Book Review. Tom Brokaw, A Lucky Life Interrupted

Tom Brokaw's seventh novel, A Lucky Life Interrupted, need not interrupt your life.

It's a short work, 256 pages in its Random House large print edition. The story's hook is the famed journalist and NBC anchorman's diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a treatable but incurable cancer affecting the blood's plasma cells

While there are memorable artful twists of the English language, e.g., the neighborhood of life has no long term leases, they are too few. The constant straying from the disease to past events and celebrity name-dropping is disheartening. The back page blurb says Brokaw writes to help others. That may be his intent, but how many people jump on planes from Minnesota's Mayo Clinic to Sloan-Kettering in New York and have General Electric subsidize the cost of a $500 chemo pill, taken twice daily. Brokaw said his co-pay was $15 per pill. Thus, he pays out-of-pocket $30 while GE pays $970 and Brokaw doesn't mention the cost of two other major drugs and other injections and/or care.

Even the presented facts (which are not disputed) get jumbled to lose apple to apple comparison. For example, "The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2015 1,658,370 new cancer cases will be diagnosed and that in the same year about 1,600 people will die from cancer-related conditions daily." Doesn't it seem that deaths are low?  Then note that the first is an annual figure and the second is daily.  To be comparable, the second must be multiplied by 365.  Moreover, let's not forget that the elapsed time between diagnosis to death is not always less than twelve months or one year. There is overlap and it's left uncommented upon.

If that is not disquieting, the ending is. At page 253, Brokaw asks the rhetorical questions: "Has cancer changed  me? Am I a better person? That's for others to judge."  The word "copout" rings in the mind. It's ironic that a great communicator can't say, or more likely won't, which is the impression given.

Brokaw does acknowledge in brief sketches that his situation, based on income, doctors in the family, being a Mayo Clinic public trustee, and with employer insurance coverage, he is far from the everyman experience. One might even say light years from the experience of the World War II generation he wrote eloquently about in his first book.

It is not a research book if a reader is concerned about the United States healthcare crisis.


Donan Berg is a freelance editor and independent author. His latest novel, One Paper Heart, won the 2016 Feathered Quill Gold 1st Place Romance Book Award. One Paper Heart e-book or One Paper Heart trade paperback .  His mysteries and other stories can be found at Amazon .

Donan Berg's One Paper Heart Wins Gold

Donan Berg, author of mystery novels earning 5-star ratings, topped all 2016 Featheredquill.com romance category entries with his debut contemporary romance novel entitled One Paper Heart.

The February 2016 Featheredquill.com  Gold Award/1st Place winner announcement list can found at its website.

An excerpt of One Paper Heart appeared here in an earlier blog post. For a larger free sample click on the following link: One Paper Heart free sample .

Click here to order E-book One Paper Heart E-book $2.99

Click here to order trade paperback One Paper Heart Paperback $13.00

Writing Analysis - The Bones Dance Foxtrot

Statistical fiction writing analysis is a fun exercise.

How the results are interpreted becomes a writer's individual journey.
A dash of faith is required to accept the topic ranges as fair or supported
by empirical data.

I submitted The Bones Dance Foxtrot, Second Skeleton Series Mystery.
It's a novel available in trade paperback and e-book worldwide,
free on Amazon's KindleUnlimited. Author Donan Berg Amazon Page

Here is what was determined by the word analysis.

Generic words 2.15%  (Less than acceptable range, which should be good.)

Flesch Kincaid Grade 5.73 (Reads at sixth grade level.)

Adverbs 5.19%  (Less than acceptable range, which should be good.)

Passive sentences 4.37% (At range bottom.)

Adjectives 6.24% (Within range.)

Sentence length 9.47 words. (At range's lower end.)

Initial pronouns 2.07% (At range's lower end.)

Difficult sentences 19.79% (At range middle.)

Best genre is mystery/detective/police procedural. (44.69% )

To forge a conclusion from the above results adds further subjectivity.
The novel's length is approximately 86,000 words. Lower than the acceptable
range of generic words suggests the words written were specific. This may account
for the mid-range sentence difficulty, however, the sixth grade comprehension
level indicates readability wasn't hindered, nor was it a PhD dissertation.

Perhaps, the short sentence length coupled with active sentences (i.e., a low
number of passive sentences) mitigated the difficult sentences effect? The low
number of initial sentence pronouns supports sentence variety.

Authors should remember that the typical reader doesn't parse sentences or
count words. He or she reads. If the author makes the story interesting and easy,
the more read the work will be.

