Writing the First Line

Writing the First Line

By Jeff Bennington

As an author I’ve learned that the most important part of any book is the first few words, the first line, and of course the first paragraph and chapter. If I can’t bait a reader with my prose and hook their attention from the beginning, I might as well pack up my writing gear and head for the hills. In the world of literature where thousands of books are published every day, readers have an abundance of choices and mine is one of many, like a solitary vapor swirling over Niagara Falls. 

If I can’t grab a reader from the very beginning and get them excited about my story, I might as well fahgetaboutit.

Once I’m into the story, and parts of speech start flying like trimmed shrubbery, I can install new chapters for hours at a time. But when it’s all said and over with, it’s the beginning that I come back to. It’s the first impression. It’s my only opportunity to get a reader interested. It has to be perfect. It has to be compelling and it has to attack with bear-trap-like strength.

In a May 14, 2004 issue of psychology today, Carlin Flora states that, “Our brains form first impressions by creating a composite of all the signals given off by a new experience.” When someone reads my work, they are entering into a new experience, a new world with my name stamped on it. I want their first impression  to be, “Wow! This is good!”

When Bill and Hillary Clinton discuss how they met at Yale's law library, they tell how after staring and flirting with each other Hillary finally walked up to Bill and said, "Look, if you're going to keep staring at me, and I'm going to keep staring back, we might as well be introduced. I'm Hillary Rodham. What's your name?" It’s said that Bill couldn't remember his name, but that’s another story.

From an artist’s perspective, I want you to remember my name: Jeff Bennington, the guy who writes incredibly engaging thrillers. From a business perspective, I need you to remember my name. And that’s why I work so hard on the first line.

To demonstrate what I’m talking about, I’ll show you a few of my first lines from my novels, lines that I hope will nudge you to the next paragraph and to the next chapter and finally to the very end.

•••

Reunion (Now available):

David Ray stood in front of his mirror, dressed to kill. I look good, he thought, like the real deal, like a real killer. He narrowed his eyes, grit his teeth and unfolded his checklist. Sharp blades of black hair dangled in front of his face, covering the brownish rings that encircled his eyes. He peered at his scribbled writing and read the list as he felt his insides tense with hatred.

Act of Vengeance (Coming late 2011):

Detective Rick Burns raced into the upscale neighborhood, slammed on the brakes, and stepped out of his rusty red Pontiac. He peered into the night as the crowd gathered, took a deep breath, and prayed to God that this murder would not be like the others. The heaviness, the blood, the darkness had finally pricked its sharp edge into his soul. Red and blue lights enveloped his body and danced across the frightened neighbors who had gathered together, shaking and shivering. The car door let out a lingering squeak as he slammed it shut and he hurried toward the crime scene.

Federal Underground (Coming Late 2012):

My legs strained up the dark and musty mineshaft as I ran from the depths of the federal underground. My left hand scraped the rocky edges, caking my fingernails with dirt and decades of filth. Every step I took injected a cold burn into my lungs; every breath thrust me beyond the point of exhaustion and terror. My red jump suit smelled of the world below and clung to my skin, wet and ragged. I stopped running for a moment, sucked in a life-giving inhalation and rested my body on the earthen wall. I tried to forget, but the images were too strong, too frightening to escape.

•••

In my opinion, and in the opinion of the authors and editors who have taught me how to weave a harrowing tale, an author must place the reader directly in the heart of the action. Some authors spread out the details of setting and back story like a picnic blanket, the foundation on which the main course will be enjoyed.  In the case of thrillers and suspense, however, I prefer action.

My goal as a thriller writer is to throw the reader into a story that screams, “What is going on here? Why is David Ray dressed to kill? What is Detective Burns about to get himself into? What is the federal underground and what did he see there? Questions need answered, and I find that if the first few lines have a compelling character with adequate tension, a reader will want to discover the answers. Besides, if I can’t get you interested in reading beyond page one, why even bother with the rest of the book? The first lines are that important to me.

It isn’t until after you decide to read on, that I’ve earned your trust as an author.

After all, If I’m going ask you to give me money and dedicate hours of your precious time into my words, they better be good, especially the first line. BOOM!

Thanks for reading.  – Jeff Bennington

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Secrets of a Master Novelist

By Jeff Bennington

Like many people, I’ve had multiple occupations in my life, scrounging through positions like a dumpster-diver, digging for the secret to my soul. I’d go to work and think about writing a book some day. Then a few years later, I’d think about it again. Sometimes I felt inspired to write a few songs or poems, but determined that I had experienced a chemical imbalance, melancholy blues, or lack of vitamin D. That was probably an accurate diagnosis, but the point is, I never noticed the red flags flying, waving, snapping their thunderous threads, clapping for my attention.

