tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-102823512026-04-06T12:06:43.351-07:00Words. Concepts. Strategies. Since 1991.Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comBlogger1761125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-55463216340634063512026-04-03T11:55:00.000-07:002026-04-06T12:06:43.203-07:00

I wrote and designed my first advertisement forty years ago. It was a classified ad for the now-closed Tropicana Hotel & Casino. A local marketing agency took a chance on a high school senior whose only advertising knowledge came from Darrin Stephens on the television series "Bewitched."They wanted something fresh. And they decided to take a chance on me to deliver it. So I framed the ad

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-58063050373054768402026-03-25T15:43:00.000-07:002026-03-25T15:43:42.835-07:00

There are changes in the air and plenty to share. Late last year, I successfully launched a new author site, byRichardRBecker, which has even more focus on my books than I sometimes share here or a Copywrite, Ink. The new author site included a blog, but I was very leery about starting one (given that it meant starting another one). Until, well, today. I've been playing with an

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-56346488688484747112025-12-29T11:53:00.000-08:002025-12-29T11:53:37.922-08:00

Many writers are readers, and I am no exception. I read 56 books this year, which was eight more than my modest 48-book goal. Collectively, they totaled 20,082 pages read, with the shortest being "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine at 104 pages and the longest "The Guns of August" by Barbara W. Tuchman at 710 pages. Head over to Goodreads, BookBub, or TheStoryGraph if you are

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-70254951563723589002025-11-18T12:07:00.000-08:002025-11-18T12:09:30.887-08:00

I don't always put it out there front and center, except when it comes up in interviews. Where do ideas for my novels come from? Inevitably, the inspiration comes from my short stories. I wrote 50 of them at a rate of one a week while writing 50 States. I've written many more since then, although most haven't been published aside from secret sneak peaks for newsletter subscribers. All

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-4425969052405730712025-10-05T11:00:00.000-07:002025-10-05T11:01:40.048-07:00

In Augusta, Maine, a historic nor’easter and something more sinister unearth secrets buried deep in the town’s past. With time running out, three lives collide in a desperate fight for survival, where truth becomes a casualty and redemption comes at a cost. Billy Stevens, a quarry worker haunted by loss, is drawn into a web of betrayal when a brutal crime pins him as a suspect. Jessica Michaud

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-20597539381951640682025-08-24T11:49:00.000-07:002025-08-24T11:49:39.758-07:00

It felt surreal yesterday, as I was supposed to be picking up a car rental. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a mid-sized SUV that could take my daughter and me cross-country, from Nevada to Illinois.  The route would have been spectacular, a little more rural and remote than some of our previous trips. This would have taken us from Vegas to Flagstaff, Durango, Pueblo, Dodge City, Wichita,

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-90988142838129502512025-07-29T14:53:00.000-07:002025-07-29T14:53:59.406-07:00

I’m less than one month away from my next cross-country book tour. This will be my fourth trip between Illinois and Nevada, with each tour introducing me to the majesty and diversity of America. Last year, I travelled north through Utah to I-80 and over the Rocky Mountains and across the rolling farmlands of Nebraska and Iowa. My return trip followed the historic Route 66 across the Ozark

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-71790707075290895792025-05-01T13:45:00.000-07:002025-05-03T12:28:34.693-07:00

"Third Wheel" by Richard R. Becker is my gritty, heart-wrenching coming-of-age thriller of betrayal, redemption, and the search for hope in the morally gray desert suburbs of 1980s Las Vegas. It follows fifteen-year-old Brady Wilks as he seeks freedom from an abusive home and a fleeting chance at love, only to find a treacherous world of lies, drugs, and feeling like a third wheel in every aspect

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-53856548231290784532025-04-06T12:30:00.000-07:002025-04-06T12:34:19.567-07:00

Yesterday was a breezy Saturday in Las Vegas, but it still made for a beautiful day for a book signing. I had set up an Authors & Artists tent at the Art in the Park event at Bruce Trent Park to gauge interest in some new prints of Jenna Becker's artwork. (We still need to set up an online store for her.) This was the second time I attended the event. The first time was in 2021 to

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-85631557896770935902025-02-14T17:13:00.000-08:002025-02-14T17:14:00.507-08:00

"Words. Concepts. Strategies.," which was sometimes called the Copywrite, Ink. blog started in 2005, was the same year the first blogger received White House press credentials, The Huffington Post was founded, and YouTube was launched. It was nine years after the first blog was created by Justin Hal in 1994, which meant I was a latecomer to blogging but still an early adopter.I remember telling

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-11874609924127805892025-01-10T15:06:00.000-08:002025-01-10T15:10:35.868-08:00

Some writers have the ability to put one word in front of another and make whatever they write about feel as real as if it happened. Great literary writers do it out of habit. The best copywriters, myself included, are trained to weave whatever differential facts they are given with fantasy to make a brand story come to life. And journalists, although the public likes to pretend otherwise,

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-41725046006801286462024-10-24T13:00:00.000-07:002024-10-24T13:00:12.540-07:00

Last year, video accounted for over 82 percent of all web traffic, with TikTok boasting 1.04 billion active users and YouTube setting the high bar at 2.6 billion. Latecomer Facebook Reels is just under 620 million. These numbers represent a significant shift from when blogs were content drivers ten years ago. So, while blogs and articles still play an essential role in SEO and easily

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-78879115684579232812024-07-27T16:33:00.000-07:002024-08-05T13:54:25.336-07:00

