Austin S. Camacho's Blog, page 24

My View of Reviews

I am often asked how to get reviews for a book.  It’s a fair question when fewer and fewer magazines and newspapers have review sections, well known reviewers naturally prefer to review well known authors and even bloggers who review books are inundated with books from publishers every month. 
Blogger reviews are great, and you can get them.  The trick is to network with bloggers.  Start by following the blogs you’d like to be reviewed on.  Post comments often.  When they write a review you really like, tweet it, or if it’s already out there, REtweet it.  BE a fan to GET a fan.  When you send your book out it is much more likely to be reviewed if the reviewer recognizes your name.
Even bloggers who don’t usually review books can help you.  Once they know who you are they might agree to let you post a guest blog talking about your book.  Or, maybe they’ll put an excerpt of your book on their blog.  Many bloggers like to do author interviews, so make sure you offer to answer a few questions. 
Another way to get reviews is to become a reviewer yourself.  I write monthly for The Big Thrill, the newsletter of the International Thriller Writers.  There’s no pay, but it makes networking with other writers in my genre very easy.  And when I have a new book coming out, it is very easy to ask people I have reviewed to take a look at it. 
You don’t have to have connections with a newsletter or magazine to do this.  Post reviews on Amazon.com of books in your genre.  Not only does this put your name in front of their readers, but it makes them more likely to say yes if you ask for a review. 
All the same rules apply to getting reviews in print publications.  Your best bet is to get to know the reviews at local newspapers and magazines.  If they don’t have one, get to know the entertainment writer.  If he’s writing about TV or local theater he might want to review the local author’s work too.  So comment on their articles (so easy now that almost all publications are on line as well) so they’ll get to know your name.
And don’t overlook social media sites.  I regularly post on a Yahoo Group called Kindle Korner and when someone mentions one of my novels I ask them to put their comments where everyone can see.  A lot of the group members have posted reviews of my books.  Other good places to get reviews include Goodreads and Library Thing.  Both sites have easy setups for doing reader giveaways.  Readers can win a free copy of your book if they post reviews.
Of course the most important factor in getting reviews is to write a book worth talking about.

Staying Focused

This guest post is contributed by Debra Johnson, blogger and editor of Liveinnanny.com.  This is one writer who knows how to maintain her focus to get her writing done
As a writer, staying focused on my writing is often one of the most difficult parts of my day. I mean, I have so many distractions around me. Facebook and texts, co-workers and family, even music can get me off of my writing train and derail my thought process. In order to stay focused while writing you need to:1.                 Keep your cool – Believe it or not the temperature in the room can affect your concentration level. A cool room is better for your brain than a hot one, though if it gets too cold that can cause problems too. But a hot temperature can make you sleepy, nauseated, and even overheated.
2.      Keep it quiet – I know that music is your muse, but studies have found that silence works best for higher thinking. If you are just doing point and click tasks then music is fine, but if you are really trying to write turn it off. If you play music to drown out other auditory distractions, then choose your music wisely. Pick instrumental music r songs with lyrics in a language you do not understand to reduce distraction. Keep the sound down low, just loud enough to cover up the other noises.
3.      Make time to write – If you do not set aside strict times to write you will never get anything done. There will always be something else to do or someone demanding your attention. Be firm and stay strong.4.      Say no – People will want to disturb you while you are writing. They do not understand that writers get into a flow and once you break it they have a hard time getting back on track. Make sure you tell people no when they come to you with requests during writing time. You can tend to them later, right now is your time to write.
5.      Edit later – If you stop to correct every misspelled word or fragmented sentence you will lose your train of thought and everything will take you twice as long. Go back and fix mistakes when you finish writing. Now is the time to keep the flow going.
6.      Write down your ideas – One problem that many writers have is that they have tons of great ideas but they feel like they can’t get them out in time. What you need to do is write notes on your ideas. Get them out of your head and down where you can’t forget them. That way you can relax and enjoy writing instead of trying to keep two things (or more) in your head at one time.
7.      Reread your work –It is always a good idea to reread what you have written, even if you just finished writing it a minute ago. Every break you take or stop you make is an opportunity for you to lose the focus of your writing. Remind yourself where you were going and what your point was.
     These are just a few ideas to help you stay focused in your writing. There are many more ways that you may find work for you as you write. Remember to keep your eyes on the goal and distractions to a minimumDebra Johnson, blogger is a busy writer and editor, but she still welcomes your comments at jdebra84@gmail.com.

