David Corbett

A former private investigator who became a widely acclaimed author offers insights on creating and writing vivid, interesting and memorable characters and describes how to craft colorful dialogue between them. Original. 25,000 first printing.

Creating Memorable Characters for Fiction, Film, and Tv

The Art of Character

In the near future, as America breaks apart into factional violence, a young artist named Georgina O'Halloran creates an illustrated book of old Celtic tales in the style of the famous Book of Durrow. Titled The Truth Against the World, it's intended as a gift for her professor-who is also her lover. But the older man cruelly breaks things off, Georgie falls into a depressive tailspin, and the book becomes an international sensation-under the professor's name. Emerging from her troubles, Georgie dedicates herself to finding the plagiarist and confronting him-a task that will oblige a cross-country journey amid rising violence.She turns to her friend Shane for help. He's a charming eccentric-"Irish as wet grass," a whip-smart ex-soldier with a curiously encyclopedic memory, a beautiful singing voice, and a dark wit. But he's also a fiercely loyal friend with finely honed fighting skills. They'll prove crucial as the dangers mount-and the real forces behind the book's worldwide success reveal themselves.

The Truth Against the World

Creating Complex Motivation for Compelling Characters in Fiction, Film, and TV

Compass of Character

Si el personaje es el centro de cualquier historia, El arte de crear personajes. En narrativa, cine y televisión de David Corbett, constituye la mejor herramienta para crear y desarrollar personajes brillantes y distintos. Cando se empieza a concebir un personaje, dice el autor, uno se da cuenta de hasta qué punto toda narración es un reflejo de la propia vida, un paso en la búsqueda de respuesta a las preguntas esenciales: ¿Quién soy? ¿De dónde vengo? ¿Adónde voy? ¿Qué sentido tiene todo esto? Para crear un personaje que parezca vivo será necesario entender sus deseos, pero también sus frustraciones, secretos y debilidades, y en especial sus contradicciones. Se evitará así que el personaje actúe como mero instrumento de la historia, que carezca de la complejidad de las personas reales.

En narrativa, cine y televisión

El arte de crear personajes

Roque Montalvo must bring his uncle and two others from El Salvador to California through smuggling routes through Guatemala and Mexico to the U.S. border.

A Novel

Do They Know I'm Running?

A saxophonist's murder is only the first shot fired in a citywide war. All great blues musicians chase something. Raymond 'Strong' Carlisle calls it 'the deep sweet' -- that perfect note that always seems to sit just out of reach. For decades he has made crowds swing, made women smile, and earned the respect of some of the greats. But as long as he strained for the deep sweet, nothing he did with his baritone sax seemed to matter. Chasing that fantasy has led him here, to lie in the rain beneath a sycamore, counting his bullet holes as he dies. The detective on the scene is Dennis Murchison, a white cop who has seen too many murders to be shocked by a dead blues man. As he eliminates possible suspects, he's left to decide between a lowlife drug pusher and Toby Marchand -- Strong Carlisle's son. As the city heaves into violent frenzy, Murchison finds that answers hover like the deep sweet: just out of reach.

Done for a Dime

Rob Hart

James Grady

No one personifies the FTW rock-and-roll ethic better than the Man in Black. Johnny Cash's music can be captured in that one iconic photograph. Guitar slung off his shoulder, sneer on his lips, middle finger extended to let the status quo know what he thought of it. Which is why Cash's music speaks to so many of the marginalized, the forgotten, the misunderstood, the disen-franchised. Featuring some of today's best crime fiction writers, Just to Watch Him Die is a kick-ass collection of wronged men and women who, like Johnny, walk the line every day, fighting for what they believe is right.

Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash

Just to Watch Them Die

Seven stories of desperation and death from a master of crime fiction Sterling Associates recruited Satcher in the killing fields of Iraq. A marine who learned the brutalities and frustrations of war in Fallujah, Satcher was ideal for Sterling, a shadowy corporation whose business is to kill for America when the CIA can’t. He comes to Guatemala, the deadliest nation in the Americas, to kidnap a Sinaloan cartel member and turn him against his family. There he meets Odilia, an idealistic young lawyer dedicated to raising her country from the mire. Both want to save Guatemala, but Satcher’s method means destroying it first. This new story from the hard-boiled mind of David Corbett is a glimpse into a life most Americans prefer to ignore. Along with the six others in this volume, it provides a glimpse into the darkest corners of the modern world, and a reminder that hope springs even from the bloodiest soil.

