Elizabeth Spann Craig's Blog, page 230

Keeping Readers in the Loop

I usually like to go to independently owned coffee houses…but there come times when I really, really need a cup of coffee and Starbucks is the only thing around.

I popped in last week and instead of asking for a "small coffee" (I never look at their menu because it makes me confused), I got a little daring and asked for a small chai tea latte.

"A short or a tall?"

"A…well, the smallest size you have."

"That's a short. If you ask for a small, you get a 12 oz. tall. Medium is grande ...

A Delicious Review

I've been in a promotion and writing haze lately, making sure Delicious and Suspicious stays on track, then quickly shifting back into creative mode to pen Memphis book three. 

So it's wonderful to come across such a generous review in the middle of a crazy day. :)  Thanks so much, Sharon!

Protagonist IQ

How smart should your protagonist be?  And—how can you show, instead of tell, your protagonist's intelligence?

Hope you'll come by Molly Weston's blog, Meritorious Mysteries, to weigh in on the importance of IQ in our main characters.

Synchronization

Okay, things are slow starting up today at the Mystery Writing is Murder blog!  :)  I'll explain first of all that I hosted a sleepover party for my son's friends and daughter's friends….and the "sleep" part of the sleepover was minimal, at best!  But they all seemed to have a good time.

I'm trying to sync up to a blog that I'm guesting on today, but unfortunately I'm not sure what time the post is running.  This is the way things go with guest posts sometimes. :)

I am also on Killer...

Quiet Books

We hear a lot of advice these days on hooking our readers and grabbing them on page one.  That's easy enough—if we've written something fast-paced, like a thriller.

But what if we've written a quiet book?  Hope you'll pop over to Michele Emrath's Southern City Mysteries blog for some thoughts on hooking a reader in a slower-paced book. 

Twitterific

Here are writing links that I've posted to Twitter for the past week. If you're looking for a particular topic, just plug in your keyword into the search box at the top left-hand corner of the blog (on the black header right above my blog name…next to the Blogger symbol…the small search window is next to the magnifying glass) and the roundup with your subject will come up. To narrow your search down on the page, do a CTRL+F, type your subject, and hit enter.

Do the things you *think* you...

Planning a Book Tour

Book tours can get expensive and overwhelming, but they don't have to be.  And a tour doesn't mean you have to cover a broad area of the country, either.  You can limit it to just a few towns that are close to each other, geographically.

The nice things about book tours is that you get an opportunity to produce a spike in book sales, develop a relationship with some book retailers, and create a little buzz about your book.

I'm going on a book tour starting this next Friday in central...

Making a Living With Art?

Sometimes it's easy to get dragged into your day…and the day isn't a very inspiring one.

That was my day on Wednesday. I had what felt like an army of workmen at my house, in and out, lugging materials around for the air and heat system. They kept me in the loop as far as what they were doing (although I didn't understand a word of it.) And my daughter was dying to get out of the house (probably because we couldn't get out of the house.)

The salesman who sold us the system, which cost ...

Mental Preparation—Or, Expecting the Worst

Right now, even as I type, we're having our upstairs and downstairs a/c systems replaced, along with our furnace.

In my blissful ignorance, I thought this wasn't that complex of a job. Actually, I don't think I thought anything much about it at all. I was a little surprised when I heard that it was going to take Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday to do the job…but I didn't really think about the why behind the length of the job.

Then, a few days ago, I spoke to a friend of mine and...

Inspiration from Unusual Places

I'd reached one of those points in my current manuscript where I really wasn't excited about moving forward with the plot. I wasn't even really sure how I was going to move the plot forward. In fact…I'd stalled out.

I skipped ahead to a different part of the book…which works out great. You still get work done on the manuscript, but you're not working on the part that's tripping you up.

But I needed to get back to the rocky part of my story.

I'm one of those writers who works completely