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 Super excited, my second novel, "Finding Bonita" is now available for purchase! 

I hope you read it and love it as much as I loved writing it.

Will Bonnie ever discover the secret behind the mysterious Man With The Camera, and why she's always felt that something fundamental has been missing from her life?
Impactful childhood experiences form intriguing adults whose paths cross in life-altering ways. Their fates entangle in San Francisco and a tiny Caribbean island through sexual and existential obsessions, profound love, and epic loss.
Ted gets passionate about every new concept that comes his way. Jill just wants to be normal but what’s normal keeps changing. Rachel craves emotional connection and healing from compounding tragedies. When their lives collide in the 1970s, joy abounds until Ted’s next infatuation. Meanwhile, a child has been born.
Living in their periphery, with no small consequence, is Ivan, who would be happy to fish, grow ganja, and praise Jah if only he didn’t have to keep fighting off the devil.
This frolicking novel takes readers on an insightfully explicit adventure sprinkled with natural beauty, culinary delights, and confounding homicides.

If you never read my first novel, "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe," here's the link for that. 

 Book cover! Thrilled that I created a cover worth of the story. "Finding Bonita" will be released in September. You can mark it as "Want to Read" on Goodreads and you'll be notified when it's released. 

Tips for Creating Bisexual Characters

 Tips For Creating Bisexual Characters  My article on Unicorn Booty

Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe Print Version

My bisexual themed literary coming of age novel, with a polyamory subplot, "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe," is now available on Amazon in a print version, in addition to the Kindle e-book version.

Naming Characters in Fiction

Often my characters names just come to me quickly as I'm writing down the first words in my story, other times I have struggled with them. Here are some of the things I have considered in naming. 

I have found when I'm reading a novel I get mixed up too easily if two similar characters have similar names. For example, best friends named Mike and Mark. So I avoid that in my own writing. 

I also decided that relatively insignificant characters shouldn't have significant names. In "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe," I changed one character from Alison to Alice for this reason. 

Another thing I have done when naming characters is to have a little fun with it. I had a character named Carol, and when I changed Alison to Alice, I decided I should also have a Ted and Bob - as the theme to the movie Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, was somewhat relevant to my novel. In my second novel I also use all four of those names.

One of my main characters started out as Clara but I changed it to Bonnie because it was useful to the story-line. Bonnie is not her real name and there is significance in several scenes to both her name being Bonnie - a West Indian guitarist singing My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean on a beach - and the secret behind her real name, which Bonnie is short for.

It can be tempting to have a little fun by giving a character an unusual name, but that can be distracting. I only use unusual names for unusual characters, such as Flash, a bisexual, punker artist who has an orange crew cut. I originally spelled Derek as Derrick just because it seemed more interesting, but then I decided there was no good reason for it to be spelled in a more unique manner and this might just needlessly divert the readers attention.  

I once changed a very minor character's name because I realized that Jamie is short for James and Jamie's brother was named James but called Jim.

Whatever you do, make sure you're being consistent. For a long time, while developing my second novel, I would interchangeably use, Rosalyn, Rosemary, and Rachel for the same character. In the same book I was also accidentally using both Wicked Wendy and Wicked Wanda for another character. The Find and Replace feature of word programs are great for fixing this kind of problem. 

I like it best when the character's name just pops into my head and fits well, as if his or her name was inevitable and somehow obvious. Another one of those moments when you feel like the words you are writing somehow already existed and were just waiting for you to come along and transcribe them.

Details in Fiction

In order to do your job well of transporting your readers to another world, your writing has to give them the feeling that they have entered an actual three-dimensional space. Details can make all the difference. Take for example this bit of description from a New York City scene in my soon-to-be-published novel "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe:"
 "Some fifteen minutes later, taxis honking impatiently, a siren wailing from a nearby street, we stood outside the cafe with our hands stubbornly in our pockets, a Milky Way wrapper swirling in the dust and wind at our feet."

I could have just said that they stood on the sidewalk, but instead, their body language brings a picture - complete with emotions - to mind. I could have just said that the street was full of city sounds, but the details about the sounds bring the scene more to life, giving the reader the impression that this really happened. I could have mentioned "a bit of trash," but the fact that my character noticed what the trash was tells you he was trying not to focus on what was really happening between him and the other guy (it's an emotional scene), and that there was enough time for him to have noticed.

