“Little Free Library” Release Week Giveaways

Today is the day. The Method Writers paperback has officially been released! To celebrate, the Rogues Gallery Writers with cooperation from our publisher, Dreamer Publications, are continuing with the promotional giveaways.

This week, the Rogues of the North, Bridget Callaghan and Jeff Swesky, will be giving away free copies of The Method Writers paperback by way of the Little Free Library charters in Traverse City, Michigan. The first copy was placed into a Traverse City area Little Free Library this morning. We’re not going to tell you which one, of course. Consider it an Easter egg hunt, but for books. If you do find/win a copy, please let us know what you think of our novel.

In learning that many of the LFL charters have become somewhat depleted following last week’s National Cherry Festival (seems there had been much more taking than returning,) Dreamer Publications gave us surplus copies of Rabbi Samuel Cywiak’s award-winning and best-selling Holocaust memoir, Flight From Fear, to distribute to the LFL locations as well.

If you’re not familiar with the Little Free Library program, please visit their website to learn more about this wonderful global movement that promotes literacy, community, and the love of reading.

 

Preparing for Launch

We’re only days away from our official paperback release date (July 11th, 2016) of The Method Writers. The promotional copies just arrived, and damn they’re looking good:

  

The Method Writers paperback is now available for pre-order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and others soon to follow. This weekend we aim to stand up our book launch page, methodwriters.com, which is currently pointing to our blog. The new site will be a responsive book launch page, which will include the option to download the first six chapters as an ebook sample.

We’ve all worked very hard on this paperback edition and are extremely proud of it. Thanks to our family, friends, and fans for all of your love and support; past, present, and future.

The Rogues

Pre-Release Goodreads Giveaway

Good morning Rogue Nation!

We, the Rogues Gallery Writers, wanted to let you know that starting tomorrow (Monday, June 27th,) five copies of our new paperback version of The Method Writers will be given away during a Goodreads Book Giveaway.

Enter here:

 

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Method Writers

by Rogues Gallery Writers

Giveaway ends July 05, 2016.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

 

Paperback Release Date

We’re very excited to announce that the paperback version of The Method Writers will be published by Dreamer Publications and will be available on July 11th, 2016!!! More news to come!

Here’s a preview of the cover:

Attention Rogue Nation!

It’s been a while since we’ve been present out here (nearly two years!,) but we have some exciting news to share. This summer, the paperback release of The Method Writers will be published by Dreamer Publications! Please stay tuned for future updates both on this site and www.DreamerPublications.com.

 

 

The Method Writers as a Free Kindle Download!!

Tomorrow, October 28th, the Rogue Gallery Writers’ group novel, The Method Writers, will be available as a free Kindle download!!

The Rogues put a lot of time and energy to making this a unique and enjoyable read, and now are giving away their labor of love for free. So please don’t miss out on this opportunity to download the antics of four distinct and colorful, yet disturbed and struggling, writers who get lost deep within their Methods. Once you get caught up in their stories, you won’t want to put the book down.

Download the free Kindle here!!

Book Excerpt – The Method Writers

One of the great experiences of writing a novel with three other talented writers comes in reading back over what we created. We built this microcosm of life out of our imaginations. We directed (as often as they would allow) the characters. We lived in a writing cocoon for a year.

What spawned from our collective creative muses feels fun. Energetic. Fresh. Even half a year later. I enjoy reading back over the letters and words and paragraphs that stack up to form our story. Case in point, in Chapter 30 when Georgie Mae is on a date with detective Joe, the interplay between the characters feels quirky yet warm and exciting. I love Bridget’s writing style. This tiny excerpt finds Joe probing Georgie Mae with a few questions:

“What do you like outside of working at the track?”

“I, uh, I devote a lot of time to the writing group.” And I rob banks here and there.

“That’s right, Dorian told me about the writing group.”

“Yeah, we’re helping each other out with…projects.”

“What are you writing about?” Joe is staring deep into my eyes, into my soul. As if in a trance, I respond to his question with a light voice. My gaze is fixed on his.

“I’m working on a play…a musical.” Where the hell did that come from? Secretly I’ve dreamt of writing and directing a musical. I’ve never told anyone, not even Dorian, David, or Marty. Why that came out is a mystery.

“I love musicals,” he states.

Bullshit.” I can’t believe I swore. That’s classy Georgie, why don’t you hock a wad of spit on the ground while you’re at it.

Bridget runs with dialogue, personal narrative since the book is written first-person in each main characters’ voice, as well is internal dialogue. This excerpt shows some pretty cool interplay between two characters. I still think it’s fun reading.

This post comes as a tip-of-the-hat to Bridget, who I regard as a wonderfully talented writer, and for you, the reader, as an enticement to check out The Method Writers. Yes, all writers must promote their books. When you have a gem like The Method Writers, simply picking a section from the book as a teaser, I feel, lends itself well to promotion. It works on me! 🙂

Get your copy today at; The Method Writers

Project Launch! Watch Our Smoke!

  The day has arrived – October 5, 2011. The Rogues Gallery Writers will sit down at 7:00pm, eat some    Chinese, discuss final tweaks to the plan, then gather around the mouse. Yes, the wireless mouse of a laptop. The four of us will place our forefingers on the left-click button and press as one.

