Roberta Trahan's Blog, page 10

Guest Post: Richard Ellis Preston Jr – Character Development: Finding a Friend for Life

Please join me in welcoming fellow 47North author Richard Ellis Preston Jr, who is visiting the blog as part of our monthly author swap. Today, Richard is sharing his thoughts on character development. Got questions? Post them in the comments and Richard will reply.

~ ~ ~

Hi everyone. It is an honor to be here with you on Roberta’s blog. Roberta has asked me to do a feature piece on how I approach character development—and how my steampunk action-adventure hero, Romulus Buckle, came to be. My apologies in advance for the perhaps unfocused nature of this piece—it’s a bit stream-of-consciousness— but I wanted to have a conversation with you here today. Even if you disagree with some of my points, I hope the discussion provides both of us with food for thought. Let’s chat about character development.

 

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”  (W. Somerset Maugham)

Like all writers, my methods for building characters are a mix of mishmash and melting pot. Some methods are drawn from personal experience but more have been assembled from many hours of reading books by writers and academics on the art of writing. Great observers of the writing craft are able to gather up and crystallize the nuts and bolts of the machine. They make them easy to digest. I offer a short bibliography at the end of this article of some of my favorite books on character building and the writing process. My methods of character building vary from book to book—I don’t have a well-defined system, but it does involve an intense attack during the creation phase and an active pursuit throughout the life the novel. Below is a short list of the ideas I’d like to cover.

A Character Who Refuses to Die
Know Your Archetype
The Great Man/Woman Theory
What MUST the Character Do (and What Does the Character Think He/She Must Do?)

A Character Who Refuses to Die

“We care about what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are” (Henry James)

With any book I write, I usually start with a character. I start with a character whom has often lived with me for years, even decades. The character is a shadow, perhaps invited, perhaps not, inhabiting a mysterious vault in the mind, but he/she sticks. He/she won’t let go. Somehow, I already know that person in an intimate yet blind and undefined way. That ‘sticking-power’ is a kind of litmus test for me; my subconscious is fascinated by the character and I can assume that this proto-person will prove a bountiful subject to explore. Be wary of the infatuation with newly invented characters offering fiery but brief affairs before the spark dies out. Seek a long term relationship with your characters and make them your friends for life. Nothing is worse (for a writer) than stalling in the middle of a novel because you realize that your main character is a fraud. Nothing.

Romulus Buckle, the hero captain of my steampunk adventure tale, has been with me since I was a boy. I didn’t yet know his name or his story but the young swashbuckler lived inside of me, in tales where I imagined myself to be Robin Hood, Captain Blood or Captain Nemo. I think about him often even when I am not writing, and I am deeply invested in his life. I worry about him. I suffer the pains and joys that he suffers. I am intensely interested his backstory and the experiences that have made him the person he is. I root for him even though I shall allow his own flaws to tear him to pieces.

“Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” (Kurt Vonnegut)

 Know Your Archetype

“Summoned or not, the god will come” (Motto over the door of Carl Jung’s house)

No matter how original you think your character might be, warrior queen or tree frog, he or she will fall into one of a limited category of character archetypes. I recommend, once you have a sense of who your character is, that you seek out the similar character type in literature and film and study how other artists have tackled it. Stand on the shoulders of giants. Stealing, you say? I say not. The archetypes are as old as the art of storytelling itself. Your character shall be original in the sense that he/she will be someone we’ve all never met before, but don’t deny yourself the rich brain-fodder you can feed on studying how the masters of your craft explored the archetype. If you are creating a fantasy king, read E.B. White’s The Once and Future King about King Arthur; if you are creating a French-Canadian Second World War nurse, read The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. Don’t ignore non-fiction either: biographies of real people who lived lives similar to your character are wonderful studies as well. If you are creating a woman pilot, read about Amelia Earhart.

The hero of my steampunk action-adventure series is Romulus Buckle. I knew that I wanted him to be larger-than-life and a swashbuckler of immense confidence, similar to Robin Hood or Captain Blood (both movies starring Errol Flynn) but with a darkness beneath like Captain Nemo I looked to the great fictional sea captains of the 18th century like Horatio Hornblower and Richard Aubrey, who are both brilliant but aggravatingly (and often amusingly) flawed. I drew on my love of adventure heroes such as Indiana Jones and Han Solo. Romulus Buckle has pieces real historical figures in him, such as the young Winston Churchill and Stanley Livingstone. Knowing your archetype doesn’t box you in; it frees you, showing you the endless avenues you can explore without being untrue to the basic essence of your character.

