Goodreads Choice Awards 2011: Horror Category - An Apple For Zoe by Thomas Amo

I was incredibly excited to hear that An Apple for Zoe by my dear friend and fellow author, Thomas Amo, is a semi-finalist in the Horror Category in the Goodreads Choice Awards 2011. Tom is an amazingly talented writer as well as one of the nicest people on the planet. He does so much to support his fellow authors that I am honored to be able to return the favor. He has been an inspiration to me and has been invaluable in my quest to be an indie author.

If you like the horror genre, you won't want to miss An Apple for Zoe. It's available on Amazon and stop by his blog for more information about his latest projects.

I would love to see An Apple for Zoe win for Best Horror novel! It is definitely worthy of the title. Please help out and vote! You can vote for the Best Horror category on Goodreads here . Vote by November 20th! Thank you!!

Thoughts From An Old Mining Town Cemetery

          We went to visit my in-laws today who live in the foothills of California in an old gold mining town. On the way out, we stopped by the cemetery. The kids both lost their minds still having childhood thoughts of ghosts and zombies stuck in their heads. I told them they could stay in the car and even lock the doors if that made them feel better, but there was nothing to fear in a cemetery. They were not convinced.

I love old cemeteries. It sounds creepy, I know, but I see those headstones and I wonder what their lives were like. What stories could they tell especially in this cemetery where many of those buried here were pioneers leaving everything they knew behind hoping to strike it rich in California during the gold rush of 1849. Were they able to find their fortune? Did they find happiness here or only heartbreak? I wondered about these silent souls as I stood amongst the family plots; old gravestones with the words worn down some barely legible, including some made of wood with the words “Unknown RIP.”

          What I found most disturbing was the number of graves for infants and children. Life was hard for adults in these mining towns during the gold rush days. It has been estimated that as high as 1 in 5 people died within the first six months of coming to California to mine for gold due to accidents, disease, malnutrition, and violence. Imagine how difficult it would have been for the women and children. There was one poor couple in the cemetery who lost all three of their children within a three year span. They were 9, 10, and 11 when they died. Two of them died in the same year. I can’t imagine the hardships these people must have gone through in such an isolated area.

Their birthdates were not listed on the headstones, but how old they were when they died in years, months, and days making it obvious how young many of them were when they passed on. Many of the family plots had several infants and children. While the gold rush in California was very profitable to some, many of the people who came to mine during that time barely made enough to live on.

On my way back to the car I saw my 13 year old daughter (who freaked out when we said we were going to a cemetery) with paper and a pencil making rubbings from some of the headstones.

“Hey, I thought you said this was stupid and creepy.” I said.

She looked up and said “Mom, he was just a baby. You’re right. It’s not creepy.”

Looking at her beautiful face as she made the rubbing of that baby’s headstone, I had a sobering thought. If I had given birth to her during the late 1800s in this tiny mining town, we would have both died, and my son would never have been born. I just wanted to stop off and look at an old cemetery. I had no idea it would make me think so much about my own life. I sat next to my daughter in that family’s plot while she worked and said a silent prayer of thanks for all the blessings in my life.

Where Will You Run? Book One of the Dìon Series

          My debut novel Where Will You Run? is the first book in the Dìon series. I am currently working on book two called Where Will You Hide? Several people have asked me for more information on the first book, so here it is. The story takes place in San Francisco and follows homicide detective Mari Lucas as she searches for her sister, Kerry, who goes missing from a locked psychiatric facility.

Mari took care of her younger sister, Kerry, after their parents were murdered. While Mari focused on her career in the SFPD, Kerry had her own run-ins with the law. Mari resented the fact that she was constantly pulling strings and asking for favors to get Kerry out of trouble. She felt as though her career had suffered because of it. Mari’s original plan was to join the police force, work her way up to homicide detective and eventually solve her parents’ murder. However, with the number of current homicide cases she was assigned to she rarely had any free time. She was a chronic workaholic and her personal life had suffered as a result. The relationship with her sister was all she had and that was strained.

