A Master's Final Lesson

Over the last few months, I have been relearning the methods and lessons that Erle Stanley Gardner, best-selling author and creator of Perry Mason, had learned as I have written this series of blogs for The Writers Lens. It is sad that this is the end of that series, but I will end this with some final advice he had for writers. Before the creation of the Internet, writers struggle their way through the pulp magazines. Those magazines served as gatekeepers. Some of these magazines still exist and there has been a birth of a newer version of them called e-zines. This quirky industry of ours is evolving and I will not even attempt to enter into the debate of the pulp still serving as guardians or not — as I am unsure. What I am sure about is that the lessons Gardner came out of the process with our lessons all of us could learn from.

Lesson one: A writer must scratch for his money

Like attorneys, wood pulp writers were paid by the word. Unlike attorneys, they were not paid as well. The amount an author was paid at the height of the Golden age of wood pulps was one the five cents per word. [In case you didn't recognize that price, the amount hasn't changed at all since the 1920s and 30s.] This might lead the reader to believe that authors could pad their stories with extra words. Forget it!

The wood pulps then and now, along with the readers, want a tightly written story. Here is a lesson of writing, publishing and economics that Gardner learned from F. E. Blackwell, editor of Detective Story:

"An editor is just the buyer of a commodity called a story. Of course he tries to buy it as reasonably as he can; for this reason if you can buy is a good story for two cents and another man offers him for three cents, he buys the story for two cents.

"I have always said that just an employee takes his life in his hands when he asks for a raise — so it is with an offer; for, while the employer might give the employee a raise during haying time, he might immediately go out and look for another man — and so when an author is set up on a certain rate, if the editor thinks he isn't worth that rate, but a lesser rate, he'll only my stories worth the money — the others just go back."

Gardner eventually won his argument over why you should gotten a raise, however this argument is a great reminder the writing is a business like any other. Gardner learned that if you want to get paid more you have to work harder and publish more.

Lesson two: Write the Editor a Good Letter

When Gardner began his career as an author, he wrote timid, brief and banal letters to the editors to sell his work. He started by following the age-old advice, which I know I have heard often when growing up, "If you don't have anything to say, don't say it." He learned very quickly that was a fast road to rejection. Gardner was an attorney, writer, and the salesman. So, he became a prolific correspondent with an "ebullient, outgoing approach." In fact, there was one editor who expressed relief that he wasn't paying Gardner per word for the letters he wrote. Guess what? He was, because he was buying and publishing Gardner's stories.

Gardner also broke with tradition that most writers follow regarding letters to the outer. Most writers write a letter and expressing confidence in his work and try to show the editor why a work is brilliant or should be immediately published. Not Gardner. His letters caught the recipient's attention and he seldom wasted time getting to a first name basis. He would write letters to the editors have the time begging them for information on editorial needs, reader information, and he would tell them stories about his adventures in obtaining the research about the story he was pitching. Gardner was honest about his story and how he felt about it when he tried to sell it.

This seems to go against the grain of everything in which I know I have learned in various seminars or classes about trying to sell your work to an editor. However, here are some examples of what Gardner wrote:

"You know, I'm more or less green and again, and I don't know all the rules."

"Dog-gone if I know much about my own story analysis."

"Maybe other writers have my same problem, but are such good liars they don't admit it, or maybe I'm just mediocre."

"I can't judge my own work."

I am not sure what professional editors or agents would say to him today, however Gardner was actually following a primary rule of story writing when he did this. We know, as writers, that our main goal (besides telling a good story) is to obtain the reader sympathy for our characters. Gardner, in his letters to the editors, treated himself as a character and went after the editor's sympathy as the reader. Regardless of what we might think looking back or if this style still works today, he was successful and makes a clear note to the modern writer that when we try to sell our work we should always write a good letter and attempt to obtain reader sympathy with that letter.

Lesson three: Good facts don't make good fiction

This is a lesson that many writers who have been successful have learned. One such writer, besides Erle Stanley Gardner, that immediately comes to mind is John Michael Crichton. I remember reading a story published by the BBC of someone who challenged Crichton about one of the stories he wrote, saying that he got the facts wrong. Crichton responded, and I paraphrase as I do not remember the exact quote, that his job was to write a good story first and get the facts second. Both Gardner and Crichton as well as other authors have learned this lesson. However, this does not mean an author can be sloppy are nonchalant regarding the facts when building a story.

