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…

But the real reason – I think – is this: I need to try using an outline or formula for writing a long narrative, and it    [Continue reading]]]> I decided to start writing a mystery during this year’s National Novel Writing Month. For one thing, it’s time to live up to the name of my blog.

But the real reason – I think – is this: I need to try using an outline or formula for writing a long narrative, and it makes more sense to me in a mystery than in the other types of fiction that I’ve written. For last year’s NaNo (my first), I pretty much sat down on November 1 and just started writing. I had maybe two pages of notes by the end of October. My novel was going to be a coming-of-middle-age road trip story, and a free form approach made sense to me at the time.

It still does, but almost a year later, Tap Dancing at the County Fair is still an unfinished manuscript. It’s much like any decent road trip – filled with unexpected twists and turns and detours down unpaved country lanes. Some flat tires, some breathtaking scenic overlooks. Nonetheless, I’m not There yet, and I don’t know what There looks like. I haven’t given up, but it’s time to take a hike and try a different approach.

Something with an actual plan. I figure I can’t write a murder mystery without knowing, before beginning, who gets offed, who did it, and why. With an appealing main character who holds the whole shebang together for the reader. And some red herrings. I’m trying to figure all that out now so that November 1 I can start blasting out a decent whodunit.

I’m using Plotting the Mystery Novel: The Classic 12-Chapter Mystery Formula as my starting point. I have no idea who came up with this formula; I don’t think I’ve ever read a mystery with only 12 chapters, nor one with only 65,000 words as the author suggests is “typical”. But the formula, with its narrative approach, seems accessible and sensible to me, so why not.

Once I start plowing through this formula, I’ll probably go through my notes from Steve Alcorn’s ed2go Mystery Writing course that I sorta took several years ago to see how and where his greater level of detail may enrich or obliterate the approach I’ve taken so far.

At that point, I’ll either give up or start writing. Let’s root for #2, shall we?

Alcorn says something like plot is what happens, story is whether the reader cares or not because the characters have come alive – or not – for the reader. And a mystery ain’t nuthin’ without story, according to him. I think.

Characters

Right now I’m focusing on coming up with a cast of characters. Since my handwriting is illegible, even to me, I focus on getting my scribbles into Word as soon as possible. I have a folder in Documents devoted to the WIP, and a sub-folder for Characters. There’s a document that lists each character – name and a sentence or two identifying him/her – so I can keep everyone all in one place for overall organization. There’s a separate document for each character that lists everything I can think of about the character – personality traits, looks, what they like for breakfast, back-story, how they relate to other characters, and their overall involvement with the plot and story-line.

If I think of lines of dialogue they might use at some point, I throw that in. If I think of a possible scene, I throw that in. At this point, it’s free form and stream of consciousness. But I figure as the characters come alive for me, they will be able to tell me what they are doing to move the plot along in a believable or compelling way. At least, I hope so.

Plot Ideas

I have another sub-folder for Plot Ideas. Right now it’s empty. Some of the stuff in my character sketches should (I hope!) wend its way over to Plot eventually – hopefully before November 1. Some of my character sketches already indicate events/revelations like: Hey, I did it! The SOB made me do it. Or, hey, I’ve finally figured out who did it – but uh, oh, I’m trapped with him on the island in a hurricane and he knows I know! So I hope Plot Ideas will fill up from the character sketches themselves.

Synopsis

I also will have a calendar so that I can have a reasonable sequence of events – who does what when. This seems like a good segue into my sub-folder called Synopsis, which is also empty. It will probably have one document only, a 3 to 4 page narrative that gives a précis of the entire work. I read somewhere that at least some publishers of mysteries want to see this synopsis even more than a partial manuscript. Is that true? I really have no idea.

But I want this synopsis, and I want it before November 1. And this is my rough plan for getting there.

Huh?

Will it work? Who knows. Will I change direction or approach along the way? Probably. Maybe. I don’t know. Not a chance. Pick one.

Thoughts, comments, suggestions, I-don’t-think-so: all are welcome. Thanks!

I’m thinking about November and National Novel Writing Month.  (Who reading this blog isn’t?)

Last year I started NaNoWriMo with a page or two of scribbled notes and little else.  Now, almost a year later, I’ve still got an unfinished draft with some decent characters and snazzy scenes, as well as a bunch of dead ends    [Continue reading]]]>

I’m thinking about November and National Novel Writing Month.  (Who reading this blog isn’t?)

Last year I started NaNoWriMo with a page or two of scribbled notes and little else.  Now, almost a year later, I’ve still got an unfinished draft with some decent characters and snazzy scenes, as well as a bunch of dead ends and ho-hum characters yawning ‘so what?’

I didn’t have a clear sense of where I was going with the manuscript when I started (which I thought would be okay, given the ‘road trip’ nature of the thing) and consequently, I haven’t gotten there – wherever and whatever there is – yet.  I’m not ready to give up on Tap Dancing at the County Fair, but I’d sure like to approach this year’s NaNoWriMo with a better sense of direction.

And I’d like your help.

There are a couple of paths I might take.  First is to build this novel on the goals and some of the story segments (this and this) I started in Merrilee Faber’s Creativity Workshop.  I want to explore these questions in more depth:  Why do people break the rules/break the law? What happens – good and bad – when they do?

I want to answer these questions journeying through the heart of darkness, A/K/A suburbia.  So the role of ‘place’ is important.  I’ve got a tentative title:  cul-de-sac.  I love that the literal translation is ‘bottom of the bag,’ which seems apt to me.

As I see it now, this would be a battle between revenge and redemption playing out in the ‘burbs by those seemingly normal folks who pass for our neighbors.  Originally I thought about a mythic journey although that may be too much to ask of my brain cells in their current state.

