Exploring QR codes

You've seen them everywhere--those little squares consisting of black and white marks that appear in newspapers, magazines, on coffee cups, even on t-shirts. They are quick response codes, or QR codes that are meant for consumers to grab information and perhaps buy immediately. We are living in a world of iPhones and Androids now, meaning that we carry the equivalent of electronic Swiss Army knives. Not only can we phone or text friends, we can check calendars, take notes, play games, read news and books, and take photographs. (To be sure, that list is incomplete.)

It's that last capability, taking photos, that makes QR codes so important. If you download one of the many free QR reader such as this one from Kaywa and see a QR code, just open the reader, take a quick snapshot of the code, tap on the photo, and your phone's browser is redirected to the encoded location. Here, for example, is the first QR code I ever created. Scan it with your phone, and you'll be taken to my Amazon page where all my books are for sale.

How many consumers scan these codes? I don't know yet, but the technology is free and easy, so it's going to be fun to find out. I suspect that over time, QR codes will be a real boon to us self-publishers and do-it-yourself marketers.

Have you tried using them, either as a seller or as a consumer?

Talking to yourself

If you stand on a street corner or walk down the grocery aisle and talk to yourself, people might think you're a little touched. That's certainly what I thought about a woman a few years ago when I saw her apparently chatting with a display of sirloin steaks--that hands-free Bluetooth device of hers sure had me fooled.

Chances are, most of us talk to ourselves now and then, and we just sorta keep it low-key and not too public. But if you're a writer, you should talk to yourself now and then. Read with your lips and your larynx to hear and feel the flow of your words. No, no, don't read newspapers or books that way, just the drafts of your own work. You'll find those double words and repeated sentences, the phrasing that doesn't sound quite right. Maybe you'll spot a passive voice or an incomplete sentence.

The point is to use more than just your sense of sight. Use your sense of hearing as well, and you will pick up on those errors that might otherwise slide right past you.

Right now I'm typing with the office door closed, so my wife doesn't hear me talking to myself.

Make the most of Twitter

The other day I reached 6,000 followers on Twitter. Why is that worth mentioning? Because of the  power of retweeting, Twitter is a highly effective means of reaching readers. That feature allows you the potential of reaching many times more than the number of followers you have. A lot of these followers are going to be ebook  owners, and a lot of them are willing to spend a small amount of money to try out an unknown author. For me, $2.99 seems an effective price point.

On Twitter you can find them by searching for hashtags (#) that categorize topics. Some that I've found useful are: #kindle, #writing, #amwriting, #amreading, #mysteries, #humor, #crime, #books, and #ebooks. A search will display recent tweets that have included those hashtags. Then I suggest you follow a number of those people, and retweet some of their messages. Many of those people will follow you back.

Twitter sets follower limits but doesn't publicize them. You just know you've reached a limit when they tell you, but that is not a problem. Send out some tweets and retweets, and soon you'll find you can follow more people. Be patient with trying to grow your follower list. It seems Twitter just doesn't want people to abuse the system or weigh it down.

I'd suggest you use some other tools to complement Twitter. There are many, but I'll tell you what I'm familiar with. Twellow allows you to search for people by subject matter. What I like about it is that it lists people with your interests in descending order by number of followers. So if you search for mysteries and someone saying she likes mysteries has a million followers, that person is listed first, or close to it. You want to follow people who have a lot of followers, within reason. But if Oprah or Eminem say they like mysteries and has ten million followers, it may not serve your marketing purposes to follow them. Chances are about zero that they'll follow you back. When a celebrity has a million followers but only follows 15 people, that's a sign to move on. There are plenty of people who follow and are followed by thousands, and you should focus on them--any number down to just a few hundred.

You might also try a scheduling tool such as Timely. I use mine to list a weekend's worth of tweets and have them go out on a predetermined schedule so it doesn't look like you're spamming Twitter.

So far, what I've mentioned is all free. If you get serious about using Twitter and can spare the cash, you might consider TweetAdder to automate your follows. First I suggest you try collecting followers without it and see how well you fare in selling your ebooks. When you get to the point where you're making some sales, then I'd spring for TweetAdder at $55.

What's been your experience? Have you used other tools we should know about?

A few words about Lendink

Recently, a lot of us learned of an ebook-borrowing site called Lendink. What a stir it caused, with twisted knickers everywhere, including my own. All three of my titles were listed as being available on the site. They weren't going to charge for borrowing, so what were they doing? Stealing our work? The site had a hard-to-read FAQ page explaining among other things that they didn't maintain copies of the books or even the covers. All they were doing--or attempting--was to match up owners of books with others who might want to borrow them.

Hmmm. Can you spell trouble? How about L-e-n-d-i-n-k? Amazon has its own policies regarding borrowing, and of course we authors want a say in what happens to our works. It wasn't totally clear to me whether Lendink maintained any connection with Amazon, so I wrote Amazon. Here is their reply dated August 3:


Hello,

We have not authorized lendink.com to loan your book and have not provided your file to them.

If you've found your work available on an unauthorized website such as lendink.com, we suggest contacting that website to confirm your rights and request removal of your work. If you distribute your book through other sales channels, you might contact them to inquire as to whether they have authorized the inclusion of your book on lendink.com.

Our lending program allows a purchaser to lend a title once and does not allow the recipient to re-loan that book. For more information about Kindle book lending, check out this page:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200549320&#loan

I hope this helps. Thanks for using Amazon KDP.

Meeting new friends

Santee Lakes, Santee, California

We're meeting some interesting people on our RV trip. In San Diego, we were both sitting outdoors reading books, and a gentleman stopped by to comment about what we were doing. It's great to see people who are  fellow readers, he said. Okay, so besides being sociable, he may have had another motive--his t-shirt read, "Ask me about my book," and of course there was a picture of his book. That led to a couple of lengthy and enjoyable conversations with Ralph Cates, author of Black October and member of a local writers' group. We swapped books and email addresses and agreed to stay in touch. He's done a good job of hand-selling copies of his books at various RV sites, though that's not something I've ever felt comfortable doing.

Last night, as we were strolling through the RV park in Utah, a couple spoke to us and we wound up chatting for a good twenty minutes. They had an impressive-looking telescope and were waiting for the sun to go down. Nothing remarkable about our chat, and the subject of books never came up. But in an RV park you can usually strike up enjoyable conversations with total strangers. Once in a while there's a click and you both agree to stay in touch, and other times you just spend a pleasant few minutes and that's all there is.