When Mari gets a call about Kerry being arrested and taken to a locked psychiatric facility, she has finally had enough. Mari meets with her on the psychiatric unit, and Kerry is frantic. She tells Mari that she was delivering a package to the Collins building downtown. She went to the wrong office and overheard a conversation between two men who were talking about transporting humans. When she tried to get away without being discovered, she was pursued by the owner of the building, Christopher Collins. Kerry told Mari that she made it into the elevator right as Collins caught up to her. She said that Collins moved with unnatural speed and had fangs and threatened to find her. Mari was prepared. She had been told ahead of time that Kerry had been placed on the psychiatric unit for claiming that she was being hunted by vampires. For Mari, this was the last straw. Kerry had finally pushed her too far. Maybe Kerry really was crazy. Mari leaves her sister on the unit and begrudgingly agrees to look into Kerry’s claims.

Mari knew she had to keep any investigation of the city’s golden boy under the radar. Christopher Collins was a well known and well loved business man in the downtown community. He was best known for his charitable efforts with the homeless population. He funded a series of shelters for the homeless offering them not only a safe place to sleep and good food, but substance abuse treatment and medical care as well as job training and placement. The Collins building itself was a beautiful high rise right in the middle of the business district and housed the offices for his various business ventures. Not to mention the man played golf with the mayor. Going after him was career suicide.

Before Mari can decide on a plan of action, Kerry disappears from the locked psychiatric facility which, according to them, was not possible. Mari finds out Kerry’s disappearance is not isolated one. There has been a recent increase in missing persons’ cases especially among the homeless. Mari is forced to partner up with Raith Macrae, a detective from missing persons. Mari does not play well with others and writes him off as another pretty boy who gets by on his good looks and charm. Her attempts to keep him on the sidelines quickly backfire as she finds out that his playboy demeanor is just a cover. Raith Macrae has a darker side and appears to have his own agenda.

The situation quickly spirals out of control and Mari’s life gets turned upside down. When she gets in over her head, who can she trust? Where will she run?

Book Reviews - Adventures in Self Publishing

         Finally, for the last blog in this series I want to focus on reviews. Personally, I suck at writing reviews, so I have a lot of respect for people who volunteer their time to read books and then take the time to write about it. That’s where I am at now. My book has been accepted for review by four separate people. It’s exciting and scary at the same time. Most reviewers have disclaimers on their websites/blogs that say “I only give honest reviews.” That can be a little intimidating. Of course I only want an honest review. It’s okay if someone doesn’t like my book. But let’s face it, I want people to like my book. I especially want reviewers to like my book because then others may take a chance and buy it.

          I have seven 5 reviews on Amazon for my book already, and I love every one of them. Not just because they’re good reviews, but because I know the people who left the reviews meant what they said. There are people (including friends and family) who have read my book and never said another word about it. Did they like it? Hate it? I don’t know. They never said. Complete silence. Honestly, that makes me crazier than a bad review. It’s okay not to like my book. It’s even okay to say that to me. Maybe they think it will make Thanksgiving awkward. Not on my end. My feelings are not wrapped up in my book. I’m a big girl. My husband told me to ask them directly to leave a positive review, but I don’t want fake reviews. If you like it, say so. If you didn’t, say so. If you don’t feel comfortable leaving a review because you think I’ll give you the stink eye at family functions, then don’t.

          For me, negative reviews fall into one of two categories. The first category is crap - a negative review that is absolute crap and is thoughtless and cruel. The second category is constructive – that’s right, constructive. Sometimes a negative review can tell you something about your writing you didn’t know (or didn’t want to admit). Something helpful like overusing a particular word or phrase, punctuation or spelling errors, time or plot conflicts, formatting issues, character inconsistencies, etc. These reviews can help you improve your writing (although they can be worded cruelly as well). Don’t just write off a negative review especially if several people are saying the same thing. Be honest with yourself before putting it in the crap category.

