When Writers Must Kill A Character: The Craft and Emotional Strain

This guest post is about a subject that's rarely discussed--in writing classes or on the blogosphere. Aaron Lazar is a mystery writer, but "killing off" someone in a piece of fiction isn't a subject that only applies to mystery writers. It isn't just the writing of it. It's dealing with our own emotions as we do it. The great classicists did it all the time. So do writers of sci-fi, historical fiction, romance, and more. Some of my favorite short fiction in the New Yorker has done away with one or more characters. Besides Aaron has a special freebie offer for you. So keep reading.

Writing the Tough Stuff (Or Killing the One You Love)

By Aaron Paul Lazar, copyright

It’s not easy writing a scene where you kill the one you love.

Of course I don’t mean your actual spouse or lover. I mean the wife, husband, or sweetheart of your main character.

I’ve done it in my book FOR KEEPS. Thinking about it tears my heart out every single time.

That’s what I mean by “writing the tough stuff.” Sam Moore—a retired family doctor who is our resident hero in Moore Mysteries—is very much like me, except he’s twelve years older and retired with enough money to putter around in his gardens all day. Let me repeat that. All day!

I hate him for that.

Okay, so maybe that’s a little extreme, considering he’s fictional. Shall we say, I am exceedingly jealous of his lifestyle? Although Sam was a family doctor and I am an engineer, we’re still a lot alike. We both love to plunge our hands into the soft earth and grow things. We both love our grandkids so much it hurts. And we both have spouses with multiple sclerosis. There are plenty of differences, too. I cook, I write, and I take photos. Sam doesn’t. But of course, it’s not a competition. At least I don’t think so…

In spite of the fact that he’s not real (at least not in the traditional sense, LOL), I relate to this man and feel his pain when he’s hurting. Sure, you say, writers should feel ALL their characters’ pain. We have to, to get into their heads and nail the characterization. Don’t we?

But I’ll bet some characters are closer to your heart than others.

Sam’s wife, Rachel, shares many qualities with my dear wife, Dale. They both endure MS, they both love to read, they are both chair-caning artists. Some of their symptoms are the same, but that’s where they split apart. Rachel loves to cook (that’s my job in our marriage), she’s in a wheelchair, and she stays pretty upbeat, considering her challenges. They both adore their grandchildren and both love to read. Rachel’s a tribute to Dale, in all honesty. But she also has morphed into her “own woman,” too, and I love her deeply. Er... through Sam, of course. (Honey, don’t be jealous!)

In the first two books of the Moore Mysteries series, Rachel sticks by Sam’s side, supports him when he’s overcome with grief and is plagued by strange paranormal events, and loves him deeply enough to keep him sane.

That’s why it really hurt when I had to kill her.

In For Keeps, the third book in the series, life takes an awful turn. When Rachel is murdered by a serial killer, it puts Sam back in the psych ward, the same place he was thrown when his little brother disappeared without a trace fifty years earlier. Desperate to fix things, he calls on the power of the green marble, the talisman his little brother Billy controls from afar that whisks him back and forth through his past.

Unlike those of us in real life, Sam gets a “do over.” He flies back in time to desperately try to fix the problems that lead to this gruesome act, and over and over again, he attempts to tweak the past to bring his dear Rachel back to life.



How do you write such a scene without losing it? How do you make it feel authentic to your readers? How much is too much? And how can you be certain that your character’s reaction will ring true?

It’s not easy. Matter of fact, since I loosely base Rachel on my own wife, and since Sam and I are really quite alike, it was close to torture.

I called upon my darkest, most powerful emotions experienced when my father died and also when my own dear wife almost died several times in the past few years. I’ll never forget the time the nurse in the ER called the nun on duty to bring me to a little room where no one would see my reaction to her impending news that Dale might not make it. She carried a box of Kleenex under one arm and a bible in the other. She was so sweet. Yet it was one of the scariest moments of my life. Thankfully, my wife pulled through and is doing okay today.

That hollow-gut, black-sludge-in-your-heart feeling is horrible when you lose someone dear to you, isn’t it? It’s all encompassing. Sometimes you just want to deny that awful truth, and pull away—far away—like Sam does in the following excerpt. I tried to channel those feelings when getting inside Sam’s head. Let me know if you think it worked.

Here’s the setup. Sam just picked up his son, Andy, from the airport and they enter the house after arriving home. Andy’s just arrived from his second tour of duty in Iraq, and this is his long-awaited homecoming. Rachel’s been cooking all morning to welcome her boy home. All day, Sam has ignored the insistence of the green marble, which has been pulsing, glowing, and searing his leg all day from his pocket; little brother Billy—who communicates from beyond through this talisman—was trying to “warn” him that something was terribly wrong.

