1st Book Update!

The first book in The Pendleton Files series is being turned into an ebook. For a low price, you'll soon be able to purchase the first book, Case File 3297: "The Shanghai Tunnels", online, via your favorite source for ebooks. Check back often for more updates.

Still working!

Don't give up on me. I almost have the first book ready to publish via Smashwords. Hang in there. -Greg Wilhelm, author of "The Pendleton Files".

Busy, busy, busy!

Hi guys! Just wanted to write a quick note. Last week I finished the book and today I'm busy getting a query letter started. I'm only saying it's finished because if I don't it'll never be done. I made the mistake of peeking at my Prologue. Not good. It still stinks, but I'm hoping it's passable. Only because if it isn't, then that means I'll have work on my Prologues a little harder or cut them out all together. That's something that I'd rather not do, considering it's a pivotal part of the book. It introduces the reader to the location where our victim meets his demise. Plus, it makes it easy for me to write the story without having to stop and explain the significances of every reference pertaining to the location.
I would say more, but I have to get that query letter going. Unfortunately, they don't write themselves.

-Greg Wilhelm, author of 'The Pendleton Files'.

File 3297 Update!

I'm still busy getting the book ready to show to an Agent. It's halfway through, almost. I'm now up to Ch. 18 in the revision process. I wish I could go faster, but since this isn't my fulltime job I have no choice but to work with the limited amount of time that I have.
Sorry.
I wish I could write more, but I have to get back to it.
Busy, busy.
Greg Wilhelm -author of The Pendleton Files.

Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Book Signing!

Hello everyone. I’m still busy getting the first book revised. (To date, I have the Prologue + 7 chapters ready for any Agent who’s interested.)

But this time the post isn’t about my writing.

Last Friday night, my wife’s (Lisa) favorite author Sherrilyn Kenyon held a book signing at Cedar Hill’s Borders Books. We patiently waited along with Kenyon's other Minions for her arrival with the minute hand reaching and exceeding six minutes beyond the six o’clock scheduled appearance.

 “Thank ya all for coming. Sorry for not replying to some of you on Tweeter. I trashed another laptop.” She announced after showing up with a smile and a headache, but you wouldn't have been able to tell by this trooper. This is truly an author who loves her fans and was happy answer everyone's questions.

There was one entertaining new fan in the crowd who had a love for dragons and was astonished to discover her favorite character was included in other books she hadn't known about.

Then it was Sherrilyn’s turn to be astonished when another fan asking about typos pointed out that her new book had ‘knees’ where there aught to ‘trees’. “What!?” She exclaimed. “I even had my husband check the galleys, and he’s an English teacher who teaches spelling!”

 Dianna Love Snell, Kenyon’s collaborator in the B.A.D. series, was also there. I asked her if there was ever a time when you guys are not writing. “There’s never a time where we’re not writing," she said. "We get up at 4a.m. every morning.” Ah, the life of a writer.

The fans formed lines according the letter they had been assigned at the register after buying Kenyon’s new book, “Bad Moon Rising”. Since she showed up at the crack of 1:00p.m., my wife had ‘A’ and was among the first group to be called, but sadly at a slowpoke's 20th place in line.

One adoring fan (pictured) brought Sherrilyn a beautifully handcrafted plague dedicated to everyone’s favorite character Simi. Normally fans would show up in costume at Kenyon’s book signings, dressed as Simi with red horns poking through a head of normal looking head of hair, but only a handful came to this one.

 Call 0120, 0120, 0120. And as at every Kenyon book signing there was the raffle. Since the book signing lines stretched almost all the way to the front of the store, Dianna had enlisted the help of an employee, Lindsey, (the girl in the white shirt.) who she dubbed Vanna. Although she was calling out the numbers through a microphone attached to two medium sized speakers perched atop tall stands, Dianna had Vanna stand halfway down the line and repeat the numbers that were called. “Can you hear me now?”

Our turn came. Dianna still hadn’t called out 0120. My book was finished I said, testing Sherrilyn to see how she would handle a fan who thought she would remember them. I took mental notes. “You did! When will it be published?” She was good, very believable. She told me about a Writer’s Conference being held ‘around here’. I stupidly assumed she meant a group workshop and said, I don’t go to those things. I later found what she was talking about and had I known then I would’ve probably said I would rather wait until I was done revising. No harm done.

