Judith Post's Blog, page 13

Happy Book Birthday to A Ghost of a Chance

Hooray! My book went up on Amazon Kindle today! It’s official. Keeping my fingers crossed and wishing it luck.

Point of View (POV) #3: Five Elements

Great writing advice for writers on POV. Just sharing.

Story Empire

by Stephen Geez

If you missed part two, find it here: “Point of View (POV) #2: Structuring.”

The kinds of POV information you might choose to convey generally fall into five overlapping elements. Immersing readers in a character’s POV is way more effective when you look at most or all of these elements:

Five Elements of POV

1:The Senses: Consider all five senses, plus extra senses as needed—balance, intuition, ESP, whatever—and pay particular attention to camera angle. What does the POV character see, hear, smell, taste, and feel? The highest priority is sight, the sense we rely on most to orient ourselves in our environments. Hearing fills the next-most important role in most scenes, except that startling or otherwise attention-grabbing sound might eclipse visuals. The lower priorities are smell, taste, and feeling. Unless any kind of unusual or important odor catches the character’s attention, readers will default to their…

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Twitter

I’ve always been a big fan of twitter. Every message is short. It’s easy to keep up with other writers’ news. I’ve had good luck promoting my books there. But I did a little experiment a while ago and put a book on sale for 99 cents, put up several posts about it, and got NOTHING. I might as well have eaten bonbons and watched TV.

I recently finished a new book in a new series, and I thought I’d get a good start for it on Twitter. And I’ve gotten some likes and retweets, but nothing like I used to get. I looked at my analytics, and they’re sorry. How many people left Twitter after Elon Musk bought it? And where did they go?

Are other writers feeling the pinch? Do you have the same responses on twitter that you once had?

A friend told me to try spoutible, but I signed up there and could hardly find any other mystery writers. I know some authors went to Facebook, but I’m not a big fan of it. I never know who sees what I post and who doesn’t. Which leaves me with the question, how do I connect with fellow writers and readers now?

I loved twitter. Now, I’m not sure how many people are still there. Any feedback?

More Shameless Promotion

I just wanted to let you know that I signed A Ghost of a Chance up for a Goodreads Giveaway from July 2 – 10. I’ve used the giveaway before to promote a book, and I was happy with it. But marketing has changed a lot recently, and what worked once doesn’t always work now. Fingers crossed. If you decide to enter, good luck! The book’s up for pre-order now and will be live on July 6th.

Shameless Self-Promotion

I’ve put up A Ghost of a Chance for preorder on Amazon. It will go live on July 5. It’s only $3.99 since it’s a shorter book than usual.

The blurb:

When a ghost pops up in Loretta Ransburger’s bedroom, she’s slightly annoyed.  Her grandmother saw and talked to ghosts, but she has no desire to.  Then Harrison tells her that, in life, he was a detective and the last person he talked to before he was shot was her deceased husband. 

Detective Harrison knocked on a door.  When it opened, someone shot him.  Twenty-two years later, a young detective he’d mentored decides to reopen the case, and almost immediately, someone shoots Harrison’s old partner as he walks to his car in his driveway.   Then poof!  Harrison’s ghost is back, standing over Jorgenson’s body.  But no one can see or hear him until he meets Loretta Ransburger.  Her deceased husband sent Harrison to the building where he died, but Ira didn’t kill him.  Together, they decide to find the person who did.

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This book was so much fun to write! I hope that shows when people read it. Every book’s different. Some make it easier to string scenes together than others. This one was especially wonderful. I hope you like it.

Time To Slow Down

My daughter and her husband came to stay with us for a few days from Florida. My Indy daughter and my Indy grandson drove up to see them. We had a houseful, and we had SO much fun! They don’t like sitting around, so we tried to think of some place to take them every day. We ate out for three meals, and I cooked a big meal on Friday night. I’d cooked breakfast burritos, lemon loaf with blueberries, and scones ahead for breakfasts, and that worked out great. I made a huge deli salad and garlic bread for lunch one day, and gumbo and rice for the next day. Everything went as smoothly as it ever has. So it was wonderful. But when the last person left, HH and I looked at each other, chose our favorite sofas, and took naps.

Next week, I want to zero in on getting Not A Ghost of a Chance ready to self-publish. I’m hoping to do a preorder and a giveaway on Goodreads to spread the word. I’m more nervous than usual about this book. So much has gone on while I worked to write it and get it ready, I feel sort of disconnected to publishing it. It’s an odd feeling. By now, I’m usually struggling with excitement and nerves, but this time, I just feel a little fractured. I’m SO HAPPY with this book, but it’s SHORT. Only 45,000 words. I happen to really like short novels. They move fast. I don’t lose steam in the dreaded middle, and I lose steam a lot reading long books. I love my characters.

I wanted to get this book up sooner rather than later. And I’m not the most patient person, so I’ve sort of dampened the energy I had built up for it. But Life happens. Things don’t always go according to plan. Add to that–and don’t snicker at me–my horoscope isn’t as fun as it was in the middle of the month. The astrologers said to Go For It then. Now, it’s all about Saturn being retrograde. Ugh!

