Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
Tuesdays with Story
November 4, 2016

 

Who’s up next . . .

November 15:   Millie Mader (poem), Jen Wilcher (chapter, fictional autobiography), Nora O’Reilly (chapter, Bill McCormick’s Bliss), Hannah Marshall (poems), Cindi Dyke (chapter, North Road), Meg Goss (chapter, novel), and Tracey Gemmell (novel, chapter).

December 6: Pat Edwards (???), Amber Boudreau (chapter 11, The Dragoneer), Kashmira Sheth (???), John Schneller (chapter 7, Final Stronghold), Eva Mays (chapter 7, Dhuoda), Paul Wagner (???), and Mike Austin (chapter, Before I Leave).

 

Tuesday eve at the B&N . . .

Former second-and-fourther Paul Wagner joined us around the table. Here’s some of what was shared during the critique session:

– Amber Boudreau (chapter 10, The Dragoneer) . . .

Here is a summary of my review from last night.

Amber read from chapter 10 of the Dragoneer. When the protagonist asks another character for a favor, Pat wondered why they weren’t happier about it, as we know that character likes the protagonist. Kashmira questioned if Moira had any social skills to begin with. Jerry enjoyed the strong verb choice at the end of the chapter.

– John Schneller (chapter 6, Final Stronghold) . . .

Chapter 6 of Final Stronghold needed some work as the consensus was too much talking and not enough action. Although the author promises more running and less talking in the next chapters, this was a valuable assessment. Changes made. The other dynamic discussed was as to whether a reader can get a proper sense of pacing by reading one chapter a month. To that end, Pat created a file in our group site so that we can load a book or section of a book. I look forward to anyone’s assessment.  Thanks!!

– Eva Mays (chapter 6, Dhuoda) . . .

Amber wanted more of a reaction from Dhuoda when Ermengarde’s sharing her thoughts about Vernados. Pat recommended that if Creada is not, in fact, suffering from liver damage, that I change the word “sallow” to “pale”. Kashmira thought that there were a few too many similes in the first part and it made the scene feel choppy. Jerry was curious about kind of birds Ermengarde was watching in the second scene, and a nice discussion of “murmurations of starlings” followed. Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and ideas!

– Judith McNeil (parts 2 and 3, “Fly Story”) .

Generally, the group liked the story. Pat said she learned something about the digestion of flies.  Some people felt the flies were hearing “words” from the zzz of the electric razors. Also, suggested illustrations.  Thanks for thoughts.

– Kashmira Sheth (part 3, I Am From Here, Too) . . .

Kashmira submitted part of her story in verse. Nora pointed out that she wanted to see one of the scenes in more depth to bring out more impact. Pat and Jerry were confused by Daydream poem as it went back and fourth between imagination and reality. The overall comments were positive.

– Hannah Marshall (poems, “Earthly Things” and “Foster Child”) . . .

I received much helpful feedback on both poems. We discussed the meaning of the last metaphor in “Earthly Things.” The consensus on “Foster Child” was that more work was needed in clarity as well as substance. Thanks all for your comments!

 

We cap our membership . . .

With the demise of our second-and-fourth group, we are now Tuesdays with Story, no other distinction. TWS meets the first and third Tuesday evenings of the month.

We have capped our membership at 15 active writers. In that way, we can assure our writers that they will get up for a critique at least once a month.

With Jen Wilcher and Paul Wagner coming over from second-and-fourth, we really have 19 members, but four are either inactive or semi-active writers.

From now on, anyone new who comes to us will be welcome to attend and take part in everything we do except submitting pieces for critiques. For that, they will go on a waiting list. When we have an opening for an active writer, we will go to the waiting list first to fill it.

 

Something else that’s new . . .

It’s the Whole Books file on our Yahoo group. Here’s where you can post your first draft of a novel or the chapters up to the point where you are writing. New members coming in on the middle of the critique of your novel can then read the chapters they’ve missed and be up to speed on your work.

So post, post, post the manuscript – complete or partial – of the novel you are having us critique.

 

November’s Fifth Tuesday . . .

Yes, Fifth Tuesday is November 29. We’ll be at the Café Hollander . . . 701 Hilldale Way for your GPS.

The writing challenge: As, yes, you are sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner when someone knocks at the door.

In the story you write, you must use all of the following five words: stew, excoriates, laxative, bi-lateral, and dementia.

Max length: 500 words.

 

We’ve got published writers . . .

Jerry Peterson’s newest short story anthology, A Year of Wonder, is now up on Amazon as a real book and a Kindle book.

 

The editor . . .

Judith McNeil is our November editor. Send her the good stuff you want to share with your fellow writers.

 

December meetings . . .

We will be at the Alicia Ashman Branch Library’s, in the library’s community room. The library is in the shopping center at Old Sauk Road and High Point. For your GPS, the address is 733 North High Point Road.