Ten Book Club Discussion Questions

Adolph’s Gold by Donan Berg

1.  What conflicts protagonist Adolph Anderson other than the fact he doesn’t clip a gold detective shield to his belt?

2.  Was Chief Ron Howard right to pair Adolph and Luann? Was there ever any doubt that Adolph would achieve his gold shield?

3.  Did Adolph follow correct police investigative procedure or fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants?

Does it matter? If not to Adolph, to reality’s criminal justice system?

4.  Adolph finds scraps of poetry, or what ascribes to be poetry. What do they foreshadow?

If someone said it was an author’s trick to advance the story’s plot or to generate artificial suspense, would you agree or disagree?  What other foretelling is there?

5.  Did the locale add significance to the story?

6.  There is a multitude of secondary characters. Are all necessary? Did they distract or become vital to understanding Adolph or his gold shield quest? How important is Officer Finnegan? Rebecca? Dean Wainright? Lt. “Bulldog” Hunter?

7.  Is Adolph’s family important to understanding all sides of Adolph? What significance is his relationship to his wife, his daughter? Does Adolph’s interaction indicate he’s more concerned about his family’s well-being or that Adolph would act as he does for any individual in peril?

8.  Does any character name remind you of an earlier Donan Berg mystery?

9.  Is there a fear, an experience or a contemporaneous event that motivates Adolph to alter or confirm how he reacts the way he does? More than one?

10. Is it important to characterize the novel as a police procedural? Would it fit or cross to other genres? Mystery? Thriller? Literary? Character or family study?

Secondary Mystery Characters Who Play Fair

It’s a mystery reader’s challenge and the name-of-the-game: Every character who populates a page could be a suspect. While the author and reader know who is and who isn’t, the reader can’t be sure. The author must play fair.

 Secondary characters main role is usually to move the story along. They serve food and drink to the sleuth, drive him or her around, are family members or associates who attend holiday parties.

 Often sketchy and written in without taxing the author’s brain, these secondary characters challenge the reader, especially in early chapters. The author also faces a dilemma. If drawn to narrow, the reader quickly dismisses the character as not a suspect. Flat, one-dimensional characters also create lifeless reading.

 The author who desires to have as many viable suspects as possible can not overlook the minor characters, especially on their stage debut. That is because, if the only three-dimensional characters are the hero/sleuth and the villain/criminal, the reader won’t have any fun in trying to decipher whodunit.

 The balancing fulcrum between reader and author must be fair play.

 Fair play in that the reader knows as much as the sleuth and there are multiple suspects.

 If the sleuth enters a supermarket, what type of individual might he find?

Example one:

The obese, heavyset white-shirted male with the store badge clipped to his black belt knelt near an aisle merchandise display.  His gray hair and facial wrinkles said he neared retirement. He chewed a yellow pencil stub as if it were a toothpick. His brown eyes were downcast and hardly brighter than his scuffed black shoes.

 Comment on Example one:

 Many writers pass off this physical description as strong characterization. Other than outward appearance, what do we know about this character. Is he a clerk, a middle-level manager, or the store owner. Was he concerned with merchandise or had he dropped something? There’s a lot we don’t know and nothing that really makes this male memorable, except the writer really wanted us to know the character carried extra weight by the needless repetition.

Example two:

The purple-shirted male with a shaven head knelt with his hob-nailed engineer boots blocking any grocery store cart that dared attempt to pass him. The red of his bulbous nose contrasted sharply with deep-set dark eyes. A red bandana tucked into his rear blue jeans pocket lay limp against his right butt.

Comment on Example two:

This exaggerated attempt to add “color” to the character spins a blurry and confusing palette. Is this person young and not know better or old and doesn’t care. Perhaps, he stopped into the store for water before he was to set out for the costume party. Who knows? These types of characters don’t ring true to the reader. It draws unneeded attention to the author. The reader. as well, might question the motives of the author, and not in a good way.

Example three:

The store clerk pushing a wheeled merchandise-laden cart hummed “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” Must be new, Detective Jim thought. He hadn’t met this blue-jacketed young man before.

     “You practicing for Christmas Eve?”

     “Easter,” said the clerk. He grinned and Jim knew he wasn’t serious.

      “Where’s the eggnog?”

      “Aisle 9.”

Comment on Example three.

 What does this brief introduction tell the reader about the young man? Yes, young, but we don’t know years so the reader must actively engage his or her imagination and draw upon personal experience. May be a high school or college student working during the Christmas break. He wears what might be a common clerk uniform jacket so the reader can deduce he’s an employee. If he hums, there’s an indication of how he approaches his tasks. His response to Detective Jim indicates a sense of humor. Since he knows where the eggnog is, he’s either studied the store layout or has worked there for a sufficient time to become familiar.  If not naturally friendly, perhaps he’s sophisticated in how to hide his true feelings.

