KN Magazine: Articles
The Difference Between Passive Voice and Passive Verbs
By Lois Winston
I began writing fiction nearly thirty years ago. Over the years, I’ve attended dozens of writing conferences, both in the romance genre and the mystery genre. Most of what I learned was invaluable toward advancing my writing career. However, occasionally I’d come across inaccurate information. Such is the case with passive voice and passive verbs.
Once upon a time, somewhere during some talk or on some panel, someone emphatically stated that authors should NEVER use any form of the verb “to be.” That misinformed person said using “was,” along with its brothers and sisters (is, am, are, were, been,) was passive voice and a surefire way to receive a rejection from agents and editors. Like a bad rumor, this piece of writing advice flew from writer to writer, taking on a life of its own, until it became gospel.
I’d like to set the record straight. There’s a huge difference between passive verbs and passive voice.
Passive voice is when an action is acted upon the subject, rather than the subject acting. The car was driven by Anna is a passive sentence. Anna drove the car is an active sentence. However, Anna was happy to drive the car is not a passive sentence. Anna is expressing emotion. She is acting, rather than being acted upon. Of course, there are more interesting ways to write the sentence to show Anna’s emotions, but that’s a separate discussion.
One of the easiest ways to tell whether your sentence is active or passive is to analyze the position of the subject, verb, and direct object. In active voice, the subject (the one performing the action) will come before the verb (the action), and the verb will come before the direct object (that which is being acted upon.)
There are instances, though, when passive voice is necessary to the unfolding of a story or better suited to the realism of the dialogue. When we speak, we don’t first think whether our sentences are active or passive before uttering them. We just speak them. The same is true when writing dialogue. Manipulate a sentence to avoid passive voice in a conversation between characters, and you often transform snappy dialogue into stilted dialogue.
For example: Billy ran into the house and cried, “Mom! Come quick. Snoopy was hit by a car!” This passage accurately illustrates the way a child might respond to a car hitting his dog. Snoopy was hit by a car is a passive sentence because Snoopy is being acted upon by the car, but the child mentions Snoopy first because the dog’s welfare is uppermost in his mind. Also, by placing the last sentence in passive voice, the author is ratcheting up the tension. We don’t know until the very end exactly what hit Snoopy. A stray baseball? A nasty neighbor? A falling tree limb? Although A car hit Snoopy, is active voice, using it lessens the impact of the sentence.
Still squeamish about the use of “was”? After you finish your manuscript, do a search of the word. Check each sentence to see if you can rewrite it to avoid using “was.” If you can, and it doesn’t detract from the pacing, dialogue, or meaning of the passage, do so. If not, leave it. Some “was” are meant to be.
EXCEPT in the subjunctive.
The what, you ask? Subjunctive case or mood is one of the most misunderstood rules in the English language because it runs counter to subject/verb agreement. In other words, if a subject is singular, the verb must also be singular. But not in the subjunctive.
The subjunctive applies to cases of “wishfulness” or “what if” situations. In these cases, “was” becomes “were,” as in, I wish I were taller. “Were” is also used when a sentence or clause uses “if,” “as if,” or “as though,” but only in instances where the statement is contrary to fact.
Examples include:
If I were taller, I could see the stage better.
Her twelve-year-old son acts as if he were in kindergarten.
The maid behaved as though she were queen.
Because I cannot grow taller, the twelve-year-old is not in kindergarten, and the maid is not a queen, all the statements are contrary to fact, and “was” becomes “were” even though the subjects are all singular.
Keep in mind, though, that the key statement here is “contrary to fact.” “If” statements that are not contrary to fact retain the singular form of the verb. If I was at the store that day, I don’t remember is a correct sentence because the statement is not contrary to fact whether I can recall the event or not.
So don’t be afraid to use “was” and “were” in your writing but be sure to use them correctly.
USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. Her most recent release is Sorry, Knot Sorry, the thirteenth book in her Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series. Learn more about Lois and her books at her website www.loiswinston.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter and follow her on various social media sites.
Character as a Haunted House
By Aimee Hardy
Establishing engaging and relatable characters is one of the most important parts of storytelling. Characters should have compelling backstories, relatable flaws, and fulfilling character arcs, but one of the best tools that I’ve learned about creating characters is to think of them like a haunted house.
Each house has a facade that everyone sees. This is usually the most complimentary view of the house. Passersby can admire the paint, the sweeping porch, and the manicured lawn. Everything is usually neat and tidy, and all its secrets are safely locked away inside. Even haunted houses look best from the outside.
Similarly, everyone sees certain aspects of a character. This is the image they present to society. It’s the suit jacket worn for status, the combat boots worn for protection, the high heels worn for seduction. It’s the gruff voice to establish dominance or the motherly coo to show nurturing, the helping hand they give when on the train or the kind words said at the gas station. These are the outward images that we must establish from the very beginning because they show how the character would like to be seen from the outside.
Friends are allowed access inside the house, however. Acquaintances are invited in and can see the common rooms. Those rooms are still cultivated, yet they are a little more intimate. As acquaintances become friends or loved ones, they are invited further inside the house. They see the dishes that have been piled in the sink, the laundry that is overflowing, or the tub that is in need of a good scrub. In a haunted house, we can see the evidence of ghosts. We can hear strange footsteps, feel cold spots, and see apparitions, but we can’t quite determine what is haunting the house.
Just as with houses, our characters will reveal more intimate details about themselves (and their own ghosts) as they make bonds with other characters and as we (the reader) get to know them in the story. We can see that they are kind by the way they treat their loved ones but that it hurts when no one says thank you. We can see that they are jealous of an adversary, but we can also see that it’s because they were never given the same opportunities to be great. We can see that they are smart but that they are terrified of losing their top spot. They become nuanced–both kind and resentful, jealous and righteous, smart and insecure.
Then, there are rooms in this haunted house that are so scary that the main character would not dare to enter. These rooms contain the worst secrets that will not leave us alone, and with characters, these rooms contain their deepest fears. The kind and resentful mother might fear that she isn’t worthy of being loved. The jealous and righteous bully might be afraid of being weak or controlled by others. The smart but insecure scientist might fear they are useless. The main character is haunted by these fears and can’t move on until they confront their ghosts.
So, when I write stories, I always ask what is haunting my main character. If they are worried that they have no identity, maybe they fill their “rooms” with collections. They might appear to know a lot of things in their search for their identity and might even adopt different identities as they interact with different characters. On the outside, they might overcompensate by wearing elaborate costumes or may even be so insecure that they only wear black. However you design your character, keep in mind that their house is haunted, and that in the end, their ghosts will have to come out.
Aimee Hardy is a writer and editor in Birmingham, AL. She is the author of Pocket Full of Teeth (September 2024 Running Wild Press). She has been published in Stonecoast Review, Running Wild Press’ Short Story Anthology, Havik2020, Bluntly Lit Mag, Adelaide Literary Magazine, and Lost Pilots Lit and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2020. She has a B.A. and M.A. in English from National University. When she’s not writing or editing, she enjoys going on hikes with her husband and two kids or curling up with a good book and a hot cup of tea. For more of Aimee’s work, please visit www.aimeehardy.com.
Editors- You DO Need Them
Editors are essential to improving your work and aiding your success. Most writers are blind to the faults in their own writing, despite being sharp about discovering them in every other printed work. I’m no exception, and though I’m paid to evaluate and edit other manuscripts, I still pay another good editor to help make my manuscripts better. However, when I send my manuscript to my editor, I’ve done a great deal of cleanup beforehand, to give her less work to do. Note that some editors charge by the page, which is a crap system. Something that needs a lot of cleanup takes far more time than a very clean page, so go for editors who work hourly, to save yourself money. And get honest ones- my editor thought the latter half of a novel needed rewriting, so sent it back for revisions before spending hours editing something that would be significantly changed.
There are different types of editors and editing, and disagreement about which is which, as some of these terms are variable. Some combine more than one of these in their inclusive editing. Know up front what you’re getting and paying for.
Manuscript evaluation/appraisal— This high-level check is for the essential quality of your manuscript. Does it work as a book? Does it have commercial viability? Does it have the elements it needs for publication, or are there major problems which must be corrected first?
Developmental or Story editing— This is a check that the structural story works as it is, or may need chapters/characters moved around, added/deleted, or simply further detail in certain areas. Completed story arcs?
Line editing— This check is for content and flow, things like consistency of voice, point-of-view, tone, and clarity, and slack writing which may sag or need some punching up.
Copy editing— This type drills down to the precision bits on a word-for-word basis, usually working to a style type or sheet. Different copyeditors work using different standards, though, so make sure you agree with yours.
Proofreading— Checking for any and every error, in text, layout, numbering, placement, etc.
Fact checking— If you have a manuscript with a lot of facts in it, you may need one of these editors for verification of the information you’ve included.
Because most Indie writers don’t have a lot of surplus income, they blanch when told they MUST have a good editor for their work, before it goes out to the buying public. Since good editing runs $50 or more per hour, they despair at not having hundreds of dollars to make their work better. Especially when they hear that there are different levels of editing, and the work might need more than one editing pass. Ouch! When you’re talking about a thousand dollars or more for each book, that’s real money to most writers.
And if the writer is expecting an editor to wear all those hats and correct all the errors in a manuscript in one pass, and to do it cheaply, well, that’s like looking for unicorns. So the money-impaired writer is tempted to skip the process altogether, or to assume a publisher (if they go that route) will take care of that. Skipping (or even skimping) on editing is a bad business decision that will adversely affect a writing career. As a reader, when I encounter a poorly-edited book, I seldom read that author again. If their story wasn’t even worth an editing pass, then it’s not worth wasting my time to read it, or anything else by them. So what’s a poor writer to do?
It’s never too early to start your search for a good editor, to get them lined up for when you’ve got a work ready for their red pen. Know what type of editing you’ll be getting for the money and get some samples up front. Many writers got burned paying for poor levels of edits they didn’t want or need. You’ll need to do some careful research for this one, to find someone you’re comfortable working with, who can be trusted to work in a timely fashion, and who provides quality for the price. You can start an editing fund right away, even if it’s a few bucks a week. Forego the pricey coffee, young hipster, and bank those four dollars so your work will be better. Your stories are worth it, aren’t they?
Here are some ways to get your manuscript in shape BEFORE you send it to the editor. The less work the well-paid editor does, the less you pay. You’ll see that each method described here will do some of the work of different editors. It’ll catch a lot of simple stuff, but it’s extra work that takes an editor more time to point out and mark up.
Study about feedback, using beta readers, writing groups, and workshops. Get advance feedback for your work through the methods described there. Story edits for flaws can cause massive rewrites, driving up the cost of your editing, and taking a lot of extra time. When your story passes muster with all your free feedback sources, then send it on to a pro.
Our brains play tricks when scanning text, gliding over mistakes, so copy the text into a different type of file, and change the font, and the size, and print it out. You’ll catch a lot of things you didn’t see before.
Get a helper, someone to listen, and read through your work- slowly. Do this in stages, so you don’t overdo it. Mistakes will sound like dull clunks in many cases. You’ll wince when hearing some of the stuff you wrote that looked okay on paper. Mark it all and fix that stuff!
Some people recommend reading it backwards. If that floats your boat, go for it. Haven’t tried that one yet.
Check with the editor in advance when you know you’ll soon have a manuscript for them. They might be busy for weeks with the work of someone else, and you don’t want to have your manuscript sitting around. Once you’ve put in all the free feedback, and had other eyes on the text, NOW you’re ready for a proven, paid set of eyes for your work. You’ll swear up and down your manuscript is perfect, but you’ll be shocked to discover what you missed when you get it back.
On the path to success, quality is necessary to establish a trusted “brand”- with clean, well-told stories, your audience will grow. Having a lot of mistakes in your manuscript will get you dinged in reviews, and may convince some to not buy or read it. Lay the groundwork for a long-term writing career you can be proud of.
Dale T. Phillips has published novels, story collections, non-fiction, and over 80 short stories. Stephen King was Dale's college writing teacher, and since then, Dale has found time to appear on stage, television, radio, in an independent feature film, and compete on Jeopardy (losing in a spectacular fashion). He's a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Sisters in Crime.
Why I Hate Self-Publishing
By Steven Womack
Some time ago, I gave a talk at the monthly meeting of the Middle Tennessee Chapter of Sisters-In-Crime. A week or so before that, I’d read an installment of Clay Stafford’s writing blog that put forth the proposition that writers should not give their work away. A writer’s work has meaning, Clay wrote. It has value and to give it away for free sends the wrong message to readers and to the world in general.
