Author Archives: Kirsten

I am editing. Loose Dog.

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So I’ve got this novel, you see.

I love the concept. It’s a first person novel, narrated by a woman who is an animal control officer.

And she’s got problems.

Man problems, for starters. Her ex-fiance has shown back up in her life. And here, she thought she was completely over him.

Before you know it, she also ends up with dog problems — particularly when she stumbles on evidence of a dog fighting ring that is out of her official jurisdiction but very much on her conscience.

I first drafted Loose Dog several years ago. Shopped it to exactly one agent, who requested a full, but eventually passed on it.

I should probably have kept pushing, but instead I set it aside and wrote Libby, and a bit after that Can Job.

And you know what? That was the right decision. Because what that one agent told me is that Loose Dog was well-written but needed work on pacing. So I focused on improving my plotting, and as you can see from my Amazon reviews, plotting is one of the things readers like about my novels.

So now I’m back to Loose Dog, and my first New Year’s resolution for 2012 is to tweak it until I absolutely love it.

Get ready, world :-)

UPDATE: Out now…

#bestreads2011 Blog Hop. Kindleriffic!

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Thanks to John Wiswell for hosting this blog hop! Please go visit his blog for more #bestreads2011.

Here are mine :-)

A Classic

Portrait of a Lady. One of the great things about my Kindle is that there are so many free classics. This book, considered by some to be Henry James’ masterpiece, is definitely “slow hand lit.” James takes his time; the book’s pleasures are subtle ones meant to be lingered over, not swallowed in chunks. Definitely worth reading if you’re inclined to literary fare.

An Indie

As an indie author myself, I’m meeting other indies on a daily basis. There’s no way I could read all of the new books I’m finding out about as a result, but I am trying to at least sample and if something grabs me, read on. The Movie by Bosley Gravel is one that did. Said it before and will say it again, Bos is a writer to watch.

Where have you been all my life

This one sort of falls into the indie author category as well. Julie Harris is a midlister who has started bringing titles out as ebooks. I read An Absence of Angels and really enjoyed it. It’s historical fiction, great story telling, memorable characters.

And one print book

My dad lent me this one. Gregory Orr spent part of his childhood in Germantown, New York, where my father also grew up. The Blessing is his memoir. It opens on the day that Orr accidentally shot and killed his younger brother, but this is not a maudlin book. It’s a beautifully realized meditation on pain, grace, and art.

Does this book teaser make me look . . . fat???

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A porcupine ate this sign.

A porcupine ate this sign.

So we indie authors lob tons of marketing advice at each other.

Let me know when someone answers the most important question of all:

Why is it harder to market yourself than somebody else?

Actually, now that I think about it . . . this may be just a variation on that other perplexing paradox: in general, it’s easier to solve other peoples’ problems than your own.

Ever notice that? You can tell when someone else’s relationship is a disaster waiting to happen. You know when somebody else should quit his/her soul-crushing job. It’s easy to tell when someone else’s self-destructive habits are out of control.

Meanwhile, someone dares to offer you some extremely good and  timely advice . . .

“Maybe you should dump the jerk” or

“Why don’t you just quit?” or

“Ya know, there are other foods besides Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey”

. . . and you bristle and snarl like a porcupine with PMS.

I can’t!

But how will I pay the bills?

Are you saying . . . I’m FAT?

camel

Why would anyone want to buy my camel?

Anyway. Those of you who noticed that my Can Job book description was pretty fugly: no worries. Because if you’d mentioned it, I wouldn’t have been able to fix it anyway.

But you were right. It was too much information, and not enough tease. I see that now.

So here’s the rev. Let’s see if it helps sells books . . .

They’re launching a product that will save the company.

At the biggest trade show in the universe.

Their careers are at stake.

Heck, the future of the entire CITY is at stake.

Then they discover that the product doesn’t actually exist . . .

KDP Select. My experience so far.

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I’ll be honest. I initially bristled at the whole idea of KDP select:

  • Don’t like the exclusivity clause. Don’t really see how that benefits Amazon, either. Just seems to me it’s their way of throwing their weight around.
  • The $500,000 pot is a joke. What are the odds that some Amazon Prime member will pick my book as the one book he/she borrows that month? Vanishingly small. I’m an unknown, remember? I’ve read that an estimated 27,000 titles were enrolled in KDP Select within the first 24 hours. Explain to me how my book stands out among tens of thousands of other titles? Answer. It won’t.  The writers who are going to collect a more than a few pennies from that pot are the same writers who are making money self-publishing already.

So why enroll?

Because my sole hope, as an indie author, is that my novels are good enough that over time I’ll start generating word of mouth.