For authors, it seems like so much emphasis is put on reviews, and for obvious reasons. If a book gets several bad reviews, it can have a serious negative effect on sales. Not to mention, it can be a little hard to hear. While I do have a thick skin, I’m not totally immune. Some writers I know say you’re not a legitimate author until you have at least one hater. They wear their one star review like a badge of honor. I like that attitude.

Adventures in Self Publishing - Twitter

            Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. Argh. I wrote an earlier post called “My Take on Twitter.” Going back and reading it I realize how quickly things can change. I have become more forgiving on Twitter. Some things I considered impersonal are really done in the interest of time and efficiency. For example, it bothered me when someone’s first tweet to me was about reading their blog or book. I thought that was pushy. I know now that that may be the only encounter I have with that person, so they are taking advantage of that opportunity. They are using Twitter to help market their product. Isn’t that what I’m there to do as well?

 My Twitter follows are exploding. I will soon have over 1000 followers; a feat that seemed impossible when I wrote that blog post in September. I had no idea it would take off that fast. I used to follow everyone back, but I’ve learned that I need to stay focused, and I have to be picky with my follows. I thought that was mean at first. I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I am out there to make connections with other authors and readers. I don’t need break up advice, not talking politics, and I don’t want to see your naked pictures. Sorry.

            Even though tweets are limited to 140 characters, it’s amazing how much personality can shine through in so few words. I have met some amazing people on Twitter. They make recommendations for follows, retweet, make fun comments, ask how I’m doing, help push my blog and book, and I do the same for them. However, that hasn’t necessarily translated into direct sales of my book. I think that’s mostly my fault. I honestly don’t send out many tweets about my book, and I don’t push my book and blog the way others do. Mostly because I don’t have time to be on Twitter that often.

Enter tweet generator. In my previous Twitter post, I said that I didn’t like tweet generators because it made my Twitter feed look like one long infomercial, and I didn’t want to be a part of that. I’ve had to change my views. Now that I am following more people, the Twitter feed goes by so fast, that one or two book tweets a day just won’t cut it. Even if they are retweeted, they can easily be overlooked in a sea of tweets. When I was only following a few people, I could get on Twitter and go back in time and see all the tweets for the day. Now, I’m lucky if I can cover a few hours of tweets. In an attempt to get some control back, I recently downloaded TweetDeck to help manage my Twitter account. I’m going to set up scheduled tweets about my book and blog and join the infomercial. Stay focused – promotion and making contacts.

While Twitter has not translated into a lot of book sales for me, it has generated a lot of buzz about my blog. Honestly, this blog, which I got dragged into kicking and screaming, has been more fun than I thought it would be. I’ve been surprised to see the number of page views I’ve been getting and the majority of them are from Twitter. So the potential is there. I just have to find a way to tap into it. I would love to hear any comments or suggestions you may have. Thanks!

Adventures in Self Publishing - Facebook

I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I know social media is a huge part of getting the word out about my book, but it can be very overwhelming. There are so many social outlets, it would literally take a full time staff to keep up with everything out there. I have limited my exposure to Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

I have had a Facebook account for some time now thanks to my loving sister. I have to admit I was not happy about it at first, but it grew on me. Facebook is a good way to keep in touch with friends and relatives I don’t get to see very often. It’s nice to hear about what’s going on in their lives when we live so far apart. Facebook has always been a very personal place for me, and I have only accepted friend requests from friends and family.

With the publication of my book, my author buddy Tom introduced me to the #BNFF group on Facebook. This group is made up of an amazing bunch of authors who welcomed me with open arms. They understood the characters scratching to get out of my head, the late night writing sessions, the single-minded drive to finish. They also struggled with writer’s block, family issues, work responsibilities, and self promotion. I didn’t feel so crazy or alone in this process. If you haven’t found a close knit group of authors to talk to, I would highly recommend it. Soon, they started sending me friend requests. I didn’t see a problem with that. They are a great bunch of people I am honored to call friends.