C3 Conference - polished paneling

When planning the Creatures, Crimes and Creativity conference it was easy to decide what we wanted the content to be in general.  But the devil’s in the details.  The plan calls for a total of 13 hours of panel with three presentations happening at a time.  That means we need 39 different presentations that will be fun and interesting to readers and to writers of seven genres of fiction. 
Filling two of those slots was easy.  Our local special guests, thriller author John Gilstrap and suspense writer Trice Hickman each offered to give a one-hour presentation.  Both these best sellers have had interesting writing journeys and I think their fans and fellow authors will be jump at the chance to get up close and personal with them and ask their own questions. 
We’re saving one of those hour-long slots for a special event I’ll tell you about later.  That still leaves us with 36 spaces to fill.  Luckily we’ve all been to enough cons to have seen dozens of panels, and we know which ones we liked and which we didn’t.  So the group got together and started throwing out ideas.
In conversation we’ve learned that a lot of people have heard of steampunk but don’t know what it really entails.  So a “What is steampunk” panel seemed a natural.
The team is pushing for me to do a one hour class called “Let’s write a mystery” in which the audience will collaborate, with my guidance, to build a story from scratch.  I love the panel idea, but I’m looking for another mystery author to take it over.  We’d also like to see a panel of new writers talking about how their first book came about and what the experience of being a first-time author is like.
Like the previous idea, a panel discussing how to create a strong protagonist can have writers of different genre.  For mystery and thriller fans we’d like a panel on real-life crime fighting and forensics.  And we plan to mix the genre again for a panel of writers discussing where their ideas come from.
Of course this only scratches the surface – the ideas bubbled up out of control.  The real challenge will fall to romantic suspense author Deliah Lawrence who is our talent coordinator.  As each author registers for the conference she will contact them to learn about their genre and their talents.  Then she will place them on a panel or two with others who will provide the right balance of similarity and contrast. 
Honestly, I can’t wait to see some of these panels, and we haven’t even assigned any authors yet.  And we’re still open to ideas so if there’s a panel YOU’D like to see… or be on… let me know!

The Cover (Letter) Story

Whether you’re writing to a small press like Intrigue Publications or an agent who can get your manuscript considered by a larger publisher, you want your approach to be professional.  Your first professional contact with them will be the cover letter on your submission.  You need to write it as if it will make or break the reader’s interest in your work.  Because it will.
If your work is fiction we (or that agent) want to know two things right away: your book’s title and genre.  In just four months of reading submissions I’m already surprised at how many people send us material we wound never publish, despite our guidelines being posted conspicuously on our web site.  Just as we handle only four genres, agents usually specialize in certain kinds of work.  So we all want to know right away if we should waste our time reading past the first sentence of your letter.
Next we want to know the word count.  Each genre has a common general length.  We are as unlikely to handle a 60,000 word thriller as we are to accept a 100,000 word young adult novel.  Either might be successful someplace else, but not for us.
The letter also needs to show us you know who your target market is.  We want to know you’ve done enough research to have a feel for where your book might fit. 
Now it’s time for a brief synopsis.  It’s not so much about the characters as it is about the story’s primary conflict.  Will we care about the villain’s plan?  Is the hero someone we can care about?  Are the stakes big enough or intimate enough, depending on the genre.  Is the conflict one that the target audience will care about?  This story summary should answer these questions.
Cap your letter with a little history.  Not your personal history, but your publishing history.  What have you sold?  What have you gotten published?  I’d even like to know what you’ve posted for free on the internet.  If you have a blog, I want to see that.
Beyond that, keep your letter to one page.  If it’s an email, try to keep it to that roughly that same length.  This should be enough to get an agent’s or publisher’s attention.  After that, let your writing do the talking.