And that comes down to a numbers game. Everyone who has read my novels has told me they think they are really good. (Yes, I realize that’s a sample that self-selects — i.e. people who don’t care for it aren’t too likely to let me know.)

But “everyone” so far consists of a really small group of people. Embarrassingly small.

As a side note, there are two categories of indie author who have an easier battle.

First: genre writers, because you have a ready-made audience and all the benefits of the publishing industry’s genre-centric communications apparatus. Your books fit neatly into the categories and tags for example.

Second: the mid-listers — people who have a backlog of titles they can take over and self-pub.

Notice that in almost every indie “success story” you read, the writer fits into at least one of those two categories (and very often both).

Me? I don’t write genre, and worse yet my books incorporate elements of genre but also elements of lit fic. And I’m starting from absolute scratch — I had a couple of non-fic books published traditionally but other than that, nobody knows who I am.

I love the idea of Smashwords, but if there’s a way to leverage it to generate exposure, I haven’t figured it out. For example, I’ve participated in several of the Smashwords Facebook promos (such as Freebie Friday, where you post a coupon code for a free copy of your book). At most it’s gotten me a handful of downloads.

And here’s the thing: with KDP Select, Amazon lets you give away free books.

So I talked it over with one of my best indie author buddies, Peazy Monellon (here’s her debut horror novel, Meany) and enrolled Can Job.

Yesterday I offered a 24-hour promotion.

285 people downloaded my novel.

I don’t know how else to put a free copy of my ebook in the hands of 285 Amazon customers.

Now, how many of those people will actually read my book? Who knows.

But if even a fraction do, and if out of that fraction one or two write reviews, or decide that they want to buy When Libby or something else I publish — well, then I’ll count this experiment a success.

Stay tuned. I’ll let you know how it works out long term . . .

Friday Find. The Blessing, by Gregory Orr.

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I have my dad to thank for this one. He grew up in the same town as the author (Germantown, NY), bought the book, and lent it to me.

The Blessing is a memoir about a tragic family that opens on begins at the bottom: on the first day of deer hunting season in 1959, Orr accidentally shot and killed his little brother.

Today Orr is a poet, so no surprise: The Blessing is not only beautifully written, but also richly felt — Orr has lived a life examined and as dreadful as it has been, at times, he’s somehow found a way to bear it.

Highly recommend.

Read more Friday Finds here.

I disagree. Social media is a MUST for writers.

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how important is website traffic to writers?

Fiction writers face peculiar challenges when it comes to generating search engine traffic.

Sabine Reed, in a guest post on published here [UPDATE: link no longer any good], tackles a topic of perennial interest to writers: how much time should we spend on social media?

It’s a good question and her answer is a thoughtful one, but I don’t think it goes far enough.

Sabine makes the following, very valid, points:

1. Google is by far the biggest source of online traffic. She points to this study, which notes that

social media sites do not drive traffic like content sites and search engines do, and it’s not even close. That means that, while all those retweets are nice to see, apparently, few people are clicking the actual link embedded within the tweeted message.

2. Writers need to generate saleable content. The corollary being: if you’re wasting hours a day on Twitter, you’re not writing your novel. And yes, that’s a problem.

But while I agree on both of those points, I don’t think they tell the whole story.

So let’s look at the problem a bit more closely — and tell me if you think I’ve missed anything here!

Yes, Content is King

As Sabine also mentions, the not-so-secret secret about driving Google traffic is to publish good content.

But what is “good content”?

It is text that Google’s bots determine to be

  • Relevant and
  • Authoritative

Relevance = keywords. Authoritative = linked.

This is a relatively straightforward problem if you are operating in the world of non-fiction.

Say I want to promote my dog books. All I have to do is write articles and blog posts about dogs, and dog training, and adopting a companion dog. There’s my keyword-laced content that all relates to dogs.*

I also network with other people publishing articles about dogs, and over time they link to my blog, which gives me authority.

This isn’t difficult to do, especially if you’re working in subject areas that are relatively narrow and don’t have  a lot of competition. I’ve done it lots of times, both on my own blog and for other peoples’ blogs.

But when it comes to fiction, what keywords are you going to use?

If someone hasn’t read my novel Can Job, then it doesn’t matter if I write 500 articles about Borschtchester, New York, or Miles Chacuderie, or the DipTych Digital Division of DipTych Corporation.

Nobody’s going to Google those terms, because they are all made up.

Now if you write genre, you may be able to get around this. It’s arguable that there are sets of keywords specific to certain genres that you could use as Google bait. Publish 500 articles about dragons and wizards and fairies, and you could find your blog generating traffic from people who want to read about dragons and wizards and fairies.

Lucky you.

