My Take on Critique Groups by M.T. Bass – Guest Post and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. M.T. Bass will be awarding a $50 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

My take on critique groups…

You can’t live with them…and you can’t live without them.

I spent quite a bit of time going through the local writers’ groups listed on MeetUp.com and “auditioned” a whole bunch of them out. I went through some of them like a revolving door. One group was intensely focused on Fantasy/Sword and Sorcery stories—they spent at least an hour discussing the details in a sword fight at that meeting. And they basically admitted that they weren’t really interested in reading my kind of stuff. Adios, amigos.

I’ve finally ended up in two groups that I’ve gone to for years—well, at least I did before the stupid COVID-19 scamdemic shutdowns. One group has suspended their meetings and the other has transitioned to Zoom calls. Anyway, the first group allows 5 minute cold reads, while the smaller Zoom group takes submissions of up to 7500 words two weeks in advance for more detailed critiques. It’s a good mixture.

As writers, we work alone, and sometimes that’s a nice cozy cocoon to hide in. But if you intend to publish, you have to know what other people are going to get out of your writing. As the author, the surprise is gone for me: I pretty much know what is going to happen in my story. What I don’t know is what the uninitiated reader thinks about who the characters are and what is going to happen to them. And that is exactly what I am listening for in the group’s comments.

Sometimes it’s difficult to pull that information out of the comments. People have a lot of things to say in these groups—and not much of it is really about your words and your story. You have to really listen and sort through the critiques and decide whether they are advocating their particular theories of “creative writing” and whether those theories have anything to do with what you have written. Sometimes not and it goes in the discard pile.

Beyond that crucial information, of course, I get plenty of grammar corrections, which is okay, though I have an excellent editor for my work. I also listen closely to those folks who have an expertise that I don’t, like the ex-Navy SEAL, the FBI agent, and the lawyers in the cold read group. They offer insightful corrections and additions to my military, law enforcement, and lawyer-type characters.

And sometimes you really get a gem. I read the first chapter of a novel I called Exit Alley, and Dave, the moderator, gave me the real title from the words in my story: Murder by Munchausen.

On the other hand, I also get to throw in my two cents worth on the works submitted by other folks. I’m not real good at off-the-cuff reactions to the cold reads, so my comments are usually limited. I prefer to put more time and thought into what I’m going to say. For the long-form group, I typically read the submissions at least twice before I comment: once as just a reader, then as an editor, when I start making my comments. Sometimes you have to be tough on the writing, but there is no need to be mean when you are critiquing.

Hopefully, you’ll make a connection that will help them out. And that’s what I’m looking for.

“There are only two types of aircraft: fighters and targets.”

~Doyle ‘Wahoo’ Nicholson, USMC

Sweating it out in the former Belgian Congo as a civil war mercenary, with Sparks turning wrenches on his T-6 Texan, Hawk splits his time flying combat missions and, back on the ground, sparring with Ella, an attractive young missionary doctor, in the sequel to My Brother’s Keeper.

Enjoy an Excerpt

“Break left,” I radioed Angel, jammed the throttle forward, and yanked the stick back and to the left in a climbing turn to circle around on the enemy position. I searched back over my shoulder for a road or trail leading out of the area to anticipate their possible direction of movement. There was a small scar coming down off the hill to the southeast.

As we came around three hundred and sixty degrees, lining up on the small section of the jungle where red and green tracer rounds floated up our way, the intensity of the fire began to wane as the rebels understood what was about to come their way.

“Take the trail. Southeast,” I radioed Angel.

He clicked his mike twice to acknowledge the one-two punch plan and throttled back to drift away in trail to follow up my initial attack on the enemy positions with rocket fire as they inevitably fled to melt back into the jungle.

I banked hard and began to dive down on the hilltop. The tracers began to concentrate on my nose. I lit up my guns, spreading the field of fire left and right with a little dance on the rudder pedals. I felt the Texan buck up a bit as rockets left the rails. I followed the plumes of their engines halfway to the target before I had to pull up, but noticed the intensity of the enemy fire had waned considerably.