Summary:

 The store clerk in the last example hasn’t been over developed. Yet, if need be, his character can reappear later. It’s the same gradual process of creating major characters.

 Examine your secondary characters. If the restaurant server is mentioned only because a plate of food must be in front of the sleuth, there is likely no reason even to give the server a name or gender. If the server is in a cowboy outfit and that is a way to identify the restaurant as a BBG joint, then by all means add this as one of the few details necessary to orient the reader.

 One last point, in real-life we often learn more about another person by the way they act and talk than by their dress. Detective Jim will likely remember the clerk’s humming rather than he wore an employee uniform. Chances are the reader will, too.

Donan Berg's latest novel is a romance entitled One Paper Heart. Read a free sample of One Paper Heart by clicking the underlined link or at your favorite online bookseller.

His recent mystery is Adolph's Gold. Read a free sample at the following link Adolph's Gold or online at your favorite bookseller.

Book Clubs Select Adolph's Gold and One Paper Heart

A second book club has selected an Author Donan Berg novel. His police procedural mystery Adolph's Gold will be a January 2016 selection.

An excerpt of Adolph's Gold can be found at this site or a sample at www.amazon.com/Donan-Berg/e/B00799QVFI or https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/adolphs-gold/id799879942?mt=11


Author Donan Berg's debut romance novel, One Paper Heart, an excerpt which can be found at this site, has been chosen to be a book club's December, 2015 selection.

In separate news, Donan Berg earned a 5 out of 5 rating for his book critique (editing) of a client's latest novella.

Thanks.

Writer Choices: May the World be Yours

World building is the first goal of science fiction writers;  a goal that isn’t completed until it’s the weirdest ever. A thing or creature is greater than physical features. It interacts. It communicates.

 

All writers swear an allegiance, either knowingly or subconsciously, to the world of communication. How do we do it? The moronic answer: we put words on paper. Dah!

 

C’mon, it’s not that easy. Right you are. Let’s try to list the ways our words on paper impact the reader?

 

            1. Characters can think, speak, act and/or interact.

            2. Things exist and have a history, known or unknown.

            3. The environment (i.e., scenery) impacts by whatever it does.

            4. What’s left out.

 

Number 1 is a no-brainer in concept and difficult in execution. Does the head have one eye or two? If not a human, maybe no head at all. What characters think tells us about them. A sports fanatic, one scared of water, or one who procrastinates each travel a different path or no path at all. Is there a difference between a mile runner who goes straight versus one who enjoys an oval surrounded by cheering fans?

 

There can be differences in all these. That’s the payoff to a writer. You agonize and then you get to choose. Choices, that’s what communication is no matter how done.

 

Number 2 can be as vast as number 1. The simple rock may not attract attention until a pickax exposes a vein. “Gold!” is the cry. “Stupid rock.” “Fool’s Gold.”  Its toss onto a pile eight-feet high instantly tells a story. Things can be chosen for intended results. An old letter to bring the writer’s history to the forefront. Bright or faded, the marks can be decipherable or not. Modern day electronic bytes zooming through space unseen can be a challenge or not. One day society might have a machine that displays the unseen words. In your writing you can have it today.

 

Number 3 is the environment. Number 2 mentioned space. There is a connection. Compartmentalizing numbers one, two and three is possible, but so is combination. Writers separate the ingredients to create a pie presented to the reader. It’s a metaphor. Writer’s like, no love, them. With our pie metaphor there is the flour and water that makes the crust. A fruit, apples my favorite, mixed with cinnamon and sugar, as a filling. Then, either a full crust to hide the filling or strips to expose and tantalize the prospective eater. While the aroma may be the same, size may not be. Would it sit on a window’s sill or enter a contest? As with the pie, trees, lakes, buildings, sewers, drain spouts, insects, mammals provide an infinite number of choices that can be shaded with singular or combined variation.

 

Number 4 can be as important as any of the above. What is left out is also a choice. If a writer never mentions a character’s feet, maybe they don’t exist. If they exist, are there three or five toes? Maybe they’re fashioned out of clay? Oh, is that literal or figurative? Again, what is left out leaves an impression. It’s a good impression if the dull stuff isn’t left to be read. There are necessary physical acts for a character seated in a room to answer the door. Readers can figure that out if its every day normal suburbia. But? The writer says the character flew to the door. Is it literal?

 

All this certainly left out an encyclopedia. If it made you think, that’s enough. Now, make those choices, change them, circle back, try a choice outside your comfort zone. To revert to the pie metaphor, the world awaits your choices and will enjoy the taste, even if they don’t recognize or understand how you made it.