“The concept of Archetypes is an indispensable tool for understanding the purpose or function of the characters in a story” (Christopher Vogler)

The Great Man/Woman Theory

“…some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” (William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night)

Gak, you say—the pretentious scribbler is quoting the great Bard now? Yes, yes I am. Which one of Shakespeare’s descriptions in the quote above best fits your character? All of them? None of them? I find that using this mirror to study my character helps illuminate my entire story. Who am I building and how does he/she react to the obstacles in the way? Remember that ‘greatness’ is a relative term. The courage of a door mouse defending her litter from a rat is a form of greatness, is it not? Greatness can be either good or evil. Achilles was born great. Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood achieves greatness (albeit a twisted version of it). Harry Potter has greatness thrust upon him (or does he? You could argue that he is born great, and you can argue he achieves greatness as well, but I personally think ‘thrust upon’ is the most fitting formula in his case). Some characters don’t seem to fit into any ‘greatness’ category at first glance; look at Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman or Charlie Gordon in Flowers for Algernon. But wait; I would suggest that you look again.

For me, Romulus Buckle is not born great. He does possess many abilities and virtues but he is plagued by far too many flaws to occupy the near demi-god status that ‘born great’ demands. But the warts are what the make a character real and fascinating, aren’t they? Personal flaws shall bring your hero to his/her knees and force him/her to prove their constitution and courage on the rebound. The Gods of literature, in The Iliad and Percy Jackson and on and on, are interesting because of their glitches, not their thunderbolts.

As my Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin series progresses, Romulus Buckle shall run the gauntlets of defeat and despair and in the process he shall both achieve greatness and have greatness thrust upon him.

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point…” (C.S. Lewis)

What MUST your character do (and what does your Character think he/she must do?)

“Every man has three characters: the one he shows, the one he has,  and the one he thinks he has” (Alphonse Karr)

This one is huge. Characters can of course be multi-layered and complicated in their motivations—often consciously misrepresenting their true selves and intentions, but, generally speaking, they have to be driven by something specific and singular at their core. You can break this driving force down into two categories: one, what the character must do; and two, what the character thinks he/she must do. Human beings often do not understand the real issues which compel them to act and neither should many fictional characters. For example, in the beginning of the film Casablanca, Rick Blaine is a disillusioned Spanish Civil War veteran who rejects heroism and thinks that he must regain the love of Ilsa above all things; but by the end of the film, Rick realizes that he must return to the fight, and rejecting Ilsa’s love is a part of the sacrifice he must make to help win the war. Knowing the difference between what your character must do and what he/she thinks they must do is a brilliant way to discover and exploit their desires and contradictions.

I’m going to bail out on this one as far as my book is concerned. I can’t speak to what Romulus Buckle must do in the Pneumatic Zeppelin series because it would give too much away, but I can assure you that it is different from what he thinks he must do.

In conclusion, I’d like to thank you for your attention if you managed to hang on all of the way through this guest post. Even if you disagree with my ideas I do hope that they got your brain chewing on the subject; this was a wonderfully constructive exercise for me. Just keep on spilling the ink, which often seems to be the same color as blood. Writing is difficult but writing is life—and life is difficult.

“Every writer I know has trouble writing.” Joseph Heller.

~ ~ ~

A Select Bibliography—a few good books for writers:

Booklife by Jeff VanderMeer

How to Write a Sentence (and How to Read One) by Stanley Fish

The Art and Craft of Novel Writing by Oakley Hall

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters by Christopher Vogler

Richard Ellis Preston, Jr. is a science fiction writer who loves the zeitgeist of steampunk. Although he grew up in both the United States and Canada he prefers to think of himself as British. He attended the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, where he earned an Honors B.A. in English with a Minor in Anthropology. He has lived on Prince Edward Island, excavated a 400 year old Huron Indian skeleton and attended a sperm whale autopsy. Romulus Buckle and the City of the Founders is the first installment in his new steampunk series, The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin. Richard has also written for film and television. He currently resides in California.

Want to connect with Richard? Visit him online:

Website: richardellisprestonjr.com

Twitter: @RichardEPreston

Facebook: Richard Ellis Preston, Jr.

Happy Release Day, Anne Charnock!

A very happy release day to my fellow 47North author Anne Charnock! Her dystopian sci-fi novel has been re-issued by 47North and is NOW AVAILABLE!!

