Tag Archives: Pennsylvania

By the time we got to Woodstock . . .

Posted on by under Books, e-books, Fiction, history, Music, mystery, Novel, suspense

It is 1969, capstone of a tumultuous decade, and life in the rural town of Pennsboro, Pa. is about to explode. A dam that would flood the valley pits family against family. Protesters riot. Buildings burn. Amid the chaos, two lovers risk everything to fight for their dreams.

Elizabeth Reed feels conflicted. She loves the river the government wants to dam and a musician who can’t settle on any one person or place. Hayden Quinn, the guitarist Rolling Stone calls the next Jimi Hendrix, feeds a single obsession—to play Woodstock, the biggest concert of his life. He presents Elizabeth with a terrible dilemma: stay to save her family farm or relinquish her dreams to follow Quinn into the unknown.

Born Under a Bad Sign not only tells their story but the story of a generation. It’s opening sets the stage for a very personal battle for peace and love.

1.

FROM BEYOND THE hills came a jagged flash of light. Elizabeth Reed counted five seconds before the sound rumbled across the infield of the raceway, this makeshift venue for the largest outdoor rock concert on the East Coast. Another flash, and another ripple of thunder. In an improvized call and response, the crowd echoed its approval. The tower that held the lights and PA system trembled. So did Elizabeth’s arms and legs. She let the dizziness pass and, willing her stomach to settle, tucked both cameras under her arms and climbed to the sky.

      The warm-up band had just finished, the announcer promising that Orwell, fresh off its national tour, would soon take the stage. A wall of people surged forward. Despite the scalding July heat, this was the group’s homecoming and the locals had turned out in force, thousands of ragged kids with beards and muumuus, jostling each other in a fog of beer and smoke. Two years after Monterey Pop and the festival had come of age. So had the band.

      The tower swayed enough to cause Elizabeth to question her bravado. Despite the knot in her stomach, she climbed past speakers and spotlights for a better view of the makeshift stage, a plywood floor laid across a half-dozen flatbed trailers. The platform had been hastily constructed for the festival, the biggest in Pennsylvania’s Minisink Valley and a warm-up for one she’d heard could be even bigger, next month’s Woodstock Music & Art Fair in nearby New York.

      That was the real object of the evening’s performance, a final rehearsal for Orwell and its leader, Hayden Quinn, the guitarist Rolling Stone had called the next Jimi Hendrix, the man that Elizabeth, fresh out of high school, had followed halfway across the country as the band’s unofficial photographer. It was make or break time for the group. The band’s manager, Elizabeth’s Uncle Morey, had invited the man organizing Woodstock, Michael Lang, to attend the concert. So far, she hadn’t seen anyone fitting Lang’s description.

      As the wind rose to meet the night, Elizabeth realized that, if the crowd pressed closer, the tower could tip. Since her dizziness disappeared if she didn’t look down, she focused on the distance, tracking the Delaware as it wandered between Pennsylvania and New Jersey like a nomad, flowing freely despite the government’s effort to dam the river and drown her family’s farm. With the telephoto lens, she could isolate her property, snug in the rich bottom land of the valley. Camera in hand, river and fields spread below, she felt exhausted, scared, and ridiculously happy.

      Voices below startled her. Dressed in black, two members of the security crew waved her from the tower. The yelling morphed into the sound of hammering. Against the raw wood of the stage, Tommy Reed nailed cardboard cylinders to rows of two-by-tens, preparing the fireworks for the evening’s finale. He seemed dwarfed by the munitions.

      When the sound system kicked in with a recording of “Crossroads,” Elizabeth gripped the metal pipes to maintain her balance. Despite the rush of adrenaline, her arms ached from lugging a pair of heavy Nikons all day. With a normal lens, the weight seemed bearable. But when loaded with a zoom and a motor drive, the outfit felt as if it weighed as much as a bale of hay. Before she descended, she snapped a picture of Tommy as he wired his makeshift rig, the camera hot and slippery in her hands. Heaven help them if she dropped it on his head.

      As soon as she landed, the security officers assumed their positions in front of the stage while the roadies assembled the last of the equipment. Her older brother Robbie frowned as he arranged cymbals and tightened the drumheads, his rusty hair in a deliberately unhip buzzcut. Reaching above his head, Cordell White plugged his bass into a stack of amplifiers and plucked a few notes. Unlike Robbie, who wore his usual white T-shirt and shorts, Del had dressed for show in leather pants, a jacket of purple satin, and a high-crowned Navajo hat with a yellow plume. Both of them looked frustrated, or mad.

