novels

Is it murder to kill a man if the man never existed? To the man it is.

My spirit has been around far longer than my soul--I've lived several lifetimes already. And one this novel has been written, I will have lived several more.

I agree with Kilgore Trout about realistic novels and their accumulations of nit-picking details. In Trout__ novel, The Pan-Galactic Memory Bank, the hero is on a space ship two hundred miles long and sixty-two miles in diameter. He gets a realistic novel out of the branch library in his neighborhood. He reads about sixty pages of it, and then he takes it back. The librarian asks him why he doesn__ like it, and he says to her, __ already know about human beings.

Novels are just very, very, very long lies. That is to say, you__e got to get your story straight!

One thing an early-on writer has to learn, is to be comfortable with and responsive to critique. When five people in a group tell you this chapter sucks; don__ snap back at them with, __ure, but it gets better in another 6 or 7 chapters!__isten. _ Thank them. _ Consider.They can look from a fresh perspective, and catch things that you might be too close to see.But, you will also learn along the way that not everyone in a group of relative amateurs themselves, is going to catch everything, and there will be a few who seem to never understand much of anything.Some will always want paragraphs chopped down to explosive missiles of passion, while others are more used to long composite paragraphs that I myself find impossible to wade through.You may, once you have hit your full stride and power, feel comfortable telling a few of them, __ook. This isn__ a diner. I don__ take orders: ____ gluten intolerant; he can__ do salt; she__ allergic to peanuts ...___f what I offer is a salad bar, then No; I am not going to fry you up a cheesesteak!

Novelists are basically inviting their readers to play a game of pretend. That's what fiction is: a game of pretend.

I like what I do. Some writers have said in print that they hated writing and it was just a chore and a burden. I certainly don't feel that way about it. Sometimes it's difficult. You know, you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve. But I think ... that's your signpost and your guide. You'll never get there, but without it you won't get any

I have often wondered, Sir, [. . .] to observe so few Instances of Charity among Mankind; for tho' the Goodness of a Man's Heart did not incline him to relieve the Distresses of his Fellow-Creatures, methinks the Desire of Honour should move him to it. What inspires a Man to build fine Houses, to purchase fine Furniture, Pictures, Clothes, and other things at a great Expence, but an Ambition to be respected more than other People? Now would not one great Act of Charity, one Instance of redeeming a poor Family from all the Miseries of Poverty, restoring an unfortunate Tradesman by a Sum of Money to the means of procuring a Livelihood by his Industry, discharging an undone Debtor from his Debts or a Goal, or any such Example of Goodness, create a Man more Honour and Respect than he could acquire by the finest House, Furniture, Pictures or Clothes that were ever beheld? For not only the Object himself who was thus relieved, but all who heard the Name of such a Person must, I imagine, reverence him infinitely more than the Possessor of all those other things: which when we so admire, we rather praise the Builder, the Workman, the Painter, the Laceman, the Taylor, and the rest, by whose Ingenuity they are produced, than the Person who by his Money makes them his own.

Taut, intelligent, and intense suspense that is deeply human.___ark Greaney, New York Times Bestselling Author of Gunmetal Gray__xciting and well-layered....David Bell is a master storyteller with a sure hand at crafting characters you feel for and stories you relish.___llen Eskens, USA Today Bestselling Author of The Life We Bury__ tense and twisty suspense novel about the dark secrets that lie buried within a community and a father who can save his daughter only by uncovering them. Will leave parents wondering just how well they truly know their children.___ester Young, author of The Gates of Evangeline and The Shimmering Road__ gripping, immersive tour-de-force full of twists and turns. BRING HER HOME kept me flipping the pages late into the night. Don__ expect to sleep until you__e finished reading this book. I could not put it down!___. J. Banner, bestselling author of The Good Neighbor and The Twilight Wife__n David Bell__ riveting BRING HER HOME, the unthinkable is only the beginning. From there, the story races through stunning twists all the way to its revelation, without letting its heart fall away in the action. Intense, emotional, and deeply satisfying. This one will keep you up late into the night. Don't miss it!___amie Mason, author of Three Graves Full and Monday__ Lie__pellbinding and pulse-raising, BRING HER HOME hooked me from the first sentence and surprised me until the final pages. Sharply written and richly observed, this book is about the secrets we keep, the mysteries that keep us, and the lengths a father will go to for the daughter he loves. David Bell is a masterful storyteller who has perfected the art of suspense in BRING HER HOME.___arah Domet, author of The Guineveres

Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction; in particular, the novel.

I came, I saw, I concurred...

All marriages have their bad sides, because people have weaknesses. If you live with another human being you learn to handle these weaknesses in a variety of ways. For instance, you might take the view that weaknesses are a bit like heavy pieces of furniture, and based on this you must learn to clean around them. To maintain the illusion.

Are we not all books waiting for someone to pick us up and read the pages that people missed?

Landscape is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel.

I am certain that a novelist is someone who attributes a different reality-value to the characters and events of his story than to those of 'real' life. A novelist is someone who confuses his own life with that of his characters.

Writers of novels live in a strange world where what's made up is as important as what's real.

Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.

Novels are forged in passion, demand fidelity and commitment, often drive you to boredom or rage, sleep with you at night.