Gardner learned from Arthur E. Scott, editor of Top-Notch in 1924, a maxim that was one of the hardest lessons for him to comprehend at the beginning author: "truth makes bad fiction, although fiction must read like truth." Authors have always been required to get the facts correct — or have the? The writer's first job is to tell a good story. In fact, sometimes certain truths must be altered or ignored to make that story. Where the art of writing comes into play is in the understanding of the rules of fiction, understanding the facts, and then knowing where they can ignore a fact or break a rule.

Instead of talking about Gardner or using one of his stories as an example, let me use Crichton for a moment. From what we can do scientifically today, there is no way that we can genetically reproduce dinosaurs from preserved DNA as Crichton did in Jurassic Park. However, we know and reportedly have succeeded in bringing back plants from that time from preserved DNA. But let's face some facts. How exciting would a story be of people running around in a Jurassic botanical garden, where industrial espionage has caused the plants to escape their holding cells while people are trapped in the park by a terrible storm? Did you just yawn at the thought? I did. However, turn those plants into giant roaring dinosaurs and now you have a story. Note, that the dinosaurs behaved as our current research seems to indicate that they would have and the rest of the facts appear to be correct. Crichton, didn't let the tiny fact that it was unlikely dinosaurs could be brought back to life stand in the way of telling a good story.

Nor did Gardner allow a fact stand in the way of his stories, which are still sold and read today.

Lesson four: Don't poach on the preserves of other writers

Most beginning writers learn by imitating their favorite writers and by capitalizing upon the current popularity of the character, style, or a type of story. Sometimes editors and agents are accomplices in this process, trying to mine the reader's and the marketplace's excitement over the topic. Gardner seems to have fallen into the same trap at the beginning. He immediately began to pursue characters that were attracting the readers as a guarantee in the writing market. One editor noticed what he was doing in fired a shot across Gardner's bow:

"I wanted to caution you about your characters. Be careful not to tread on Carroll John Daly's toes. Both of your characters are very similar to his Race Williams. So far, you have handled it nicely, but I think you should read some of daily stories and consciously avoid duplicating any of Race Williams' stuff. Please don't misunderstand me — I know you won't. He is one which I referred to is merely that both you and Daly tell your stories in slang . . . All have contempt for law and take justice into their own hands. You can really see how easily confusion might result, and how both you and Daly might someday be at each other's throats. I have always spoken to Daly about it. As I have said, at present all three characters have distinct personalities — Williams, a private detective; Jenkins an outlaw; Larkin, an adventurer with no desire for gain."

Gardner admitted that he had studied Daly stories, but with the idea of making the characters different. Nevertheless, he became quite aware that he could be close to poaching on another author's work. Gardner learned that you had to be unique and your characters had to be unique as well. Sadly, Gardner was accused of imitating Dashiell Hammett's objective style and private detectives, a charge "which Gardner highly resented and hotly denied for many years."

Lesson five: Don't be hackneyed

Today, and maybe this has been the case all along, plagiarism appears to be rampant. As mentioned in lesson four, many beginning writers learn their craft by imitating others. Sometimes that leads to accidental, and sometimes premeditated, plagiarism. Beginning writers sometimes do not realize that when they are poaching another author's style or fiddling with those ideas they are quickly falling into a rut and becoming hackneyed.

When Gardner learned that he had fallen into this trap, and learned from his mistakes in that trap, he wrote on an index card, which he would prompt in front of himself while he sat at his typewriter, and the following reminders:

"Work on every plot until you have

1. Unusual opening incident

2. Complete character conflicts

3. Some emotional appeal

4. Some unusual slant of characters and situation

5. All stock situations eliminated

Make a genuine reader suspense in which he doesn't know what will happen next and surprised either by

(a) What does happen

(b) the way in which it happens."

Lesson six: Don't give your readers a headache

One of the hard lessons the Gardner learned early in his career is that if you're trying to write "art for art's sake", then you are in for a disappointment. Editors and agents do not necessarily by stories on the basis of their personal preference for literature. One editor pointing this out to Gardner shortly before he moved to a new magazine, "I really enjoyed 'Hard as Nails,' which is more than I can say about some the stories we buy. Damned tiresome always reading stories with the idea of pleasing imaginary readers." But the fact is a good editor or agent is one who has a hold of the readership and the industry and can send, like an EKG, the faintest change in a heartbeat of what they're looking for.

