Adventures in Reading,
aka:  Learning My Lesson:

While in NYC, I got the itch to look at debut books [after reading Allison Pang's Brush of Darkness].  Since I was in the "flagship" B&N, I had the perfect opportunity to check out solid paper books.  While they didn't have a debut author section, I did find quite a few just by turning the to the backs of the books.  [Yeah, I know I could probably search new authors at the online stores.] 

I came across Cheryle Ann Smith's The School for Brides where a plain, stern-seeming young Regency lady runs a school for mistresses who want to get married rather than ply their trade.  Nice premise.  Nice secondary characters.  But the main character turned into a beautiful redhead who then turned into a stupid piece of fluff the first time she gets bedded by the vindictive love interest.  I skimmed through it enough to know it was decently written, but the main character turned me off.

Hate to admit it, but Brides had me returning to the romance section where I picked up It Happened One Season which featured stories by Stephanie Laurens, Mary Balogh, Jacquie D'Alessandro, and Candice Hern.  The authors were given the same premise:

"A handsome hero returns from war, battle-scarred and world-weary.  But family duty calls and he must find a bride.

"A young lady facing yet another season without a suitor never expects to find herself the object of his affections."  

My favorite story of the lot was by Hern, whom I had never heard of before.   I think the book's going on my keeper pile since the book's a good object lesson on how the same plot metamorphises in the hands of different authors.

Web Promotion and Other Stuff:

Joe Konrath, one of the author gurus of e-publishing has a blog called:  A Newbies Guide to Publishing.  Last week, he wrote a long multi-faceted blog:  What Works: Promo for Ebooks.  It's one of the best summaries I've seen.  If you are promoting some short stories or even a full length book, you might check it out.  I'm sure you'll find some ideas on how to promote your work.  I know I did.

You might like his closing line:  "There's a word for a self-published writer who never gives up... rich."

Of course, you have to have something to promote ... something that doesn't die in the middle.  Justine Musk in her blog, The Tribal Writer, discusses some ways to make sure your book doesn't sink like a soggy cake:  The Secrets and Revelations of a Powerful Middle Act.  She takes the position that your characters need to have secrets which are revealed in the middle of your book.  Oh, I forgot.  You also have to have confrontations.

Progress:

Am a little jittery, got my line edits for Taking Vengeance back to WolfSinger Publications  ... and now I wait for the publication date.  I'd send you there, but they don't have the excerpt up yet. 

How did I celebrate?  I finished off a short story and sent it off to Asimov's.  It's no longer flash fiction, and I like it much better with the bugs crawling around.  My main character got even crankier, a man after my own heart.

Got another short story finished too --  Cavern Between Worlds -- which I'll self-publish so I have two choices up online.  [Yes, mommy, it has been professionally edited.]

Trivia:

  Back to Mother's Day and all the good wishes.  I always think of Mother's Day as the day I changed my mother's life for the worse.  I'm more stubborn than she was.  

How stubborn was she?  She sat in the hospital lobby, refusing to budge, when the nurses said she was too small to be in labor -- until her waters broke five minutes later..  Unfortunately, it was me that popped out ... on Mother's Day ...  rather than "Shirley Temple".

Self-Publishing or a New Strategy for Marketing?

My muse stomped all over my lap/chest during my cat-and-coffee sessions the last couple days as I wondered about marketing books ...  Self-publishing isn't my bag.  (Too much work.  Hey, people, you have to be the whole publishing house ... in spite of the promises of vanity presses.)  Self-publishing can be the way to go, but most people don't have the skill set ... or inclination ... to make a success of it.  The problem:  there're no neat boxes.  Authors, irregardless of their publishers, must promote their books whether they want to or not  -- if they want to sell more than 10 copies -- so they become a de facto part of the marketing department even if the department ignores them.

Why these thoughts?  My brain is  revolving around what e-publisher I should submit Mariah to next, now that I withdrew it from the place that had it almost a year and didn't reply to my status queries.  

If I manage to sell something/anything, I'm expecting the publisher to have a marketing template of some sort to help me help them market my "minimum opus".  Question:  If you can't trust a publisher to answer your legitimate questions, how can you trust them to help you make your book a success.  [It's a test, sort of like comparing the vanity press ads in the New York Times Book Reviews with the ads by major publishers.  Which do you think is more effective?]

Then, on my blog roll Deborah Schneider on 1st Turning Point mentions the Expresso Book Machine, a POD publishing deal that lets book stores print a copy of a title as needed.  Link.  Fast service for the customer.  Low upfront costs for the book store.  My mind ran riot with the possibilities with the first thought was self-publishers gained a way to more easily get their books into stores.

Then, with my brain [or the cat] jumping all over the placem I kept thinking of writers who go with e-publishers.  Why are they mostly limited to Amazon.com and their publisher sites?  What if lots of books stores had an POD center, and e-authors formed alliances around the country to get their group's authors into regional stores.  The logistics would be interesting to say the least ... but I love the possibilities.  Maybe, it might increase the cash flow of independent book stores.

The Read ...  Now for something different, Sandra Dallas' Whiter than Snow.  Dallas is a Colorado writer who has a fascination with Rocky Mountain gold mining towns.  (She also wrote Prayers for Sale.)  I think the books fall into the category of woman's fiction and explore the nature of hardship and healing.  Even her books not set in the Rockies explore those themes.

This is a best-selling author ... but forget action packed chapters.  Dallas  tells her tale with a chapter devoted to each of the characters involved in the tragedy as she explores the ways of the heart.  The hooks are magnificent:

1)  Opening sentence:  "No one knew what triggered the Swandyke avalanche that began at exactly 4:10 P. M. on April 20, 1920."

2) Last sentence of the first chapter:  "Four of the children survived."

Progress ... Am dithering.  Maybe to some effect.  Got the last chapter of Emma rewritten and overcame my inclination for having her flip her grandmother off.  [Not a nice thing for a tween to do.]

Still am managing to revise a couple chapters of Kaffy Anne a week ... in spite of everything.  Seem to have a fetish about characters with black curly hair though.  [Mine isn't ...  wasn't, even when I was young.]

Mariah's on the front burner again, but I don't know what I'm going to do.  Someone with any sense would call Dark Solstice a trunk-novel and shelve her.

Trivia ... Have become a part of an ill friend's transportation network.  Seems like there are more cruel diseases out there now days than when I was a kid ... or are people just living longer with them?

PS.  Seems I'm spending a lot more time watching my retirement portfolio after yesterday.  Fortunately, the anemic thing wasn't drained too badly.