Archive for November, 2015

Writing Fiction/Story and Character Development

Friday, November 27th, 2015

Yesterday I promised I’d talk about how I come up with the plots and characters for my Klepto Cat Mysteries. I was asked just recently if I plan the story and the ending before I start writing it.

For the most part, I have a place setting and possibly the outline of a theme in my head when I start jotting down ideas. I might write two pages of basic scenarios and then pick one to use as the beginning of my story. From there I start writing and the story develops as I move from scene to scene and page to page. Several of my stories start with a shocker—a frightening, stressful, questionable, precarious, tantalizing stunner designed to make the reader keep reading, eager to discover how the main characters found themselves in this dilemma and how they escaped it.

From there, for me, the story just evolves as if by magic as I write it chronologically. When I introduce a new character, there are typically no storyboards or character logs. I simply develop the character as I create the story—the character develops along with the storyline.

Sometimes it’s as if I have a room full of story-writers in my head collaborating to bring a scene or a character to life.

Once the story is pretty well set, I begin the process of fact-checking, reviewing the time-line so it works, making sure the story rings true, and so forth. This is the longest and most tedious part of the process for me, but I enjoy it. I spend a lot of time checking to make sure I introduced the character properly and at the right point in the story—you don’t want to all of a sudden mention a character who hasn’t been properly introduced. It doesn’t matter that he is familiar in the other books in the series. Someone’s apt to be reading book 10 before reading the others. So it’s important to make your stories stand alone, which means you need to reintroduce characters in each book. But that doesn’t mean you must bore those who have read books 1 through 9 by giving the character’s complete history. It takes some finesse to bring old (and new) characters into a story or a scene so that the story flows for any reader.

As for the ending—that’s up for grabs. Rarely, when I start writing a new story do I know how it will end. Sometimes it becomes obvious as the story winds down. Other times I struggle to bring the story to a close and to end it with the reader feeling satisfied, but still wanting more.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m the author of the Klepto Cat Mystery series—cozy mysteries with cats. The main cat character is Rags, an ordinary cat with some extraordinary habits. Rags has entertained readers through 13 books so far, and counting. The latest book is “A Picture-Purrfect Christmas.” The Kindle and print versions available here: http://www.amazon.com/Picture-Purrfect-Christmas-Klepto-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/B016BBY2GY/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1448629276&sr=1-1&keywords=a+picture-purrfect+christmas Or order it from me and receive an autographed copy AND a bookmark. http://www.matilijapress.com/Klepto-Cat-Mysteries/Picture-Purrfect-Christmas.html

Please, if you’d like more detail about my techniques or you have a comment, send it to PLFry620@yahoo.com.

 

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Author to Author/Writer to Writer

Thursday, November 26th, 2015

I’ve always fielded a lot of questions from authors over my forty-plus year career. As my writing interests have changed, the questions have changed. When I was writing articles for magazines, hopeful freelancers wanted to know how to break in. As my published books began to stack up, folks wanted to know more about publishing and marketing.

I’ll never forget a man I ran into at Toastmaster function. He knew I wrote regularly for The Toastmaster Magazine and he wanted some insider tips. He’d written an article for them and it had been rejected. He wanted to know why.

I invited him to send his article to me. After a quick glance, I told him that one reason might be that they publish how-to and informational pieces and this was strictly a personal experience article. I suggested he read the magazine more carefully and change his article to conform. I assured him he just might have a chance.

At the next Toastmasters event, the same man came up to me and said he had an article he wanted published in The Toastmaster and asked how he might get the editors to accept it. Come to find out, it’s the same article he showed me months earlier. When I asked him if he’d made the changes I suggested, he said no—he wanted to have it published just the way it was and he asked me again if I could help him get it accepted.

I have responded to hundreds, if not thousands of such questions and my responses have helped many, many authors—but certainly not those who didn’t care to listen or to make any changes.

Since I started writing fiction, I get a whole array of very different questions. I’ll share some of them along with my responses in subsequent blogs over this long weekend. In the meantime, if you have any questions related to writing, publishing, book marketing, please send them to my personal email PLFry620@yahoo. While I accept comments here at my blogsite and I have filters in place. I have to respond to a mathematical question before I can log onto my own site, for heaven’s sake. Despite this, I get hundreds of spam comments every week, which often make it nearly impossible to locate and even recognize legitimate comments. I have to tell you there are products I will never buy again because of their relentless spamming which clogs my system and does no good except to annoy me and turn me off to their products, since they never go live. I’m the only one who sees them. RayBan, Uggs, and all of you others who try to hitchhike on my site–you’re wasting your time here. Now I must go and delete 304 of them. Sigh!!!!!

 

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What Does Your Manuscript Need Most?

Monday, November 16th, 2015

Do you have a proposal ready to send to a publisher or a manuscript ready to publish? Don’t go it alone. Don’t be so confident or in so much of a rush that you neglect a very important step in your presentation—editing. I know it’s hard to let someone else read what you’ve written. You aren’t crazy about having your work critiqued. You’ve worked hard and don’t want to have to make changes. But I’m telling you—you need that extra set of eyes or four or six.

