What's in a name

I like to find names that are different and I always asked the person if I can use their name. For instance, in Tell Her Goodbye, I asked a friend if I could use her last name. I had two characters, a father and daughter, and I needed a last name for them. Rooney and Ruth Ann (or Rugsby) were my lead characters, but they needed a last name. My friend's maiden name is Senn, and I latched on to it. For my latest unfinished manuscript I used another friend's name: Kimsey.  Just because I use a last name does not mean that the character is a reflection of my friend. A character is this complicated compilation of you, your friends and daily exposure. If a name is familiar to you in one of my books, don't think that it is their personality. It's not. I just took their name.

Social Media

Social media has become very important for the independent author. It has become a major avenue in which we promote our books and personally contact our readers. Social media has brought authors and readers closer together than any time history. It is especially rewarding when a reader shares a post with their friends, or simply posts that they have read your book and thoroughly enjoyed it.   A simple post or sharing a post increases the exposure of the author. I want to thank those of you have done this for me. I am truly grateful.

Tell Her Goodbye in paperback

Just in time for Christmas, Tell Her Goodbye is now available in paperback. It should be available on Amazon by December 17th.

Borrow Tell Her Goodbye

If you are a member of Amazon Prime, you can borrow Tell Her Goodbye for free.You can read it on any Kindle ebook reader, or any of the Kindle software programs for tablets or computers.

Bits and Pieces

A friend asked me yesterday if there was a way she could give Tell Her Goodbye (eBook version) as a gift. The answer is yes. Amazon will ask you when you buy the book whether it is a gift. The last minor corrections were made on the paperback version of Tell Her Goodbye and should be available for purchase sometime next week. The price of Tell Her Goodbye is no different than my previous books. 

Goodbye old friend

As you get older, you have to get used to change. The most obvious change is bodily. That person you see in the mirror is no longer recognizable from the person you were forty years ago (or more). Change can be good and bad. Some change is evitable

Last week I lost a dear friend of over thirty years. My wife and I met her when she our kids started preschool at St. Peters. During those thirty-plus years, we had gone down many roads together: sharing in hard times and good times. I loved Nancy. We could sit for hours talking about food and how we prepare it. In some of my darkest hours before I lost Jane, Nancy's shoulder was strong and capable. She never turned her back on a friend. I will forever hold Nancy in my heart.

My father told me one time that you learn to accept death of friends and loved ones. He said instead of anguishing over what you'll miss, think about what you had, and that will stay with you forever. Nancy will be with me forever.

Read the first chapters of Tell Her Goodbye

The first few chapters of Tell Her Goodbye is now ready for you to read on Amazon.com.

Tell Her Goodbye Now Available

Tell Her Goodbye is now available on Amazon.com. It can be read on any Kindle software product, so that mean eReaders, Kindles, Kindle software on any computer or smartphone. If you have Amazon Prime, you may borrow the book and read it for free! 

I always appreciate the help you have given me in the past to help me promote my books. If you visit Amazon, please click "like". This simple task helps promote my books. Others have shared my books through Facebook and email. Again, thank you for all of your efforts. And most of all, thank you for buying my books!

Being Consistent

You never know that your readers are going to like or dislike. One of the problems any writer has is being consistent with readers. I have found that is very difficult. I have had some readers write me how they loved Tanglewood Road and disliked The Possessor. Others write how much they like The Possessor. As an author, you write what you feel and that may not be consistent with what you've written in the past. On the other side of the coin, I may think people will love one book over another and be dead wrong! So, as I continue to refine my skills, do I want to be consistent? Yes...but I don't want to end up hating what i write in the process.  I am about to finish my next book and I have no idea where it will end up with my readers. I do know that another novel is forming in my mind... but more on that later.

What is real?

It is not rare for someone to come up to me and ask if my novels are based on events in my life. Are they real? Let's take a look at my latest novel, Out of the Darkness, and you decide. Let's take three unrelated observations and then put them together to develop a character and an event for the novel.