      Tommy caught her eye and jerked his head toward the edge of the stage. He, too, appeared angry, a look that was highlighted by chapped lips, hair the color of licorice, and a nose as sharp as a chisel. The only festive thing about him was the tie-dyed headband.

      “Hey, Cuz,” she said, drawing a face that signaled either irritation or fatigue.

      He smelled of oil and mint. As usual, he wore sunglasses so dark that she wondered how he could see to connect the fireworks. Pecking him on the cheek, she took in the rows of rockets, mortars, and Roman candles that crowded both sides of the stage and felt a twinge of concern. “Aren’t they a little close?”

      Tommy scratched his back with a screwdriver. “Close?”

      “To the band.”

      Another crack of thunder and Tommy dragged a tarp over the pods. “Wait and see.”

      As security stopped a ginger-haired man flashing press credentials, Elizabeth regained the tower. One by one, the members of Orwell wandered onto the stage to a cascade of applause. Robbie positioned his cymbals, Del and Quinn hunched over tuning pegs, and Mattie, jiggling her ample ass, asked the crowd how they were doing. As the band struck its first tectonic chord, the audience thundered their approval.

      Mattie belted out the first number with a ferocity that shook the towers, all trace of her Southern accent lost in the ricochet of sound. Robbie thrashed as if he were drowning in one of the cow ponds on the family farm. Even Del, who usually bobbed in place, stalked the boards, his face a darkening cloud.

      Quinn followed with a scorching lead that featured a collision of Bach, Thelonious Monk, and Hendrix. Shirtless now and barefoot, he played with a single-mindedness akin to religious devotion, prowling the stage, slashing his guitar, bending strings until they threatened to snap. He hammered the neck with both hands as if playing a piano, the sound a frenetic cross between Paganini and Robert Johnson, the shaman who’d sold his soul to the devil for his talent.

      From her perch, she tracked the band, feeling more than hearing the smack of the mirror as it lifted to admit the light, the whir of the motor drive as it advanced the frames. Pace yourself, she thought, or you’ll run out of film.

      Like a tsunami, the intensity of the music grew, Quinn hurtling his body into the wave of sound, his head bowed, shoulders hunched, fingers on fire. Dreadlocks flew as he reared, face twisted in ecstasy, the notes tracking across his lips. No matter how many times she’d seen the show, Elizabeth felt stunned, and not just by the acoustical acrobatics. With the flick of his fingers, Quinn guided the music from brave to anxious to calm. Elizabeth felt warmth and humor, sadness and pity, and so much in between. It astonished her that anyone could convey such emotion without the use of a single word.

      The band continued the pace, blazing through songs as if racing to an uncertain end. By the close of the set, their faces shone with euphoria and sweat. Robbie raised his sticks, caught the eye of Quinn and Del, and they miraculously finished on the same beat, even as Tommy launched the first volley of fireworks, burning the night in a shower of red and gold.

      The musicians filtered off stage, waited a beat, and returned to a swelling ovation. With a deep bow, and a nod from Mattie, they launched into one of the medleys Quinn had arranged as an encore. Even before Elizabeth traced their faces through the telephoto, she could tell that, as the music grew more frantic, they struggled to hear. Hitting the final chorus, Mattie looked over her shoulder as if she were lost in the woods. Robbie buried his head in his drum kit. Del and Quinn traded places, Del moving to the monitors along the wing while Quinn arched over the stage to listen to the PA speakers.

      The music had grown so loud that Elizabeth could barely feel the vibration through the camera body as the motor drive cranked through another roll of film, thirty-six exposures in a matter of seconds before she hunched to reload.

      This time, the band didn’t leave the stage. They bowed slightly, as if they’d expended so much energy they had little left for movement, before launching into the second encore, a reprise of their single, “Bomb Babies,” that ended in a cataclysmic version of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Quinn had shortened the piece for maximum impact and, when he nodded, Tommy let loose with his final volley.

      From the corner of the viewfinder, Elizabeth watched the skyrockets arc into the night and explode in phosphorescent swirls. She grabbed a shot of Tommy, who timed the bursts to coincide with the downbeat. As the encore hit its crescendo, he quickened the pace, unleashing a white-hot assault that mimicked the original cannon fire. The band fed off the energy, Quinn and Robbie flailing, Del leaning dangerously close to the fireworks while Mattie spread her arms to embrace the crowd.

