I gave the readers what they wanted
June 4, 2018 by H. O. Charles in category WritingA little while ago, I published the final volume in my fantasy series, The Fireblade Array, and I purposefully left the ending vague. Up to that point, I had not yet had to write a final, final ending, what with seven large books running sequentially over seven years, so perhaps this is in part responsible for what happened next.
Almost all the reviews that came in binned it. Readers complained about being left in the dark, about its depressing nature, and about their upset over the lack of redemption or happiness for the key characters. Some of the most hardline fans said nothing at all, which was even more heartbreaking for me to bear. I felt as if I had let down those who had supported me through each publication.
And so I did what we are told we should never do: I went back and altered the ending to give the readers something closer to what they wanted. It is an opportunity that the digital publishing world offers that the paperback world never could – the ability for me to make a rapid change, and for buyers to obtain an updated and improved version of the book at no extra cost.
At the time of writing, the ending had made compete sense to me, but now I see why I was wrong. It is said a writer should have confidence in their writings, and enough of it not to make changes to the final script. But I say, why not have the confidence to accept I needed to learn and improve the way I write a book?
I’ve yet to receive many reviews of the new version of the book, but I am hopeful that the little extra work I put into it will reap some positive results.
Autoettes: The tiny cars of Avalon by Will Zeilinger
June 3, 2018 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger tagged as autoettes, cars, Catalina, mysteries, research
My wife, Janet Elizabeth Lynn, and I co-write the Skylar Drake Murder Mystery series, a hardboiled series that takes the reader to 1950s Los Angeles and other areas of the west. Our new book, Slick Deal, begins News Year’s Eve 1956 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, The first murder and clues lead to Avalon, Catalina.
While researching this island for 
our story, we discovered it exists a whole world apart from the car culture of Los Angeles which, if truth be known, does not provide a lot of incentive to bring a conventional automobile to the island when the wait is fourteen years.
Why would the wait be so long for an island just twenty-one miles long and eight miles wide? According to our unscientific research, cars and trucks were posing quite a problem for the residents and visitors to the island. Pollution, soaring fuel prices, traffic, and parking were causing the kind of environment most people came to the island to escape. So a limit of 800 “personal use” vehicles was imposed for the entire island.
Prior to this ordinance, many islanders had already switched from conventional vehicles to smaller modes of transportation, such as motor scooters, and “autoettes” which is the name for vehicles no more than ten feet long and four and a half feet wide. Most of these are electric or gasoline golf carts, and tiny Japanese commercial trucks and vans. Recently “Smart Cars” have begun to appear.
There are separate waiting lists for residential vehicles and commercial vehicles. Importing an autoette doesn’t provide any loopholes either. The vehicle waiting lists apply to both cars and autoettes.
While ferries travel from Los Angeles to Avalon daily, they accommodate passengers only. If you’re importing a vehicle, you have to arrange for private transportation
As a property owner or a potential property owner looking to import a personal vehicle to Catalina Island, all the restrictions make for a frustrating task, but it’s for the good of the island. Avalon currently (2017) has space to park fewer than 1,000 autoettes in the main downtown area. As there are already over 1,100 autoette permits issued for residents. Adding more would only create stress on the limited space. Even now, Avalon seems overrun by puttering rental golf carts, courtesy vans from hotels and local residents in their four-wheel drive pickups. But Catalina Island retains its laid-back air and restrictions like these keep the island from turning into the polluted perpetual traffic jam and parking nightmare that looms on the mainland.
In Slick Deal, you’ll see how Skylar Drake and Casey Dolan use the technology of the time to solve the mystery.
SLICK DEAL is the fourth in the series and yes…we are still married!
Website: Janet Elizabeth Lynn
Website: Will Zeilinger
Kat Martin – Romantic Suspense Author Extraordinaire!