The occasion happens to be the launch of our Kickstarter.com project. This project is the culmination of months of work and preparation. We’ve written a novel, blogged loads of blogs, Facebooked as many posts as is respectable, and we’ve made short films. Videos of silliness and seriousness about our baby, our novel – The Method Writers.

The Rogues recently gathered at the Florida Heritage Book Festival in St. Augustine, Florida. We had a great time, sold a few books, and generally got our name out to John Q. Public a bit more. This notoriety we’re building is not by accident.

What we need most at the moment is precisely that – a moment of your time. Drawing attention to your book project these days is a labor, albeit one of love. Kickstarter.com is a place where benevolent people go and pledge monetary support to creative projects. We own one such project – The Method Writers.

We are looking for funding to produce a 5000 print run of the book as well as funds to cover the editing and some marketing of the book. Acquiring the assistance of anyone and everyone we know as well as those they know as well as people THEY know is critical to getting funding of this nature. Please take a moment to click on the above links to our project, or heck, use this one (www.kickstarter.com), and watch our video, read over our project and pledge some money to help us launch this book properly.

With all the books being published these days, the ones that make enough noise get noticed. We cannot make noise without your help. Each individual person who pledges funds to our project, lifts us up. One of the great aspects of Kickstarter.com is the fact that you, the Pledge, receive something in return. You receive a piece of the project in the form of Rewards. We have set up 23 Rewards for our Pledges based on their level of giving. We believe there is a satisfactory Reward for each level of pledge.

Yes, you get a piece of the project as well as the pleasure of contributing to the launch of an ambitious new novel. We believe what we created in The Method Writers is viable, entertaining and well-worth launching into the world. Won’t you please click on over to Kickstarter.com now and pledge to the project right now? If we do not reach our target money in 45 days, we will get nothing and no pledges will be collected. That would be a travesty.

We look forward to thanking each and every one of our Pledges once we hit our target! The Rogues Gallery Writers ask also that you contact everyone you know and send them to our project at Kickstarter.com. We obviously require the help of many. We humbly thank you for your participation in our project and we sincerely hope you will be rewarded by your assistance!

The Rogues Gallery Writers Invade the Florida Heritage Book Festival!

If you’re located in the Northeast part of Florida, please come visit The Rogues Gallery Writers at the 2011 Florida Heritage Book Festival in downtown St. Augustine this coming Saturday (September 24th) from 9:30-5:00. We’ll  be located in the exhibitor’s “Marketplace” (Flagler College’s Ringhaver Student Center Building) to promote our soon to be released group novel, The Method Writers. More information about the exhibitor’s marketplace can be found at: Exhibitors Info.

We’ll be collecting business cards and once every hour (between 11:00 and 3:00) we’ll be drawing one card, and the winner will receive a free authographed copy of The Method Writers when it’s released in November 2011. We’ll also be finally premiering our much talked about Rogues’ mockumentary, Behind the Prose. A couple teasers from “Prose” can be viewed on our YouTube channel: RoguesGalleryWriters

Also on Saturday, we’ll have The Method Writers available for preorder, including free shipping and a free Method Writers‘ bookmark. We’ll also be handing out cards (containing QR codes for those into the technology) that will provide a link to obtain a free PDF ebook copy of More Writing is Easy!! You’ll also receive a 20% discount on a copy of Writing is Easy.

And that’s not all, the Rogues will also have some of their individual books for sale! Plus there’s sure to be other surprises as the day progresses. So come on out and join in on the fun and excitement!!

We hope to see you there!!

There’s More Than One Way to Skin a Character …

Or develop one, that is.

In a very recent post, fellow Rogue, Bridget Callaghan, discussed how she created her highly adored character: Georgie Mae Perez. She offers two ways that characters can be generated, by flat-out copying a real-life person (or fictional person) or creating an amalgamation of several, by borrowing traits and characteristics from multiple people or characters.

Although, I’ve created more than my share of amalgamations in my writing days, I want to discuss a third technique: situational character development. I don’t know if it’s an actual writing “technique” or not, but it’s something I began to do out of necessity for some of my works. Being that I like to write literary fiction that’s highly influenced by environments and social issues, sometimes I come up with an issue or situation I want, or need, to write about, and then let the environment birth my character. The challenges of this environment will help me to determine the personality and character traits my protagonist will need to share my message.  

David Haas, exploring his dark side

This is basically the technique I used to create The Method Writers’ David Haas. I knew the path, or “method,” that I wanted my character to travel. But how would I get him there and make it believable? After all, I wanted an author to transform into a vigilante, of sorts, in a short period of time.

I needed someone who was down and out on his luck. All that he had worked so hard for had failed. All the ways he had learned to get by and succeed in life were false teachings. He had to be open to giving in, trying something new. Something desperate.

Enter David Haas.

David lost his father several years back to alcoholism, something David is also susceptible to. His senile mother is confined to a nursing home. He left his job as an editor of a big New York based magazine to help care for his mother, and as a result, his fiancée, a beautiful model, left him. He’s broke, jobless, alone, and his first novel had bombed.

At some point, David’s serial protagonist, the vigilante Kenny Black, begins to whisper in his ear, planting seeds, giving him ideas.

Dark, sinister ideas.