David L. Thompson's Blog

For the next few blog posts, I thought I would share a bit about my experiences with the writing process and the challenges of getting published. Bottom line - it's been an eye opening experience.

First of all, the publishing industry is under immense pressure just to survive, with consolidations of the large publishing houses resulting in fewer publishers available in the marketplace (see 1st link below). Those remaining big publishing houses (refered to as the Big Five) have to choose from a growing number of possible books from a growing number of aspiring authors. How do they choose what to accept for publication? Well, here is what I have learned while on my journey to becoming a published author:

1) Most publishing houses have chosen to specialize (to some extent) in particular areas. For example, Harlequin Romance (which is now a division of HaperCollins which is itself owned by NewsCorp...) will not publish a non-fiction book about the military tactics of the Roman Empire. Harlequin has developed brand loyalty by exclusively publishing romance novels that closely follow a particular formula (see 2nd link below). And while this is an obvious example of specialization, it represents what is happening more broadly across the industry as costs soar and margins shrink. Therefore, the publishing industry is contracting by both consolidation, and by limiting the kind of books that each surviving company is willing to publish. The more the publishing industry shrinks, the more difficult it is for a new author to find a publisher willing to accept their book.

2) Since most publishing houses don't have the staff needed to sift through the incredible volume of new material that is constantly being produced, many will no longer accept manuscripts directly from authors. Instead, they have downloaded the responsibility of triaging manuscripts to the literary agents (a literary agent is someone who represents an author and helps them become published). Most publishing houses will only work with a small cadre of literary agents - those who know and understand their core business (for example: will only send Harlequin those books that are romance novels meeting Harlequin's publication guidelines). The literary agents therefore act as gate keepers for the publishers which speeds up the review and decision making process at the publishing house itself.

All of this means that an author who wants to publish a book using a traditional publisher should first find a literary agent that works with the publishing houses that accept the kind of books that the author is writing. Right?

Right.

It's simple.

A piece of cake.

Not a problem.

Well... hold on a minute. It might not be so easy...

In my next blog entry, I'll share what I've learned about finding a literary agent. To repeat myself from earlier, that process was eye opening...

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/89038-over-the-past-25-years-the-big-publishers-got-bigger-and-fewer.html

https://harlequin.submittable.com/submit/29562/harlequin-romance-mb-true-love-50-000-words#:~:text=Key%20Elements,real%20and%20down%20to%20earth.

#canadianauthor #author #thriller #politicalthriller #davidlthompsonauthor

As a way of promoting my work, I have created an Instagram account. I would like to invite you to follow me on that page or follow me on my professional Facebook page. Instagram will be a more visual description of my journey, while Facebook will include most of my Instagram postings along with other text-based information about upcoming book-signing events, new projects etc.

I look forward to meeting and greeting you on either of these two platforms!

The Links

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidlthompsonauthor/

Facebook Professional Page: https://www.facebook.com/DavidLThompsonAuthor/

#Canadianauthor #Author #Thriller

Here is the third and final post of text bites from Entangled Hopes of Glory. Part of the scene (backstory) has been edited out for brevity...

"Bradley Parsons, a Brad Pitt look-alike… more-or-less… stood by the stove in his pajamas and housecoat, flipping pancakes while listening to the morning news on the radio. The coffee pot had already refilled his mug with the dark-roasted blend he ground every morning, and at least for the moment, life seemed good.

He slathered the last golden-brown flapjack with a little butter and slipped it into the warm oven, right on top of all the rest. He just bought himself a little time. Turning off the burner, he wiped his hands on his housecoat and headed for the bathroom. The shower door was covered in mist, but his wife’s shapely curves could easily be made out as Liz began lathering her hair.

Bradley reached for the handle on the shower door, pulled it open, and stood there, smiling.

“What?” Liz asked as she stopped working the conditioner into her hair.

“Can’t a guy just enjoy the scenery?” Bradley replied.

Liz squinted for a moment and then shook her head. What was it with men? Back to working in the suds, she pointed out that the temperature in the shower was dropping. Either he had to quickly strip and join her, or he should close the door.

“Breakfast is ready,” Bradley said while reaching in and running his fingers down her back - the sleeve of his housecoat directly in the line of spray. “But it’s staying warm in the oven… I could always—”

Liz pushed his arm out of the shower and closed the door.

“Times up,” she said from behind the glass. “You had your chance. You snooze, you lose. Come back tomorrow.”

Bradley’s grin grew broader. The morning was just beginning, and he had made sure that their calendars were both cleared - at least for the next three hours…"

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As promised, here is the next installment of text from ENTANGLED HOPES OF GLORY. Something big is about to happen...

"Within hours, men all across America began gathering by the dozens in smokey backrooms of nondescript all-you-can-eat restaurants. Others gathered in the dark, moldy apartments of countless dilapidated flop houses. Still others met in the offices of various Middle Eastern import company warehouses. Some of the men were delivery truck drivers, others were factory workers, and some were even in the US Military reserves. All were secretly devout followers of Hezbollah and many already had blood on their hands."