I don’t know if the planets are going to shine on me or not now, but I’m not sitting on this book for months. I like it too much, so I’m going to throw it into the world, kiss it goodbye, and wish it the best. Loretta (the protagonist) wouldn’t sit around and dither. She deserves an audience. So, hopefully, this week, she’ll find one!

Elements of a Dual Timeline Novel: Connecting Past to Present

I love Mae Clair’s dual timeline mysteries. She’s posted a great series about how to write them. Thought you might enjoy it.

Story Empire

Hi, SEers! It’s another Mae Day on Story Empire, and the closing post for my series on dual timelines. If you’ve missed any of the previous posts and would like to visit, I’ve linked them below:

Part One: An Introduction
Part Two: Character Development
Part Three: Timeframes and Settings

Today is all about connections. In a dual timeline novel, you’re usually working with one timeline in the present and one in the past. Remember that each should be able to stand separately, but also tie together at the end. That means there needs to be a connection between the two. Common connections include linked ancestry, inherited or purchased property, found documents or a catastrophe.

All photos from Bigstock Photos

Linked Ancestry
Your unassuming office clerk, Walter, learns disquieting rumors about a deceased ancestor and begins investigating to discover more. Perhaps great-great-great grandfather Thaddeus died under mysterious circumstances, vanished without a…

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Cats Boss Me Around

HH and I had a busier week than usual. We stayed up later than we normally do on Friday night, so got a late start this Saturday. Slept until 10:00. I would have slept longer, but our gray cat jumped on the bed and licked my hand, then my face, when I ignored him, because he thinks he was starving. He’s a HUGE cat. I’m not worried he’ll perish if I sleep another half hour, but he didn’t agree. And he’s impossible to ignore, so it’s easier to get up and feed him than try to get rid of him. He’ll claw on the bedroom door if we close it, use his paws and move the doorknob, rattling it, trying to open the door. He’s a bossy, demanding feline, and I adore him. He’s so smart, we locked him in the basement one late night so he’d leave me alone, and he knows the laundry room is right underneath where we sleep, so he jumped up and down, up and down, over and over again on the washing machine lid until I got up and gave him anything he wanted.

I should be used to demanding cats. Our very first feline wanted out every night, and when I called her to come in at ten, and she didn’t show up, I’d tell her I was going to bed and she’d be outside all night. (Now, we have an indoor cat, but every cat roamed the neighborhood when it got dark back then. Times have changed.) Sesame would stay out, then want in about two a.m., but we were asleep, so she’d go to our mail slot on the porch, and raise its lid and bang it shut time after time until I got up and let her in. She was the same cat, who every time she got mad at HH, she’d tip our laundry basket, take HH’s socks, and bury them in her dirty kitty litter. Cats have attitudes.

We always had cats, though, usually more than one, for years. Once, we ended up with five cats at once when our kids kept finding strays, but we didn’t get a dog until a chihuahua showed up at our door. We knew its owners, but they were tired of it and were going to take him to the pound, so Chewy ended up at our house and loved any cat he met. That’s how I ended up with a dog in my Jazzi mysteries. My daughter and her husband had a pug they adored. I guess I thought Ansel would prefer a dog over a cat, so he got George, and he spoils him, even carries him upstairs every night because George doesn’t climb steps, but Jazzi took in two kittens. Marmalade is a sweet, mellow cat, but Inky is obnoxious. Just the kind of cat I love.

Anyway, I’d like to stay up late tonight, reading, and have another lazy morning tomorrow, but it probably won’t happen. We have Dutchy, our gray cat, and even though I have to strain to lift him, he can only go so long without food. And his tongue feels like sandpaper. So I’ll probably get up before I want to.

Tough Love

My daughter finished reading the draft for Not A Ghost of a Chance. She called to give me feedback and said, “This might be my favorite book of yours, so I took tons of notes, because I want it to be really good.” She really DID have tons of notes, more than she’s ever done before. So, I guess, the more Holly likes my books, the more rewrites I’m going to have:)

The notes were wonderful! All insightful. Mostly about characters and how they react to events in the story. And the fixes will be easy. Each one is just a short scene, nothing that affects the entire novel. And I’m so thankful for her feedback. I got a kick out of the irony, though. The more she likes a book, the tougher she’ll be on it.

My critique partner will give me her notes soon. I probably won’t get through all of the edits, though, until the end of the month. My daughter and her husband from Florida are coming to visit us for a few days, and that tops writing. I’ll have plenty of time to noodle over their suggestions before I sit down and put fingers on keys. I always start to feel anxious about now, but I’m not going to let myself rush things this time. Patience is a virtue, right? I’ll keep telling myself that.

Agatha Envy

I never thought about being a writer when I was young. All I wanted to be was an elementary school teacher. I loved teaching first and second graders. I really liked teaching fourth, and I did it twice, but first graders are so bursting with potential, so ready to soak up everything they could learn, it was especially fun to teach them. But just like everything else in life, the fantasy of teaching and the ACTUAL teaching were pretty different.