ABOUT THE BOOK:

A Calculated Life

Late in the twenty-first century, big business is booming and state institutions are thriving thanks to advances in genetic engineering, which have produced a compliant population free of addictions. Violent crime is a rarity.

Hyper-intelligent Jayna is a star performer at top predictive agency Mayhew McCline, where she forecasts economic and social trends. A brilliant mathematical modeler, she far outshines her co-workers, often correcting their work on the quiet. Her latest coup: finding a link between northeasterly winds and violent crime.

When a string of events contradicts her forecasts, Jayna suspects she needs more data and better intuition. She needs direct interactions with the rest of society. Bravely—and naively—she sets out to disrupt her strict routine and stumbles unwittingly into a world where her IQ is increasingly irrelevant…a place where human relationships and the complexity of life are difficult for her to decode. And as she experiments with taking risks, she crosses the line into corporate intrigue and disloyalty.

Can Jayna confront the question of what it means to live a “normal” life? Or has the possibility of a “normal” life already been eclipsed for everyone?

~ ~ ~

Now available on Amazon.com – click on the book cover to purchase!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Anne Charnock’s writing career began in journalism; her articles appeared in the Guardian, New Scientist, International Herald Tribune, and Geographical. She was educated at the University of East Anglia, where she studied environmental sciences, and at the Manchester School of Art. She traveled widely as a foreign correspondent and spent a year trekking through Egypt, Sudan, and Kenya.

In her fine art practice, she tried to answer the questions What is it to be human? What is it to be a machine? and ultimately she decided to write fiction as another route to finding answers.

Anne is an active blogger and reviews fiction for the online magazine Strange Horizons. She contributes exhibition reviews and book recommendations to the Huffington Post. She splits her time between London and Chester and, whenever possible, she and her husband, Garry, take off in their little campervan (unless one of their two sons has borrowed it), traveling to southern Europe and as far as the Anti-Atlas Mountains in southern Morocco.

To connect with Anne, visit her online:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ACalculatedLife

Twitter: https://twitter.com/annecharnock

Website: http://www.annecharnock.com

Happy Release Day, Steve McHugh!

A very happy release day to my fellow 47North author Steve McHugh! The first two books in his Hellequin Chronicles series have been re-issued by 47North and are NOW AVAILABLE!!

ABOUT THE BOOKS:

Crimes Against Magic (Hellequin Chronicles: Book 1)

How do you keep the people you care about safe from enemies you can’t remember?

Ten years ago, Nate Garrett awoke on a cold warehouse floor with no memory of his past—a gun, a sword, and a piece of paper with his name on it the only clues to his identity. Since then, he’s discovered he’s a powerful sorcerer and has used his magical abilities to become a successful thief for hire.

But those who stole his memories aren’t done with him yet: when they cause a job to go bad and threaten a sixteen-year-old girl, Nate swears to protect her. With his enemies closing in and everyone he cares about now a target for their wrath, he must choose between the comfortable life he’s built for himself and his elusive past.

As the barrier holding his memories captive begins to crumble, Nate moves between modern-day London and fifteenth-century France, forced to confront his forgotten life in the hope of stopping an enemy he can’t remember.

Born of Hatred  (Hellequin Chronicles: Book 2)

There are some things even a centuries-old sorcerer hesitates to challenge…

When Nathan Garret’s friend seeks his help investigating a bloody serial killer, the pattern of horrific crimes leads to a creature of pure malevolence, born of hatred and dark magic. Even with all his powers, Nate fears he may be overmatched. But when evil targets those he cares about and he is confronted by dire threats both old and new, Nate must reveal a secret from his recently remembered past to remind his enemies why they should fear him once more.

Born of Hatred, set in modern London with historical flashbacks to America’s Old West, continues the dark urban fantasy of Crimes Against Magic, the acclaimed first book in the gritty and action-packed Hellequin Chronicles.

Both books are now available on Amazon.com – click on the book covers to purchase!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Steve’s been writing from an early age, his first completed story was done in an English lesson. Unfortunately, after the teacher read it, he had to have a chat with the head of the year about the violent content and bad language. The follow up ‘One boy and his frog’ was less concerning to his teachers and got him an A.

It wasn’t for another decade that he would start work on a full length novel that was publishable, the results of which was the action-packed Urban Fantasy, Crimes Against Magic.

Steve McHugh lives in Southampton on the south coast of England with his wife and three young daughters. When not writing or spending time with his kids, he enjoys watching movies, reading books and comics, and playing video games.

