This, That, and Zap! 10/05

We’re still green in Washington, DC, but it’s a dried out green (must be all the hot air coming from downtown). Rumor has it that we might get a speedy fall color.  The weather still can’t make up it’s mind.  Yesterday was lots of rain and today was humid and 80.  Off to This, That, and Zap!

THIS is the arrival of my Moo cards. I’m going to take the plunge and leave them on the con table.  My imagination is already hard at work, convinced the flyer police will make some kind of announcement over the hotel speakers that I shouldn’t have put them on the table.  The cards are below, and are a very pretty high gloss texture:

THAT is Rabia Gale’s post on book covers of Strong Women.    We see so many that turn women into objects that this is a refreshing change. I started rebelling against the really horrible covers by voting with my wallet.

ZAP! Combine a tornado and a fire, and you get one big scary thing.  Can you imagine even being near this?  Though I’m sure SyFy has probably already done a movie on it, though the tornado will probably chase people like it has a brain.

What’s it like where you’re at?  Are you getting any fall colors?

 

Went to Intervention — No, It’s a Con, Not What You Just Thought

It’s a science fiction con.  It stands for Inter(net) (Con)vention.  This one was within driving distance for me along the George Washington Parkway. If you’re not familiar with Washington, DC, that’s a very scenic road that follows the Potomac River.  This is is a photo:

It should be gorgeous once the trees begin to change color.  No pics from the con this time though.  The con simply didn’t have much in the way of photo ops.  No action workshops (darn!  I was looking for another action demo), and very little cosplay.  I saw only one person in full costume, though horns were popular.  Do you think I ought to get horns since Halloween is coming up?  Ooh, ooh — maybe alien antennas.

I did raid the dealer’s room for a few more t-shirts …

Overall, I was not impressed with the con.  It was sparsely attended and seemed poorly organized. The first workshop I went to did not bode well.  “Writing a Fantasy Novel” was a given about the subject matter. Four comic book artists showed up for the panel.  Two of them didn’t even know the name of the workshop and spent time complaining about being there.  One lost interest midway through and started sketching a picture for an auction in a hour that he should have done before he got to the con.  I spent $40 for this?

The other two workshops I attended were much more interesting, but they were also the only ones I found of any interest.  One was “Blogging for Fun and Profit” with Mark Blum and Mike Fenn.  I wasn’t too sure what I was going to get since on the last one I attended it was apparent none of the writers knew what they were talking about.  As it turned out, there was a lot of good information.  The message that resonated for me was on how to market you blog.  Some of the things they mentioned:

• Put out cards with the blog name and site address at cons.  I had a “Do-oh!” moment on this one.  I have Moo cards and haven’t been doing that at any of the cons.  I did have some with me, but I realized there was a small problem — I’d left off that I was a writer.  So I’ll get that fixed in time for the next con.
• Write your blog name on your con badge.  Yup, we all hauled off our badges and added the name right there.
• And the final note, which is that you can’t be afraid to promote yourself.  The hardest thing about being an introvert is that it’s very difficult for me to even think of stuff like that.  With the Moo cards, I was always thinking that I needed a book published.

Despite this great workshop, I couldn’t help noticing that almost none of the panelists really promoted themselves.  They mentioned they had an online comic strip, but didn’t provide paper samples or even a card with a link on it.  Maybe that was a symptom of the entire problem with the con?

The best workshop was “It’s About the Villain.”  The panelists were Michael Terracciano (did villain imitations), Eric Kimball, A.J. Rosa, and Elaine Corvidae (the only person in costume).  They had a blast and had the audience really laughing.  Yes, we do enjoy our villains.  Some highlights, since villains are always fun:

• Good guys are defined as much by their villains as they are by their deeds.  Or, by any other name, make the villain a strong character.
• A villain can be terrifying if you can’t reason with them (given we recently had a tiger attack on the news, I thought about a tiger.  You can’t reason with a tiger.  He just thinks you’re lunch, or whatever meal he’s missing).
• If readers love a villain, give him a moment to be awesome before he’s defeated.  The example given was Boba Fett from Star Wars.  A lot of fans really liked the character, but he went out without much fanfare.

But Michael Terracciano was adamant that hero-villain team ups were a really bad idea.  So what do you think?  Should villains and heroes ever work together?

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Linda Adams, Soldier, Storyteller

Starting November 4, I will doing a month-long session on Forward Motion on “Basic Training of Military Culture.”  The lesson plan for the course is posted here.  I promise that I will promote myself for this!

 

How I Stopped Buying So Many Books

I’ve always loved to read.  When I was growing up, I’d go to the library and get an armload of books and polish them off in a week.  When I was old enough to buy my own books, I went to the bookstore at least once a week and spend way too much money.  But there was nothing like finding a great book, and better still, a book that I wanted to reread again and again.  I’d eagerly pop down to the bookstore as soon as I heard that one of the series authors I liked to read and buy the hardback version because I couldn’t wait.

That start to change about 10 years ago, and significantly changed in the last few years.  Now go into a bookstore once a month, and sometimes I don’t buy anything at all.

It was because I noticed a trend — the overall quality of books was declining. Not just one author, but all the series authors.  As I writer, I think this was a combination of an aging series and pressures to produce a book a year, regardless of how good it is.