“Way to go, Batman,” Angel radioed. “Let me just clean up this little mess you made.”

Behind me, Angel strafed the road and fired his rockets in so close that he seemed to clip the top of the fireball from the warhead explosions.

I circled back and took a path coming back up the road, stitching it with .303 caliber fire…

About the Author:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

M.T. Bass is a scribbler of fiction who holds fast to the notion that while victors may get to write history, novelists get to write/right reality. He lives, writes, flies and makes music in Mudcat Falls, USA.

Born in Athens, Ohio, M.T. Bass grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, majoring in English and Philosophy, then worked in the private sector (where they expect “results”) mainly in the Aerospace & Defense manufacturing market. During those years, Bass continued to write fiction. He is the author of eight novels: My Brother’s Keeper, Crossroads, In the Black, Somethin’ for Nothin’, Murder by Munchausen, The Darknet (Murder by Munchausen Mystery #2), The Invisible Mind (Murder by Munchausen Mystery #3) and Article 15. His writing spans various genres, including Mystery, Adventure, Romance, Black Comedy and TechnoThrillers. A Commercial Pilot and Certified Flight Instructor, airplanes and pilots are featured in many of his stories. Bass currently lives on the shores of Lake Erie near Lorain, Ohio.

Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Amazon Author Page | Goodreads

Buy the book at the author’s website, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Mario Andretti on Balancing Life & Writing by M.T. Bass – Guest Blog and Giveaway


This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. M.T. Bass will be awarding a $50 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Mario Andretti on Balancing Life & Writing

I grew up in a racing family. As a kid I remember Saturday nights watching Sprint Cars race on the 1/3 mile clay track at Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. “Pop” — my dad’s dad — built race cars with his four boys and they grew up traveling around the dirt tracks and state fairs of the upper Midwest

Of course, the “Big Show” was the Indianapolis 500. And it wasn’t just a Memorial Day thing. Weekends in May were spent watching time trials and qualification runs. And one of the big stars of the Brickyard was Mario Andretti, the only driver ever to win the Indianapolis 500 (1969), Daytona 500 (1967) and the Formula One World Championship, and one of only two drivers ever to have won a race in the NASCAR Cup Series, Formula One, and an Indianapolis 500. He’s #5 on my personal list of favorite drivers. (Click Here)

Okay…so what in the world does this have to do with writing and life and stuff?

Well, Andretti’s racing motto was:

“If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.”

There is no balance to life and work. Not for me.

Maybe it would be nice to have an calm, orderly parade lap of a life, where all the competing elements of your world are all lined up in a perfect grid, rolling around the track at a leisurely pace…but, no. That actually sounds kind of boring.

I’ve got a gazillion things going on and, honestly, sometimes I spin out of control. Sometimes life and writing touch wheels and there’s a huge pileup coming out of turn four just when I’m heading for the finish line.

It is dangerous, because life and work don’t always play nice together. They’re both competing to win.

But every once in a while…it all comes together and you get to the checkered flag and it’s amazing. You even surprise yourself.

Robert Frost said:

“No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.”

Give me the mayhem of green flag racing.

“She was one in a million…and the day I met her I should have bought a lottery ticket instead.”

***~~~***

Griffith Crowe, the “fixer” for a Chicago law firm, falls for his current assignment, Helena Nicholson, the beautiful heir of a Tech Sector venture capitalist who perished in a helicopter crash leaving her half a billion dollars, a Learjet 31, and unsavory suspicions about her father’s death. As he investigates, the ex-Navy SEAL crosses swords with Helena’s step-brother, the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum, and an All-Star bad guy somebody has hired to stop him. When Griff finds himself on the wrong side of an arrest warrant he wonders: Is he a player or being played?

Lawyers and Lovers and Guns…Oh, my!

Enjoy an Excerpt

She was one in a million…and the day I met her I should have bought a lottery ticket instead.

Blonde, slim and well-built, of course, her eyes were darkly blue which, when unsheathed from behind her Jackie Ohhs, glinted like gun metal at twilight.

I noticed when we first met.

I ignored it after the first time we made love.

