News from Suz Brockmann: 20 February 2018

News from Suzanne Brockmannwww.SuzanneBrockmann.com20 February 2018

Today's book news and info:

*********************************************I'm celebrating the impending paperback release of Some Kind of Hero by having an e-sale of Ready to Roll, my Troubleshooters novella in which SKOH's hero, Navy SEAL Lieutenant and BUD/S instructor Peter "Grunge" Greene, is introduced! (Along with the legendary SEAL candidates of "Boat Squad John.")Ready to Roll is the first time LT Pete Greene appears on-page and in person in the TS series. Prior to this, the SEAL nicknamed "Grunge" was only mentioned in passing. Trivia: "Grunge" is discussed in Hot Pursuit, when Chief Ken "WildCard" Karmody's wife, Van, attempts to set her friend Jenn up with him. And yes, that would be Jenn of "Jenn & Danny Gillman." So yeah, good thing for Dan that that never happened!!At 55K words, Ready to Roll is slightly longer than my other TS novella, All Through the Night. It's also the third installment (yet it stands alone!) in a series of Troubleshooters shorts and novellas that starts with Free Fall and continues in Home Fire Inferno. (Those two shorts are available as individual e-shorts, or in an e-book or print-on-demand 2-in-1.)Regularly priced at $5.99, Ready to Roll will be $3.99 (US$ or the international equivalent!) through the end of the month, so grab it fast if you've missed it! 

Kindle: http://amzn.to/2dHlNbW 

Nook: http://bit.ly/2cSihPc 

Kobo: http://bit.ly/2dYUyNp 

iBooks: http://apple.co/2dspJiS 

Read Ready to Roll's blurb and find out more at my website!

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Some Kind of Hero will be out in paperback next Tuesday, February 27th!If paperback is your fav reading format, you can pre-order it now!

Some Kind of Hero Digital:

Kindle: http://amzn.to/2seuGn4 

Nook: http://bit.ly/2rmIWG9 

Kobo: http://bit.ly/2tclahl 

iBook: http://apple.co/2e87stD 

GooglePlay: http://bit.ly/2d2s9Dx 

Some Kind of Hero Print:

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2r2w5g0 

Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/2qBpIkb 

Indiebound: http://bit.ly/2rCv8wj 

Books-A-Million: http://bit.ly/2sBjbWK 

Powell’s: http://bit.ly/2rHtvZr 

Target: http://bit.ly/2sKaBWg 

Random House: http://bit.ly/2tzrVdg 

Some Kind of Hero Audio (read by Bahni Turpin & Patrick Lawlor):

Audible: http://amzn.to/2qb1Cfb

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2qbNwtl 

iTunes:  http://apple.co/2sPNFBX  

Downpour: http://bit.ly/2sPX3oP 

*********************************************Annotated Editions 101I've recently reissued a number of books and stories in "annotated editions," in which I provide endnoted comments about the story, the characters, my writing process, and/or the time period in which the book was written and is set. In print format, that means there are numbers in the text, and a list of numbered comments in the back of the book. When you see a number, you flip to the back to read the note from that numbered list.In ebooks, it's pretty much the same (numbers in text, notes in the back), except for two things. In an ebook, because space is essentially limitless, each note is on its own page so to avoid spoilers. Also, in an ebook, there's a link that will connect you directly to the corresponding note--and likewise bring you right back to the text after you read it.There are, however, variations on the theme. In the Kindle format--for the Kindle device, not the app--footnotes appear in a pop-up box. Here's what appears after I click the link for endnote (1) on my (very basic!) Kindle device edition of my annotated reissue of Embraced by Love. The endnote pops up in a "footnote" box: 

But the Kindle device footnote pop-up assumes that your note is going to be brief, and it removes all paragraph formatting. (Yeah. Some of my notes are many pages long.) So while the pop-up is great for reading the shorter notes, when it comes to the longer ones, you should click that little "Go To Footnote" link at the bottom to get to the actual end note page. Which looks like this:

Then, after you read the note, you click on (back) and that link drops you back into the book's main text, and you keep reading.Here's what the annotated format looks like in Adobe Reader, one of my fav ebook apps for my computer. This is from the annotated 3-in-1 of Beginnings and Ends, When Tony Met Adam, and Murphy's Law:

The endnotes are not only numbered, but they show up as blue links. We're gonna look at note (33). Here's an easier to read view in a super-large font:

And here's what it looks like when you click on the link to endnote (33):

This is one of my longer endnotes, but definitely not THE longest, because, well, you know me by now, dear readers, right...?!The screenshots are hard to read, so here's comment (33) in its entirety, FYI:

(33) Let’s talk a bit about recurring secondary characters. In a long-running, ongoing series like Troubleshooters, it’s really important for me, as the writer, to keep track of even the smallest of minor characters. And although Art Urban has an important role in Robin’s world—he’s the writer/producer of the TV series that’s given new life to Robin’s career after coming out—Art really doesn’t do much more in the series than exist. But okay, because now this note needs a sidenote: I felt it was really important in the TS series to reward Robin for coming out and living his truth. And back in 2007, I did just that by having big name writer/producer Art Urban write a TV pilot specifically for him. Far too often in literature and even in pop culture, gay characters are punished and even killed off. So I wanted to be very very VERY clear in my books that Robin wins by coming out. He wins, indeed, by having Jules in his life. But after losing his a-list action hero movie career (I wasn’t going to attempt to write a storyline that had Hollywood and the world accepting him that completely, when even today such a thing is rare), he wins two other important things, too. He wins this role of a lifetime, and he wins a chance to work and live in Massachusetts—the one place, at that time, that recognized his marriage and his love for Jules. Okay, side note over. Back to Art Urban and our focus on minor secondary characters in an ongoing series: Before this story, Art really doesn’t do much more in this series than exist. His existence and presence happens mostly off-page. So we hear about Art, usually indirectly, as he impacts Robin’s (and Jules’s) life. Let me explain what I mean by off-page. Let’s start with on-page, which is the opposite of off-page. On-page is everything that happens on the pages of the book. On-page is super-canon. These things happened and these characters said these particular words—and we know it because we’ve read it, directly, in the one of the books. Let me give you an example: In Hot Target, (TS #8), Robin is playing a gay soldier during WWII, and he’s got a scene coming up in the movie where his character, Hal, kisses actor Adam Wyndham’s character, Jack. And Robin doesn’t like Adam very much, and he’s also a little freaked out because he’s never kissed another man before (at this point in Robin’s life he’s jammed himself so deeply into his closet that he doesn’t even know that he’s in there). So Robin knocks on Jules’s hotel room door—they’ve become friends prior to this—and he basically asks if he can kiss Jules, so he’ll know what to expect. And Jules is like, wow, okay, that’s gotta be the reaching-est excuse I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard a lot of excuses, but… sure. And they kiss, and we see them kiss, and then we get inside of Robin’s head, and we watch him unravel as he realizes that, yeah, his feelings for Jules are far more than that of a friend, and WHAT DOES THAT MEAN…??!!!?? (We know what it means, but it takes Robin a little bit longer to get there.) So that all happens on-page. Now here’s an example something, also from Hot Target, that happens off-page: The hero of this book, a Navy SEAL named Cosmo Richter, gets a call telling him that his show-tune loving mother (a very minor secondary character we will come to know as Lois, later in the series) has fallen and broken both of her wrists. Lois’s fall impacts Cosmo (he requests a leave from the Navy because he thinks he’s gonna have to go help care for her, I mean, two broken wrists…?) and puts him in a place where he’s available to do a little moonlighting for the personal security team of TS, Inc. We don’t meet Lois in Hot Target—she never appears on-page in that entire book, but she’s a big part of Cosmo’s life, so he thinks and talks about her pretty often, considering. Other examples of off-page action pertaining to secondary characters in the TS series—things we hear briefly mentioned but don’t see or get lots of details about (at least not at the time they’re first mentioned): Navy SEAL Danny Gilman (back when he was still a very minor character) gets stuck in the elevator when the power goes out in Over the Edge (TS #3). And here’s an excerpt of another, when we find out (from Sam’s POV) that Jules has broken up with Adam, that Adam has moved out and Jules’s heart is broken in Into the Night (TS #5): There was silence then as Mike Muldoon moved into earshot. But as he glanced from Sam to Jules, he broke into a trot, quickly passing them and giving them a chance to continue talking privately. “Be still my heart,” Jules said, gazing after him. “I don’t suppose Michael Muldoon has come out of the closet yet.” Sam rolled his eyes. Jules knew damn well that Muldoon wasn’t gay. He was only doing this to annoy him. Or maybe distract him from his shitty home life. “Even if he was gay, I thought you and Adam were, you know…” Living together. Jesus, he couldn’t believe he was friends with a guy who was romantically involved with someone named Adam. “Adam packed up and moved out. He went to L.A.” Ouch. “Sorry.” “Yeah,” Jules’s smile was forced. “Well, life goes on, doesn’t it?” “Yeah,” Sam agreed. “It sure as fuck does.” But, Christ, wasn’t anyone happy anymore? (from Into the Night (TS #5) Again, we don’t meet Adam on-page for three more books, not until Hot Target (TS #8), where he moves from very minor off-page secondary character to solid on-page secondary character. And that’s also what I’m doing with Art Urban in Beginnings & Ends. He’s finally appearing on-page, in a solid secondary character role, in this pivotal scene with Robin. Before this, Art has only put in off-page appearances—okay, he’s got a brief phone call with Robin in All Through the Night, so make that “mostly only.” Now, before I wrote this scene in B&E, as I prepped for Art to make his very first on-page appearance, I made a list of everything that I knew about him. He had a studio in his hometown of Boston, he was known as a brilliant writer and producer, he’d had a massive heart attack… That’s a major life event, so I definitely kept it in mind as I figured out how Art should appear in this scene. I asked myself some questions: How many years ago was that heart attack? (I did the math—it was definitely years, not months.) What’s his life been like in the aftermath of that? And I decided that Art took that heart attack seriously—what’s that expression, as serious as a heart attack. Yeah. He took it that seriously. It was fun to let Art come to life in this story, because I’ve always really liked him as a character. (I had him drive himself to the hospital—that’s a legendary thing to do, right? Compared to, oh, say, having someone find him slumped over on the toilet…?) Art is, after all, the man who saw (as I did!) just how talented and special Robin was, and wrote Shadowland and the role of Joe Laughlin for him. It was also fun to picture Art in an office that looks/feels very similar to Richie-the-fictional-agent-of-Joe-Laughlin’s office. After all, they both have admins named Maureen. :-) But most of all it was fun to let Art speak and to take a look into his warm eyes (behind his trademark horned-rimmed glasses). (back)************************************If you were reading this on an app or an e-reader device, you'd simply swipe or click the page forward button (in this case it's that little arrow at the bottom right of the screen shot) and page through the entire lengthy endnote...

