The Spin Doctor is another name I could have given to my book, The Language Professor, given the ease and effrontery with which its central character deliberately misrepresents his doings.

Here are some examples from the book:

When confronted with extensive written evidence that he has illegally and unjustly removed a stellar employee from her job, he changes registers effortlessly. But no one gave you any verbal assurances that you would get your job back when you returned from you leave, he says,  because if they had, I would have felt bound to honour such a commitment.

In that same conversation, he advises the employee to accept a compromise, The college thinks highly of you, he says, and wants the happiness of its employees.

And he describes the union rules that protect the employee as petty technicalities.

Of course, months later, when his job is on the line, a most unusual, esoteric rule becomes a right.

And, again, in reply to the question why there had not been any strikes at the college, he answers that budget restrictions were being managed by attrition as opposed to layoffs because staff morale was of the utmost importance to him.

Finally, in response to repeated criticism of his secretive and despotic ways, he feigns shock and ignorance. Why didn’t people come to him, his door was always open, he didn’t understand it, why people didn’t come to him.

Spin, spin, spin. Say what you need to say when it suits the moment, the veracity of what you say is of no importance.

So why The Language Professor? Because there are many spin doctors out there, but the story told in The Language Professor is about the effect this kind of spinning has on a morally upright individual to whom words have always had meaning and whose world is turned upside down when she learns otherwise.

Debora Resnick

author of

The Language Professor

Eloquent Books

Strategic Book Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-60911-868-6

http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TheLanguageProfessor.html

Start in the middle of the action – that is my mantra.

It is the rule I have applied to all my writing since I discovered it.

It’s not really as original as all that, though. Mysteries and thrillers start in the middle of the action when the crime is committed or the body found. After that comes the search for and the discovery of who did it and why it was done.

But what exactly does it mean, start in the middle of the action? For not all novels are action novels, what then?

Modify the word ‘action’ with the word ‘emotional’ and you have the formula – start in the middle of the emotional action.

Here is an example.

An earlier version of my book, The Language Professor, began like this:

The phone call came at three o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, nine days before Naomi was scheduled to go back to work…

“I’ve been instructed to tell you that when you come back to work, you will not be coming back to your position as Director of Admissions…”

“This must be some kind of joke, Reuben…”

There was no rejoinder.

“I don’t believe this…”

The emotion Naomi is experiencing is implied. The action is taking place in front of the reader but it remains static, as if it were taking place on a canvas. The reader remains outside.

The present version starts like this:

The bastard, the fucking bastard, Naomi swore…

Here the emotion is proclaimed vehemently. The reader cannot remain outside but is pulled in and deposited squarely in the middle of the emotional action.

This rule can be applied not just to the beginning of a novel, but to every chapter and key scene in a novel as well.

A practice followed in The Language Professor.

Debora Resnick

author of

The Language Professor

Eloquent Books

Strategic Book Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-60911-868-6  http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TheLanguageProfessor.html

“You told, you did not show,” my friend, Harriet, said when she gave me feedback on the first version of what was to become The Language Professor. Three other friends had given me mitigated feedback, but their reticence had not registered with me. When Harriet said what she said, however, a feeling of certainty took hold of me and did not let go. She was right, I thought, I had to rewrite this story.

I left The Phone Call – that was the story’s first title – worked on something else and came back to it a few years later. This time I would show, I would not tell.

This time I did show, but poorly. I told the story in dialogue form, a form I had used in another book I had written. No sooner did I finish this second version, which now bore the title, The Language Lesson, and give it to a friend for feedback than I knew, before being told, that I had still not succeeded in showing how it felt to be thrown out of your job with the flick of a finger.

And then I remembered something else I had learned about writing through the years, start in the middle of the action. The final version of The Language Professor was born.

Here are the three different opening sentences: the first, from The Phone Call, which tells; the second, from The Language Lesson, which tries to show but does not succeed; the third, from The Language Professor, which shows in no uncertain terms:

• The phone call came at three o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, nine days before Naomi was scheduled to go back to work…

• “I don’t believe it, “Naomi said.

“I’m sorry,” Reuben said, “those were my instructions.”

• The bastard, the fucking bastard, Naomi swore as she searched frantically for the memo

granting her  a one year leave of absence.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Debora Resnick

author of

The Language Professor

Eloquent Books

Strategic Book Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-60911-868-6

http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TheLanguageProfessor.html

This was Naomi Singer’s hope when she was summarily removed from her job by the vengeful president of her college. She was about to turn to the board for recourse when her situation was rectified. But once on the board – she had been elected as a representative of her employee group – it takes a single sitting for her to realize that there is no such thing as the ideal she had imagined. The board she has just joined does not have a collective persona that transcends the different personae of its members but is composed of twenty individuals, all of whom have come there with distinctive ideological bents that make of some fervent supporters of the powers that be, of others open-minded individuals willing to judge by the evidence, and of others, like her, thanks to their intimate knowledge of the president’s ego-tripping, his irreconcilable opponents.