The red flags had a message. And if you could’ve analyzed my life, and examined the evidence, you might’ve noticed that I was on the wrong track.

I didn’t see it. 

I was too busy with my fledgling attempts at success to hear the call. I had strapped on a pair of fulfillment-blinders and kept my gaze firmly fixed on that which left me passionless. I was spiritually self-medicating on a false perception of what life was meant to be and who I was. I didn’t know that I was a writer. I didn’t know, although I suspected, that God had gifted me in that area. Yet I had never experienced the level of satisfaction one gets when transposing his thoughts and dreams into a full-length novel.

Oh sure, I enjoyed writing college papers and telling my kids absorbing bedtime stories, but that was different. That was business. That was just being a dad.

That was my ignorance.

I was clueless about what it meant to be a writer until sometime in 2007’ish. I’ll save you the gory details about what I’ve penned since then, because at this point, only three of those works are even worthy of discussion. However, I will tell you this; my literary reviews cover the full gamut from, “This is the best thing since bottled spring water!” to “Poor writing skills...One Star...YOU SUCK!”

Most writers can relate to the pain and joys of writing, a craft that can never be perfected, at least not in the eyes of the author. The way I see it, the craft of writing requires diligent study, loads of reading, thick skin, saint-like humility, and a consistent routine. But there is one secret that the master-craftsmen never reveal. It’s a secret that’s been kept in literary vaults since Moses locked the Ten Commandments into the Arc of the Covenant.

What’s the secret?

The secret of a master novelist is that writing, as in good writing, has nothing to do with money, it has nothing to do with an author platform, snagging an agent or getting that elusive contract. The secret every would-be, aspiring, want-to-make-it-someday author needs to know is simple; if you don’t love it, if you don’t drink literature by the gallons, if you can’t enjoy sitting still, dreaming, rewriting, plotting, taking criticism, breathing life into a new character and feeling absolutely passionate about your words and what they mean to no one else but yourself, you will never know how excellent you can be.

In my opinion, writing has less to do with the skill of carving stories out of words, and more to do with the love of the sculpture, including the pieces of stone that crumble to the ground. 


What do you think?

-Jeff Bennington

Author of REUNION & Other Thrillers

***Be sure to read my previous posts where I interview writers who are living their dream, fully commited to the craft. BOOM!

The Writer's Law of Attachment

Writer's Law of Attachment

By Jeff Bennington

Author of Reunion and other thrillers

If you follow The Writing Bomb, you know that I’ve just recently completed a 45-day blog tour followed by a trip to Washington D.C and New York City. Both events were exciting but absolutely wore me out. The kids had a chance to see the nations Capital and much of NYC and I had a chance to rest my brain. 

I resumed writing this past week and man do I miss it! I wrote a little during the blog tour, but not enough. And now, after being away from my latest work for over a month, I’ve had the pleasure of reacquainting myself with my characters, those good friends that I’ve learned to love. In doing so, I’ve been thinking about what it means to become attached to a character, those figments of my imagination. I’ve been wondering if it’s okay to befriend them or if I should keep a healthy emotional distance. If you have any thoughts on this subject I’d love to hear it.

In the meantime, what I’ve found is that the more I dive into the lives of my characters, the more real they become. And the more real they become, the more I want to know and understand who they are and where they’ve been. This isn’t a concept that I dwell upon. I’m crashing into this idea because I’m working on a third draft and I’m filling in details and backstory and critical thoughts that are rounding my make-believe friends.

Ernest Hemingway

You see, it’s my character's strengths that get them through the story. But it’s their weaknesses that draw me to them. Ernest Hemingway once said, "When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters." Adding personality glitches is what makes them real. Flaws are what make us people rather than characters. I should know, I have plenty of glitches, plenty of defects and I’m real. I find it quite ironic that as much as I hate my faults, I love the faults of my characters, the people in my stories. Sick, I know, but I think that’s the magic of literature. There’s something very intimate about learning about the faults of others. That’s the difference between a stranger and a friend. A stranger doesn’t know jack about me, but a true friend knows everything. As an author, I feel like it’s my responsibility to share the truth about my characters so my readers can be their friends. 

The question is, is it wrong to grow attached to these people in the process? And that’s where I’m stuck. I write stories about people that don’t exist. They’re not real. They’re fictional but they’re meant to come alive. And if they’re meant to seem real to a reader than I think it’s okay for me to get emotionally attached. It’s what gets me into the story. In my opinion, attachment is what makes the author capable of transmitting an idea into something palpable. Attachment is what allows me to enter the mind of a protagonist and think and live on his or her behalf. I call it the Law of Attachment: A reader will relate to the people in a story to the degree that the author has grown attached to those people.

