Also, through this contest I’ve discovered Christi’s lovely blog and    [Continue reading]]]>
This week I won a contest on Christi Craig’s blog: my own copy of Linda Cassidy Lewis‘s novel The Brevity of Roses. I’d already read and enjoyed the e-book, but I admit it, there’s something special about actually holding a physical book in your hands…

Also, through this contest I’ve discovered Christi’s lovely blog and am happy to add her to my list of favorites and new friends.

All in all, a good week. Now if the shot I got in my knee this morning would start working and if Tropical Storm Emily would remain off-shore, I’d call it a terrific week.

Well, Cathryn Grant’s Book and Kindle Giveaway is over – you can find out who won the contest here.

But I gotta say – I really feel like I was a big winner last week. It was fun to welcome new visitors to my blog and to visit those blogs in return.    [Continue reading]]]>
Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all.

Well, Cathryn Grant’s Book and Kindle Giveaway is over – you can find out who won the contest here.

But I gotta say – I really feel like I was a big winner last week. It was fun to welcome new visitors to my blog and to visit those blogs in return. I discovered several new-to-me blogs to follow regularly, and that’s a real treat. I learned something about the passions that fuel people’s need to read and to write.

Of course I look at everything through my own lens, but getting into someone’s head – whether a fictional character, an author, or your own head as a reader/writer – to learn a bit more about human nature is a thread running through most of the comments. I get that, wanting to write about characters who climb into the brain somehow, want to read about them.

I’m reading Elizabeth George’s For the Sake of Elena right now. George has an amazing talent for slowly tossing little pieces of a character out like breadcrumbs that you just have to follow, hungry to learn more.

I bought the book at a used book fair last year and when I opened it, I found a little purple card taped on the inside front cover with this written on it: Absolutely the best Elizabeth George. If you like this one, you can go back and read all of them.

oh. yeah.

My post today about my love for reading and writing is    [Continue reading]]]> I’m participating, along with several other bloggers, in Cathryn Grant’s Suburban Noir Fiction and Kindle Giveaway. Lucky winners will receive a FREE copy of Cathryn’s debut novel, The Demise of the Soccer Moms, OR a FREE Wi-Fi Kindle pre-loaded with the novel.

My post today about my love for reading and writing is part of the contest. Read it, read the contest rules below, and then leave a comment on my post to enter the Giveaway. Good luck!

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I’ve always felt inadequate around Top Ten lists. I’ve never been able to hone in on just ten of anything and declare them my all-time favorites. There are simply too many “tops” to pick from in most categories, and “it depends” turns out to be first on most of my lists. Mood, time of day, what I had for lunch — they all influence my choices, which can change faster than coastal weather.

Same thing with developing a short list of why I love to read and write. It depends — there are SO MANY possible reasons fighting for top ten status on my Literary Love List.

Cathryn Grant, indie author of the just-released Demise of the Soccer Moms, and Linda Cassidy Lewis, indie author of soon-to-be-released The Brevity of Roses, had a wonderful conversation yesterday on Linda’s blog. You can read it here. Cathryn talked about the pull of examining “lives of quiet desperation” and how that pull drives some of her writing.

Yeah, I get it. Even those of us with pretty great lives feel that quiet desperation at some point(s) in our lives. Reading gives us a chance to explore that desperation through the lives of characters we can relate to – sometimes with a happy face resolution, sometimes with a resulting pile of dead bodies, sometimes with, well, no resolution at all.

Reading provides an opportunity to get out of our own skins and into someone else’s. A good writer makes that step from one skin to another seamless. A great writer makes it inevitable.

Getting inside another person’s head is just one of the reasons I love to read. I like to think it helps me understand human nature a tad better. Not just the desperation, but the aspirations, hopes, doubts, fears, loves that drive us.

Getting inside another head is a great draw for me as a writer, too. Especially when that other head, that other character, takes risks I would never attempt on my own.

I have more reasons, of course, for loving to read and write, and they are always changing.

But enough about me. How about YOU?

What compels you to read? To write?

Enquiring minds want to know.

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Enter the Suburban Noir contest for the chance to win a copy of “The Demise Of The Soccer Moms”. The grand prize is a Wi-Fi Kindle. Rules for the Kindle Giveaway:

1. Between February 4 and midnight PST, February 11, comment on any one or all of the 7 participating blogs to get one entry per comment. Limit of one comment per blog for a possible total of 7 entries.

2. Between February 4 and midnight PST, February 11, tweet any one or all of the participating blogs to get one entry per tweet. Limit of one tweet per blog for a possible total of 7 entries. Tweets must have @CathrynGrant so I can track them.

3. Participants can have a total of 14 entries between commenting on blogs and tweeting.

4. Ten people will win their choice of an eBook or paperback copy of Cathryn Grant’s Suburban Noir Thriller, “The Demise Of The Soccer Moms”. One additional person will win a Wi-Fi Graphite Kindle (valued at $139) pre-loaded with a copy of “The Demise Of The Soccer Moms”. Please note the paperback copy will not be available until March. Winners will be chosen by a random number generator.

The schedule for entering at participating blogs is listed at Cathryn’s blog.