Fun Times at the Corner Cafe

This month I'm pleased to be part of the publication of The Corner Café, a dandy little collection of short stories by a group of indie writers. You can learn more and buy it on Amazon at http://bitly.com/Cornercafe. The cost is only $0.99, and all royalties will go to a charity that promotes literacy.

Now (drumroll, please) I'd like to introduce my guest and cyber friend Stephen Tremp. The floor is yours, Steve:

Today I thought I’d have a little fun and blog about really bad ideas writers conceptualize when developing a new story. Not every idea is a good idea. And sometimes we only see this in retrospect, after spending many valuable hours trying to write the story.

This is not Steve Tremp.

Hmm. This isn't him either.

Example: a few years ago I wanted to do a private eye series. The protagonist, named Dave McCracken, lived and worked in Manhattan. The first book in the series opened with him failing miserably in a particular case where the bad guy got away and killed an innocent person. Dave knew he needed a street smart sidekick. Little did he know his future partner would be a black crack whore with a bad attitude.   Another character was an informant Dave would get valuable information from. He was a cab driver and would see a lot of things happening on the streets at night and hear things from people he drove around. His name: Hack. That’s it. Just plain Hack. Together, the three incompatible misfits solved crimes.   I wrote a few chapters and outlined a few more. After a couple weeks I stood back and took a look at my work. It was then I realized that this was one of the stupidest things I had ever read. Two weeks wasted, down the drain.   After receiving feedback from people, I can see that I might have something of significance lying dormant with the really dumb idea I had. Perhaps there is a spoof in there, consisting of a white bungling PI, a black crack head hooker, and a surly middle-eastern cab driver. Part of the slap stick conflict between the characters could arise from this diversity.   Each book in the series would present a new cast of supporting characters, such as families who hire the PI, the suspects, local police, and people in the neighborhood such as shop owners. Crime fighting comedies include Reno 911, the Keystone Cops, Barney Fife, Police Academy, the Naked Gun series, among many others.   Although I like taking calculated risks, I would be stepping into a new genre, and one I’m not confident I am able to write. But I do see potential. Just not sure I want to step off this particular cliff.

Question: Have you ever changed genres? Have you thought about making the leap?   Stephen Tremp blogs at Breakthrough Blogs and is the author of the Breakthrough Trilogy.   If you feel this blog is worthy, go ahead and make my day. Retweet.

Oh, here is Stephen Tremp.

Next up in the Blog Book Tour for The Corner Cafe: June 6 Red Tash interviews Dani Greer at http://RedTash.com

Review of GOTU: A Thriller with Speed and Attitude

Right from the opening scene, GOTU is an action-packed thriller that moves with the speed and attitude of a .44 slug. Sergeant Robin Marlette supervises Arizona's drug enforcement unit, known informally to its members as Guardians Of The Universe, or GOTU. Their job is to stop the worst of the bad guys from crossing the Mexican border with illegal drugs, and they don't exactly issue traffic citations. Robin is the ideal leader, who inspires his men to follow him anywhere. He is a fine family man, which is a crucial fact about him--if the bad guys shoot at the GOTU crew, that's business. But when they threaten Robin's family, they make the worst mistake of their miserable lives. At times he almost seems too perfect, but then we learn that he isn't.


With his background in Arizona law enforcement, author Mike McNeff certainly knows his stuff. There's never a dull moment in GOTU, especially when it comes to gunfights. It's a crisply written, satisfying read.

Review of The Devil of Light

I posted the following review on Amazon. If you like your fiction dark, read this one. This author is good.

Gae-Lynn Woods has written a dark thriller that plumbs the depths of evil in a small Texas town. Hitch, an ex-convict, comes to Arcadia and finds a man of means who will pay him to take care of certain unpleasant business. Hitch takes much pleasure in his work, which includes amputations, torture, and spectacular displays of cruelty. Ms. Woods writes exceptionally well, with good dialogue, smooth writing, and vivid details that will make the reader wince--take "brain drain" as a hint. Much of the story is told from the police investigators' point of view, and they certainly have their hands full. But then Arcadia may not be the only town graced by Hitch's presence, because "evil always finds a home."


Fans of James Lee Burke will enjoy The Devil of Light for the way Ms. Woods exposes human depravity. This looks like the beginning of a compelling series.

Nothing That Needed Eyes

Here is a bit of flash fiction I'll turn into something longer one of these days. Copyright 2012 by Bob Sanchez, of course.

NOTHING THAT NEEDED EYES

By Bob Sanchez

No good would come from disturbing this old house, I thought, applying my crowbar to an ancient oak plank. Still, there could be money squirreled away somewhere in this mess. Rusty nails creaked and snapped; the board popped up to expose a shallow dirt cellar crawling with centipedes and roaches.

Nellie Westhaver had lived here alone, at first pitied and then ignored by the townsfolk for the shiftless husband who had held lots of odd jobs and fast women until he and some mini-skirted trash named Luann disappeared for good and good riddance, probably on the Greyhound to Boston. He’d left his rattletrap Buick behind, but Nellie didn’t drive.

I’d recently spent ten years’ worth of medium security in Walpole and didn’t have a dime left to my name. Crazy Nellie had been my next-door neighbor, the type who never answers the door, fills every room with newspapers going back to Genesis, and lets you know she’s dead when she starts to smell. The house dated back to Revolutionary times, with its low ceilings and stone fireplaces in every room and not a single wall or doorway plumb or true. Not having many job prospects as an ex-con, I decided to see if the old bat had hidden any cash.

The stench had finally told her fate last week—masked EMTs carried her body out feet first on a stretcher, and police closed and padlocked the door. Already I hear Seven-Eleven wants to buy the lot.

Evidently, someone had made half an effort to tame the terrible odor, but the place still smelled like air freshener overpowered by death. Rot gnawed at the wood while mold spores and silence filled the air. Old Look magazines and Lowell Sun newspapers sat in dusty stacks. A small TV with rabbit ears looked like it hadn’t been used since Lawrence Welk died. At the window, a fly struggled in a spider web as a daddy-longlegs sidled up to suck out its juices. I knew how the fly felt, an inmate at the mercy of a sadistic prison guard.

