I have recently done a number of public speaking sessions in my current home town of Brisbane, Australia. Most of these have been 1.5 hour sessions and a few weeks ago, I did my first full day seminar on “How to Write, Publish, Sell and Promote Your Own Book”.

I have been learning a number of things about public speaking so thought I would share them with you. I have recently joined National Speaker’s Association, but I am certainly not a highly accomplished speaker yet so these are only beginner’s notes.

• Prepare extremely well, but then relax and go with it. My seminar was based on my 3 books and the last 18 months of experience, so you could say I have been preparing for a long time! I know my material and I am confident with it, but I still spent 3 whole weekends preparing for this 1 day seminar. I prepared the slide packs, organised the materials and venue as well as marketing it online and through various contacts. I had nightmares the two nights before and was anxious it would go well, but on the day itself, I just let it happen. I had done everything I could to make it perfect, so I relaxed. Once the people arrived, I was good to go.

• Use Zen Presentation, not death by Powerpoint. Visual slides are almost mandatory on a full day/weekend workshop and I had prepared a fantastic slide pack for each session. If you are someone who does seminars or work presentations, then you must read Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery This book can revolutionise your Powerpoint and entrance your audience, and I used it as the basis for my sessions. Basically, it is about using strong images and keywords to convey your message, instead of packing slides full of detailed notes. Leave those for handouts. I get the majority of my images from Flickr Creative Commons, and the rest from iStockPhoto.

• It’s not nerves, it’s Shakti. I learnt this from a friend and mentor, Robert Rabbin who I highly recommend as a public speaking coach. At one of Robert’s weekend courses, he taught us about Shakti, which is a creative, dynamic life energy flowing throughout us and the universe. If you are about to give your energy to others in speaking, you need to be filled with energy. Think of those “nerves” as the shakti flowing – you need that energy to give to other people, to perform and to speak from your heart. Think of those feelings as positive, and reinterpret the ‘nerves’ as Shakti. It really helps!

• Be the expert people see you as, even if you don’t feel like that. This is something my business coach, Lisa Murray told me. Public speaking is about putting yourself out there as an expert, and if people want to hear you speak and enjoy it, then you are that expert. I feel like I am just one step ahead in the class on many topics. I am just keen to share so people don’t make the mistakes I did. You may feel that you are not an expert either, but I bet you are one step ahead in the class on your topic too! That’s enough to make you an expert in the eyes of your audience, so embrace that.

• Be real and tell your story. People want authenticity and they want to see the real you. You can share your learnings and your problems without being less of an expert or compromising your position. I find sharing my lessons learnt to be the way I personally move forward as well as helping others (and you will find a lot of lessons learned on this blog!)

• Respond to the audience, rather than enforcing your schedule. I found that at the dreaded 3.30pm slot, people were fading fast and I was talking about technical things like blogging. So we took an extra break and that helped to carry us through to the end. I had to cut some content but people were tired. I also took questions on the fly throughout the session and responded to people’s expressions like “what on earth are you talking about?!” when I got onto ebooks. Also, I would recommend taking feedback and using it to improve the seminar and your performance. I did little forms that I gave out at the end of the session for people to write their comments on. I keep these and add them to my database of testimonials and things to improve.

• Have products to sell. If people are interested in what you are saying, they will naturally want more of what you have to say. They will want your books, your programs and more of your time. So let them have it. Make sure you have more products for them to buy.

Joanna Penn speaking at a Brisbane public seminar

I will be doing more seminars in 2010, and also I’ll be creating some products around them for people who don’t live in Australia.

I am also keen to speak at events, so please do get in touch if you’re interested in having me to speak live, or by teleconference. Email: joanna@TheCreativePenn.com

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I am just so lucky this week because I had the brilliant Mur Lafferty AND the fantastic J.C. Hutchins to interview! Since it is NaNoWriMo, I am asking these authors for their tips for writing. As I am writing a thriller, J.C. had some great tips for me (and for you too!)

J.C. Hutchins is an award winning novelist best known for his 7th Son technothriller trilogy released as free podcasts in 2006-2007. With around 100,000 downloads still occurring each month, 7th Son is the most popular podcast novel series in history. The first novel in the series, 7th Son: Descent is out now in print on Amazon.com from St Martin’s Press.

