Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 164

Being a Marketing Slacker

I have 96 more pages to proofread, and then I'll be done with this book, other than writing cover copy, deciding on a cover design (the art is done), reviewing the e-book and print book layout, and then marketing, etc. Then next week I can get back to working on the next book.

I've somehow fallen into a group of independent/self-published authors on Facebook, and seeing what they do for publicity/marketing is making me feel like a slacker.

Apparently, I should have a newsletter. I haven't done much of this -- I once had a Yahoo group mailing list, but I haven't used it much -- mostly because I hate these as a reader. Then again, I haven't actively signed up for any author newsletters. The ones I've received are from people who must have put their entire address book into the mailing list, so they're from people who may have e-mailed me once or twice, people I might have e-mailed once or twice, people I've been on another mailing list with or people I've been in an organization with. I might feel differently if I had actually signed up because I wanted to receive an author's news. I'm not sure how many more people I'd read with a newsletter, though, because that Yahoo list I had didn't have as many people on it as my usual blog hit count. Unless maybe they were entirely different people? So maybe there are some people who read my blog, some people who follow me on Facebook and some people who might want a newsletter? I can't imagine I'd reach new people with a newsletter because why would anyone sign up for it if they hadn't heard of me? I know some authors do contests to build their mailing lists -- like giving away an iPad or a Kindle -- but from what I've seen, these get spread around contest junkie groups, they sign up just to win, and then they unsubscribe from the newsletter immediately (or even mark it as spam, which can lead to the mailing service dropping you). I'm not even sure what I'd put in a newsletter, and some of these authors do them monthly. Romance authors do stuff like recipes and knitting patterns, but I don't know about my audience. However, I do have at least three books scheduled for this year, so I could probably sustain a quarterly newsletter. Thoughts?

Then they have "street teams." I've heard about this for traditionally published authors, where they cultivate groups of fans to go into bookstores and ask for their books, turn them face-out on shelves, pass out bookmarks, etc. I'm not sure what a street team would do for books mostly available online. Maybe virtual street teams? Get people to blog, Tweet, etc., about their books and post Amazon reviews? It may be the Scandinavian in me coming out (there's a cultural distaste for marketing -- something fun when you're doing PR for Ericsson), but there's something that seems a little dishonest to me about officially cultivating and even rewarding people for doing the stuff that fans do spontaneously, so that if they're doing it because of the reward but other people think it's just them being fans, then it's misrepresented. I suppose I'm fortunate that my fans seem to be good about talking about my books without being recruited and paid to do so.

Then people were posting pictures of their offices and showing their swag closets full of stuff they give away for promotional purposes. I have a box of bookmarks. Does that count? I don't even know if any of that works. I mostly use the bookmarks as a kind of business card for when I meet people who say, "Oh, you're a writer? What do you write?" and I can hand them a bookmark that lists my first four books in order. I probably need to start coming up with promo items for the new series and the steampunk book.

In my experience, one of the best ways to boost sales for all books is to put a new book out. When my publisher has done BookBub ads, that's also been effective. I may look into doing a promo like that for the first book in the Fairy Tale series when the third one comes out (the first one becomes a loss leader, so where you reap the benefit is from having more books that can also be boosted).

But I'm not doing too badly, so maybe I should keep doing what I'm doing and not worry about it so much.

Death Throes

As of last night, my holidays are truly over, since I was back to having children's choir and regular choir practice. I only had seven kids, but they were all insane. It got cold, so instead of having recess at school that day, they watched a movie inside, and that meant they were bouncing off the walls by the time I got them. There was one thing that actually got their attention, and it was the snowman counting song. I don't know what it is about this song, but every group I've had absolutely loves it. Basically, the song is about a line of snowmen, and then with each verse, one melts. I've done it with the kids melting in order or by pointing to kids at random and having them melt until they're all melted. I don't know that we've ever done that one without the kids begging "again!" We did it three times last night, and the meltings got more and more dramatic. We're talking William Shatner-quality emoting. "Light … fading. Darkness … closing … in. Goodbye … cruel … world." There was even one who called out, "I'm not done melting yet," when we went on to the next verse before he was done with his drawn-out death scene.

But hey, it kept them occupied and participating instead of running around and screaming, so I could have kept it up all night. And it was really fun watching their death throes. Not because I wanted them dead, but I liked seeing how creative they were. I suppose I'll need a real lesson plan next week.

Otherwise, I'm singing in an ensemble Sunday morning for the early service and someone wants to put together a flute ensemble for later in the year, so I have to start practicing again. I wonder if the stage fright cure from singing also applies to instruments. I used to be as bad for instruments as I was for singing.