For Keeps is book #3 in Moore Mysteries, and is now available through Twilight Times Books and Amazon.com. The series can be read in any order.

***

Sam raced toward the laundry room in a panic. Rachel’s wheelchair sat abandoned in the hall, and his son froze in the doorway, hands clenching and unclenching at his side.


Andy’s voice thickened. “Maybe you shouldn’t come in here.” He spun and tried to hold Sam back.

One of Rachel’s shoes lay beside the doorjamb. The brown clogs. Slip on. With lambswool lining. She loved them so much she wore them even in summer.

Sam drifted closer, terror pooling in his stomach. As if in anaphylactic shock, his throat tightened and threatened to close off his air. His heart beat wildly now, in his throat, ears, chest.

Sam barreled past his son and stumbled into the room, his voice hoarse. “What happened?”

Rachel lay on a basket of laundry, her eyes wide open, looking with blank surprise at the ceiling. Sam’s garden shears protruded from her heart. The image danced before him like heat waves on tar, shimmering with unreality. Blood ran from Rachel’s floral print blouse to the sheets stained red in the basket, pooling on the white linoleum floor.

The room tilted. A series of screams of No No No No No resonated in his head. Or maybe he yelled it aloud. He couldn’t tell as he shoved Andy aside and collapsed beside her, checking for the pulse that evaded him like a cruel tormentor. Neck. Wrist. Ankles. No beating met his probing fingers.

“NO!” He drew the shears from her chest, sickened by the soft sucking sound it made, then wadded up a compress of pillowcases and held it over the wound to stem the flow. More blood dribbled from the wound and curled around her pearl buttons. He realized with a start that she was still warm.

He looked wildly about the room, as if a solution lay beneath the neatly folded piles of towels and linen. “Call 911. Hurry!” He cradled Rachel in his arms, smearing the blood between them, and feeling her arms dangle away from him, as if she didn’t have the strength to return his embrace.

Andy cried out, his anguish pinging across the small room. He squeezed between his mother’s body and the washing machine, holding his hand out to his father. “Dad. It’s too late. She has no pulse. I checked, too.”

“NO!” Sam’s mind reeled, his vision clouded, and the scent of blood tasted metallic on his tongue. “Who did this? Is he still here? She’s still warm, Andy. Find the bastard!” He stiffened when his brain repeated a phrase he’d heard during some of Rachel’s favorite shows.

Don’t disturb the evidence.

 Panic slewed over him, boiling inside his head, freezing his arms and legs.

 My garden shears. The killer took them from the barn. Used them on my Rachel. And my prints are all over them.

 A great gulping scream filled his throat, tearing out of him like a primal scream. “RACHEL!”

Her head slumped sideways when he moved away, as if she was rejecting him. He checked her pulse again, muttering under his breath. “No way. No. No.” In a sudden manic thrust, he stood and reached for the marble, searching his pockets, patting madly at his pants and shirt. “My God. Where is it? What did I do with it?” Sam asked aloud. “Billy! Why didn’t you warn me?”

 Inside the double-stuffed world that batted him between reality and nightmare, he remembered the marble’s insistent throbbing all morning. Billy had tried to warn him, had tried hard.

 "Dad, come on. You can’t help her now.” In spite of Andy’s two tours of duty in the heat of battle in Iraq, the bodies he had seen and possibly created, and his soldier-toughened soul, he wept. Loud and strong, he wept and choked on his words. “Dad. Please. Leave her be. It’s over.”

 Andy pulled him to his feet. Sam stared at his son as if he’d never seen him before. His eyes widened, trying to piece together a puzzle. Who is this nice young man? And why does he look so familiar?

 Andy took him by the elbow and started to shuffle him toward the living room.

“Come on, Dad. Let’s go sit down.”

 “No. Please. My wife needs me. She has multiple sclerosis, you know.”


Andy’s eyes popped open. Tears still streamed from them, and he shook his father’s shoulders as if he could not only snap him out of it, but maybe bring back his mother, too.


“Dad! Come on. Hold it together. Don’t do this.”

Sam stopped and stared at his bloodied hands. His legs weakened to jelly. He stumbled, then braced himself against the wall as sobs wracked him in waves of increasing amplitude. He slid to the floor and buried his face in his hands.


Rachel.

 Dear God.

 Not Rachel.

 ***

 Thanks for reading! I hope you were drawn into Sam’s world, and that you might want to see how our favorite retired family doctor gets out of this one.



