Thursday, February 27, 2014

The Internet Cowboy

I am fortunate that I do not suffer from that dreaded disease of writer's block. Most often I have the ability to just sit down and write. However, I do it a bit differently than most other writers in that I often write two stories simultaneously. I try to write a thriller and a romance novel together, one on one sheet and the second story on another sheet. I will sometimes get an idea for my romance story while writing a thriller story, so I just jump over and log my idea, maybe in great detail and maybe just the single idea. It is amazing how effective this is for me.

Another thing I do is set up my outline of points I want to cover in a story and keep them just ahead on the page I am writing. I also log the main characters of the story so that they are right there all the time. This helps me keep things in perspective as I jump between stories. Should I get a new idea while I am writing, I simply put a new detail in the correct place on my outline.

This may never work for another author, but for me it is gold. I couldn't write without doing these minor things. If you have never tried these ideas, give them a try.

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The Internet Cowboy

By

Paul R. Meredith


Perry Williams, a semi-recluse, receives a gift package in the mail that totally mystifies him. He wonders who would send him a gift. When he finally opens, the box, it explodes in his face, destroying the house and setting in motion a long, frustrating investigation by Detective Oren Baker and his partner, Burt Hendricks.
            Leads are difficult to discover, but eventually a suspect, a neighbor next door to Perry, Sid Thompson, is identified and questioned. As Baker puts more and more pressure on Thompson, he suddenly flees the area and disappears from the police radar.
            In an attempt to find relatives of Perry Williams, a sister of his is located, so Baker and Hendricks follow that path and learn several interesting things that lead them to broaden their investigation all the way to Nashville. Two additional suspicious deaths are uncovered, both in areas where Thompson was known to live at the same time of the deaths. Potential leads are followed to no avail, until eventually the two additional deaths are determined to be murders. It is revealed through the intensive investigation and hard-nosed questioning by Burt Hendricks that Thompson could be connected to them.
            Baker soon learns his daughter has been involved in a traffic accident in Davenport, Iowa. He rushes the miles to get to the hospital to be with her, only to receive a cell call notifying him he is minutes too late. His son-in-law notified him she just died, leaving both of the men devastated. A small son is left without a mother.
            Eventually Baker falls in love with and marries long-time district attorney Lila Burns. He makes several attempts to bring Thompson to arrest and trial, both before and after his marriage, but each time Lila says there isn’t enough solid proof to convict him, so she refuses to prosecute. After his marriage, Baker is promoted to police chief once his boss retires. Soon there is enough evidence to bring Thompson to trial. Lila is convinced she can get a conviction.
            It is a huge, shocking surprise when Baker’s new daughter-in-law is his identified as Thompson’s defense attorney. But as shocking as it is, it pales in comparison to the shock of how the trial is conducted and the way the story comes to a dramatic climax.
            The intense, shocking end of this mystery thriller is not easy to guess. The story starts with a bomb blast and several other explosive situations in the story will take the reader’s breath away as they anxiously read to the final paragraphs of the last page.

The primary setting for this mystery thriller is in the heartland of America, the Midwestern cities of Peoria and Decatur, Illinois, as well as Davenport, Iowa, and Nashville, Tennessee.  
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Wednesday, February 26, 2014

In My Wildest Dreams

A few years ago I knew a lady who had the ability to see things most of us never see. She lived in Iowa, a state I lived in for twelve years. While my story is fiction, the settings are not. Some of what you will read in this story is what really happened in the lady's life, although of course the actual names in the story are fictitious, as is much of the rest of the story. But there were other events that took place in that area in Iowa that made me want to write this story someday. Of all the romance stories I have written, this one took me to some places I thought were important to be discussed.

This story has three primary characters, Josh, Julia and Dianne. It is a complicated love story that will keep the reader's full attention as it weaves its way through the peaks and valleys of real life. The story will make you laugh at times, but then just as suddenly cause you to cry. Ultimately, the story will make you feel the happiness of what can be achieved when true love prevails between two people, even the story had the saddest of beginnings.