C3 Conference – Book ‘em

There is no “how to give a literary conference” kit.  So I’m building one.

Next year’s Creatures, Crimes and Creativity conference will give avid readers a chance to mix and mingle with some favorite writers and meet some new authors they’ll want to get to know.  Many of those fans will want to pick up books by those writers while they can get the books autographed.  That means the C3 Con has to have its own bookstore.
Some conferences have volunteer staff run an onsite bookstore.  While that can work, it has its limits.  Authors have to bring their own books, whereas many published authors don’t keep books because bookstores usually just order from a distributor.  You need several dedicated volunteers to make a bookstore run.  And someone has to handle cash and figure out how to take credit cards.
We decided to let a professional handle the book sales at the C3 Con.  In addition to the reasons above we wanted to support a Maryland-based, privately owned bookstore.  We considered several, but it didn’t take long to narrow the choice down to Mystery Loves Company in Oxford MD.
As their name implies, Mystery Loves Company is well versed in handling genre fiction.  Aside from that, Kathy and her staff have a long history of showcasing local authors (including this one) with book signings and other events.  Plus, they have extensive experience working outside their own store.  Mystery Loves Company handles the book sales at the Bay to Ocean writer’s conference and the Malice Domestic mystery convention, not to mention the monthly Mystery Writers of America meetings.
The good news for us is that we will only need for one volunteer to deal with the bookstore.  Romantic suspense author Deliah Lawrence has volunteered to interface with all the authors who register for the conference.  She will get their book titles and ISBN numbers and feed those to Kathy at Mystery Loves Company so she can order them.  Published authors who don’t have distribution will bring books to the conference, where Kathy will log them in and add them to the display for sale. 
We want every author who registers for the conference to have their books available there.  Fans can get to know the writers, hear them speak on a panel or two, and have extra insight into that autographed book they take home.

What ELSE Not To Do In Your Novel

Last week I talked about some things fiction writers should NOT do if they want to see their work published.  Since then several fellow authors have mentioned some other crimes that writers need to avoid, enough to warrant a follow-up blog.  For example…
Don’t write a classic.  Thomas Hardy’s “Return of the Native” opens with an entire chapter describing the setting.  That may have made readers swoon in the 1870s but it will simply put today’s readers to sleep.  Keep your book focused on the story, and give us no more detail in setting or background than we really need.  The easiest way to avoid being wordy is to seek out and delete all adverbs and most adjectives.  Nouns and verbs make the story.  
The only thing worse than being overly wordy is being overly scholarly, especially in your dialog.  Atlas Shrugged was a big hit in the 1950s, but you won’t be able to sell a manuscript with a 70 page monolog today.  Dialog needs to imitate the way people converse, and none of us is going to let our friend go on for even a fraction of that time without chiming in.  Also, dialog doesn’t need to follow the same rules of grammar your prose sticks to.  People speak in fragments, use contractions, and sometimes just misuse words.
In the same vein, don’t focus too much on detail in general.  Tom Clancy is a very successful writer, but he had brought any of his manuscripts to Intrigue Publishing we would have passed unless he cut about a quarter of the book.  We just don’t think our readers need to know much more about a particular weapons system than its name and what it can do.  The same applies to day-to-day activities.  Unless something exciting happens during the trip I don’t really need to see our hero sitting in his car going from here to there.  We will assume that your characters do brush their teeth, shower, go to the bathroom, get dressed, etc.  Unless something happens that moves the plot forward or deepens characterization, let it all happen off camera.
Don’t make me work to follow your story.  I’m not against flashbacks, but non-linear storytelling (the TV show Lost comes to mind) will prompt me to put the book down.  Flashing forward and back is not necessary if you have a good story anyway.  Using literary techniques just to show off does not impress me, or most acquisition editors.  The last writer I read who I thought got away with being cute with a story was O. Henry.
If you have more ideas for things that writers should NOT do if they want to get published, share with us!