My daughter played her last travel softball game a few weeks ago. It's surreal to think, given I once wrote about her in the context of overcoming hurdles. Yet, here we are: Weeks away from taking a road trip to her college, where her next game will be at the collegiate level. Along the way, I'm hoping she learns a few things, too. Some of what I hope she learns comes full circle to that

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-18125618106971315782024-05-06T13:30:00.000-07:002024-05-06T13:30:33.267-07:00

In his book The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin praises artificial intelligence (AI). But he doesn’t find its strength in being creative as much as in seeing problems with a fresh perspective. He highlights AlphaGo’s approach to the game Go as his example. AlphaGo, the first AI to defeat a Go grandmaster, applied a never-seen-before move that no human would have made. Indeed. Most humans

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-73489866795707425142024-02-08T11:49:00.000-08:002024-02-08T11:53:06.903-08:00

I met my first girlfriend in the third grade. She thought I was a rebel of sorts — a transfer from the public school system, repeating third grade. I wasn’t a rebel. I still couldn’t read.We were “boyfriend and girlfriend” for three short months. I moved away after the school year ended. We might have been “together” longer, but she didn’t know I liked her. I always liked her. I finally

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-44646922597627208592024-01-04T06:00:00.000-08:002024-01-04T06:00:00.197-08:00

It isn’t easy, but there is something magical about it when it happens. An author’s connection with an independent bookstore can be something special. Since I’m tied to my daughter’s softball schedule, I can’t set up book tours like some authors do. Instead, I try to time my introductions with her tournament schedules, emailing or calling a few weeks in advance to set up a book signing or

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comDallas, TX, USA32.7766642 -96.796987899999991-0.055547268857381482 -131.95323789999998 65.60887566885738 -61.640737899999991tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-8137264485751101592023-09-18T15:58:00.003-07:002023-09-18T15:58:44.458-07:00

Last April, I was a guest speaker at the Kiwanis Club of Las Vegas as an accidental author. Why accidental? I didn't know what else to call becoming an author. I wasn't one of those book dreamers. I couldn't even read.I grew up in what was then one street over from the wrong side of the tracks in Milwaukee, where my grandparents lived. They raised me. We were poor, and I had a handicap to

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-64089897800171944242023-08-05T14:13:00.002-07:002023-08-06T16:01:40.260-07:00

I was having lunch on Balboa Beach when I received the review notification for my debut novel, Third Wheel, from Kirkus Reviews. A mist was over the water, and a dead seagull washed up in the surf. It didn't seem like the best of omens.My daughter encouraged me to load the review anyway, a daunting task with only one service bar on my phone. She was amused to see me a little nervous and reassured

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-72238126609555283352023-07-14T11:14:00.002-07:002023-07-14T11:28:51.212-07:00

About four months ago, we bought a Whirlpool range from RC Willey. After a few weeks of use, the oven's computer board inexplicably rendered the oven inoperable. No big deal. These things happen, and it's under warranty.Except, Whirlpool currently has a parts issue. The technicians could not get the needed parts, and Whirlpool was unable to provide an estimate of when these parts would be

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-10302105364611439082023-05-11T08:00:00.013-07:002023-05-12T11:32:32.916-07:00

Great news! I've set August 21, 2023, as the release date for my debut novel, Third Wheel. It's a coming-of-age story about a boy trying to find his identity by taking chances on random and fragile relationships forged in the early boomtown years of Las Vegas, 1982.The teenage protagonist Brady Wilks is an outcast as a Midwest transplant, who forges a brotherly bond with an older teenage neighbor

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-28724059022504069572023-04-06T12:57:00.001-07:002023-04-06T12:58:22.126-07:00

A few weeks ago, 50 States was honored with a 2023 Book Excellence Award. Out of thousands of books entered in this competition, 50 States was selected for its high-quality writing, design, and overall market appeal in the category of short stories. You can find its listing here.  This isn't the first award 50 States has earned. It won first place for short stories in the Spring 2022

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-55286852462630468162023-01-31T09:46:00.018-08:002023-05-12T11:32:59.545-07:00

There is a childhood punishment that the protagonist of my debut novel describes in my forthcoming debut novel. One of the beta readers didn’t like it. She called it silly, disbelieving it would ever happen. The irony is that I borrowed it from real life. No, the novel isn’t real life. It’s a work of fiction. But as most writers will tell you, we all draw on real people or events, especially

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-51134112189084310572022-07-29T12:56:00.002-07:002022-07-29T12:56:17.817-07:00

When 50 States was published last year, I didn't have the highest expectations. It's not that I didn't believe in the work. I did and do. But I'm also a realist who read some articles: self-published authors likely sell around 250 books or less; short story collections by small publishers sell between 300 and 2,000, about 1,000 for short story collections; and

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-79847900018582337882022-07-12T06:00:00.005-07:002022-07-12T06:00:00.235-07:00

This one study continues to surface in articles, and it always stops me in my tracks. It claims a creativity crisis in America, largely attributed to the pursuit of winning formulas over future breakthroughs.The crisis began, they say, as American education put creative thinking on the back burner in favor of measurable rote memorization in the 1990s. Americans wanted to test better than

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10282351.post-49372312726699022942022-05-21T10:21:00.001-07:002022-05-21T10:21:37.149-07:00

The last two years have been among the hardest — a series of unrelated wretched events with the dark cloud of the pandemic looming in the background. You know the cloud. We all do. It blotted out the sun. The start of all our trouble didn't begin with it. It started with our home being invaded and cars stolen. Mine, a 20-year-old Infiniti G20, was nearly totaled. Who am I kidding? I

Richhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11249654290264168416noreply@blogger.com