As just as was her cause, Naomi realizesthat she might not even have been given a hearing by the board, let alone a fair hearing.

Boards, like chains, are only as good as all the links of which they are composed. One weak link and the whole thing can fall apart, as it does in The Language Professor, the story, among other things, of Naomi Singer’s eye-opening encounter with micro-politics in a post-secondary educational institution.

Debora Resnick

author of

The Language Professor

Eloquent Books

Strategic Book Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-60911-868-6

http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TheLanguageProfessor.html

“…and the eyes of the two of them were opened.”

Habitually, the loss of innocence is associated with the loss of sexual innocence.

But there is another kind of innocence, the moral kind, one that good people, unless they live on a desert island, inevitably lose at some point in their lives.

One of the spheres in which one can lose one’s moral innocence is the workplace.

The Language Professor is the story of just such a loss.

The lead character in the book, Naomi Singer, does not think in biblical terms, but what happens to her does, indeed, open her eyes. She learns that words do not mean what the dictionary says they mean or what she has habitually believed them to mean, that their meaning and value are not fixed.

After losing her moral innocence, Naomi’s character does not change, nor does she change the way she uses words, but she learns not to expect other people to use them the way she does. From trusting others until proven otherwise, she learns not to trust others until proven otherwise. From believing the words people utter, she learns to wait upon their actions before judging them.

Several years after the events in The Language Professor take place, the new president of Naomi’s college utters many reassuring and inspiring words at his first college-wide meeting . Naomi listens but waits. Let’s see whether he will carry through on all his promises, she thinks, on the team-building and the renewal of purpose.

Naomi waits, the new president does not carry through, and she is not disappointed.

That’s what the loss of innocence does, it robs you of expectations, but it spares you the disappointment.

Debora Resnick

author of

The Language Professor

Eloquent Books

Strategic Book Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-60911-868-6

http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TheLanguageProfessor.html

At the bars, roadside taverns, pool halls and game rooms I ran into drug dealers pushing their drugs to their buyers with intent to use them. There was other criminal involvement within the privacy of those establishments doing their business with each other.

I actually ran into used car dealerships and other private individuals that were willing to buy stolen cars.

Drug use was wide and rampant in the localities I frequented. Wide variety of drugs available everywhere inclusive of marijuana that primarily was smuggled into the state from many foreign sources by airplane and ships sold for huge profits.

These illegal substances also shipped into northern states by car, trucks and other vehicles. The hi-ways beaten up and down with carriers of these drugs transportation to destinations in northern states where they were unloaded and sold to buyers and distributors in those locations.

I have so much firsthand criminal background from these hitchhiking adventures and other experiences throughout my lifetime that I decided when beginning my authorship that this was one genre I could qualify to write in.

Therefore, I wrote Fantastic Florida Fun and some other books because I wanted to write what I knew and was perceptive and knowledgeable about.  My prior knowledge gained through personal experience became invaluable to my storylines.

In my mystery thriller novelette on these topics already researched by my own travels through the Florida area I also introduced the aspect of a hypnosis induced incestuous scandal that brought the creator of that event forced to face the music by the boyfriend of the girlfriend that was the instigator’s downfall.

Timothy Louis Baker
Fantastic Florida Fun
Florida, crime, drugs, hippies, dealers, hitchhiking
http://sbpra.com/authortimothybaker

I witnessed firsthand that crime syndicates and drug rings were widely spread across the area most prevalent in the cities but also lacing throughout the countryside. From orange groves to vegetable farms where migrant workers made their daily paychecks some of them so that they could arrange a buy and use their drugs then go out and do it all over again the next day.

During my hitchhiking escapades and other encounters with the area, I even located people who would buy stolen cars as well as a used car dealership that would give a better price to me and other runaways beside me who participated in criminal activities that I was privy.

I have also had other criminal and drug affairs throughout my life and when I first became an author in authorship I wrote some of my books on those genres among others all of which I had first hand experience at. These were the topics I was most knowledgeable about experiences straight from the life I lived they were the perfect subject matter to choose for my titles.

Indeed, I wrote Fantastic Florida Fun mystery thriller concerning a legal aged runaway who runs into a girl and her father but the Dad was a kingpin hippie that earned his legal money from an orange grove business that also sheltered his criminal dealings.

That crime boss employed the teenagers in pushing his drugs in town for him. However the hero teenager suspected foul play in the bedroom and he was pretty sure it involved an incestuous scandal. Upon questioning his girlfriend, he found no real witness but then he made a breakthrough discovery that sickened him terribly.

