The Book Publicity Blog had an item last week that I wanted to be sure and pass along.
American Airlines wants summer reads for women so click the link and learn how to propose your published book to them.
Sling Words out. I've taken the day off to garden since the weather is so beautiful.
10 Ways To Hook Readers
I'm getting ready to start a new manuscript so, of course, I'm agonizing over how to write the scene that opens the book. Conventional wisdom says an author must hook the reader from the very first sentence. So let's talk about baiting the hook.
1. A story begins with change. Change alters the environment for the character and/or threatens a character’s self-concept.
2. Never warm up your engines when writing. A novel isn't zero to sixty in a quarter mile from a warmed-up engine. It's more like Le Mans with a thrilling start and the stamina to make it to the finish line while constantly increasing the pace. So start the story immediately then keep it going.
3. Establish a threat or worry or story question at once. The king is giving a ball. Will Cinderella get to go? (Classic fairy tale Cinderella) There’s a bomb on the elevator. Will the bomb squad be able to rescue the people inside before the bomb detonates? (the movie Speed)
4. Keep character confusion to a minimum by introducing your characters carefully, one at a time not in clusters.
5. Get something happening immediately. A novel is characterized by rising action.
6. Make the story go forward by pushing the hero/heroine back. Make life difficult for them and make those difficulties riveting.
7. Don’t pick up the story threads too quickly. Make readers wait until they can hardly stand it.
8. Do not give the entire life story of your characters immediately. This bogs down the story more completely than black gumbo soil after a rain impedes walking. Sprinkle the back story throughout.
9. Evoke some kind of emotional reaction in the reader. Laughter, tears, anger, disgust, whatever you elicit, make sure it has a universality which gets the same response from someone in Houston as it does from someone in Rio or Prague. We are all basically the same human animal once you remove the trappings of our particular culture. What makes me cry, more than likely makes someone in Tokyo cry. Evoke emotions in readers, and they will stick with your story from the first word to the last.
10. Do not be afraid to write a beginning and toss it away. Sometimes you have to write just to figure out what you’re trying to say. Don’t look at your words as if they are carved in stone. If you think your prose is unchangeable, trust me, once an editor or agent gets a hold of you, you'll learn differently. Be willing to experiment in order to grow.
10 Truths About Writing
Several years ago I experienced a personal loss that made me fully realize how fragile life is, and how fleeting time is. I realized that I had no guarantee of another year, or five, or ten, in which to find the time to turn the ideas bombarding my brain into novels and then to get them published.
Freelance vs. Novel
Compared to publishing novels, freelance writing is easy. Easier than devouring warm fudge brownies, chased by a glass of cold milk. My journey to published novelist was often a bumpy one. Looking back on that pot-holed road to becoming published, I realize that I wouldn't know as much about the publishing industry, the creative process, and the business of writing had I instantly achieved my goal.
Learned Lessons
The lessons I've learned have often been learned the hard way. I joke that I'm a slow learner. Perhaps resistant is more accurate. (My mother always said I was the most stubborn child she'd ever seen.) I tried to impose my belief systems on the vagaries of the publishing business. For instance, I believed that you could write a book about anything that struck your fancy, and if it was a good book it would get published. Guess what I learned? The publishing business didn't care what I thought. Big surprise, huh?
Perhaps Ben Franklin meant people like me when he said: "Experience keeps a dear school but a fool will learn in no other." I don't say this with bitterness, but with a self-deprecating laugh. I may not be the brightest person in the world, but I possess one trait that many do not have. I learn from my mistakes. And I learn from other people's mistakes because I figure I won't live long enough to make all of them myself!
For Your Consideration
From my years in the business, I pass along these truths.
1. Writing successfully requires a consistent commitment. You must place the seat of your pants in the seat of the chair on a consistent basis.
2. Writing is hard work physically so incorporate taking care of your body from the start. Prevent problems like back spasms, sciatic pain, carpel tunnel rather than try to cure them.
3. Writing is hard work emotionally so take time to play. Don't tell your child "later" every time she or he wants to toss a ball with you or take a swim. Don't tell your husband “no” when he wants you to go fishing with him or play golf. You'll regret it one day if you do. Pages can be written another day but time with loved ones can't be reclaimed. Life is short. Children grow up while you aren't looking.
4. Writing is hard work mentally so read for pleasure and read to learn more about the world and do fun things to balance the work.
5. Not every good book you write will sell. Sad but true. Ask any published novelist.
6. After you sell a book, you'll still get rejected. Yep. Unfortunately true too.
7. If you don't get rejected very often, you aren't trying hard enough.
8. You'll lose friends because some become jealous. The day may come when you realize there is no excuse for their nasty comments to others about you. No excuse but jealousy. You'll grieve, but you'll accept and move on.
9. You'll make new friends who accept you and cheer you on.
10. You won't get rich unless you are that one in a million, and no one can predict that so don't expect it. Just write the best book you can write and have fun doing it.
Then do it again and again.
Help Children Of The Dump
Marketing Maven is on a fund drive to raise money for Children of the Dump, called that because it's near the entrance to the dump in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Children of the Dump
The group "teaches computers, English, and math to the poorest Mexican children in hope of providing them with real job skills that will lift them and their families out of the cycle of poverty. The program is free for the kids. They're given meals to ensure they get at least one proper feeding per day.
What can you do?
Visit Marketing Maven and click the Google Ads on her site. Use the arrow keys to scroll. She's donating all her AdSense revenue to the school. She plans to post her receipts so everyone can see the effect of their clicking. Each time the revenue reaches a $100USD, she'll go to the Office Depot at Puerto Vallarta to make a purchase of school supplies.
Let's click away.