To connect with Steve, visit him online:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/steveJMchugh?ref=tn_tnmn
Twitter: https://twitter.com/StevejMchugh
Website: http://stevejmchugh.wordpress.com/

You know what's missing in this whole Fans vs. Creators thing...

Reblogged from Robert Jackson Bennett:

My own dumbass opinions.

But seriously, I wouldn’t weigh into a conversation unless I felt like I had something good to say, and this is something I pretty devoutly believe in regards to the way I interact with my audience:

Basically, I try not to.

Well, that’s not totally true. I have this blog, and I have a twitter feed, and I do interviews and, in a very fundamental way, writing something is a very direct way of interacting with an audience.

Read more… 1,007 more words

From the uniquely talented (and as you will see for yourself) supremely insightful Robert J Bennett on the nature of writer - reader relationships. Good advice for every one of us author type people. Read it, and heed it.

Guest Post: Writing (and cooking) From Inspiration…and Unexpected Travel

with Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

Hello to everyone. I’m Linda Thomas-Sundstrom, author of paranormal romance and urban fantasy, visiting today to share a disturbing (and therefore inspirational) way to stumble upon an idea: Travel (to odd places).

Of course, inspiration can come from anywhere, and for me, pretty much everywhere. A couple of years ago, my niece married a Frenchman, so my family traveled to Paris for the celebrations. A family member suggested we climb the 387 steps that wind through Notre Dame Cathedral like an old spinal column, to get to the Gallerie des Chimeras . . . to not only get a birds-eye view of Paris, but to see the world-famous Notre Dame gargoyles up close. So, we did.

And geez.

It was one of the spookiest places on the planet, (and I’ve been to quite a few) because this Gallery is a walkway populated with lots of grotesque stone sculptures, most of them life-sized. And around it, in numbers too great to count, are the rest of Notre Dame’s strange, dramatically ugly creatures – the whole shebang, from gargoyles and angry dogs, to every kind of mixture of beasts. There are actually hundreds of these monstrosities that supposedly guard Notre Dame’s rooftops.

So what comes to mind for a writer who loves this sort of gothic experience? A question:

Are those freaky stone critters actually guarding the Cathedral, as people say? Really??

Notre-Dame de Paris is an historic Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Ile de la Cite in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It’s considered to be one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture, and among the largest and most well-known church buildings in the world. Construction began in the year 1163.

However, it wasn’t the building that tapped at my inspiration buttons. It was those eerie creatures, and their sheer numbers. Right there, face-to-face with them, my next story was born. Because, like most authors, more questions formed that I just had to answer. I could not let it go.

What do these beasts do after nightfall?
How could things so ugly be attached to a cathedral, at all? What was up with that?
If they aren’t really guarding the Cathedral, what are they doing? Are they up to no good?
What happens up there when the sun goes down? – Cuz folks, I would NOT want to be there when the sun went down and the big iron door closes.

This launched me into a flurry of research following that visit. My story idea came together quickly, and “Trapped in Stone” was born as the first urban fantasy novella of a new series titled Dark vs Light. Here’s the tagline that took shape for that first story: “Her lover’s soul is at stake . . . She was vowed to change his fate.”

You see, there was a man trapped inside one of those grotesque stone statues on that rooftop. I just knew he was there and I had to find a way to get him out. That’s how Izzy, the femme character in my book, came to be. It became her job to free him, to help her lover breathe again, as a man. Tristan is trapped for 364 days of the year, and can shed the spell that can release him on only one night — the 365th. On that night, Tristan can find another to take his place on the unwholesome Gallerie des Chimeras. The number of monsters must remain static, or the cathedral’s walls might finally crumble after decades of cheating on the pacts made between Dark and Light.

Does there have to be romance in an urban fantasy? Of course not. But since I love romance (who doesn’t?), and I write a lot of paranormal romance novels, this “urban fantasy” novella has plenty of it. What could be more romantic than a woman who waits for the one night when her lover can shed his stone casing and be with her again? Will she sacrifice her limited time with him in order for him to succeed, or be greedy? Of course, in a well-crafted book there is always more at stake than merely the outcome of a relationship between two people. Maybe even, in part, the balance of the world, and everyone in it. So, as I developed the story, the tagline expanded: “High above the streets of Paris a war has been going between the forces of Good and Evil over the soul of one man . . . and a woman stands in the way.”

What a woman that would have to be, right, to face those things down?