This was only the second time we’ve attended one of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s book signing. If you’ve been following this blog, you would know that the first was in Redmond, WA, where Sherrilyn informed me that you know when to stop messin’ with a chapter when the Publisher calls for it for the umpteenth time. Okay it’s been a while, so I don’t recall exactly what she said, but that was the gist of it. All and all, even though there weren’t any Tasty Cakes, each time was a great experience and a lot of fun. Next time she comes into town, maybe I’ll be a Minion too.

Thanks for your interest.

Greg Wilhelm-author of The Pendleton Files.

The Agent Search Begins!

Hi everyone, or you there. I've been busy straightening the kinks and smoothing out the rough edges of "The Shanghai Tunnels". Just last Thursday I completed all my revising on Chapter 5, and attempted to submit a query letter with my Synopsis and The Prologue, but soon found that I really wasn't ready to do that.

I discovered from my research on query letters that it's usually a good idea to include the amount of words in your novel, but since I wrote each Chapter and Prologue in their own separate file I had no idea how many words I had total in my novel. I had to spend the time I had set aside for writing a query letter putting all 41 chapters and prologue together in one file titled the entire book. That little job took me all of both Thursday and Friday to do. (It came to around 76,500.)

I know that doesn't seem like a lot, However! Here's the story.

I'm really not ready to submit all of my manuscript to any Agent or Publisher. I only intended to submit query letters to Agents who take a while to respond, just to see who would bite, while I finished up with my revisions to the rest of the book. The Agent I had lined up wouldn't be responding any sooner than 4 weeks. Perfect, right? Only I really don't want to screw this up and get rejected because I didn't make it clear that my book is in fact finished and was already in the process of writing the next book. Oops!

Uh ... by the way, I've started writing "File 7279: Pioneer Courthouse Square".

Anyway. After I learned from a book written by a book publisher that it's a good idea to slip in the fact that the book has been written and ready, I felt I had to include it. So, I couldn't submit a query yet, not until I fill out a few chapters and at least get a better idea of how many words I'll have.

Honest! Its done! The story is complete. I just need to get a little more descriptive with a few things and get some locations and actions more into focus, so to speak.

So that's whats happening. I'm working on The Prologue for "File 7297: Pioneer Courthouse Square" and at the same time getting "File 3297: The Shanghai Tunnels" ready to be published.

Thanks for your interest and remember. Omission is the enemy.

Greg Wilhelm-author of The Pendleton Files.

File 3297: The Shanghai Tunnels is DONE!

Hello to everyone who's been following my progress, or should I say to the person who's been following it. Well whatever the case my be, as you can guess by the title of this posting, and if you've been following me on Facebook, I have finally completed the first draft of the first book in the mystery series of The Pendleton Files.

To think, it all started about fourteen years ago. I had moved to Portland, after finally fleeing my life of captivity in Florida, and discovered that there were Russian immigrants living here. It hadn't occurred to me before, but it made sense. I should have realized that would be the case since the Iron Curtain had fallen. But then I also thought, what had they done for a living before? What were they doing now? What if one them had worked for the KGB? What kind of job would they have here in Portland? The answer was obvious. A private detective. A Very good private detective. One with skills taught to him by an organization which delved into espionage. Then that's when I came up with the idea. Someone should write a book!

Unfortunately I found that I couldn't write that book. Not exactly that book. The research that was required for such a character didn't exist. The Iron Curtain had done too good of a job. Short of actually finding someone from Russia and spending a week with them, there was no way I would have been able to write an accurate depiction of my character. But I tried anyway. Along the way I had written a short story for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, but was rightly rejected, thus giving me my first badge of honor as a writer. The coveted Rejection Letter. (Sigh.)

So after having been bitten by the writer bug, I did not despair. I thought if I couldn't write a book with my favorite hero being the main character, I'll write around him. Plus, I was starting to like Lydia. Originally, I had planned for her to be Kris's partner, a woman who had just gotten over the death of her husband who had been killed about a year ago in a tragic car accident on those treacherous Terwilliger Curves of I-5. Tsk, tsk.

She was still supposed to be from a wealthy family connected with Portland's history, but only into reading detective mysteries. She thought it was time to start seeing people and had always had a thing for our hero, who had previously been working at her bakery. You see, I had planned for Kris to be working at his Uncle's bakery in order to save enough money to start a private detective agency. In his first book, I was going to have him just starting up and putting his office together when Lydia shows up at his door with a phony case. Eventually he warms up to her and finds her to be an asset. Near the end of the book, by the way there does turn out to actually be a case along the way, we learn that she earns her private detective license and has picked up a few things from our former KGB hero.