The Key to the Keynotes

If you decide to produce a mystery conference you want to get a big-name mystery author to give a keynote speech.  That name lends credibility to your project and attracts fans who want a chance to get up close and personal with the master.  But what if you’re giving a mystery-suspense-thriller-horror-science fiction-fantasy-steampunk conference like our own Creatures, Crimes & Creativity Con?  Well, to draw those various fans you better have broader big name representation.  How do you do that?
Well, here’s what not to do.  Don’t write to the publicists, managers, editors or agents of your favorite writers.  Those folks are in the business of getting lucrative gigs for their authors.  One vampire-writing Southern belle gets more for a speaking engagement than our entire conference budget!  Even local mystery bestseller Laura Lippman gets $5K to appear.  (To be fair, Ms Lippman does donate every penny of that to the Enoch Pratt Free Library, a marvelous way for an author to give back.)
You get those big names to your conference by being part of the writing community so you can ask them personally.  Jeffrey Deaver has put so many thrillers and mysteries on the New York Times bestseller list that he could almost name his price to appear at a conference.  Even if you’ve never read a mystery you probably know who his sleuth Lincoln Rhyme is or have at least seen The Bone Collector, one of his novels that made the jump to the big screen.  But when I asked him, at a Mystery Writers of America meeting, if he’d be willing to headline our new conference he checked his PDA and said, “Sure, I’m free.”
Similarly, our local guests of honor are people we know beyond their writing.  I’ve met John Gilstrap, another New York Times bestselling thriller writer, at several writers’ club functions.  He gives classes in the area and works with local writers whenever he can spare the time.  John always supports other authors and he quickly agreed to attend the C3 conference.
Urban drama author Sandra Bowman is a master (mistress?) of networking.  She knows all the local writers worth knowing and met bestselling romantic suspense author Trice Hickman on Facebook.  When Trice learned of our planned conference she was the first to offer her talents and marquee name to the cause.  She, like Gilstrap, will be interviewed at the conference and will give a seminar on writing and getting published.
Our second keynote speaker, New York Times bestselling horror and science fiction writer Christopher Golden was NOT a personal friend.  However, Golden is a longtime friend of a longtime friend of mine, Meloney Crawford Chadwick.  When Meloney was a comic book editor she gave Golden his first break as a writer.  When she reached out to him for me, he was happy to come on board.
Networking and professional friendships are the secret to getting great celebrity guests for a conference.  And I think we have some real shining stars for the C3 Conference.

What Not To Do In Your Novel

Now that we have launched Intrigue Publishing I am often asked "What do I have to do in my novel to get it published?" Most often, authors would be better served to focus on what NOT to do.

First, if you’re writing for us, forget the common advice to “write what you know.”  For example, a sensual erotica novel will be downright boring if most writers only relate what they have personally experienced.  In crime fiction it’s important to be able to not just introduce new and interesting ways to commit murder and other crimes but to imagine how it feels to be the evil megalomaniac.  Good YA depends on having an imagination to match a child’s.  And even though urban drama must be rooted in realism, it needs to go beyond simply relating events we all know happen in the hood if you want to catch our attention.  So Start with what you know but write what you imagine.
Don’t get so caught up in your story that you confuse your reader.  To picture the action accurately I want to know what day it is, what time it is and, more importantly, how much time has passed from one scene to the next.  If, in the middle of the action I go, “Wait.  Is it the next day?” then you’ve lost me.  This is one place crutches are okay so go ahead and refer to the position of the sun, or that darkness is approaching.  Tell us what meal is coming up or have a character comment that they’ve been on that trail for three days.  In some cases you might want to state the day and time in a subheading at the start of each chapter.   And don’t confuse me about the point of view either.  It’s best to stick to one POV but if you want to hop into another character’s head do it at the start of a chapter, or put an extra space between paragraphs.  Give me some warning that the switch has taken place.
When it comes to characters, don’t overdo the description.  You want to give me enough description so I can tell the characters apart.  But you also want to leave something for the reader's imagination. If you overdo it you might contradict the image the reader already has in mind.  Words like “handsome” and “tall” mean different things to different people, and unless the character’s exact height is important to the plot, “tall” is probably enough.
That’s a good start for your self-critiquing and editing.  I’ll have more “thou shalt not”s in a future blog.