Home improvement for this house would have to start with a match, but I’d never torch it because I’d be the number one suspect. This was the first place I’d ever broken into, the first place I’d ever been arrested, back in my juvie days when Nellie and Ashton still held backyard cookouts and enjoyed sipping martinis and electrocuting moths with their luminescent bug zappers.

Nellie’s bed smelled about right for her having died in it. I felt in the stained pillows and covers for hidden cash, knowing perfectly well some cop would already have checked all those obvious places and pocketed the prize. Cabinets and closets and dressers turned up the usual jetsam floating in a sea of dust bunnies as Nellie sailed on to her next life.

I pushed the queen-sized bed aside to rummage through the tattered cardboard boxes underneath and found old letters and bills, a broken telephone, stained Melamine plates, nothing even fit for a yard sale. If this house had anything less than ten years old or worth more than five dollars, I’d have been shocked. Frustrated, I kicked a box. There was no point in looking any more—but wait, this was odd. Several floor boards looked lighter and newer than the rest: pine surrounded by oak, galvanized nails bent but not rusted, hammer-head impressions in the soft wood suggesting slapdash carpentry.

Eagerly I pried another board and looked into the darkness. Some godforsaken life form squeaked and scurried away. I turned my flashlight on a pea-green Army blanket, and a thousand miserable bugs scattered in all directions. Only a fool would disturb that filthy piece of trash, but I was a plain and simple fool.

I went to a closet and found a wire coat hanger that I used to fashion a hook. I tried to catch one edge of the blanket, but the hanger slipped out of my hands and out of reach. Disgusted, I lay on the floor and reached down to pull away the blanket.

A sudden visit from the police couldn’t have brought me closer to cardiac arrest. I didn’t care anymore about money.

A pair of skeletons in rotted clothing lay one on top of the other. A hatchet rested inside the skull it had shattered down the middle. Toadstools grew out of both eye sockets—but there was nothing here that needed eyes.

A modest proposal

Kindle and Nook owners are always on the lookout for good reads, and I have three for you (ahem, cough, cough) -- mine. So here's an offer: Send me an email at desertwriter1@gmail.com, asking for a free e-book from the list below. I will send you one right away. In return, I request that if you like the book, you post a brief review on Amazon.

Let me know whether you own a Kindle or a Nook so I can send a file in the right format. Here are the titles:

When Pigs Fly (Funny. Silly, even. Not for kids)

Getting Lucky (Semi-serious P.I. fare)

Little Mountain (Serious crime novel)

You can find descriptions and current reviews at bitly.com/bobsanchez, which is my Amazon author page.

You want a good read. I want your feedback. Can we make a deal?

A jumbled mess

My desk is a jumbled mess. Fourteen books, a stack of papers that my cat Gracie nibbles on (she does love her paperwork, a calendar, my laptop and monitor, a rarely used lamp... What's in that stack of paper? I haven't seen the bottom of it in months. There are books to read, books to assign to reviewers, duplicate books to donate to the library. I owe two reviews to Kirkus and plan to write one for the Internet Review of Books. One novel needs polishing, one needs a first draft to be completed, and one short-story collection is all ready except for the cover art. And of course there are the guest blogs I've been delinquent in writing.

What's a writer to do? Well, one could toss out some of those papers. Prioritize tasks. Or hop into the old RV and go flower-peeping. That's what my bride and I did last week, visiting Wildseed Farms and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Texas Hill Country. I didn't write a lick during that time, but enjoyed taking photos.

Wildseed Farms is a nursery on steroids. If you're ever in the Fredericksburg, Texas area in springtime, it's a must-see.

Poppies, Wildseed Farms

We just missed the bluebonnets at the Lady Bird Wildflower Center in Austin, but the displays we saw were gorgeous.

Lady Bird Wildflower Center

Meanwhile, my paperwork and writing projects await. 

Nitpicker's delight

The first time I ever heard of a concordance was in a public library in the 1960s, when I saw one for the Bible--the King James version, probably. It listed the number of occurrences of every single word and indicated the context. What an odd project, I thought. Did some monk undertake this task in an isolated monastery after finishing his morning prayers? Or was it the work of a theologian who, having finally solved the angels-on-a-pin question, realized he still had spare time?

Between then and the late '80s the word "concordance" couldn't have escaped my lips more than once or twice, except perhaps to question the reason for their existence. If memory serves, the first version of Microsoft Word I encountered allowed the creation of such a curiosity.

The other day, though, I got to wondering. Does Word have such a function now? No. So I Googled the word and found a free third-party tool that does the job. I downloaded it and found it easy to  use.

So why should you care?  It turns out to be a nice proofreading tool. You can see if you may have overused a certain word, and it can help you find typos and inconsistencies. (Yeah, I know. Bo-o-o-oring! So all the more reason to have a tool that does the job quickly.) For example, did you hyphenate a word only part of the time?  One of my current projects is editing a person's novel, and I am making one final pass through it. TextSTAT helps me find some of those annoying nits I might otherwise miss until the book goes into print.

Here is part of a sample output. Notice the sorting options on the right:

How to maintain sales?

My first just-for-me splurge with money from my Kindle sales: a copy of Rosetta Stone for Latin American Spanish. Is it too late in life to master another language? It's not too late to try. That first royalty check hasn't arrived yet, but it should be here soon.

Meanwhile, the big question is how to maintain a level of sales that had been so strong for a month or two and then dropped off? Perhaps one way is to keep new products coming. At the moment there are three in the pipeline--two novels and a short e-book. Of course, no two of my projects have any logical link, which goes against what everyone seems to think a writer should do. You take someone like Sue Grafton. She has a whole alphabet full of novels tightly linked with the same main character. And Janet Evanovich. And Ed McBain, rest his soul, writing 87th Precinct novels by the dozens.

Me? No sequels here. ADD, maybe.

Do any other writers have this problem, that your head gets turned by every new shiny object of an idea?

Oh wait, I was talking about sales. If you haven't tried Twitter, give it a go. It's time-consuming but free, and I think the time has been well spent.

Review of Jeff Rivera's Effortless Marketing

Yesterday I downloaded Jeff Rivera's 99-cent e-book, Effortless Marketing: How I Sold Thousands of Ebooks, Landed an Agent and Book Deal in Just 10 Minutes a Day Using Message Boards. Today I spent two hours in a doctor's waiting room with my Kindle and read the book from beginning to end. Other than a couple of small blips, it's a decent resource for us indie authors.