FREEBIE! The FOR KEEPS Kindle eBook will be free to all readers on Sept. 14^th, 15^th, and 16^th 2012, as well as on October 12^th and 13^th. Please stop by for your free download here. Also, all of my other books in my three mystery series will be priced at $1.99 during this sale. Check them out at http://www.lazarbooks.com.


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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Writing First Draft? Then It's Also Time to Promote!

Thanks to well-known author Nina Amir for this rarely seen topic on early promotion! I'm recommending it to my author/clients. (-:

Promote Yourself and Your Book While Writing Your First Draft
By Nina Amir

Most writers struggle to figure out how to juggle promoting themselves and their upcoming books while getting their manuscripts written at the same time. They know they need an author’s platform no matter how they publish—indie or traditional—if they want their books to succeed. Yet, the amount of time necessary to build that fan base seems to preclude actually getting that first draft finished. Then, of course, there’s the expense of promotion to factor in, which, in and of itself, makes the majority of aspiring writers drop at lest one ball if not all.

Today, one promotional activity provides the solution to this problem: blogging. Don’t worry that you will spend all your time blogging and not writing your book. Instead, use your blog as a way to write your book while promoting yourself and your work at the same time. That’s right. Blog your book.

A Blog Serves All Your Needs Promotional Needs

First, let’s look at why a blog serves all your needs and lets you keep all those balls in the air. A blog allows you to do what you do best—write—while also providing the best promotional tool available to a writer today. Every time you publish a blog post, you provide new content for the search engines’ automated mechanisms, called spiders or bots, to catalog. The more keywords and keyword phrases you produce on any one topic, the higher up in the search engine results pages your blog (or website) rises. This means when someone searches for a particular keyword relevant to your blog, your website or blog will come up near the top of that first Google or Yahoo search engine results page.

Best of all, today, not only blog readers may find your blog via the search engines. Book readers will find your blog and your eventual book via their searches. Also, the media find experts using the search engines; they do not like to be approached with press releases any longer but prefer to find their sources on line. If you are discoverable, they will find you.  Additionally, agents and publishers find new authors on the Internet via their successful blogs.

Blogs are Inexpensive Promotional Tools

Second, blogs are inexpensive. You can get a free blog from Wordpress.com or Blogger.com. However, I suggest you pay the minor hosting fees from Hostgator.com GoDaddy.com (or any other hosting company) and purchase a domain name and URL (like www.howtoblogabook.com) from like GoDaddy.com (or some other site), and then use a self-hosted blog from Wordpress.org instead. WordPress is the most often used blog platform by professional bloggers. If your blog becomes very successful (ie. you garner lots of readers.), you’ll wish you had gone to the small expense to have the extra features provided by a self-hosted blog.

You Can Write Your Book on Your Blog

Third, you can blog your book. You can actually make each one of your blog posts one tiny installment of your book. This is easier and more effective for nonfiction writers, whose content is filled with keywords and keyword phrases and easily can be broken down into post-sized bits. However, fiction writers can do this, too, if they plan out their content well. Memoirists, who fall into the nonfiction category but who write like novelists, also can blog their books if they are creative with their content plans.

Here’s how you blog a book:

1. Create a content plan. Do a big “brain dump” of every topic you might include in your book. Then create a table of contents, or even an outline.
2. Create content you will not publish on your blog. This is particularly pertinent for nonfiction writers. Look at your content plan and decide what pieces you might hold back for use in your printed book or ebook. Having some new content available only in the book (not on the blog) provides an incentive to loyal blog readers to purchase the book. Fiction readers will want to reread your book in an easier format than on your blog; and your revised copy will be better and possibly include new material.
3. Break your content into blog-post sized pieces—250-500 word chunks. Create subheadings (blog titles) for each small bit of content you will write. For nonfiction, this is fairly simple. For fiction, it can seem more difficult; think in terms of scenes and give each one a title.
4. Create a blogging schedule. Maybe you will write two days a week—the very minimum amount—or seven days a week. Maybe you will write Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Decide and commit to the schedule.
5. Write one blog post on each day of your blogging schedule. It shouldn’t take you too long, 45 minutes tops. Remember, they are short. Compose these in a word processing program in sequence so you create a manuscript in the process. (You can write more posts per day, or, if necessary, write more posts once a week and use the scheduling option on your blog program to have them publish throughout the week.)
6. Publish your posts. Copy and paste your blog post into your blogging program and publish it using the same schedule mentioned in steps #4-5.
7. Publicize your posts. Share your blog post via your social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook.

Viola! By blogging your book—especially a nonfiction book—you will successfully promote yourself and your new book. You will drive your blog up in the search engine results pages, thus making you and your new book much more discoverable by readers, agents, publishers, and the media. And you will have done this while writing that first draft. Now all you need to do is polish it up by editing and revising it and get that query letter and proposal written. Or, ahead and self-publish.