Me, I’m not so lucky. Even my book about fairies isn’t really a paranormal so much as a romantic comedy with a paranormal twist.

So what about links?

It’s a funny thing, but links without focused content aren’t really useful from a search engine perspective.

Example. The New York Times has published articles about dogs. (“Asymmetric tail-wagging responses by dogs to different emotive stimuli,” anyone?) And The New York Times gets linked by bloggers, at the rate of probably a zillion links per nanosecond.

But type “dogs” into Google and The New York Times does not get top ranking.

Links without focused content aren’t an effective way to generate high visibility via search engine rank.

So although Sabine makes valid points, I think we need to re-frame the issue.

Social media is not about generating website traffic.

For writers . . .

Social Media is About Long-Term Word-Of-Mouth, Not Short-Term Traffic

That statement would give the heebie jeebies to your average SEO professional.

Your average SEO professional focuses on driving website traffic. He/she has to. When your goal is to get people to spend  money, website traffic is critical. It’s a critical link in the process of online lead generation and/or sales.

your readers are waiting

Your audience is out there — and chances are they’ll find you by word-of-mouth.

But as a novelist, I don’t care as much about traffic as about something more nebulous.

I’ve actually been wrestling with what to call it. It has aspects of “visibility” and “brand” and “platform.”

But ultimately what I need to do is generate word-of-mouth referrals.

And the way to do that is to be available when people want to connect — specifically, people who love books.

In fact, this relates to another point Sabine makes in her post:

Writers should write. The more books you have out there, the greater the number of people who will find out about you.

She notes that JA Konrath, among others, reiterate this point all the time.

But why does it work?

Word of mouth.

Write a great novel, and people talk about it. They recommend it. They publish positive reviews about it. And when they do, other people buy copies. And those people recommend it. And so on.

Which is where social media comes in.

Social Media Augments This Process

Social media can act as an amplifier.

Savvy writers know this. Watch them. They’re not tweeting to get people to go to their websites. They’re tweeting to start conversations about their books.

Yes, you need to strike a balance. You have to be conscious that time you spend on social media is time you aren’t spending on generating saleable content — novels or short stories.

But IMO it’s not accurate to say that Amanda Hocking’s success is based on the fact that she wrote a lot of books instead of doing any promotion. To quote Hocking herself: “The amount of time and energy I put into marketing is exhausting.”

So not only has Hocking invested her time in marketing, her success  can be directly attributed to social media — specifically, to word-of-mouth about her writing, which was spread and amplified via social media.

My advice, then?

Writers need blogs. They need Twitter accounts. The need to be on Facebook and probably a bunch of other sites like GoodReads.

And they need to invest time in connecting with people on all of those platforms.

What do you think?

a NaNoWriMo debrief

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So I “finished” my NaNoWriMo project — working title, Dr. Forst — on Sunday. That’s three days early, for anybody who’s paying attention.

Notice I’m not calling it a novel — I’m calling it a project.

Because what I have now on my hard drive is not a novel by any stretch.

I’m very glad I participated. There are a lot of things about writing a novel that are pretty intimidating, of course, but one of the biggies is the sheer volume of words required. Starting a novel feels a bit like standing at the foot of an impossibly high, impossibly steep mountain, and wondering how the hell you’re ever going to get to the top. And of course, the answer is “one step at a time,” but you also know that a lot can go wrong on the way, including spectacular falls from precipitous heights ;-)

Participating in NaNoWriMo forces you to push through that anxiety. And then, 30 or so days later, you’re at the top of the mountain and you realize: hey. It really wasn’t that hard.

That’s the kind of experience that you internalize even if you don’t do anything else.

And I’ve got proof. As I neared the last few thousand words of Dr. Forst, I found myself suddenly thinking of another novel I’ve drafted, Loose Dog. I like the book, but it needs a major edit. And I’ve been putting that off because the job seemed so enormous.

Hey, that doesn’t look too bad from here . . .

Now, all at once, the job doesn’t look so huge. I’m excited. I’m going to start working on it as soon as I catch up on a few other non-NaNo responsibilities.

I have some other thoughts on the benefits of NaNoWriMo which I’ll share at some point (about 4,500 words’ worth! A longish essay :-))

But part of what I also learned is that NaNoing isn’t 100 percent compatible with the way I, personally, need to write fiction.

As a result, the output I’ve generated this month is a bit of a mess.

Now granted, I haven’t gone back and read it over, and yes, I know there is probably some decent writing in there, and probably plenty of salvageable bits.

But pushing to get to 50K in 30 days just didn’t give me the gestation time I needed to solve certain problems that came up as I wrote.