As its title suggests, it focuses on how to effectively use message boards, stressing the importance of visiting boards with 5,000 to 10,000 users. Of course, different writers will likely have different audiences, but I wish the book gave at least a few examples of large boards. If you know of some, please reply to this post with the information. In the meantime, here are the most promising links I've come up with:

http://rankings.big-boards.com/
http://directory.big-boards.com/
http://www.fictiondb.com/

The Big Boards site has a comprehensive-looking list on various topics and in various languages. If I find specific links on that site that seem promising, I promise to share and hope you'll do the same.

Can I make it up in volume?

Kindle's KDP Select program opened up some real opportunities for independent authors to make money from our own work. With three books on the market, it wasn't hard for me to tweak the formatting and upload them to KDP.

The deal is widely known: give Amazon an exclusive on distribution for 90-day periods, and you can not only sell your e-books for a 70 percent royalty, but you're also paid each time your titles are borrowed in their Kindle Prime program. You can offer them for free for up to five days within that period as well.

For me, this program has been an immediate success. My titles have been downloaded over 30,000 times, mostly as freebies, but the attention has also generated a fine, if temporary income. I was determined not to spend any money at all on advertising, so I focused almost all my energy on Twitter. When giving away a title, I always included the #free hashtag in my tweets. It's like bears to honey. People love freebies. But one surprise to me was that a certain number of people would see the free offer and pay for the book instead, as it was only $2.99. After an initial announcement on Facebook, I used it very little, partly because of the lesser reach and partly because it felt more intrusive, like always getting in someone's face. Twitter is anonymous, and the connections seem more distant. Ironically, while Facebook is bigger, it seems that tweets can reach more new people quickly.

Still, you know the saying about all good things. Until a week or so ago, Twitter and I seemed to be generating steady sales--and then sales seemed to fall off a cliff and go splat. There's a certain group of people who retweet my messages, and I always do the same for them, but apparently my market is tapped out for now. My followership is at about 2,400, and probably that number has to increase by quite a bit to reach a significant new group of potential buyers.

February sales have convinced me that the market is out there. Book lovers will spend 2.99 on an unknown author if they are given the opportunity. Could Facebook ads provide that extra kick? I tried a brief experiment, uploading an ad for all three books that would cost me slightly under a dollar per click. My plan was to try it for a week, budgeting $10 per day. My Twitter sales had already flatlined, so any Facebook results would be obvious. By the time I had 32 clicks, the cost to me was about $26, and I had sold two books. So let's see:

Sale price: $2.99
My share: $2.05
Amazon's share: $0.94
Facebook's share $13.00

Someone please help me out, because I'm not very smart. If I lose about $11 per sale, can I make it up in volume? Since the answer is probably no, I canceled my FB ad today.

What in the World Is Creative Nonfiction?

Please give a warm welcome to Morgan St. James, who knows a thing or two about creative non-fiction, an area quite new to me. Take it away, Morgan ...

First of all, Bob, thanks so much for asking me to write about “creative nonfiction.” Many people are a bit flummoxed when they hear this and want to know “what in the world is creative nonfiction?”

Well, the genre of creative nonfiction is enjoying a renaissance of sorts these days. I’m even working on one myself—a book entitled Confessions of a Cougar, targeted for release late this year. The title should give you a pretty good idea of what it's about, so we won’t go there today, but watch for it to come out. It is a very “interesting” read.

What type of books qualify as creative non-fiction?

The range is wide. There is fertile ground for creative non-fiction because so many out-of-the-ordinary things happen in real life. It can be anything from life as a spy for Churchill to the child of a parent who was one of America’s Most Wanted to a romantic romp. Maybe this genre is enjoying resurgence because reports of crisis or bizarre experiences spew from every newscast, tabloid, radio talk show and more. Reality shows demonstrate the degree of humiliation or challenge a human being is willing to endure for money and publicity. Some stories are fascinating, some make the heart go atwitter, and some cause revulsion. Defining creative non-fiction as “not fiction” is almost like calling classical music “non-rock.”

It actually started centuries ago

Back in the days of yore, literature was mostly non-fiction—it just wasn’t called that. Books recounted actual events in a storytelling style. Myths were basically the fiction of the day. It is natural for people to tell stories about events in their life, and that said, I must be the poster child for over-the-top stories. If anything, I almost have too many of my own stories. Sometimes I have to heed a mental “T-Sign” and slow it down, so for the most part they turn up as scenes in my fiction books.

Example of a creative non-fiction story

One of the award-wining stories in the recently released The MAFIA FUNERAL and Other Short Stories collection is The Second Time Around—a hilarious, over-the-top story about a woman who remarried her first husband thirty-six years after getting divorced. When Husband #4 died at the race track with a winning ticket in his hand, she decided to find Husband #1, the dashing tango dancer in her youthful memories. Although he turned out to be an aging, potbellied little man with a sprinkling of thin gray hair across his pate and a Desi Arnaz accent, to her he was Antonio Banderas. Who was the woman? My former mother-in-law. It’s a great story and a terrific example of creative non-fiction.

Most people have stories about what happened at the office, how we met our spouse, a hilarious misunderstanding and on and on ad infinitum. When telling these stories, we often embellish the facts for the shock or humor value by adding details that didn’t actually happen and exaggerating or eliminating some that did. What does a story like that become? Creative non-fiction. Facts mixed with fictional details.

Manipulating the story while being "sort of" true to facts

Think about it. Often the tendency is to leave out details that might make us look bad, stupid or gullible. When we are talking about someone we don’t like, they might be depicted as a real ogre when in fact they are only someone with bad habits. But it is more entertaining to give them extras that make them loathsome. Let’s not call these lies. They are “prevarications”—statements that don’t really give a direct and honest answer or opinion, or perhaps dance around a clear and truthful account of a situation. Adding controversy or being deliberately ambiguous or misleading, doesn’t qualify as a bald-faced out-and-out lie. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

What makes the story change?

Depending upon the point of view we choose, the story changes. Are we telling only what we can see (first person)? What someone else has seen and is now telling the reader (third person)? Perhaps a God-like knows all/sees all point of view that includes knowing thoughts of various people (omniscent). Or, a combination of any of the above. We determine who is important to the story, who will be most likeable, what events will trigger the reader’s emotion, etc. This might not be the way it really happened, but it makes for a better read. We are being creative with factual information plus some manipulation and prevarication thrown in for good measure.