For me, this was one of those magical moments when the stars align, and a story writes itself. Moments like that don’t happen real often for authors working against tight deadlines for other books. When they do, we have to find the time to fill in the page with the quest of these two people, so that we, as writers, can see what happens. Sometimes we can’t rest until we know. That was the way it was for me with Trapped in Stone. This gothic, romantic urban fantasy, with gargoyles, chimeras and much darker things set in the late-night streets of Paris, reveals really happens on the walls of one of the world’s most famous cathedrals after dark. I hope you’ll take a look at my novella.

Questions? Ask away. Or just leave a wave so I know you have stopped by. I’ll look forward to hearing from you, and am really excited to be here, guest posting on Roberta’s beautiful site. And if you’d like to make some Gargoyle magic of your own, try out the recipes below.

~~~

 

Linda Thomas-Sundstrom is the multi-published author of nearly a dozen fantasy, paranormal romance and urban fantasy novels.

To learn more about Linda, visit her web page and follow her on Facebook.

Trapped in Stone is now available on Amazon & BarnesandNoble.com.

 

 

~~~

 

“GARGOYLE TONGUES”

(yields 16 wedges)

INGREDIENTS:

1 pg soft corn or flour tortillas

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 cup (4 oz) finely shredded sharp cheddar

1 cup chopped ripe olives

1 tablespoon salsa

PREPARATION:

Preheat oven to 450°F. Sprinkle cumin evenly over tortillas and rub gently to lightly coat tortillas. Cut each tortilla into 4 wedges. Coat a nonstick baking sheet with cooking spray, arrange wedges on baking sheet allowing space between wedges. Sprinkle cheese evenly over the wedges (allowing cheese to spill over slightly) then sprinkle with olives. Bake 4 minutes or until cheese is melted. Remove from heat. Top each wedge with about 1/2 teaspoon of salsa in center and place on serving tray or large platter. Do NOT stack wedges.

AND TO WASH IT DOWN:

“GARGOYLE BREW”: 1 part Captain Morgan® spiced rum, 3 parts Mountain Dew citrus soda

Marketing Monday Revisited- How to Set Up an Author Blog (Step-by-Step with Author Rob Kroese)

I’ve received repeated requests to re-publish this very helpful guest post by author Rob Kroese. Got questions? Leave them in the comments and I’ll make sure Rob stops by to answer! 

~

Recently I made the transition from web developer to full-time writer. I decided I didn’t want to spend my days writing code when I could be writing novels. So as part of that transition, I rebuilt my author website to make it as simple as possible to maintain. What I wanted was a site that I could set up once and then forget about, except for posting blog updates.

Here’s my list of requirements:

Home page with basic information about me, including links to my books on Amazon and social networking links
Integrated blog that automatically posts to Twitter and Facebook
Links for sharing blog posts on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites
Automatic posting to Twitter and Facebook
Blog commenting system with spam filter
No hand-coding and minimal maintenance

I’m going to walk through the basic process of setting this all up. Note that I’m going to be using the WordPress blogging platform for my example, because I think it’s the easiest to set up and manage.

You can see the final results of this process at http://robertkroese.com. I’m not saying it’s the most beautiful site in the world, but it does everything I need it to do – with minimal ongoing effort on my part.

Getting a Domain and Web Hosting

First, you’ll need to register a domain and get a basic hosting package. (You can skip this step if you don’t mind using a subdomain on someone else’s site, e.g. RobertKroese.wordpress.com or RobertKroese.blogspot.com. If you’re short on money, that might be the way to go.) I use a company called MyHosting.com, which has reasonable prices and has been fairly reliable for me. I recommend going with a hosting company that uses the Parallels Automation tools. Parallels provides a simple web interface that allows you to upload files, install applications, and change settings for your website.

The process of registering a domain and setting up a basic hosting package through a company like MyHosting.com is pretty straightforward, so I won’t go into detail about it here. Just be aware that it might take up to a day for the hosting company to get everything set up. Once it’s set up, you’ll be able to log into your site control panel. You’ll see something like this:

(This is the Parallels web interface. If your hosting company is using a different service, it will look different.)

If you don’t have an email address set up for your domain (e.g. Stephen@stephenking.com), I’d recommend clicking on Add New Mailbox and doing that first.

Setting Up WordPress

After that, click on Site Applications in the Websites section. You’re going to want to click on the big +Install button.

You’ll see a list of applications you can install. Click on WordPress.