About the Author

Nina Amir, Inspiration-to-Creation Coach, inspires people to combine their purpose and passion so they Achieve More Inspired Results. She motivates both writers and non-writers to create publishable and published products, careers as authors and to achieve their goals and fulfill their purpose. 

The author of How to Blog a Book, Write, Publish and Promote Your Work One Post at a Time (Writer’s Digest Books), Nina has also self-published 10 short books, including the How to Evaluate Your Book for Success and 10 Days and 10 Ways to Your Best Self. A sought after editor, proposal consultant, book and author coach, and blog-to-book coach, Nina’s clients’ books have sold upwards of 230,000 copies and landed deals with top publishers. The founder of Write Nonfiction in November, she writes four blogs, including Write Nonfiction NOW!, How to Blog a Book and As the Spirit Moves Me, and appears weekly on the Dresser After Dark radio show.

www.ninaamir.com

www.copywrightcommunications.com

www.purespritcreations.com

Follower her on:

Twitter: www.twitter.com/#!/ninaamir

Facebook: www.facebook.com/InspirationToCreation and www.facebook.com/ninaamir

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Nina/Amir

Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/ninaamir

Google+:  https://plus.google.com/107098776847894040162

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second ediction of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Dana Lynn Smith Rills On Book Review Process

What Authors Need to Know About the Book Review Process

by Dana Lynn Smith


Book reviews are a terrific way to get your book noticed by potential buyers and convince them to purchase your book.

There are a number of publications and websites that review books on a regular basis. Before submitting books to these organizations, it's helpful to understand how the review process works.   Here is a basic overview of the process:

1.     Authors and publishers research potential reviewers and send books (or queries) to those review outlets that are a match for their book, in terms of subject matter and the reviewer's guidelines. It's the author or publisher's responsibility to make sure the book is a good fit, send appropriate materials with the book, and package it to arrive safely.

2.     Reviewers have no obligation to review every book submitted to them, and each reviewer has his or her own criteria (which may be both objective and subjective) for deciding which books to select and review. Even if a reviewer has expressed interest in a book in response to a query, that's no guarantee that a review will be published. Sometimes reviewers are just too overwhelmed to get to all of the books they intend to review, or they may find upon receipt that the book is not of sufficient quality to merit a review.

3.     Once the review is published, the reviewer should send the author or publisher a link (if it's online) or a tear sheet (if it's in print.) Some reviewers also post their reviews on sites such as Amazon.com, although there is no obligation to do so.

It's important to remember that a book reviewer's responsibility is to the readers of their reviews, not to the author or publisher. Reviewers aren't really in the business of helping authors further their careers or helping publishers sell more books. Their goal is to help readers (and librarians and booksellers) make appropriate book selections.

It's unrealistic to expect to get a response from everyone to whom you send a review copy. Also, not all books that are assigned to a reviewer will actually get a published review. Sometimes the reviewer fails to do the review, or the editor feels the review is not up to the organization's standards. Also, some sites and publications do not publish negative reviews, so a review may be scrapped because the reviewer could not find enough merit in the book to do a positive review.

Here are some of the most common reasons that books are not assigned to a reviewer or not reviewed:

Time or space constraints – Most publications and websites that review books regularly have the time and space to review only a small percentage of the submissions received.

Poor quality – If the quality of the writing or editing, or the quality of the publication (cover, interior, printing), are not up to professional standards, a book is likely to end up in the reject pile. Sometimes the quality of the writing and editing isn't clear until the reviewer has already started reading the book.

Not a good fit – Some authors and publishers don't do enough research to determine if their book is appropriate for the reviewer. The book's subject matter or format may not fit with the reviewer's editorial policies.

Poor communication – Sometimes authors or publishers fail to follow clearly stated review guidelines, provide inadequate marketing materials or contact information, or are just generally annoying to the reviewer.

Problem reviewers – Some people claim to be book reviewers in order to get free books for reading or re-sale. Be cautious about sending review copies to people who solicit them. Other reviewers may have good intentions but do not follow through after agreeing to review a book, or their review is not approved by the editor of the publication or website.

To increase your success rate in getting reviews, keep these points in mind as you plan your book review strategy.

Excerpted from How to Get Your Book Reviewed, by Dana Lynn Smith. To learn more about book reviews, follow the virtual book tour for How to Get Your Book Reviewed. Get more book marketing tips on The Savvy Book Marketer blog.