So I stopped buying hardbacks.  It wasn’t worth spending $27 for a hardback and getting a story that just didn’t work.  Instead, I waited for the paperback to come out.  At $5 a book, it wasn’t a deal-breaker to get a book that didn’t quite work.

Until the price went up to $7, and a new trend: The books all felt like the same thing.  I wasn’t getting anything different or exciting.  As writers, we hear that we have to write a story that’s different but not so different that it’s a risk in order for agents and publishers to consider it.  There’s not a lot of room in that to be different, and the result is the books don’t take risks that ignite the excitement of readers like me.

So now I’m a lot more picky, even for a paperback.  I don’t care for romantic subplots.  At $5, I’d get the book anyway if it looked good.  At $7, it’s a pass. If I see multiple instances of profanity in the first few pages, it’s a pass.  If it’s in first person, it’s probably a pass.

Enter ePublishing.  John Locke sells a million books for .99.  Suddenly all the writers are flocking to eBooks and selling their stories for the same amount.  As a reader, I usually pass on the .99 and free books.  These are often not ready for publication and feel more like the writer is hoping to cash in on John Locke’s success with a cheap price.  I like the $3.99 price range because I can experiment without feeling like I’m going to waste my money.

Price will influence me to not buy a book.  However, it will not influence me to buy a book.  I want better books.  I want to recapture the magic of finding buried treasure in book.

Have the changes in the book industry influenced what you buy?

 

The Best #BookMarketing Tool

As the publishing industry changes, we hear a lot about social media being used to market the writer and his/her book.  But it’s not the primary book marketing tool.  There’s one that’s even more important:

The book itself.

Readers have every right to expect a well-written book, no matter what they pay for it.  Even when it’s free, they’re still choosing to invest time in it.  A good book is going to make the reader want to read another book by the same writer.

AA good book also delivers on the promises it makes.  I’m an action reader, so I always look for books in different genres that might have action,   One of my personal pet peeves is an author who states that his book is an action thriller, but when I read the description of the story, it’s obvious it isn’t.  When I look at the opening pages, it’s obvious it isn’t.

What are your expectations of what a book is supposed to have before you will read it?

 

 

The Power of First Impressions

All my life I’ve had problems with my feet — Adams feet.  The whole family has a history of bad feet.  Mostly, the doctors either said “There’s nothing we can do,” or “You need shoe inserts” — at $300.  No one ever told me what was wrong with my feet or how I might find shoes that worked better for them.  And it was always challenging buying them.  Most simply didn’t fit, and others were built in such a way that my feet would roll or hurt.

In the last week, I discovered that I have high arches (thanks to Dr. Scholls!).  So I looked online for information that would tell me how to buy shoes.  And found actual shoes.  That led me to a local shoe store.  It was run by one man, who was more interested in making sure I got shoes that fit right, than simply selling me whatever he could.  Afterwards, he asked, “What else can I do for you?”  He also answered my questions about shoe wear (these shoes are higher on the outside, so the wear will show up there) and shoe care.  I’m definitely going back — not only because they have the shoes, but because of the customer service.

First impressions are important.  As writers, we have all kinds of options available to us via the internet.  Twitter, blogs, Facebook.  Just the other day, a writer posted a profanity laced diatribe against people who were self-publishing (link goes to a blog discussing it, rather than to the site).  Part of the social networking side of book marketing is selling the Brand Writer.  A bad first impression like cussing at other people may create controversy, but it’s probably not going to sell books.

Several years ago, a lawsuit involving a plagiarism case was settled in favor the writer who was sued.  I posted a link to the news story on my blog and noted that it had been settled.  Apparently, the writer who had sued was watching for any posts about the case and posted a canned comment on my blog.  It was a heaping of sour grapes, but I did go look at his website.  The site was worse.  I got why he was bitter — his publishing company had gone bankrupt, so he had a book on shelves that he was never going to get paid for.  But that didn’t make up for the really bad first impression he gave me.   What the he didn’t know when he commented on my blog that I had picked up his book from the library because of the lawsuit, and because it was an action novel.  If I’d liked it, I would have bought others.  Instead, I stopped reading less than 50 pages in.  Haven’t touched any of his books sense.

What’s an example where a first impression either sold you on something or turned you completely off?

These are the shoes I got:

Walking Shoes – Very comfortable!  I got the white version.

Work Shoes – Has a curved sole, with a rolling motion.  A little strange at first, but is supposed to help me walk better.

Winter Boots – The last ones I had really hurt my feet, but something was necessary because when it snows, I often have to walk through it.

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I hope for Veteran’s Day you’ll check out my article “Grateful for a Gift to “Any Soldier” on The Washington Post.

 

 

 

The Importance of Being A Title

I just stumbled across a random title generator.  Click the button, and it creates a list of titles from words.

Hmm.

Titles are the first impression of a book to a reader:

I walk past a table, and the book title catches my eye.

I scan a website with cover shots, and the book title catches my eye.

Titles tell me …

What genre the story is.

If it has action in it.

A hint of things to come in the story.

This is a book I want to read.

This is a book I don’t want to read.

How do you decide on a title for your book?  What types of titles draw you to books or films and why?  What types of titles will make you pass on a book or movie?  Why?

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I hope you’ll check out my article Critiquing Omniscient Viewpoint in Vision: A Resource for Writers.