If you’re a writer, you understand that experience. It’s almost spiritual in nature and I think this experience is what keeps me writing. This strange relationship between author and character is the high I often refer to, the shot in the arm that causes writers to become literary junkies. Makes me wonder if author adrenalin can be measured and used as a tool to discover ones predisposition to writing. Hey! You never know. Science has proven some pretty incredible things.

Anyway, if you’re a reader, none of this really matters except the fact that the process might interest you. In the end, all that matters is that the book draws you in and that you can engage with the characters as they make their way through the journey. But know this, the folks inside those pages are friends of mine; they’re friends of King and their friends of Koontz and Konrath and Nicholson. And one day, if all goes as planned, they'll be your friend too. BOOM!

What do you think? Leave comments and please, share this with your Facebook & Twitter pals.

Analysis of a Guest Blogging Specimen

Wow!
       What a ride! 
                    What a thrill! 
                                     What a Blog Tour!

Welcome to The Writing Bomb where our special guest, Dr. Diik Von Carelittle, will discuss the findings from his research regarding indie author guest blogging and the affects that blog tours can have on the human psyche and announce the winners of the Reunion Kindle Giveaway!

Jeff: Welcome, Doctor Diik. All of us at The Writing Bomb are very pleased to have you as our guest. Tell us what you've discovered in your studies.

Dr. Diik: Thank you. I'd be glad to. I'll begin by drawing your attention to exhibit A - Before and After photographs of our subject.

Before

Do you see the pictures to the right?  This is what happens when you go on a 45-day blog tour to promote your new book.  Your head spins until green fluid comes out of your ears, your eyes ooze like melting cheese and you start loosing your hair as fast as Donald Trump loses credibility in the presidential race. Notice the wrinkled forehead. Do you see the confusion in the subjects demeanor? Do you see the bags under his eyes and the facial deformations? These are all telltale signs that a writer has completed a 45-day blog tour.

This was a fine specimen for my research because he was in perfect condition beforehand. And now? Blaaaach!  He gives me the heebie geebies! Apparently, a blog tour that lasts more than 30 days can transform a normal author into someone quite problematic. This specimen is now edgy, deformed, indignant, paranoid and is showing signs of dementia.

After

Of course, he will heal in time. He's in our 10-step blogger recovery program! With a little time and TLC, he'll be back to his writerly self; you'll see.

Now about our specimen's blog tour...his 45-day, writing more than ever, meeting countless reviewers, exposing himself (ummm...in a good way), ginormous undertaking blog tour. Now that's a run on sentence if I've ever seen one. But who cares? If you can blog for 45-days straight you can have the keys to the city if you ask me.

Will he recover from the trauma? Well, that's up to him. You get what you put into the ten-step program, so we'll see how dedicated he is to healing.

Anyway, while studying this author who has asked to remain anonymous, we have found that there were several positive outcomes from his endeavor. There were also a few negatives. But overall, the subject managed to stay alive and as far as our research team is concerned that's all that really matters. Quality of life post blog tour is not our objective. We simply want to see results and log those findings into our data base. Subject need not be conscious for proper analysis of this information.

Here are a few of the benefits that we were able to extrapolate from our research:

• Exposure: Blog Tours are a great way for new/indie authors to get exposure and build a platform from the ground up. Several months ago, our subject didn't even have a twitter account. He had zero platform. He now has dozens of book bloggers waiting for his next book (Act of Vengeance, coming in late 2011). Furthermore, the authors book was exposed to tens of thousands of blog followers.

• Connections: The process of contacting book bloggers is a great way to make connections in the world of books. Book bloggers will refer you and your book to bloggers that they follow. To find similar bloggers in your genre simply investigate the blogs they follow.

• Personalize: A blog tour is a great way for you to share the message and story behind your book. Readers enjoy learning about the authors that they read through guest posts and interviews. It enhances the reading experience.

• Grow: Guest blogging is also a great way to show blog readers that you are creative and friendly. As a result, you might find that your blog will grow as your new audience looks into your blog or website. Our patient shown above gained about 50 blog followers over the course of 45 days.

• New Fans: Blog tours sell books and continue the selling momentum after you've exhausted your personal fan base (family and friends). This can propel you into a whole new readership. Many of our subject's most dedicated blog-tour followers were new fans that found him on the tour. When a fan likes your book, he or she will talk about it and recommend it to their reader friends.

• Reviews: Book bloggers write book reviews and good reviews sell books. A good review wins the trust of someone considering a new author. We can not emphasize the importance of getting reviews...NOT after your book goes on sale...but before!!!! This way when you launch your book, your family, friends and new fans can be confident that your book is a good one. Our specimen began his blog tour 15 days before the book launch. He began querying reviewers over 30 days before the tour began. The reviewers at the beginning of the tour were the first to post reviews, the others followed. Note: He had zero contacts when he began approaching book bloggers. 