Step through the installation. You can just accept the default values for most things. One thing I would recommend changing is the default URL path. It will want to put WordPress in a /wordpress directory, which means that to get to your blog, users will have to go to that directory. This is useful if you want your WordPress blog to be just one part of your website, but for simplicity we’re going to manage the whole site through WordPress. That means users who go to yourauthorsite.com will see the WordPress content without having to go to yourauthorsite.com/wordpress.

To accomplish that, change this…

…to this:

Step through the rest of the installation and you’re good to go.

Now if you click on the Site Applications link, you’ll see WordPress installed.

Configuring WordPress

To log into WordPress, click the Login => link. Unless you’re happy with the default WordPress theme, I’d recommend clicking the change your theme completely link. Spend some time browsing the various themes. Remember that you want something that captures the feel you want for your author site as well as having a place for all the links and widgets you’re going to want on the page. You can change this later, but plan on losing any customizations you made to the previous theme.

Once you’ve selected a theme you like, you can make simple customizations by clicking on the big Customize Your Site button.

Next, you’re going to want to add some plugins. The first one you’ll want to add is the Akismet anti-spam plug-in. You may already have this installed, so check under Installed Plugins on the left nav menu first.

If you see Akismet listed, just click Activate to activate it. If it’s not listed, click Add New on the menu and search for “Akismet”. Install and activate it. You can also click Settings to manage how Akismet handles suspected spam comments.

There are thousands of other plugins you might find useful, but for now let’s just add two others. These two plugins are needed for integrating your site with social media platforms. We need one plugin to display links to your Twitter/Facebook/etc. pages from your sidebar and another to let people easily share your posts on these sites.

Click Add New on the Plugins menu and search for “social media”. You’ll find a bunch of social media-related plug-ins. What we’re looking for is something that will allow readers to easily share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Plus, etc. I use Acurax Social Media Widget, which seems to work pretty well. Install and activate the plug-in.

After installing the Acurax plug-in, you’ll want to configure it. Click the Acx Social Media Widget Settings button on the left nav.

Select the button style you want and enter your social media account information. You can leave boxes blank if you want; the widget just won’t display those options to the reader.

Now click on the Dashboard link on the left nav and then click Manage widgets.

You’ll see a list of Available Widgets, including the Acurax Social Media Widget. To the right, you’ll see all the widgets currently installed on your site. Drag the Acurax Social Media Widget to where you want it to appear.

It will look something like this on your site:

Next, we need a plugin to allow users to easily share your posts on social networking sites. Click Add New on the Plugins menu and search for “social media” again. I use a plugin called “Social Share Buttons” by Loskutnikov Artem. Again, there are plenty of other widgets that do basically the same thing. Install and activate the plugin. When you’re done, you should see sharing options at the bottom of your posts. It will look something like this:

Setting up Twitter and Amazon widgets

There are special WordPress plugins for displaying data from Twitter and Amazon.com on your site, but I found it simplest just to use the code provided by Twitter and Amazon, respectively. (I’m assuming you already have a Twitter and Amazon Affiliate accounts set up.)

To get the code to display your recent tweets, go here: https://twitter.com/settings/widgets.

To get the Amazon widget code, go here: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/. You can easily use Amazon’s tools to create a widget displaying all or some of your books, with links to the Amazon page.

Copy the code for the widget. Then go to the WordPress dashboard again and click Manage widgets.

Drag a Text widget to where you want it to appear on the site.

Then click the widget header, give the widget an appropriate title and paste the code. Click Save when you’re done.

Make a separate text widget for Twitter, Amazon, and any other arbitrary text/code that you want to display.

Here’s a screenshot of my blog:

The sidebar below my bio/photo is comprised of:

Amazon slideshow (Text widget with Amazon Affiliate code)
Email list signup form (Text widget with code from from MailChimp)
Ad for one of my books (Text widget with image and link url – this is the one bit of code I actually wrote)
Social media icons (Acurax Social Media Widget)
Twitter feed (Text widget with Twitter code)

Setting Up Your Blog to Auto-Post to Twitter and Facebook

OK, your site is all set up! You’ve got all your basic information on the site and made it easy for readers to connect with you on various social media platforms. There’s just one other step you should take to make life easier for yourself in the long run: set up your blog to automatically post to your favorite social media sites.

First you’ll need to find the URL for your blog’s RSS feed. A link to your feed URL will generally appear somewhere on your blog sidebar, depending on your theme and settings. If you right-click on the Entries RSS link, you can copy the link address.

