Ask the Author: Gerald Everett Jones
Answered Questions (13)
Gerald Everett Jones
Richard, The Buddha assures us that suffering is a given. I'd say it's no more optional than breathing. Your question implies there's a choice. The choice is in what you decide to do with the experience. Humans are meaning-making machines, and making meaning is also a reflex, although you can choose which of many possible meanings works best for your mindset and purpose. Purpose itself is a meaning, an opinion that the human organism has formed about itself, based on a continual process of experience and making meaning of those experiences. Joy is meaningful and, yes, I'd say it's a choice - albeit often a difficult one. Carry on! Gerald.
Gerald Everett Jones
A tragedy in my family which included questions about an estate and farmland inspired the plot of my award-winning mystery-thriller Preacher Finds a Corpse.
Gerald Everett Jones
Hard to do better than Hemingway:
For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.
For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.
Gerald Everett Jones
Agent Running in the Field (Le Carre), The Dutch House (Patchett), Infinite Powers (Strogatz), Neurology Rounds with the Maverick (Patten), Hippie Chick (English), Augmented Mind (Bates)
Find my reviews already published on Spashmagazines.com for Hippie Chick and Augmented Mind.
Find my reviews already published on Spashmagazines.com for Hippie Chick and Augmented Mind.
Gerald Everett Jones
da-AL I thought I was replying to you but I posted the answer above.
Gerald Everett Jones
For Choke Hold, I researched police misconduct cases. I have a friend who is a retired victims-rights lawyer, and he advised me.
Gerald Everett Jones
I'm finishing my crime novel Choke Hold, a wrongful-death story, for release by LaPuerta Books and Media this fall.
Gerald Everett Jones
My advice for aspiring writers is not to get hung up on book sales. If you're writing nonfiction, you probably want to be known as an expert, an authority, or a practitioner. Your goal is to build your reputation and your practice. If you are writing fiction, your goal is to build your fan base. Neither of those goals is directly related to how much income you derive from book sales.
Gerald Everett Jones
The best thing about being a writer is those times you feel the work flowing from your subconscious onto the page.
Gerald Everett Jones
I'd go to steampunk London as a reporter.
Gerald Everett Jones
That would be Nick and Nora Charles from The Thin Man. Of course this choice has a lot to do with their screen portrayals by William Powell and Myrna Loy. I remember that line when he's holding one of those distinctively shaped bottles of Pinch (Scotch): "How about a drop of something to cut the phlegm, Mommy?" But I suspect there's a lot of Hammett's relationship with Lillian Hellman in there. They must have teased each other mercilessly.
Gerald Everett Jones
I'm rarely blocked. Having a disciplined writing schedule helps. You just keep going. But I do find myself confused or undecided at times about choices, particularly plot alternatives. I don't hold with the advice of simply taking one to see where it leads and being willing to scrap that whole scheme if it leads to the wrong place. No, I ask my subconscious the question, then I get up and do something else. And sleeping on it often works. So does climbing into the shower. Ask the question, and sooner or later, but probably not right away, the answer will present itself.
Gerald Everett Jones
My writing is rarely motivated by inspiration. What pushes me is a desire to express myself, and if I'm not writing, I'm feeling frustrated. Also, after being a professional writer for longer than most of my fans have been alive, I confess to the unromantic secret that the best and most consistent motivation is discipline. As one of my wisest editor-mentors once said, "You start by putting your butt in a chair."
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