• SEO: Many book bloggers have a lot of followers. These followers will take note of your book, add it to their "to-read list" and then refer back to the blog when they want to find you. Which brings up the concept of SEO (search engine optimization). Leaving your book links and buy links and blog address at all of these sights will take your searchability to new levels. After reading this article, do a Google search of Jeff Bennington for example (although he had nothing to do with this experiment) and keep in mind that he, like many of the writing bomb followers, is new to publishing and has only begun to build a platform for his work in the last year or so. You will notice that the Google search brings up countless guest posts, reviews and other mentions about his work. That's how SEO works!

Over all, the Carelittle Research Group found the 45-day Blog Tour to be a very effective method for an author to launch a new book. However, there is also a dark side. Like most things, there's good and bad.

Here are a few of the negatives:

• Time: The number one negative is the amount of TIME it takes for an author to cold call, schedule, and then follow through with guest posts, writing, interviews and responding to comments. Our patient spent between 40-50 hours in the initial contact and scheduling stage. He then used at least 90 hours writing posts, contacting the bloggers and responding to comments over the duration of the tour. That's right, you can't just write a guest post and walk away. You should respond to any comments on the day that the article is posted at the very least. You can save time by paying someone to schedule a tour for you, but those can cost you around $300 and if you sell your ebook for .99¢, you'll have to sell 857 books to pay for it.

• Material: The second negative is that if you write guest posts, you'll have to come up with A LOT of original material. I know, you're a writer, that's no problem. Well it is if you're blogging about your book or the book's subject. Wasn't it hard enough to write the back blurb? Try communicating the essence of your book 45 different ways! You could use a blanket article and post it at every blog stop, but who wants to follow the same post day after day? No one, that's who. 

• Energy: Our subject found that the amount of energy he had to dedicate to the blog tour drained him of the will to continue working on his next project. His usual  4-5 hours dedicated to writing dwindled to less than one hour on average. When life happens, and it will, the time you set aside to write the next guest post or interview can easily be stolen by more demanding issues such as family, work or car accidents! Besides, have you seen our victim...I mean specimen? He looks like crap. Good thing he's going on a vacation with his family very soon. He deserves it. 

Jeff: Thank you, Doctor Carelittle. We so appreciate your insight into the benefits and repercussions of blog touring. We thank you for your time and dedication to the cause and to the betterment of writers everywhere.

Now I'd like to open the floor to our audience for questions? Also...I'll post a short video later today and announce the winners of The Reunion Kindle Giveaway!!!!! I'll post it later in the afternoon because I need to catch a few zzzz's (I work nights). I hope you understand. Look for it after 5:00 p.m. EST.

I'll close this post with a BIG thank you to all of the book bloggers and book reviewers who took a chance on Reunion. You should know that I didn't know what I was getting into before I contacted you. And I didn't have any idea what you would think of my book. You took it on and enjoyed it and that is extremely gratifying to me. Thank you for the nice reviews and for all of your support throughout the Reunion book launch. I can't wait to find out which one of you will win a Kindle.

To those of you who faithfully followed the blog tour, I send you gobs of gratitude. Your comments and encouragement and kind words along the way kept me going, giving me energy to continue. One of you will win a Kindle today! BOOM!

Jeff Bennington

Author of Reunion and other thrillers

If you haven't read Reunion yet, you can get it in print, kindle, nook, iPad, and at smashwords.

And now...let's pick the winners of the Kindle giveaway!

Links to the participating Book Blogs can be found here!

Lessons Learned on the Publishing Trail.

Welcome to The Writing Bomb, where authors of every kind are appreciated and cared for like a calf at the teat!

As part of The REUNION Blog Tour, I’d like to share just a few things that I’ve learned about writing, my expectations and the lies that we writers often tell ourselves. If you’re a newer author, an indie author, or considering taking the plunge for the first time into the winding river of the digital publishing age, you’ll want to hang around and soak up some of my thoughts.

PART 1:

To begin with, you need to know that I published my first book, Killing the Giants, with Outskirts Press in 2009. Other than selling a couple hundred print copies, mostly to family and friends, I had a pretty miserable book launch experience. I had less control than I thought I would, I sold fewer books than I anticipated and I knew nothing about ebooks and platforms and blog tours. Yes, I was a literary virgin and I bled miserably.

Two Years Later...

PART 2:

Over the last two years, I’ve learned so much about publishing, marketing, but more importantly, I’ve learned that I’ve had expectations of an industry that does not bend to my wishes. Without boring you with the usual “get edited and a good book cover” redundancy, I’d like to share 5-Fascinating Facts I’ve learned that might help you with your book launch, and prepare you for an industry that’s filled with vipers and wild stallions.