June 2, 2018 by Jann Ryan in category Jann says . . . tagged as Kat Martin, new release, romantic suspense
New York Times bestselling author Kat Martin is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara where she majored in Anthropology and also studied History. Currently residing in Missoula, Montana with her Western-author husband, L. J. Martin, Kat has written sixty-five Historical and Contemporary Romantic Suspense novels. More than sixteen million copies of her books are in print and she has been published in twenty foreign countries. Her last novel, Beyond Danger, hit #4 in Mass Market fiction on the Bookscan National Bestseller list.
Kat is currently at work on her next Romantic Suspense.
Several years ago I had the pleasure to meet Kat Martin. I was attending my first Orange County Chapter of Romance Writers of America meeting with two fellow writers. I knew very little about the organization and had no clue what to expect. To my surprise and delight while getting coffee at the refreshment table, I was greeted by none other than Kat Martin, one of my favorite authors. What made it more amazing was that I had just finished reading Gypsy Lord, her latest book, and never, ever thought I would actually meet her. Now here I am today in 2018, doing a Q & A with her. So, let’s get started.
Jann: You have a stellar list of Historical and Contemporary Romantic Suspense novels. May 30th, Beyond Control, the third book in the Texas Trilogy made its debut. How do you do it? How do you keep writing these wonderful books?
Kat: Thank you so much for the compliment. I really try hard to come up with good characters. I try to find a good plot and hope I can make it all come together. I will say it is getting harder and harder to come up with new and interesting stories. But I’ll keep doing my best!
Jann: Where did you get the idea for the Texas Trilogy – Beyond Reason, Beyond Danger, Beyond Control?
Kat: I never really know where an idea comes from. It’s just sort of not there one minute and there the next. It’s just a kernel of an idea to start with then it expands during the course of writing the novel.
Jann: Tell us about Joshua Cain and Victoria Bradford from Beyond Control.
Kat: Tory is a strong woman but she has been beat down by life, losing her husband, raising a child, then hooking up
with a very bad man. Josh is exactly the kind of guy Tory needs because he’s strong and supportive. Coming out of the war in Afghanistan, he’s had problems of his own, but Josh is tough enough to handle them. They made a great couple to write.
Jann: Victoria has a four-year-old daughter, Ivy. When working on your characters and the plot, how do you decide if you want to have a child in the story?
Kat: Putting a child in the story makes the book much more difficult to write–at least for me. I don’t have children so I have to rely on interactions I’ve had with other people’s children and my husband’s sons and grandkids. Usually the story just calls for kids or it doesn’t. I just kind of go with my instincts.
Jann: What profession other than your own would you love to attempt?
Kat: At this stage, there is nothing I want to do I haven’t done–except maybe travel more. I used to joke that if I could start over, I’d be an astrophysicist. I love astronomy. It would have been an exciting career.
Jann: What is one of the craziest thing you’ve ever done?
Kat: We stayed in a house on stilts in the middle of a violently flooding river. It was stupid and dangerous. We were lucky the house didn’t get swept away and drown us!
Jann: If you could travel back in time with whom would you like to meet and why?
Kat: Winston Churchill would be interesting. I’d also like to meet Margaret Thatcher, one of my personal heroes.
Jann: If a spaceship landed in your backyard and the aliens on board offered to take you for a ride, would you go? Why or why not?
Kat: I don’t think I’m ready for a spaceship ride. I’m a little too practical.
Jann: Do you ever run out of ideas? If so, how did you get past that?
Kat: I freak out when I run into an idea roadblock. Terrifying! I usually try to run through ideas with my husband. Just saying everything out loud often solves the problem. Sometimes going for a ride, taking a day off, going to the show will help. Anything to stir up fresh ideas.
Jann: How do you stay motivated? What drives you to keep writing?
Kat: I like the puzzle-solving aspect, the chance to be creative. Earning a living, of course, is part of the reason I write. I don’t think I would keep going if I had to work for free. I like getting rewarded for what I do. I love it when people like my books. That’s one of the best rewards.
Jann: It was great getting to catch up with you Kat and wish to thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. If you have any comments or questions for Kat, please use the comment form below.