I’ve known Clay Stafford a good couple of decades now and have always regarded him as a wise and successful friend. When he speaks, I listen—and usually take notes.
This time, however, I had to disagree.
It’s not that I disagree with his notion that a writer’s work has value. It does, even if sometimes it’s only to the writer him/herself. All writers put an enormous amount of work and heart in to getting those words onto a page. But that doesn’t always automatically translate into value, especially value measured in sales/dollars. When there are roughly 2.2 million new books published every year (according to UNESCO), the competition is pretty rough out there and it’s hard to convince an audience that your book has value; in other words, it’s worth reading.
So I put forth the notion—based on my own experience—that the best way to get attention for your book was to give it away. In February, I had my first BookBub Featured Deal and in a four-day period gave away 24,897 eBook copies of the latest installment in my Music City Murders Harry James Denton series, Fade Up From Black. Through the rest of the month, that resulted in over 200,000 page reads. And since Amazon’s policy is to pay page reads on book giveaways if the book’s enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, I made money giving stuff away.
Enough to pay for the BookBub Featured Deal, anyway.
While I’ve given up predicting the future, I feel confident that at least a few of the people who downloaded those nearly 25,000 copies will like the book well enough to actually go out and buy the other installments.
It’s a whole new world out there, marketing-wise. Marketing in the internet age has a very long tail, and to riff on my old pal Larry Beinhart, sometimes the tail wags the dog.
***
After my talk, Clay wrote me a very complimentary note and asked if I’d be interested in writing a monthly column for Killer Nashville Magazine on self-publishing. I was very flattered, but the first obstacle to overcome was my loathing of the term self-publishing. Loathing? Seems kind of harsh. Why would anyone loathe a term like self-publishing, especially since some of the greatest writers in history published their own work?
Disgusted with his usual publisher, Mark Twain formed a publishing company to publish The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Charles Dickens’s regular publisher showed little interest in A Christmas Carol, so Dickens hired artists and editors and paid for the printing himself. Beatrix Potter literally couldn’t interest anyone in publishing The Tale of Peter Rabbit, so she borrowed the money to print 250 copies. At latest count, there are some 45 million copies of THE TALE OF PETER RABBIT in print. Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass. The rest, as they say, is history.
In our lifetimes, the stories of self-published books that sold gazillions are apocryphal. Amanda Hocking, Andy Weir, Margaret Atwood, John Grisham, Scott Adams… all have, at some point in their careers, published their own work. And let’s not forget that whole Fifty Shades of Grey thing.
So why such distaste for the term?
I confess here that I’m an old guy. I began seriously writing in 1970, fresh out of boarding school and working on my first novel. There was no Internet then, no such thing as an eBook, and everything was old school; no respectable publisher would consider an unrepresented book, so you queried one agent at a time and if they took six months or a year to get back to you, tough noogies. They were the gatekeepers and they made the rules.
Then, like now, it seemed that every sumbitch who knew how to type thought they could be an arthur (a term coined by the wonderful Molly Ivins, when someone introduced me to her as a mystery writer—Great to meet you, we arthurs gotta stick together…)
Then, as now, there were dozens of predators out there preying on the hopes and dreams of aspiring writers. Self-publishing then was a synonym for vanity publishing, and the vanity presses were raking it in from the naïve rubes. Vantage Press, Pageant Press, and Exposition were three leading vanity presses that were, by the 1950s, “publishing” over 100 titles a year each.
Even I got roped in myself when I paid $400 to have the legendary Scott Meredith Agency read a novel of mine. Meredith, being one smart cookie, had created a whole separate company to sucker in aspiring writers like moi. I got notes back from some office drone, supposedly signed by Meredith, who needless to say, didn’t take me on as a client.
Not one of those books published by a vanity press had a chance of being reviewed by anybody, let alone a respectable press like the New York Times. No bookstore would carry them.
Writers have always been easy pickings for predators. The most egregious case in history was The Famous Writer’s School, founded in 1961 by Bennett Cerf, a Random House editor and regular panelist on the TV show What’s My Line? There isn’t enough space here to go into that con job, but it made millions by paying writers as diverse as Mignon Eberhart, Rod Serling, Bruce Catton, and Faith Baldwin to join their “faculty.” The suckers thought their stuff was being read and critiqued by Rod Serling, when in reality the work was being done by unknown copy editors. There’s not room enough here to really relate the history of this scam, but Google it. It’s an object lesson for us all.
If not self-publishing, then what?
The world of publishing today bears no resemblance to the publishing world I came of age in, and that’s a good thing. I’m already over my word allotment that Clay gave me for this column, so over the next few months (or however long this little adventure goes on), I’m going to talk about these changes and how my own experience in This Crazy Writing Life have shaped me and my career. To me, it’s not self-publishing. Self-publishing means your stuff’s so bad, you’re the only who’ll touch it.
I prefer the term independent publishing. Going forward, I’m going to talk about how we, as writers, can take control of our work and careers, take back the power from the gatekeepers, and become the kinds of writers we want to be, with the kinds of careers and lives we want to have.
This’ll be a journey we’ll share. After all, as Molly Ivins once said: We arthurs gotta stick together…
The Writer’s Playbook: Michael Jordan, Me, and a Poster
By Steven Harms
To all aspiring authors, this one’s for you.
I’m fortunate to have two published books with a third taking shape on my computer, but aspiring I am. To be sure, my journey has had its share of bumps and bruises. For new and aspiring authors, the headwinds of the publishing industry are not only real but magnified. One big hurdle is securing a literary agent if you’re inclined to go the traditional route. That’s followed by the excruciating rollercoaster ride of landing a publisher, which comes with a healthy dose of rejection. Or, you can go self-published, but then you must manage the entire process and the burden that presents with perhaps a steeper climb to the top. There’s no right or wrong method. The point here is the odds of becoming a best-selling author are not favorable.
For as many authors that have “broken through” and reached a level of success, there are immeasurable others that haven’t, despite pulling all the right levers. With two books out, I’m decidedly in the second camp.
The reality is that there’s an ocean of books out there, and it can be daunting to wade into those waters. Establishing your brand, marketing your book, growing your sales, getting exposure, building a following, and then, ultimately, hopefully, expectantly, and with a measure of luck or timing or both, you catch a wave and ride it to the bestseller list.
I have an amazing agent and a supportive publisher, and I’m grateful for her. Killer Nashville Magazine also taking me on as a contributing writer has been a fantastic blessing as well. Yet, like so many others, I’m still in the trenches looking up and trying to break through.
In most any endeavor, realizing one’s dream includes a dose of luck and timing. They are uncontrollable variables, and they are real. Ask any athlete, actor, model, artist, singer, or musician. If you reach the elite echelon of one’s chosen pursuit, there was some degree of those two elements somewhere in the process.
With all that as the backdrop, my career in the sports business affords me an interesting take on the journey to author success. The parallels are weirdly similar.
At this juncture, you may be asking, where does Michael Jordan come into the conversation? Well, I had a unique experience that sort of captures my points here. Let’s jump back to February 7, 1988, inside the old Chicago Stadium, former home of the Chicago Bulls, and to the NBA Slam Dunk contest going on as part of the NBA All-Star Weekend. Specifically, let’s move ourselves down onto the court. And to the Slam Dunk staging area courtside by the Gatorade table near mid-court. That’s where I was stationed.
I was there at the request of the NBA to help manage the event. At that time, I was with the Milwaukee Bucks as head of ticket sales and the NBA had gotten to know me. They pulled in three team executives they knew they could rely on to help. Besides me, Don Johnson from the Denver Nuggets and Brad Ewing from the Houston Rockets were part of the team. We became a three-headed event manager, taking lead from the NBA’s VP, Paula Hanson. Thus, the headsets. We were to ensure that the participating players were seated in line as instructed on the team bench, and that we had the next player to compete informed and sent to that mid-court table to wait their turn for the competition. That’s where I was stationed, while Don and Brad were on the sideline managing the media and player positioning. I was there to keep the player in place and tell him when he should go.
I relay all this for a reason.
That Slam Dunk contest is now part of the annals of NBA lore. It was, to some extent, Michael Jordan’s coming out party that cemented his reign over the NBA for years to come. He beat out Dominique Wilkins to win the slam dunk title, and in the process, executed a dunk where he sped the full length of the court and leaped at the free throw line to slam home the basketball. In mid-air, he looked like he was flying with his left arm slightly back, his legs like wings, the ball held high, and his elevation almost inhuman. A photographer captured that moment, and the photo went on to be a best-selling poster every fan wanted. Smart phones and personal devices with cameras weren’t around back then. Images of celebrities were monetized through posters sold at retail locations (no internet either!).
Look up that moment online and you’ll see two well-dressed guys on headsets squatting on the sideline, each sporting a mustache. That’s Don and Brad. On the poster. Forever. To the right, the Gatorade table where yours truly was squatting is cropped out. Forever.
The three of us were equals. We each were young executives doing the same job for our respective teams, having got to that point because of our talent and capabilities. The NBA noticed us. We did all the right things to achieve our position. We worked hard, put in the hours, learned our craft, and improved ourselves by networking and just being in the business. But at that moment, on the floor of the Chicago Stadium, something unexpected happened to my two colleagues. They caught a break in that they’re visually and permanently part of a historic moment. And for the record, I have zero consternation that I was cropped out. I’m genuinely elated for them both.
I tell this story because it speaks to our ambitions of finding success. As aspiring authors, we’re all the same in many ways. We have talent. We can write compelling stories. We network and learn and improve. We pour ourselves into our dream and spend countless hours writing, editing, rewriting, marketing, and sweating over the details. But sometimes, it simply comes down to luck and timing.
And maybe I should’ve added Thomas Jefferson to the title of this article, because he said something that should give all aspiring writers some solace we’re doing all the right things to succeed. Jefferson is quoted as saying, “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." The newer version of that is “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
So, keep writing and keep working hard. A dose of luck is an element to success in most any field. Stay the course and know that the road we’re on isn’t necessarily paved, rather that it’s a bumpy ride with potholes and hills to climb. But keep driving. Luck and timing seem to find their way to those that persevere.
Agents- You Don’t Need Them
In the past, literary agents were sometimes useful and necessary for selling a manuscript to a publisher, and as an author representative, negotiating a better deal for the author for the sale of the book rights. Unsolicited, un-agented manuscripts were often sent to the publishing house. These were called over the transom (the crossbar above a door), because in the olden days, some were literally pushed through the window portion over the transom in the hopes that someone would read them. They would be dumped into a slush pile, and good luck to anything that broke out of that oubliette. Once in a great while, somebody would scan some of the manuscripts in the pile and find a pearl in that mountain of clamshells (not even oyster), and a miracle occurred, and the book got published. Extremely low odds, but it didn’t stop the flow. Hope springs eternal in the hearts of writers.
In the latter part of the twentieth century, the publishing houses churned in a frenzy of consolidation and mergers. The people taking them over were interested in profits more than literature, and things changed dramatically. Many people who had been in the business for the love of books went away (voluntarily or just cut), and the ones remaining had to do more with much less. One thing that got outsourced was the discovery of buyable manuscripts. Many publishers announced they would not accept unsolicited manuscripts. Some still did, even though they advertised the opposite. They just didn’t want to deal with what they considered were piles of junk. So they pushed the work of editors and screeners onto literary agents, who would take on the burden of sifting through submissions for the needle in the haystack, the sellable manuscript. Agents became the gatekeepers to the Big Leagues- if you didn’t have an agent, you couldn’t even get someone to read your work. Agents were convenient for traditional publishing, because they’d recommend manuscripts that had some merit. If an agent sent nothing but duds, they wouldn’t be around long.
Generalization follows. Agents screen by what they think will sell to the handful of editors they have contact with. And instead of reading actual manuscripts to start, they rely on the query letter from hopeful authors. A (usually) one-page letter is a summary of what the book is about. It can be scanned rapidly, and usually discarded. Their reasoning is that if a writer cannot write a good query, the manuscript isn’t likely to be good. So now New Author must spend a lot of time composing the Perfect Query, all to hunt for the elusive Great Agent, who will take them on, to find the Perfect Publisher. Trouble is, the Great Agents are all booked up, and few are taking on new clients. Guess where that leaves New Author? Going through listing of potential agents to query, studying what kind of book they prefer to represent, and firing off a batch of queries to the selected group. Why in batches? Because the agents then usually take their sweet time about responding, if they respond at all. It can be days, but is more often weeks or months before the author hears back. And the response is usually “Thanks, but it’s not for us.”