In the end, however, if you want it to stay creative non-fiction, you are stuck with what really happened. Otherwise it becomes a creation of your imagination or pure fiction. Oak Tree Press will be releasing my latest novel, Who’s Got the Money?, written with co-author Meredith Holland. It is a government embezzlement story that happens in a division of the Department of Justice--federal prisons. The story is fiction but the inspiration was from first hand knowledge of the system. In other words, the scheme didn’t happen but from our experience we know it would be possible. As for the humor, well, that’s a bonus.

Whichever path you choose, it’s your story—you can play with the endings. Real stories don’t always turn out the way you want them if you are holding to reality.

Writer or not, I’ll bet you have some great stories. Why not try your hand at turning real events into a captivating combination of dialogue and narrative with a little help from your imagination. Even if it doesn’t get published it should be an interesting jaunt down Memory Lane.

MORGAN ST. JAMES co-authors the popular Silver Sisters Mysteries series with her real-life sister Phyllice Bradner. She also writes and co-writes novels, short stories and columns, publishes a Writers’ Tricks of the Trade monthly E-Zine newsletter, and more. Her books are available at most online booksellers or from your favorite local bookstore. Morgan’s talks and workshops have been praised by attendees at conferences, meetings and events. The Writers’ Tricks of the Trade webinars, sponsored by www.savvyauthors.com, begin on March 6. There is still time to register.

Market your e-book!

Recently, Amazon announced a program called KDP Select, which seemed like a promising idea. They asked for a 90-day renewable exclusive on distribution, and in exchange people can borrow my enrolled titles through Amazon Prime. Each borrow earns a proportional slice of a nice-sized pot that changes monthly. Also, writers are allowed to offer each enrolled title for free for up to five days. That sounds like a good marketing tool.

Some of my friends have legitimate concerns about this. Amazon has become so dominant, and writers are leery of being part of a behemoth that wants to take over the book world. I had similar feelings about Walmart until after settling into a new town, Walmart consistently offered the best deals on food and sundries for average people. So dealing with them is in my interest, and it's the same now with Amazon. They may deserve whatever labels we want to tag them with, but dealing with them is in my interest.

Combine that with Twitter, a free and easy social networking site, and you have a marketing combination that works better than anything else I've tried so far. My first promotion resulted in over 20,000 free downloads of When Pigs Fly, followed by a significant amount of paid sales. Without getting into numbers, I can say the results are great.

If you're an author looking for a way to market your ebooks, do yourself a favor and try this. If you don't want to deal with Amazon, perhaps you can try Smashwords. I have no experience with them, but friends have only good things to say. Either way you'll need to do your own proselytizing, and for that Twitter seems like a darned good tool.

Am I old yet?

My guest this week is author Morgan Mandel, who explores the dark side of eternal youth. Take it away, Morgan...

Am I old yet?  I’m not sure.  If so, when did it happen? Was it when I turned twenty-one and plucked out my first gray hair? Or when I got married three years later? People tied the knot much younger in those days.

I remember watching Bonanza on TV, and discovering Adam Cartwright (Pernell Roberts) was thirty-one. That seemed horribly ancient, until it happened to me.

All of a sudden I turned middle-aged, then before I knew it, I found an AARP application in the mail. I was kind of proud of my card, yet sad at the same time, realizing I’d already existed for half a century.  

When my parents passed away, it hit me that I was officially a member of the older generation, as they and others had been before me.

Now, when I stare at myself in the mirror, it’s strange to realize this is the same person who once climbed monkey bars and played hopscotch, went to sock hops, wore mini-skirts and bikinis, learned to disco dance and checked my mood ring to see if it had changed color.

Am I old yet? Inside, I still feel like the same person, but I don’t look the same. Would I like to be young again? Most of the time, I’m content with being who I am right now. Other times, I wonder what life would be like if I could delve into the Fountain of Youth and re-emerge young.

Writing is a blessing. Not only can I enter into the make-believe world of my characters, but I can also share that experience. Forever Young:  Blessing or Curse, is a result of my musings about being young again. It was written not only for Baby Boomers like me, who’d like to imagine reliving their youth, but also for those who don’t need to ask if they’re old yet.

About Forever Young

Fresh beginnings turn tragic when Dorrie Donato’s husband, Larry, is killed in a hit-and-run accident a few months after starting a new job at the Life is for Living Institute. Discouraged and desperate after suffering countless setbacks, Dorrie accepts an offer by Larry’s boss, the famous Angel Man, to  be the first to test an experimental pill designed to spin its user back to a desired age and hold there, yet still retain all previous memories.  The pill seems too good to be true. Maybe it is.

About Morgan Mandel

Before writing books, Morgan Mandel freelanced for the Daily Herald newspaper. She’s a past president of Chicago-North RWA, the former Library Liaison for Midwest MWA, and is a member of Sisters in Crime and EPIC. She enjoys writing thrillers, mysteries and romances, and has fun combining the genres.

Her latest paranormal romantic thriller Forever Young: Blessing or Curse, Book One of the Always Young Series, is available on Kindle, Nook, Itunes, Kobo, and Smashwords, plus other electronic venues.  Morgan’s previous novels, also available electronically, include the romantic suspense, Killer Career, the mystery, Two Wrongs, and the romantic comedy, Girl of My Dreams. Morgan is now working on Book Two of the Always Young Series, called Blessing or Curse: A Forever Young Anthology, where readers will learn what happens to others who take the Forever Young pill.  Another book will follow, bringing back the original heroine, to close out the series.

You can find Morgan Mandel at her blog: http://morganmandel.blogspot.com, website: http://www.morganmandel.com, on Facebook: http://facebook.com/morgan.mandel, on Twitter: http://twitter.com/morganmandel, as well as other social media networks and egroups.

Ten Tips to Make Your Manuscript Shine

We self-publishers fight a lonely battle, finding readers for our wit and wisdom. We write alone, and now we sell alone and search for ways to market our work. How do we entice readers to open their wallets?

Those questions are often premature. Before asking how you're going to cope with all those book orders, you need to make sure you have a quality product. So here are ten tips to make your book, fiction or non-fiction, the best it can be.