On this podcast you will learn:

• How J.C. started writing 7th Son back in 2002 spurred on by NaNoWriMo. He queried 60 agents and publishers and was universally rejected. Demoralised and depressed, he wondered what to do next with his story.
• The ray of hope was podcasting and J.C. started to podcast 7th Son. Authors were releasing unpublished manuscripts as podcast novels at the time and it was a way to get the story out and test the market. The podcast was an amazing hit which eventually led to a publishing deal. The first book in the series, 7th Son: Descent is now out in paperback
• How brilliant fan support can be, based on a relationship built on podcasting
• A bit about the plot of 7th Son: Descent – The President of the United States is dead, killed by a 4 year old boy…. (cue thriller music)

• J.C.’s top 3 tips for thriller writing
• Thrillers need to quicken the pulse and be relentless in pace. Start the story with a bang.
• Start when the heroes life is immediately changed. No day job, no domesticity. Grab your character and throw them into a van straight away!
• Always end scenes/ chapters with cliff-hangers, narrative plot twists or evocative dialogue. Make the reader want to read on.
• Be conscious of pacing. You do need the ‘grout’ to glue the story together but keep the characters moving. Keeping chapters short with cliff-hanger endings keeps the pace going.
• Recommends Jeffrey Deaver as a great thriller writer, particularly Lincoln Rhyme series e.g. The Coffin Dancer
• Remember to just write. Write without fear and ignore that inner voice. Enjoy the process.

• Movement is important, especially if there is a lot of talking. Keep the story physically moving, or cut to the villains. This also helps with cinematic visual cues (7th Son has been optioned for a movie!)
• Describing physical location grounds people in the event and also helps with the visual cues. Describing things with tangible items helps people relate to the physicality.

• Writing violence in thriller vs horror. The difference between graphic description of violence/horror or leaving more to the imagination. Conveying it in words that aren’t gory even though there is still violence.
• On the inspiration for conspiracy theories – late night radio show Coast to Coast AM. Grounding conspiracy theories in truth or historical events to make them seem more real.

• How J.C. is marketing 7th Son and why authors have to pull out all the stops to market their books, whether they are published or self-publishing. Attention is hard to get as TV and radio cut book segments. Giving away content for free online gets customers who would never have heard of the book otherwise. They get to test drive the story. Empowers people to make an informed purchasing decision. You can get it in audio form, PDF chapters, prequel short story anthology and serialised on BoingBoing.

• Authors need to be responsible for their own marketing. You are the best person to sell your story. Building your platform will definitely attract more opportunities.
• Podcasting has helped J.C. with self belief and confidence as well as building a platform and relationships with listeners and fans. It is an incredible amount of work though so you may want to try traditional publishing first! Try everything!

7th Son is available now at Amazon.com => 7th Son: Descent

You can find all the free content and more about J.C. Hutchins at JCHutchins.net

You can also follow J.C. on Twitter @jchutchins

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Word Count: 11, 185 on thriller novel, codename “Project Morgan”

Here’s my video from Day 5 NaNoWriMo… and there’s text and links below the video!

More Lessons Learned:

• My writing really sucks but that’s ok because brilliant author Mur Lafferty (who I interviewed yesterday) says it’s ok! I’m also just focusing on getting stuff out of my head. It doesn’t matter how it’s written at the moment. No one will see this draft!

• I am writing very fast especially on the train. I use a little Netbook (Dell Mini 9) and don’t even bother with punctuation. I just write what comes. I am leaving in the question marks and (follow this up later) comments and asides. I’ll tidy it all up later. More thanks to Doyce Testerman who also wrote on this topic (warning: explicit but very funny!)

• It is a thriller so my kick-butt heroine is doing exciting things. When I realise that the characters are talking too much I throw some action in to move the plot forward. This is so much fun! Thanks to author J.C. Hutchins for his thriller tips (interview to be podcast next week!)

• Another helpful post this week was from Scott Westerfeld who talked about dialogue spine. I have used this technique between my 2 main characters, Morgan and Jacob. It has worked really well. Just talking, no filler “he said, she said” etc. Very useful for bare bones writing.

• I have also bought the URL for my novel name and also the main character- to be revealed at a later date! But for $10 you can make sure it is future proofed if you already have a title in mind. I use GoDaddy.com.

More videos and lessons learnt coming soon……  Let me know how your Work In Progress is doing!

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There are some great authors online who are years ahead of me, who are achieving success and who also share their knowledge with other writers. Mur Lafferty is one of those people and I was thrilled to interview her during NaNoWriMo to get her tips on writing.