How does one find a good agent that will take them on? At this point, it’s a matter of rare good fortune. While there are excellent agents, there are some who are just awful, and a portion who are downright toxic or even criminal. Some famous authors have struck deals with well-bespoken top agents, only to discover horrendous abuses. See the horror stories of Laura Resnick and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Sometimes the agents wouldn’t bother notifying the author of additional potential deals. A bad decision by an agent can be costly. And that’s just the honest ones! But new writers are so desperate to get an agent (a process that can often take years) that they’ll sign with the first one who indicates interest. It can be a catastrophic mistake.
The problem is that anyone can say they’re an agent, hang out an agent shingle tomorrow, run an ad or two, and within a few weeks, probably have hundreds of submissions, because there are so many people hungry for traditional publishing that they’ll sign with anyone who’ll take them. They’ll be taken, all right, usually to the cleaners.
Agents need no certification or education, no degree, no proof of ability, no license, no standards. It’s all voluntary. In many cases, they give legal advice on complex contracts (which benefit themselves)- in other words, practicing law without a law license, which is actually a crime. Thousands of authors hand over their careers and money to absolute strangers, with little or no vetting other than they saw a listing somewhere. And then a few emails and a phone call or two. “They seemed nice, and eager to work with me.”
The publishing houses mostly send the money due the author for advances and royalties to the agent/agency. When does the author get paid? At the whim of the person holding the money. Imagine if your employer sent your paycheck to your bank, who then decided when and how much to give you of the money you’d earned!
It’s always a good practice to be in charge of your own finances. If you do decide to sign with an agent, try to work it so the payments from the publishing house go to you first, or to each their share. After all, the agent is supposed to be working for you. Then you pay the agent. Unusual, but not unheard of.
Other problems with agents are that if you decide to part ways, you might still have to pay them forever for any of your books they represented, or even any you sold elsewhere while you were signed with them. Yup, you could wind up forking over your 15%, even twenty years after you got rid of them. Worse than alimony. And if they sold anything of a series, they may try to get a cut of any future things you sell from that series, even after you’re no longer working together. Dean Wesley Smith (with over 40 years of experience) says writers don’t need agents anymore. He says it’s like giving fifteen percent of your house value to the person who cuts your lawn.
Many authors say they love their agent. Some authors don’t want to talk about bad experiences with agents, for fear they’ll be blacklisted, because the Manhattan book world is a tiny bubble. And it’s possible an author might not even know for a long time they’re being badmouthed in the industry, and why doors are closed in their face. But many more will tell of the hell they went through with agents. One well-known example had an author finding out only years later that their agent had died!
If you want to work with an agent, be careful. Have any contract with the agent and with a publisher additionally vetted by qualified, licensed Intellectual Property attorneys, not just agents who say they know what they’re doing. In the new world of publishing, agents are far less useful than they used to be. With all the changes, it’s getting tougher for them to make a decent living as well. Not having an agent means not having to give up a good chunk of profits, which are slim enough.
However, if you want to meet agents, writer conferences are the best places, because many agents go there to find new clients, and expect to get pitched. Some agents even schedule pitch sessions at these conferences, where a prospective writer has a few minutes to pitch the agent on a book proposal. Many writers get asked for part or all of a manuscript, based on those few minutes. At least the agent will give it a chance.
If you do this, have a killer tagline to catch their interest. Follow with a few sentences similar to a description of other books the agent has done, or top-sellers. Think high-concept: for example, Gone Girl crossed with Silence of the Lambs, that sort of thing. Keep it simple, exciting, and show you know the marketplace and what type of book that agent represents. Most have their likes and dislikes available on their website, so do your homework first. Some give precise guidelines for how to pitch them. Don’t think your manuscript is so wonderful that a strictly children’s author representative will suddenly want your adult science fiction novel (yes, this kind of idiocy still happens). But if your book is like others the agent has represented, say so.
Your pitch could go something like this:
“Hello. I’m [author name], and my novel, A Time for Tea, is an eighty-thousand-word cozy mystery about a blind librarian who solves crimes in her small Welsh village. It’s similar in tone to Murder by the Sea, which I see from your website you represented. This is my first novel, although I’ve had mystery stories published in [credits].”
This pitch shows the author has done their homework, and in many cases, the agent would want to hear more. The conversation might end with the agent asking for a partial manuscript, maybe the first fifty pages or so. I’ve seen this happen so many times at conferences, and the writer comes out of the session stunned, starry-eyed, and grinning from ear-to-ear. It’s wonderful to see dreams come true, so give them the moment and don’t harangue them with lectures about what other paths they might want to think about. If they’re happy, let them live their dreams. Of course, if someone asks for your advice, wait a bit and then give them the truth as you see it. Just don’t volunteer to be a buzzkill or dream-crusher, and remember that timing is everything.
Remember that you don’t need anyone’s permission to publish, nor do you have to wait years to be chosen by gatekeepers. You can publish independently while you pursue a traditional path if you want, becoming a hybrid author, or any way that makes you happy. And if you achieve outstanding success as an independent, the traditional publishers will then want you even more.
Dale T. Phillips has published novels, story collections, non-fiction, and over 80 short stories. Stephen King was Dale's college writing teacher, and since then, Dale has found time to appear on stage, television, radio, in an independent feature film, and compete on Jeopardy (losing in a spectacular fashion). He's a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Sisters in Crime.
The Use of Mysteries in the Classroom
By Amy Denton
In the public school or college classroom, multiple issues face the teacher, one being what to cover and how much to cover in the subject the class is about. Should the class be about history or English? A ready-made assignment is analyzing fiction for the subject. This practice teaches your students that not everything they read is dull, dry, academic text. Analyzation also uses those all-important critical thinking skills. If you're looking for a text that is a good fit for this assignment look no further than the Joe Leaphorn and Walt Longmire novels, written by Tony Hillerman and Craig Johnson, respectively.
In the history and English survey courses, what the student perceives to be the truth can greatly affect how they understand and process the information they are given. It is one of the jobs of the teacher to find out what those perceptions are and find a way to work with them. The easiest way to discover those preconceived notions is to ask. Don’t be surprised by the answers. Make a list. This list of questions is vital for opening the students’ minds to understanding something they may or may not have thought about---what people are like in other parts of the world and/or their own country.
Ask them where their information about Native Americans comes from. Do not be surprised if the main answer is the internet, TV, or movies. Students today live in a highly digital society. Having easy access to vast amounts of knowledge is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing in that they can find whatever they need for a class, quickly and easily. But it can be a curse if the information is wrong. It’s a conundrum that has perplexed both college professors and high school teachers since the rise of the internet---how to get the needed information to the students without losing their attention but without turning the subject into a three-ring circus in an attempt to keep the students’ attention.
The answer? Use the media they are used to, video, in the form of tv episodes or movies as well as print media. Use an author who has won awards ranging from the Mystery Writers of America and the Agatha Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement to the Navajo Tribe’s Special Friends of the Dineh Award. Use Tony Hillerman.
The novels themselves will be a throwback in time for students who know no other world than computers, iPods, and cell phones. The first novel in the Joe Leaphorn series was printed in 1970, long before either they—and in some cases, their parents—were born. The first books in the series have no technology and give students a look at what life was like before technology took over. In that brief look, so much can be discovered: about the Four Corners area, the relationships between the characters, and, most importantly, the culture of multiple Indian tribes. It is through the stories that the students will learn about the different tribes, their traditions, and their differences.
A good place to start the analysis is to look at the background of the writer and where his inspiration came from. The answer is in this case is simple. Hillerman wrote about what he knew. He lived among the people he wrote about. He started writing in the late 1960s, before computers. Research was done the old-fashioned way, living in the setting and among the people in the books.
His inspiration, Hillerman claims, came from an Australian mystery writer Arthur Upfield. Upfield wrote a series of novels set in the Australian outback featuring Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, “Bony,” of the Queensland Police Force, a half white, half Aborigine. That Hillerman was inspired by a native Australian to write mysteries staring Native Americans make his stories all the more compelling.
The landscape of the Southwest is as much a character as Joe Leaphorn or Jim Chee. From Window Rock in Arizona to Shiprock in New Mexico to Tuba City back in Arizona, the depth and the breadth of the Southwest is on full display in all of the books. An interesting avenue to take in class would be to assign specific regions from the books to students and have them research the area and the people that live in it. In this way, the students not only learn about places they have probably never heard of, but they also learn about the people who live there and why they live there.
All of Hillerman’s novels are steeped in Native American culture; usually Navajo but sometimes Hopi and sometimes Zuni. In the first book in the series, The Blessing Way, the reader is introduced to half of one of the major Navajo song ceremonies, the Enemy Way. The ceremony is done to counter the harmful effects of the “chindi,” a ghost left behind after the death of a Navajo or to kill off a troublemaker. Joe Leaphorn attends an Enemy Way ceremony at the beginning of the book because of a body he finds. In the course of the story, the reader learns that the trouble maker, responsible for the body, is a Navajo named George Jackson, who was hired by Jimmy Hall, to keep people away from an Anasazi pueblo. Hall was collecting radar data from missiles being tested on federal land near the reservation. He had hoped to sell the information for a million dollars, a lot of money in 1970. In the end, Hall fails, shooting himself as Leaphorn approaches.
In The Blessing Way, the reader discovers the Navajo philosophy of keeping peace in one’s life versus the desire for money. The book can be seen as a morality tale--- this is what can happen when the desire for money overwhelms everything else--- but it is first and foremost an excellent mystery. Seventeen novels continue Leaphorn’s story, each a study in Native American culture.
Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire mysteries, is another author prime for this assignment type. The series are alike in that they use Native Americans and the life on Native American reservations in their stories. The difference is that the main character in the Longmire series is white. However, his best friend , Henry Standing Bear, is Cheyenne. Longmire doesn’t work for the Tribal Police (Leaphorn does). He is the sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming. And he often has to deal with Native Americans from the reservation located in his county.
The Cold Dish, the first book in the series, deals with a young Cheyenne girl suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome. She is sexually assaulted by four members of the local high school football team. Two years after nominal sentences are handed out to the boys, the least repentant one is found shot to death. The Cheyenne Nation is considered a sovereign nation within the borders of the United States, meaning Longmire, as an outside law enforcement officer, is not allowed to walk onto the reservation whenever he wants. The conclusion of the story will have students talking long after they have finished the book.
Like Hillerman, Johnson lives in and among the people he writes about, near both the Crow and Cheyenne reservations in Wyoming. He has used people living on the reservations in the creation of some of the characters. Unlike Hillerman, Johnson came to writing after a career in law enforcement. He grew up in a rural part of the U.S. and comes from a long line of storytellers. Johnson claims he is just the first one in his family to write stories down. Among his many awards is the Tony Hillerman Mystery Short Story Award in 2006 for his short story “Old Indian Trick.”
Johnson has also had the internet and social media at his disposal since he began to write. The use of both in the classroom can make the learning of such complex concepts as “sovereign nations within a nation” or the status of federally recognized tribes in the U.S easier. After reading his books, students can go to Craig Johnson’s website, download discussion questions and bring them to use in class. The questions are not easily answered. This makes for ready-made class discussions.
Another media available for Johnson’s work is television. Hillerman had three of his novels turned into movies. Dark Winds is a recent television adaptation of his work. A&E aired the first episode of Longmire in June of 2012, followed by two more seasons. Netflix produced three additional seasons after that.
One activity suggestion, from the storytelling perspective, is to have students choose a Native American character from the television show and explain why he is the way he is. Two possible examples are Acting Police Chief Mathias, the head of the Cheyenne Tribal Police, or Jacob Nighthorse, a Cheyenne businessman building a casino to benefit the Cheyenne with jobs and the proceeds of the casino. Students might also compare the Walt Longmire depicted in the books with the Walt Longmire seen in the television show to see what the differences are between the two and why.
The episodes of Longmire cover a variety of topics from the modern-day such as the treatment of Native American women. One of the best episodes is from the third season,“Miss Cheyenne.” At its heart, the entry deals with one of the many depredations visited upon Native American women, disguised as “help,” forced sterilization. At the end of the episode, a former Miss Cheyenne is discovered to have murdered the sons of a doctor who sterilized her many years ago without her consent or knowledge during a minor operation. A simple question to ask the students is: Why did the doctor decide to sterilize the woman? To look at it from another angle, why did the woman kill the sons of the doctor? Why not kill the doctor himself? These questions can lead the students to think of Native Americans and their lives in new ways.
Another part of the same episode deals with the Miss Cheyenne pageant, a real event that takes place every year and was “borrowed” by the television show. Contestants in their exquisitely beaded costumes are shown doing ceremonial dances that are part of the pageant. When the students see the costumes and the dancing, they see the real thing. This opens another avenue of questions. What exactly is the Miss Cheyenne pageant? Asking that question and more like it can be answered and discussed in the classroom as an extension of the Native American-White relations or Indian cultures.