I’m sorry to disappoint those of you visiting my site for the first time because of its title, but this post is actually about how authors merchandise and sell their books.

No, really.

Bye. Thanks for dropping by,    [Continue reading]]]> Well, if this title doesn’t up my blog stats and clog my spam filter, I don’t know what will.

I’m sorry to disappoint those of you visiting my site for the first time because of its title, but this post is actually about how authors merchandise and sell their books.

No, really.

Bye. Thanks for dropping by, and come back again, y’all… In my next post, I’m gonna write about punctuation faux pas and it should be pretty – uh – revealing as well.

~~

Okay: I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on How Authors Move Their Own Merchandise. In it, writers shared some stories about what they’ve done to get noticed and ultimately to sell their books.

The article should definitely give pause to any writers hoping that going with a traditional publisher means the publisher will do the marketing for them. That just ain’t the case. However you publish your book – indie or big-box publisher – you need to be prepared to do some heavy lifting in the marketing arena in addition to the typical social networking blitz.

According to Penny Sansevieri, CEO of Author Marketing Experts, 1,500 books are published every day in the U.S., including traditionally and independently published titles. She’s quoted in the WSJ article: “To get noticed, you have to throw more at people than just your book.” She’s in the book marketing business so of course she’ll say that, but still…

Which is where the sex toys come in. Lynn Schnurnberger chose Babeland, “a sort of FOA Schwarz for adults,” for her publication party for The Best Laid Plans since one scene in the novel takes place there. Got her and her book noticed.

My WIP is tentatively called Tap Dancing at the County Fair and the thought of locational publication parties terrifies me, frankly.

Give-aways like key chains and drawings for iPods or e-readers are popular to draw attention to a book. You’ll see one of those give-away drawings on this very blog in a couple of weeks.

Putting together a cabaret show based on your book? Another marketing scheme that a couple of writers have done. (You will NOT see that here.)

And, of course, buy-one-get-one-free: tucking in a copy of someone else’s novel with your own book. That’s what Ayelet Waldman did to boost sales of her Bad Mother in 2009: She included a free copy of a novel by her husband.

Uh, Waldman’s husband is Michael Chabon.

The Michael Chabon.

Ya think that helped Bad Mother make it to the New York Times best-seller list?

Still, even if you didn’t marry a Pulitzer-Prize-for-literature winner, the WSJ article has some worthwhile hints, though it can be a tad depressing to realize that putting on your thigh high latex boots to market yourself and your book is a must-do.

This brings me to a different literary couple: John Yunker and Midge Raymond. I’d never heard of either of them until yesterday, when, thanks to R.J. Keller’s Facebook share, I came to Love in the Time of Amazon: A Book Trailer about Sales Rank.

Read the blurb, and watch their trailer – funny and probably painfully true. And then, of course, buy their books.

Oh – about the boots. They’re available online for $369.60. You know what to Google to find them.

Me, I’m sticking with the tap shoes for now, but you never know…

DING! DING! DING! Yesterday I crossed the National Novel Writing Month finish line when I wrote the 50,000th word of Pelican Island, my NaNo murder mystery. I didn’t stop writing even though the flashing lights and buzzers went crazy and someone started pouring champagne while a brass band played.

oh. wait.    [Continue reading]]]>

DING! DING! DING! Yesterday I crossed the National Novel Writing Month finish line when I wrote the 50,000th word of Pelican Island, my NaNo murder mystery. I didn’t stop writing even though the flashing lights and buzzers went crazy and someone started pouring champagne while a brass band played.

oh. wait.

maybe it didn’t happen quite like that.

Maybe no one even noticed when I got to word 50,001. And that brass band must have been playing on a different island. I just kept on slogging, slogging, slogging until I got to the end of the scene I was writing and I noticed I’d made it to the finish line. The champagne was NOT flowing freely. I’d come up with a sort of okay ending and written it a few days earlier, but the road to the ending was and still is filled with gaping plot holes.

I’m going to keep on slogging forward, but I’ll tell you a secret:

I hated NaNo more days than I felt the love.

I felt chained to this process that brought out the very worst of my writing capabilities. I was so bent on coming up with plot points that I forgot to tell a story. I killed my most interesting characters. I used clunky and banal language. My only funny scene was a funeral, and that happened at the beginning of the book.

My family learned to tread softly when my word count was advancing too slowly for the calendar. I wondered what in hell ever made me think I could tell a story anyway, ’cause I sure wasn’t banging it out here.

Here’s another secret:

I already miss NaNo.

I miss the urgency that kept me glued to my chair and would. not. release. me. until I’d met my daily word quota. I miss competing (yes I do) with my writing buddies, and cheering them forward as well. I miss that single-minded focus and intensity on my writing, even my bad writing. I miss having a deadline that forced me to approach writing in a totally different way than I was comfortable with, and to crank out that many words that quickly, quality be damned.

I’m looking forward to putting Pelican Island to sleep for a while. And reading — I’ve already started The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And blogging again. And a host of other things that went on hold during NaNo.

And then, sometime in January, I’ll pick up Pelican Island again. Who knows what I’ll find in it then. Or in myself.