      Then, as Elizabeth lifted the camera to her face, the stage flashed with a blinding light and the world exploded.

The band with kaleidoscope eyes

Posted on by under Culture, Music, Nonfiction

Fifty-three years ago, a group of high school kids calling themselves Shagg performed as the warmup band for the bubblegum hit machine The Ohio Express. What a contrast in musical styles, and whiplash for the audience, who’d come to hear the Top 40 classic “Yummy Yummy Yummy” and got Hendrix, Cream, and The Who. (“Yummy” hit No. 4 on the U.S. charts in April 1968. Although we eyed fortune and fame, our band never had a hit, or a recording contract. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, So it goes.)

The date was Saturday, June 22, 1968, the venue the Hullabaloo Club in Wind Gap, Pennsylvania, a pole building off a four-lane highway that looked like a World War II bivouac and felt the size of an aircraft hanger. Concrete floor, metal walls. I doubt anyone heard anything except a wall of noise. It certainly sounded that way from the stage.

Shagg’s original lineup consisted of Chip Decker on bass, Bob Dittman on rhythm guitar, John McAllister on drums, and me on lead guitar. The band expanded with the addition of Joey Raynock on keyboards, Gene Gorse on the Hammond B-3, and Ron Oney and Don Chase on vocals.

I wrote about that and other formative experiences of our generation in FINDING WOODSTOCK, which you can find at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and other fine retailers.

As for the poster, yes, it is the original, on neon cardboard, with additional styling by Chip, the artist in the band. He added the flowers, the smoke streaming from the locomotive, and a girl with kaleidoscope eyes (it was the Sixties). Oh, yes, and the most important element that was missing from the original: our name.

Trial by Fire

Posted on by under Books, e-books, Fiction, mystery, Novel, real estate, suspense, thriller

In her fifth outing (after Permanent Vacation), former detective-turned-real-estate-agent CW McCoy rushes headlong into her most troubling case, one that will change her life forever. With Burning Man, she faces the greatest challenge of all—coming to terms with a past that continues to blaze.

Here’s the opening chapter:

I WOKE TO the smell of danger. It seeped through the floorboards and pushed under the door and crawled into my bed. It stung my eyes and clogged my nose and tasted sour as an old penny. There was another smell, too, like the time Mommy turned on the stove and forgot to light it and my brother made a joke about the house blowing up.

It was four days before Christmas, a Saturday and the start of our holiday vacation, mine from kindergarten, Colton’s from second grade, although it didn’t feel like Christmas, because there was no snow. Daddy had just put up the lights, too many, Mommy said. He’d stood on a ladder and hung them over the windows while Mommy stood on the sidewalk below, her arms crossed, telling him not to burn down the house.

This smell felt wrong. Like the time Daddy lit a fire and forgot to open the flap in the chimney, and the smoke tumbled out in swirling stripes, as if it were trying to escape. The smell was dry as the newspapers he pushed beneath the twigs, the logs making a high, hissing sound as if they were hurt by the flames.

My parents had gone to a party. They should have been back. They should have come in to check.

The light that came through the curtains made a square on the wooden floor. Beneath the door, the smoke went in and out as if something in the hall was breathing, alive, coming after me. A lizard with a flame for a tongue or the lady with her hair full of snakes. Or burglars. Daddy was always talking about burglars. Colt would say it was a dragon, breathing fire and smoke as it hunted for little children to cook and eat, but then he liked to scare me.

The smoke stung my eyes and hurt my head. I couldn’t swallow. But I had to warn everyone. And I had to see what was in the hall.

Sliding from bed, knocking over the lamp and a gold cup with curly handles that said I could count to twenty, I crept toward the door. The floor felt warm. I reached for the knob. It turned, but the door wouldn’t open. I rattled and pulled and yanked as hard as I could, but the door wouldn’t budge. I banged on it and yelled for Colt, whose bedroom was across from mine, but no one answered. I put my ear to the keyhole, but I couldn’t hear the voices I’d heard earlier, just before I’d fallen asleep. Angry voices.

Smoke curled over my feet and crept up my pajamas. Like a dusty hand, it pushed me toward the bed. Tripping over the lamp, I crawled under the quilt Nana had made for me, the one with a picture of Snoopy on his doghouse, and stared at the door, daring the monster in the hall to break it down. Its gray breath grew dark, rolling up the wall and across the ceiling. It warmed the air and stuffed my nose and made my tongue stick to the top of my mouth.