It may have never occurred to either man that their mysteries would be used to broaden high school students’ knowledge of Native Americans. The gift of using the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee novels and the Walt Longmire series in history, English composition or Literature, is that it makes the class come alive.
Amy Denton been writing since high school and has been making up stories to amuse herself since she was a small child. Currently, she is a lecturer at University of Houston in the English Department. Denton also teaches history online at Southern New Hampshire University and Lone Star College. She is working on a paranormal mystery about a vampire mystery writer who is being stalked, titled Ink and Ashes. It was a finalist in the 2022 Claymore Awards.
The Writer’s Playbook | A Ripe Kumquat
By Steven Harms
“Fumble at the thirty-two-yard line! Rod Smith jumped on that ball like it was a ripe kumquat!”
That line was uttered during a radio broadcast of a Detroit Lions home football game. And I’d bet my life savings that “kumquat” hadn’t been used in an NFL broadcast prior and would never be again. The Lions radio color announcer, Jim Brandstatter, made that rather pointed reference to a Lions defensive player recovering the fumbled ball. The idea of a kumquat on a football field conjures up a comedic image. A fumbled football is sort of one itself: as the ball bounces around, players scramble to get it; sometimes they accidentally kick it or refumble it as they frantically try to hold on. In the context of a fumbled football, using a kumquat simile was perfect.
Why did he say it that way? Well, he and I had a weekly challenge when I was working for the Lions. Each week during the season I would give him a word that he had to weave into the broadcast. I wrote it out on a small piece of paper about an hour before kickoff, entered the broadcast booth, and subtly handed it to him. It was our “thing.” If he was able to insert the “word of the game” into the broadcast each week during the season, I owed him lunch. If he missed one game, he owed me the same. As the weeks wore on, I had to get more creative if I wanted to win, and I thought I had him trapped with “kumquat.” The fumble happened in the fourth quarter, no less, of that game. Jim told me afterward he was on the verge of losing but for that fumble.
The point is, using a kumquat as a descriptive simile worked. In fact, it worked very well. Reimagine the utterance if it was a ripe apple, green bean, onion, or ear of corn. Not quite the same for some reason, is it? Or worse, if he stated “like a ripe egg” or “like a noisy kumquat.”
Bad similes are story killers and can take an author’s credentials down a few notches on the reader’s scale. They undermine a reader’s engagement with the story and implant in them a negative distraction that may carry throughout the rest of the book.
However, a well-written simile can evoke just the right emotion. As a creative tool, it paints a picture that resonates in readers’ minds—good or bad—but it clicks. Similes can be quite powerful if written well and deployed at the perfect intersectional moment.
A few rules to follow in writing similes (and there may be others):
KEEP THEM LOGICAL
The simile must be logical in comparison with the moment described, and it must have an immediate connection for the reader. If the reader needs to pause to think through the comparison because it doesn’t compute, don’t use it.
USE THEM SPARINGLY
Overuse of anything is generally not an effective strategy. I’ll relate it back to sports. If a football team always runs to the left on first down, the maneuver becomes boring and predictable and unsuccessful.
STAY WITHIN COMMON KNOWLEDGE
A simile that uses unique or uncommon elements in the comparison can destroy the moment because the reader can’t grasp what it is you’re trying to say. If Jim Brandstatter had said “Rod Smith jumped on that ball like it was a timorous mangosteen!” (a real fruit from Southeast Asia), he may have been fired the next morning, or at least ridiculed for a full week.
STAY CLEAR OF SIMILARITY
When you’re deciding on a simile, ensure the two components of your comparison are different enough to drive home the point. As an example, a sentence that reads “She ran up the hill like an athlete in training” doesn’t give the reader much clarity on what that character was doing, since athletes do run up hills as part of their training regimen. There’s not a lot of separation. Conversely, “She ran up the hill like a wounded deer” creates an image of a frantic person, hobbled by fear as she’s trying to get somewhere fast and out of sight.
Whenever similes are deployed, read them to yourself to see if they’re effective. As an example, one of my characters in The Counsel of the Cunning voices his feeling that what he and his assistant detective are experiencing during their hunt for a missing person isn’t adding up. He amplifies this and says, “it’s like a duck in robin’s nest.” The point being that while a duck and a robin are both birds, their distinctions are profound, and a duck would never, nor could ever, be in a robin’s nest. He instinctively knows something is “just off,” and he uses this simile to make the point. He’s saying a bird in a nest is right, but the type of bird is wrong, or the nest should be in the water and not in a tree. In other words, their hunt is going in a direction that gives him pause, that makes him think something’s amiss, but he can’t quite put a finger on it.
Similes are a great tool to propel a story or a moment or a character description. But they are a unique tool and need to be done with precision if used. Don’t shy away from using them as writers, but be tactical in placing them and intuitive in writing them.
A writer's hardest work begins when the presses stop!
By John MaGuirk
Is the world ready for us?
I’ve watched Doris Kerns Goodwin sit in a drafty hall, sign books, and make small talk with strangers. She has won two Pulitzer Prizes.
This is the blog you have been waiting for: Number 3 in the series producing your audiobook.
We’ve bought the equipment, learned how to use and edited our effort. What happens next?
Journaling, Blogging & Podcasting are three sides of a single coin. If you think of a Podcast as a spoken blog, you’re almost home.
Every Podcast is three things: creation/writing, performing/producing & distributing.
I hope what you may have been doing is bombarding your friends, family & mailing list with promotional material. If our friends won’t buy our book, maybe it’s time for new friends. You’re stuck with your family.
I used my first novella as Christmas presents for some family & close friends and sent a review copy to a media friend. I also mailed PDF copies to friends who were confined to home by illness.
I posted installments on my website, but not the concluding chapter. Your first chapter should contain a further special offer. Every episode should invite feedback. For your website, get professional help to build a subscription offer and/or a sales funnel.
It’s possible to distribute any file through your website. The trick is to build a proper sales funnel to channel subscribers to your premium content. That’s a task for your webmaster; websites are always collaborative efforts. It takes two to tango, as they say.
A webmaster creates the site, and a content provider (writer) gives the site substance ie. Make a post! The webmaster should assist you by building the sales funnel or channel which directs visitors/users toward your premium content.
You may invite readers to subscribe via your website or through Facebook, for content to be delivered direct to their inbox by subscription.
An audiobook is just one more arrow in your quiver and if you have built your sales funnel properly you don’t have to share with anyone else, not even Amazon. But you have to do your share by creating the best content you can manage and demand equal performance from your webmaster.
FYI/iBooks author by Apple permits the inclusion of video, and audio along with the text.
Another promotional tool is to create a CD for mailing to friends and associates as a sample, be sure to include a “special offer” or mini sales funnel on the CD.
At the end of each production be sure to encourage feedback. It’s the audio equivalent of a “sales funnel.”
Yes, any MP-3 is indeed a large file, especially if it has a run time longer than 30 minutes. Exporting content to a Cloud server aids in compression.
Although we are unaware of it, radio personalities or newsreaders speak just a little faster than our normal speech pattern.
That makes it necessary to plan your work into as short segments as you can manage. Try to stay under a maximum of 45 minutes of reading time.
The message I write for is: “that was great send me more….”
John MaGuirk creates, writes & produces digital content by PodCast. Since his debut in 2011(December) he has produced over 1100 unique episodes.
Zenith Man
Maya Angelou once said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Since the 1999 acquittal of my client Alvin Ridley, an eccentric TV repairman accused of holding his wife captive in a basement for almost three decades before killing her, I knew I had to tell his story.
But there was one element missing—a satisfying ending.
I could easily explain, as I did to the jury, that Virginia Ridley was never held captive by Alvin. I could even show that she was not even murdered. What I could not explain was Alvin, the most difficult and demanding client I ever had as a small-town defense attorney. Why was he so hard to deal with? Before the trial, his entire social circle had consisted of his wife and one close friend, a character who was even odder than Alvin himself. Known as “Salesman Sam,” this pal rode around on his bicycle, pestering people to buy the promotional items he sold from catalogs he carried in his bike basket. He also (annoyingly, to me) often gave Alvin his so-called “expert legal advice,” which often countered and interfered with the legal advice I was giving my client.
After Alvin was acquitted, I continued to help him navigate the world that seemed to thwart him at every turn. We continued to have lunch together every week. Our friendship became important to both of us. But I still couldn’t figure the guy out. Forensic Files, A&E’s American Justice, the front page of the Washington Post, People magazine, NPR’s Snap Judgment, and FujiTV (Japan) all produced the basic outline of Alvin’s story, but none could explain the main character. The quirky TV repairman seemed beyond explanation.
A screenwriter friend wrote our story, and it was acquired by New Line Cinema under my suggested title of “The Zenith Man.” But after five years, it was clear that it was going nowhere. I tried finding co-writers to help write the book of my story, but one by one, each promising effort fell flat. I began to write down episodes from the case, just to preserve the story. I also sharpened the telling of the story in spoken-word, which I usually delivered to small social gatherings where drinking was involved. My friends could tell I was obsessed with it.
Then one day, someone pointed out a book being sold online with the same title that I had shared with New Line Cinema—Zenith Man — about a failed TV repairman accused of locking up his wife for decades. On brief inspection, I could see that it was our story! It changed all our names and location in this short story. What angered me was that it was being touted as original fiction. After my protests, the author of that book later changed her description of it to “inspired by true events.” But I was hurt, feeling like something very personal had been taken away from me. Frustrated at myself, mostly. We were “fair game” —I had been giving the story away!
Around this time, I was working on telling the story again with a podcaster at my undergraduate alma mater, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. A juror from our trial, who had moved to Alaska to work as a nurse, mentioned to the podcaster that she thought Alvin might be autistic. A lightbulb turned on in my mind. Within weeks, an expert on adult autism evaluated Alvin in Atlanta. The testing showed that he was very much in the autism spectrum.
The diagnosis gave me a new appreciation for the problems that Alvin had struggled with all his life and that had culminated in his murder trial. It also gave me what I had sought for Decades—an ending to my story. I could at last explain Alvin. That others like him could have similar experiences with the justice system in the future spurred me to action.
I met Bonnie Hearn Hill, an accomplished writer and editor, who read my scribblings and convinced me I could write Alvin’s story. She helped me develop a proposal and shared it with her curated short list of agents. That’s how I met Linda Konner, who agreed to represent me as a client. She sent the proposal to Michaela Hamilton, editor-in-chief of Citadel Press at Kensington Publishing Corp., who signed it up. I cannot stress enough the influence of these three women. If I have any success, it will be because of them.
My book contract called for a manuscript of 90,000 words. The problem was, the first draft weighed in at 177,000 words. Bonnie told me firmly but graciously what was working, what wasn’t working, and what should be cut. It was agonizing. We ended up with a lean and clean book of 98,000 words.
My excitement went through the roof when my book went online for presale on several bookseller sites in late May 2023. There it stood online alongside the “other” short story, which was now being given away for free. Soon they were both joined by yet another book, priced at $4.99, entitled “SUMMARY of Zenith Man by McCracken Poston Jr.” There, in 47 pages of A.I. drivel, a lawyer by the name of Rebecca Mitchell saved her client in a generic courtroom depiction of a trial. I was a woman! I went into action, and by the time I got through, the fake book was gone from all the major sites. Later I was told the project came out of Nigeria, in what seemed to be a scam designed to delude some confused or budget-minded purchasers.
Deciding that selling copies of my book was the best revenge, I signed up for Killer Nashville and had some promotional material printed up. I gave it to (or forced it on) everyone I met at the conference. The next day, I was thrilled to see a bump in Zenith Man’s Amazon Sales Rank. I learned that the ASR could fluctuate wildly, even in response to just a few sales, but it served to motivate me. It provided just enough dopamine to keep me going. I continued to drive the presale campaign at every opportunity.
At this writing, the publication date is a few weeks away.
As I continue my ground-level campaign, asking everyone I meet to support my book, I found an unusual sales aid from an unexpected source. Back in 1998, while I was defending Alvin’s case, I tried to get Salesman Sam on my side by buying some of his useless promotional items — cheap personalized pens inscribed with “McCracken Poston, Lawyer.” A gross of them soon arrived, and I quickly realized they were dried up and useless on arrival. Don’t ask me why I saved them. But it turns out, they now serve a purpose.
When I started talking to people about Zenith Man, I offered to give one of these twenty-five-year-old useless dried-up promotional pens to anyone who sent me or showed me their preorder receipt. To my amazement, people love them. After twenty-five years, the pens are finally of good use to me. You never know what can come in handy when you’re promoting your book.
