'Tis the Season: Ghost Story Review #1

 Mary Downing Hahn must be the Queen of chapter book ghost stories. Granted she writes more than ghost stories, but it's the ghost stories I keep running across in used book stores. Wish I could squeeze out the suspense from my stories like Hahn does. What's worse for the inferiority complex is that Hahn makes it look easy.

Picked up Wait Till Helen Comes at the farmer's market. Hahn takes her talent for combining kid's family problems like lost secrets and general friction, then combines them with more tension in the form of a ghost story. Her books may be "simple" chapter books, but the story is scary enough to raise chills in an adult. [Guilty.]

In this 1986 book, Hahn tells the story a blended family -- the mother with two older kids who are expected to take care of their step-dad's younger daughter who hides a heavy secret. All the kids are unhappy about moving to a new home, but the youngest feels picked on until she finds a "friend", Helen, who wants to take her to a hidden land where she'll be happy forever. Molly, the older step-sister, soon finds herself trying to "save" a step-sister who doesn't want to be "saved". Molly finds herself caught getting blamed for causing trouble because every time she tries to help, her step-sister twists events so Molly appears in the wrong.

One of the wonders of a good chapter book is that it has all the elements of a larger novel, but there isn't as much internal dialog, complicated settings, or description to get in the way of the core. An adult reader can easily follow the basic craft structure of a novel in Helen: the introduction of characters, the complication that emphasizes the danger a character's in, and the working out of a realistic the solution. On this simplified framework, Hahn creates a scary story with a warm and happy ending, a must for younger readers.

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Yeah, writing for kids is deceptive -- looks easy but ain't. I can remember how once I thought I'd write kid's books so I could finish one book in one year. Two tween books even sit in my computer waiting for revision. See how that idea got blasted out of the water? WolfSinger Press, also,  sort of distracted me and pulled me back into my Half-Elven world.

If you're having problems plotting your novels, you might study writers like Mary Downing Hahn who have a closet full of awards. The books are relatively short and uncluttered, making the pace of the structure easy to see.

Yeah, when I revise, I go back to this elementary drawing board. I find I can learn a lot from reviewing what I thought I knew.

Tweet, Tweet about Book Promoting

Tweet, tweet do the writers sing. Sometimes, they even warble useful songs, like Michael Hyatt posting an article on How to Use Twitter to gain the effective publicity for your new book ... or old one. The disgusting thing? I knew a lot of his tips. Doing them consistently and efficiently? Another can of worms. 

Tip I liked the best? Posting quotes from your book. [It's also harder to do for fiction than non-fiction.]

The tip I forget to do the most? -- Using hashtags on my tweets. This is important so more people than my followers seen my comments.

Yeah, I printed this blog off to study. So far, it's sitting on top of the pile of print-offs that need organizing ... a month's worth if you look at the post note about chiropractor info. My challenge: To figure out how to use the quote idea for fiction.

Bonus Marketing Tip: Fear Net has a discussion on why post short stories as ebooks, an interview by Brian James Freeman, the managing editor of Cemetery Dance. Read it. The comments by the authors interviewed should give you some effective ideas for promoting your work ... including just your blog.

Main points: Do you write short stories in your novel's world? You might get some added mileage out of them if you polish them and self-publish.

To Market , to Market to Sell a Fine Book

Marketing has become an unavoidable basic fact of a writer's life. Even if you have a major traditional publisher, you'll end up doing freelance promotion for your books.  So, I sit in my corner and grumble about my own miniscule efforts at book marketing.

Fact #1, I hate marketing. Always have ... even when I wrote successful ad copy.  Fact #2, I'm not absolved from the Basic Fact. Fact #3, it means I must get the maximum effect from the amount of time I spend on doing. 

So, loved it when Tamela Buhrke [Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Daily] included a blog link to a Maria Zannini article about: Three Layers of Book Promotion, from Tony Eldridge's blog Marketing Tips. Don't know what her sales are for her book, but to me, Zannini seems to be doing quite well with her marketing. I've caught her all over the web promoting her book Apocalypse Rising.  [[How's that for teamwork?]]

On the other hand, I'm not doing particularly well at all. Oh, I've sold a few books, but they're buried deep in the kelp bed and may never see the light of the surf. Maybe regular readers of my blog and a few others might know I have a couple ebooks floating around out there ... if they think hard enough to bring the memory to their fore-brains. So, I wondered what I was missing. If I figured the thing out, I might just jump-start my sales. Study time again. 