1-I have always been amazed at people who sacrifice their lives to take care of others. My cousin John came home after World War II and took care of his parents. He never married. I've seen people of all ages give of themselves for their families and loved ones.

2-A friend of mine is extremely close to her young daughter. They express their love for one another very willingly and they have grown together as mother and daughter. I find their relationship very unique.

3-A friend  told me that when her husband died, she took his ashes back to Nova Scotia and Alaska to scattered them where he had the fondest memories. Of course, I thought what a wonderful story idea.

Now, let's put them all together.

After I finished The Possessor, I was looking for a new character to write about. As I was perusing Facebook one day, I came across my friend expressing her excitement about something her daughter had accomplished.  The daughter responded in a short time to her mother. The daughter is an only child and I thought how devastated either one would be if something happened to the other.

A character started forming in my head.

I had to bring some of my own experiences with my wife into the picture. I had first hand knowledge how a person facing death feels because of her. Sarah Jane Senn is the mother who must tell her daughter she is dying. The daughter, Ruth Ann, has devoted her life to taking care of her mother. Sarah Jane tells her daughter not to mourn her passing. It is time for Ruth Ann to come out of the darkness and into the light so she can have a life of her own.

I now had a character and a compelling event. Now what?

Sarah Jane is a very wise woman and she realizes that her death is going to be very hard on her husband, Rooney, and Ruth Ann, so she devises a plan to help them with the closure with her death. She doesn't want a funeral, but wants her family to scatter her ashes in three places. Two are places she's always wanted to visit but couldn't because of her illness. The last place is in her front yard between the two towering oak trees so she can feel the morning sun.

Three unrelated observations in my life were combined to begin my novel. I have my character, a compelling event in the death of Sarah Jane, and scattering her ashes will be the catalyst of the novel. From these simple beginnings, I developed other characters. Are they real? What's really important is that they are real to you.

Out of the Darkness is a thriller.

Share Me

The check from Amazon from the sale of my books brought a smile to my face. After all, I have two major goals in writing: make money and entertain my readers. I am slowly on the way to achieving both goals.  Seeing my bank account grow was very gratifying, but it doesn't compare to listening to someone tell me how much they enjoyed reading my books. My first thought is I touched someone. I made them feel good. Writing and publishing your own books is time-consuming, tiring, and the marketing of your books is never ending. I made mistakes  along the way(I published the wrong draft of Tanglewood Road and didn't discover the mistake until three weeks had passed!), but I don't give up because this is my passion. This past weekend, a friend was telling me how much she was enjoying Tanglewood Road. She wanted to know if it was okay to pass the book on to her friends to read. I had no problem with that, but I did ask her to do one thing for me. Tell her friends about the book if she liked it. Tell her friends on Facebook, Google Plus, email, and any other social media. Word of mouth, social media, and the internet are becoming even more important to new and established authors with the popularity of eBooks growing and starting to surpass print books. I have a web site: http://www.davidmhooper.com and an author's page on Amazon.com.  So, if you feel inclined, tell your friends

Put on your thick skin

Author and publisher, Arlene Chase, once told me that to be a writer you had to have a thick skin. How true!  I talk to aspiring writers and the one thing that holds many of them back from writing is the critique from others.  I recently saw a post on Facebook where the person had asked her friends if they wanted to read her new novel. All of her friends replied that they would love to read her novel. That may be great for the ego, but not for the quality of the writing.  Friends never want to hurt your feelings. What you want is honesty, frankness, and truthfulness above all. I have three readers that are allowed complete freedom when they read my manuscripts.  Sometimes the red marks are discouraging, but their remarks and corrections are what will make me a better writer—hopefully. If a friend or acquaintance tells me they found a grammatical error, I don't wring my hands and implore them to tell me the exact location on the page in the book. I don't try to explain the difficulties of writing and publishing my books. I just make a mental note to be work harder on my next book to eliminate errors.  The writer needs to continue to improve and not become stuck correcting past endeavors. 