Please read, In My Wildest Dreams. I don't think you will be sorry.

http://www.amazon.com/My-Wildest-Dreams-Paul-Meredith-ebook/dp/B00ANQILIE/ref=la_B00DS736E4_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393440616&sr=1-11




 

Monday, February 24, 2014

Canadian Romantic Adventure

I had the privilege of being in Canada twice several years ago. The beauty of Lake Wabaskang in Ontario Province, a place where I stayed in a cabin on a remote island miles from civilization, was beyond my ability to describe in mere words, so I tried to capture the things I saw and experienced in a fictional tale of romance and adventure. I designed the extremely simple (sort of retro) cover of the story on my tablet, The story is set in two countries, the USA and Canada. The title is, Memories of Lake Wabaskang. If you like adventure and are a romantic, this is a story that will do it for you. Here is a small sample of the start of the story:

Memories of Lake Wabaskang
by

Paul R. Meredith

The surface of the water appeared to be a huge mirror reflecting the blue sky and the white puffy clouds hanging above it. Never in all the twelve years she had come here from her home in Illinois for two weeks of each year had Stacy seen the lake so still and so absolutely beautiful. The sounds of the loons on the morning lake seemed to be calling her to come to the water’s edge. They called to her the same way in the quiet evenings as well. Many evenings she would sit on the cabin steps or on a large rock at the edge of the lake to listen to their calming calls. The calls of the loons were mysteriously beautiful and seemed to have a quieting effect on her she didn’t quite understand. She could sit and listen to them for a long time without ever moving. As she gazed across the big lake, Stacy thought paradise must be like this.

Stacy’s husband Dave taught her to love this place from the first year they were married. It had been his dream to own a cabin in Canada, preferably on one of the large lakes in Ontario, and be able to come anytime he had the chance. The year before he and Stacy married, he saw the chance and bought the cabin from a wealthy attorney who was ill and retiring from practice in Davenport, Iowa. The cabin was located on Lake Wabaskang in southern Ontario. It was north of Kenora up on Red Lake Road. Dave had worked in the old attorney’s office for a short time after he passed the Illinois Bar. That’s where he met Stacy. She was clerking for the same attorney and his partner while she was still in law school. It was almost
love at first sight for him, but not exactly the same for Stacy.
Dave fell hard for her and asked her out after knowing her slightly over two weeks, but she flatly turned him down. “Thanks, but I want to get my career started before I get all bogged down with personal things that could interfere with it,” she told him. But Dave was a persistent cuss and made it his goal to talk her into accepting a date from him. It took three months of talking, but she finally relented one evening after work and told him, “Yes, I will agree to a date with you, but the date will have to be for dinner.”
Dave jumped on the offer. “Terrific, yes, I absolutely agree to that.”
“At my parents’ home,” she added.
“Whoa, I don’t think I’m quite ready for that yet. We haven’t even gone out together. I just want to get to know you better, not meet your parents.”
“That’s my offer, so are you not taking it?”
“Why not just the two of us going to dinner first? If that goes well, which I think it will, we could do the thing with the folks later. I am not asking you to marry me, at least not just yet.”
Stacy turned and walked away.
“Hey, wait, what about an answer for me?” Dave insisted.
“I gave you the answer in the terms I offered. Apparently you didn’t like them.”
“But what if your parents don’t like me?” Dave asked.
“I guess that would mean we wouldn’t be having any future dates, so I would say that if you think you might ever want to see me again, you had better be on your best behavior when you meet them at dinner,” Stacy matter-of-factly said. “And as far as that stupid comment you made about not asking me to marry you, please, give me a break. As far as I know right now, you might be the world’s biggest jerk. I guess time will tell.”
Her rejoinder caught Dave by surprise. He hadn’t realized she was quite so spunky. “But why? Just give me one good reason why we have to have dinner with them.”



Sunday, February 23, 2014

Second Chance

This is a beginning excerpt from one of my best romance novels, Second Chance. I hope it will interest you enough for you to want to purchase it.
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Second Chance