From the street below, I heard a siren and the honk honk of horns.

The smoke changed from gray to yellow-brown. It rose through the cracks in the floor and reached over the bed. My chest felt as if someone had me in a bear hug, but I would not go with the smoke. I would climb out the window and come back through the front door and run up the stairs to wake Colton. And together we would save our parents.

Pulling the quilt over my shoulders, I stumbled to the window and tried to lift it, but the window was stuck. I pounded the latch with my hands, but the latch wouldn’t budge.

The sirens got louder, and then they stopped. Red lights flashed across the window. From the street, I heard honking and shouting and the rattle of something as it scraped against the house. Then a dark shape holding a long stick appeared in the window and ducked out of sight, so I wouldn’t know what it was doing. It raised the stick and used it to smash the window and ran it around the edge, the glass flying into the curtains and bouncing across the floor. The shape had a big head that stuck out in the back and a mask like divers wore in the ocean. That’s where its breath came from, the smoke, how it blew it under the door into my room. And because the door was locked, it had climbed up the side of the house. It put a foot on the window and another on the floor and, setting the stick against the wall, stuck out its big black hands and moved toward me.

My ears stung. My heart hurt. My mouth felt as dry as paper. Falling back into the quilt, I cried for help, but nothing came out.

The dark shape wore a raincoat and gloves and had a hump on its back. As it got closer, I saw that it wasn’t a monster but a man, a fireman. He was saying something from inside his mask, but I couldn’t hear. He stomped across the floor and, like the smoke, reached for me. I got scared. I couldn’t leave before I found Colton and Mom and Dad. As I backed against the bed, my hand landed on the cup. I couldn’t stop whatever was still in the hall, Colt would have to do that, but I could stop the man. Raising the cup over my head, I rose to my knees and swung as hard as I could.

But the man was too fast. Wrapping me in the quilt, he threw me over his shoulder and lifted me through the window. I couldn’t breathe and began pounding on his hump. Opening my eyes, I looked down a ladder at firetrucks and flashing lights and people dragging big fans through our front door. The ladder bounced. I felt dizzy. The lights hurt my eyes. The man’s foot slipped.

Just when I thought he would drop me, my cellphone rang.

—

Burning Man is available through bookstores and online at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Smashwords. You can find all of the books in the Candace McCoy series, plus other works of fiction and nonfiction, at my author page on Amazon.

An unhappy family like no other

Posted on by under Books, e-books, Fiction, mystery, Novel, suspense, thriller

Did CW McCoy’s father kill her mother and brother and nearly take her life? The question has haunted the former detective for nearly thirty years. When friend and mentor Walter Bishop discovers that police have arrested a suspect, CW reluctantly revisits her roots to uncover the hard truth about her family—no matter the cost.

Confronted by hostile sources and a city ravaged by a string of arsons, CW questions everything she’s come to believe about that night. Did her father commit the crime, or was he framed? Did he disappear, or was he murdered? And what about her own history with conflict? Does the family’s violent streak run in her veins, too?

In her fifth outing (after Permanent Vacation), CW rushes headlong into her most troubling case, one that will change her life forever. With Burning Man, she faces the greatest challenge of all—coming to terms with a past that continues to blaze.

Burning Man is available through bookstores and online at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Smashwords.

Gardner’s Ghosts

Posted on by under Authors, Books, Culture, Fiction, Nonfiction, Novel, Writers, Writing

On a warm Tuesday in September of 1982, I received a letter from the novelist John Gardner about a collection of my short stories he’d been gracious enough to critique. That evening, as I sat in the newsroom editing copy, the city editor swiveled his computer monitor and said, “You should read this.”

Gardner had died that day, the 14th, in a motorcycle accident. The description in the story that had moved over the wire read like something from his novels. It didn’t make sense. I’d just seen him, on my first and only visit to his house in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, standing in his makeshift office, touring his home, speaking to his fiancée. He was a living legend among writers, his novel October Light a bestseller, his newest at the time, Mickelsson’s Ghosts, leading the book review section of the New York Times. Unlike many celebrities, he was approachable, hospitable to emerging writers. And now he was gone.