Kat has a guest post here on A Slice of Orange, Writing Dialogue. You can also read Geralyn Corcillo’s Book Review: BEYOND CONTROL. And finally, here are all three books in Kat’s Texas Trilogy. If you hover over the cover images a buy link will show up. Happy reading.
Linda O. Johnston: June Featured Author
June 1, 2018 by Linda O. Johnston in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as dogs, Featured Author of the Month, Linda O Johnston, mysteries, Pets, Suspense
Linda O. Johnston
Linda O Johnston started publishing fiction with a series of short stories for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. The fist story, “Different Drummers” won the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award for best first mystery short story in 1988.
Her first novel published in 1995, A Glimpse of Forever was a time travel romance for Love Spell. Since then she has written over 40 novels . . . mysteries, paranormal romance, romantic suspense and more.
Pets and especially dogs frequently show up in Linda’s novels. She has written for Berkley Prime Crime, The Kendra Ballantyne Pet-Sitter Mysteries, which was a spin-off of the Pet Rescue Mysteries and for Midnight Ink The Superstition Mysteries.
She is currently writing three different series. Her most current releases are Pick and Chews, the fourth Barkery & Biscuits Mystery from Midnight Ink, Second Chance Soldier, in the K-9 Ranch Rescue series for Harlequin Romantic Suspense and Protector Wolf, a paranormal romance for Harlequin Nocturne.
In addition to blogging for A Slice of Orange on the 6th of every month, Linda blogs at Killer Hobbies, Killer Characters, the Midnight Ink authors blog, and Writerspace.
Linda enjoys hearing from readers. Visit her website at www.LindaOJohnston.com or friend her on Facebook.
Dear Extra Squeeze Team, I Finished My Book, Now What?
May 31, 2018 by The Extra Squeeze in category The Extra Squeeze by The Extra Squeeze Team tagged as publishing. marketing, writing
Rebecca Forster
USA Today Bestselling author of 35 books, including the Witness series and the new Finn O’Brien series.
After thirty-five published novels (and a few that are still under the bed) the best advice I can give an author is to step away from the book. Leave the house and do something physical for a few days. Play tennis, jog, or get a massage. When your body is energized, so is your mind. You have also now made a break with your creative responsibilities and are ready to tackle your administrative one. Here are the next steps that I think are critical. These steps will make it easy for readers to sign up for your mailing list and help you get reviews – the two most critical things for successful marketing.
- Construct your front and back matter. This will include:
- Carefully worded reviews request linked to relevant bookstore (front and back)
- Links to your website, BookBub and Amazon page follows. (back)
- Information on your lead magnet with a link to your sign up page (front and back)
- Backlist with title, one line blurb and a few books covers (can be front and back) If you have a zillion, limit to ten and then offer a link ‘for other works by this author’
- Short author bio (back)
- Check every link to make sure they are live and go to the right place.
- Reread the entire book including all the additions to catch last minute mistakes.
- Publish the book.
- Wait a few days before aggressively marketing so that the book establishes itself within the Amazon algorithms.
H.O. Charles
Cover designer and author of the fantasy series, The Fireblade Array
That depends! Do you want to self-publish or try the traditional route?
Whichever you choose, it is worth getting someone you trust (and who is supportive) to read it through for basic errors at this stage, if you haven’t already. If you plan to self-publish, find an editor or proofreader to clean up the final draft. Next, you’ll need to choose your distributor, a formatter and a cover designer. It is possible to format e-books and paperbacks yourself (and really not that difficult) but learning anything new takes time. Choose your cover designer carefully (!) and make sure you communicate exactly what you want to them as clearly as possible. Again, it’s possible to do a cover yourself (I did – do!), but I would recommend first looking at your online competition and honestly questioning whether you can create something that meets those standards (this sounds soooo harsh, but unfortunately so is the bookselling world).