By


Paul R. Meredith

Chapter I




The night was closing in fast on Ted Wilson as he started the drive from Chicago to return back home to Sullivan. He had been in town for three days to help one of his consulting clients through a large and complicated software change.
The rain first started out as light, intermittent drizzle on the windshield of the car as he left the southern edge of the Windy City, and then later changed to a steady drizzle of light rain. Ten miles down the road it changed to heavier rain, but not so heavy it hampered his vision to any large degree. But by the time he reached the northern edge of Kankakee this warm autumn evening, the rain had slightly decreased in intensity once again and the fog was becoming extremely heavy in spots.
Ted stopped in Kankakee and called his wife on his cell phone. “Hi honey, I’m on my way home, but it’s raining up here and it’s extremely foggy, so I pulled into a restaurant off the highway so I could call you without crashing the car and let you know I’m running a bit behind. I need to gas up and grab a cup of coffee and a sandwich anyway.”
“What time do you think you will be home?” Marge asked her husband.
“I’m guessing around nine to nine-thirty. I just hope the fog lets up some. I can handle the drizzle of rain, but the fog makes it doubly tough. Is it foggy down there?” he asked his wife.
Marge looked out the window. “No, there’s no fog here, at least not yet, but it is drizzling some light rain. It must have just started a few minutes ago because when I came in from work it was dry.”
“I was hoping I’d drive out of this pretty quick, but I guess that won’t happen. I could be as late as ten if the fog doesn’t let up south of here.”
“Just be careful driving, honey. I want you here safely, so take your time and don’t worry about anything else. I’ll be here waiting up for you. Should I have something prepared for you to eat?” she asked.
“No, as I mentioned, I’m grabbing a quick bite and a cup of black coffee here, so I’ll be good to go. See you later. Love you.”
“Love you too, sweetheart,” she said as she put the receiver on the phone.
Thirty minutes later, Ted had finished eating his hamburger and had gassed up the car. He was ready for the drive on down toward home as he entered the ramp back out onto the interstate. The best speed he could manage was about forty to forty-five miles per hour. It was very difficult to see anything more than twenty-five or thirty feet ahead of the car. He just kept his eyes glued on the taillights ahead of him. He drove south for about fifty miles under these conditions, and then the fog seemed to lighten up in spots and he was able to increase his speed to fifty-five. He immediately decreased speed whenever he ran into a heavy patch of the fog, as did the vehicle ahead of him. Soon the vehicle pulled off one of the off ramps to exit. Then Ted drove as a single vehicle without any guide to follow, slowing a bit from the speed he drove earlier. This allowed some of the big rigs to pass him. It bothered him that they were passing him. How can they see any better than I can? he wondered. This stuff is like pea soup.
No sooner had this thought left his mind than he hit another really thick patch of fog, and suddenly he saw the bright red flashes of automobile and truck stoplights and heard the crashing of metal. Ted jammed the brakes as hard as he could while his car slid helplessly sideways on the wet pavement toward a mass of smoking and torn metal and rubber. He thought he heard screaming ahead. 
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Second Chance is available at: 

 



Saturday, February 22, 2014

In MY Wildest Dreams



A sample from my story, In My Wildest Dreams

The loud buzz of the electric alarm woke Josh up with a start. Then the blaring morning news erupted on the television he had set to go off at six. He sat upright in bed, perspiration saturating his entire upper body. His tee shirt was soaked completely through. “Damn, not again!” he swore as he jumped from the bed and headed for the bathroom, attempting with great difficulty to peel the tee at the same time.
            Josh shed his shorts and tee shirt and started to open the shower door, and then he remembered he had to shave first. He quickly lathered his face with the shaving cream and ripped his razor from the drawer. He shaved in short quick strokes, carelessly cutting himself on the chin. When he finished shaving he looked for his styptic pencil so he could stop the bleeding, but it wasn’t where he thought he left it in the drawer. He stepped in the shower thinking the warm water would stop the bleeding while he showered. He lathered up his body and scrubbed it with the washcloth. When he was done, he rinsed the soap from his body from top to bottom, slowly ratcheting the water temperature from warm to cold.
            Stepping from the shower when he was done, he saw the bleeding had stopped. Now he wondered how long the nagging dreams would continue. It seemed there was no letup to them. Every night was the same thing. It was affecting his daily life as well because he was not sleeping very well and seemed tired every day. The dreams woke him several times each night, but then he would turn back to sleep, only to have the same dream start all over again. It was maddening. He wondered whether a shrink could help him, but then he quickly discarded the idea. Down deep he didn’t really believe in shrinks anyway.


This story takes place in the heartland of America in places where I lived. It is one of my most popular romance novels. I know you will enjoy the story as you read it. It will not be easy to lay it down until you reach the end. Enjoy.