Gardner responded to one such note, reiterating the lesson he learned, "You say that you think the readers would rather be excited that interested, would rather have the emotional appeal to that intellect. In this I entirely agree with you." Many would-be writers often fell short of the audience because they let slick techniques and writing style invade their stories. The wood pulp readers wanted action and story not necessarily beautiful narration or shortened lessons in those stories. In a strange way, it is this lesson that led to the creation of a popular lawyer – detective, Perry Mason. Does this excerpt from a letter written to the editor of one magazine sound familiar? This was written in 1926. Perry Mason would not appear until 1933.

"How's this? A third person series of a lawyer whose sense of justice is a lot stronger than his sense of legal ethics who habitually outsmarts the district attorney, with the action taken from court before readers eyes or, the first person series of a lawyer who is always consulted by crooks, gets into lots of action outside the courtroom and income into court (the reader being familiar with the facts) and drops legal bombshell.

"The only argument against the good legal theories is that they all have to be founded upon some clever trick, some original twist which involves reader thought in order to follow it. I am wondering if your readers don't prefer the type of story in which everything is action and they don't have to think the follow the yarn."

Another way of phrasing this lesson is to remember the story of the Wizard of Oz. The author is a wizard, who stands behind a curtain and does all of his magical things. He must not poke his head out of behind the curtain and get in the way of the action of the story. The writer must know their reader and what their reader is looking for from the story.

Lesson seven: (a final lesson) You can't flout your readers' morals.

Gardner learned that the editor and the agent is a guardian of the readers' morals and beliefs. If they are to remain agents and editors, they have to understand that a reader does not spend money to have their beliefs or prejudices deliberately flouted, even if they are the most militant of liberals who believe that they should be open-minded and listen to things they don't even believe or understand. Gardner found that this was one the most difficult lessons to get across to traditionally "Bohemian writers and crusaders who wanted to display libertine learning or hide messages in their fiction." This does not mean that writers cannot challenge established ideas or prejudices. What Gardner learned is that you can't slap the reader across the face with some issue.

Readers want to identify with the characters. The writer cannot win over reader sympathies by bashing them over the head with what the writers sees as some moral injustice against society. Regardless if the writer is writing about some social issue or if they are just writing a good story and adventure, the telling of the story is like seduction. The writer must get the reader to sympathize with the story. There are many good examples of writers who have challenged the readers' morals and beliefs through proper storytelling instead of using their manuscript like a baseball bat to the reader's head. One good example of this is a novel that was written in 1965, which would be eventually made into an award-winning movie and television series, In the Heat of the Night by John Ball. Another good example was written in 1992 by Richard Price titled Clockers. There are hundreds of thousands of other examples throughout literature, mainstream or genre, and has successfully written about social issues.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com and www.thewriterslens.com. You can also follow me on twitter @Owlkenpowriter and the Writer’s Lens @TheWritersLens. Fiction is the world where the philosopher is the most free in our society to explore the human condition as he chooses.

Learning the Basics of Writing from a Master--Erle Stanley Gardner

Sometimes it is hard to remember that even legends started off on the road with a lot to learn and nothing else but hopes and dreams. Erle Stanley Gardner, the world-famous author of various novels and stories, including the famous lawyer detective Perry Mason, started off at the very bottom of the writer's pay scale — in the wood pulps.  In today's market the role of wood pulp may have changed, depending on which author you speak to will give you a different view on the role of wood pulp magazines nowadays or their electronic versions known as e-zines, but the lessons that Erle Stanley Gardner learned starting off as a brand-new author of mysteries and Westerns and stories of adventure hold true for the authors of today as much if they held true for the authors of his own day. The lessons that he learned he kept in his book he called his "fault book." What were the lessons that he had learned and how did he learn to correct them?

Lesson One: First-person narrative is not an easy way to go.

Erle Stanley Gardner would, like many other authors, including myself, often find themselves attracted to the first-person narrative. After all, the first-person narrative allows us to feel as if we are the main character — the hero of our own story. However, the first-person narrative viewpoint is quickly discovered to be restrictive on plot mobility and, depending on the cycle of the writing market and the agent or publisher, may quickly arouse the anger or distaste of the editor or agent because of the author's apparent tendency for possible egotism and rambling.

