It’s the 1870s, and things are weird in the Wild West. Follow Modestus McDoon, wannabe Bandit King, as he tears across the desert, stealing money, fighting phantoms, and ultimately earning the title of Bandit King of the West.
Die Standing Up is a collection of short stories intended for adult readers.
Modestus McDoon has just been expunged from his gang. After a fellow gang member, Smiley, nearly stabbed him to death in the night, he’s on his own and alone in Cimarron, New Mexico.
A rancher has taken him in, but McDoon knows he soon must leave before his gang, the law, or worse finds him.
Modestus McDoon returns to Cimarron, despite being told to stay away. He reunites with his old ex-gang friends, Rosita and Maurice, only to be hired to help save their inn.
Things turn sour as McDoon pretends to be a priest, he dodges old enemies, and, worst of all, a head turns up on a pike in the middle of town.
Things are quiet in Cimarron… until Smiley’s men show up to make things miserable for the people living there. Modestus McDoon is hired to protect a woman as she moves on to Santa Fe, but things become sticky as paranormal activity kicks up around town.
McDoon continues to have to play pickup with the town of Cimarron. With now law present, someone has to make sure everyone stays safe. When a woman is threatened by some less-than-reputable men, McDoon must step in to make sure the town stays a safe place to live. On top of that, someone has been following him…
After some of Smiley’s men show up in town to smuggle stolen goods, McDoon decides to take matters into his own hands and stop them… while getting paid, of course. Naturally, dealing with Smiley’s men is not easy, and after making a series of foolish decisions, McDoon finds himself trapped inside a house with them. Will he make it out alive?
Smiley sends a serial killer after McDoon, and things get serious. People start disappearing and dying all around town, and to make things worse, McDoon sees things he can’t explain…
The best way to write kids is to spend time with kids. If you don’t have physical access to a kid in the age range you need, turn to the internet. By watching how kids interact with each other and with adults, you’ll pick up on their mannerisms, their speech patterns, and any slang that they use.
Middle Grade readers are incredibly smart and are also growing and learning, trying to process the world around them. By including formative themes like divorce, death, ethical dilemmas, abuse, and other “dark” themes, you can help kids learn through fiction how to cope with those things.
A thesaurus is your best friend when you need to spice up your writing, add complexity, and intensify mood. You don’t need a physical thesaurus, but an internet thesaurus is absolutely necessary.
Grab a thesaurus, use creative dialogue tags, get rid of your adverbs, and use tags only when necessary. Dialogue tags are your best friend, but can easily become redundant.
Your book synopsis needs to condense your 50k novel down into merely a hundred and fifty words. To write a great synopsis, you need to tell the story, give a clear idea of the conflict and the resolution, and avoid boring language.
The genre that you are writing in determines how long your novel should be, and if your manuscript is too far over or too far under word count, publishers and agents won’t take it.
Research, reading, and a whole lot of writing are key to developing your own voice. Only with practice, patience and time will you find what makes you unique and you.
There are three surefire things that make a great main character: believability, relatability, and characterization. Without these three things, characters become mindless NPCs left to be puppeted by your will.
The tone of your novel is determined almost strictly by word choice. Tone is something that is often overlooked when working on a draft, and it can make or break your novel.
Luckily for you, self-publishing is actually one of the most inexpensive ways to publish a book. Sometimes, self-publishing a book can cost less than $10.
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