Mur Lafferty is an author, podcaster and freelance writer. Her first novel, ‘Playing for Keeps‘ won the 2008 Parsec Award for Best Novel and was subsequently published by Swarm Press. It reached #1 in Science Fiction on Amazon.com and is also available as a free podcast novel.

Mur has co-authored a book on podcasting, as well as writing role-playing games. She is currently working on the Heaven series of Podiobooks, as well as new projects and has also joined NaNoWriMo this month. On top of all this, Mur has a fantastic podcast for wannabe authors “I Should Be Writing“, which I highly recommend!

In this podcast, you will learn:

• About Mur’s journey as a writer. From having her confidence knocked in college, to getting back into writing in her 30s, first as a freelancer and then as a novelist.
• Thinking people are better than you is fair enough, but you don’t have to be a great literature writer to be an author. You can write what you love!
• No one can do the work for you. No one will make sure you get your word count done. You have to do it yourself. If you keep doing something every day, you will get better at it. Mastery takes time!
• The journey of a writer – it takes 10 years to make an overnight sensation. The authors who “suddenly” become famous have been slogging away in the background

• You have to start… and then keep going. In writing and in podcasting. Stubborn-ness goes a long way!
• Losing the fear of failure. It’s not a big deal. You just have to pick yourself up and do something else.
• “It’s ok to suck” (click here for the link to Mur’s podcast on this topic). Your first draft is not supposed to be a masterpiece. You don’t step out of the door and run a marathon without training. You need to be in writing training too. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Don’t think about it too much. Just let yourself express yourself, and don’t worry about the outcome.

• Mur’s top tips for novel writing in #NaNoWriMo!
• 2 parts to your brain – the writing side and the editing side. Keep them separate. Express first and then edit. Do not obsess over that paragraph forever. Move on! (You can always get an editor).
• Outlining even just a little bit can help – even basic 5 point plot outline. It keeps the writing a lot clearer. Organic writing is fine and can come up with plot twists but still an outline helps.

• How ‘Playing for Keeps’ developed as a novella, then a novel and then into a potential sequel (which Mur is writing as her NaNoWriMo project). How ideas do come as you write, and how plot threads can reappear later in the novel – it’s an amazing process!
• On drafting and how rewriting and editing is a HUGE part of writing a novel. It needs revision and editing. That’s part of the process! Don’t expect it to be perfect at first try.
• How podcasting has got Mur the most attention from agents and publishers. Her journey has been unexpected (and wonderful) because of it. Has lost fear of public speaking through podcasting.
• Podcasting is great for connection with people. Hearing your voice creates an intimate relationship with the listener. It builds an audience and they actually care about your success.
• Get over your voice! (if you want to podcast!)

• The Storytellers Unplugged post from Mur.  More people will give away free chapters and also dabble in podcasting. Embracing the internet as a new author is imperative, or you will be left in the dust.
• Get over the piracy debate as well – successful people get pirated! On giving it away for free as a sales technique. The dandelion method via Cory Doctorow.
• On writing humour as a novelist. Write what you find funny. Don’t try to write what you think others might find funny.

You can find Mur at Murverse.com and also on Twitter @mightymur .

Definitely go and subscribe to “I Should Be Writing” where Mur shares her own tips as a novelist and also interviews some very cool people!

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It is a new world of book marketing out there, and it is brilliant to see how authors are embracing it!

Here is a little story of what happened to me this week that I thought I would share, so you can learn from it and also tips on what you can do to replicate this kind of connection success.

Last week I went to a fantastic business bookstore in Brisbane called McGills. I love to browse there in my lunch times at the day job. It gives me a break and I like to see what latest books are out.

A new book caught my eye, The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media but it was $42.50 and there is no way I will spend that much on a book, unless it is “must have”. (I generally order books from the US from Amazon.com as it is cheaper, even with shipping.)

Now I have my International Kindle, I searched whilst still in the shop and found it was available in Kindle format. So I bought it right then and within minutes it was on my Kindle. I had lunch reading it in the Brisbane sunshine (review to come in a separate post).

Since I enjoy sharing these things, I went onto Twitter on my iPhone (Tweetie app) and tweeted:

“Just found a book I wanted in McGills bookshop. Found it $31 cheaper on my Kindle. Aussie retailers won’t be able to match these prices.”

[A follower of mine @angee asked what I bought.]

“@angee Just bought Digital Handshake Paul Chaney. Re social media business. I’m reading around this topic currently!”

Within about 30 mins I got this tweet:

From @pchaney: “@thecreativepenn – Joanna, thank you for purchasing my book. Let me know what you think; so far, so good in terms of feedback.”

