I'm Paul Dale Anderson, and I Kill People for a Living (TM)

SF writers love to astound people. Suspense writers love to leave people hanging, oftentimes from cliffs and sometimes from ropes. Thriller writers love to take people on fast roller coaster rides. Mystery writers love to lead people on a merry chase, often with hounds nosing up the wrong trees while the fox hides in plain sight. We horror writers love to shock people.

I read aloud from my works recently at a public library. I was the last writer to read that afternoon. I shocked people awake by saying, “I’m Paul Dale Anderson, and I kill people for a living.”

The nine mostly-mainstream writers who preceded me identified themselves as fiction writers or biographers or historians or journalists who celebrate the lives of either real or fictional people in books.

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I write about death and dying.

I identify with serial killers. I identify with trained assassins. I kill people for fun and profit. I love to get into the minds of my villains as much as, or perhaps more so than, the minds of my protagonists. I want to show why, as well as how, people do what they do.

Like I said, we horror writers love to shock people. I write shock suspense stories that cross genres, but all of my stories and novels turn into cautionary tales. I am the executioner who holds an axe over your head, and I love to watch the hairs on the back of your neck bristle.

Make one false move, and feel my Instruments of Death!

My Return from the Dead

Coming back from the dead is never easy.

I deliberately killed myself off twenty-five years ago. I stopped writing fiction to help my wife overcome chronic life-threating illness. Instead of writing fiction, I earned several masters degrees and worked on doctorates in educational psychology and cognitive neuroscience. I learned hypnotic techniques to help prolong human lives and improve the quality of life. I made a name for myself as a hypnosis instructor and author of journal articles.

But Paul Dale Anderson the author of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and thrillers was buried and forgotten.

When I returned to fiction writing in 2012, it took two long years for my novels and short stories to again appear in print. I’m still in the process of resurrecting my backlist, but new Paul Dale Anderson novels are now available as paperbacks and e-books.

I began making live personal appearances in 2014, and this year I’m doing the full convention circuit. I’m getting my face and name out there to show people I’m still alive.

I have been back in the fiction game for four consecutive years, and I am about to have a breakthrough. Breakthroughs come when an author publishes consistently for at least five years in one genre or related genres. Breakthroughs occur when name recognition and writing quality reach critical mass.

It takes at least five years before people in this industry take you seriously, five years of writing your heart out, five years of pitching and submitting manuscripts to agents and editors, five years of attending conventions and doing readings and book signings, five years of reaching for the golden ring, missing it by millimeters, before you can grab hold and hang on.

It takes five years for word to get around that your work is worth reading. Any writer worth his or her salt who sticks around for more than five years should notice a breakthrough at the five year mark.

It takes ten additional years to produce a bestselling book. Your writing improves with each book you write, so the more books you write, the better your writing becomes. Sales, also, are accumulative, and the more you write the more books you’ll sell. And the more you sell, the more readers will recognize your name. The more people who recognize your name, the more books you’ll sell. It’s a vicious circle. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Writing is a numbers game.

In order to play the writing game and have a chance at winning, you need:

1. Name recognition

2. Facial recognition

3. Genre recognition

4. Quality (Content) recognition

5. Peer recognition

People will want to buy your work only if other people buy your work. You must fist show that other people like and trust you. Humans are socially conditioned to do what they see other people doing. That’s why books have lots of blurbs from other bestselling authors and reviewers on their covers and in their front-matter.

That, my friends, is a hard truth most writers refuse to admit.

I now have a New York agent, one of the best in the business at a literary agency I respect. I have made new friends, many of them bestselling authors, who know my name and like my work. I help fledgling authors with reviews and blurbs. I have found heaven on earth and I am once again alive and well.

Watch for my breakthrough novel to appear from one of the Big Five publishers. I’m hard at work on a sequel and three stand-alones.

I’m scheduled to appear on panels at MidAmeiCon II, the World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City, in August. I’ll be at BoucherCon in New Orleans in September.

Life is good.