The girlfriend and boyfriend went somewhere they could sit down and talk about things. Questioning her, he was able to discern the truth that the father was using hypnosis to seduce her and then alter her memory of the affair at each event.

Livid and seeking revenge the runaway who was by all intents and purposes a man now sought to put a stop to this scandal forever.

Timothy Louis Baker
Fantastic Florida Fun
Hitchhiking, Florida, crime, drugs, syndicates, mystery, kingpin, hypnosis, incestuous, scandal
http://sbpra.com/authortimothybaker

Since the turn of the century, I have started writing seriously accomplishing the authorship of the genres that I am familiar with from personal experience. Therefore, I wrote my current novelette concerning a family that broke up in 1974. The young man runs away to the destination of Florida. On the way, he picks up a teenage girl who invites him to come live with her at her father’s house. Which he does and becomes involved with her father’s illegal businesses who turns out to be not only a hippie but also a kingpin for that particular Florida region.

Soon the boyfriend and girlfriend are dealing drugs in town for that crime boss who is the girl’s father. He also becomes greatly involved in other heavier crime with that man that is the participant of criminal organizations that deal with his own crime ring and that his own little syndicate does business with them in on a regular basis in return. There is even a murder occurring the father as the gunman over a dispute about his teenage daughter.

Once dealing for her father the young man hero of the story discovers little by little and piece by piece that his girlfriend host has been innocently involved in hypnosis induced incestuous scandal that the father has been initiating but because of the method he used she was virtually unaware.

However, our hero discovers evidence of this affair at which time that young man persuades her to remember and recall those events and enables her to tell him about them.

Now the boy hero is intent on taking revenge of the father.

Timothy Louis Baker
Fantastic Florida Fun
Florida, crime, drug, hitchhiking, criminal, syndicates, organizations, hypnosis, scandal
http://sbpra.com/authortimothybaker

Sometimes I worked in the orange groves by day and caroused the taverns, bars, pool halls, and game rooms by night. I witnessed so many drug deals and so many kinds of drugs dealt and knew that other deals were going down in secret.

Since I have, had the good fortune to become a writer of topics I know including mystery thrillers I have been able to remember what I experienced and put those thoughts down on paper that became published books.

My Fantastic Florida Fun of the genre of mystery thriller written by just such circumstances that I was privy to from first hand experience way back in the past.

A young gentleman runs away from home and picks up a teenage girl hitchhiking near Florida where she lived in Florida and invites him to come live with her father and herself.

He accepts and presently learns that her Dad is a kingpin hippie and the boy quickly becomes involved in the syndicates that the father is in immediacy.

All seems to be well except for one thing between the two teens boyfriend and girlfriend. The girl accidentally lets out little hints that her father is, or was having some sort of incestuous scandal with his daughter. The young man tries to decipher the riddle but at first is unable to.

Then much to his disgust he comes across the incriminating evidence that proves the matter beyond a shadow of doubt confronting his lover that has been involved involuntarily in the affair but unaware and not remembering because of the method of hypnosis that was being used by the man until the boyfriend unearths all these facts.
Then his only desire is to seek revenge that he feels the crime boss that is the girl’s father deserves.

Timothy Louis Baker
Fantastic Florida Fun
Crime, drugs, syndicates, kingpins, 70’s era, Florida, hitchhiking, drug deals, incestuous, scandal, hypnosis
http://sbpra.com/authortimothybaker

In that work named Fantastic Florida Fun, I have generated a fictitious novelette with the three main characters having in common the crime and drugs transpiring in that locality during the same 70’s period, as were my visitations on the area.

The young man Mark leaves home due to an altercation with his stepfather and drives to Florida. On the way, he happens upon meeting the teenage lady of the story Melissa. As she hitchhiked home from Georgia, he picked her up. Then she allowed why did he not come home with her. Her father Al was a kingpin and the young man soon discovered what he had gotten into, or so he thought because there was apparently a mystery.

After doing dirty business dealings at first helping and then directly for Al, Mark uncovered evidence of a hypnosis-induced scandal by his crime boss Al with Melissa. At first, Mark stumbled upon hints of a dirty dark sex secret from unsuspecting and unknowing possible participant Melissa that escalated into gradually increasingly vivid memories of hers but it was a completely innocent role.

However, when after exposure of the scandal in all certainty to Mark and when he questioned his girlfriend Melissa concerning the matter, Mark found that because of the method that Al employed with hypnosis she was almost completely unaware of the occurrences. Until Mark gently questioned her about it in the right way then she was able to remember to some extent.

Entirely sickened by the discovery at first Mark but by the time the full story was exposed he sought revenge on Melissa’s incestuous pedophile father in the highest degree.

Timothy Louis Baker
Fantastic Florida Fun
Crime, drugs, 70’s, Florida, kingpin, hypnosis, scandal
http://sbpra.com/authortimothybaker