 (LINKS FOR YOUR REFERENCE)

http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/get-book-reviews

http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/get-book-reviews/tour.html

http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Publicist Partnering: Shooting Your Book to Stardom--Frugally

If your name isn't King or Grisham or Roberts you've probably already figured out that you need to do a lot of publicity on your own because your publisher hasn't assigned a budget ample enough to shoot your book to stardom.

 That publicist can be you or someone else, but somebody's got to do it if you want your book to sell.

 I have a publicist friend who is also an author. Rolf Gompertz, 20 year veteran of NBC marketing,  rightfully claims that he could never find a PR person who would do the same kind of job he does, including the time he spends on his own PR work. How could anyone argue with that? We all are our own best publicists, even if we hire someone else.

But what if we don't have the time or expertise?

We can learn to do it ourselves. After all, we are writers. We should be able to grasp the knack of how to write a release.

But the best way to do it is to learn a lot about the marketing of books and then partner with expert publicists or people who can help you with specific projects like online book tours. And partnering with them in a way that won’t eat up your advance or cost you more than you’re likely to make on your book. Here are some suggestions for preparing yourself to be the best publicity partner around.

1.     Join organizations like SPAN (Small Publishers of North America) (www.spannnet.org) where you’ll learn to understand the world of publishing from every angle—your, that of your publicist and that of your publisher.

2.     Subscribe to newsletters sent out my experts in the field of publishing. Dan Poynter, John Kremer, Penny C. Sansevieri, and one of my favorite publicity gurus Joan Stewart are all online resources for getting online information that isn’t rooted in myth and gossip. You’ll learn tons from my Sharing with Writers newsletter, too. Subscribe by sending a SUBSCRIBE message to HoJoNews@aol.com.

3.     Take a class in public relations. The only way I know how to avoid drastic mistakes in choosing a class is to patronize your local college or attend writers’ conferences sponsored by universities.

4.     One of the most frugal ways to learn a new skillset is to read. Most of those who publish free newsletters like the ones I mentioned above, also have books that will get you off on the right foot. Find my Frugal Book Promoter at www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo

The next question is how do you find the best help with publicity possible.

1.     Consider what you need and how much time you can put into it. Your budget may not accommodate a full-service publicist. You may not have the time to fully participate with all of the services she offers at once, anyway.

2.     If that’s the case, consider people who will work with you piecemeal like BookinSync. You may need an online book tour. It shouldn’t be too expensive to get help with that and when you do, many of the contacts you get from your service will become contacts for the life of your writing career. Or you may need help writing your first release so you can do it yourself. That kind of help is available, too.

3.     Before you hire anyone consider their Rolodex. I'm talking about is a Rolodex of personal, working relationships with editors, radio hosts, etc. What kind of publicity have they gotten for their other clients? AND those relationships must be—to a great extent—contacts who might have an interest in a project like yours. A book publicist who has had mostly experience with mystery writers, deals mostly with books stores that dedicate themselves to stories about crime, and has a huge file of names of reviewers interested in psycho/thrillers probably won't be able to do you much good if yours is a literary novel.

4.     As you have already guessed, you want someone who has clients similar to you. Check that out, but also check with the clients. Were they satisfied? If not, why not. Their expectations may have been different than yours. Further, if there were some gaps that you consider important, you may be able to negotiate with your newfound partner to include those services in the publicity package you are contracting for.

Am I speaking from experience? You betcha. And lukewarm results were not the fault of my publicist. She did a great job with what she had. She just didn't have what I needed! If you do your homework, you’ll be happier with your publicity campaign and your publicist will be able to help you reach your goals more quickly…and they’ll be happier with you.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, is the author of so-called hard-to-promote genres (www.howtodoitfrugally.com/carolynhoward-johnson.com) and of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers, www.howtodoitfrugally.com.

----- Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Demystifying Virtual Book Tours

When I decided to work with Mayra Calvani on a virtual book tour, little did I know that she would be so full of information--and so generous. Actually, I did have an inkling because I'd worked with her before. The real news is, I couldn't decide what to publish. She graciously allowed to me publish several of her articles. This is her second. The first on Halloween promoting may still be found (on the 17th of Sept. And watch for the one coming up on October 3rd, too! You won't be disappointed!


Demystifying Virtual Book Tours
By Mayra Calvani

These days, when it comes to book promotion, virtual book tours (from here on in we'll call them VBTs) seem to be the hottest thing on the net. I’m not surprised. In fact, whoever invented them was a genius.

VBTs allow you to make your name and book visible to thousands of people without having to spend a fortune or ever leaving your home. All you need is a computer and internet connection, and all you have to do is get a bunch of bloggers to host you on their blog while you sit in front of the screen with a nice beverage and enjoy the show… Well, not quite.