“@pchaney. very impressive! Connecting as per your book. Love it. Will be deserving of a blog post. I’ll let you know thoughts. Thanks.”

From @pchaney: “@thecreativepenn – I watch mentions of my book & my name very closely ; will lk forward to see what you have to say. And thanks again.”

Paul further showed his interest by friending me on Facebook with a personal message, which I really appreciated.

How can you learn from this and action lessons learned now?

• If you are a US author/publisher, put your books and backlist onto the Kindle. Now it is international, there will soon be hundreds of thousands, if not millions new buyers. You can publish at dtp.amazon.com. If you are not in the US, keep an eye out for when Amazon opens up to international publishers. I had an email from them saying it was in progress. I would not have bought this book in print.

• Set up a Twitter Alert for your name, your book name or your company name (or all of them), plus any keywords you might be interested in. You’ll get an email with where these are mentioned on Twitter.

• Set up a Google Alert for the same topics and you’ll get another email.

• If someone mentions these topics, connect in some way. It might be an email response, or a tweet or a message on Facebook. Acknowledge the person and also say something personal. Paul used my name in the tweet above which showed it was not just some automated message.

• From the reader perspective, if you are enjoying a book, tweet/blog/Facebook about it and you might be surprised at the response you get from the author!

This is a perfect example of the kind of business model people are starting to move to. It revolves around trust, networks and connections rather than advertising. Authors have to be business people in order to sell books, so I will be blogging more about this in the next few weeks.

I will also be reviewing the following excellent books that I have been recently reading on a similar theme: Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk, Trust Agents from Chris Brogan & Julian Smith, Socialnomics by Eric Qualman and of course The Digital Handshake by Paul Chaney.

In the course of reading these books and tweeting about them I have also had brief tweet conversations with @chrisbrogan and @equalman so these guys are living what they are preaching. More to come on these social media lessons!

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NaNoWriMo has started and thousands of people round the world are tackling new novels, aiming to finish 50,000 words in 1 month! This is a bit of a sprint but it has some great advantages (see this post for more details).

I try to be honest and share my writing journey on this blog. I have now written 3 non-fiction books, I’m pretty good with internet marketing, but I seriously have no experience with writing fiction novels. I read like a maniac though so I know what I like. I also know I am capable of writing 150,000 words (with wicked editing, it will be a 100,000 word novel!)

So I thought I would try it this month with an idea I have been playing around with for months. I will update with short videos every few days, and here’s the first one with highlights below.

Highlights from the video:

• I realise that I have not planned enough and find myself writing disjointed plot sections and extra notes as things appear in my head. I am bubbling with ideas, but it is not directed at writing in sequence. (Maybe this is not an issue right now though!)

• I need to research more in order to write, e.g. my protagonist knows Krav Maga, hand to hand combat developed in Israel, but I don’t know enough to write in detail about it.

• I know about my protagonist, Morgan. She is a kick-butt heroine, kind of Lara Croft meets Bones (Tempe Brennan). She is also a parapsychologist which directs the theme of the book. But I don’t want to write back story about her. I am mindful of the Back Story post by Rachelle Gardner last week, so need to bring in more action and less ‘telling’.

• I do have a song for the mood of the book. It’s ‘Kryptonite’ by 3 Doors Down and you can listen on Blip.fm. I was driving this afternoon and this song speeds the heart and races the mind (for me anyway!). I want my novel to be like this too. A book that makes you want to drive too fast! Watch this space for a fast paced thriller!

Let me know how NaNoWriMo is going for you – or any other works in progress this month!

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I do a monthly Ezine that includes links to the month’s articles from this site and from other peoples. It also includes news and information that might be useful to writers and authors. People have been having problems with the PDF download so I am now hosting them on Scribd.com and will provide links for you monthly.

Here is the October Ezine. You can download or read on Scribd.com. Click here for the backlist.
The Creative Penn Ezine October 2009: Writing, Publishing Options, Internet Sales & Marketing for your book

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I love travel and I love writing so I have been really looking forward to this interview! I have been following Alexis for a while and have been really impressed by her Aspiring Author blog.

Alexis Grant

Alexis Grant is a newspaper journalist writing her first book, a memoir about her travels in Africa. She also has a blog “Aspiring Author” where she talks about her writing and publishing journey.