Write what you know

There were three of us sitting around the table talking about writing and, as our conversation progressed, I was asked why I wrote about a small town in southern Missouri. Most people had never heard of Bolivar in my novel The Possessor; their point being why not a location near Kansas City where the novel begins. That was easy. I was familiar with the area I wrote about. I had walked those same cow paths, waded in Mile Branch, and looked out the East windows of the one-room schoolhouse.  Many happy moments in my life have taken place on my Cousin John's farm just north of Bolivar, Missouri.

I took a correspondence writing course and my instructor was Arlene Chase. Once she scribbled a little note on a piece of paper when she returned a lesson to me. She wrote that she could tell the difference in my writing when I had a personal knowledge about my subject.  That is a no-brainer, but many people who attempt to write do not have a personal knowledge of their subject.  My new novel, the Peruvian Urn, is about an antique cremation urn. Believe me when I tell you that I have a limited knowledge of Peruvian cremation urns. I went to the internet and started reading all I could about cremation urns and especially those from Peru.  I am gaining a personal knowledge of my subject. Will I use all the material? Probably not, but it still will enhance my writing.

Often, what we think is mundane is just the opposite for our readers. We attempt to write a novel such as To Kill A Mockingbird and forget the main reason we are writing: to entertain the reader.  Harper Lee wasn't attempting to write a great American masterpiece. She wrote what she knew and looked what happened! My great niece is a wonderful writer who at the age of seventeen left the United States for school in London for three years. What she sees as ordinary is unique to the rest of us. When a writer attempts to write about those things that they have little or no knowledge of, chances are they will fail. Write what you know and entertain us.

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Tanglewood Road

I am happy to announce that Tanglewood Road is in now being formatted for the Nook and the Apple iPad. It should be available sometime in July or the first of August. This means that Tanglewood Road can no longer be "borrowed" for free on the Kindle if you have Amazon Prime.

Tanglewood continues to beat The Possessor in sales, especially in The Untied Kingdom. As an author, you can never assume which book people will buy. I much prefer The Possessor to Tanglewood Road. But, what I like and what my audience likes may be entirely different.  I can understand why Tanglewood would have an appeal over The Possessor in the United Kingdom. It has a universal theme where The Possessor is regional in a small town in the Midwest. Tanglewood Road could take place ten years ago or today. The Possessor takes place in 1954.

My new novel, The Peruvian Urn, is starting to come together. I hope to have the first chapter on my web site soon. The first draft is such drudgery for me. The plot is in place, but the characters are still not fully developed. Only after the sixth draft do they finally reach their full potential because they continue to develop their individual uniqueness. When it finally is finished, you feel as if you’ve said goodbye to good friends.

Characters make the story

I am always asked where I get my ideas for a novel. For me it is simple: characters.  For instance, in my short story Play Beethoven, the character Mac is confronted at an early age with discrimination. Something I saw on television triggered a memory I had of my grandmother and her prejudices. Although her name wasn't Sarah, a young Jewish girl lived down the street from my grandmother and one weekend I did visit her home. It hurt when I remember how my grandmother reacted to me playing with this young Jewish girl.

I had an idea, but I had no story. What I did have was two characters.

I kept mulling this idea over in my mind, but I still didn't know where I was going with it until a friend called me. The minute I heard her squawky voice over the phone I cringed. She is a nice person, but the voice can be irritating. By the time I'd hung up the phone, the opening scene where Sarah approaches Mac as he puts on his roller skates was rolling around in my head. I immediately started writing. Did I have a story? No, but I knew that the characters would help me develop the story. They would tell me what was going to happen—and they did.

Every time I get an idea for a story it falters and eventually dies. I can't write and let the plot carry the story. I have to rely on my characters. You can read Playing Beethoven on my web site. 

Pure Evil

Tony Grace is pure evil in my book The Possessor. There is no right or wrong in Tony's world. He is anti-social, angry, and very lonely. He is an outcast in a world he can't comprehend.  I came up with the idea for Tony from two individuals that crossed my path earlier in my life.