Yes, you do need bloggers to host you. And yes, you may sit at the computer with a nice beverage and enjoy the tour. But unless you hire a publicist to plan and coordinate your VBT, doing it yourself will take considerable time and effort. Did I say considerable? Let’s put it this way: Be prepare to spend A LOT of time at the computer, not only answering interviews and writing guest posts, but also making sure everything is moving according to plan.

To promote the release of my first children’s picture book, The Magic Violin, which came out last November, I went on a VBT in December. The tour began on December 1st and culminated on Christmas Day, when I gave away a $20 Amazon gift certificate to a lucky winner. Since the book had a Christmas theme, timing was perfect.

Though I had hired a publicist for another tour earlier in October (this one for another book), this time I decided to take on the whole project myself. From one side, the idea felt daunting; from another, I told myself: ‘If I can get at least 15 kind-hearted bloggers to host me, I can do this.’

Since I wanted the tour to start on December 1st, I started planning in early November (I recommend planning at least 2 months in advance).

So the first step when planning a VBT is deciding when you want the tour to take place. You must also have an idea of how many tour stops you’d like to make. For one-month tours, I recommend at least 15-17 stops. Some VBTs may last one week (these are called Mini VBTs); some two weeks; others two whole months. It all depends on how much time, work and commitment you’re willing to give.

Next, prepare a schedule.

This was my schedule during the month of November:

Four Weeks Before the Tour

• Bought a monthly calendar with big squares and enough writing space to help me coordinate tour stops. (This was very helpful in helping me see the whole tour from above.)

• Made a list of possible hosts—authors/bloggers I know, bloggers I admire, reviewers who are also bloggers, bloggers who keep blogs related to my book’s theme/content, etc.

• Made a list of groups/forums where I could announce my VBT and ask for hosts. In my case, these were www.gather.com, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/publishingandpromoting, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Latino-Hispanicwriters4Kids, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/childrens-writers, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/childrenswriterstoday, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PumpUpYourBookPromotion, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/booksweloveauthors, and www.facebook.com.

• Wrote a ‘template’ message to use for contacting hosts. (This included a short intro, info about my book with links to the cover and blurb, my request to be hosted on their blogs, etc).

Note: I requested not only interviews, but also guest posts and reviews. Reviews are great tools of book promotion and you can always use them later. Keep in mind not all reviewers will agree to read e-books and you may have to send them print copies. When you contact the hosts, make sure to tell them you would be delighted to return their favor in the future (You better keep your promise, too! This is all about helping each other, after all). Also, let them know you’ll be aggressively promoting the tour, thus bringing traffic to their blogs.

Three Weeks Before the Tour

• Began receiving responses from bloggers, agreeing on dates, and recording the information on the calendar. The information included the name of the blog, the host’s name, and whether or not it was for an interview, guest post or review.
• Began completing interviews.
• Sent review copies to reviewers
• Started looking for possible material to be used as guest posts. For one host, I used an old article. For another, I wrote a new one.

Two Weeks Before the Tour

• Continued answering interview questions and sending them to the hosts (These interviews can be very time consuming, so don’t leave them for the last minute!)
• Continued preparing/writing guest posts.

A note about interviews: Try to keep the interviews fresh, offering links and information. After a few interviews, they tend to sound boring and repetitive because the hosts’ questions are often similar. For one of the interviews (http://www.sueeves.com/2007/12/interview-with-author-mayra-calvani-by.html), I incorporated a video of a famous violinist playing Vivaldi’s “Winter”, the piece mentioned in my book. Make sure your answers aren’t too long either. People have busy lives and will not spend hours reading an interview. On the other hand, make sure most of your interview answers aren’t one-liners. My favorite combination for interviews is a mixture of short, witty answers with longer, more thoughtful ones.

One Week Before the Tour

• Continued to answer and send off interviews.

• Double checked the calendar to make sure all was in order—especially dates.

• Posted the complete VBT schedule on the main page of my website and blog. To see my schedule, go to: http://mayrassecretbookcase.blogspot.com/2007/11/win-20-amazon-certificate-on-christmas.html

• Send a reminder to all your hosts. (For this purpose, it’s practical to put your hosts’ contact info in a separate e-mail folder and to e-mail them together when needed).

The First Day of the Tour

• Announced the tour to everybody I know—friends, relatives, colleagues, groups, and forums—inviting them to take a look and follow me about the blogosphere by providing a link to the complete schedule and mentioning the prize giveaway at the end.
• Made sure the links to the blogs on my VBT schedule were hyperlinked correctly.

During the Tour

• On the day of each stop, I announced the new post to all my contacts— including all the groups mentioned before.
• Visited each tour stop to read the comments and interact with the people who wrote them, which meant writing comments myself.