Yeah, that would've probably been a good book, but the one I ended up with isn't too far from it. I tried to write Kris before, but I had no idea what his views and opinions would be, the things that drive our actions. Like I did when I was writing our woman detective, I dance around Kris by saying 'he said something in Russian', or 'he had to go contact a source, but said he'd come right back'. Fortunately with Lydia I only have to dance around those feminine things a little bit. Which thankfully isn't too hard for me, considering I grew up in a female dominated family. A mother and two older sisters.

Anyway. Enough about me. The book is finally done and today I start dressing it up so I can take it to the dance. The Query dance, as I like to call it. Though having never done it before, I'm not sure that's an accurate metaphor.

I feel I owe Lisa (Scottoline) for this. From the beginning, it was her style that made me really want to write this book. The first book I had read that was written by her, Courting Trouble, was different from any other book I had read before. I thought it must have been a lot of fun writing it. Then I started wanting to have that kind of fun for myself and thought it was time to start writing the book I had been wanting to write. But I struggled at first. I bought Stephen King's book on Creative Writing which helped me a lot, and tried my best to follow his guidelines. I got discouraged because I found it difficult to find time to write, but read in Mr. King's book about successful authors who were faced with less time than I had. It was then that I had decided that during lunch breaks at work would have to do for now.

Then two trashed books and six years later, I finally met Lisa. By this time, my progress had trickled and I convinced myself that going back over chapters without finishing the book was still writing the book. I had just been laid-off the week before and was afraid I wouldn't be finding a job in a very long time, if ever. But I was still working on the book. I tried to think of what I could ask her and thoroughly went through her website in order to find something to say besides 'Your responsible', and risk ending up with her having to issue one of those TROs against me that I've read about in her books. I came across a video she had made, explaining her writing process. In it, she says she doesn't do any revisions or editing until she's finished writing the book. Well, I thought. That's what half the writers say, but I ask her about that anyway.

Before I had asked her that question, I believed that whether it takes months, or years, eventually I will get published. So for now I should take advantage of the fact that I don't have a deadline.

That was before.

It was the night of her book-signing. After she had came to a point in her introduction, and talking about her new book, she asked once more if anyone else had any questions. Then I mustered my courage and asked my question. But first, I should point out that stemming from my desperation and fear, I had recently became a member of Facebook as a means of notifying anyone out there of my jobless situation, thus hopefully alerting someone to come to my rescue.

"I have a question," I said.

"Yes," she answered.

This is it, I thought. "You say that you don't do any revisions before you've finished writing the book." I realize soon after saying it that it wasn't a question, but quickly recovered by saying, "How can you do that? I mean I can't move on without going back over what I've written."

Then she said, "You have to. You can't get it done unless you get it done." I'll have to be honest here. I really don't remember exactly what her answer was, but I'm pretty certain that was the gist of it.

What I do remember though is that we hit it off. It was like we thought the same way. I was actually finishing her sentences. She told me that you need motivation, you need Fear. I needed to "go for it." I remember that last one because she's always saying that to me in her e-mails.

She opened up about how it was when she first started out and how it took her five years before learning that, as Stephen King puts it, 'you have to kill your babies'. In other words, edit out your best work, no matter how much you love it. We talked for so long that I ended up being the last person she talked to before having everyone line up to get their book signed. But just before, this is why I mention Facebook, she knelt down to me and asked, "Have we met before?" Apparently, my Facebook page had caught her attention.

After I made her evening more fun and further embarrassed myself by kissing her goodnight, Yes, that was me on her 'Appearances' page, I went home and followed her advice. At first, I found it difficult. I hadn't realized until then that it had actually been a while since I had written anything new, but soon remembered my own little motivator. Once you make the first cut, the sawing gets easier. Once I realized what a problem it was not to be writing anything new in a while, I started to become a believer.

Eventually it got easier again, and then started to realize something else. I was wrong to think that not having a deadline was a good thing. Because without a deadline, you have no reason to get it done!

I finally close today's posting with something I've probably done before, but I believe I should do again.

Thank you, Lisa Scottoline, for all that you've done and all that you will do. You've inspired me from the beginning and for that I owe you.

And thank you everyone who had been following my progress. Some time in the next few weeks, when I finish straightening out the kinks in 'The Shanghai Tunnels', I'll begin writing "File ????: Pioneer Courthouse Square".

Once again, thanks for your interest, and remember ... "Omission is the enemy."

-Greg Wilhelm, author of The Pendleton Files.