Paul

Thursday, February 20, 2014

I love to write mystery thrillers like one I wrote recently. It is a story called, The SWOB Affair. The story is one of mystery and intrigue, but also of a brutal killing of a young mother. Imagine, if you can, a young mother attends a creative writing class at a local senior center in Florida, but then mysteriously disappears without anyone in her class knowing why. Imagine the anger of her husband, or the sorrow of her two young children, when she doesn't return home and the police can't find her.

When her car is later discovered in the parking lot of a large local shopping area, and it is saturated with blood, the local police start an investigation that covers many of her writing classmates at the senior center and even members of her family.

This is a story that never happened, but it could--and it could happen to any one of us, given the right set of circumstances. Read the exciting story as it unfolds in realistic perspective. The ending will shock you.

http://www.amazon.com/SWOB-Affair-Paul-R-Meredith-ebook/dp/B00A4COOZQ/ref=la_B00DS736E4_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392901536&sr=1-14

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

What Started Me Writing?

What was the single thing that made me begin to write novels? For me, the question is easy to answer. When my children were growing up I told them stories of my two grandpas and grandmas, even though one grandma was dead before I was born. The stories were both sad and funny, depending on the circumstances. Most of the stories were exaggerated in one way or another in order to make the kids laugh. My nearly-grown daughter Kris once told me, "Dad, did you ever consider writing these stories down on paper?" I said, "No, not really. Why would I do that?" She responded, "I think you should because when you are gone all these stories will then disappear. None of your grandchildren will ever hear them because we won't be able to remember them. I think you should write a book and include all these stories. Maybe it could be a family book about your  life that we could enjoy with our kids someday." That comment got me to thinking maybe I should do that, so I set out by making notes and jotting down some of the most vivid memories. That eventually culminated in a family book I called, "First Things First." My daughter Kris helped me edit the book before I had copies printed.

When the book was finally completed a few years later, I had fifty copies made and gave them to my kids and grandchildren, plus a copy to each of my siblings. It was funny because I made all my siblings sign a waiver that they would not sue me if they found their names in the book, which they gladly agreed to do. Each of them also wanted copies for their children. All told, I have no idea just how many copies were made because we have a very large extended family. Most who received copies said they put a copy in their lock box for future reference.

After writing that book, my daughter Kris told me, "Dad, you have a talent for writing. I think you should consider writing other stories, maybe fiction of some kind." Well, that did it for me, so I started writing, very slowly at first. I discovered that writing was therapeutic for me. At the end of a busy day at my regular work, I could sit down and write and it made me relax and lose the stress that had built up. After writing more than fifteen books, and being fully retired from work for almost fifteen years, I still find it relaxing to sit and write.

That's my story and I am sticking to it. Thank you, Kris.

 http://www.amazon.com/All-Accounts-Paul-Meredith-ebook/dp/B006ZRBZ1U/ref=la_B00DS736E4_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392813555&sr=1-1

 
 By All Accounts is my second novel, a thriller that is still available. I hope you will like it.


















life." 

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

My very first published story was a romance novel, His Soul Mate. It was a story of a woman who had the misfortune of contracting breast cancer. It is a story that takes the reader on a journey with Ellen Meacham, the lead character in the story, as she falls deeply in love with a man. Then she discovers her illness and valiantly battles this horrible disease with everything in her. This story, sad as it is at times, is a story that I had personal interest in writing because my own daughter was battling the same disease. Click on the link below to find the story.

http://www.amazon.com/His-Soul-Mate-Paul-Meredith-ebook/dp/B006SUHWQQ/ref=la_B00DS736E4_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392736700&sr=1-2

Monday, February 3, 2014

My Writings

Hi All:

This is my first blog, so I want to tell you what I do as a writer. I write awesome romance stories and thrilling mysteries. I have many great stories out there on various sites, including smashwords, PublishAmerica, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon. My early works are available as paperbacks and e-books, but most recently I have been publishing as e-books on Nook and Kindle. Here are my stories:

His Soul Mate
By All Accounts
The Vigilante God
The Rise of the Vigilante Goddess
The Return of the Vigilante Goddess
The Love Wish
Ten Minutes Past Two
The Internet Cowboy
An Iowa Blessing
In My Wildest Dreams
Second Chance
My Scottish Connection
Memories of Lake Wabaskang
The SWOB Affair



I hope you will look them up and check them out. You won't be sorry.