Stories

Killing Yourself to Survive

Caught up in a scheme to smuggle his deported uncle back across the border, a young American must fight to save his family, himself, and the woman he loves . At eighteen, Roque Montalvo is a gifted guitarist and a hit with women, but the rest of his life is a struggle. Orphaned at birth and scraping by in a rough Northern California town, he helps support his hardworking aunt and tends to his ex-marine brother -- a physical and emotional wreck after his tour in Iraq. Then, to make matters worse, his uncle gets snared in a workplace raid and federal immigration agents deport him back to El Salvador. When Montalvo's loose-cannon cousin, himself a former deportee, shows up unannounced, he draws Montalvo into a scheme to rescue his uncle and bring him back home. It's a perilous undertaking in the best of cases, now that gangs and organized crime control the smuggling routes, and the risk ratchets higher when Montalvo learns he'll be transporting not just his uncle, but also a Palestinian refugee and a young beauty destined for the clutches of a fierce Mexican crime boss. A gritty, realistic, and unforgettable adventure where all borders are tested, Do They Know I'm Running? tightropes the perilous line between menace and hope, danger and home.

Caught up in a scheme to smuggle his deported uncle back across the border, a young American must fight to save his family, himself, and the woman he loves At eighteen, Roque Montalvo is a gifted guitarist and a hit with women, but the rest of his life is a struggle. Orphaned at birth and scraping by in a rough Northern California town, he helps support his hardworking aunt and tends to his ex-marine brother—a physical and emotional wreck after his tour in Iraq. Then, to make matters worse, his uncle gets snared in a workplace raid and federal immigration agents deport him back to El Salvador. When Montalvo’s loose-cannon cousin, himself a former deportee, shows up unannounced, he draws Montalvo into a scheme to rescue his uncle and bring him back home. It’s a perilous undertaking in the best of cases, now that gangs and organized crime control the smuggling routes, and the risk ratchets higher when Montalvo learns he’ll be transporting not just his uncle, but also a Palestinian refugee and a young beauty destined for the clutches of a fierce Mexican crime boss. A gritty, realistic, and unforgettable adventure where all borders are tested, Do They Know I’m Running? tightropes the perilous line between menace and hope, danger and home.

Just as a compass provides direction for an explorer, so does motivation provide direction for characters in fiction. The "compass" of character motivation is composed of four points: Lack, Yearning, Resistance, and Desire. In The Compass of Character you'll learn to deeply consider the key question "What does my character want?" and learn techniques to answer that question by writing realistic and empathetic characters without falling into formulaic, unsatisfying results that only diminish the character. Bestselling author and acclaimed writing instructor David Corbett provides writers with the essentials for building characters with motivations that range from clear to complex by exploring topics such as: • human yearning • pathological maneuvers • the pain of life vs. the promise of life • backstory and behavior • mechanics of growth and transformation • dramatizing mistaken desire and misbegotten yearnings • moral arguments The key to fascinating characters is rendering subtle inner states in straightforward external circumstances, which requires a fundamental understanding of the simple building blocks of complex motivation as they manifest themselves in behavior, where complexity of purpose collides with the messy, indifferent world. The Compass of Character is the one book that can guide writers to that end with both instruction and inspiration.

The Compass of Character

Domenic Stansberry

Sin Soracco

This anthology of “genuinely haunting noir fiction” set in the Golden City features new stories by Jim Nisbet, Alejandro Murguía, Michelle Tea and others (Publishers Weekly). Oscar Wilde once quipped that anyone who disappears is said to be seen in in San Francisco. With its famous fog, winding streets, and hazardously steep hills, it is certainly an ideal place for getting lost. It’s also an ideal setting for noir fiction. From Fisherman’s Warf and The Golden Gate Bridge to The Haight-Ashbury, Chinatown, and Russian Hill, fifteen authors explore the sordid side of the City by the Bay in this sterling collection. San Francisco Noir features brand-new stories by Barry Gifford, Robert Mailer Anderson, Michelle Tea, Peter Plate, Kate Braverman, Domenic Stansberry, David Corbett, Eddie Muller, Alejandro Murguía, Sin Soracco, Alvin Lu, John Longhi, Will Christopher Baer, Jim Nisbet, and David Henry Sterry.