      
      A Crash is Coming! If you’re a new or newer author without a platform, be prepared for a sales crash soon after your release. No matter how hard you market your book before you let that baby fly, you will only be able to reach so many people. Think about your family, friends, twitterverse, and facebook cult members. You may have hundreds or even thousands of peeps cheering for you, but they will only take your sales so far. A couple hundred sales on day one are great, but they will not keep your sales rolling. The rest is up to you. The days or weeks after a book launch to a newer author can feel like you’re the Grand Marshall of a parade who walked ten miles into an uninhabited desert, only to discover that you’re waving and smiling at no one. 

I don’t mean to discourage or scare you away from publishing your work. I do, however, want to prepare you for the rocky road ahead. Just be tough, and wait. There are a few affordable and effective marketing tools that can propel your book into the next level and breaking through the plateau, but that’s another post all together. 

         Dig Deep. If you’re self-published (pay to publish), indie author or published with a small press, remember that you will be responsible for almost all of your marketing. There will be no paid book tours, no TV ads, and little to no Internet marketing other than your publishers web page, mostly viewed by other authors looking to publish their book.  Dig your heels in deep, and plan to work hard, filling every extra minute of your time doing something to promote your novel while simultaneously writing your next book.

      Grow Gator Skin. No matter what your expectations are, be prepared for a let down. Grrrr. I hate to say that, especially because I’m usually very positive, but I have to be honest about this. I can’t be sure, but I’d bet that most authors have dreams and fantasies about the sales of their book and how much everyone is going to love it. But when the reviews and sales trickle in slower and less enthusiastic than expected, we can hit a wall…a very hard and dark wall, bringing some to the point of depression.

My point is this: Adjust your expectations and remember that you’re one of thousands of authors who picked that special day to publish and you will be competing against all of them, like a single droplet of water floating amidst Niagara Falls. Don’t take it personal. That’s just the way it is. Most writers begin to grow a hardened layer of skin at this point, an undesirable yet necessary part of authorship.

 More is Merrier. Prepare for the long haul. As you may have read, J.A. Konrath, Scott Nicholson and other successful indie authors agree that the key to indie success is having a damn good book, and having lots of them. As a newer author you generally have two choices: market yourself into a bestseller (i.e. going broke on an ad campaign), or prepare for the long haul. Many of these bestselling indie authors did not enjoy their successes until they had several books out. This is the “Getting more shelf space” concept, which means the more books you have on the digital bookshelf, the more visible you will become. Again, that will take time. Plan on this when you begin publishing that first or second novel. It will save you a lot of pain and Prozac.

Build a Scaffold. Remember that your first book is an opportunity to build your platform, a scaffold to reach your dreams, not necessarily a shortcut to fortune and fame. Just because Joanna Penn wrote a top rated fiction on her first try, doesn’t mean you will, even if your book is head and shoulders better than Pentecost.

This won’t be the last time you hear me say this, but I think writing is one of the most demanding professions around.  Writing and publishing is tough and it will test your character. As I stated in an article I wrote for The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog, Many great books have risen to the top and then sank to the bottom of the literary ocean, rusting and watching the crabs walk over their pages.

All I’m saying is… it’s best to prepare yourself for the ups and downs of the publishing experience before you come buzzing into an empty circus arena. And it is a circus. There are wonderful people who will help you along your journey, but also a few mean spirited folks as well. So wrap yourself with a breathable coat of thick skin and get that book published! But don’t stop there; write the next one and the next one and the next one until publishing becomes more about your full line of books than your breakout novel.

Of course there’s always room for a literary anomaly, and I hope you are that author. For the rest of us, as in the hundreds of thousands of the rest of us, we must ride our books like wild stallions, not knowing which way they may go, but carefully plotting the course for the long ride ahead. BOOM!

-Jeff Bennington

Author of REUNION

•••••

School Shootings: Remembering Columbine.

School Shootings: Remembering Columbine 

By Jeff Bennington author of Reunion

According to Wikipedia, the first recorded incident of school violence occurred on July 26, 1764, in what is known as the Enoch Brown Massacre where a group of Indians retaliated against the community in what is now Franklin County, Pennsylvania. According to David Dixon ten students were scalped along with their teacher in a single-room schoolhouse. All died except one student who escaped(1).

The first recorded school shooting occurred in 1871 when Chauncey Barnes shot and killed Anna Dwight, who rejected him as a suitor(2). He then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. Since that tragic day, there have been many more school shootings. I never heard of a school shooting until that horrific day on April 20th, 1999 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 15 (including themselves) and injured 24 others in Littleton, Colorado. To me, that was a day that marked a turn in my world-view that has since been reinforced due to the many acts of violence that have followed.

School shootings didn’t start in Columbine and they haven’t stopped since. 

Did you know there have been more acts of school violence after the Columbine massacre than those that occurred the entire century before? That’s right, there have been over 100 acts of violence, including shootings, stabbings and other methods in American schools after Columbine. 