The RSS feed is basically a version of your blog that’s easy for automated services to read.

The best service I’ve found for auto-posting to social media sites is TwitterFeed.com. Simply go to TwitterFeed, create an account and then click Create New Feed. Paste the URL for your RSS feed into the text box. You can click the test rss feed button to make sure you did it right.

Click Continue to Step 2. Select the service you want to publish your posts to. You’ll be prompted to connect your social media account(s) to TwitterFeed. When you’ve done that, click All Done! That’s all there is to it. (Using the default settings, it might take up to 30 minutes for new posts to show up on the selected social media sites.)

Note that for Facebook, you can choose to post either to your personal wall or to your author page (if you’ve set up a separate author page). If you want to post to both, simply repeat the process. You can post to as many pages as you want. Repeat the process again to post to a Twitter account or other service.

Oh, and if you’re wondering why you don’t see an option to post to Google Plus, it’s because the G+ API doesn’t currently allow write access. I couldn’t begin to speculate why. Hopefully that will change at some point.

There are all sorts of advanced settings I won’t get into here. You can also get really clever with Twitterfeed by using categories in WordPress. For example, I’ve set my blog up to post all blog entries to my personal Facebook page, but only book-related posts to show up on my author page. To do this, create a category in WordPress (for example, “Book Promotion”) and then create at least one blog post in that category. Go to that post in your blog and click the category to open the archive for that category.

Your browser will open to a page with an url like http://robertkroese.com/wordpress/?cat=6. In this case, “cat=6″ means that 6 is WordPress’s identifier for the “Book Promotion” category.

Go to Twitterfeed and create a new feed, using this format: http://robertkroese.com/wordpress/?cat=6&feed=rss2 (replace my domain with yours and the number 6 with the appropriate category identifier for your site). Click Continue to Step 2 and select your author page as the destination. Now any posts in the category “Book Promotion” will appear on your Facebook author page. This is handy if you don’t want your readers to feel overwhelmed by posts about your cat, children, political rants, etc.

Done!

And you’re done! Now you’ve got a website that provides all the basic information potential readers need and makes it easy for them to share your posts and connect to you on social media sites. It even automatically posts all your new blog posts to those sites for you! All you have to do is write your posts. Have fun!

~

About the Author: Author Rob Kroese’s sense of irony was honed growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan – home of the Amway Corporation and the Gerald R. Ford Museum, and the first city in the United States to fluoridate its water supply. In second grade, he wrote his first novel, the saga of Captain Bill and his spaceship Thee Eagle. This turned out to be the high point of his academic career. After barely graduating from Calvin College in 1992 with a philosophy degree, he was fired from a variety of jobs before moving to California, where he stumbled into software development. As this job required neither punctuality nor a sense of direction, he excelled at it. In 2009, he called upon his extensive knowledge of useless information and love of explosions to write his first novel, Mercury Falls. Since then, he has written two sequels, Mercury Rises (2011) and Mercury Rests (2012), and a humorous epic fantasy, Disenchanted. He has just finished a new novel called Schrodinger’s Gat, which he calls a “quantum physics noir thriller.” 

Rob’s Website / Rob’s Latest Project: Schrodinger’s Gat Kickstarter

Winged Elegance

A Delicate Approach – photo by Sarah Chorn Photography

Ill at Ease with Solomon Grundy

Reblogged from POE:

via fellow 47North author J.D. Horn

A summer sleep-over more than thirty years ago. A rare chance to peruse someone else’s comic collection left me incapable of sleep.

Throughout the wee hours, I lay on the floor, a small lamp shedding a dim circle of light on the massive pile of comic books spread out in a careless semicircle before me.

Read more… 373 more words

For your reading pleasure - this article is part of an on-going blog swap between 47North authors. Here's a look at what inspires J.D. Horn, whose debut urban fantasy THE LINE will be released soon!