And speaking of promoting, by the time this article is published, Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom will be a published book. And the campaign goes on!
McCracken grew up just across a creek and the state line from Killer Nashville founder Clay Stafford. They frequented the same country store in his hometown of Graysville, Georgia. Poston is a criminal defense lawyer in Georgia and Tennessee. His book, "Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom" (Citadel, Hardcover, February 20, 2024), is about one of my cases. His client, failed TV repairman Alvin Ridley, was accused of some terrible things, including murder. We all had him wrong.
Horror with Character
By Mark Anthony
Many years ago, I had a bizarre and uncomfortable nightmare. One of those unsettling dreams that plagues when you wake. Hoping it won’t come back, it replays behind your eyes as you go to bed the next night. Whilst working as a Cancer Nurse, COVID decided to arrive, and I found myself living in a very unsettled, scared, world. From this, I decided to finally play with those scenes that had kept expanding in my mind. Quite naturally for me, my imagination began to weave them into a story. Building upon thought, creating visions and moments like jigsaw pieces which, as my mind was manifesting them, it was piecing them together to form complete pictures.
I have always been a storyteller and, on reflection, a fan of very specific stories. Whether written, or on screen, I have always been drawn to tales of normal people in extraordinary, otherworldly, situations. The archetypal stereotype of the determined hero, the ordained victim, and the clear win or lose motive, did not interest, or inspire my imagination. The tropes of the pure virginal hero and the twisted, ugly monster arguably had their time. The audience became desensitised to heads rolling. To blood, blood, and more blood.
However, the juxtaposition of a normality infected by a world of stark anomalies and extraordinary dangers enthralled me. The closer horror is entwined with reality, the more unsettling it can become. The harder it is to draw that line between fantasy and reality, between the good and the bad, the more horrific it can be. And a key aspect of creating this uncanny stage is the characters within it.
In the beginning, the first of the LIT novels started with the framework for one, single protagonist. Her physical appearance, her mannerisms, her voice were a mimicry of someone I already knew. A real, tangible person used as a blank sheet to add the vast amounts of color that would make her an intriguing, natural individual in this dark world that I planned to create. I had a rough idea of what would happen and how I would develop the atmosphere that would be humming throughout the entire story. Foreboding, bleak.
The first chapter was all about her. Intimate, and to be honest, as much as it was there to reveal her essence to the reader, it also served to plant my own seed of who this young woman was and would become. Strong, stoic yet selfish. Determination fuelled by self-absorption. Clever and manipulative.
In the third chapter, Sam was created. An amalgam of different people from my past. A dynamic young man, smart, candid, and irrepressible despite the horrors that hid within. A rebel within his own mind. Most people can relate to this. There to push against the inner demons with varying degrees of success. He was to be an open book, in stark contrast to the pure, but damaged, introvert of chapter 1. An openly gay man who demonstrated that we all have so much more in common with each other than not.
The second chapter, however, was an afterthought. I find it very interesting on reflection that he quickly became a reader favourite—a 9-year-old boy. A pure innocent. A character there to inject heart and yes, I will admit, give this horrific tale some balance. It is funny but I once had him described to me as the “pathos” of the story. . .and I felt largely offended! Yes, I was genuinely offended, not about this young character but. . .for this young character. However, he fulfilled the ‘pathos’ brief. A child who deserved no guilt, no fault, and no karma. Yet even he wasn’t going to be spared from the same terrifying existence as the others. He would experience the same losses and grotesque rules. Perhaps he would become the character that most people would “root for.” And they did.
Many people don’t notice that it takes quite a lot of time in LIT, before our three protagonists are there in the same space at the same time. Whilst writing, I had a concern. When these individuals came together, in the same space, would they all still be able to hold their own. To remain as equals. Each a fully formed 3-dimensional protagonists? Yes. By carefully keeping their characters in limbo, swaying between the macabre and the mundane, it creates a deep understanding of the individual that invests the reader in all three equally. When they come together, the reader’s familiarity with each of the individuals allows for an intriguing ensemble to develop that embraces the reader like a special treat.
With the three protagonists in play, each continued to have their own distinct storyline. That took a deal of planning, but more so, a need for intuition and an understanding of the people that had been created. As any writer would agree, after a time the characters are able to take on a life of their own. Their mannerisms, their reactions and even their dialogue begin to write themselves. Each of the above is paramount in giving the reader the feeling that they are gaining the gift of insight into someone else’s life, someone else’s thoughts, and feelings. And within the universe of LIT, someone else’s trauma, terror, and bravery. Why would they make the decisions they make? Take the path they chose in any given situation? Because that’s what real people do.
These three characters with their own unique afflictions demonstrated what I had learnt over the course of my life. No one is 100% good or bad. No one is either hero or villain. Every person has the ability to be brave, to be scared, to fight or run. Everyone is influenced by their own experiences, successes, and traumas. That is what I wanted to achieve in the LIT series.
Horror writers tell tales to scare, titillate and sometimes, simply to shock. I wanted to create a story that not only terrified the reader but also, moved them. The best way to achieve this was to give the true victims of evil a basis in our own reality. A small part of them will then resonate within each of us. Do you agree with their decision? No, but you understand why they made them. Do you like them? Sometimes, you won’t, but isn’t that just like real life?
Horror and suspense greatly benefit from the gift of thoughtful, natural character arcs. One grizzly scene set-up only to follow another fulfills just a small component of a memorable horror story. There is so much more that can be done to grasp the reader. Not only does strong character development prevent reader boredom, it enhances the intrigue of the ‘What next?’ It drives curiosity for the avid fan of dark writing and gives them protagonists that embody universal character traits. Traits that one can both relate to and be repelled from. It makes us question what would we do if faced with the same dilemma? Are we coward? Hero? Or a bit of both depending on the circumstance and drive. This is the task of the storyteller. Their reader is a guest, to be guided through our world. Our characters take them on a journey both from within and outside their mind.
Mark Anthony is the award-winning author of the supernatural horror series, “LIT” He lives in Perth, Western Australia with his husband and 9 year old son. Anthony began writing whilst working as a Cancer Nurse when the COVID-19 lockdowns commenced in 2020 and has since produced a sequel “ASCENT”. “RAGE” the third book in the series has an expected release for April 2024.
Productivity
By Dale T Phillips
“Writing a novel is like driving at night with your headlights on- you can only see a little of the road ahead, but you can make the whole journey that way.”
—E.L. Doctorow
You write a novel the way you’d eat an elephant—one small bite at a time.
Writing even one novel is a lot of damned hard work. Continuing to write them is little short of obsessive. But to be successful, you’ll have to keep doing it over and over. Unlike singers, however, you get to do different ones each time, not the same thing over and over.
Every writer has a different way of doing the work. Two major types of writers are (with many of us doing one or the other, or both):
• Plotters, who carefully detail everything before writing, doing the outline, and setting the scene first.
• Pantsers, who write “by the seat of their pants,” just jumping in without a complete structure in advance. Dean Wesley Smith uses this method, which he calls “Writing into the Dark.” He has an advantage, though, in having done it several hundred times!
It’s good to keep files of ideas, titles, character sketches, and turn of phrases. When you need a new idea, scan these files for things that spark your imagination. I’ve got hundreds of potential titles in one file and ideas for new stories in another. I’ll never run out of things to write.
The best way to be productive is to write every day if you can. It builds the habit. Don’t wait for inspiration. If you can do that, it’s a wonderful way to be productive. On the other hand, I do it the “wrong” way (even though fellow writers compliment me on my productivity, which I find amusing). I have to be inspired by the ancient Greek concept of “The Muse,” which many say is not effective, because you won’t write as much. Lucky for me, I take The Muse seriously, and She often drops by to tell me what to write next. It sometimes messes me up because I shift projects at a moment’s notice.
For too long, I was working on three different novels and not completing any of them. One was 75 percent done, another was 50 percent done, and the third was 25 percent done. Which all adds up to zero percent finished. There were some publishing strategy changes and various issues in the narratives which bogged me down.
Then I finished one novel, but before I got to the other two, another novel sprang into being. I wrote most of that, and got stuck again when illness, depression, and Covid-19 hit in rapid succession. I was down and out for too long before I decided that writing would give me back my life. Indeed, it did, and I burst forth with a completed and published novel, a new story, and a finished draft of another novel.
Write whenever you want or can: early morning, late at night, on lunch breaks, whenever. Find the time that works best for you. Short stretches or long marathon sessions, it doesn’t matter. Keep a notebook handy for ideas that come to you when you’re doing other things like driving, showering, or taking a walk (when many ideas turn up).
If you have trouble, try the “Pomodoro Method” of sprints and movement. http://graemeshimmin.com/the-pomodoro-technique-for-writers/
NaNoWriMo is a fun method to put out a lot of work in just a few weeks. If you’re having trouble getting words down, think about giving it a try to kickstart your brain into fevered word production.
One good habit is to set aside your writing time as the primary task for the day. Writers procrastinate better than anyone else, and it’s so easy to get sidetracked that writing time can easily slip away. Write first, do all else later. Don’t do research in your writing time because it’s easy (and lots of fun) to fall down the rabbit hole. If you come to a passage that needs to be researched, just mark it as such and move on.
Doing the Math
If you’re just starting out, you may produce at a slower rate. That’s okay, it will just take you longer. If you’re going to be a successful indie writer, you’ll need a fair amount of good work. Do you know how long on average it takes you do finish, edit, and publish each book? If not, start with an estimation of writing one book a year, 50-100,000 words. When you get more experienced, you’ll definitely want to increase this output, but it’s a good place to begin. At that pace, it will take you roughly five years to write five good books, which will (simply by that output) put you in the top 20% of all published writers.
Have you got at least five good books in you, just as a start?
So, your first novel. Say 75,000 words, and you want it done in a year. That’s only 1500 words a week (a few hundred a day) and around 5 pages. Fifty weeks later, you’ve got 250-plus pages, and those 75,000 words. Congratulations! You’ve done more than many who set out to do this. It may not be the best yet, but you got it done.
Celebrate!
Then get to work on the second novel. You’ve practiced for a year, so maybe this one will go faster. Up your word count to 2500 words a week. Still quite doable. This means you’ll get this one done in just over six months. How about that? Almost half the time. You learned a lot more, and it’s probably better than book one.
Celebrate!
Write the third book, slightly better pace. Finish.
Celebrate!
Two years total, three books under your belt.
Starting to get the hang of it? Hopefully. Rinse and repeat.
If you need a million words to get really good, how many can you write in a year? A book a year is a decent pace, better than most, but for more success, you might want to step it up some. If you can put out 5,000 words a week, you can have 250,000 in a year, and a million words in only four years.
One book a year might net you a few hundred dollars in income (or a few thousand), but you want more, you want volume. The more you write and publish, the more you’ll make. If you want to make 48,000 dollars a year, you’ll need 4,000 dollars a month, or roughly two thousand total sales at two dollars profit each, or 500 sales a week. One book will sell x number of copies, ten books will sell much more. So you want to get to ten good books published, as quickly as possible. That takes discipline and dedication.
Figure out how much you make per hour, and scale up. If you make a penny per word, an hour of good writing at one thousand words nets you roughly ten dollars. That’s your scale. If you want to make $48,000 a year, you have to either write faster or get paid more. Daunting, yes.
After six to ten books, you should be selling more of everything. Each new book adds to the total. The “Halo effect” means that other books of yours are bought because people discovered a first book, then went on to others. Especially if you have a series or connected books.
In the old way of publishing, some authors could get by with one book a year. Today, you’ll likely have to be far more productive to make a decent income. It’s up to you to determine your level of success.
Dean Wesley Smith calls his copyright and production output The Magic Bakery.
Imagine that you have a storefront with all your items for sale within. If you have one book in one format, you have one product. Have you ever walked into a store and bought a single product? You likely won’t stay long. As a successful author, you want variety and choice, different price points, and for shoppers to come back again and again to buy more. A series can bring them back for more. Put your work out as an e-book, in print, as audio, and other formats, such as graphic novels. The other aspect of The Magic Bakery is that as an indie author, you can keep licensing pieces of each product, while keeping the original. Traditional publishers buy the whole product, which you cannot resell. Dean made thousands of dollars from one story, by licensing different pieces of it. Make your work into a virtual storefront, and fill it with tempting merchandise.