However, I still wanted to keep my Facebook account personal. I know many people use this as another way to promote their book. I made an author page (I can’t say Fan Page, it makes me giggle) for people to “Like,” and I post information about my book there. I knew eventually people would find me. Sure enough I started getting friend requests from other authors outside of the #BNFF group and random people from Twitter. I panicked. I’m a private person, and I didn’t want these people I barely knew to see pictures of my niece’s birthday party. Honestly, why would they want to? Facebook is a place for me to be myself, chat with family and friends and not have to worry about pushing my book.

I know several authors have multiple Facebook accounts which I will have to consider for myself. The problem is time. If I barely have enough time to do one Facebook account, how can I manage two? Facebook and Twitter alone take up most of the time I have allotted for book promotion. I have a Goodreads account, but I’m rarely able to look at it or keep it up to date. I read a blog recently where the woman said that if you are putting yourself out there to promote a book, blog, etc. then you have to get passed any misgivings you may have about being approached online. You have to let people get to know you. I’m working on it.

Adventures in Self Publishing - Promotion and Sales

When I planned out this series in self publishing, I wanted to start at the beginning and proceed in an orderly fashion. However, since my brain doesn’t work in an organized way that’s not going to happen. I want to talk about what has been on my mind lately – promotion and sales.

Honestly, when I was writing my book, I didn’t think about publishing. Mostly because I was afraid I wouldn’t finish it like every other book I had started, so why think that far ahead? My sister, Melanie, and BFF, Shelbi, were so excited about the project, it kept me motivated. With their gentle encouragement (a.k.a. hounding), I was able to finish my first book, Where Will You Run? At the time, I was so proud of my accomplishment and the fact that Mel and Shelbi loved the finished product that I didn’t care if another soul ever read it. Then I thought about it. All that  work was just gathering dust on my hard drive. Was I really going to just let it sit there?

Why not self publish? I sent a copy of my book to a friend of mine, Thomas Amo who was a self published author. He liked the book and said I should definitely do it. Tom and his beautiful wife came by to help me upload my book to Amazon, she said with a knowing chuckle “Now you’ll be checking your sales all the time like he does.” I assured her that wouldn’t be me since I didn’t really care about sales. Boy did that change overnight. Having people buy my book was both exciting and scary at the same time. I did find myself checking my sales reports regularly and grinning at my Amazon page.

Reality soon set in though. After the initial boost from friends and family, the sales numbers quickly dropped off. Now I was left with the daunting task of promotion – something I have never been good at. (Here is why I wanted to go in order because I wanted to write about promoting on Facebook and Twitter first. Oh well…carrying on.)

The biggest problem for me is that I wrote a vampire/paranormal romance. While that doesn’t sound like a problem since that genre is hot especially with the juggernaut that is Twilight and also with the popularity of television shows like True Blood, it would make sense to strike while the iron is hot. The problem is the market is saturated with paranormal books. I can’t believe all the paranormal romance indie authors I have met on Twitter alone. In a genre that is filled with heavy hitters like Jeaniene Frost, Charlaine Harris, J. R. Ward, Kresley Cole, Kim Harrison, Keri Arthur, etc. (and that doesn’t even scratch the surface), why would paranormal readers want to take a chance on an indie book (or a bajillion indie books for that matter) when they have such an amazing collection of traditionally published authors to choose from. I don’t have an answer. In a genre dominated by well established, traditionally published authors, how do you get noticed in an ocean of indie books?

Again, I’m trying to be patient. I know it takes time. I am reading a lot of blogs on the subject of self publishing, and I am going to try some of their suggestions. I will start trying some of these and blog about the results. The first one is a recommendation to start local. Today I went to our Barnes and Noble since my book is also available on Nook. I met Lee and asked him if they had a program to help promote local authors to increase Nook sales. Lee just stared at me. I said “Did I stump you?” He said “Yes.” There were no managers available so he took down my information and promised to get back to me. If I don’t hear from Lee by Monday, I will be brave and go back. I have to start somewhere. I will keep you all updated. Thanks for stopping by!