Category: Nanowrimo 2014

All Good Things Must Come to an End-Virtual Book Tour Stop #6

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Today I make my last stop on the Virtual Book Tour for the launch of Scripting the Truth. I finish my globe trotting amusement with a stop by FreeValley Publishing, a small local press cooperative devoted to independent writers.

What does FreeValley Publishing want you to know about them:

FreeValley Publishing was formed in the spirit of an arts co-op. A group of writers affiliated with SnoValley Writes! were working toward publishing and marketing their own books. While sharing experience and ideas, they realized there was much to be gained by moving forward as a group.

FreeValley encourages writers to develop and market their own work with support and advice from fellow-writers. It provides a network for promotion and interaction with our community to move toward mutual success. Our success is sharing our stories with you. Feel free to linger in the Valley and read awhile…

I’m a little sad. This tour was so much fun. And it really made me feel like I had actually published something.

And yes, I know, I did publish something but the tour made it feel real. Like a constant reliving of that first thrill when I found my proof in the mail box.

In case you are just now tuning in, stop by my first five blog stops to get the full range of excerpts available from Scripting the Truth.

The Phantom Child, Tommia’s Tablet, Dan Alatorre, Sheri J. Kennedy Riverside, Skye Hegyes. 

Wednesday Writer’s Cafe – Not

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So my book came out last Friday. Yeah, me! And what does any writer worth their salt do after launching the first book they have ever published? They go on vacation. So I am gone.

While I am gone however, things will continue to tick over here. Tomorrow I will have my last Virtual Book Tour blog stop. Weekend workshops and Monday Book Reviews will continue to appear with the well oiled functionality of wordpress’s scheduling service. LOL.

I’ll tell you all about it when I get back, in time for Nanowrimo, I promise.

Virtual Book Tour Stop #5

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I know, I’m posting on a Tuesday, what is that all about? It’s about my book, Scripting the Truth.

Today I pop in for a little southern hospitality at  Skye Hegyes blog. Skye is a mother, author, blogger, and creative enthusiast. She reads and writes paranormal romance and fantasy, and she absolutely loves a good love story.

If you haven’t been keeping up on my previous stops, you can check them out now. I posted a different excerpt at each stop moving through the first few chapters of Scripting the Truth.

The Phantom Child, Tommia’s Tablet, Dan Alatorre, and Sheri J. Kennedy Riverside.

Monday Book Review: Seducing Strangers

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Just stop. Before you even get going on what have I been reading lately…read the rest of the title: Seducing Strangers, How to Get People to Buy What You’re Selling, by Josh Weltman. Yeah, not sexy. Information. Hey, my book come out last Friday and I needed to figure how to market it right?

I should have known by the front cover tag about how John Weltman is co-producer of Mad Men that the book would talk about Mad Men. And it did. At first it talked about it soooo much that I wanted to pull my hair out. Weltman tells you right out he has eons of experience in advertising, but every example in the first few chapters he uses is from the show. Which bugged me. I want real life. Not what you made happen in Hollywood, even if the show was crazy hot.

As I read on however, it was like he forgot he was supposed to be talking about Mad Men, he forgot that was his hook and he started talking about the real world experience he garnered from years in advertising. That I liked. I like the truth, look at all the non fiction I read.

The meat of the book is his theory of the 4 step arc an advertising campaign should use. In short: introduce it, give a limited time offer to bring them in, differentiate the product to grow the market share, and then mutual love and respect ads. That’s it. That’s how you run a total campaign lasting years and years.

Weltman also talked a lot about figuring out what you want from your marketing. So in the old advertising world, you were trying to get someone to do something. With so much of advertising being on-line driven these days what you are doing is getting someone to stop doing one thing and do something else. Indeed. Stop reading this blog and buy my book. What the direct approach doesn’t work for you? Alright I’ll refine my style.

℘℘℘℘ – Solid four pages. I liked this book. I didn’t love it. I didn’t feel it was mind opening or so full of information I could barely handle it. It was good. Some nuggets of information, some bs. LOL. If you are looking for an easy advertising read, this could be it.