 

Writing Advice: Authors Share 6 Ways to Market Your Books

Any self-published author will tell you that writing a good book is just the start of the hard work. Once you’ve published your carefully crafted and edited tale via Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), you need to get the word out. Best-selling indie authors Violet Duke, Scott Pratt, and Stephanie Bond offer seven road-tested tips for driving readers to your work, building a fan base, and achieving commercial success.

1. Write a lot of books. 
   “Frankly, the single most effective action I or anyone can take to promote a book is to write another book,” says romance/thriller/mystery author Stephanie Bond (Body Moversmysteries, Southern Roadstrilogy). If you’ve written one book and it isn’t performing as well as you’d hoped, it sounds counterintuitive to write another book. But, the more inventory you have on the market, the greater the chance of someone finding one of your projects, reading it, and looking for other things you’ve written. Bond knows what she’s talking about. Her 70 novellas, published traditionally and independently, have sold millions of copies. In June, The Hallmark Channel aired a TV-movie based on her self-published romantic comedy Stop the Wedding!
2. Put sympathetic, likeable characters at the heart of a series.
   Creating characters and plot sounds like creative writing 101 but legal thriller author Scott Pratt (author of the popular 8-book Joe Dillard Series) says it’s more than that. It’s basically a marketing strategy, and something he thought through back at the beginning. When he created series hero Joe Dillard, Pratt made a deliberate decision to eschew an unchanging action hero and instead build his franchise around a world-weary Tennessee lawyer with a family who evolves over time. It worked.

“Readers have latched onto this protagonist,” he says. “And they are deeply, deeply invested in this guy’s family. His wife has breast cancer and he has two kids. Readers want to know, ‘When’s the next book coming out? You’re not going to kill this character off are you?’ Some of them are even concerned about Dillard’s religious convictions. They pray for his soul. And this is a fictional character.”

3. Set aside adequate time for promoting your work.
   If your dream involves writing in a garret disconnected from the business of promoting your work, indie publishing probably isn’t for you. Successful KDP authors invest substantial time and money in promotion. Stephanie Bond generally splits her time 60/40 between writing and marketing. Fellow best-selling contemporary romance writer Violet Duke (with three indie series, Can’t Resist, Cactus Creek, and Unfinished Love) also dedicates several hours a day to social media and ad planning. Duke recently pulled back on book writing during a medical leave, but she kept up her efforts to market and advertise her backlist and had her best sales year yet. (More about that below in “Mine your backlist.”)
4. Mine your backlist; there’s gold in there.
   With three indie romance series and the recently published (by Random House) first book in her new Fourth Downseries, Duke has written a lot books. Known as a backlist, all these published works are a serious asset for the savvy author.

“You can kill with your backlist,” Duke says. “It’s an evergreen. You can’t stop marketing. Because every day there are new readers.” So rather than simply pushing out and promoting new works, Duke is inventive about repackaging and repositioning older novels. She’ll change the covers, rewrite new book blurbs, and create new advertising campaigns (for example, based on the changing seasons) to attract new readers.

5. Talk to your fans.
   Prosperous indie writers have direct relationships with their readers. It’s central to their success. Pratt reads and answers every reader email himself. He won’t farm that out because he believes if one of his readers cares enough to write to him, they deserve an answer back. It’s been worth it as far as he’s concerned because he’s developed a lot of loyalty with those readers.

Duke, like Pratt, reads and responds to all reader messages. She says for a lot of her social media fans, one of her books may have initially brought them to her page, but it’s her interaction with them that has them returning as fans. In addition to direct correspondence, a website, and her Facebook page, Duke has created a Super Fan group on Facebook. This isn’t a place for giveaways or special deals, this is where she takes deep dives into the writing of her books, giving avid readers a behind the scenes look at her creative process.

Bond also responds to readers and in addition, she has a mailing list—something she believes authors do better than any publisher—to which she sends semi-regular newsletters with alerts about deals and upcoming projects. After she realized the majority of her reader email asked if and when she would be releasing future books in series, she also installed on her website a writing ticker/progress meter, which shows the status of her works in progress.

6. Stay ahead of the curve.
   Nimble marketing isn’t the only way to capture more readers—sometimes a little experimentation on the writing side is in order. “I believe the future of storytelling lies in short-form delivery,” Bond says. So she has started experimenting with length and format. This summer she launched a daily serial called Coma Girlabout a young woman in a coma who can hear everything happening around her, especially friends and family who don’t think she’s listening. Some readers keep up with the daily episodes on her website, others order the month’s novella for the binge-read option.

“I’m trying to figure out how I can best fit into their reading time,” Bond says. “Considering how much the book industry has changed in the past few years, I believe the most valuable thing a writer can do is to be willing to change as reader habits change.”