The worst attack in school shooting history occurred on a college campus in Islamabad, Pakistan in 2007 leaving 154 students dead and another 44 injured(3). Closer to home, there was the Virginia Tech shooting among others and a school shooting as recent as February 7, 2011 in Youngstown, Ohio where one student died and 11 were injured(4). And then on March 25, 2011, in my home state, there was a school shooting in Martinsville, Indiana where a 15-year old shot another student(5). The most recently publicized shooting occurred in Rio de Janiero where 11 elementary students were gunned down(6). Of course there are many, many more that I didn’t mention.

The point is... school shootings are an ever-growing reality for us and for our children. They shoot fear into our hearts, but do they still shock us like they did in 1999? Our society has grown numb to many things, but I hope we never become so calloused that we shrug off this disease that has infected the entire human race.

The death toll is staggering. The number of students who will live the rest of their lives with scars or in wheelchairs is frightfully unfathomable. School violence is an enormous problem and yet the solution is elusive because we cannot predict the future, and according to the U.S Secret Service, it’s just too hard to profile a school shooter; their profiles are too varied(7).

As a novelist, I feel a responsibility to include social issues like school shootings into my work, because the world needs to do less escaping and more watching. When it comes to our kids I believe we need to change in a few areas. Here are a few:

• Focus less on ourselves and pay attention to what’s going on around us. It’s not enough to hear the news that a school shooting occurred at your school and then suddenly become passionate about the cause. When that day comes, it could be too late. Your son or daughter could be the next victim, and so could mine, an absolutely frightening and unimaginable thought.

• Be aware that there are hurting children in every school system that are on the brink of losing it and they have learned that violence has become the attention-getter-of-choice. We need to find them, listen to them, discover the source of their pain and get them help. 

• Reject school bullying policies that are too lenient and ineffective. It's amazing how fast the government responds to a new flu strand and yet we can't seem to respond to the bullying epidemic that is spreading like wildfire.

• Understand that human nature cannot be put in a box and that students who are bullied are absolutely unpredictable; their frontal lobes are not fully developed, leaving them susceptible to reckless and impulsive decision making.

• Put an end to bullying now. I’m not just talking about teenage bullying; I’m talking about adult and workplace bullying as well. Children act according to the examples we set. I often sign my books by writing “Bullies Suck!” or “Life is short, don’t be a bully” but you know, bullies aren’t the only ones who suck. If I watch someone getting bullied or mistreated and do nothing about it, I’m just as guilty!

Passivity is killing us.
I’m not an expert on school violence and bullying, but I do know that people enjoy their personal space—their comfort zones. I do too. The problem is, when we live passively, life begins to get turbulent around us and we get caught off guard when reality smacks us in the face. We have to proactively investigate our children’s friends and the particulars of our kid’s social life. We have to have open lines of communication. We have to listen, and we have to find ways of helping instead of cowering to fears, ignoring the red flags and silent expressions of distress.

Ultimately, every school shooter, every bully and every victim has a story to tell. There is almost always a trail of warning signs, patterns and cries for help that were somehow overlooked. Unfortunately, knowing the stories after the violence occurs doesn’t do anyone any good. The dying spirit of a young person will only leave so many breadcrumbs on their trail to destruction before they implode and decide to take matters into their own hands. 

According to the current trends, there will be more school shootings this month and more this year than ever. Before we let another massacre hit the news, will you do something to create change? I’m not exactly sure what that is, but we have to talk about it. We have to call out the bullies. We have to reach out to the lost ones. We have to do something! What we’ve been doing isn’t working.

I believe we need to ask if this is a spiritual matter or if this is simply a matter of policy? In my opinion, the human condition is too complicated to fix by tweaking the numbers. We can’t leave this to government and bureaucratic red-tapers. Hearts and souls are not logarithmic or statutory; they’re tender and hardened and everything in between. This is a matter of personal contact and interaction, a matter of the soul, literally in our own backyards.

As a writer, I’m trying to do my part. I’m creating the impetus for a discussion and I've written a book that I hope will bring an awareness to the many issues that surround bullying and school shootings. What about you? Will you continue the conversation? Will you Twitter this article or share it on Facebook or forward it in an email? Will you talk about this with your children? Or will April 20th, become just another day awaiting the next murderous headline? We’ve had twelve tears since the Columbine massacre to think and act and change? How are we different?  How are you different?

Remember Columbine, and pray it never happens again.

Written by Jeff Bennington, the author of REUNION, a supernatural thriller that addresses school shootings, bullying and the long-term effects of trauma. Available wherever books are sold online and in stores.

₁Dixon, David(2005). Never Come to Peace Again: Pontiac's Uprising and the Fate of the British Empire in North America. University of Oklahoma Press)

₂New York Times. Retrieved 2011-03-12.