Weekend Workshop Sunday Edition and Virtual Book Tour Stop #4

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As I explained yesterday, I will now be covering two chapters from Everyday Editing by Jeff Anderson each weekend so that we finish book before Nanowrimo starts. Chapter Six, to be or not to be, in other words verb choice.

Verbs of being are: is, are, was, were, be, been, and am. You can avoid using a verb of being with the -ing form of a verb to strengthen your writing. Active voice creates cleaner, tighter writing. Verbs add action and movement to our writing. Often the main verb will pack more punch if it stands alone.

Examples from Anderson:

Writing is weakened by the passive voice.

vs. The passive voice weakens writing.

The first is passive, the second active.

Further examples:

Fred, Sam, and I stood in front of strange trees and giant ferns. A rocky cliff rose behind us. A volcano smoked ahead of us. – Jon Scieszka, Your Mother Was a Neanderthal

vs. Fred, Sam, and I were standing in front of strange trees and giant ferns. A rocky cliff was rising behind us. A volcano was smoking ahead of us. -Adjusted by Anderson to make a point.

Which one sounds better to you? I know which one I like.

On the other hand sometimes you need verbs of being.

Xavier is dying.

Changing it to Xavier dies or died, would very much change the meaning. Use the voice and the verb that give you the message you want to convey to the reader.

Be sure to stop by Sheri J. Kennedy Riverside today to read another excerpt from Scripting the Truth and to laugh at further interview fun.

Weekend Workshop Saturday Edition

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Toiling on with Everyday Editing by Jeff Anderson, today I bring you Chapter 5: Simple Sentences. In an effort to finish this book before Nanowrimo starts I need to start covering two chapters per weekend so the chapter summary and the exercise suggestions will be covered in one post.

So Simple Sentences. They need a subject and verb. Did you know that a starting it with a Capitol Letter and finishing with a period does not a sentence make? laughing.

We write in sentences all day every day. I think I do anyway. But Word frequently informs me I am wrong about that and sometime I ignore Word and leave it as a style choice.

Some examples from Anderson:

My hair wakes up stupid. – Tony Johnston, Any Small Goodness

Is that a sentence? (Yep. Subject:hair, verb:wakes)

Another corpse. – Scott Smith, The Ruins

Is this one? (Nope. Subject:corpse, verb: MIA)

Let’s make our own two words sentences.

She writes.

She edits.

She designs.

She publishes.

Sounds good to me. But it’s a subject close to my heart. I think the point of simple sentences is to use the most powerful verbs you can get your hands on. Here are some from my current reading.

The universe loves novelists. – Chris Baty, No Plot? No Problem!

I hope they will not meet at all. – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

It was unlikely that she had drowned accidentally. – Ann Rule, Green River, Running Red

As usual my reading is somewhat disjointed. LOL. Be sure to check in tomorrow, both here for another Chapter from Everyday Editing and at Sheri J. Kennedy Riverside for my next blog stop on my virtual book tour.

Virtual Blog Tour Stop # 3 and the Launch of Scripting the Truth

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I am so excited today I can barely type. Woohoo!

Ok now that that is out of the way, let’s talk business.

It has been such a fun book tour so far. Monday I stopped by The Phantom Child, check in at his site if you want to see the first excerpt from Scripting the Truth. Wednesday I visited with Tommia at Tommia’s Tablet. Be sure to check her site if you want the second excerpt.

Today I visit the fabulous Dan Alatorre. Dan is a fellow author (Pongibonsi is his latest) and dedicated to helping to all writers get where they want to go. Check out his site for the funnest interview I did on this tour and get a third excerpt from Scripting the Truth, which by the way, you can now order from Amazon. Woohoo!

I know I said I was done with the squealing, I lied. After all that’s what writers do right? We lie, in writing, really well. Then we ask you to buy it, literally.