Why Writers Need Swelled Heads

This morning I responded to requests for an updated bio. Those who know me understand my reluctance. I’m a shy guy who would much rather extol the accomplishments of others than my own.

“You? Shy?” I hear some people say. “I don’t believe it!”

“I am shy most of the time,” would be my truest answer. Both my father and mother were shy people who hid their accomplishments. I had no siblings, and I grew up in an environment where each of us was allowed to be a private person with our own private personal spaces. My parents were basically introverts, and so am I. Shy is my comfort zone.

That does not mean I’m always an introvert. Like all humans, my essential personalities tend to cycle in 90 to 120 minute intervals. I go from quiet, shy, and retiring to loud and boisterous literally at the blink of an eye. Read studies by Ernest L. Rossi or my 2003 States of Consciousness and Cognition (http://www.worldcat.org/title/states-of-consciousness-and-cognition-a-study-of-state-dependent-learning/oclc/55033686&referer=brief_results) if you doubt this normally happens to practically everyone almost every day. Has it ever happened to you? Probably.

I spent twenty years helping various hypnotherapy clients, many of them very successful high-achieving professionals, overcome what researchers call “The Impostor Syndrome.” Here is a brief description from Wikipedia: “Despite external evidence of their competence, those exhibiting the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be. Some studies suggest that impostor syndrome is particularly common among high-achieving women,[2] while others indicate that men and women are equally affected.”

I possess two of the syndrome’s major symptoms: diligence and avoidance of displays of confidence.

What that means is, I believe I need to work harder than others to achieve success. And, no matter what I do, it’s never enough.

My parents, puritans to the core, taught me that blowing my own horn was sinful.

So imagine my reluctance to write my bio. Major trauma! I was conflicted to the max.

What I did was to wait 90 to 120 minutes. My biorhythms switched over. Then I wrote down the following facts:

Paul Dale Anderson is the author of The Instruments of Death series of police procedurals from Crossroad Press, the Winds Cycle of supernatural thrillers, and other genre novels and short stories.

Do I need to say anything more?

I could say I’m a panelist this year at Odyssey Con, StokerCon, Thrillerfest, MidAmericon2, Bouchercon, and World Fantasy Con. I could say my stories have appeared in major anthologies and genre magazines, and I have two published collections of short stories available and another in the works.

The reason I’m asking these questions is because others have asked me to supply bios. I have pitch sessions scheduled with several agents and editors who also want bios.

And because some readers have asked me to tell them more about myself. Like the Lone Ranger, I have hidden behind masks. Much of my early work was written under pseudonyms. I’m a private person who prefers to work behind the scenes rather than on stage.

In short, I keep shooting myself in my own foot. It matters not that the bullets are pure silver.

Intellectually, I realize I need to blow my own horn. If I don’t do it, who will?

The solution, of course, is to hire a publicist. Does anyone know a good publicist who works cheap?

Meanwhile, I guess I’ll have to limp along as best I can.

I’ll need to be diligent and work harder. And I’ll need to develop a swelled head so I can act confident when I appear in public.

And that brings me to the the theme of this short tale: Why writers need swelled heads.

There are simply too many books out there for readers to choose which to buy without some guarantee they won’t waste their time and money on trash. Readers want to know in advance what else the author has done and if that work proved successful. Someone has to introduce the writer to the reader and tell the reader good things about the writer.

In today’s marketplace, that someone is often the writer himself or herself.

Publishers have reduced the money they spend on publicity in order to maximize profits. These days, writers have to arrange and pay for their own book tours, including attendance at conventions and bookstore signings. Midlist authors like me aren’t considered worth the investment.

How can I convince them otherwise? Write a blockbuster best-seller that earns millions and gets made into a major motion picture.

Do I have the confidence and diligence to make that happen?

I’ll have a chance next week when I pitch proposals to agents, editors, and film-makers at StokerCon. I’ll have another chance in July when I pitch at Pitchfest during Thrillerfest in NYC.

So, please excuse me if I seen to have developed a swelled head. I’ll need it if I want to overcome my impostor syndrome and become the best-selling author I want to be.

Wish me and my swelled head luck. We’ll need it.