₃BBC News. 2007-07-19. Retrieved 2008-05-13.

₄ABC.News. February 7, 2011.

₅Indystar.com. March 25, 2011.

₆Associated Press and Salon. April 7, 2011.

₇THE FINAL REPORT AND FINDINGS OF THE SAFE SCHOOL INITIATIVE: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PREVENTION OF SCHOOL ATTACKS  IN THE UNITED STATES, June 2004.

I'm Having a Book for Launch!

It's 6:59 pm on a Wednesday evening and asside from getting married and being present for the birth of my four children, I'm about to do the biggest thing in my life: an honest-to-goodness book launch, starting with a 45-day blog tour. After spending over three months preparing for April 1st, I am one day away from sharing my labor of love with tens of thousands of book blog followers and lovers of supernatural, horror, paranormal, romance thrillers. For a regular guy like me, that's frickin' scary!


The process started two years ago when the concept for REUNION flooded into my head. Like most book ideas, they seem to come out of nowhere. A year later, I had a rough draft, but was advised by an editor to put the book away for a while because I didn't write it according to the common rules of fiction.I did. 


Over the next year, I wrote my follow up thriller, Act of Vengeance (coming late 2011). When I turned my attention back to REUNION, I was also advised to focus on one protagonist, and that he mustn't be a wimp.


I couldn't do that.


REUNION is not about one brilliant superhero; it's about the suffering and recovery of a group of flawed and changed individuals - survivors. This book is not a cliched paranormal romance, there are no vampires, there are no werewolves,  no zombies and it overlaps genre boundries as if they didn't exist. But that's okay. I had to tell the story as it played out in my mind, rules or no rules.


That was work. Writing, in my opinion, however, is enjoyable work. Crafting and molding the rough story into a fully developed novel is the best part. But I didn't want this book to get stuck in literary mud, read only by surfing internet shoppers. It needed to be read and I needed to do something different with REUNION, because when I launched my first novel, I had no idea what I was doing. I still don't have it all down, but I stepped out there and worked the blogosphere and put a tour together so I could share this story with as many readers as my life could practically allow. It's not a 90-day, shoot-me-when-I'm-done Scott Nicholson Blog tour, but it is a fairly modest blog tour for a rookie. If you want to know the details about how I put it together, you can get the skinny at IndieHorror.org. I wrote a guest blog there today outlining each step. I will also write a post-tour article as a follow up sometime in late May, after I take a break with my family.


I still have several guest blogs to write, and I imagine I'll spend way too many hours obsessing over book sales the next thirty days or so, but I kind of think that that's pretty normal. I'll spend some time each day reading the blog comments and answering questions, trying not to forget what day it is, because I have to do all this while working my regular job. But WHO CARES! This is such a cool experience. I really don't mind losing sleep for the next month. I want to savor the excitement, taste the fear, and enjoy knowing that at least a few people enjoyed my work.


I think new authors believe that all you have to do is write a book, get feedback from family and friends and if everyone likes it, then it's ready to be published. In the words of Dwight Schrute from The Office...False! Getting your book uploaded into the Kindle DTP is easy. Making your book the very best it can be and creating a sturdy platform, a launching pad if you will, takes a lot of work. In my case, it took two years. But what are the results? I don't know. Time will tell. So far, REUNION has not been reviewed by any of my family members or friends, and it's getting great reviews. 


I'm nervous about reviews, but more than anything, and I mean this wholeheartedly, I want this book to impact the reader in a way that other books don't. My greatest ambition for REUNION is not book sales, but that the reader walks away from my book, shaking their head, wondering why they can't seem to forget the message, the story and the characters. Be sure to follow the tour and try to win a FREE Kindle or one of two signed copies from my Goodreads giveaway that starts on April 1st!



You can get REUNION now at most online retailers, but I'd love it if you'd wait until April 15th...TAX DAY. Why? Because I'd like to skyrocket REUNION up the Amazon ranking system to take advantage of Amazon's exposure algorithms. BOOM!

Bullying Needs to Stop.

When kids are tormented by a bully, their life can change fast. Many smart, happy, family centered kids  take a terrible turn because they are bullied to the point that they are afraid to talk about it. Sometimes they feel so alone and hopeless that they take their own life. It's sad and it's infuriating. Here are a few words about bullying from Dr. Phil. I hope you enjoy these clips and I hope you comment, sharing your experiences.

REUNION - my supernatural thriller is not just about school shootings. It's about a lot of issues including bullying. I am passionately opposed to bullying and have trained my 4 children that under no circumstance will I tolerate any level of that kind of behavior. They know that it is hurtful, and understand the damage it can cause to one's spirit. I hope you have talked with your kids or grandkids about bullying. If you want to watch the pain of this kind of behavior unravel in real time I'd suggest reading REUNION. And watch these videos. They are very informative.