In this podcast you will learn:

• How Alexis gave up her job at the Houston Chronicle to go solo backpacking through French-speaking Africa for 6 months. You can see her travel blog here
• How collecting stories and pictures along the way is helping Alexis to write her first book based on her travels. She wrote in notebooks and updated her blog whenever she could find an internet cafe. Writing a blog is a great way to record your work in progress.
• How journalism experience helped with writing notes whilst travelling
• Aiming to be in a new niche – women who are not looking for a relationship while travelling! (the anti-Eat, Pray Love?!)

• How going on a writer’s residency has helped Alexis to write her book and develop creativity
• The Alliance Artist Communities site . A very useful database of places you can apply to, the costs or whether there are scholarships, what is included etc
• Post by Alexis referred to in podcast: How to find and apply to artists colonies
• About Alexis’ time at Hambidge, a great place to meet people and network with other artists as well as being quiet and walking in nature… and writing!
• How 5 weeks at Hambidge affected Alexis personally. Why getting away and being in nature can help creativity, inspiration and clarity.
• Why taking a writing retreat is great, even a long weekend, but how you can also write where you are.

• On Alexis’ plans for getting a traditional publishing deal, but longer term plans for a lifetime of writing
• How having an active blog helps writing practice as well as attracting collaboration with other writers, and even attracting agents.
• You need to sell yourself with every blog post as someone important could be reading it!
• Travel writers can make money from speaking. Refer to Alastair Humphrey’s podcast here.
• On using real names with writing travel memoir (an important question!)

Alexis Grant in Timbuktu

You can connect with Alexis at her site www.AlexisGrant.com , or at her writer’s blog, Aspiring Author.

You can also  connect on Twitter @alexisgrant

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Joanna Penn reading a James Rollins thriller on the Amazon Kindle in the hammock

I now go to bed with my Kindle! It  joined the ranks of much loved technology within about 2 hours of receiving it. I have already bought 3 books and read for a number of hours on it. It’s fantastic!

The Kindle might be old news to Americans, but for the rest of us, it is brand spanking new!
If you are not in the US, you can order a Kindle Wireless now – no more waiting, it’s finally here.

Why is the Kindle so great?

• Easy win: Availability. I live in Australia and it is the first decent e-reader available here. Sony don’t sell the E-Reader here and the others haven’t had great reviews. I ordered my Kindle and it arrived in it’s beautiful box very quickly. It is easy to set up and very very easy to spend money on!

• It saves me money immediately. I am a fast reader and I love reading. I don’t have a TV and buying digital music/movies and now books is essentially my entertainment. I will devour fiction in one (long) sitting but since moving to Australia have not bought much because of the expense. New books are between $30 – $45 here (that’s almost equivalent in US $ at the moment). This is utterly ridiculous and I earn a good wage plus have a budget for books, so I wonder how others manage. I will get the book from the library or order print off Amazon.com with shipping rather than pay those prices. Yesterday, I bought Socialnomics for $12 and Trust Agents for $12 on the Kindle, both are around $40 in the print bookshops here. That is a huge saving, even though you might consider it a high price for an ebook! I will have paid the cost of the Kindle off in no time with the number of books I buy.

• Reading plain text is great on the Kindle. There is criticism that the Kindle is not a multi-functional device, it’s not colour and doesn’t have much functionality.  But this is essentially a book! It is very easy on the eyes and great to hold. It’s light and slim and beautiful. For reading plain text books, it’s perfect. I zipped through some chapters of Socialnomics before starting a James Rollins thriller. You can also save books in your want pile, so you don’t have to buy them all at once.

• It’s wireless. Gorgeous! I love this feature! This is brilliant for authors and for publishers who embrace this (and of course, for Amazon!) It means I can buy a book and have it in minutes, sitting here in my house. I can be reading the blog of some brilliant new author, and immediately make a purchase of their book on Kindle. I don’t have to remember to order it from a store. With the lower prices, it’s lower risk so people will buy more. There is evidence that Kindle owners buy more books, and now I can see why.

These are my main reasons, and I definitely recommend buying a Kindle. If you are a devourer of books, then it’s definitely worth it!

Incidentally, my books are also available on the Kindle: “From Idea to Book”, “From Book to Market” and “How to Enjoy Your Job”.

What are some of the downsides of the Kindle?

• The main criticism is the Amazon behemoth DRM (Digital Rights Management) issue, where the formats are locked and incompatible with other devices. This is a common discussion amongst ebook afficionados but I don’t think most users would even notice. If you are an Amazon buyer, you are happy to buy Amazon ebooks on your Amazon device. There are also some hacks to get around the issue of  putting other documents on the Kindle if you are tech-minded.