In an earlier scene, my character is getting a ride in a Volkswagen Bug and I have my character tell the reader, "I ran my thumb along the textured squares of the vinyl seat." Have you ever been in an older model Volkswagen Bug? Didn't reading that line just bring it all back to you what those seats felt like, looked like? Doesn't this bit of movement also show some sense of nervousness and contemplation on the character's part?

In one of the opening scenes, my character tells the reader "I looked out the window, past my faded cowboy and Indian curtains, and watched the soft December snow falling." In my first draft, I just had him looking out the window and seeing the snow. I added the curtains to give detail. At first, I thought, there are probably curtains on the window, so let me show that. Then I asked myself what kind of curtains. He's 12 years old here so I emphasize with the curtains his move from childhood towards adolescence, which is relevant to the scene.

With all the examples, the details aren't just thrown in there to bring the scene alive, each one of them also serves some other purpose to the story.

So, tell us what kind of soda your detective is drinking, and whether the can is dented, or not cold enough, or if it tastes too sweet or has gone flat - but only if it adds to character development or gives us a clue to who done it. Maybe the fact that it's not cold means that someone must have put it in the fringe after the beautiful heiress was murdered, and that must mean that the pool boy was lying about where he was at the time of the murder because he was the only one who had a key to the cabana and..... but the detective doesn't put all that together until Chapter 12, though the savvy reader realizes....

Real Life Inspiring Writing

In an earlier bog post, Are Novels Largely Autobiographical?, I talk about how bits of experiences in my life are used in creating my fictional worlds, but when all is said and done, the novels are far from autobiographical. However, my poetry is much more autobiographical, and yet my poems too are not completely true to life. A writer often, as I do in my poetry, uses real life as an inspiration but does stick strictly to the facts. 
A writer's first commitment is to create good writing, or more to the point, good reading. To this end, in my poetry, I will often take an emotion or a life situation and magnify its effects to fully capture its essence. It's like cooking down a sauce to enhance the flavor. In so doing, I not only over dramatize the theme but I leave out details that would water down or take away from the full impact.
Readers are left with something that they can possibly relate to in their lives, something they once felt or experienced, and here it is in a pure form, spoken with uncluttered intensity. Though they too most likely did not have as raw of a real life event as the poem conveys, it's speaks to what they went through.
All this being said, here is my most recent poem:

Misguided

I think that when I hug him, what he feels is what it will be like when I’m gone and he can no longer experience the comfort of being in my arms.

When I kiss him, and he wants it so badly, he pulls away because he knows (has convinced himself) that someday he will not have my kisses, and it will be all the more agonizing if he lets me have his now.

My smile is taken to be a threat that I will someday only offer him only sneers.

My kindest gesture is interpreted as a promise that there will be a time when I no longer give him anything but pain.

Every time he does not slip his hand into mine, he is extending the kindness of making its absence less difficult when he is eventually gone.

When he does not say “I love you,” he is giving me a gift of a less-it-could-have-been someday broken heart.

Each time he refuses to share his past with me, he is assuring me that when I become someone from his past, my secrets will be safe.

The walls he erects are meant to support us both when the time comes for us to stand alone.

For my own protection he has told me it will never get any better.

That fact that I am still here, means little, for he could see the end before it even began.

Yet the fact that we are both still here, is because he has failed miserably in all his efforts to protect our hearts.

- Harrie Farrow August 2013

Food and Fiction

We all have to eat, generally about three times a day. Even fictional characters have to eat. Even zombies have to eat. My point is, unless you've created a fantasy world where eating is excluded from the picture, food is going to come into your novel, so you might as well make it work for you.
Give this some thought. Answers to the questions of what your characters eat, where they eat, and with whom they eat, are all great for developing characters, and relationships between characters, and can provide settings, and possibly even plot and conflict. Does that blind date take place at a cheap Chinese buffet and result in food poisoning? Does the rich sister insist the poor sister meet her at an upscale steakhouse, then run out leaving the tab unpaid after a call from her husband's mistress?
Maybe the role food plays in your book is simple and subtle. In the classic movie Repo Man, the main character opens the cupboard and takes out a can marked only "Food," opens it, and eats with a spoon.
Maybe food is a basic backdrop to your story as in the Japanese comedy, Tampopo, which has at its center a noodle restaurant.
In my novel, "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe" food and eating play many roles, for example, the characters often meet in coffee shops, lemon cake is the only sweet thing one character ever eats, and another character has college classmates teach her recipes from the various countries of their origins, and then there's the strawberries dipped in sugar at midnight scene.
Food is less relevant in my second novel but I had lots of fun with a scene involving two women eating doughnuts at a truck stop and another scene with a woman enjoying a mango while sitting in shallow waves on a Caribbean beach.  
Food offers so many opportunities in fiction, it would be a shame to not take advantage of this readily available tool. Food fight? T.V dinners? The mood at a fast-food joint during off hours? Hot dogs burning on a grill while the parents fight over who takes out the trash? Pink cotton candy stuck in her hair while she cries on a Ferris wheel? A snow cone on a hot day in his favorite flavor changes everything for John Doe? I'm sure you'll come up with something tasty.