It’s amusing to me that when I set up my display at book events (24 books currently, plus anthologies with others), people look at the output, and think I’m prolific, when I feel like a slacker who doesn’t do enough. I smile and say, “If you want it badly enough, you’ll work for it.” I sell more than most writers at these events, because of my sheer variety, and the different price points (with prices shown for each book, so browsers don’t have to ask). A few secrets of my success. I point out that someone can grab a book of short stories for little more than a cup of coffee or get a good novel for half the price of a hardcover in a bookstore. And because people love a bargain, I’ll give them a price break if they want to buy more than one book. By having so much available, with ebooks and audio of everything, I’ll offer them other free versions of the work when they purchase print (which costs me nothing). People will remember and come back in subsequent years to buy more. And every year they come back, there’s more to sell.
Advantage, productivity.
Dale T. Phillips has published novels, story collections, non-fiction, and over 80 short stories. Stephen King was Dale's college writing teacher, and since then, Dale has found time to appear on stage, television, radio, in an independent feature film, and compete on Jeopardy (losing in a spectacular fashion). He's a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Sisters in Crime.
The Scene Of The Crime
Location. Location. Location.
It’s true for real estate, restaurants, and even books.
As a reader, I’ve lost track of the number of times that I’ve purchased a book based on the setting. Whether it was a place I’ve always wanted to visit, an area I was already familiar with, or a spot that promised a form of intrigue that I just couldn’t pass up, no other part of a book has the ability to create a picture quite as quickly and thoroughly as where it is set.
That’s because a location has the uncanny ability to transport the reader to a new world. It’s cheaper than a vacation, less crowded than the airport, and safer than traveling by car, but like anything you’re looking forward to, readers have certain expectations. Your setting is a promise you make to them, a pact that that small town will be brimming with secrets… that beach filled with romance… or that jungle saturated with suspense.
When writing, ask yourself—how much thought have you put into your setting? Do you craft scenes oozing with atmosphere? Are your locales drenched with details? Or is your setting simply the place where your fascinating characters bring your stellar plot to life?
I have to admit that while I occasionally focus on developing an atmospheric setting in my short fiction, in my novels, the settings tend to be the trunk on which my plot branches and my characters grow their leaves.
The idea for my Chief Maggie Riley series, set in the fictional town of Coyote Cove, was inspired by the real-life, no stoplight town where my husband and I spent our honeymoon years ago.
That’s right. I spent my honeymoon plotting a murder. Fortunately for him, it wasn’t my husband’s.
But it wasn’t the thought of the impending ups and downs that marriage would bring once the honeymoon was over that had me thinking about death. There was something magical about that small town in Maine nestled in a mountain valley on the edge of a lake. A spot where moose outnumbered people three to one, the annual snowfall numbered in the triple digits, and everywhere you looked, you saw a postcard setting.
It just seemed so… perfect. And I wasn’t buying it for a second.
Call me cynical or jaded—or a mystery author—but the more we explored this seemingly flawless place, the more I became convinced that beneath the peace and the quiet and the enchanting beauty lurked something dark and sinister. I couldn’t help thinking to myself that this idyllic little burg would be the perfect breeding ground for crime.
But would the setting be able to carry a series? To answer this question, I considered the location in terms of being its own character.
It was wild. Unpredictable. Moody. Vulnerable. In short, yes, it would.
I decided that the remoteness, aided by the harsh environment, would be ideal for creating suspense as well as conditions that could be used to torture my heroine and further complicate her struggles.
Sitting beside that lake—one that surely hid at least a few bodies—all those years ago, goosebumps peppering my flesh as I listened to the chilling cry of a loon, answered by the hungry howl of a predator, I knew the scene was prepped for murder. Coyote Cove was born. Some small towns hide big secrets. And some secrets are deadly.
With degrees in Crime Scene Technology and Physical Anthropology, Florida author Shannon Hollinger hasn't just seen the dark side of humanity - she's been elbow-deep inside of it! She's the author of both adult and YA standalone psychological thrillers as well as the gritty Chief Maggie Riley series. Her short fiction has appeared in Suspense Magazine, Mystery Weekly, and The Saturday Evening Post, among a number of other magazines and anthologies. To find out more, check out www.shannonhollinger.com.
When “The End” is Just the Beginning
Ten years ago, when I sat down to write my first novel, the thought of self-publishing never crossed my mind. To be fair, times were different then. There was a greater stigma to self-publishing, and vanity presses had (deservedly) earned their reputation as the bottom feeders of the book publishing industry.
As an established freelance journalist and magazine editor, I was also no stranger to seeing my name in print, with bylines in dozens of North American newspapers and magazines. I assumed—wrongly, as it turned out—that my good reputation would help pave the way to a traditional publishing deal.
It didn’t, and in July 2014, after several (mostly nice) rejections and one offer from a New York City agent to ghost write a book in exchange for a small share of any royalties earned (I turned her down), I signed a contract for The Hanged Man’s Noose, the first book in my Glass Dolphin mystery series.
I vetted the publisher, an independent press based in Oregon, as well as anyone can prior to submitting. I checked online reviews and ratings of the books in their catalogue, read a handful of titles to ensure they were well edited, then contacted three of their authors who, like me, belonged to Sisters in Crime. Feedback about the publisher was overwhelmingly positive. Quality editing, proofreading, and cover art were all handled in a collaborative manner with the author. Royalties were reported monthly and paid promptly. I was further assured by the publisher’s Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers approved standings.
Despite all that, when it came time to find a home for the first book in my Marketville mystery series, I decided to query elsewhere to make sure all my eggs weren’t in one basket. I’d heard too many tales of authors whose series had been “orphaned” (an industry term meaning the premature cancellation of a contract due to the publisher shuttering its doors or discontinuing the genre). That wasn’t going to happen to me.
Except, it did. Twice. It turned out having multiple baskets didn’t offer the security I thought it might.
It didn’t come as a huge shock; traditional print media had been declining for years, and my years in the magazine world taught me to read the signs of impending closure. One publisher had systematically begun to release every one of their authors from their contracts. The other had all but stopped communicating, including royalty reports and updates on books-in-progress. By July 2018, both of my series were officially orphaned.
Few “orphaned” authors find a new home for their existing series, even after months, sometimes years, of trying. Some start over. Some give up. I did neither. Both failed publishers had given me knowledge of the industry. I understood what loomed on my horizon, and a few months prior to being officially orphaned, I’d set up my own imprint, Superior Shores Press. I was ready to take my destiny into my own hands.
I’ve learned a lot since 2018, made a few miscalculations along the way, overcomplicated some things, underestimated others. I’ve also guided a couple of traditionally published authors through their own indie journeys and, at the request of my then-local library, developed a presentation titled Finding Your Path to Publication, which led to a second presentation, Self-Publishing: The Ins & Outs of Going Indie.
Both of those presentations led me to research and write two step-by-step publishing guides in 2023. Finding Your Path to Publication released in May, followed by The Ins & Outs of Going Indie in December. I don’t kid myself. These sorts of niche publications are unlikely to earn me what I like to call “Stephen King money,” but it is my sincere hope that they will help other authors—whether orphaned, published and looking for a change, or still at the querying/getting rejected stage—a place to explore options and opportunities.
Because authors should help authors. And because sometimes the end is just the beginning.
A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the bestselling author of Finding Your Path to Publication: A Step-by-Step Guide, as well as two mystery series: the Glass Dolphin Mysteries and Marketville Mysteries, both of which have been published in multiple languages. Her short crime fiction appears in several collections, including the Superior Shores Anthologies, which she also edited. Judy has a passion for understanding the ins and outs of all aspects of publishing, and is the founder and owner of Superior Shores Press, which she established in February 2018.
Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she served on the Board of Directors for five years, the final two as Chair. She lives in Northern Ontario. Find her at www.judypenzsheluk.com.
Timing is Your Time’s Best Friend: Calendar Management for the Soon-To-Be-Published Author
By Roger Johns and Kim Conrey
If you’ve been through the book publication process, you know the demands of publication and promotion can be ferocious time eaters. If you’re a soon-to-be-published author, about to go through this process for the first time, the magnitude of these time demands can be difficult to anticipate. So, it’s important to know what this process will look like, ahead of time, so you can manage your time and your calendar more effectively. The last thing you want is for the joyous occasion of your book’s upcoming emergence into the world to be plagued by stress and anxiety because you’ve gotten stuck in the mire of constantly playing catchup, or because things aren’t happening at the pace you expected them to.
An important set of tactics to keep this from happening is to make it a priority to acquire advance knowledge of: (1) the demands the book production process will place upon you, (2) the opportunities publication will make available to you, (3) how to properly plan for what’s coming so you can stay ahead of the game, and (4) when you should begin the various tasks that contribute to your book’s success.
As with all complex endeavors that are not completely under your control, the schedules and demands of others will have to be considered and, to some extent, catered to. This means you will need to know who and what you will encounter on the road ahead, what their role is, and how they view your role in the process. Experience tells us that what you do, and when you do it—especially during the busy months preceding launch—can have an outsized impact on the success of your promotional efforts in the critical months immediately following publication. So, it pays to understand the timeframes during which certain undertakings need to be started, because when you begin can be as or more important than what you begin. In this context, timing is your time’s best friend.
Demands of the Book Production Process
If you have just signed your first contract to become a traditionally published author, you should expect your manuscript to undergo a fairly rigorous, multi-part editing process—a process in which you will play a significant part. Depending on your publisher, the condition of your manuscript, and your editor’s inclinations, this can include story edits, copy edits, and proofing edits. All of these must be done with care, and completed and returned on time. So, ask your publishing house editor what’s coming and how much time you’ll have to complete and return your responses. If your editor wants a lot of story edits, this can take quite a while to do properly because changes to one part of a manuscript often require changes to other parts. And, obviously, the longer your book, the longer all phases of the editing process can take. Knowing, ahead of time, what’s expected of you, will allow you to plan these tasks into your personal and professional life.
In addition to the editing process, you will need to provide input on cover images, gather blurbs from other authors, produce some of what’s known as front matter and back matter (i.e., dedication and acknowledgements), and provide an adequate headshot, and you may be asked to weigh in on (or craft entirely) the jacket/flap copy. All of these tasks can be loads of fun, but they all take time, and they all come with deadlines, so they need to be planned for. Missing an editing or production deadline is not a recipe for success in the publishing world. And starting late in the process of soliciting blurbs from other authors can leave you with less than you had hoped for, in terms of quality and quantity. Authors who agree to furnish a blurb will need a copy early enough to do a good job for you. This is especially true if you are self-publishing your book. Publishing houses have established timelines for prompting authors to solicit blurbs. If you’re self-publishing, you’ll need to initiate this process yourself.
If you have just made the decision to self-publish, you’ll need to plan other activities even further ahead, as well. The fantastic editor you’ve hired who took only weeks to get edits back before, may be playing catch up when your manuscript hits their inbox, and the same goes for your cover designer. A mantra for any author, especially the self-published author, is, everything takes longer than you think it will. If this is your first attempt at self-publishing, you may be shocked to find that it can take Ingram Book Company, the largest book wholesale distributor in the world, several weeks to load your book’s meta data onto Amazon and other retailers. So, if your goal was to get as many print preorders as possible, you’ll need to have your book ready to go months before your official publication date. Take it from droves of authors who’ve checked book retailer websites every morning for weeks looking for their book’s cover only to find the dreaded “No Image Available” icon. This can be heartbreaking for an author who was planning a huge preorder push, and there will be nothing you can do but wait for the data to load. No amount of begging customer service will help. You are one of thousands of authors waiting on the same thing. If eBook sales are your only goal, you will have more time, but if you do not have your eBook loaded in time for preorders to be delivered, Amazon can suspend you from selling an eBook on their site for a solid year. It is crucial to plan for the unexpected. Whatever you think your timeline is, double it at the very least.
And…while all this is going on—whichever way you choose to publish—you’ll need to do your part in the increasingly challenging process of book promotion. It’s tempting to think that, if you’ve signed with a traditional publisher, especially a big one, that all of that “promo stuff” will be taken care of by the sales and marketing and publicity folks at your publishing house. Sorry, unless you’re one of the biggest of the bigtime authors, things are unlikely to work out that way. Regardless of whether you’re about to be traditionally- or self-published, you’re going to have to do your part. And, unless you’re a celebrity author, with high brand recognition, “doing your part” means building demand for your book before it becomes available for purchase, by: (1) establishing a social media presence, (2) lining up appearances at bookstores, local author-oriented events, conferences, conventions, book clubs, and other venues, (3) developing or joining a blog or a podcast, (4) creating posts for blogs hosted by others, and (5) becoming involved in professional organizations dedicated to the type of book you’ve written.
And…while all this is going on, you’ll need to be writing your next book.