But the priority this week is getting through my last round of proofreading. The challenge there is that I need frequent breaks so I don't zone out, but then that reduces the amount I can get done in a day. So I have to be careful about what I start to do on the breaks so the breaks don't become longer than the work sessions. I do still like the book, which is good. Since I'm mostly looking at the writing itself on this round rather than the story and characters, I'm actually noticing that there is some good writing there. I'm normally more focused on the story when I work, but I guess I do know how to string words together.

In other news, it looks like this summer's steampunk book is now available for pre-order in e-book form, at Amazon, at least, and it's already on all the teen steampunk bestseller lists, including the one that's general books, not just Kindle books. With any luck, that means that when the book is actually available it will do even better.

I Feel the Earth Move

We've had a rather earthshaking time of it lately -- literally. There have been at least 10 earthquakes in the past 24 hours in my city. All of them have been relatively minor -- people in California are sneering -- but as the Texans responded, how would they deal with that many tornadoes, even minor ones? If you've had maybe one tornado in the past 50 years, then have 15 in two months, and then 10 in one day, it's rather shocking, even if they're EF-1s.

I definitely noticed the first one, a 3.5, yesterday afternoon. My whole house shook, things rattled, and it was loud. Then there was a 3.6 just before 7, and that one felt and sounded like a truck hit my house. There were two more in the upper 2s that I didn't notice -- I was driving to ballet class at the time -- and then two more around 10 that I also didn't notice. There was apparently a 3.1 around 1 a.m. that I guess I slept through. I heard something for the small one around 8:30, but didn't peg it as an earthquake, and then we had another that felt like a ripple about an hour ago, but I haven't seen any reports on that one (but a friend in the area felt the same thing at the same time). I definitely notice them more when I'm sitting at my desk upstairs.

Today, though, it's so windy that I have to pause and wonder if any shaking is yet another earthquake or just a really good gust of wind.

And now I need to use minor earthquakes in a book. I have a sensation to describe when the earth trembles (probably from a spell, or maybe from a dragon waking).

I got through the copyedited manuscript yesterday, with all the corrections entered. Today I'll start going through the whole thing again for one final proofread. It'll be a short workday, though, because children's choir starts again this evening, and I have a few errands to run on the way there. The weather's supposed to get really rather nasty for the next few days, so I'm looking forward to holing up inside and digging into the work. And maybe bracing myself for more shaking.

Swashbuckling Romantic Fantasy

The house has now been totally de-Christmassed, aside from all those artificial pine needles that never seem to go away. Since today is Epiphany, I'll take down the Nativity scene tomorrow. So I guess I'm back to normal. I also got a good start on copyedits yesterday and will try to finish today so I can spend the rest of the week giving it one more once-over as a proofread.

I did a fair amount of reading over the holidays, but much of it was re-reading, along with more books in the Phryne Fisher series. I've started thinking of these as Nancy Drew for adults, since just about every book shows off some random skill or knowledge Phyrne has. At least with her, she's an adult who's lived a really full life, so it's more believable that she's a trick rider, pilot, race driver, cricket expert, etc., than it was for Nancy to be able to do all that stuff at 18. And then there's a touch of a gender-switched James Bond thrown in, as she tends to collect attractive men and has at least one new lover per book, most of whom are quickly forgotten.

Last Friday was cold and rainy, and I wrapped up my holidays by curling up with what turned out to be a really wonderful book, Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen, which is a fantasy/romance for adults about Captain Hook from Peter Pan. I will confess that my choice of this book had a bit to do with my slight crush on the version of Captain Hook on Once Upon a Time, and this take probably gets closer to that than to the original, as it's essentially a redemption story. It also fits the Once Upon a Time story structure, with a present-day story interspersed with backstory flashbacks.

In this take on the story, Hook was cursed into Neverland when he chose revenge and his reputation as a pirate over love (the other pirates would have thought he'd gone soft if he gave up piracy for a woman). He's made immortal, so he can't be killed. He just suffers through and heals from wounds that should have been fatal. He and Pan are the only immortals on the island, so the Lost Boys are sent home when they get too old and the pirates get killed in the ongoing fights with the Lost Boys. The pirate crew keeps getting replenished by former Lost Boys who return to Neverland when they can't handle the transition back to the real world and never actually grow up, in spite of being adults. After a couple of centuries of this, Hook is getting really, really tired of it all. And then an adult woman shows up, something that's never happened before (since Pan thinks grown women are icky). She's a war widow who longed to escape the gloom of 1950 London, and she might just be Hook's last chance to escape Neverland.