#1 Use a spell-checker, but only as a first line of defense. Then you look for misspellings the spell-checker won't catch, such as then/than, to/too/two, tail/tale, or its/it's.

#2 Read your manuscript critically, as though you weren't the author. Some things to check include complete chapters, well-organized paragraphs, complete sentences, and accurate punctuation.

#3 Be consistent. If you capitalize a word once in the text, chances are you always want to capitalize it. Decide whether you want one space or two at the end of a sentence, and stick with it. Never change your font or type size without good reason. If your work consists of more than one file, be sure that every file is formatted identically.

#4 Get honest, competent critiques. Leave your mother and spouse alone; your family has better things to do than fawn over your work. Avoid critiques from anyone who has an emotional stake in making you happy, because that isn't what you need. The Internet Writing Workshop (http://internetwritingworkshop.org) is an excellent source of constructive, informed criticism.

#5 Use your judgment. Even good critiquers may give you conflicting advice. Remember that it's your project, so the final decision is always yours.

#6 Refer to a style manual such as the Chicago Manual of Style, which is the most widely accepted guide for standard writing.

#7 Make a style sheet. A novel or other large manuscript can involve lots of small stylistic decisions by the author. Keep a pad of paper with a running list things you don't want to have to keep looking up. For example, a cartoon I liked showed a bank robber writing a note and asking the teller, "Is holdup one word or two?" Think of words you often misspell or don't know how to capitalize, and write them correctly on the list.

#8 Follow your publisher's guidelines religiously even if they don't insist.

#9 Repeat tip #2.

#10 Review the publisher's proof carefully. When you receive the publisher's proof isn't the time to look for typos; you should have done that already. At this stage, the publisher may even charge you if you fix many of your own mistakes at this stage. Instead, look for their errors. Are illustrations in their proper places? Are pages and chapters numbered properly? Look at every page's overall appearance. Is each one properly aligned? Is any text missing?

If you follow these simple (but not always easy) tips, I can't guarantee best-sellerdom for your book, but I can promise you this: Your book will be far superior to the vast majority of self-published books. You will have a quality product.

This article first appeared in Ezine Articles in 2007.

Review of Forever Young

Dorrie is a beautiful middle-aged woman who watches her husband Larry die in a tragic accident. Larry had worked for the Life is for Living Institute, which then offers Dorrie a job that includes being spokeswoman for their brand-new Forever Young pill. She can choose to revert to any age and stay there virtually forever without the worry of death by disease, so with some trepidation she becomes a gorgeous 24-year-old again. That's a blessing, right? Wouldn't we all love to revert to the prime of our lives?

But as the subtitle "Blessing or Curse" suggests, it gets complicated. Wouldn't you know that Larry died knowing a secret, and that not everyone wishes Dorrie well? What follows is a fast-paced romantic escapism with generally good dialog and interesting characters. Nitpickers will note that the Forever Young pill has been released to the public without FDA testing or approval. Dorrie is a well-crafted, likable heroine whom romance fans will surely root for.

Forever Young is a fun read even for a guy like me who's never read a romance before. It is available on Kindle and Smashwords.

Review of Welcome Home, Sir

Welcome Home, Sir takes the reader into three realms that may well be unfamiliar territory: the biochemistry lab, Israel's Golan Heights, and the world of hypochondria. The main character, Doctor Ethan Meyer, has served in Israel's military, and key experiences show up in frequent brief flashbacks. Now he runs an American university lab and deals with the inevitable politics that turn vicious and may destroy a career almost before it begins. Privately, he worries that every twitch, every variation in his pulse is the first sign of a terminal disease. He knows he's a hypochondriac and sees a doctor to help him struggle against it.

All of this makes for a good premise. The idea is that Meyer's hypochondria stems from his military experience, but that doesn't come through clearly enough in the novel. The chapters are too short and need development. As far as it goes, the novel is well-written and enjoyable, but it literally falls short. I recommend the novel for its insights into new territory, but it really needs to be at least twice as long.

Review of The Stasi File

The Stasi File impresses on several levels: author Peter Bernhardt knows Germany, he knows opera, and he knows how to write a solid thriller.

The time is the early 1990s, and Communism is crumbling. The Berlin Wall has fallen. East Germany is a failed state with an uncertain future. Will it even remain independent, or will West Germany absorb it? Some fear a resurgent, powerful Germany, while others see reunification as crucial to the future health and stability of Europe.

The Stasi, the newly defunct East German secret police, hate and fear the prospect of reunification. Attorney Rolf Keller is sent from America to Berlin to obtain a secret Stasi file that may be critical to the West. Meanwhile, the opera singer Sylvia Mazzoni has a past that embroils her in a dangerous game of espionage, whether she likes it or not. She sings a key role in Bizet's Carmen. What is in store for her? A bright career, arrest, or death? Keller and Mazzoni have to work together, but can they trust each other? And what is the real threat?

The Stasi File reads smoothly as Bernhardt builds the tension from multiple viewpoints and brings the story to an exciting and satisfying conclusion. This is the work of a pro that deserves a wide audience.

Review of The Power of Validation

How can parents raise a child who has the confidence to avoid peer pressure, deal with bullies, avoid self-harm, and get a proper grip on emotions? That is the goal of The Power of Validation, a practical, commonsense book on child-rearing that many readers may wish their own parents had known about.

What is validation? It's "the recognition and acceptance that your child has feelings and thoughts that are true and real to him regardless of logic or whether it makes sense to anyone else," the authors write. No, it doesn't mean giving in to their demands or necessarily agreeing with their feelings. It might well mean "Yes, I understand that this is what you want to do, but we're doing something else right now."

This book shows that validation promotes a healthy, well-deserved self esteem that is based on children fulfilling their potential. Parents learn how to deal not only with children's worry, anger, fear, and jealousy, but with happiness, joy, and having fun. "The idea is to allow independence, interests, and imperfection while recognizing and accepting your child's weaknesses and strengths," the authors write.

The book has occasional exercises that help readers try out the principles themselves, and they are all easy to understand.

If only I could, I would travel back in time with two copies of The Power of Validation. One would go to my parents when they had their first child, and the other would be for when I became a parent.

Review of Totally Buzzed

Totally Buzzed is a lively murder mystery that's full of humor and potential.