Interacting with the public was great fun and, in fact, I was quite overwhelmed with the response I received. Some people followed my tour from beginning to end, and for that I was deeply grateful. Some posts received close to 20 comments, the highest some of the bloggers had got for any of their posts so far. All together, I think I got over 120 comments. On Christmas, the day of the prize giveaway, I made a hand-written list of all the people who’d left comments in order to draw a winner. Once chosen, I announced the winner’s name on my blog. Being able to give the prize on Christmas Day was extra fun.
Final Tips:

• One week before the tour starts, send a press release to your local newspapers/stations and online directories. I didn’t do this with my December tour but plan to do it with all future ones.
• If possible, tie your VBT with a holiday. November and December are great months for Christmas books; October for scary/paranormal books, and so on.
• Don’t just think ‘kit lit blogs’. Think of your niche audience. I realized this late in the tour, so I didn’t have time to search for violin-related blogs. For my next tour, I plan to contact dog/puppy/pet care blogs, since my book will be about a boy caring and finding a name for his new puppy.
• Offer a gift on the last day of your tour to motivate people to follow you around the blogosphere and leave comments on your stops. Never give a copy of the book you’re promoting. If people think they might win it at the end, they won’t buy it. Prizes may include gift certificates, goody baskets, other books, and even free critiques!
• Visit your own tour stops on a daily basis in order to interact with the visitors and answer their questions, if any.
• Always thank your hosts. After the tour, thank them again and offer to return their favor in the future.
• It’s human to forget. Two or three days before a tour stop, send a polite reminder to the host.
• Be prepared to be flexible. Some times the tour stops may not take place as planned and dates must be changed at the last minute.
• Don’t think just interviews. Keep your tour varied—interviews (may be audio, too!), guest posts, reviews.
• Keep the complete VBT schedule on your site and/or blog and update it on a daily basis, adding links and/or hyperlinks as necessary.

Once the tour has ended, put your feet up and celebrate with a glass of champagne. You’ve earned it! Oh, and send a thank you to those who hosted your tour!


Guest Blogger Bio

Today's guest blogger Mayra Calvani is a multi-genre author, reviewer and animal advocate. She enjoys writing for children and adults. A regular contributor to Blogcritics Magazine and American Chronicle, she's a member of SCBWI, CWCC and Broad Universe. She keeps two blogs, Mayra's Secret Bookcase (http://mayrassecretbookcase.blogspot.com/) and The Dark Phantom Review (http://thedarkphantom.wordpress.com/).

Additionally, she's the co-author of the ForeWord Best of the Year Award winner, The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing. (http://slipperybookreview.wordpress.com/).

Visit her newest, fun blog, Pets and Their Authors (http://petsandauthors.blogspot.com/), where her golden retriever interviews authors' pets.

Mayra does Spanish translations of children's picture books and is the National Latino Books Examiner for Examiner.com (http://www.examiner.com/x-6309-Latino-Books-Examiner).

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.

Kathy Stemke's Newsletter Example Helps Writers Tailor Newsletters That Work

One of the questions I get asked most frequently is how a writer can use a newsletter to develop a loyal following of his or her readers.

I had the luck to run across Kathy Stemke's newsletter today. It is often said that children't fiction and other literature is one of the most difficult genres to promote so, by using Kathy's newsletter as an example, I believe many authors will find it easy to analyze their own talents, the needs of their book, and then apply those principles to a newsletter will work well for them.

Kathy is the author of three books, Moving Through All Seven Days, Trouble on Earth Day, and Sh, Sh, Sh, Will the Baby Sleep?, so she needed to craft a letter that would appeal to parents and educators, the group most likely to buy and recommend books for children. But she has many other talents besides and writing and wide interests. Too many of us forget that our past experiences can be woven into the kind of information we provide to our newsletter audience.

In Kathy's case, much of that expertise comes from the research she has done freelancing for magazines and organizations like The National Writing for Children's Center.

That expertise includes relationships, health and fitness, education, antiques, biographical personalities, literature, and biological sciences. She has been a dancer, choreographer, teacher, tutor, and antiques dealer. We are all cumulations of our lives and experience and often angles that will interest our newsletter readers can be found in everything we do or have done.

You can see from the above list that no one will get bored reading Kathy's letter, that many who don't fit neatly into her target audience will find it useful, too.

Kathy's "Movement and Rhythm" newsletter is full of the latest information, activities, and games for the home or the classroom. It includes topics like: "Why Use Movement to Teach?" "Musical Consonants in Action," and "Activities for Gross Motor Skills." Her readers are also updated on her book-related features like education tipster's upcoming events including her virtual book tour and her FREE teacher teleseminars.