And these are structural problems. This may be the height of folly, but with Dr. Forst I am trying to combine a golf novel (whatever that is) with a loose retelling of Faust (as you may have guessed from the title) (hey, I know lots of golfers who would do a little deal, wink wink nudge nudge, in exchange for a single digit handicap!) with a lightly satirical whodunnit.

I have no idea if I can pull together such a hodgepodge into a cohesive story.

But I do know that I can’t pull it together in a month.

There just wasn’t enough time for the bits of my mind that connect things together to discover and bridge the connections.

So instead of a novel, I have a . . . a kind of jackalope.

Or, say: a jackalope so poorly stitched together that it’s not going to fool anybody.

I also suspect that the voice/tone of the novel changes in the course of the book — which is partly a symptom of the same issue, but is also a result of the NaNo process. Usually, when I am writing a novel, I go back through what I’ve already written from time to time. This helps keep the voice consistent. I couldn’t afford that luxury with Dr. Forst, and I suspect the book suffers for it.

So will I ever do NaNo again?

Maybe.

But what I really hope I do is to retain the feel of constant production that the NaNoWriMo process instills.

I have my eye on a certain other mountain.

I don’t necessarily need to climb it in 30 days.

But I’ve noticed it looks a lot less steep than it did before . . .

Filed Under “Now Why Didn’t I Think of That”?

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I wonder if anyone of the legions of NaNoWriMo writers is writing a novel about . . . NaNoWriMo?

Wow. If only I’d thought of that . . . 17 days ago!

If I had . . .

Day 17.

It’s turned colder, and as I sit at my computer I notice that the last leaves have fallen from the river birch in the front yard.

I can see the neighbor’s house across the street.

With the leaves down, I can see it clearly now for the first time in months.

Nobody appears to be home.

Are they at work? Or perhaps simply hiding somewhere in the house, hiding from the chill damp of this gray November day?

I find myself unable to write. Unable to find inspiration. And I know why. There is nothing prime about Day 17: it’s a day lost in the middle, two days removed from the relief of the midway point but not far enough along to feel like the end — the final relief — is within grasp.

Yes, I still do my best to turn my pretty phrases. I must. I have no choice. If any of this is to be salvageable, I have no choice!

A slight breeze tosses  the leaves in the street.

I’ve moved to a place that is beyond prayer. Almost beyond thought.

Will anyone ever read these words?

Will anyone every read these words?

I sigh and get up to make another cup of coffee.

 

Advice to writers who want to do humorous fiction. 1975 interview with P.G. Wodehouse

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1975 interview with P.G. Wodehouse

I adore Wodehouse.

I appreciate serious novels, of course. I love novels that tackle Big Questions, and when they’re well-written I find them transporting.

But I also adore humorous fiction, and Wodehouse is by far my favorite humorous fiction author. It’s partly the language — I’m a total Anglophile — and perhaps it’s also that we’ve got those Butterfields and Lydiards in the family tree but I so appreciate the English sense of humor as well.

No surprise, then, that I view him as a writer to emulate — so much so that when I was starting my novel Can Job, I spent some time studying the Wodehouse novel Leave It to Psmith to understand how he put novels together.

I did thing like count how many characters he uses, and created an outline of his plot to see how he handled pacing.

Learn from the best, right?

Now I discover this gem: an article online where Wodehouse passes along some tips for writers!

They are fantastic tips as well. Here’s a taste:

[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a great slab of prose at the start. I think the success of every novel – if it’s a novel of action – depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, “What are my big scenes?” and then get every drop of juice out of them.

He also says this, in answer to a question about what makes a story funny:

I don’t think a man can deliberately sit down to write a funny story unless he has got a sort of slant on life that leads to funny stories. If you take life fairly easily, then you take a humorous view of things.

All in all a delightful little read. Many thanks to Abe Books for putting it online!

Monday Musing: Whoa. Wow. Waugh.

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Musing Mondays from Should be ReadingToday’s Monday Musing prompt from Should Be Reading:

  • Are you currently collecting any authors? Why?
  • Do you have all of their books? If not, why not?
  • Did you buy all the books in the collection at the same time, or did you buy a book here, a book there? Have you actually read all of the collection? If not, why not?

Currently? No.

But I have done, and when I do I like to not only collect the author but also read things like bios and collected letters.

The last author I collected, for instance, was Evelyn Waugh. I read a number of his novels: Decline and Fall, Scoop, Vile Bodies, Handful of Dust, The Loved One, Helene. (I’d already read Brideshead some years earlier.)

Around the same time, I also read Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family by Evelyn’s grandson, Alexander Waugh. I read Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London’s Jazz Age by D. J. Taylor.

Reading related non-fiction books enriches the reading experience for me, and may even  help me become a better writer.

What is your response to the prompt?