John Champlin Gardner Jr. was born on July 21, 1933. His death 36 years ago came as a blow. The author of 14 novels and numerous others works, he taught at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the State University of New York’s Binghamton University. All notable achievements, but a CV hardly describes his influence.

Over the course of his career, he evolved from ardent critic to mentor who embraced veterans and novitiates alike. Still, his true north was in storytelling. He eschewed labels, focusing on the ancient art, rewriting epic tales like Beowulf from the monster’s point of view and putting people at the heart of great philosophical debates. He strove to create what he called “a vivid and continuous dream” in the mind of the reader, writing novels with an intensity often reserved for short stories and poetry.

His passion overflowed in his nonfiction, too. Gardner seemed obsessed with the collision of philosophy and culture. He constantly argued against nihilism, a doctrine that claims nothing is knowable and rejects all distinctions in moral value. In his work of criticism, On Moral Fiction, he called for books with “just and compassionate behavior,” art that “establishes models of human action.” It’s likely he deeply identified with Grendel, the monster in Beowulf, who finds itself cast from heaven because it is ugly, comes from a bad family and asks too many questions—possibly a comment on the maligned state of humans, as Gardner’s father was a lay preacher.

While his characters were not always models of behavior, Gardner treated students and aspiring writers with a generosity and grace consistent with his values. I first met him in May of 1982 after he spoke, at the invitation of professor and novelist Fred Misurella, at East Stroudsburg State College, in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Gardner looked the part of the Great Writer, sporting a shock of white hair overflowing his forehead and small, wrinkled bags under his eyes. His ubiquitous pipe kept winking out as he talked. He also acted the part. After reading aloud the first page of one of my stories, he invited me to his home in Susquehanna for a longer critique.

* * *

Gardner lived across an open metal bridge on the edge of town, in a farmhouse nestled among the hills the locals call the Endless Mountains, purplish gray and draped with mist like the webs of tent caterpillars. The clapboard house resembled an old train station, with curlicues over the porch. Inside sat Gardner’s son, Joel, a photographer, and Susan Thornton. She and John were to be married that Saturday. A colleague of his handed him a few short stories and a novel for Gardner’s comments. They talked about producing plays in Susquehanna and about a literary magazine on which he was working.

Then it was my turn. Gardner retreated to his study, a spare room with big windows, to concentrate on the story I’d brought. His desk consisted of a door resting on two sawhorses, covered with pipes and stacks of papers. He hunched over the work, making quick notes in pencil. Then he and Susan had to leave, Gardner apologizing repeatedly for offering me so little time.

In the living room, I asked Joel how much of his father’s work was autobiographical. Not much, he said, but then opened the door to the dining room. With its thick beams and sparkling new plaster, it resembled something out of Mickelsson’s Ghosts.

There were other similarities. The main character in that novel, Peter Mickelsson, is a professor at SUNY Binghamton who is battling a failing national reputation and the IRS. He lives in Susquehanna and is going through a divorce. That much mirrored Gardner’s life. But Mickelsson is going mad, his mind enflamed with the ghosts of Martin Luther and Nietzsche, as well as his wife, son, two lovers and a murderous couple who used to live in the farmhouse. Joel smiled at this and said his father invented most of the book.

* * *

John Gardner was born in Batavia, in northwestern New York. His father worked as a dairy farmer, his mother as a high school literature teacher. His first novel sold about a thousand copies, but The Sunlight Dialogues became a bestseller in 1972 and October Light won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1976. He was an academic but not an elitist. Playboy paid top dollar for his short stories. (“Julius Caesar and the Werewolf” appeared in September 1984). He raced motorcycles, survived surgery for cancer of the colon and was married several times. He settled in rural Susquehanna on a 30-acre farm and continued to work.

A gifted writer with a marvelous ear for dialogue, he always wrote interesting books. But with Mickelsson’s Ghosts, he had completed his evolution, merging philosophy with a vital narrative, tempered by a humility that bordered on self-doubt. By the time he got to Susquehanna, he’d turned the ferocious critic into a man who wanted to say good things about others. People believed he was trying to find his place.

That day at his house, he seemed subdued. Seated on the couch, he spoke in a smooth and quiet voice about future projects. As an aside, I said I’d had trouble finding his work in the local bookstore. The novels weren’t filed under the category of “Fiction.” I’d asked the clerk if she carried the author and she led me to the back of the store. We found his books filed under “Literature.”

Gardner listened intently, without expression, then threw back his head and laughed.