Opportunities Publication Will Make Available to You
Being a published author is a big deal. It’s true that millions of books are published in this country every year, but it’s also true that hundreds of millions of people live here. By publishing a book you have accomplished an amazingly rare feat. And a fascinating one, as well. The reading public shows a strong interest in knowing about the writers of the books they read. Because of this, there are dozens of regularly scheduled (and undoubtedly thousands of individually arranged) events around the country, every year, at which authors and their readers gather for the purposes of getting to know each other and finding new authors to read. This means published authors will have opportunities to get in front of the reading public in ways that are generally unavailable to others—including appearances at conventions, conferences, bookstores, local author events, blogs, podcasts, libraries, and book clubs.
Availing yourself of these opportunities takes time, research, and determination and can require special knowledge. For instance, if you’re interested in lining up bookstore or local author event appearances on, or shortly after, your launch date, you’ll need to know how far in advance their schedule is booked, and approach them early enough to be considered for a spot. The most desirable venues often have crowded event calendars that are fully booked long into the future, so you’ll need to give them plenty of lead time. The same goes for blogs and podcasts hosted by others. And conferences, conventions, and book and literary fairs and festivals have specified registration periods that must be adhered to. And because not all venues will be receptive to your pitch, it’s possible you’ll need to over-develop your list of target opportunities, and make contact with enough of them early on to have a useful understanding of what’s going to work out and what’s not.
If you intend to create your own blog or podcast, you will need to start long before launch day, so you can establish your presence and build a readership or listenership. These activities can be difficult and time-consuming, and the more tech-challenged you are, the more difficult and time-consuming they become. However, there are lots of good books and web resources that can advise you on how to set these projects in motion.
Planning (to Stay Ahead of the Game), and Knowing When to Begin
It bears repeating that all of these tasks take time—sometimes lots of it. Many of them will need to be in process or fully in place well before launch day, so that a steady stream of promotional efforts is bearing fruit in the critical weeks and months immediately following publication. To make this work, it’s helpful to view your publication day as the midpoint on a timeline that begins the day you either sign your publication contract or decide to self-publish and continues for several months after your book becomes available.
The critical take-away is to develop a list of the obligations you will need to fulfill and the dates by which you will need to fulfill them, as well as a list of the opportunities you wish to pursue, along with the dates you’d like to avail yourself of them, and then place all of these on a timeline so you can literally see what the future will look like.
So you can have a clear understanding of when to begin each of the obligations and opportunities on your timeline, think of them in terms of lead time—the period between when you begin a process and when its purpose is achieved, and mark the start dates on your timeline as well. Then develop checklists for the specific tasks associated with each item on your calendar, indicating what needs to be done, by when, and by whom. This will allow you to measure your progress and to avoid getting blindsided by matters you should have or could have known about. In other words, give your book and your writing career every chance for success by creating a detailed map of the road ahead, so you can handle things like a pro.
ROGER JOHNS is the author of Dark River Rising and River of Secrets, from St. Martin’s Press, as well as numerous short stories published by, among others, Saturday Evening Post, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly Magazine, and Black Beacon Books. He is the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year for mystery, and a two-time finalist for the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award. Since 2016, Roger has made over 140 live appearances across the country, at conferences, conventions, bookstores, libraries, book clubs, corporate events, writing clubs, continuing education classes and other writing-oriented venues, as well as on podcasts, web radio, and broadcast radio. He has also made, and continues to make, frequent invited presentations on writing and career management for new authors, and his articles and essays on these topics have appeared in, among other publications, Southern Writers Magazine, Career Authors, and Southern Literary Review.
KIM CONREY is the Georgia Author of the Year recipient in the romance category for Stealing Ares, traditionally published by Black Rose Writing and Losing Ares, the follow up. Her urban fantasy Nicholas Eternal was published in June 2023, and her memoir You’re Not a Murderer: You Just Have Harm OCD, which she co-wrote with her adult child, was released in October of 2023. Her work has also been published by numerous magazines and literary journals and received awards. She serves as VP of Operations for the Atlanta Writers Club and podcasts about writing with the Wild Women Who Write. She gives book marketing talks and speaks on various topics relating to writing at local and regional writing conferences and literary festivals.
TOGETHER, Kim and Roger co-author “If You Only Have An Hour: Time-Saving Tips & Tricks For Managing Your Writing Career” the quarterly advice column in "Page Turner", the magazine of the Georgia Writers Museum and the Atlanta Writers Club.
Setting Goals
As a new year unfolds, many of us may sense the need to set objectives for our writing, regardless of whether we’re novices or experienced. There’s also a business aspect to our writing careers, which requires us to focus on how we present ourselves. To achieve this, we may need to polish our editing skills, improve our social media presence, attend conferences to network, and stay updated on the latest market trends.
We can inspire and uplift our readers through writing, providing them hope, guidance, and encouragement. However, doing this requires more than talent and passion. We need a clear understanding of where we’re going and a well-defined plan. This includes identifying our target audience, developing a marketable brand, building a platform, and engaging with our readers through various channels. We should be willing to continually grow and improve our craft, seeking feedback and guidance and staying current with the latest trends and techniques in the industry. With dedication and perseverance, we can achieve great success as writers and positively impact our readers.
Setting goals is a crucial aspect of our journey as authors. It helps us to stay focused and keeps us motivated and accountable for our progress. By aligning our objectives with our values, we can ensure our efforts are directed toward what matters. To help us, here are tips to keep in mind while creating goals that are in line with our values:
Seek guidance: Starting with a strong foundation is essential. Whether seeking clarity on a specific goal or looking for general direction in life, mentors can be a powerful tool for gaining insight and inspiration. Before starting anything new, it’s wise to seek guidance from those with more experience and ask for help from them to lead us forward.
Establish a clear vision: Clearly define what we want to achieve. Once we comprehensively understand our end goal, we should write specific things we want to achieve. This should be measurable and achievable to track our progress and stay motivated. Setting clear and attainable objectives usually increases the chances of success and allows us to prioritize our focus.
Align goals with our values: It’s vital to ensure our objectives align with our beliefs to share our message with the world effectively. This means that before embarking on any writing project, we should take the time to reflect on our values and beliefs and ensure our aspirations are aligned. This way, we can create content that resonates with our audience and positively impacts the world. Ultimately, our writing should be guided by our desire to make a difference in the lives of those who read our work.
Break down goals into smaller steps: When we create aspirations for ourselves, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. However, we can make them more achievable by breaking them down into smaller, more manageable steps. We must create a detailed plan outlining specific actions to move closer to our aim. By breaking things down this way, we can feel more in control of our progress and motivated to keep going, even when faced with challenges.
Hold ourselves accountable: To take responsibility for achieving our goals, we set objectives and hold ourselves accountable to them. Another key tactic is to schedule regular check-ins with ourselves and those we trust to evaluate our progress and determine whether we are on track to reaching our desired outcomes. Through this action, we can identify areas we may need to adjust our approach or put in extra effort to stay on target.
Celebrate our success: Celebrating small achievements along the way helps to reinforce positive behavior and maintain our motivation to continue working toward our targets. We can learn from our failures by reflecting on what went wrong and using this information to improve our strategies. Adopting a growth mindset and viewing failures as opportunities for growth can turn setbacks into stepping stones toward success.
As writers, we can accomplish unprecedented success and leave an indelible mark on the world through our words. By setting goals, channeling our creative potential into our literary endeavors, and dedicating ourselves wholeheartedly to our craft, we can make meaningful contributions to society. Let’s relentlessly strive with unwavering passion and dedication to create works that inspire, motivate, and transform lives. Let’s unleash our full potential and reach the pinnacle of our literary journeys, leaving a legacy that’ll inspire future generations.
Author, speaker, educational consultant, and editor–Katherine Hutchinson-Hayes, Ed. D., has had her hand in leadership for many years. She loves speaking to groups, delivering messages with quick wit and real-life stories. Katherine is a freelance writer/content editor, a content editor/writing coach for Iron Stream Media and a sensitivity reader for Sensitivity Between the Lines. She is a review board member and contributor to Inkspirations (an online magazine for Christian writers) and her writing has been published in Guideposts. Her work in art/writing is distinguished by awards including the New York Mayor’s Contribution to the Arts, Outstanding Resident Artist of Arizona, and the Foundations Awards at the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writer’s Conference (2016, 2019, 2021). She is a member of Word Weavers International and serves as an online chapter president and mentor. She belongs to FWA (Florida Writers Association), ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers), CWoC (Crime Writers of Color), AWSA (Advanced Writers and Speakers Association), and AASA (American Association of School Administrators). She serves on the board for the nonprofit organization Submersion 14 and is an art instructor for the nonprofit organization Light for the Future. Katherine is the host of the podcast Murder, Mystery & Mayhem Laced with Morality. She has authored a Christian Bible study for women and is currently working on the sequel and prequel to her first general market thriller novel, “A Fifth of the Story.”
Motifs for Murder
No, the title is not a typo, and motifs was not meant to be motives.
If you had asked me, “What is a motif?” twenty-five years ago, I would have had no idea. After earning a master’s degree in Rhetoric and Composition, teaching college and university students, and receiving a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing, I shout out not only the definition but also the importance of motifs in mysteries.
Of course, the definition of a motif, or at least mine, is: a literary device that uses repetition of a key word, phrase, symbol, color, or image to emphasize a subtle meaning. A motif also helps to develop the overall theme of the written work.
In my work in progress, one of my motifs is dead black crows. Some see crows—more than two are called a murder—as a message or prediction of sadness, danger, and even death to come. Further employing crows as a motif also helps to emphasize my overall theme of good versus evil and, more specifically, that even the most righteous can fall from a pedestal of grace into the darkness of sin.
But what exactly is the etymology of the word motif? Interestingly, the origin of the word dates back to the 14th century when the word in Old French meant to “drive,” and in Medieval Latin meant “to move.” Similarly, today, motifs are used to drive or move the theme along.
The use of motifs in mystery novels serve this very purpose, and in fact, Edgar Allan Poe, considered to be the father of detective fiction, used such common motifs as death, fear or terror, and madness in several of his short stories.
In the Sherlock Holmes canon, written by Arthur Conan Doyle, he creates such themes as cunning and cleverness, justice and judgment, and society and class, to name a few. He uses such symbols as Toby the dog to represent devotedness and faithfulness, a coronet as a tool to represent greed and hidden worth, and exotic animals to represent the dark, threatening, and poisonous nature of Dr. Roylott in “The Adventure of the Speckled Band.”
Agatha Christie used a rhyming verse of then there were none, well as dreams and hallucinations, as motifs in her novel “And Then There Were None.”
Motifs can be used in character development. If a character is depressed, the description of her clothes as being heavy and black can convey her mood. If a character is arrogant and haughty, the writer might choose to use the motif of mirrors or the repeated phrase mirror, mirror on the wall. The continual wailing of a baby can foster grief, suffering, and pain.
Motifs can also be implemented to create a mood. A foreboding tone might use motifs such as heavy drapery, dusty furniture, or squeaky floors. On the other hand, a joyous mood could be represented by gnomes appearing in a sitting room or in a garden. A threatening mood might be depicted by thunderstorms, lightening, and thunder.
Another place to incorporate motif is in setting. Rain might imply treacherous conditions or uncontrollable circumstances. Some motifs to describe an isolated setting are weeds, dead flowers, or a howling coyote. A hospital’s motifs are squeaky oxfords, medicinal smells, or overhead public announcements.
In the above examples of characterization, mood development, or setting creation, you probably noticed that motifs are often examples of sensory language, such as sight, sound, and smell. What categorizes them as motifs is the frequent use of them in a written work.
Another literary term known as a tag also becomes a motif if used often. An example of this is a tapping cane, a pipe’s scent, or a twitching eye. Not only are these words used to describe or to set apart one character from another, but they also could imply nervous habits, anxious traits, or restlessness if used as motifs.
In my opinion, this literary device is often neglected in mystery novels. The importance of red herrings, misdirection, and cliffhangers, for example, are a must, but don’t discount the use of motif to reinforce your theme, add depth and meaning for the reader, and contribute a subtle ambiance to the plot.
You Want Me to Spend Time with You?
By Paula Messina
We all have different measures for what keep us reading. One of mine is characters I’m willing to live with all the way to the end. The gift of a mystery got me thinking about this. Why do some characters meet my requirement and others fail?
The novel looked promising. The author had won a prestigious award. The main character is an archaeologist. I enjoy books that involve an expertise, especially one I’m not schooled in. Alas, my interest dwindled quickly.