I met the first boy when I was in grade school. He lived in a shack in the middle of a vacant lot. I'm sure that they didn't own the property, but were "homesteading" until someone kicked them off. The outside was nothing but discarded lumber. The inside was flattened tin cans nailed to the walls to keep out the cold. The yard around the shack was bare dirt littered with trash. This boy knew he and his family were different, and that dichotomy was evident in the classroom by his dress, social skills, and intelligence. He truly was a product of his environment. He was very angry and struck out at the other children. If you neared his home, he would attack you with homemade spears. This boy was truly a wild child.

The other boy lived in the Northeast part of Kansas City and came from a large family. The family harassed their neighbors, was always involved in petty crimes, and lived outside the boundaries of society. The children were truant most of the time. Although the children were taken out of the home from time to time, no foster home could handle them. If they did come to school, they struck out at the other children. I remember one incident where the boy went to court and the charges were dismissed on a technicality. Thinking she was alone, the mother grabbed him by the shoulders, violently shook him, and said next time he was not to get caught.

These two individuals have always been in the back of my mind because they had no control over who they were or what they would become in life. At times you pitied them, but most of the time you were petrified of them. One died early and the other is serving a life term in prison for murder. Combining these two individuals into Tony Grace produced a very evil individual.

Mother's Day is fast approaching. it is time to remember mom. As it draws near, I think about how strong my mother was, and how her skills and courage kept our family together. I remember my dad reminiscing about my mother and all the hard times they went through together. He readily admitted that he couldn't have done it without her. I realized that my father had a real admiration for my mother as a person who had personal traits and skills that complimented his own. They were a team. I didn't think of the word admiration specifically when I thought of my mom.  I thought of things she did like bake bread, iron my clothes, fix our meals, and to be there when I was hurt. Admiration is the genuine approval and respect for another person. Now it started to make sense. My dad told me once that you can't have real love without respect for the other person. I admired my mom as I got older, but nothing like my father. Late in life, they wanted to borrow money to fix up the house where my father was born, but they didn't want a house payment. Dad told me that they sat around the kitchen table pouring over figures. Finally, he said, mom figured out how they could do it. She sent him to the bank the next morning with all the numbers in a Manila folder. He tried to get her to go, but she wouldn't hear of it. The bank approved the loan and they spent their last days in his boyhood home. Dad would tell anyone that it was mom that figured how they could restore their home, and when he did, she'd get a little sparkle in her eyes. I think she had a great admiration for my dad.

Happy Mother's Day, mom. I miss you.

Finding a Target Audience

One of the hardest parts of writing is choosing your audience: whom do you want to entertain. Many writers fail because they can’t find their audience. I chose women 45 and above as my target audience. There were several reasons for choosing this age group. Number one, they read. Women read books while men tend to read magazines. The second reason is that women like mysteries, and I write mysteries/suspense novels. The third reason is mysteries usually are in two different categories: plot driven or character driven.  Women of this age group tend to like character driven mysteries. My novels revolve around strong characters. So it is easy to understand why I chose this age group for my target audience. I also have a Midwestern theme in my novels. I didn’t begin thinking this would be another reason my novels would appeal to my target audience. Tanglewood Road takes place in Kansas City while The Possessor takes place outside Bolivar, Mo. My new mystery novel, The Urn, goes from Bolivar to St. Louis and then Kansas City. Many people have commented that they like novels that have a Midwestern theme. So part of finding your target audience may just be luck.

I Miss Kids

I miss raising kids. It was probably the hardest, but most satisfying job I've ever had. It was also the most fun. (My warped personality even liked the teenage years) I think that is why I had a teenager as the narrator in The Possessor.  In my new novel, The Urn, I have another teenager as narrator. I miss their black and white interpretation of the world. They know how the world works and they have all the answers. How they think their parents are clueless. My daughter was certain that I was clueless. No matter how hard I tried to prove otherwise. I remember one time I was watering a flowerbed under my daughter's bedroom window and saw several footprints. Since my daughter had an overnight the night before, the only conclusion that this clueless dad could come to was they'd sneaked out during the night. I thought about telling their mom, but that would mean a confrontation, and those were never much fun. So, I decided to wait.