I caught it again as she testified against me.

I suppose, I’ll just never learn.

About the Author: M.T. Bass is a scribbler of fiction who holds fast to the notion that while victors may get to write history, novelists get to write/right reality. He lives, writes, flies and makes music in Mudcat Falls, USA.

Born in Athens, Ohio, M.T. Bass grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, majoring in English and Philosophy, then worked in the private sector (where they expect “results”) mainly in the Aerospace & Defense manufacturing market. During those years, Bass continued to write fiction. He is the author of eight novels: My Brother’s Keeper, Crossroads, In the Black, Somethin’ for Nothin’, Murder by Munchausen, The Darknet (Murder by Munchausen Mystery #2), The Invisible Mind (Murder by Munchausen Mystery #3) and Article 15. His writing spans various genres, including Mystery, Adventure, Romance, Black Comedy and TechnoThrillers. A Commercial Pilot and Certified Flight Instructor, airplanes and pilots are featured in many of his stories. Bass currently lives on the shores of Lake Erie near Lorain, Ohio.

Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitte | Amazon Author Page | Goodreads

Buy the book at the author’s website, Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, or Smashwords.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
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Murder by Munchausen by M.T. Bass – Spotlight and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. The author will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn commenter via Rafflecopter. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

A police procedural sci fi thriller ripped from future headlines!

After Jake shoots and kills a murder suspect who turns out to be the son of a powerful city councilman, he finds himself demoted to the Artificial Crimes Unit, tracking down androids hacked and programmed to be hit men.

When his case of an “extra-judicial” divorce settlement takes a nasty turn with DNA from a hundred-year-old murder in Boston and a signature that harkens back to the very first serial killer ever in London, Jake finds himself tangled up in the brutal slayings of prostitutes being investigated by his former Robbery/Homicide partner, Maddie–who is now his lover.

But a madman, The Baron, is just getting started with his AI recreations of Jack the Ripper’s brutal crimes. And Maddie and Jake are teamed up again to stop the carnage as the Baron’s army of human replicants imitate history’s most notorious serial killers.

“It might not make sense, but the beloved Media tags it ‘Murder by Munchausen.’ For a price, there are hackers out there who will reprogram a synthoid to do your dirty work. The bad news: no fingerprints or DNA left at the crime scene. The good news—at least for us—is that they’re like missiles: once they hit their target, they’re usually as harmless as empty brass. The trick is to get them before they melt down their core OS data, so you can get the unit into forensics for analysis and, hopefully, an arrest.” [excerpt from Murder by Munchausen]

Artificial Intelligence? Fuhgeddaboudit!

Artificial Evil has a name…Munchausen.

Enjoy an Excerpt

The Three Laws

1. A civilian-owned and operated synthetic humanoid entity may not act in any manner so as to engage in or cause any harmful or offensive contact against a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A civilian-owned and operated synthetic humanoid entity must obey the directives and orders given it by human beings except in those instances where such directives and orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A civilian-owned and operated synthetic humanoid entity may protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Federal Technology Administration Regulations

About the Author:

M.T. Bass is a scribbler of fiction who holds fast to the notion that while victors may get to write history, novelists get to write/right reality. He lives, writes, flies and makes music in Mudcat Falls, USA.

Born in Athens, Ohio, M.T. Bass grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, majoring in English and Philosophy, then worked in the private sector (where they expect “results”) mainly in the Aerospace & Defense manufacturing market. During those years, Bass continued to write fiction. He is the author of eight novels: My Brother’s Keeper, Crossroads, In the Black, Somethin’ for Nothin’, Murder by Munchausen, The Darknet (Murder by Munchausen Mystery #2), The Invisible Mind (Murder by Munchausen Mystery #3) and Article 15. His writing spans various genres, including Mystery, Adventure, Romance, Black Comedy and TechnoThrillers. A Commercial Pilot and Certified Flight Instructor, airplanes and pilots are featured in many of his stories. Bass currently lives on the shores of Lake Erie near Lorain, Ohio.


Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Amazon Author Page | Goodreads
Buy the book at Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or Smashwords.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
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