A body turns up in the crawl space underneath a Wisconsin farmhouse, and the vic turns out to be a local woman named Carole Graff. Who killed the poor woman, and why? Luckily, retired investigator Buzz Miller takes on the case. She's smart but a little crazy, just like the friends and family who get mixed up in the case.

The story has all the elements of an intriguing mystery and contains plenty of interesting detail about forensics. There is no problem with the plot.

The question that comes to mind, though, is this: Is Totally Buzzed a murder mystery that happens to be funny, or is it a comedy that happens to include a murder? At times it's hard to tell as the story pauses for a joke or for some totally unhinged silliness that may or may not advance the plot. Buzz, who is fifty-something, has a sister Margaret, whom she regularly calls "Maggot." That's the talk of a twelve-year-old, and much of the dialog is laced with mild profanity. That is fine for establishing a character trait or for showing how a person talks in certain situations, but it's greatly overdone here. And for the family dog to pass gas once might be cute--and is probably enough. Humor can be tough, because not everyone laughs at the same things. As a general rule, though, not many people laugh at the same clever line or funny event twice.

Also there are lots of cliches and some repetition, for example "Dead bodies piss me off," followed later by "As I said, dead bodies piss me off."

This looks like a good first draft. Fix some typos and get rid of most cliches. Give the reader an occasional rest from the nonstop daffiness, and try to incorporate more of the humor into the story itself, to keep things moving. Cut the repetition. There's no need to call the same person a "rat-bastard" three times.

The crime detail is good, and the story as a whole can be fun after it gets a little TLC.

Review of I'm Not Muhammad

I'm Not Muhammad attempts to show what it is like to be a Muslim in post-9/11 America. Based on what I have gleaned from reading non-fiction books on the Middle East, author Jason Trask's details seem to be quite accurate.

Yusuf Alsawari is a devout Muslim and a native-born American living in New York City with his wife, Ruth. The crisis begins when at her mother's deathbed Ruth declares herself a born-again Christian, renouncing Islam. Yusuf is mortified and decides to leave her. The World Trade Center attacks provide a seemingly good cover for him to simply disappear, pretending to have perished in the rubble. He re-emerges as Muhammad Muhammad, determined to lead a new life.

But then he is kidnapped--hooded, whisked away, and imprisoned without explanation. As an Arab he is automatically suspect, though no one tells him what crime he is thought to have committed as Muhammad Muhammad. Meanwhile, no one misses him because Yusuf is presumed to be dead. Despite his protestations that "I'm not Muhammad," he is placed in a jumpsuit for days on end, not even allowed to use a toilet. The consequences are described in cringe-worthy detail several times, whereas once would have served well enough.

Yusuf's imprisonment without trial forms the core of the story. Will he remain a prisoner forever? Will he ever see Ruth again? What will happen to his faith in Allah?

Jason Trask's novel is well-written and well-researched, and offers a useful glimpse into Islam and some of the darker corners of American security. There are, though, a couple of problems with the story. A good fictional struggle should have both a protagonist and an antagonist where there is some hope for a fair fight. Here the antagonist is an impersonal, crushing system represented by no one in particular, and Yusuf never has a chance. His only hope is that Allah will rescue him. The other problem is that the resolution comes too soon. For the last ten percent of the novel, the tension is gone.

Books, books, books

There is a stack of books on my desk, bookcases behind me, a Kindle and an iPad with more TBR. Where to start? How about the books I'm being paid to read for Kirkus? And then the books I've promised friends or acquaintances I'd read, such as Karyn Hall's The Power of Validation or Jason Trask's I'm Not Muhammad? Most of the books that arrive in the mail from publishers go back out to reviewers for the Internet Review of Books, unless I can't find a willing reader--Taliban: The Unknown Enemy, anyone? That one's been sitting in my office for months, serving no other purpose than to hold down the stack of papers I haven't looked at in just as long.

But this isn't a complaint, not really. After wife and family, books are my first love. If there is too much on my TBR list, so be it. May I die many years from now with a book in my lap. The trouble is, that Taliban book deserves a review while there are still any Taliban left, and the pages may be yellow before I get to it.

Now, come on. Who wouldn't want to read a book about the Taliban?

Mystery & Me: When Pigs Fly

I couldn't resist reposting this review by Allene Reynolds. Basically positive, but ...

Mystery & Me: When Pigs Fly: When Pigs Fly , by Bob Sanchez, is the most unorthodox book I've ever read. I'm not referring to the religious connotations of unorthodox, ...

NaNo Lite wrapup

For years I avoided NaNoWriMo because pouring out words quickly has never been my style. And all those other items on my to-do list clamored for too much of my time. Not this year, though. Fifty thousand words just was unrealistic, unless my goal was producing gibberish. So I set out to write 1,000 words per day and kept an old-fashioned log on my desk to track progress. Oh, and my project was to continue a novel in progress, so I began at about 39,000.

How did I do? Well, there was that 12-day Thanksgiving break followed by some 600-word days, so November wrapped up with about 13,000 words added, bringing me up to 52 k. Now let's see. A thousand words a day every day in December, and the first draft of my 70k mystery is done. Voilà! (Or viola, for the musically inclined)

Huh? Who's kidding whom here? The distractions haven't disappeared, and my internal editor is knocking on my skull and demanding to be let back into my brain. My first draft may not be finished by New Year's Eve, but the important thing is the steady progress.

Presidential aptitude test

I'm thinking there should be a PAT (Presidential Aptitude Test) for anyone who wants to be president. Not a legal thing, of course, and it would have nothing to do with one's views on issues. It would just be a minimum bar for the wannabes to clear. It would be open book, multiple choice, and cover factual knowledge of broad topics: world religions, demographics, culture, military, technology, economics, U.S. history, and the Constitution. There would be no trivial questions about capital cities or leaders' names, just a test of what might reasonably be considered as core knowledge for a potential leader. I would make it, say, 100 questions with a passing grade of 70. No grades, just pass/fail. And no loaded questions, just strictly factual. And to be entirely fair, no trick questions.

Sample questions:

Which of the following is true about the Middle East?
a. All Muslim women must wear burkas.
b. Iran is an Arab country.
c. Turkey has secular leadership.
d. Saudi Arabia's Muslims are primarily Shia.
e. All of the above.