Bullies come in all shapes and sizes from elementary students to parents to bosses to co-workers. The thing is, we all have our issues, but we need to work them out ourselves and stop taking our stress out on those around us. Then, we need to teach our children to respect and care about others.

I've only been in one fight in my entire life, with the exception of my brothers and friends, and that fight was with a bully. He made repeated threats to me and my brother. One day, in 1985, he stepped on my white jeans with dirty shoes and that was it. I had had enough. I let him know that I wasn't going to take his crap any more and I proceeded to get my butt kicked. Sure I had a black eye the next day, but he never bullied me again.

I don't tell you that because I was super brave or that I think fighting is the solution. I tell you that story, because I know how scary it is to have someone pushing me around and threatening me. I took that experience into writing Reunion and I hope it makes
a difference, somehow encouraging you to be aware and averse to Bullying at home at school and at work. BOOM!

What's your story? Do you have a bullying experience you'd like to share?

Live from Best Buy!

Hello writers and readers,
I'm here at Best Buy writing today's post because I can.

I've done a lot of things in my life and most of those things required me to be present whenever I was actually doing the task.  For example, when I was a kid, I couldn't deliver the newspaper while shopping at Kmart, or sweep the shop floor while eating at The Tasty Freeze. But writing...now that's a different story. I can write anywhere.

I can write while driving. I can write from my iPhone. I can write at home. I can write at Starbucks. I can write anywhere now and it is amazingly freeing! I'm no longer tied down to a PC or a typewriter - although  I haven't used one of those for a long long time. The point is, writing has got to be the best job in the whole world. You can work at your own pace, and set your own hours, and live anywhere you want. There might be a few other occupations that compare, such as day trading, or internet marketing, but those jobs are all about the money and I'm not into that. I love to create...and I'm most creative when and where I'm inspired.

So here I am, bent over the display table, writing a blog post, inspiring you to take advantage of the technology available to you, reminding you that you can be so much more efficient, thanks to Microsoft and Apple computers.

I'd like to take the concept further by telling you some of my favorite places to write. Here they are....

• At Home.
• At Starbucks
• At Panera Bread
• At work.
• At Meme's House (Mother-in-law)
• In the car.
• At the cabin in Tennessee
• On the airplane
• On the back porch

That's all for now. The sales reps are giving me the evil eye, so I better log off. Thanks for reading. And remember, my new supernatural thriller is coming out in April. More news about that to come! BOOM!

Absent Fathers Suck.

I know this topic is a tad off my usual subject matter, but an important one nonetheless.

I'm really enjoying my children lately - always have - but life as a daddy has been especially good lately. That may sound strange to you, but my wife and I have four children, ages fifteen through nine and our world gets really crazy at times. Yet with all the wackiness, we managed to have a great weekend. I spent quite a bit of time with each one of them, doing something they enjoy, like playing video games, making necklaces, writing, reading, boxing, wrestling. And now, as you can imagine, I'm exhausted, muscles sore, head aching and in need of a little peace and quite.

I'll confess, there were times over the course of the last several years where I put other things ahead of them, not always, but times. I'm sure I had my list of reasons, all justified in my eyes: quotes were due, had to finish the job, chapters almost done, you name it. But the thing is, I always hated myself later. When I finished whatever it was that kept me from them, I was always filled with remorse.

Children grow up way too fast, sometimes leaving before we're ready for them to go. They watch and learn and observe our mannerisms, imitate our dialect and mirror our integrity. As I was thinking about this, I thought of the moments I've failed and then remembered the things I've done right and then sighed, somewhat pleased that although I've not been perfect, I know that I've not been absent.

As a writer, it's very easy to be absent, because writing is such a solitary act. The very thought of interruptions, just about gives me a migrain. And so I have to be very careful, and my wife does a great job at making sure I lift my head up and engage in our family. On my own, I'm afraid the story, or the platform building, or the emailing would consume me. In fact, I know it would. My nature is to keep my head down, driving forward like a Wisconsin snow plow, smashing mail boxes and digging up sod along the way!

The point is, absent fathers suck and they come in an assortment of colors: emotionally absent, physically absent, financially absent, and spiritually absent. They breed absent teenagers, absent citizens, absent husbands and absent daddys. And when they look back on their life they shrivel up and die with regret, because when an absent father finally lifts his head and discovers that no one is there, he looks back and wonders what it was that pulled him away, what was so damn important that took precedence over his family.

Absent fathers suck. Don't be an absent father or mother. Write, read, create, but live your life with balance, frequently taking time to laugh and wrestle and talk with your children. If you choose to give your family the scraps of your life, you'll regret it for all eternity. But you'll never regret keeping your head up and engaging with your children. BOOM!