In separate locations, dozens of women wearing hijabs also began to gather. Their numbers included homemakers, retail workers, and federal employees. Many had been widowed for the cause and all carried knives under their skirts."

#fiction #thriller #author #writer #canadianwriter #canadianauthor #writing

As a way of introducing ENTANGLED HOPES OF GLORY, the next few entries in my blog will include snippets from the book. The below excerpt takes place early in the story and is set in the city of Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. A pregnant woman is just trying to get on with her day, but this day isn't like most other days...

"Ignoring the constant bickering between her five daughters and two sons, a woman dressed in a grey hijab and bland, ankle-length black robe, stood in front of the cramped kitchen's sink, washing the mound of chipped bowls and cracked plates used at breakfast - her eighth child weighing heavy inside her belly.

The woman's name didn't matter. She was just one more faceless/nameless woman caught up in the violence of what had always been, and what would always be. If Allah was kind, her husband would come home to her that evening. If Allah had a different destiny for him, then she and her children would starve. Tehran and its powerful Ayatollahs would not give her, or her family, a second thought.

A stabbing cramp forced her to double over across the tiny countertop. It had been five minutes since the last one - they were coming quicker now. She took a deep breath and leaned back, hands on her hips, supporting her lower back. She should probably call her sister soon - it looked like she was going to need her."

Iran - through Hezbollah - had recruited the woman's husband for a suicide mission in the name of Islam; a mission he willingly agreed to accept. This begs the question of why he made the choice he made, especially when his family depended on him for their very survival. While bad personal choices can be made for many reasons including the pursuit of money, fame, and/or power, in this case, it was due to a fanatical form of faith that was exploited by others.

The issue of personal choice is a key theme that runs throughout ENTANGLED HOPES OF GLORY where nothing less than the survival of nations often lay in the balance.

#canadianwriter #writer #author #fiction #writerscommunity

I'm really excited to share the news that the FINAL book in the Caliphate trilogy will soon be available for purchase on Amazon! Over the next few weeks, I will share some excerpts from the book. Let's start with the text from the book's back cover. Next to coming up with a catchy, unique, and appropriate title, I find writing the cover text for a book the most difficult part of a project. How do you capture 400+ pages of a complex story in just a few paragraphs? It's not been easy for Entangled Hopes of Glory, but this is what I have come up with. I hope you find it intriguing!

Entangled Hopes of Glory is the high-paced climax to the Caliphate trilogy. In this third and final book of the series, Iran's desire for political, religious, and economic dominance in the Middle East brings them into direct military conflict with the Caliphate.

China has similar dreams of glory but on a more global scale. The only thing that stands in the way of them finally becoming the world's most powerful nation is the continued economic and military might of the United States of America. And when an IT specialist at the US Embassy in Tunis goes missing, a chain of events unfolds that leads China, the US, Iran, and the Caliphate to the brink of disaster while the world holds its breath.

The key characters from the first two books in the series return while several new characters make their debut appearance, including President Zhang of China, Ayatollah Parizad of Iran, and his intriguing wife, Roshanara.

Abu Ishaaq al-Madani was introduced in Smoke Over Baghdad, the second book in the Caliphate Trilogy. His persona is dark, violent and sadistic. While al-Madani is a muslim cleric, his behavior is certainly not that of a religious man.

The person I had in mind when I developed the character of al-Madani was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a man who dressed completely in black, sported a long black beard and sold himself to his followers as a muslim cleric. In last week's post, I mentioned that al-Madani is dressed in black and has a long black beard. This is how I linked him to al-Baghdadi.

Who was al-Baghdadi? I use the past tense because al-Baghdadi was hunted down by American forces and just before being captured, killed himself by detonating a suicide vest (October 2019). He was hunted by the US because of his position - he was the Caliph of the Islamic State (ISIS). He was notorious for his brutality as described in the following example:

"Baghdadi would become directly involved in atrocities and human rights violations. These include the genocide of Yazidis in Iraq, extensive sexual slavery, organized rape, floggings, and systematic executions. He directed terrorist activities and massacres. He embraced brutality as part of the organization's propaganda efforts, producing videos displaying sexual slavery and executions via hacking, stoning, and burning. Baghdadi himself was a serial rapist who kept several personal sex slaves."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Bak...

Whoever reads Smoke Over Baghdad after reading this blog will hopefully understand why Abu Ishaaq al-Madani behaves the way he does. For example:

"When the elevator arrived and the doors opened, Alexandra saw the handiwork of Abu Ishaaq al-Madani. Apparently, he wasn't concerned over keeping the mess to a minimum.

Amon's naked and headless body was splayed out across the floor of the elevator. His belly had been slit open and his slashed intestines had spilled their contents. The stench was horrific."

Alexandra, the person mentioned in the above passage, is one of my very favorite characters in the trilogy - a woman who was more than a match for al-Madani. Perhaps I will write more about her in a future blog post.