A notebook entry by Gardner, even after the success of various first-person narrative stories, expressed his concern: "Check up on this — I get better writing in my first-person stories because the characters take charge of things better. Bertha in a taxi says 'Not a damn thing' and drives away. Whereas my characters are too inclined to all act as they should to advance the story — the minute I get them into the third person narrative. Let them take things into their own hands."

Lesson Two: First, get your reader sympathy.

The lesson that Erle Stanley Gardner learned can be found in his notebooks.  A mentor and editorial friend of Gardner's once stated that they believed motivation was the key to making appealing characters and awaken the desire which holds the readers enthusiastic interest to the end of the story. His mentor and friend, George Jenkins, chided Gardner on one of the stories that he submitted by saying, "Once again you for conflict of individuals, of villains battling for his own selfish, for sordid reasons, with Speed battling merely to solve a mystery. We appear to lack, in this synopsis, the sympathetic motivation that you had in other stories,...

"By all means have Speed in danger of being shot, stabbed, hung, trapped in the mine, etc., for then our readers will be to see how and if he escaped. They want speed to survive. They want him to survive because they like him, he's battling against crooks, and so on."

Don Moore of Argosy thought the secret resided in a combination of understandable conflict and clarity of presentation:  "The other thing that bothers me in this is that the aims, problems, conflicting schemes, and even the action are so remote, devious, obscure, and cryptic that the story is hard to follow and does not arouse much urge, or suspend in the reader.  . . . . I feel that a conflict over a scrap of paper, no matter how important the treaty, is hardly important enough to warrant a serial."

Harold S Goldsmith at Popular Publications maintained that reader sympathy derived from the principal character's involvement in stories circumstances: "To my mind, character sympathy is built into ways: 1. It is developed because of the trail of a very likable character. 2. It is strengthened in proportion to the opposition that the main character receives."

Thirty or more years later Gardner would reflect this idea in a notebook in reference to a Perry Mason story he was plotting: "Regardless of the market I plan to reach, the Perry Mason story must deal with character conflicts — human emotions and situations which flow out of the relationships, rather than characters used merely to support the situations. Menace and suspense must flow naturally from what the people do and what they do must be logical."

The editorial reactions to Gardner that he received led him into a lifelong study of the problem of how to arouse reader sympathy for his characters. He consulted readers and critics, he read authorities, and he filled his notebooks with observations and conclusions. He worked on this issue until he became a self-made expert.

Lesson Three: Start with the story.

One of the most difficult tasks of a writer is to capture the reader at the beginning in the story. Gardner found, as many other writers and editors, that the failure to do so is one of the most common deficiencies of unsuccessful fiction. An editor of Gardner's identified the reason for one of Gardner's failed stories: "The movies and other things of our hectic life have educated the public the quick reading. You have to catch their interest with the first line and keep 'em moving to the last." This editorial friend cast an ever jaundiced eye at the philosophical openings which so many writers were borrowing from an earlier, more leisurely day of writing. He cautioned Gardner: "It would be a pretty difficult task to interject meditative bits and not slow up the action. However, every now and then, but not too often, it might be done but not at the very opening of the story."

Having learned his lesson, Gardner entered a maxim in his notebook under the heading "Action," which would guide him for the rest of his writing life: "Smash 'em between the eyes right at the start, then brush 'em off their feet, and don't let 'em up until the end of the story."

Lesson Four: Action! Action! Action!

The watchword the Gardner learned immediately from the wood pulps was "action." The way, Gardner learned this lesson and how it was explained to him can best be seen in three editorial criticisms that he received:

One wrote, "Now I will state very clearly what I feel about Push Over. Throughout, it lacks vitality, and he appealed the grips, sensation and, therefore suspense. You will observe there is movement that no action until page 40."

Another wrote, "I like Barney Killigen very very much. The only fault I can possibly find with the story is that Killigen is off stage so much. We do like to see him follow his mysterious actions a little more than to be told about them after they occur."

In the final example was, "On our last Paul Pry story I was very glad to see that you had injected more action scenes in this particular yarn in your previous ones. Considering the type of reader that is buying Gang War, I think each Paul Pry story should have a goodly amount of action-conflict."