Stormy weather

Posted on by under Authors, Books, Creativity, Fiction, Novel, Writers, Writing

Starting a new project is never easy. Working during a storm that threatens your entire state makes it even harder to concentrate.

Now that Hurricane Irma has swept through Florida and spared our home, I’m trying to refocus efforts on a new novel, tentatively titled Born Under a Bad Sign, although The Peaceable Kingdom might provide an ironic description of the theme.

Set in 1969 just before the historic Woodstock Music & Art Fair, the book pits the residents of eastern Pennsylvania against the government in a battle to save or dam the Delaware River. It introduces two young people, a budding photographer named Elizabeth Reed and a prodigal musician called Hayden Quinn, who struggle with their own personal conflicts as they weigh the risks and rewards of love and fame.

For Elizabeth, the peace of the Minisink Valley is a form of paradise. For Quinn, whom Rolling Stone calls the next Jimi Hendrix, Eden lies to the north, at Max Yasgur’s farm. Whether they realize their dreams is an open question.

Unlike its predecessors, the CW McCoy and Brinker novels, this work is more mainstream, an exploration of the baffling mysteries faced by a sixteen-year-old woman on her emotional journey to adulthood.

I started working on paper (hence, the image of the notecards) before graduating to Word, with its document-view feature that uses headers to provide a visual outline of the manuscript. Less onerous than outlining, it’s a system I recommend to fellow writers who want flexibility as well as organization.

 

The locus of murder

Posted on by under Authors, Books, Creativity, Culture, Fiction, Law Enforcement, mystery, Novel, Photography, PR, suspense, thriller, Writers, Writing

In fiction, when does setting become a character? When does location move from background to foreground?

Readers from Pennsylvania to Florida have called out locales they recognize in both the CW McCoy and Brinker series of crime novels. Even with altered geography and names, those places seem to resonate like the voice of a friend.

As they did with me while doing research for Tourist in Paradise, Peak Season and Mr. Mayhem. Here, then, are some of the images that inspired the characters that inhabit those books. As well as the writer.

Sarasota marina, similar to one where Walter Bishop berths his sailboat in CW McCoy novels

Sarasota marina, similar to the one where Walter Bishop berths his sailboat in CW McCoy novels

 

Sansara condos in Sarasota, one of models for DeSoto Park complex in “Tourist in Paradise”

Sansara condos in Sarasota, one of the models for the massive DeSoto Park complex in Tourist in Paradise

 

Farmers Market in downtown Sarasota, where CW and Tony Delgado meet in “Peak Season”

Farmers Market in downtown Sarasota, where CW and Tony Delgado meet in Peak Season

 

The Sarasota skyline inspired creation of CW McCoy’s Spanish Point

The Sarasota skyline inspired creation of CW McCoy’s Spanish Point

 

Sarasota Police Dept. inspired Spanish Point’s PD where Cheryl, Oz, Delgado work

Sarasota Police Dept. inspired Spanish Point’s PD where Cheryl, Oz and Delgado work

 

Drumming the sun down at Siesta Beach, where CW finds second body in “Peak Season”

Drumming the sun down at Siesta Beach, where CW finds a second body in Peak Season

 

Key Breeze stands in for galley of Mary Beth, where CW finds an unconscious Walter Bishop

Key Breeze stands in for the galley of the Mary Beth, where CW finds an unconscious Walter Bishop in Tourist in Paradise

Lend us your friends’ ears

Posted on by under Audio, Authors, Books, Business, Commerce, Culture, Fiction, Marketing, Mobile, Nonfiction, Novel, PR, Social media, Writers, Writing

Audible has a new service called Clips. It works like bookmarks do in e-books and web browsers, with a feature for the sharing economy.

Here’s how.

Audible clipsFirst, you have to have the latest app for an iOS device. Then, when you hear a passage you’d like to share with others, tap the Clip icon, move the start and end points and save it the snippet, or share via email or social media.

Saving the clip allows you to return to that spot for a repeat performance. Benefit to you. Sharing the clip amplifies Audible’s marketing and might eventually put a few more pennies in the pockets of its authors and narrators. Game, set and match to Audible.

But before grow too critical, I’d like listeners to try the service on one of my audiobooks, Peak Season or Mr. Mayhem, depending on whether you like a strong female lead or a crazy disgraced journalist nattering in your ear for seven hours.

Speaking of nattering . . . let me know what you think.