What Inspires Your Characters?

In order to move your plot along, you have to have your character decide to do something. You've created conflict, so there are problems, to build suspense there are more problems. Something has to change, something has to bring the story to its climax.
While it may be tempting to make events beyond your character's control bring about the resounding crescendo of your novel, readers are much more enamored by a story if the struggling protagonist actually does something that makes all the difference. This is where your character needs inspiration. Generally, this is in the form of a catalyst - something new introduced to the story that awakens the lead.  It may be hitting rock bottom as a result of an especially catastrophic event. Just like what inspires alcoholics to go to AA, the situation gets so bad for your character that they are forced to recognize that something has to be done.
Your character may be woken up by something another character does or says at just the right moment - a slap on the face during a wedding by a grandmother who has always been only kind, a statement by a co-worker that makes the character realize that her impression of who she is, is far from how others see her. It may be that a new person or relationship in their life makes your character realize things can't go on the way they have been.
Perhaps it's something subtle like a glace in the mirror at a friend's house or the way a fish struggles on the end of the hook during a camping trip.
Inspiration can come in the form of a long-repressed memory coming to the surface, or a silly poem, or the look on a dog's face.
Your plot, theme, setting, and characters will all guide you toward the best choice for your book. Just make sure your readers feel it as intensely as you do.

The Fiction Of Love

The Fiction of Love

Love is not fiction, but love makes good fiction. Readers want to be moved; they want to leave the mundane of their life when their life does not leave the mundane. Of course one of the most assured ways to get your readers there is by writing about love. Perhaps what inspires us the most in life is love, wallowing in it when you have it, looking for it when you want it, recovering from it when it's gone. Everyone can relate and almost every story, no matter the genre, at least taps into this theme. One need not write a romance to write about love.
Love is also especially useful for creating the necessary page-turning, can't put it down, that keeps readers hungry for your books. Will he find love? Will she ever get that guy? Will he ever finally get a divorce and be with the one he truly loves? Will they ever stop fighting and enjoy their love? Will she ever tell her co-worker she loves her? Will love heal the pain of his past? etc.
One of the best vehicles for using love to create suspense is the friends/coworkers/neighbors who just can't quite seem to ever get it that they are in love. The reader figures it out early on but the characters, or one of the characters, is clueless. There is flirtation that is not recognized or acknowledged by those involved. There are excuses to get together that they believe are innocent. There is fluttery stomachs and nervous laughter that are written off as a reaction to the burrito at lunch and being over-tired. When will those two ever see what we see? When will they finally figure it out? Will they both figure it out at the same time? Will they ever stop laughing at their friends when they try to clue them in? Oh, we can't wait for the moment when they finally fall into each other's arms. But every time it seems there is a glimmer of recognition, they look away and start talking about their kids' baseball game, or suddenly notice that it's pouring rain and run into their separate cars.
Love is also good as a backdrop to other storylines. Love causes characters to make that fatal mistake that messes up their best-laid plans to become stockbrokers, or to rob a convenience store, or finally do right by their long-lost child. The loss of love drives characters to commit gruesome murders, or to become overly involved in their children's lives, or debauchery, or world travel.
Yep, love is a writer's best friend... or wait, is it really just friendship, or the beginning of a torrid romance?

Fist Impressions - Book Covers!

Fist Impressions - Book Covers!