This is one of those books that manages to be a lot of things, all at once. It's an adventure story, there's a mystery, there are a lot of fantasy elements, and there's a love story. But it's also a meditation on what it is to grow up and be an adult -- about taking responsibility, about standing up for yourself and not following the crowd, about knowing what's right and not being swayed from it, about recognizing consequences. Hook may have been a man in his 40s when he was sent to Neverland, but he wasn't a grown-up. He was just as arrested as Pan himself. So this is also a belated coming-of-age story.

It was the perfect thing to read on a cold, rainy night, and I almost couldn't put it down. This is definitely one I'll be rereading eventually, and I may even end up with a keeper copy (after I move and get some bookshelf space). Now I want to write a good swashbuckling romantic fantasy. But first I have to finish copyedits on this book, then finish writing book 3 in that series, and then I want to get a start on my second steampunk book, and then I have something pretty ambitious that I want to tackle.

Kicking off the Year

I was so productive this morning in getting my to-do list dealt with that I forgot to post a blog. Oops! But I've done a programming survey for a con, responded to some other business and promo stuff, sent in my notes for my page proofs and taken down my Christmas stuff. There's still a pile of greenery in the living room floor because it's cold and I don't really want to go out to the garage right now to get the boxes and then take everything out. I'm waiting until it warms up a few degrees.

I was really good this weekend and totally purged my kitchen. I went through the pantry and got rid of everything that had passed its expiration date, then I organized everything so that all my baking supplies are on one shelf and everything else is on another, and grouped by category. Then I cleared out and organized the tea/hot beverage cabinet and emptied several drawers where I'd apparently been saving coupons, recipes and fast food condiment packets. If I didn't know the recipes were there all this time, I'm not likely to use them, and some of the coupons had expired in 1999. Oops. Now I have an extra utensil drawer. My kitchen is still too small for my needs, but it's bigger than it once was.

I really want to do a closet purge next, but I think I need to start with the closets upstairs in the office so I can get more stuff there cleared away and open some floor space. This is the danger of a military brat living too long in one place. My way of doing regular purging was just to do it before each move, but I never learned how to do it while staying in the same house, and it's not something that occurs to me as needing doing.

But housework is going to have to fit between other work sessions because I need to deal with copyedits and get a book ready for publication.

2014 In Review

I got my page proofs done, so today is pretty much going to be a holiday for me. I want to do some housework so I can relax tomorrow and as part of my ongoing goal of getting the house ready to show and sell.

Looking back, 2014 was a really good year for me. I didn't have a new release until the end of the year, but this was my first year that I earned more as a novelist than I did in my best year with a full-time job, even when I take business expenses, health insurance and self-employment taxes into consideration. A lot of that was due to audiobooks, which were very successful for me. And unless things totally tank in a surprising way, next year should be even better, since I'll have the income from one new release, two more books in that series and my major publisher hardcover debut (my first three books were hardcover, but were from a very small press). So, yeah, ten years after getting my career truly started, I'm achieving some success.

I didn't do perhaps as much writing as I would have liked last year, as the one book I finished was started the year before, but I got a book ready for publication and finished a book while also going through a number of rounds of revision, copy edits and page proofs on another book. In 2015 I want to finish the third book of the Fairy Tale series, the second book in the steampunk series and at least one more book to be determined later. That will take a lot more self discipline than I've had lately, especially since I do hope to be moving during the year and have a major publisher release that will require publicity.

I didn't see enough movies to really have a best of the year, but Into the Woods would top the list. My favorite new TV series was Forever.

My reading was down a lot for the year, falling short of my 100-book goal, but a number of the books I read were really, really long. My favorite series discovery was the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch. My "author new to me" discovery of the year was Sherwood Smith. I started on two of her series, and I still have what seems to be her major one waiting for me. That will likely be my January reading. It's hard to say what my favorite book of the year was. When I look back at my reading log, there's no one book that jumps out at me in an obvious way.

In addition to finances, I guess this was a pretty good year in general. I seem to have got over my singing in public stage fright (I hope it hasn't redeveloped, as long as I've gone without solo or ensemble work). I had no major health issues. I took my first real vacation in forever.

For next year, I could stand to be more fit. I hope that moving will help me with organization by giving me a fresh start and a clean slate. I can make sure everything has a place to start with and try to create new habits to put things in those places. And I need to spend more time writing, as always.

Into the Woods

Today is having to be a kind of work day because I have to go over some page proofs, so I may as well follow my workday routine and make a blog post.

I had a good Christmas. It was pretty quiet, just spending time with my parents and the usual napping, eating and reading. I suppose that doing some work today will be good for me because it will help me transition back into a really busy schedule starting next week.

