Back in mid to late 1980s I was a security guard. The pay was lousy, but it gave me many hours in seclusion to write short stories and novels. However, I usually worked over 80 hours a week. No one can write that much. Well, at least not me. Thus I discovered joys of my local libraries.

Recently, I decided to look up an author who gave me great pleasure in those days. Most of his books are now out of print, I've learned, even one that became a movie.

I found that two of his were books available, so I ordered them. One I'd enjoyed before. The other was a straight thriller from days before he created "Appleton Porter" spy spoofs, re-released in 2001 in POD. I didn't know this before it arrived at my home in China.

Since I'm giving away THE plot spoiler, I won't identify author or title.

A man who deeply loves his wife buys her a hotel outside London. She is very happy there, at first. This is a fine suspenseful read as she notes oddities and eventually appears to be losing her mind and such. Suicides, an eventual murder. Finally, her husband pays a doctor to kill her.

Her husband arranged all this, we learn at end, because she was dying of a horrible and incurable illness. Rather than let her suffer indignity, he tries to give her some final days filled with wonderful memories. He never realizes that he ended her days with a living hell.

The writing was fine, aside from some stupid typos of sort common in unedited POD titles. He's obviously a sincere, hard-working, talented author. The plot was wholly consistent and everything "worked."

So why is it a weak book? Because plot I described is all there is. It's a one-plot wonder.

As an author, if you find yourself floundering, if you find your work-in-progress failing to make progress, ask yourself. Is it a one-plot wonder?

Here are some best sellers I've read over past thirty years.

During Cold War, a Soviet commander steals a top-secret submarine and tries to defect to US with it. A good and idealistic young law graduate accepts a job too good to be true, only to eventually learn he's working for Mafia. An alcoholic author and his family become caretakers at an old Maine hotel, alone during winter, and he eventually goes nuts. A US President declares war on drug dealers, a "clear and present danger" to national security. A crippled author is kidnapped by ultimate fan.

Some of us write simply because we can't not write. Ideas grab us, move us, and demand to be written. We strive to make it as real as we possibly can, to improve at our craft every day, hopefully to make it into realm of literature as well as entertainment. We want to craft an entire world where places and people are so real that reader doesn't feel like he's reading a book as much as he is going to another place. In lofty world of literature that we strive for, reader will still think about book after reading that last page. It's our gift to reader, something to take with him. Given sufficient skill, this can even happen long after we are dead.

Then we learn that doesn't sell. Oh, there are exceptions. Some novelists make a living by consistently writing quality literature. But, there are quite a few best sellers who have no such goals. They write for money, and they make it.

Even writer who has written great literature has trouble marketing it that way. We have to look at our "target audience." Who will buy this book? Let me see, our heroine survived spousal abuse, so there's an audience. There's a suicide, so we can get bereavement crowd. Where's setting? We can get a local audience. The hero's a cop. Maybe teen boys will go for that. Nah, too light on action. But there's a romance. Maybe we'll market to romance readers. Give hero bedroom eyes and pass him off as a romantic hero. Yeah, that might work.

But if you want to write to get rich, even that's not enough. Nah, time to think about your reader is before you write book, not after.

Throw in lots of gratuitous sex, preferably extramarital. One (and only one) character who flirts and is sorely tempted and walks away from "love" to remain true to his wife.