Been struggling for weeks now to come up with a good cover for my novel "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe." If this had been anything but seriously daunting, my book would have been published already. I admit, I'm a slow learner. Not slow as in dull witted, but slow as in it takes me a while to process, assimilate and digest info that requires an important creative output on my end. I've been doing a whole lot of learning and digesting, and have found some interesting and useful bits of info and advice.
A book's cover is of utmost consequence - it's that all important first impression. This is especially true in today's internet world of massive, quick, and ever-evolving information. In a book store or library, once you've bothered to pull a book off the shelf, chances are you're going to look at the blurb on the back, or read the first paragraph, if the cover is anything less than repulsive. On the internet,  people make split second decisions to move on if their attention is not immediately sparked by the initial image they encounter.
One of the great things about e-publishing is that one can change one's cover easily and relatively quickly if a cover doesn't seem to be capturing an audience. In fact this convenience has demonstrated quite clearly how much difference a good cover can make. I read of a woman whose first book wasn't selling so well even though those who bought it gave it great reviews. She came up with a much better cover and her sales exploded.
With e-publishing size matters. Covers on e-books are only virtual and most often seen in the size of a thumb nail. An author's graphics have to be big enough to be clear in that size. Same with the title. Extra long tittles, like the working title I've had for my second - soon to be finished - novel "Bonita Verses Ivan Rastaman and the Monkey-Go-Round," end up needing smaller font sizes to fit, and thus become illegible. Which is why I've decided to go back to my original title, "The Man with the Camera."
Color is an issue too because many e-readers show the cover only in black and white. The first option I tried for "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe" had a black silhouette on a blue background; the effect was pretty cool in color but didn't work at all in black and white.
Some other useful advice on creating a cover, that I discovered, includes:
Don't depict some profound aspect about your story that isn't going to mean anything to someone who hasn't read it yet.
Figure out what feelings your book is meant to provoke and create a cover that will provoke the same feelings. You can do this by exploring what your book's themes are.
Sex sells, so if you have a lot of sex in your story use it on your cover. Duh; but someone did have to point this out to me. Well I said I was a little slow.
Don't bring your potential reader down. Another thing someone had to point out to me. I had chosen an image of  a sexy guy on a bed looking distressed. Yeah, my character is frustrated a lot, but I don't want those considering downloading my book to think it's a sad story when it's actually quite uplifting.
Anything else anyone reading this would like to add, I'd greatly appreciate it. I'm still working on that cover.

Using Humor in Dramatic Fiction

Using Humor in Dramatic Fiction.

I saw the movie Winter's Bone with my mother some time ago. We were quite impressed by the movie but it was super intense and my mother said, "There just wasn't any comic relief."
I had never thought about the role comic relief plays in dramatic stories before. However, I realized that I had been using it all along in my writing and that most dramatic fiction does too. Like a lot of things in life, we act out of instinct or perhaps in reaction to things we've picked up on subconsciously.
My novel "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe" is a dramatic tale of a man struggling to be himself in a world that doesn't want to have to accept who he is. After hearing me read many passages from my book, a fellow writer's group member said to me once, "I really enjoy your humor."
I especially appreciated the compliment as the humor in my book, despite being pervasive, is quite subtle. I was glad to see that I was successful in getting it across.
The humor is needed in my book; it's necessary to break up the tension, to prevent the reader from getting bogged down in the character's problems. As my novel is written in the first person, the humor is really that of my main character, Jim. Accordingly, the humor in his narrative also serves to gain the reader's empathy and allegiance. Everyone likes a good chuckle, and if Jim, despite all his problems, can get a little comic relief from the drama in his life, perhaps so can we when the going gets tough.

Using Setting in Dialogue

Using Setting in Dialogue

In real life, conversations usually have a lot of pauses - especially emotionally charged conversations. In fiction, much of the dialogue occurs in emotionally charged situations. A rapid exchange of comment and response will not ring true in this case. Adding, "he paused" or "She thought a bit" is fine once in a while, but that gets over used quickly.
One of the things I do to handle this is have my character's interact with their environment to show the pause or thinking occurring.
In "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe," during a very intense scene in a coffee shop when Jim, my main character, reveals he's bisexual to someone very important to him who's homophobic, I breakup dialogue and show his discomfort by having him feel the granules in a packet of sugar. In the same scene I have the person he's talking to stare fixedly at a car parked on the curb. I also show Jim gripping the edge of the saucer at one point, later, he's looking at the cold slosh at the bottom of his cup.
In "Bonita Verses Ivan Rastaman and the Monkey-Go-Round," I have Bonnie's mother accidentally singeing the blouse she's ironing for work when Bonnie asks her if she'd been a planned child.
The trick is to intersperse dialogue with body language at key moments. This also has the handy effect of creating suspense for the readers - keeping them waiting just a bit for what's going to be said next.