Zannini divides marketing into passive, active, and lateral forms. Thought I'd would've covered  the passive forms -- the do it once and leave it alone stuff of marketing -- best. Some of her thoughts didn't pertain to me, but I have a book trailer ... which people even watch and which has more than tripled visits to my Half-Elven website. 

Negatives: I need to revise my website home page. Big time. What needs to be done? Well, add the Taking Vengeance Facebook link and redo my business cards so I have links to the two ebooks for sale. Plus other stuff like getting an email catcher, something I haven't figured out a "prize" yet. There're some other things but I forgot them at the moment.

On the proactive side, I've touched all the bases except for book signings which don't apply to ebooks. I've heard some rumblings about ways to sign ebooks, but the technology escapes my understanding. [Yeah, I'm a computer klutz and can't even get the "like button" to appear at the top of the Taking Vengeance Facebook page.]

Then, there's the lateral forms of promotion. I surprised myself when I learned I was covering this base -- the blogging, Facebook, Twitter, social forum things -- more thoroughly than the others. One thing I haven't done is write articles on a consistent basis. 

So, if anyone wants to reprint this as a guest blog, you are more than welcome. You have my permission as long as you give me links to where people can buy Taking Vengeance and Cavern Between Worlds. Or, you could to give reference to this blog since the buy info's in the sidebar. Guess I could add I'm available for interviews, but that might be dangerous. I tend to say what I think.

My thoughts on my mixed achievement? All these are nice given time constraints. At the moment I'm leaning more and more to limiting my social networking activities to the afternoons where they compete with errands, doctor's appointments, gym visits and whatever else shows up on the calendar, including coffee with friends.

Hey, I have a life and set priorities according to my energy levels. I write first and foremost. Marketing's going to get squeezed in at the end.

Why Indie Writers Should Read Best Sellers

Reviewing another urban fantasy by a best-selling author: Jeaniene Frost's One Grave at a Time. Really loved the villains in this episode of her Cat Crawford vampire fantasies. One's the ultimate manipulating bureaucrat with a hidden agenda and the other is the malevolent ghost, Heinrich Kramer of Malleus Maleficarum infamy, who comes back every Halloween to torture and burn three women. Having two villains really adds tension to the story line.

Of course, Cat is out to save the three women Kramer has picked to sacrifice since in his opinion all women are witches. The way Kramer oozes through the simple attempts to contain him proves he isn't just any wimpy evil spirit. He's out to gather enough power by killing "witches" so he can materialize any time of year.  One of the twists in the book, one of the ghosts helping Cat catch Kramer was a witch killed by Kramer, who then killed Kramer by materializing and spooking his horse. 

The bureaucrat villain performs his role by complicating the attempts to contain Kramer while holding out promises of creating even greater complications in later books. Complications are the keystone in this book. All the secondary characters seem to add both negative and positive contributions to the plot. Not knowing when something will backfire is part of the fun of the read. In short, an evil spirit chaser's job is never done ... as proven by the latest book in the series is hitting the best seller lists. 

Frost's book is pretty straight forward urban fantasy. Okay, what do you expect with two vampires as the VP characters. I still prefer mixed genres, maybe because I tend to mix things up in my own writing.

Do you confine yourself to one genre? I've always thought of my Half-Elven as a basic high fantasy with, maybe, a touch of science in the form of genetic drift in a mixed population, but I recently got told I really don't know what I write. Marsha A. Moore at Fantasy Faction has a blog on fantasy sub-genres. Granted it's a matter of opinion, but what they say makes a lot of sense. Will I change my mind? Don't think so. After all, I'm the person who thinks that most mysteries are fantasies. 

Hey I found a rationale

for picking the books I review:

Don't know if you noticed, but a lot of the books I review end up on the "best seller lists". Part of this is because I pick up a lot of the books I read at the supermarket ... surprisingly from their best seller section. Hate to admit it, but I follow a bunch of writers who have thousands of other fans. But, there's another factor, the independent bookstore I frequent most is making it by selling more and more used books. Such is the nature of the book business at the moment. 

Yeah, I've got stuff loaded in my Kindle ... by I haven't read any of the books yet. *blush* [I least I think I know how to blush even if I don't do it much.]

To the point, The Passive Guy wrote another blog that should have sitting up with their eyes perked:  What You Can Learn from Best Seller Lists.  His parting comment: Write a spectacular book. 

For the Fun of It

In Case You Missed It:

The Passive Guy has been resurrecting Dorothy Parker. Latest quote: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."  

Even Passive's Guy's readers are getting into the act. The link is to a search I did on his site for "Dorothy Parker".