The story is told through the main character’s viewpoint. She is miserable and self-loathing because of her weight. This was not a good sign, but I read on. Soon enough a detective needs her help on a murder case. He comes not with hat in hand. Rather, he’s downright nasty. Not only is the detective as off-putting as the main character, his approach is irrational. The characters have no history together. His unprofessional behavior is inexplicable, even cause for termination. Didn’t he learn at his mother’s knee you catch more flies with honey than vinegar?
Actually, he was terminated. I stopped reading the book.
For me to sustain interest, I don’t demand that the characters be Mother Teresa incarnate or a Nobel Peace Prize winner or even a Boy Scout rescuing abandoned dogs. It’s those one-note grumpy characters I can live without.
I’m not alone in this. After I closed that book, I read the online reviews. I have plenty of company. The negative reviews essentially said the same thing: I don’t want to waste my time on these characters.
It’s next to impossible to imagine anyone more dislikable than Ebenezer Scrooge. Dickens is emphatic that absolutely everyone avoids him. “Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and, when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, ‘No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!’”
And yet Scrooge is one of the most enduring and, dare I say, beloved characters in English literature. Ebenezer is proof that flaws are fine. It’s how flaws are presented that makes all the difference. Characters need not be perfect. Indeed, they shouldn’t be.
Dickens pulls the reader into A Christmas Carol by raising questions. Who is Marley and why should we care that he died? Why was Scrooge “his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner.”?
Dickens quickly establishes Scrooge’s wretched personality. No reader would invite Ebenezer over to watch the Super Bowl, at least not until the three Ghosts of Christmas get through with him. Dicken’s delicious descriptions keep us curious about how one being could be so miserable and disliked, but delicious descriptions only satisfy for so long. Dickens could have easily pushed Scrooge into an unbearable, unreadable character.
Yet Ebenezer Scrooge endures. Why?
The answer is simple. Scrooge doesn’t tell the story. An intimate, chatty, gossipy narrator does. If Scrooge told A Christmas Carol, it is highly doubtful even the inestimable Dickens could keep readers turning the pages for one hundred eighty years.
Arthur Conan Doyle and Rex Stout used the same technique for the odd genius Sherlock Holmes and the often belligerent but brilliant Nero Wolfe. We see Holmes and Wolfe through the eyes of their friends, and because Watson and Goodwin find redeeming social value in Sherlock and Wolfe, the reader does as well.
It’s no accident that Dr. John Watson is a cheerful, friendly character, or that Archie Goodwin is only a few IQ points short of Wolfe’s genius. Archie is wittier than Wolfe, likes women, and is a great dancer. Our view of Sherlock and Nero is filtered through these immensely enjoyable narrators, and we’re willing to stick around until the end.
A narrator isn’t the only technique to make an unpleasant character palatable. We often describe our lives in absolute terms. I’ll never be anything than an utter failure. My husband never compliments me. My mother never has a kind word for anyone. There’s a name for this kind of thinking: cognitive distortion.
We humans are not a never-ending one note, miserable or ecstatic. Even in the worst of times, we laugh at a good joke, make goo-goo eyes at an infant, and enjoy the warm sun on our skin. It’s impossible to be miserable all the time, just as it’s impossible to be endlessly upbeat.
Humans experience ups and downs throughout a day, a year, a lifetime. Characters do as well. Good characters are complex. They enjoy life one minute and complain in the next. They lament about their weight, then promise to diet tomorrow.
In the mystery mentioned, a little levity, for example, would have made the character’s self-loathing tolerable. An explanation and an apology would have made the detective’s initial bad impression understandable and relatable. In other words, mitigating circumstances make an unpleasant character more lifelike, but even mitigating circumstances only carry a reader so far.
Sherlock’s genius makes him impatient with lesser mortals. Wolfe has a dark past that is never explained. It possibly involves a bitter betrayal by a woman. Dickens shows us Scrooge’s descent into a spiritual wasteland through a series of flashbacks while also showing Scrooge’s journey to reclaim his soul. It is those flashbacks that make his redemption on Christmas Eve believable. His goodness was always there to be brought to life. We know in our hearts that Ebenezer Scrooge does become “as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”
It’s not flaws that are off-putting. A character without a flaw is malformed. It’s how those flaws and foibles are presented that makes the difference. A main character can be stubborn and uncooperative. Supporting characters can goad the protagonist into a better disposition. Archie Goodwin is a master at this. Introduce a humorless character to a cutup. Dr. Watson on the page isn’t the bumbling Nigel Bruce, but he does lighten Holmes’ intensity. A dour woman populating pages needs to meet a ray of sunshine. Conversely, that main character who insists on imitating Pollyanna is just waiting for someone to burst her bubble.
Contrasts work wonders. Characters bring out different aspects of the main character. Best-selling author Barbara A. Shapiro says different friends bring out different aspects of our personalities.
Think about it. You discuss politics and solve the world’s problems with one friend. You’re a veritable joke machine with another, and a third has you discussing how to grow mushrooms and make kimchi and sauerkraut. Scrooge interacts differently with Bob Cratchit than he does with his nephew Fred. Scrooge moves from disbelief, to insolence, fear, and finally to submission as he travels with each ghost.
This works both ways. No human is always bubbly and positive. Characters aren’t either. What my friend Marilyn says of life is also true of fiction. “If you don’t have a problem now, wait two weeks.”
In the novel I’m writing, Donatello, my main character, is essentially a good guy, but he vents his fury on his parish priest. The priest deserves the drubbing, but Donatello believes it’s a sin to scream at a priest. He screams anyway. Donatello would be a weak character if he ignored the priest’s nastiness.
Donatello’s anger serves another purpose. It displays Donatello’s determination to reclaim his life after an accident robs him of his dream to pitch pro ball. Donatello’s anger says he’s not giving up. No one’s pushing him around, not even his parish priest. This anger intensifies Donatello’s commitment to find his sister’s murderer.
When I pick up something to read, I want to be carried along in a story filled with characters I’d invite to share my life for a while. They can be a pompous Sherlock, a ton of immovable flesh a la Wolfe, or a Scrooge so nasty even dogs avoid him. But I only keep reading if those negative traits are balanced by positive ones. In short, for this reader, how a writer presents his characters is vitally important.
As for the kvetchers, the malcontents, the one-note nasties, I’d rather not even open the book.
Paula Messina lives near America’s first public beach. When she isn’t sloshing barefoot through the Atlantic, she’s writing short stories and essays. Her humorous caper, “Which Way New England?” appears in Wolfsbane, Best New England Crime Stories 2023. “Science for the Senses,” an essay, is in issue 7 of Indelible Literary and Arts Journal. You can listen to her reading works in the public domain at librivox.org.
Punctuation is Power - Part 5: Are you in business or in hobby?
Across the board in creative endeavors something interesting is happening. Folks are getting to be about 55 or so, thinking of or are retiring, and getting back into the thing they loved before the kids came along and the bills piled up and their time was not their own in that thing we call Life.
Whether it is music, writing, sculpture, painting, pottery, dance, and more, you will find many “of an age” mingling with young folks just getting into that creative endeavor. For some, writing a book or two is just a hobby. They don’t really intend to make it a business. Thinking about the bygone golden years of publishing when authors became stars. They dream of their book being:
rep’d by an agent,
sold to one of the Big 4,
making the best seller lists,
selling like crazy domestically,
translated into multiple languages and selling internationally to wild acclaim,
made into a movie or two or three.
Bring on the mailbox money! From your mouth to God’s ears, right?
Well, firstly, the business was never exactly like that. As we learned from the recent Hemingway documentary, his lavish lifestyle was mostly due to having a series of rich wives. Secondly, the old saying “make hay while the sun is shining” applies in this business. Much marketing of personalities went into the making of the myths. Hemingway used his marketing myth to get money for product endorsements. Nothing much has changed there.
Still, much hard work by many people went into the writing, editing, printing, marketing, distribution, tracking of inventory, and sales of most books. Starting in the late 1980s, though, the book business began to change. Tired of being shut out and stolen from, the age of the Indie Author and Indie Publisher began and has not abated. Technology has made the publishing of a work easy; distribution via print-on-demand methods has made it within the affordable reach of millions. (Marketing of a book is a whole other subject. It is a bugaboo, a thorn in our paws, a never-ending challenge.)
Unfortunately, too many authors, having written a work, tire out and don’t do the necessary boring work of thorough and multiple edits and rewrites. Not only that, they are also unwilling to pay for it, too. Many will not take any advice when it comes to punctuation, sentence structure, flow of the material, etcetera. They see any question as an assault on their baby.
I want to scream when I hear “Well, I [or my spouse, significant other, best friend, or sibling] have a degree in English and have already edited the book.” Or “My wife edited my book. She has a degree in English. She’ll get her feelings hurt if I let anybody else edit it.”
Then these authors are not in business. They are in hobby. True, there are some creative outputs that are simply for making the creator happy. Enjoy the process! It is wonderful to have a hobby one enjoys.
The business of book publishing, though, requires another mindset. Sorry to say, but one may still not see a profit from all that hard work. All business endeavors are a crapshoot.
I have always had an allegiance to words in whatever form they take. I hate advertising language that reeks of the weasel. Since it has always been a moving target, I detest rigid rules of punctuation for rules’ sake. [See Part 1 of this series].
As a writer in many categories (business, children, non-fiction, memoir, humor, and fiction), my goal is to teach and/or entertain but always challenge the reader and tell it well.
As an editor my goal is to make a book the best it can be. One that, when a grandchild finds it on a shelf and reads Grandma’s or Grandpa’s book they will be proud of how good it is, not embarrassed about it.
As a small publisher it is to bring to life high-quality books the Big 4 will not touch. Blue Room Books has published history, music business memoir, fiction, and more, some not easily categorized. We may or may not make a profit on these, but damn it all, when they go into the world they will be equal to or better than offerings from the big houses.
So, as asked in Part 4, I ask again:
Why do you write?
Performance/Production
By John MaGuirk
Yes, you can create your audiobook. All it takes is time, patience, and a minimum investment in equipment.
Equipment requirements are modest. For best results, invest in a headset microphone. Logitech makes inexpensive, reliable equipment. If you are after “big studio” sound, a boom mike with spit screen is better.
My mike was so sensitive I could hear myself turning script pages on my desk. I invested in a music stand to slide the pages, reducing background noise.
A walk-in closet makes a great recording studio. Remove the doors and use egg cartons (paper if you can find them) as sound absorbers. They will eliminate that nasty “big room” echo.
Tech Tip # 1 Beware handheld or stand mikes have two aspects.
Side delivery & top delivery.
Always speak/talk to the “badge” (makers insignia).
Any smartphone may provide a digital file, use “voice memos” It’s a widget on your iPhone. Since iOS-7 it’s possible to share a larger file through a Cloud source.
Many production programs will permit you to record directly into a “region” or track. Because of the nature of the display, I prefer not to get distracted and use voice memos exclusively.
When I first began as a podcaster, I left in the little stumbles and glitches everyone makes. Sometime if you can find it, watch “outtakes” of R. Lee Ermey, it’s a hoot. However, your consumer expects your best, don’t disappoint them.
Tech Tip # 2 A headset is necessary for best editing results.
Good editing requires practice and patience, and your first effort is bound to be frustrating, especially when it comes to “joining” regions. Think re-assembling!
Digitally editing an MP-3 file is a piece of cake compared to the old “razor & tape” days of the past.
I prefer GarageBand. It’s extremely powerful and relatively easy to master. On the PC side, look for Audacity. There is a free version, get some practice before moving up to the paid version. It’s relatively straightforward or user-friendly, as we used to say.
There are several PodCast apps and programs that you can use, but most of these lack basic editing features.
I hark back to the days of The Radio Reader/PBS Dick Estell, WPLN carried his programming and he read from current published works. His daily program was thirty minutes. It’s my personal opinion you want to keep your content at about 45–50 minutes, especially the first episode if you release your effort serially.
Consider that many of your listeners may be in their car or engaged in other tasks like working out.
The Bard of Avon said it best:
“Brevity is the soul of wit…”
Shakespeare
Be sure to include a special offer at the end of each episode, think of it as a personal commercial. This is especially useful if you are engaged in writing a series. If you are a mystery writer this might be a way to create some suspense.
Your special offer could be a copy of the print edition at a discount price, or perhaps containing added material. It’s up to you to make the offer tantalizing and unique.
Next Time: Distributing your audiobook.
If you would like a personal workshop: working with GarageBand editing features, I would be pleased to do a thirty-minute tutorial via Zoom (there is no charge for this activity.) Text a request to 615 - 584 - 2717 include contact information or via email to sideshoj@aol.com. use Coupon Code: Killer/Nashville
John MaGuirk creates, writes & produces digital content by PodCast. Since his debut in 2011 (December) he has produced of 1100 unique episodes.
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