Lesson Five: Putting it all together

Gardner was a trained (self trained) lawyer, and like every good lawyer Gardner prepared a brief of what he had learned. He reduced everything he learned to a single index card which he could pop up in front of himself while he sat at his typewriter. What was on that index card?

"Work on every plot until you have

1. Unusual opening incident

2. Complete character conflicts

3. Some emotional appeal

4. Some unusual slant of characters and situation

5. All stock situations eliminated

Make a genuine reader suspense in which he doesn't know what will happen next and surprised either by

(a) What does happen

(b) the way in which it happens."

Like many good authors, Gardner could not keep his lessons to himself. One of the joys of a writer community is the willingness to share our craft and what we have learned with fellow authors, regardless if they are well published are just starting out. Gardner shared these lessons with other writers. One of his pieces of advice that has been preserved to this day was written to beginning writer and a neighbor of this. Gardner wrote, "The main criticism I have had with your stories was that your characterization wasn't clear and that you wrote the whole thing as though it had happened. The reader wants to feel it is happening. In other words, don't step outside of your plot and write it as history. No one gives a damn about history. Write so that your reader is sucked into this world of the action, build suspense.

"One good rule is to get an attractive hero in the first sentence, get him into trouble in the first paragraph. Have a villain in the second paragraph. Then put in three pages getting the hero in a worse predicament. Have him grasp the solution which gets them out of the frying pan into the fire. Introduce the heroine. Get the hero out of the fire and have him pull the heroine out.

"But the wood pulps want a hero. For the most part they want a manly, young, attractive hero who possesses almost superhuman qualities, either patent or dormant. They want they yarn in the third person for the most part, and they want action.

"Try to write a story without a single cut back. That is start it and have it sweep along, one thing to another, with every single detail told by action. Don't say that the villain is a mean man with a wicked wallop. Show him sliding from his horse in a rage because the animal jerks away from him. Show him swing a terrific fist and crash the horse on the nose. That gives the reader the idea of the wickedness in his wallop. Then when the villain advances toward the hero with double fist the reader gets some suspense because he seemed what happened to the horse. But if you tell the reader the villain is bad and has a mean wallop it's history, and the less history you get in a yarn the better your chance."

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com and www.thewriterslens.com. Fiction is the world where the philosopher is the most free in our society to explore the human condition as he chooses.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Fluid or Unstatic Theory of Plots

Growing up, I always wanted to be a writer—well, at least since third grade when I wrote a Halloween story. Despite everything I learned in school before college on how to write a story, I felt that I was missing a huge key to unlock how to write. I found this key –at least the seed that could blossom in my mind—in a chance encounter in the campus library. I didn’t run in to Mr. Gardner, the prolific and best selling author of Perry Mason and many other novels, or any other great author. I ran into a book, sitting on a shelf by a bunch of other books on writing. The spine gave the main title: “The Secrets of the World’s Best-Selling Writer.” Dubiously I pulled it from the shelf and then my eyes must have grown to the size of small moons as the front cover gave the secondary title “The Story Telling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner.”

I grew up on the Perry Mason TV show and I had read a lot, but not all of the more than 80 Perry Mason Novels. When I saw the title, I had to check the book out. When I finished reading it, I combed the used books stores to buy a copy (as it was already out of print by the time I read it.) Unlike many other books on writing that I have read before and since that moment, this book was written directly from an examination of the plotting notebooks, the notes, and the diaries that Mr. Gardner left behind. The book documents his struggles and his life, not just how he wrote.

Mr. Gardner’s notes made it clear that as an early writer, he was determined to turn his mind in to a plot machine—which was my goal as well when I discovered the book. To do this, he actually created a plot machine that he played with until his mind did exactly what the machine did. The plot machine was only a bunch of circle cut outs that had a spinner and plot elements on it. After playing with it and a few other elements (which I may blog about at another time) his mind was able to create the twisting plots.

