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Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Sleepless Nights, A Writer's Goal

“Usually, when people get to the end of a chapter, they close the book and go to sleep.  I deliberatively write a book so when the reader gets to the end of the chapter, he or she must turn one more page.”  -Sidney Sheldon

Born on this date in 1917, Sheldon is perhaps responsible for more sleepless nights than he cares to take actual credit for.  He went from being a “good” television show producer to a great novelist, writing some 20 books after the age of 50, including the best-sellers, Master of the Game, The Other Side of Midnight, and A Rage of Angels.  

Before his death in 2007 just one week short of age 90, he had become one of the top 10 best-selling fiction writers of all time, a position he still holds.   His novels often feature determined women who persevere in a tough world run by hostile men, and contain a workshop’s worth of suspenseful devices that keep his readers turning the page. 
 


“If there is any secret to my success, I think it's that my characters are very real to me. I feel everything they feel, and therefore I think my readers care about them.  I put my characters into situations that are so precarious there is no way to get out,” he told an interviewer.  “And then I figure how to get them out.” 

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