Sure enough, two weeks later during a sleepover, I heard the girls sneaking out the window. Being a clueless dad, I didn't stop them-I followed them. They walked up the street, giggling and laughing, as if they'd pulled off the biggest scam in the world. I followed them to an old streetcar trestle four blocks from our house. I saw the lighters come out and the red glow from cigarettes in the distance. I watched for approximately twenty minutes when they started back home. I raced back and was in bed when I heard them sneak back in the bedroom.

I thought long and hard about what to do. They weren't getting into trouble although I didn't like my daughter smoking. I'd learned a long time ago that telling a teenager not to smoke is like throwing down a gauntlet. About a month later, my daughter had another sleepover. I was ready. Late in the evening, the girls were inside and I was outside with the hose watering the flowers. I made sure that the plants near my daughter's bedroom window were watered thoroughly.  Later that night, the girls sneaked out the window and were gone about forty-five minutes. I waited patiently by my bedroom door until I heard them return. Sure enough, a few minutes, my daughter said she was going to the bathroom. When she opened her door, I open my bedroom door. We met in the middle of the hallway.

"What are you doing, dad?" she asked, a dumbstruck look on her face.

"I'm thirsty," I said walking into the kitchen.

I waited for her to come out of the bathroom  and I met my daughter in the middle of the hallway.

"Good night, dad," she said.

"Good night. And Caitlin, after you wake up in the morning and the mud on the carpet is dry, I want you to get the Bissell out and clean it. Okay?"

I smiled. Caitlin eyes went from my loving face to the evidence on the floor.

"Make sure your mother and I are up. I don't want the Bissell to wake us up. After all, it's the weekend."

Clueless dad went back to bed. The Bissell came out at ten the next morning. Caitlin tells me she never snuck out again after that. And I, being a clueless dad, believed her.

I miss those days. They are embedded in my memory. They bring a smile to my face and warmth in my heart.

That's why I've started  to put teenagers in my books.

A Homecoming

A Homecoming

I've traveled down this road a hundred times in my life and in my mind. Usually in an old red Mercury covered in the red dust of Polk County. The road is asphalt now, but in my memory it is gravel. My cousin, John McReynolds, sits behind the wheel with an old briar pipe clenched in his teeth and a pouch of Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco rests between us on the bench seat. The cloud of red dust trailing the car obliterates the road behind us. In some places we have to slow down and pull to the far edge of the narrow road as a pickup or tractor approaches. The car has no air conditioning and your mouth has a gritty feel from the open windows and the hot August air. We reach a fork and turn left to navigate the rutted and bumpy road that jolts your insides and leads down to the bridge over Mile Branch. As we cross, the water is clear and alive with minnows, perch, sun fish, and even a bass or two if you know where to go. Once across, the road widens but is edged with deep gullies filled with thistle, blue stem, and wildflowers.  As the car accelerates toward the small farmhouse that sits on the ridge, I feel giddy because I realize this is the last vestige of part of my heritage. Some of my family lived in the east before the Revolutionary War and they were farmers. All my families were farmers and followed the migration down the Appalachians through the south and into Southern Missouri. My great grandfather farmed and was a county judge. My grandfather left the farm to work in a lumberyard. My father moved to Kansas City and worked in a defense plant.  I knew that after John died, this heritage would end, but while I could, I wanted to embrace it.

I was lucky that I got to share it with my children for a short time. We visited the simple stone foundations belonging only to history, small mounds where Indians pitched their tepees on the south side of a hill, and my children played in Mile Branch, but the clear water had long since gone.

What better place to bring alive the characters of Mac, Dory, and Aunt Holly and Uncle John. I enjoyed writing The Possessor because in a sense, it was a homecoming

Good Reviews for The Possessor

“Great book from a real storyteller. Anyone who knows and loves America’s heartland will nod and smile at the fine details woven delicately through the tapestry of this story’s Missouri setting. Anyone who loves characters who are as real as the people you have actually met will appreciate the way Hooper’s characters come to life and stay alive in your memory.”
--Robin Blakely, author of SIX HATS and PR THERAPY

I read The Possessor this week and really enjoyed it.  I don't usually pick books about "feelings", but I completely identified with Mac.  Once I started it I didn't want to put it down and read it in two days. It was also fun to read a period book that I could really relate to.  I spent summers with my grandparents in a small Iowa town.  Although I thankfully did not have the type of experiences of Mac, the attitudes and behaviors of the adults were so similar!