Selling authors hire editors. A good editor can make you look so much better than, perhaps, you are. She will notice mistakes and problems in your manuscript that you can’t see—until she points it out.

I remember, years ago, being told to read my manuscripts backwards—from the bottom to the top. That was in the old typewriter days, when you could get by with misspelling a word without a red line appearing below it. Looking at a manuscript from a different angle such as on the printed page or from the bottom up, helps us to see things differently and, perhaps, spot problem areas. So does reading it through from your reader’s point of view. Well, consider an editor someone who is viewing your manuscript from an entirely different angle than you are. Believe me, even someone with an untrained eye will see something you have not noticed.

Hire someone with a trained eye and editorial skills and you have given your work a much better chance of being published and of being enjoyed by the reader.

Don’t neglect this step in the process of preparing your manuscript for publication.

Now, where do you find a good editor? Through word of mouth. Join online and face-to-face writers groups and ask others who they hire to edit their work. Contact leaders within the publishing community for recommendations. Search online for an editor or online directories listing editors. Contact me at PLFry620@yahoo.com

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Understanding Amazon’s KDP Program

Saturday, November 7th, 2015

Have you published your books through the Amazon KDP program? Do you understand the statements/reports? I think I’m beginning to. I started getting confused when they introduced KOLL (Kindle Owner’s Lending Library) and now there’s KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Pages).

Suddenly, I noticed that book sales for my Klepto Cat Mysteries were down a little, but my monthly payment from Amazon was staying steady and even rising some months. After studying some of my Amazon “reports” this week, I realized that fewer customers are buying the books outright, but more of them are borrowing books—and the author still gets paid. In fact we get paid based on the number of pages the borrower reads.

Now that’s an interesting fact on its own. How do they know how many pages are read? Technology! One of the world’s greatest mysteries. At least it’s a mystery to me. However, as long as the monthly payments from Amazon stay steady or increase, I’m a happy Amazon author. And, if you’ve been reading this blog and my books, you know that sales (even the KOLLs and KENPS) reflect the authors efforts in promoting the book. If you want to generate more income from your book, you need to do the work. Promote, Promote, Promote!

Learn more about publishing and book promotion through my series of books, “Publish Your Book,” “Promote Your Book,” “Talk Up Your Book,” and “Propose Your Book.” All available at http://www.matilijapress.com

Posted in Book Promotion, Bookselling | No Comments »

Simple Holiday Book Promotion Day-by-Day

Wednesday, November 4th, 2015

Every author, entrepreneur, produce developer, artist, etc., is thinking ahead to the holidays—to holiday sales, to be more exact. If you’re on the ball, you’ve been planning your marketing strategies for months. You’ve ordered promotional materials. You’re ready to approach your audience/the consumer—or are you?

Some of you are already burned out on the marketing process. You’ve sent out an email blast and you’ve set up several events and without much response. Yeah, you’re ready to strut your stuff—start making those holiday sales, but your audience is not thinking about Christmas, yet. Most of them won’t give holiday shopping a thought until a week—maybe two weeks ahead of time, no matter how much pressure you put on them to order copies now! But that shouldn’t stop you from forging ahead with your message.

This year, I’m marketing a holiday story as part of the Klepto Cat Mystery series—“A Picture-Purrfect Christmas.” I’ve been involved with some kind of promotion every single day for the past two weeks or so and I’ll continue on this schedule until Christmas. So what am I doing in order to promote this book?

This week, I’m:

  • contacting reviewers who are new to this series.
  • reminding those bloggers and reviewers I’ve already contacted.
  • seeking guest blog invitations from appropriate bloggers.
  • addressing the Christmas cards I’ll be sending out to clients, colleagues, reviewers, etc.
  • blogging at both of my blog sites and being active with my social media accounts.
  • checking in with regard to tentative engagements—a signing and an open house where my books are being sold.
  • handing out bookmarks.
  • commenting at appropriate blog sites.
  • arranging for additional interviews for blog sites (I’ve done two already).
  • making sure I have plenty of print books to fill orders and to sell while I’m out and about.

That’s ten things I’m doing now and will continue to do over the next seven weeks. I’ll also:

  • send out 150 or so Christmas cards with bookmarks and maybe a discount coupon, free sample of our note cards, etc.
  • participate in signings and other local events.
  • write guest blogs for a variety of blog sites.
  • do another email blast promoting the book.
  • run a contest or two at my Catscapades blog site.

Believe it or not, while I’m involved in these tasks pretty much daily, I’m writing book 14 in the series and participating in everyday life with family and friends. I even clean house once in a while.

If you want to see sales spike during the holidays, it’s up to you to make it happen. Start now planning your strategy and putting it into action. We’d love to know how you did with it.

To learn more about the book I’m promoting, go to: http://www.matilijapress.com/Klepto-Cat-Mysteries

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