I did let myself have some holiday time yesterday to go see Into the Woods. I'm a big fan of the stage show, and I liked the movie. There were some changes I wasn't crazy about and the singing is a wee bit overproduced (but hey, at least it's on pitch), but there were also elements I liked better than in other productions I've seen. I was particularly pleased by Emily Blunt's take on the Baker's Wife. She's often played as kind of a shrewish nag, but this version was merely a flawed human who had her sympathetic moments. She made some mistakes and sometimes behaved selfishly, but you could also see where she was coming from, and her relationship with her husband seemed quite solid and loving (their version of "It Takes Two" may have been one of my favorite moments in the movie).

But what really stole the show was the way "Agony" was performed. The audience was laughing out loud. It's a funny song, but the visuals were hilarious.

I'll be getting this one on Blu Ray when it comes out. Then I may have to do a double feature with the DVD of the original cast of the stage production.

I'll have to do a year in review post tomorrow because I'll need to look back at what I read this year.

I know that at least the first half of this coming year will be busy since I really want to sell this house and buy a new one and get moved as soon as possible, and that means getting a lot of work done on the house within the next few weeks, all while dealing with page proofs and copyedits and trying to write a book. Then there will be moving and getting settled in. And then I want to get two more books written. This will take a lot of self discipline.

Merry Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas Eve!

Before I get caught up in all the holiday prep stuff, here are some fun Christmas treats.

First, the Minions go Christmas caroling. I really need some Minions. I think I need to add "underground lair" to my new house wish list.



Then a classic from the Muppets:



And finally, a look at downtown Grapevine, the self-proclaimed Christmas Capital of Texas. They kind of like lights. (It was hard to avoid the lens flare)


Now to finish making a pie, wrap some gifts and try to get some rest before tonight's two services.

The Holiday Countdown

I have reached the point of "hey, tomorrow's Christmas Eve, when did that happen?" in which I realize that anything I had planned to do this holiday season and haven't done probably isn't going to happen. But that's okay. I've done enough.

I had yet another failure on the holiday-set book front. There was some buildup to it being the Christmas season, then Christmas itself was skipped over, then there was a nice New Year's Eve scene, and that was the middle of the book, with the rest going on to span the first half of the year. It's tricky finding a book that's set around Christmas and has enough imagery to get me in the mood but that isn't so specifically a Christmas book. Really, the only objection I have to the specifically "Christmas" books is that most of them are very genre romances (you don't see a lot of "Christmas" books in other genres). I'm looking for more of a book that happens to be set around Christmas. I just lucked out the first time I did this because I hadn't even planned it to be Christmas-themed reading. I was just giving myself time out with a book, and it was a bonus that it turned out to be very Christmassy (there was nothing on the cover to indicate the seasonal setting). That was so nice that I've tried to do it again, without much success.

I am thinking that I need to novelize that Christmas movie screenplay I wrote last year and put it out as an e-book next year.

Instead of some of my other traditions, I've started taking walks around the neighborhood in the late afternoon, when it's not dark yet but it's not full-on sun and some of the Christmas lights have come on. I'm killing multiple birds with one stone. I'm exploring parts of the neighborhood as part of my preliminary house hunting, deciding what areas I like, checking out indications like what cars are parked outside, where there are noisy dogs, where people are out and friendly, etc., plus getting a better look at houses than I can while driving by. I'm getting exercise. And I'm looking at Christmas decorations. I think I've now wandered through all the places where I've seen listings online.

Looking at these listings is fun. I've been focusing on my neighborhood, where I really want to stay, but just out of curiosity, the other day I checked out the nearby town where my church is. The houses there in my price range are much older, but it was the way the listings were presented that was very different. For the houses in my neighborhood, the photos are very staged -- there may be furniture in the rooms, but all other signs of human habitation are out of sight. In this other town, there were listing photos where it looked like the Realtor just showed up out of the blue and started snapping photos -- there were toys on the floor, piles of laundry, stuff all over the countertops.

I'll have to do a lot of decluttering and cleaning to even get to the point where you could take a photo where it looks like a showroom, even if all the clutter is just temporarily hidden for photo-taking purposes.

Christmas Movies

The publishing tradition of making sure authors work over the holidays continues. I just found out I'm getting another set of page proofs this week, and they'd really like my comments by January 5. I don't think I've ever had a major publisher book that didn't require me to do something right around Christmas. That may be because I tend to have summer books, which makes me fall into that slot in the schedule. Funny, I was just thinking about one of the changes made in the last round this morning and wondering how it would be handled. I'm just lucky I get to see how it's handled before it's finalized, so I guess I won't complain too much about working during the holidays. I'll probably save this for that low point on the day after New Year's Day when it doesn't feel like a regular day but it's not a holiday anymore.