The Week in Review – Guest Posts, Author Events and Book News

It’s been a great week. Really. I’ve been high on adrenaline for days and it’s only a matter of time until I crash, and hard. So before I hit the wall, let’s recap:

First up, a little shameless self-promotion: The Kindle version of THE WELL OF TEARS is on SALE today for $2 bucks – if you don’t have a copy, or have friends and family who would enjoy the book, now is the time to buy it! And remember, my reader reward program is still in effect – if you buy the book, read it, review it, and let me know, I’ll send you some goodies:

Alrighty then. Now for the week in review. Last Saturday I was lucky enough to sneak into a little event hosted by my publisher for their mystery / thriller imprint, Thomas & Mercer. It was not only a wonderful opportunity to meet other authors, but also an affirming experience for me. Amazon really is setting the bar high for how authors are treated in this business, and I am a lucky, lucky writer to be included in this venture. Here are some really good posts from authors you might know who were guests at the “On the Lam” conference in Seattle last week:

Lee Goldberg

Max Allan Collins

Helen Smith

Charlie Williams

Next up was the amazing opportunity to host a guest blog appearance for my fellow 47North author Jeff Wheeler. I greatly admire Jeff’s work, especially his Muirwood Trilogy. If you haven’t yet seen his post on World Building, click here.

Then I had some good news regarding a new project, which I hope to be able to share very soon. I’m very excited, but more on that as soon as I get the go ahead to announce it.

Finally, last night was a big fangirl moment for me – I got to attend a fabulous signing event here in Seattle featuring some of my favorite authors and publishing people - Patrick Rothfuss, Terry Brooks, and Peter Orullian in support of Shawn Speakman’s short story anthology UNETTERED. Not only is this anthology a collection of incredible work by some of the true masters of Fantasy writing, it is also a labor of author love and show of solidarity for one of our own. You can learn more about UNFETTERED here.

Whew – what a week! Now it’s time to catch my breath and then try to hit that daily word count goal before happy hour! Have a great weekend!!

World Building (or why family vacations should be a business expense)

By Jeff Wheeler (author of the Legends of Muirwood Trilogy)

In July 2012, I had a lot of time on my hands. My company offers a two-month sabbatical after every seven years of employment and we decided to drive half-way across the United States and back. The time on my hands was literally behind a steering wheel in a van crossing the Sierra Nevada mountains into the Rockies through Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and ending up in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. As a writer, so many of my ideas for world building have come through trips that I’ve made where the location inspired me.

During those long hours behind the steering while, I was working on plotting Book 2 of my new Whispers from Mirrowen trilogy, Dryad-Born (coming Feb 2014). The long and lonely highway seemed to go on forever, which gave me some time to think, plot, and plan. Then we reached the Black Hills region and the surroundings took on an entirely different look. There were rugged hills with craggy granite boulders, thick forests of bur oak trees and bristlecone pine (I know this because one of the Ranger signs described the habitat). It felt like my family had entered a magical world when we reached Custer State Park, the town of Keystone, and eventually Mt Rushmore. There were tunnels carved into the enormous boulders and vistas that were breathtaking. My brain absorbed the location, nibbling on the little details. Out of this experience came the land of Stonehollow where my protagonist in Dryad-Born grew up and where the opening action starts.

I’m not sure if it’s life that imitates art, or art that imitates life. To me, there is a seamless blending of the two. My surroundings tend to influence my current projects as I borrow those little details from life to flesh out a scene or describe a place for a reader to imagine. As I’ve re-read chapters written month before, I would remember that the rain pattering on the window in my office ended up in the chapter I was writing that day. But more importantly, it is many walks through the woods or visiting different places that fire up my imagination and leave a mark in my writing.

Let me share another example. As I was preparing to write a crucial scene in Blight of Muirwood (from the Muirwood Trilogy) that would advance the relationship between the main characters, I happened to be visiting Big Trees state park in California. The park is not well-named. It should be called Ginormous Trees state park. As we walked through these truly towering redwoods, we came on one that had fallen over years before and the root system had been burned in a fire, creating a cave in the depths of this huge sentinel of the woods. Crouching in that cave, staring at the woods around me, the setting for that crucial scene bloomed in my mind and the creation of the kingdom of Pry-Ree literally took root there in the ashes.

Experiences like this happen to me all the time, especially when traveling. An apple orchard. A light house off the coast. A perfect sunset on a nature walk. Boulders in the midst of a grove of oaks. Maybe it’s just the way an author’s mind works, snatching at the little details around us and weaving them into our stories.

How I see the world ends up in the worlds that I create.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Jeff Wheeler (@muirwoodwheeler) is a writer from 7-10PM on Wednesday nights. The rest of the time, he works for Intel Corporation, is a husband and the father of five kids, and a leader in his local church. He lives in Rocklin, California. When he isn’t listening to books during his commute, he is dreaming up new stories to write.

His best-selling Muirwood trilogy (47North) is available now at

Learn more about Jeff and his books at: http://www.jeff-wheeler.com