The last two posts in this series discussed the 'inspiration' behind the character Mustafa Suleyman. In this blog post, I would like to talk about another character. This character first appeared in the second book of the Caliphate trilogy - Smoke Over Baghdad and his name is Abu Ishaaq al-Madani. To reflect how complex this character is, he is often referred to in the books by his pseudonym, the Black Imam.

Spoiler Alert: I'm going to give away just a bit of the text in the third (yet to be published) book where I describe the appearance of this villain.

"Abu Ishaaq al-Madani, wearing black leather shoes, black robes and a black turban covering all but a single tuft of black hair in the middle of his forehead, entered the room. His face, pock-marked as a child, was partially obscured behind a long black beard. It was his eyes, however, that totally dominated his appearance. They were dark, piercing eyes, eyes that seemed almost devoid of emotion. Hollow eyes. Vacant eyes - like the eyes of a heroin junkie after mainlining a near-lethal dose of Hell Dust."

As with Mustafa Suleyman, I fashioned this character after someone who dominated international headlines for quite some time. And while the actual individual may not have shared the same personality characteristics as al-Madani, this man certainly struck me as a true villain. There are, of course, others who may have considered him to be a hero, but those people have paid a significant price for that belief.

Can you guess who I was thinking about when I created the character Abu Ishaaq al-Madani? I'll pass along the answer in the next blog post.

Last week I spoke about Mustafa Suleyman - one of the main characters in the Caliphate Trilogy. I mentioned that this character's arc was similar to that of two real historical figures and challenged the readers of that blog entry to identify who those two men were.

Given that the Caliphate Trilogy deals in large part with events in the Middle East, it may not be surprising that the men I was thinking of played significant roles in shaping that part of the world. And just as Mustafa Suleyman began his journey as a terrorist (to some, a freedom fighter), so did both of these real figures. Mustafa eventually transitioned into the role of statesman and so did both of these real men. So who were they?

The two men I had in mind when writing the character arc for Mustafa Suleyman were Yasser Arafat and Menachem Begin.

Yasser Arafat was a founding member of Fatah (1959) which gained international notoriety as a paramilitary organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In 1969 he was also elected as the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO was implicated in numerous high-profile terrorist attacks including the kidnapping and murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Olympic games (1972). In 1988 however, Arafat officially recognized Israel's right to exist and tried to negotiate a two-state solution to the Palestinian / Jewish conflict. In other words, he had moved from being a violent extremist to embracing diplomacy. He even received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East.

Menachem Begin was born (1913) in modern day Belarus. He eventually relocated to Warsaw, Poland where he was living at the outbreak of World War II (1939). He managed to escape the Nazi's as they quickly crushed Polish resistance, but Begin was later captured and imprisoned by the Soviets (who were allied with the Nazis at the start of WWII) in Vilnius, Lithuania. After the Nazis turned on the Soviets (1941), Begin was released from prison and joined the Free Polish Army, ending up in Palestine to fight the Germans located in the Middle East. Eventually he left the army and joined the Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary organization which attacked the British during their mandate in Palestine. One such attack was directed against the Kind David Hotel (1946) where 91 people were killed. However, Menachem Begin eventually changed tactics and in 1977 he became Israel's 6th Prime Minister. In 1978 he went to Camp David where he and the Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat, met with US President Jimmy Carter and negotiated the Camp David Accords which resulted in a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Again - a man who had embraced violence as a means to an end eventually embraced diplomacy as the best way to bring lasting change to the region.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/energy-government-and-defense-magazines/plo-and-yasser-arafat-terrorism-statesmanship-terrorism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Begin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

The character in the Caliphate Trilogy which captured the hearts and minds of most women readers has been the main villain, a terrorist named Mustafa Suleyman. Mustafa wasn't your typical terrorist, however. While he certainly had blood on his hands, he often prayed for his victims and regretted a world that made his actions necessary. Why? Because Mustafa believed that the ends always justified the means, and when the ends were noble, then so must have been the means. And he felt that breaking the endless cycle of violence and hatred in the Middle East was certainly an end worthy of using almost any means.

So - any idea who I had in mind when I created Mustafa Suleyman? It isn't so much about Mustafa's personality as it is about his 'career path'. To determine who he has been fashioned after, let's look at the character arc for Mustafa. He was a terrorist in Dark Harvest, but became a statesman in Smoke Over Baghdad and remains a statesman in the Caliphate's third book.

I probably need to clarify one point. Mustafa Suleyman's character wasn't fashioned from a single historical figure - he was actually a blend of two different people who were at one time sworn enemies. Both men were considered heroes by some and terrorists by others, and both eventually became statesmen, dealing with each other over the negotiation table rather than at the end of a gun.

Can you name the two historical figures that contributed to Mustafa Suleyman's character arc? I'll post the answer next week when I write a little bit about Abu Ishaaq al-Madani and who he was fashioned after. So stay tuned...