Both your formatter and cover artist will need to know which distributor you are publishing through. There are quite a few choices out there, but beware that the more you use, the more complicated updating each version of your book will become, because you will have to upload it to each distributor each time! I currently use KDP, Smashwords, Createspace and sometimes Google, but I wouldn’t want any more distributors than that.
If you decide to go the traditional route, then my advice has to be based on the experiences of two friends who write non-fiction. Both of them had to try several agents before they found a good one to represent them, and both already had significant success in the journalistic and broadcasting world (a background you don’t need in self publishing!), which helped them achieve good publishing deals.
Finding the right agent was what really landed them the deal to provide the income they needed. Their previous agents were happy to take them on, but in both cases the agents did very little work in promoting their books to the publishers.
Alternatively, you can go directly to publishers (depending on who they are). Remember that publishers are looking for something and someone they can sell and make lots of money from, so you need to present them with a good investment opportunity. Therefore, consider everything about yourself that might reassure a publisher you are a ‘safe bet’, and also consider how large a market your book might have. Choose your publishers and/or agents carefully. Research them. Make sure they will put in the same effort to promote your work that you would if you were self-published.
Good luck!
Jenny Jensen
Developmental editor who has worked for twenty plus years with new and established authors of both fiction and non-fiction, traditional and indie.
Fine. El Fin. La Fin. Fund.
You’ve typed The End. An amazing accomplishment. An awesome accomplishment. Awesome by both hipster-speak and actual definition!
But you’re not finished.
You’ve invested untold hours, sweated buckets of emotion and given a piece of yourself to the story. Next step is to protect your investment: have the manuscript edited. What type of edit is up to you. It’s time for some harsh and honest self-analysis.
If you are not completely confident that the book will read as well to the public as it does to your ears, arrange a content edit. At the very least get an Editorial Assessment. Then act on that advice from a neutral party. Finessing and polishing a completed manuscript is – and always has been – a part of the process.
If you are certain every detail is consistent and every word is worthwhile and imminently readable, and you’re sure your premise, characters, action, story arc are all as strong as they should be, then hire a professional editor for a line edit. Last line of defense is to have the manuscript proofread. If the product you present the world is rife with misspellings, typos, ungainly sentence structure etc. it will not sell. Unless you offer a clean manuscript it won’t matter what marketing effort you invest; you won’t get the positive response needed to make an indie book stand taller than the millions of competing books in the Indie forest.
When you are 100% confident that your book is as perfect as you can make it then it’s time to get your production ducks in a row.
Cover designer
Formatter
ISBN number
Front and back matter
Marketing (a nifty one word concept that sums up volumes of effort)
Fortunately, The Extra Squeeze features two brilliant published authors and one outstanding PR/Marketing guru. Their experience and guidance will speak to marketing strategies much better than I can. There is a trove of support available on line – a lot of it for free. From Shewrites.com to Mark Dawson’s selfpublishingformula.com, the resources are there if you seek them out and take the effort to implement.
Remember, the product you offer to the reading public, the product that represents everything about you as a writer, the product that will make you new friends by the hundreds (aka fans) – and not a disappointment that will manifest itself as bad reviews and no sales and a stinky digital reputation that never really disappears – must be polished, professional and perfect.
From the time you type the first The End to when you’ve got your marketing efforts in place, your investment will be gigantic. Don’t squander your investment. Have your manuscript edited before it ever sees the light of day. A pitch perfect product is your best first step.
Robin Blakely
PR/Business Development coach for writers and artists; CEO, Creative Center of America; member, Forbes Coaches Council.
There is a rumor that Robin has gone fishing. Where ever she is, we’re pretty sure she’s wearing her tin star.
Send us your questions!
Ever wonder what industry professionals think about the issues that can really impact our careers? Each month The Extra Squeeze features a fresh topic related to books and publishing.
Amazon mover and shaker Rebecca Forster and her handpicked team of book professionals offer frank responses from the POV of each of their specialties — Writing, Editing, PR/Biz Development, and Cover Design.
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