Weekend Workshop preempted for my Virtual Book Tour Schedule

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Scripting the Truth Front cover final

I am so excited to finally be putting the dates out there for my Virtual Book Tour. Every other day I will be stopping by a new blog to share a bit about myself and excerpts from Scripting the Truth. Each stop will have a different excerpt from the novel, giving you a taste of the first few chapters.

Today I pack (my words) and get ready for a flight (of fancy) because…..

The tour starts tomorrow (5 Oct) with a first stop in Macedonia.

The Phantom Child

Per TPC: Zoran’s blog is a worship temple for stories. It doesn’t matter if these are stories from the big screen, books, stories captured through a camera’s lense, or original stories he’s trying to write. He believes the fictional adventures are what makes our real life adventures more enjoyable and interesting. And he certainly hopes some of his own stories will eventually reach the general public.

TPC and I share a love of Nano and he has kindly agreed to host my first stop on the birth tour of my 2014 NanoNovel.

On the 7th I will be popping in for a visit with my good friend at Tommia’s Tablet.

Tommia

Tommia is an award winning blogger who shares her stunning photography, poetry, and occasionally more (like me) with almost daily posts and still she wants to give “a big “THANK YOU” to the fellow bloggers for sharing your artistic ways, a joy to read at the start of days!” Did you notice those two lines rhymed? wink wink.

On Friday October 9th, the officially release date for Scripting the Truth, I will be off across the planet again to hang out in sunny Florida with Dan Alatorre.

Dan Alatorre, Author

Dan Alatorre is the author of several bestsellers and the hilarious upcoming novel “Poggibonsi: an italian misadventure.” Check out his other works HERE 

Not only is Dan kindly hosting this momentous stop on my release day but he makes a serious effort to help his fellow writer with his daily blogs which are a great resource of information he has learned or collected so we all can be more successful.

Continuing back across the Unites States on the 11th to stop in with Sheri J. Kennedy…

Riverside

Sheri had published one novel,  SECRET ORDER OF THE OVERWORLD under pen name KENNEDY J. QUINN. She is about to release her second opus, LIKENESS, in mere days.

On the 13th I fly back across the US (good thing these are flights of fancy, I don’t think I have enough miles to cover this) to beautiful North Carolina to hang out with Skye Hegyes, mother, author, blogger… I can relate.

Skye

Per Skye: I am a mother, author, blogger, and creative enthusiast. I read and write paranormal romance and fantasy, and I absolutely love a good love story. If you walk into my home, you’ll instantly find yourself surrounded as kids, dragons, cats, birds, and sharp objects (generally knives and swords) have made their home in my home… As well as the occasional partridge in a pear tree. I’ve recently (within the past six months) started a YouTube channel about books and reading – although I need to get better about updating it – called The Dragon’s Den.

Finally back home on the 15th to spend a little time with FreeValley Publishing.

FreeValley Publishing

Where Stories Run Free… FreeValley Publishing connects readers and writers. We aid independent authors in the journey from Story to Publication and in encouraging book sales the way they’ve always imagined. Their Vision, Their Books. Stories for all!

Virtual Book Tour

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I talked a lot about Norwescon earlier this year. It was an amazing wealth of knowledge. I hit every writer track seminar I could manage, pulling a few 12 hour days. But it was totally worth it.

One of the things that really stuck with me was how many of the indie and self published authors were talking about Virtual Book Tours. It’s a throw back to the days when a major publisher would send an author with a new book out on a physical tour to book stores for readings/signings, to radio shows for interviews, etc.

So what does a Virtual Book Tour look like? Well, you “tour” your favorite blogs. The blog host posts up an excerpt of the book launching and whatever else makes them happy. An interview. A game of 20 questions suggested by readers. Some blog hosts like to read the book in advance and give a review.

It sounds like lots of fun to me. And a bit of a win-win. The author posts all the locations they’ll be touring, driving their readers to the host blogs. And of course the author gains new readers from the host blogs.

What do you think? Would you like to see interviews and excerpts on my blog from authors about to publish?