Which of the following is NOT guaranteed by the First Amendment?
a. Freedom of assembly
b. The right to vote
c. The right to petition for redress of grievances
d. Freedom of religion
e. Freedom of speech

What other questions should we ask of our potential leaders? (By the way, the answers are c and b.)

A NaNo Lite update

This is a practice I should have started a long time ago, setting aside a specific time to write. Now I roll out of bed, watch Morning Joe over two cups of joe, eat breakfast, shower and change, and then sit down to write a thousand words--that's all, just one thousand. So far, so good from last Tuesday through today. My little log records a modest 6,426 words, steady as she goes. And it's not that hard. The words flow without agony, because my Inner Editor has taken the month of November off. My writing time lasts approximately from 10 a.m. until noon, when it's on to other things. This NaNo Lite is at my own pace, but perhaps it's one that can extend beyond November. Too much to hope for? I hope not. We'll see.

One of those other things yesterday was writing a guest post for Make Mine Mystery, a fine blog run by Morgan Mandel.

Back to Confession

Now how hard was that, going back to writing Confession? I'd set myself a modest daily goal of 500 words and broke 1,000 today. It felt good, almost like free writing. I tried to give my internal editor a rest, not worrying for a change about exactly how anything fit. Most likely, though, it fits pretty well with the overall plan of the story. A little girl has been kidnapped and will be in serious danger, though I promise she will be fine. A general rule of thumb, for me anyway, is that the writer can put children in danger but not hurt them. In fact, her captor will be much the worse for wear.

NaNo Lite?

Call it cheating. Call it NaNo Lite. First I came up with an idea for a new NaNo novel. Then another idea. Wrote ~500 words to test it out and wondered where the heck I could go with it. Actually, both ideas are probably okay, but they don't catch my fancy right now. My mystery in progress, Confession, deserves finishing. So this morning I spent working on plot points and looking for a satisfactory ending (none yet).

My goal for November is to write about 500 words per day, every day. The 15K won't be enough to finish a draft, but they should give me a good head of steam. Yes, yes, it's probably too modest, but I have never been one to write long bursts in a single sitting. The best thing NaNo can do for me is to get me back into the habit of daily fiction writing.

Desert stargazing

Last week I wrote this blog entry on my iPad and didn't get around to posting it. Here it is now:

Monument commemorating Geronimo's surrender
to the US Army in nearby Skeleton Canyon in 1886

This evening we are sitting outside our RV and waiting for the stars to show themselves. The sky is still pink over one of the several mountain ranges, I think the Chiricahuas. A partial cloud cover is blowing to the east, promising a starry night. Behind us about thirty yards, a gaggle of geese cluck quietly by a small pond that seems to be made for them. We are at Rusty's RV Ranch in Rodeo, New Mexico for our second of three nights--maybe four if we decide we can't bear to leave. The owner of the park says her place is starting to attract astronomers because of the complete lack of light pollution. Last night we saw the Milky Way directly above us, and we cranes our necks in awe. Tonight we are out again with our lawn chairs. It is 7:21 p.m. At the extreme western edge of the Mountain Time Zone, and the sky still shows the faintest tinge of pink over the mountains. A few stars are beginning to emerge, although I can't identify them. Picking out Mercury and Mars are usually the best I can do.  Last night the moon didn't appear--while we watched, anyway--and tonight looks like it will be the same, a good night for stargazing.

Going my own way

I'm not sure what the NaNoWriMo rules are, though it should be simple to check. A lady in my fiction group is participating and told me I must--must--start a new novel, because that is what someone at NNWM says. Nice person that she is, the gal can be a little bossy. My first reaction was that I am retired and no one tells me what to do anymore. But then I went home and diddled around with a few ideas, even to the point of writing about 500 words of a new story that might or might not pan out. Did I break some bloody rule by starting before November 1? The fact is that I already have an NIP that runs about 39,000 words so far. I consulted the oracle pictured below, who was no help. So I'm just going to continue working on the novel I've already started, and if NaNo or my bossy friend wants to strip off my epaulets, so be it.

This li'l guy lives in the Chiricahua Desert Museum in Rodeo,
New Mexico. He turns out to be not much of an oracle.

So. I just signed up for NaNoWriMo, despite my having always shied away from it in the past. Frankly, it's darned intimidating. Years ago, I wrote about 35,000 words on my current novel and have barely touched it since. On the one hand, I've never written lots of words in short bursts. On the other, my novel will never be done at this rate. Recently I sat down to work on it and wrote only one line, for goodness' sake. The current word count is 36,800, or about half the length of my first three novels.

It's not clear if NaNoWriMo is right for me, but November will be a good month to glue my butt to the chair and crank out the rest of the first draft. Was it the great Lawrence Block who wrote that the best guideline for getting writing done was "ass in chair"? It was either him or someone else--how's that for narrowing it down? It will be okay to write a crappy first draft, by the way. At least for me, second drafts are much easier because there is something to work with. It's getting past the terror of the blank page, because words I can see are easier to fix that words I can't see. And waiting one more year won't work, because 2012 will be busy in other ways. I'll always be able to fit revisions.

Have you participated in NaNoWriMo? How well has it worked for you?

Party time at the El Paso Writers' League!

There are big doin's at the El Paso Writers' League tomorrow. Every year we have a writing contest for members, and for the last three years we've published an anthology of the winning entries. So tomorrow the 8th we're having a big whoop-de-doo Launch Party with the winners reading their entries from the book. Yesterday I ordered a sheet cake from Sam's--they call it a photo cake--with the likeness of the cover on it. It makes me a little nervous, though, since the bakery lady said they'd never actually done one before. I'll swing by Sam's and pick it up on my way to the meeting in El Paso.

Here is the cover of this year's Border Tapestry, designed by member Maritza Jáuregui:

In addition to bringing the cake (please God, don't let me drop it), I'm bringing the 100 copies of Border Tapestry for distribution to members at the meeting. I've been editor and co-editor for the first three issues and am turning over the whole project to Sulta Bonner next year. Such fun!

The great e-book giveaway!

Left to right: serious, funny, noir

Here's a great offer for e-book readers: Leave a comment with your email address on this post, and I will send you a free ebook for your Kindle, Nook, or iBook! You may choose from When Pigs Fly, Getting Lucky, or Little Mountain.

My hope is that you will enjoy the freebie enough to post an honest Amazon review, but you are under no obligation.