of shadow puppet shows. Hunny learns growing up is hard, especially for an old dog who's used to running in circles, chasing tail.

[TexasProgresive]

1. Free fiction-why,valerie, I think this is quite the place

Thanks I took up your offer and will let you know what I think. I will read it as soon as I finish my current read.

[valerief]

4. Thanks. I promise. There won't be a test. Put it down if it bores you.

[Goblinmonger]

2. Very much so the place.

Grabbed one. Thank you very much! It is on the short list for me to read.

[valerief]

3. Thanks! It's my longest novel so far (a consolidation of three novels

I wrote for a series) but I couldn't cut it down any shorter. I kept picturing and hearing Paul Newman as I wrote the main character. Yum!

[Goblinmonger]

5. So I started today.

According to my Kindle, I am 7% through the book. Here is my honest reaction as an English teacher to this point:

*I thought the description and attempts at the vernacular of the time were a tad heavy handed in the first several pages. To the point I almost wanted to stop, but I didn't. It gets less obtrusive as the novel goes along, but there are still moments.
*Your dialogue writing is wonderful. Best part of the novel at this point.
*Though I realize I'm only at 7% of the novel, I'm looking for the conflict to start developing pretty quickly. I kind of like the characters (though YoYo seems a bit too trope-ish) and am ready for the good parts to start.

I'll finish this one. I'm pretty sure I'm going to like it (hope my first point didn't come off too harshly). And I don't say that lightly. I have WAY too many things I want to read, and if I'm not sucked in by 10% of the novel, then I'm out and moving on to something else. So you have me hooked.

[valerief]

6. Aren't you sweet to critique it! Thanks so much. I really appreciate the feedback.

I can see your points, too. Ha! So much for me trying to make Hunny sound like a curmudgeonly wiseguy. As for Yoyo, I couldn't get Maynard G. Krebs from Dobie Gillis out of my head, and yeah, he's too trope-ish/tropey. I have a real cartoonish streak. I'm trying to rein that in with the novel I'm writing now.

No one has ever said they liked my dialogue. I've always thought that was my strength, so I really appreciate you saying that.

I understand putting a book down when you're bored. I do it ALL the time. If you don't finish, I won't be offended. I enjoy the process of writing and editing most of all, and I had that with Hunny already. Still, I hope you're not bored.

[Goblinmonger]

7. Hope it came across well.

I totally saw Maynard G. Krebs, so that part worked. I would just say to reign it in and make it a little less like "hey, this is the guy that Gilligan did before he was Gilligan--remember him!" and let us get there a little more "organically."

I'm 50, so parts of me found a lot of fondness in the time period you are hearkening back to. So you are clearly doing that well, too, in my opinion.

For what it's worth, your dialogue is very much so a strength. I always tell kids that want to work on writing their dialogue to turn to Elmore Leonard as the epitome of a good dialogue writer (or Tarantino in the movies--what he wrote in Red October is ridiculous). Yours is very natural and flows well. And you don't all a lot of the extraneous stuff that Leonard preached against (not sure if you have seen Elmore Leonard's rules for writing).

[valerief]

8. Years ago, I read some Leonard (I'm older than you) but never read his rules for writing.

I'll have to check it out. Thanks. Oh, and you came across very well. I don't bruise easily. Politics is life or death. Writing fiction isn't. Ha!

[Goblinmonger]

9. Awesome

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/24/elmore-leonard-rules-for-writers

[valerief]

10. Thanks. Looks like I must have read these rules from different sources before,

because I learned to limit/avoid adverbs and to use only "said" for dialog.

[TexasProgresive]

11. Here's another vote on your dialogue- it is VERY good

I'm really enjoying your gift to us. I am amazed that you know so much about TV repair in the 60's. You've reminded me of things I have long forgotten, including the tenor of the times. I think that you should charge $8.00 to $10.00 for the download.

[valerief]

12. Aren't you nice! Thanks so much. I had to research the TV repair. Ebay and amazon

had lots of stuff I could buy cheap, old repair books and magazines, and the internet, too, of course (how did people write novels before the internet?). I've probably forgotten most of it by now.

As for charging more, well, no one would pay that. Books don't get sold unless a major publishing house publishes and promotes them, and you need an "in" to get published by a major house. That's okay. I just like writing stories. As it is, during the max 5-day free period amazon allows every 90 days, only about 25 books were downloaded. The three months before that, 1 was bought--for 99 cents--in Germany.

There's a gazillion of us writers out there. I'm just one, and an old one now, who can remember the 60s and who's polishing my skills to write the Great American Novel someday.