It came as a shock to me that some kids walked into school on the first day and were already way behind the other students in my class. They came from homes where no one read to them, no one took them to the library, people struggled to make enough money to keep food on the table, or else…they had low IQs. All through college, I was taught that if I made learning exciting enough, my students would love learning. I’d always loved learning. So, I was idealistic to the point that it was a real disadvantage. No one told me that kids with D-rated mentality could only learn, at optimum, about 3 months of what high IQ kids soaked in without trying in nine months. A few kids in the class would learn something new the first time I introduced it. A few kids wouldn’t learn it the entire school year, even when I showed one way, then another, then another. Over and over again. Not their fault. They WERE trying. It just took time for it to come together for them.

Teaching was a lot harder and time-consuming than I’d ever thought possible. But I loved it. Then I took time off to have my two daughters, and when I tried to go back into teaching, I learned another horrible lesson. No one would hire me. I’d gotten my Master’s Degree, and they didn’t want to pay that much. I still maintain that Indiana doesn’t like public education, and they really don’t like teachers. But that’s a discussion for a different blog. This one’s about writing.

I couldn’t go back to teaching, so my husband signed me up for a Continuing Education course called Writing For Fun and Profit. And I got hooked on writing. Writing’s even harder than teaching, because I can work my fanny off and have little or no success. Go, me!

BUT, for years and years, I’d loved Agatha Christie. So in my early writing innocence, I decided I wanted a career like hers. Now, mind you, at that time, I didn’t realize she was one of the biggest writers of her time. All I knew is that I loved her stories. And she had three series I admired–Poirot, Miss Marple, and Tommy and Tuppence. Then I learned that she wrote outside of her genre, and I loved her even more. She was like an early version of Nora Roberts. Whatever she wrote was a success.

Boy, was I naive. But I clung to the Agatha ideal for years and wrote one traditional mystery after another and got rejected every time I sent one out. Great comments from editors. “Loved your writing.” “Loved this story, but cozies are dead these days.” “If you write something else, send it to me. But not a cozy.” LOL. So, what did I do? I wrote another Agatha.

Finally, I tried a really odd, unusual mystery about a man named Daniel. He believed God sent him people he must kill. If he looked at a person, and his vision went red, God wanted that person to die. So, he killed him. And then, when he questioned himself and DIDN’T kill the person God marked, because he couldn’t understand WHY God would choose her, the girl was raped and committed suicide, and Daniel knew God had tried to spare her out of kindness, and Daniel hadn’t listened. And he felt terrible. Okay, not a traditional or cozy mystery. So I sent it to an editor at Tor, and she liked it but said NO One could publish it. It was too out there. BUT, she’d been made editor of a new branch of Tor for paranormal, and if I’d write one for her, she’d love to see it. I had no idea what paranormal was, so I asked her to give me some examples. It was so new, there weren’t any, so she sent me a list of what made a paranormal a paranormal, and I decided, Why Not? I tried one and sent it to her. She said Close, But No Cigar. And told me why it didn’t work. So, I wrote another one. And she loved it. BUT, when she wanted to buy it, the sales team told her they’d just sold a book with Tarot cards, and they couldn’t sell another so soon. Odd. But true. Small things you don’t even think about can cost you a sell.

I wrote another paranormal, but when I sent it, Anna Genoise had left Tor, and the new editor only wanted epic fantasy, no paranormal. I called it a day. But sent the book out to agents, and it got me Lauren Abramo at Dystel and Goderich (back then). But she couldn’t find a publisher for it. Instead, Dystel and Goderich decided to put it up as an e-book. (They don’t do that anymore). I wrote a few more paranormals, but Lauren was getting the same rejections I used to get. “Love the writing, but the market is glutted. Try me with something else.”

She suggested I try a romance. I’d never written romance in my life. But I asked her to send me a few examples of what she liked. I chose one of them and tried to write in the same style, and it sold. But only sort of. I couldn’t get any traction in romance, and my editor at Kensington said, “Why not send me a mystery?”

I thought long and hard this time. I’d failed at so many Agatha type mysteries, I decided to try something different. A cozy. To me, a cozy is different from a traditional romance. A recent reviewer said, “1/4 family and friends and cooking, 1/4 fixer upper, and only 1/2 of a mystery.” And she nailed it. When I started my Jazzi series, I wanted it to be as much about Jazzi as it was about solving the murder. And my editor liked it.

I still have my Agatha phobia. When I wrote my Lux series, it’s sort of a takeoff of Tommy and Tuppence. A little tongue in cheek, meant for fun. When I wrote Posed for Death, I was trying for more of a traditional feel. More emphasis on the mystery and less on Nick and Laurel. It started out with a decent ranking, but I haven’t written another book in the series, so it’s sunk to a dismal number. And I do mean dismal. But I’ll get back to it. Eventually.

I just finished the draft of my WIP, and I’m trying to decide what I want to do next. I can play with plot points for my last Karnie Cleaver mystery for a while, and then I need to hit the keyboard again. I failed dismally at Vella, but the idea still interests me. I think it’s the challenge of writing three or four scenes to post a week. I’ve always loved a challenge. But I don’t always make the best choices. So, I’m waffling. I hate indecision. I’d almost rather make a bad choice than no choice. So, cross your fingers for me and hope I go in the right direction.