Vivian Gilbert Zabel, the publisher of 4RV, author, and educator in her own right (
http://viviangilbertzabel.com/) says "Kathy Stemke's 'Movement and Rhythm' Newsletter is a must read for all parents and teachers of little ones. I remember having my children clean their rooms to music, as we sang little songs. Learning through movement and rhythm is a good means for teaching many things, as well as helping children learn to appreciate music. After all, many of us still sing the Alphabet Song to ourselves when we need to check the alphabet."

This kind of endorsement is proof that Kathy is accruing a targeted audience for her newsletter so that it will attract readers of her works and help those readers with their own needs.

To sign up for Kathy Stemke's newsletter go to her blog at http://educationtipster.blogspot.com.While you're there you may also want to subscribe to get notices of her new blog posts on a regular basis, too.

I thought a sample or two of the things Kathy includes in her newsletter might help, too:


"Why Use Movement to Teach?"

.....Recent studies link cognitive skills to motor skill development. Scientists now say that because a child’s earliest learning is based on motor development, so too is much of the knowledge that follows. They have found that the cerebellum, the part of the brain previously thought to control only motor activities, is a “virtual switchboard of cognitive activity.” Scientists have demonstrated a connection between the cerebellum and such cognitive functions as memory, spatial orientation, attention, language, and decision making......

"Musical Consonants in Action"

Here is an example of a little conconant song parents and teachers can pair with movement to teach young children:

If you’re happy and you know it, bounce around b b.
If you’re happy and you know it, bounce around b, b.
If your happy and you know it, then you’re face will surely show it.
If you’re happy and you know it, bounce around b, b.....

If your happy and you know it, creep along c, c...etc

I will provide readers with a review of Kathy's newest release next week at www.TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com. I hope you'll drop by on the 7th of June to see how she is helping children and all those who love them with her books as well as her newsletters.

You can also learn more about Kathy and what she does at:
http://www.helium.com/users/406242.html

http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/237923/Kathy_stemke_dancekam.html

http://kathystemke.weebly.com




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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.

Dana Lynn Smith Gives You 21 Things to Tweet About

This guest article from Dana Lynn Smith is part of the virtual book tour for her new book, The Savvy Book Marketer's Guide to Successful Social Marketing. See the complete tour schedule at http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/booktour/.


Twitter is a great way to meet people, develop relationships, and promote yourself and your book. But it's important to avoid being seen as someone who just promotes themselves.

Most of your tweets should be about helping others, but you also need to inject some personality, to put the social into social networking and help people get to know you. Here are 21 ideas for tweeting:

1. Link to helpful or entertaining articles, websites, and blog posts. Add your own comments or ask for feedback.

2. Re-tweet good posts by other people, but don't go overboard—most of your tweets should be original. Include "re-tweet" or "RT" in your post to indicate that you're re-tweeting someone else's post.

3. Another way to re-tweet is to add a thank you to the previous tweeters at the end of the message. This works well if you have edited the original post.

4. Comment on someone else's tweet by hovering your mouse over it, then clicking the arrow. Be sure to refer to the original message in your reply, because your followers will not be able to see it.

5. Invite people to subscribe to your ezine, blog, or group, and offer an incentive.

6. Announce your live and virtual events, such as book tours and teleseminars.

7. Introduce other authors or experts in your field who are also on Twitter.

8. Teach a mini lesson in 140 characters.

9. On Fridays, recommend your favorite tweeters by using the #followfriday hashtag along with their user names. It's best to say why you recommend them.

10. Send congratulations to other Tweeple when they share good news.

11. Link to your own articles and blog posts, but do it sparingly.

12. Link to photos or videos (yours or others) on Flickr, Twitpic, or YouTube.

13. Ask for advice or ask questions that encourage responses.

14. Comment on someone's interesting Twitter background or clever bio.

15. Offer a free downloadable ebook or sample chapter, with no strings attached.

16. Thank others for mentioning you on Twitter.

17. Recommend a book, product, or service, other than your own.

18. Mention your hobbies, pets, kids, or personal activities. Just don't talk about what you ate for lunch!

19. Talk about your writing or what you're doing in your business.

20. Post an inspirational quote or message.

21. Welcome new followers.


Dana Lynn Smith is a book marketing coach and author of The Savvy Book Marketer's Guide to Successful Social Marketing, www.SavvyBookMarketer.com. To view other articles in the Successful Social Marketing book tour, visit http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/booktour/

To buy Dana's book go to: http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/savvy_book_marketer/successful-social-marketing.html

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.