C3 Conference - Working On Site

There is no “how to give a literary conference” kit.  So I’m building one.
When we decided to launch the Creatures, Crimes and Creativity conference we knew that one of our challenges would be to prove the event is real. People will only register for a conference if they are confident that something will actually happen.  Despite our many connections in the writing community we knew we not only had to BE real… we had to LOOK real.  That meant getting our web site in place as early as possible because here in the 21st Century, if you don’t exist on the internet, you don’t exist.
So we looked closely at the web sites of other cons that we love: Thrillerfest, Love is Murder, Bouchercon, Malice Domestic, Balticon and several others.  Once we had an idea of what we wanted OUR site to be, we needed a web designer who could turn our vision into reality.  We settled on Stevenson Graphics and Design .
We knew the landing page needed to explain what our conference was all about.  It also needed links to a number of other pages and to show off our keynote speakers and local guest authors.  We also wanted a countdown to the Con (380 days and counting.)  Oh, and we wanted the page to not look cluttered.
Stevenson came through with a very nice design and also thought to add an RSS connection.  We had also asked for a creative logo.  After looking at several options we selected the shield design you see here, an almost heraldic combination of artistic, literary and crime-fighting symbols, complete with a fantasy creature, that somehow manages to look futuristic.  We love it.
 We wanted all registrations to come through the web site and thank goodness Stevenson knew how to execute that because we had no idea.  As it is, the registration form is separate from the money.  It lets everyone choose their banquet meal and allows for notes and comments that will help us fine-tune the conference as more people register.  And of course it allows registrants to tell us if they are authors so we can get them on the right panels.
We also created a page that will list each attending author with a link to their web site, a place holder page where we’ll display the panel schedule when we firm it up, and a contact page through which we hope to get lots of input.
In fact, I hope you will explore our conference web site and use the link on our contact page to tell us what you think of it.

Intrigue Publishing – What’s the holdup?

Some writers have told us that one reason they self-publish is that they don’t want to wait forever to see their books in print.  Their faces fall when I tell them that if they publish with us they can expect their release date to be a year from the day they sign the contract.  And that’s twice as fast as some big publishers work. 
“But,” they protest, “I sent my manuscript to a Print-On-Demand publisher and had books in my hand in less than a month.”  That reaction tells me that the author doesn’t realize all the steps involved in the process.
The fact that we believe you have a well-written story worth publishing doesn’t mean your work is done.  We’ll have suggestions for improvements that will drive rewrite number one.  Then your manuscript will go to a professional editor.  She will work with you on the structure, flow, pace, plot, character development and dialogue.  Armed with a marked-up manuscript and a four or five page evaluation, you launch into rewrite number two.
Then the book goes to a proofreader who seeks out spelling and grammar errors and looks for inconsistencies.  Another staffer will make sure the mistakes are really mistakes and don’t mess with your voice.
Once we agree that the manuscript is as good as it can be it’s time for formatting and designing the interior.  Meanwhile we send the manuscript to our graphic designer to create a cover, plus matching bookmarks, print ads and related promotional materials.
At this point we should still be more than six months from release.  A galley proof returns from the printer and both the author and one of our staff read through it to ferret out the last formatting errors.  About this time the e-book version is formatted.  This is rather different from formatting a print book. 
The first shipment of books should arrive about five months from the release date.  These are really ARCs – Advance Reader Copies.  Some will be sent to other authors with requests for blurbs.  Others will go in review packets assembled the month before.  Most reviewers want to receive books at least four months prior to release, so they can read the book and get their reviews into their publications to coincide with the book release.
But we’re not done yet.  A book-specific web page needs to be built.  Press releases must be written.  Files must be uploaded to ebook sources.  And, while each book’s promotional plan will be different, many will include ordering a video trailer, mailing books to independent bookstores, placing print ads in a variety of publications, or arranging for blog tours or talk radio tours.  Each of these is a time consuming activity that must be done weeks in advance.
Oh, and let’s not forget the fun part – planning for the book release party.  Again, each one is unique.  Your book’s release isn’t an action – it’s an event!
There are a few other details of course, but this hits the high points and hopefully helps to explain why it takes so long for a good book to be born.