San Francisco Noir

Jeffery Deaver

Brett Battles

Linda Barnes

From International Thriller Writers comes Watchlist: two powerful novellas featuring the same thrill cast of characters in one major suspenseful package. The Chopin Manuscript and then The Copper Bracelet were a collaboration by some of the world's greatest thriller writers, including Lee Child, Joseph Finder, Lisa Scottoline, and Jeffery Deaver, who conceived the characters and set the plot in motion. The other authors each wrote a chapter and Deaver then completed what he started, bringing both novellas to their startling conclusions. In the first novella, The Chopin Manuscript, former war crimes investigator Harold Middleton possesses a previously unknown score by Frederic Chopin. But he is unaware that, locked within its handwritten notes, lies a secret that now threatens the lives of thousands of Americans. As he races from Poland to America to uncover the mystery of the manuscript, Middleton will be accused of murder, pursued by federal agents, and targeted by assassins. But the greatest threat will come from a shadowy figure from his past: the man known only as Faust. Harold Middleton returns in The Copper Bracelet-the explosive sequel to The Chopin Manuscript-as he's drawn into an international terror plot that threatens to send India and Pakistan into full-scale nuclear war. Careening from Nice to London and Moscow to Kashmir to prevent nuclear disaster, Middleton is unaware that his prey has changed and the act of terror is far more diabolical than he knows. Will he discover the identity of the Scorpion in time to halt an event that will pit the United States, China, and Russia against each other at the brink of World War III?

Two Serial Thrillers in One Killer Book

Watchlist

Shield of Lantius is a fast-paced science fiction novel of war taking place in the space between Earth and her moon. Marine Corps major Dar Fantin must put together a fighting unit of Earth's finest fighter pilots to save their home from the attacking Womongly. The time frame is today or tomorrow, not years in the future. Though at first blush, one might believe the initial beginning of the novel to be "old hat," it most certainly is not. Dar and his companions are tossed into a situation that is not at all what they believe it to be. There are six primary clues given throughout the book which may lead the reader to the surprise ending. No mystery here, just a series of events in a convoluted plot. As Dar is told in chapter four, "All is not what it seems . . ."

Shield of Lantius

In El Salvador, a young American faces his troubled past -- and a dangerous present . Jude McManus has landed on his feet. Following time in the army, he scored work as an 'executive protection specialist' in El Salvador, where he safeguards a hydrologist for good money and gets to surf during his downtime. But this slice of paradise comes with post-civil-war dangers, and distance won't erase his cruel memories of Chicago. Ten years earlier, his cop father was outed as part of the Laugh Masters, a group of police officers investigated for robbing and brutally beating drug dealers. In the wake of the scandal, the family fell apart, and his father died under suspicious circumstances. When McManus gets a call from Bill Malvasio -- one of his dad's closest friends and an escaped member of the Laugh Masters, now living in El Salvador -- the past comes knocking in a big way. Malvasio opens up about what really happened, and seeks help for another member of McManus's father's old crew. Is the disgraced ex-cop being straight with McManus? Hidden corruption abounds, and it will take all of McManus's wits to come away with the truth -- and his life -- intact.

Blood of Paradise

As one of a handful of UK police officers trained in SAS deep-cover surveillance, David Corbett infiltrates the toughest communities living among junkies, prostitutes, murderers and firearm dealers, in order to gather evidence that would lead to dozens of convictions.His rapport with hardened criminals was forged during his youth on the mean streets of Glasgow, where he ran with the gangs, joyriding and stealing. But when his friends began disappearing into borstals, Corbett decided it was time to take himself in hand and followed his father into the police force. His ability to mingle with gangsters was soon identified as an asset and, after serving time in the CID - where he was involved in investigating the murder of Arthur Thompson Junior, the son of Glasgow's Godfather - he became an undercover agent with the Crime Squad. He trained in urban and rural surveillance and invented a fictional past for himself. Like Donnie Brasco, the legendary US cop who won the trust of the Mafia, Corbett risked his life every day: one false move and his cover would have been blown. The pinnacle of his career was an operation in the former pit town of Blyth, where there had been 15 drug-related deaths in 12 months. Leaving his wife and family, he spent five months undercover, wired up, winning the confidence of the dealers, and had to cope with having his life endangered by a corrupt officer. Corbett's work led to 31 convictions and commendations from the Chief Constable and a Crown Court Judge but, without any form of counselling, the stress took its toll and he was forced into early retirement.

A Life Undercover

Both Sides of the Fence

An ex-con risks his freedom and his life to rekindle an old love affair They call him Bad Dan, the Man Who Can. A talented photographer who makes his living smuggling premium Thai marijuana into the States, he meets Shel at a Las Vegas blackjack table, and falls instantly in love. After two years of whirlwind passion, they are living in California and plotting a final score. But in his haste to escape the con life, Dan makes a fatal mistake. The score goes sour, and Dan agrees to a ten-year stint to buy a light sentence for the woman he loves. When he emerges from jail, Dan’s freewheeling spirit is gone. His parole bars him from consorting with known felons, but no power on earth can keep him away from Shel. Attempting to reconnect with her draws them both back into the smuggling game, where the only things hotter than their passion are the tempers of the men who want them dead.

David Corbett

Books

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