The plot machine cardboard wheels consisted of nine circles, each answering a question. It was these nine questions that he used to plot out (most) of his 154 novels that he wrote under a variety of pen names. These questions were written to write murder mysteries, but they can easily be changed to fit any genre. The nine wheels, thus the nine questions that he used (and that I use as part of my plotting method) are:

1. The act of primary villainy

2. Motivation for the act of villainy: Villain resorts to crime because of desire for (“Note difference between a static and cumulative motivation. Better wherever possible to start with a departure from a cumulative murder motivation—gradually, inexorably, forced to a murder motivation.” Erle Stanley Gardner)

3. The villain’s cover-up: Having committed the act of villainy, the villain tries to conceal it or escape consequences, or to help carry out motive by

4. Complications which arise during and after the cover-up: In trying 3 or afterward, villain is confronted by complications incurred through

5.The hero’s contact with the act of villainy: The Hero contacts an but not necessarily the act of villainy either by chance or by deliberation

6. Further complications and character conflicts: When conflict has been joined and hero comes in contact with villainy there are certain complicating circumstances which make for character conflicts and story

7. Suspense through hero’s mistakes: The complications become involved with the suspense element

8. Villain further attempts to escape: Villain feeling net closing about him tries to escape by some further act which points to a more exciting dramatic climax when carried through

9. Hero sets solution factors in motion or traps villain.

The plot machine looks easy, but it isn’t. Nor, is it the end of how Mr. Gardner pulled his plots together. It is only one huge cog in his method that drove the rest. If you would like for me to blog more on this, please comment and let me know. If want to find the book (as I am reluctant to loan it out as my ex-wife loaned it once to one of her friends I never got it back and had to but another one at a hefty sum—per Amazon.com it sells for $71 to $125.00 as of today), look for “Secrets of the World's Best-Selling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner” by Francis L. Fugate and Roberta B. Fugate (Sep 1980). ISBN-10: 0688037011 ISBN-13: 978-0688037017 Publisher: William Morrow & Co You might be able to still get a copy at your library or through the interlibrary loan system (which is why I have given you the ISBNs and the publisher).

To learn more about me, please visit my website and blog at www.davidalanlucas.com

Comment to Win Two Novels Written by One of the Best Selling Authors of All Time

Do you know the name Erle Stanley Gardner? Maybe not. It is likely you have heard of one of his famous protagonist: the famous Defense Attorney Perry Mason--known both in book and from TV as portrayed by Raymond Burr. Gardner was proclaimed to be the king of American mystery fiction. He was a criminal lawyer who filled his mystery masterpieces with intricate plots with more twists than a wood screw. Gardner wrote novels, short stories, radio dramas, and articles on forensics and travel. He published 134 novels and 15 non-fiction books under his own name and A.A. Fair, Kyle Corning, Charles M. Green, Carleton Kendrake, Charles J. Kenny, Les Tillray and Robert Parr. On Wednesday, we will post a blog on Gardner's "Theory of an Unstatic Plot" which helped turn his mind into a "plot machine."

Meanwhile, you have the chance to win two Perry Mason novels contained in one book: The Case of the Caretaker's Cat & The Case of the Perjured Parrot:

The Case of the Caretaker's Cat (1935) – "Charles Ashton is a cranky old caretaker with one friend in the world: a Persian cat. Samuel Laxter, his new boss, wants him to get rid of the feline. A simple case . . . on the surface. But when Perry Mason gets involved, there's suddenly more at stake. Like some priceless diamonds. A million dollars. And two gruesome murders. Only Mason with the invaluable help of Della Street and Paul Drake, can crack The Case of the Caretaker's Cat."

The Case of the Perjured Parrot (1939) – "Fremont Sabin, an eccentric millionaire, is found murdered in his country cabin. The only witness: his pet parrot. The bird keeps saying, "Helen, put down that gun." But is a parrot's testimony valid in a court of law? And what's Perry Mason to do when he discovers that the dead man had two wives named Helen? In one of his most ingenious and entertaining cases, Perry Mason puts Della Street and Paul Drake to work to help solve The Case of the Perjured Parrot."

How do you win? To enter the contest, simply leave a comment or question on The Writers' Lens blog between now (Nov. 28) and midnight December 3, 2011. Please include your email so we can reach you if you win. The more comments you leave, the greater your chance of winning the contest. If you refer others to The Writers' Lens who mention your name in their comments, we'll enter your name again in our random number generator along with theirs, also increasing your chances at winning! The winner will be chosen after midnight on Saturday and the announcement made on Sunday, December 4th. Good luck and comment often.

Thanks in advance for your comments, and good luck!

For more about David Alan Lucas, please visit www.davidalanlucas.com