But in the meantime, there are cheesy movies to binge on. Here are some of the ones I've watched this year (most of which aren't actually new). I'm going to have to add a blanket disclaimer that I am not making any of this up. These are all real movies that I'm pretty sure I didn't dream.

I kicked off the movie watching season the Saturday after Thanksgiving with a double feature on the UP channel, which is new to me. It seems to be aiming for wholesome, uplifting programming. They had two British movies from a few years ago that they were treating as premieres, and I watched mostly because the listed cast members boggled the mind. The first was called Nativity! and starred Martin Freeman (after The Office, Hitchhiker's Guide and Love Actually but before Sherlock and The Hobbit) as a teacher in what was apparently the loser school in Coventry who gets stuck directing the school's Nativity pageant and who dreads it because his former drama school rival is the director at the school across town and apparently puts on a good enough show that it gets reviewed in the Times. When he runs into his former rival, he panics in a game of one-upmanship and suggests that his former girlfriend, who went off to Hollywood to become a movie producer, may be coming to see the show, and who knows where that could lead. Things spiral out of control when his idiot manchild teaching assistant (the headmistress's nephew) overhears it and tells everyone. It was actually a fairly cute, if wildly improbable, story.

But then there's the sequel, Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger in which they've had trouble replacing Martin Freeman's character because of the idiot assistant (apparently he was the breakout character, or else the actor is related to whoever funded these movies). The newest teacher hired is David Tennant (post-Doctor Who, which makes you wonder if he made the right decision to leave). The idiot assistant wants to enter the kids in a Christmas song contest, and when the teacher won't sign off on it, he kidnaps the teacher and hauls him along with the busload of kids to head to Wales for the contest. Also entered in the contest are the cross-town rival from the previous movie and David Tennant's evil twin, a renowned choral director and composer. Of course, the trip goes horribly wrong with all kinds of obstacles in the way, but there are some fun visuals of a bunch of kids in Christmas pageant costumes hiking across Wales. This one was more of a live-action cartoon, the kind of thing the Disney Channel used to do, and David Tennant payed the typical adult role for that kind of thing, doing a lot of outraged sputtering until he learned a Valuable Lesson about being an idiot, or something.

Then the Hallmark Channel gave us a Texas-style offering, a movie called something like Angels Sing, set in Austin, apparently filmed in Austin (it looked real to me) and involving a lot of Austin people. Harry Connick Jr. is a professor (presumably at UT) who desperately needs to find a house before Christmas, but is hampered by the Austin real estate situation (very accurate). Then he runs across a mysterious old man (Willie Nelson) who's willing to sell an incredible mansion to him for much less than it's worth, but under the condition that he keep up with neighborhood standards. He finds out what those standards are when his neighbor (Lyle Lovett) shows up with a box of lights and offers to help him decorate. It turns out that this is the street in town that's famous for its holiday displays. One problem: Harry hates Christmas. This sounds like the setup for a comedy, but it's a sob story involving lots of death and tragedy, mixed in with the absurdity of Willie Nelson, who is either Santa or an angel, or maybe both, giving Harry advice on faith and hope. I kept watching mostly because Willie leaves a grand piano in the house as a gift when he moves, and Harry Connick Jr. is the star of the movie, so you know what's coming, except Chekhov's Piano is never played.

Another fun Hallmark offering was It's Christmas, Carol, which is your basic Scrooge story, with our Scrooge being an uptight female publishing executive who makes her staff work on Christmas (I'd have believed it if it had been authors, but the publishing business loves their holidays for themselves) and fires someone on Christmas Eve. She gets the ghost treatment, courtesy of her former boss, Carrie Fisher, who gets to be all three ghosts, plus Marley. I had to forget everything I know about publishing to watch, but it was fun watching Carrie Fisher be super-snarky and have fun with the role. I have come to the conclusion that there's a good reason Dickens didn't make the original story a romance because it's hard to build a romance around a Scrooge character. The transformation can't happen until just before the ending, which makes it hard to believe anyone could have fallen in love with this person before the ending. In this case, it was an old boyfriend, but he seemed kind of pathetic for not having gotten over her in ten years and then instantly getting back with her after so long when she spent all that time being a raging bitch, just because she shows up on Christmas morning with an apology.

I don't know how many more I'll manage to fit in between now and Christmas. I did my annual viewing of The Holiday last night, and I want to hit either Gremlins or the Muppet Christmas Carol this year.