Terry Odell's Blog, page 45

Celebrations

Celebrations

There’s a lot to celebrate to day. Groundhog Day, for one. It’s not a major event for most, but at my place, it’s the day the Hubster and I got engaged way back when. So that makes it a double celebration.

But wait! There’s more!

 

It’s also Book Launch Day for In the Crosshairs! Happy Book Birthday! (Did I just bury the lede?)

Books are labors of love. Sometimes it’s painful. There’s the writing, of course. And the rewriting. There’s also the research, the fact-checking, the edit...

Those Living in Limbo Days

Those Living in Limbo Days

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

I’m 5 days away from the launch of In the Crosshairs. Amazon has been sending me emails reminding me the book has to be uploaded in its final form. I wish they had a checkbox that said “Yes, it’s as good as it’s going to get. Stop pestering me,” because every time that email comes in, I wonder if there’s a mistake I’ve missed, and if I should read the entire book yet again to see if I can find it. Or them. It’s like living in limbo.

But ...

Marketing Is Part of the Job

Marketing Is Part of the Job

Even traditionally published authors are expected to play a role in the marketing of their books, but for indie authors, it can seem like more work than writing the book. Probably because there’s not a lot of room for creativity. At least not the kind we have in our skill sets. I can hold my own in Canva to create memes, but are they really effective sales tools?

BookBub has an inexpensive “Pre-order Alert” ad. Unlike their Featured Deals, these are open to everyone....

Does Facebook Have a Sense of Humor?

Does Facebook Have a Sense of Humor? Should it?

Image by Matt Trostle from Pixabay

I maintain two Facebook sites. One, my personal profile (which is required), and the other, my Author Page. My personal profile was created when Facebook was relatively new, and it was the only option. The deal was, you accepted as many ‘friends’ as you could and used the profile for marketing. Then “Pages” came into being, and I added my author persona, filtering my personal page posts to reach a very limited num...

When Your Internal Editor Won’t Go Away

When Your Internal Editor Won’t Go Away

I don’t have much trouble with my Internal Editor—let’s call her Edith—when I’m writing. She normally sits in the corner and lets me flounder as I try to create the day’s work. But let me pick up a book, whether it’s written by a Big Name Author, midlist,  or fledgling, she jumps out of her chair and insists on interrupting my read.

We writers, you see, can’t seem to read like “ordinary people.” Edith is constantly pointing out the way the author has put t...

The Nose Knows

The Nose Knows

The sense of smell is directly connected to memory and emotions, and using it in writing can be a powerful tool. I’m going into more depth over at The Kill Zone Blog today. Come over and share your experiences.

 

The post The Nose Knows appeared first on Terry Odell.

Readers Are Chiming In

Readers Are Chiming In

 

I’m thrilled to share some early reviews from my Read and Review Team for In the Crosshairs. I hope you’ll indulge me. It’s always a nail-biting time when you release your baby into the world. Will people think she’s ugly? Will they like her? Love her? Or—almost worse—have no opinion at all. Months of labor go into producing a book. According to my spreadsheet, I started work on this book in late May. It’ll be released February 2nd. That’s quite a gestation period. Of c...

Resolving the Dilemma

[image error]One of the “look on the bright side” aspects of insomnia is I frequently have extra time to let my subconscious play around with my works in progress. I mentioned I wasn’t sure it was a wise move to include two characters with similar names in the first few pages of a book. Readers are getting to know who’s who, what’s what, when’s when, and where’s where, so dumping too much information in those opening pages can lead to confusion, which might lead to them putting the book aside.

For...

Character Name Dilemma

Character Name Dilemma

I’m asking for your help, everyone.

Last time, I talked about starting a new book, and dealing with character names. I like the name Dante for my hero, but nothing is final at this point. In In the Crosshairs, Kiera was Kendra for about 10 chapters, but for whatever reason, Kendra didn’t feel “right,” both when I was typing it and seeing it on the screen. Her friend Natalie was Nancy for most of the book. And I won’t get started on how many characters are named [XX] the fi...

Moving Right Along

Moving Right Along

The tedious task of the final read-through of In the Crosshairs is finished at last. This pass is on the proof copy of the print book. The challenge is to go fast enough so you can catch story/continuity glitches—Hello! Frank lives in a one-story house, so why is he going upstairs? But not so fast that you miss the little things, like “this” instead of “the”. And, for whatever reason, a bunch of missing italics. There’s also a little prettying up the overall appearance in the ...