But. I want to have a much clearer roadmap before starting.  I’d like to have some semblance of a plot – a beginning, middle, end.  I’m not too worried about character or dialogue, since they come relatively easily to me (at least in comparison to plot), but I’d like to build some kind of structure so that I’ll know how and where this thang is supposed to end before November 1 arrives and I start writing it.

Which leads me to Plan B.

How about writing a mystery?  (What do you see at the top of my blog, in bright green letters?)   I love reading them, how about trying to write one?  I do think following a formula, laid out in advance of writing, works for a mystery – even though I’m not so sure it’s appropriate for a more literary, character-driven piece (which is what I was thinking originally with Plan A).

I took the ed2go mystery writing course a couple of years ago, and maybe the timing was wrong.  It just didn’t do it for me.  But I found The Classic 12-Chapter Mystery Formula yesterday, and found myself nodding – not nodding off – as I read it.  It made sense to me!

So now what?

Should I focus on a whodunit and follow a genre formula?

As I was typing the above questions – cue ‘Twilight Zone’ theme music here (yes, I’m that old) – I got my daily Writer’s Digest email titled The Dos and Don’ts of Combining Genres.   I’m generally of the there-are-no-coincidences school of thought, so I found this pretty interesting timing.

How about Plan C?

Can I pack my angst-filled suburban characters into a murder mystery formula and still end up with something semi-literary?  And occasionally even funny?

On the one hand, it doesn’t seem so ‘creative’ to fill in the blanks of a prescribed formula.  On the other hand, who am I kidding?  I can’t seem to pull a compelling plot out of my brain on my own, no way no how.  Maybe the structure of a formula is just what I need.

Any thoughts on this?   Anyone familiar with the 12-Chapter Mystery Formula?  Or the Dos and Don’ts article?

Do they make sense?  Do I make sense?

Should I stick with my original somewhat vague goals and the revenge/redemption conflict?   If so, what are some good resources so I won’t spend November and beyond going around and around in circles?

Should I leave Shirley and her crew stewing in the suburbs while I dust off my Nancy Drew persona?   Or should I bring them along for the ride in Nancy’s blue roadster?  If so, any good ideas for how to bring this stuff together?  Angst and a couple of yucks?

Am I considering too much?  Or too little?   Am I making any sense?

I’d love to know what you think.  And what I should do come November.  Thanks.

Ms. Natasha.  In the study.  With the keyboard.

A and I took a 2 ½ week road trip, during which I intended to post occasional nuggets from the road that wended its way up through North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, and then back down to North Carolina.

Well, the road trip to anywhere is paved    [Continue reading]]]> I’m back…..

A and I took a 2 ½ week road trip, during which I intended to post occasional nuggets from the road that wended its way up through North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, and then back down to North Carolina.

Well, the road trip to anywhere is paved with good intentions, I guess – but the funkiness of our travel laptop and the quirky, slow Internet access we encountered along the way blew the likelihood of blog posting right out the car window.

But here’s the real deal: I didn’t write one. single. word. during our entire trip. Not one. (Except for mileage logs and where and when we stopped along the way.) The closest I came to a literary experience was spending two days in Maine a half-mile from where Stephen King’s Pet Sematary was filmed.

While all the definitions of vacation fit the trip – seeing new places, visiting old friends and family, changing the pace and rhythm of life – this describes my vacation mindset the best: the act or instance of vacating.

That’s it. Old thoughts, ideas and words vacated my mind. They fled the premises and left all this empty space in my brain for – what?

New thoughts, new words, new directions. Paradigm shift? Planetary alignment? I’m still figuring out what happens when your brain empties out, hits ‘re-set’ and comes up with something different, something unexpected.

Yesterday I was telling a friend about our trip and she projected, “And I’ll bet it felt good to get home, too.”

Well, no, as a matter of fact.

We’d run out of clean clothes, so we were happy to use the washer and dryer. And Polly and Lola had stayed home with a house sitter, so it was great to see the furballs. But if we could figure out a way to travel with them comfortably in the summer, we’d be on the road again as soon as the clothes were dry.

Antsy. Restless.

So, uh, isn’t Tap Dancing at the County Fair supposed to be about a road trip toward self-knowledge? Am I living my novel right now, but without the distance or perspective to write it, or know how it should end?

I was emptying one of the travel bags I’d taken on the road, and found a pile of change in the bottom of one of its zippered pockets: four quarters and three pennies.

Plus this: a funny little metal coin with scalloped edges and a star cut out of the center. WASATCH DAIRY FARM it says on one side; “Good for *1* Quart of Milk” on the other.

Huh? I never heard of the Wasatch Dairy Farm. Neither did Google. The closest a search came up with was a town in Utah. I haven’t been to Utah since a road trip in the early 1970’s, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t visit any dairy farms then. And I bought the bag maybe ten years ago at a Crate & Barrel outlet store in Massachusetts. Where did this rural talisman come from?

So here I am, a couple of days after our road trip, filled with extreme wanderlust, thoughts and words careening around the empty caverns of my mind, waiting to be arranged or re-arranged into something approaching sense, or at least amusing nonsense.

Maybe it’s time to start writing.

And then head off again in search of that free quart of milk.

She reached the door and stopped. Of course it would be locked. Of course she would be breaking the law.    [Continue reading]]]>
Becca ignored the ‘no trespassing’ sign to her right and continued down the long driveway. Dry leaves crackled as she stepped across them on the broken concrete. So much for quiet.

She reached the door and stopped. Of course it would be locked. Of course she would be breaking the law.

She pulled out her library card and started working it slowly against the doorjamb.

Resistance. Then – did she only imagine a ‘click’? – she could feel the lock give, the plastic card slide easily around the wooden door frame.

All she had to do now was turn the knob and she would be inside.