Jim Hix

Why Do I Write?

I write because I want to entertain people. I will never write a classic. All I want is someone to say they enjoyed what i've written. Here is an example I received from a friend:

My mom & I are both enjoying The Possessor, David.  You are truly gifted - wonderful style.  It's rather a miracle that mom has been able to concentrate on the story as she has had difficulty with reading.  I credit your unique story-telling talent.
Looking forward to Tanglewood.
Thanks... and thanks again.
Mary Kay

When people find out I've written a novel, many tell me they have a great idea for a novel, or it is half-finished. The first question that comes to my mind is why are you writing? Some people say they have to write, and that I can understand. I have to write, but what is your overall goal to write a novel or short story? Mine is simple. I want to entertain. I think you write that novel or finish the one you have started if you figure out why you want or need to write it.

The Character Mac

I've had a couple of friends ask if I were the character Mac in The Possessor. The answer is no. Mac was my nickname growing up, but that is as autobiographical as it gets. Mac is a compilation of many young boys who grew up in the fifties. It was an innocent time. During the summer, I would leave the house in the early morning and my parents wouldn't see me again until late in the afternoon or early evening. We'd actually walk from Meyer and Prospect in south Kansas City to Swope Park. We'd roam all over the park until we were hungry, and then walk back to someone's house for peanut butter sandwiches. Other times we'd go buy a coke and a candy bar and keep on playing. A coke cost a nickel and so did a candy bar. My favorite treat was a bottle of coke with cashews from a vending machine: pure heaven! We'd sit around and talk about girls as if we really understood them. (Sometimes we still do that!) Very few of us had air-conditioned homes, so we spent most of our summer outside. We had many sleepovers during the summer. Played a lot of baseball, and went swimming. I think one of the wildest things we did before we were sixteen was run around the block late at night in our underwear during a sleepover. I guess you could say we were modest streakers for our time. Compared to early teenagers today, we were pretty naive, but as I look back on those times, they were a lot of fun.

The Possessor is free is you have a Kindle and Amazon Prime.

Aunt Holly in The Possessor

Aunt Holly's strong character in The Possessor is a familiar figure for many of us who grew up in the 30s, 40's, and 50's. Aunt Holly is based on my mother who brought those skills with her when I was growing up in Kansas City. Like many women who had to live through the depressions and then World War II, she baked her own bread, made her own lye soap, and made many of our clothes. She was liberated before her time although she didn't understand the women's movement because she could do anything she wanted. She sold real estate and was good with money. Her greatest weakness was her grandchildren.  Aunt Holly has a jovial side and my mother was pretty serious most of the time, so I took a little bit of her cousin, Sylvia and melded her into Aunt Holly. I don't think there was a time in my life when I was with Sylvia that she didn't laugh. She had a deep throated, belly laugh that made you want to laugh. Whether at funerals or weddings, Sylvia saw the funny side of life. The Aunt Holly's are fading from this world but they are being replaced by another time of strong woman who can hold a job, raise kids, and attend PTA meetings. She's just as organized and strong as Aunt Holly.

Kindle Readers

Everyone knows about the Kindle Readers. They are separate reading devices that allow you to download books and magazines from Amazon.com. What you might not know is that there are other types of Kindle software that allows you to read that same book or magazine on your computer or smart phone.  There is even a Kindle reading application for the IPad! The neat thing about having a Kindle and/or the Kindle applications is that you can sync them. I can start reading on my Kindle reader at home and then when I'm at the doctor's office, sync my Kindle reader on my smart phone and continue reading where I left off. I could then go to work and open the Kindle reader on my PC and sync to bring up my book again.  You may not want to read on your smart phone but in a pinch and the magazines are old in the doctor's office, it ain't bad.