Get Ready For Hip Hop Emma
Dan Calvisi just started a blog. When I expressed dread to him about a new movie he mentioned, he was kind enough to send me a link to the Variety article about the new hip hop version of Jane Austen's Emma.
That's right, you Jane Austen fans. Emma for the new millennium. Like I told Dan, when I see the movie, if I hear a whirring sound, it'll be Ms. Austen spinning in her grave.
Okay, I want to be the first to pitch this idea to the studios so I'm claiming it here. Today, Sling Words aka Joan Reeves, pitches the idea of a new millennium version of Casablanca with Beyonce as Ilsa, Usher as Lazslo, and, drum roll please, Jay Z as Rick.
Nazi Major Strasser will be played by Fifty Cent, and police Captain Renault will be Master P.
Sam, the piano player, who never really is instructed to: "Play it again, Sam." will feature Mary J. Blige in a gender twist as Samantha.
Hollywood, have your people call my people, and we'll do lunch.
Oh, I forgot. I don't have any people. That's okay. We'll still do lunch. Just email me.
Sling Words out to go count my imaginary chicks before they hatch.
Judging Books By Their Covers
Authors rarely have cover art approval because publishers think that is best left to the pros in the design department. The resulting covers range in quality and appeal from brilliant to nausea-inducing. Every published author has at least one horrible cover in the past and/or in the future if they're unlucky.
I didn't want to insult another writer by posting one of their ugly covers so I've stuck my least favorite one up to illustrate this problem. Even so, I hope the artist who created the cover doesn't read this. I really don't want to insult artists. My daughter is one so I know how sensitive they are. But artists can miss the boat too. So, dear cover artist, I apologize in advance.
Why do I abhor this cover? Dorky, completely unappealing people adorn this brightly colored hardback. Does this cover say "laugh out loud comedy of errors courtship romance?" I don't think so. Buyers didn't think so either. But what's a writer to do? Grin and bear it is about the only sane course.
One of the most difficult tasks facing those who sell to electronic publishers, self-publish, or act as book producer, i.e. a freelance writer who ghosts a book and completes the production process as a turnkey project for a client, is cover design.
In the beginning most writing professionals could glance at a book cover online and know whether it was an E-book. Why? Because of the amateurish cover design. That's not true now for many E-publishers because they've really stepped up their game in this area.
If you're not an artist, how do you know what good cover design is? If you need to know this, fortunately, the Internet brings you resources to explain covers, illustrate good covers as well as bad ones, and sites that allow you to vote on covers if you're following the POD route.
6 Book Cover Resources
1. Here's a great link to a video presentation featuring Dorchester Publishing onNovel Covers.
2. Book Design Review is a blog devoted to the best in book covers.
3. Covers features some unique ways to display books.
4. Paper Cuts is a blog about books that show the best book covers of 2007 according to the NYT.
5. Rate My Book Cover is a blog that let's you vote on covers submitted by brave authors.
6. Smart Bitches Trashy Books dishes the dirt on covers.
If you're a traditionally published author with a royalty publisher and you're proud of your book cover, maybe you should enter it in the annual Book Cover contest sponsored by the Bay Area Houston Chapter of Romance Writers of America.
Takeaway Truth
1. Don't ever judge a book by the cover.
2. Don't ever think an author has any say regarding said cover. Unless you're talking about Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Nora Roberts, Jayne Krentz, Anne Rice, et al.
3. Do learn something about design elements if you're responsible for cover art or if you want to argue with your editor about it.
4. Learn to grin and bear it.
5. Learn how to promote the heck out of your book so the cover art won't hurt sales. If possible, capitalize on the lousy cover. Years ago a friend of mind Christina Dodd had a historical romance with a cover showing the heroine with three hands! That's right, three hands! Christina got more mileage out of that cover that if it had been a normal cover.
Dear Regis Philbin
Romance novels and their writers took it on the chin again today, courtesy of Regis Philbin.This morning I happened to be watching Regis and Kelly while I had my morning coffee since I'd overslept. The daring duo called a woman for their daily quiz. Regis said, "I understand you like trashy romance novels?" He went on to ask how raunchy they were. He confessed that he'd never read one.
SOS (And you know what that means!)
I'm always amazed that no one hesitates to brand romance novels as trash. The genre written primarily by women for a mostly female audience is considered fair game to denigrate and disparage by everyone from the snotty Half Price Book Store clerks to television celebrities.
Other Genres Get Respect
Horror novels aren't called malevolent, evil trash. Serial killer novels aren't called depraved, gory trash. Even male-authored romance novels, which are usually marketed with great acclaim and sold under the guise of general fiction, aren't called trash.
Rodney Dangerfield Of Literature
So why is a book with romance on the spine called trash. This genre that is primarily about male-female courtship, sometimes with consensual sex, and with the end goal of a committed relationship is the Rodney Dangerfield of the literary world.
You know, I've been married 31 fabulous years to the most wonderful man in the world. That's a romance in the real world and that kind of magic is what romance novels try to give a reader: the possibility that a man and woman can fall in love and live happily ever after. I take umbrage with anyone who says a relationship like that is unrealistic and unachievable. I take offense when someone says that romance novels, which are all about that type of male-female relationship, are trashy books.
Old School Thinking
If nothing else, Regis, it's really old school for anyone to label romance novels as trash. You're not the first. You won't be the last. It wasn't even an original or witty comment. But it did offend. Not just me but probably the other 12,000 plus members of Romance Writers of America and the millions of fans who have made the romance genre the best-selling genre in history. And that's just in this country. There are comparable writing organizations in other countries along with legions of readers.
Call To Action
Next time, it would be more original if you said something laudatory about the genre. Call the headquarters of Romance Writers of America and get someone who knows something about the genre to be on your show. Now that would be a real shocker! I'd be the first to applaud, and I wouldn't be alone.
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