...until you see the (back) link at the bottom, which will bring you back to the main text so you can read on until you hit note (34). You'll note that there's also a handy-dandy link back to the text at the very start of the end note, in case you click onto a really long note and you think, "Oh Lord, I cannot read this long note right now!"You can also read all of the end notes in a row, at the end of the book, if that's your preference!To be clear, the vast majority of the endnotes are shorter, like (16):

Clicking note (16) brings you to:

And just to show another of the various formatting and presentations, here's what Chapter Three of Beginnings & Ends looks like via the Kindle app on my computer. The endnote links are in an elegant brown.

And here's the iBooks app: 

So that's what I'm talking about when I say, "Check out the annotated edition of..."So far, I've annotated two of my very earliest books (and the comments *can* be a tad snarky whenever I take 1990s-writer-me to task!):

Embraced by Love (originally published 1995)Future Perfect (my very first published romance novel, originally published 1993)

...as well as a series of TS and Navy SEAL e-shorts:

Beginnings & Ends (TS short originally published 2012)When Tony Met Adam (TS short originally published 2011) (Boy, do I have a lot to say about writing an HEA for Adam Wyndham, the man who managed to be both Jules's and Robin's ex!!)Murphy's Law (Navy SEAL short originally published 2001, and yeah, the first short I ever, um, attempted to write, so...)

These stories are also available together in an annotated 3-in-1 edition in both ebook and print on demand: 

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2yGnSy8 

NOOK: http://bit.ly/2oocrLB 

Kobo: http://bit.ly/2AVhjgT 

iBooks: http://apple.co/2ADUvhA 

Amazon print: http://amzn.to/2j9A3y3 

BN print: http://bit.ly/2Bifh6D 

That's all the news for now!As always, thank you so much for your time and attention! Please feel free to email, blog, post, tweet, and/or share any or all of my news with your social circle! In fact, I appreciate it greatly when you do! Thank you so much for your ongoing support! Hang in there, and happy reading! Love,Suz