• My main criticism is that non-US authors/publishers can’t publish on the Kindle yet. I think they will change this pretty soon with the release of the international Kindle as that is leaving a lot of money on the table. I currently publish using a friend in America.

So I am definitely a fan of the Kindle, although I am also saving for the elusive Apple tablet that may appear in 2010. Technology is so elegant these days, it is hard to resist!

Here’s a video I did on my iPod Nano video player – I’ll be doing lots of these for #NaNoWriMo as well. I’m embracing video

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I love thrillers, especially those with an action/adventure style pace and plot. They are my escape from real life and I tend to open them and not stop until I’m done! I also like this style of movie, with lots of explosions, high body count but not horror. Yes, I also like reflective literature but thrillers are brilliant for the saturday afternoon hammock session.

Matthew Reilly is one of my favourite authors in this genre and I buy everything he writes. His latest book is The Five Greatest Warriors and I have just finished reading it. Now my mind is overflowing with ideas that I want to bring to my NaNoWriMo novel, which will be a thriller so I wanted to share them with you.

Here are 7 lessons I have learnt on writing fast-paced thrillers from reading Matthew Reilly’s books:

• Have a deadline to keep the pace moving. All of Reilly’s books have this deadline approach which is indicated by the date and time stamps throughout the book, as well as how fast the plot progresses. The countdown keeps you focussed on the end point, and turning the pages with anticipation. This is also a device used by Dan Brown in his novels and other successful thriller writers.

• Keep giving your main character a hard time, and keep the cliff-hangers coming. Reilly’s protagonists, specifically Scarecrow and Jack West, have a very hard life. They seriously don’t eat or sleep or rest at all. It is non-stop action, from one desperate situation to the next. There are awful choices they have to make, and physical dangers to endure as well as betrayal and pain. But this is a thriller, not a romance or an introspective literary piece. The main characters are there to inflict the plot onto, not to enjoy the ride!

• High body count. I love explosion movies and books with high body count, but only the ones where it is not too graphic. You know, A-Team violence where people get killed but you don’t see the nasty bits. It’s not horror, it’s thriller. There is a line! Reilly does not let up with the body count and it keeps the pace going as well as keeping you emotionally involved (he has no qualms about killing off the good guys as well). There has to be investment in the book and death, destruction and violence are pretty important in this genre.

• Dastardly bad guy. Evil has to be personified in a thriller. The bad guy has to be killing people and will look like he is winning up to a point. Reilly has an original torture device in the book, and actually, I quite liked Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol bad guy, Malak’h. His physical description was memorable with full body tattoos on a 6′3″ frame and also had an original method of torture.

• Multiple physical locations. I wonder if this is just a way to have tax-deductible trips but it certainly works to keep a reader engrossed in the book. Reilly’s books jump all over the globe and encompass a huge physical scale. I love thrillers that use geography as part of the plot as I am also a travel junkie so this hooks me every time.

• Create interesting traps and puzzles to solve. Dan Brown has this as his primary hook but other thriller writers also use this device. One of Matthew Reilly’s hallmarks is to include drawings of the physical locations, often underground caverns with complicated routes, mazes and traps. The protagonist has to solve clues to find various locations and combined with the lack of time, it also speeds up the pace.

• Hook the reader with pieces of truth they already know, and then expand them into the fiction. I have a theology degree and my bookshelves are weighed down with religious tomes, spiritual books and all kinds of conspiracy theories. So I love to read about locations or books or artefacts that have some truth to them, but then are often exaggerated into the fiction story. The Holy Grail is the obvious one for Dan Brown, and Matthew Reilly gets into Easter Island as well as the Egyptian Pyramids is his novels.

The other author I love in this genre is James Rollins, who writes similar style ‘brainy thriller’ novels. His latest is The Doomsday Key , another excellent fast read.

Definitely check these guys out if you like a rollicking thriller novel!

I will be doing another post soon on what I intend to write in NaNoWriMo, but certainly expect a thriller in this genre encompassing these lessons learned.

What do you think are the keys to a great thriller?

I put this question on Twitter and got a few responses (it was Saturday night!) :

“Solid hook in 1st line, fast pace /short chapters, cliffhangers, big plot point/action every 5 pages (last one Ken Follett)” @writersamblake

“a phantom arc reflexive of the main1 that taps in2 our unconscious, REALLY making things imperative:w/o the reader noticing” @amandashowers

“you can’t guess the ending! gee I hate it when you can” @ReviveCoaching

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