What's a Quarter Worth?

What's a Quarter Worth?

When I was maybe seven or eight years old, I wrote my first piece of fiction. It was a short story entitled, "A Dog, a Cat and a Mouse." I sent it to my aunt. She was so pleased, she sent me a quarter to encourage my writing career. I don't have the quarter anymore (my guess is I spent it on candy), or a copy of the story, but I do still - after several decades and many, many moves - have the note of encouragement that she taped the quarter to.
Obviously I already had the writing itch within me when I wrote that story, but it's likely that my aunt's encouragement and that first paycheck for my writing had a lot to do with me someday becoming "Novelist, Harrie Farrow."
Is there some wee person in your life who might benefit from such encouragement?

Getting to Know Your Characters.

Getting to Know Your Characters.

Characters who seem like flesh and blood people to readers is an essential part of good fiction. Mainly this requires that a character is multidimensional - just like real people. A character needs to have a past, hobbies, issues, dreams etc. 

One way to get to know who your character is in-depth, is to imagine him or her in all sorts of scenarios. It can be especially helpful to include situations not related to your story at all. In my novel, "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe," my main character, Jim, never once goes to a beach. But when I was on vacation during the time I was writing the book, even though I did not write during the vacation, I took the opportunity to - in my head - imagine Jim on the beach in Mexico. What circumstances would have brought him there? Who would he be with? What would they be saying to each other? What would he like or dislike about that beach? What kind of swimming attire would he wear? What beach activities would he partake in? Would he use sun block? etc.  

Once you have a real grasp on the people you people your novel with, it will come more automatically to you to know how they will respond to the situations in your book, what they will say and how they will say it. 

One of the things the other writers in my writers group use to say to me when I read from "Love, Sex, and Understanding the Universe" is "you really get inside Jim's head!" The truth was, I told them, that Jim really got inside my head. 

What Novelists Choose to Write About.

What Novelists Choose to Write About.
Yes, often our characters dictate our stories and it feels like we have very little control over it. But what was the impetus that developed the character in the first place? We - as authors - breath life into a new (fictional) being; what was our intent? People have myriads of reasons to create a story. Often the desire to entertain is really what it's all about. Sometimes a desire to educate in an entertaining matter is more the point - think "To Kill a Mocking Bird," or "Lord of the Flies." These books each highlight a reality of life in a way that keeps readers interested, and helps them understand the issue on a deeper level or from a new perspective.
My novel "Love, Sex and Understanding the Universe" was not written by me but by Jim, my fictional character. He told me his story and I put it on paper. But I created Jim as a vehicle to help me impart a greater understanding on the issues affecting bisexuals, in a way that would keep readers interested.
My novel, "Bonita verses Ivan Rastaman and the Monkey-go-round" is more about entertaining readers, but also deals with bisexuality, and the aftermath of alternative lifestyles of the Age of Aquarius.

Are Novels Largely Autobiographical?

Are Novels Largely Autobiographical?
People who have read my fiction often make comments that assume much of what I write is autobiographical. My character's all live lives that are extremely different from the one I've been leading, but that doesn't mean my experiences didn't help me write my novels. Events, people I've known, things people have said to me, and places I have been, have frequently inspired me. For example, in "Love, Sex and Understanding the Universe," my minor character, Carol was initially modeled after a woman I once saw on a bus. I have my character seeing her on the same bus route, wearing the same outfit, but when I couldn't get a good grasp on this woman's personality, I went and borrowed the physical attributes of an acquaintance of mine in the Ozarks. Suddenly Carol came alive and she's nothing like my acquaintance except in looks.
Likewise, for years I poked around with the idea that eventually became my second novel, "Bonita Verses Ivan Rastaman and the Monkey-Go-Round," but could not get it to take a hold on me. When I had my main character say and do some things a woman once said and did with me this brought Bonnie alive, though she is extremely different from the real woman I know. Then after I went to the Rainbow Gathering here in the Ozarks I decided to put Bonnie and her father in a scene there. While she sees some of the same things I did at the Gathering, her experience is her's alone and the people she meets are fabrications based on bits and pieces of people I have come across in my lifetime. It is this scene that made the novel finally take off for me.