What NOT to Do

Last night, I sat down to watch the remake of the original movie for the series The Waltons.  I do love me some Waltons, doncha know.  I've seen every episode of the series multiple times.  And with the way entertainment is these days, I wasn't so sure I wanted to watch this remake.  But there was nothing else on, so I waded in.

It was bad.  So bad.  I mean, we watched it all (Hubs joined me about halfway through), but it was not good.  The acting was bad.  Most of the time, it was like they were reading the lines instead of acting the characters.  But this blog isn't about acting.  It's about writing.

And the writing was bad.  The dialogue was bad.  Good god, people.  Did you even think about how people talk to one another?  Especially how people talked to each other in 1933?  Some of the slang for today would not have been slang then.  I wish I could remember some of the instances, but I don't.  Trust me, they were there.  Glaring.  Spotlight right to the eyes.  

And it wasn't like writing the script would've been hard.  The movie followed the original plot for the most part.  They could've used the original script for petesakes.  Geez.

And whoever researched the historical period should be slapped.  1933... Virginia.  A black police officer?  Come on.  Really? And considering, it was post-Depression, so why the hell was everyone dressed so nicely?  Oh, sure, they put Mary Ellen in overalls, but they were nice overalls, like they'd been bought recently for her instead of the hand-me-down ones she would've been wearing.  And all the other children were so nicely dressed they looked like they were sporting their go-to-church clothes instead of the cheap, raggedy play clothes the children of a poor mountain family would've been wearing.  Everything should've looked well-worn, like they'd been passing the clothes down for years and making everything else by hand.  Hell, even when the dad was laying in bed in his long-johns, the damn things looked like he bought them online last week.

Did they even bother to watch the original movie???  They could've made it all so much better if they had simply followed the formula that worked so well it spawned a hit TV series that lasted for NINE YEARS.  (Okay, so maybe they should've stopped after Richard Thomas left, but that's just my opinion.)

Anyway, if you're writing a period piece or anything else, pay attention to how people talk to each other.  Pay attention to the period you're writing.  Otherwise, you'll leave your readers like that movie left this viewer... irritated and wanting to write a scathing one-star review.  

KU, Page Read Vacuum, and the Timesuck That is Writing Forums

As you know, I had the Once Upon a Djinn books on sale.  And this is the point at which I should be seeing residual Page Reads mounting.  Except I'm not. 

So, I says to myself this morning... 'Self?' I says.  "I wonder what the hell is up with Kindle Unlimited?  And finding no answer in my head, I went in search of people who were perhaps in the know about such things.  And the only place I know of to go is the KDP community forum.

Yeah, yeah, if you know me, you know I don't do forums.  At least not in any participatory way and rarely in a read-and-learn way.  (Long story... old story... blah and yawn.)

Anyway, I was scrolling though the forum, trying to discern the answer to my question.  I clicked on a post that I thought might help.  Nope.  Someone asking a question that might've been answered by doing what I was doing, and then getting a 'well, duh' answer and then getting her undies in a wad because she felt like she was being bullied.  Clicked on another... Same same.  Then I clicked on a thread because I wanted to laugh at the responses to the question of 'why is everyone so vicious here?' (and they spelled vicious wrong... on a writing forum... derp.)  Then I got sucked into a post that's subject was so horribly written it made me want to gouge out my eyes.  You know, just for kicks.

And then I remembered I was supposed to be trying to answer a question and I left because being in there is suck a huge waste of time.  Which is pretty much what happens when I go into any forum lately. 

Yes, I could've tried searching the topic.  I've done that in the past and get more useless hits than useful ones.  Sometimes it's better to just scroll down the list and hope for the best. 

Anyway... again... I did find that other writers seem to be in the same position (i.e. Kindle page reads are down), but no real clue as to why.  It could be that so much drek is floating around in the program and readers are being so consistently burned by crap that they're not using KU as much as they used to.  That's my guess anyway.  Not sure what the answer is.  I know I don't want to go wide, but it may be the only answer. 

The problem with even exploring that is my Kindle Select dates aren't up for an entire series any time soon.  And it's such a pain in the ass to go through all my books and change all the links so they don't point to Amazon.  Ugh.

I also noted, in the forums, that the general consensus is ads are paying for themselves, but no one is seeing sales like they used to.  So, I guess we're all in this together.  I'm guessing again but I think it's the glut of  potential reading material. 

Imagine you're in a stadium full of people and you're trying to find one person you might want to be friends with but you've never met them and you aren't sure what any of them are like.  That one is wearing a brightly colored shirt, but when you step up to him, you discover he's boring.  You overhear a woman talking and she sounds interesting, so you step up and find out she's kind of repeating the same things you've heard over and over.  There might be a good one in there somewhere, but finding them is hard and the harder things are the less likely we are to do them.  And so you get a headache and you go home.

I imagine that's kind of like what being a reader these days is like.

Wish I had better information for you this morning.  Like I said, I tried.  I may try to research this more after I've had some more coffee and the memory of the forum timesuck has faded a bit.

What say you?

A Little Marketing Research

I've been doing an interesting experiment lately.  I've actually been scrolling through all the marketing newsletters and FB groups I'm subscribed to, looking for books I want to read.

Now, understand something, I only subscribed to these newsletters so I could see the ads I was placing with them.  I get at least a half dozen every day in email form.  There are at least another half dozen groups I follow in FB that bombard me with book ads throughout the day.

I didn't start this out as market research.  I just had some time and some inclination to look for new books to read.  But the more I flip through the emails and the FB postings, the more I'm learning about the venues I've been paying to market my books.

This is, of course, totally unscientific and all anecdotal.  Your mileage may vary.

The best newsletters for finding books, for me, have been Ereader News Today and the newly-found duo of Book Barbarian (SF/F) and Book Adrenaline (mystery, thriller, suspense).  Clear and concise ads with a big enough font that I don't have to enlarge anything to read them.  And large images. Plus, a wide selection every day.  I'm also finding some good stuff at Reading Deals, Freebooksy and Bargain Booksy, and Book Gorilla.  (Although Book Gorilla is sometimes information overload.)

Another thing about Book Gorilla that I've noticed is that they have a bunch of books listed and then a big thing about their ongoing contest to win a Kindle Fire, and after that, a bunch more books.  Sort of a 'below the fold' kind of thing, which makes me wonder where my book would end up if I got an ad there.  I'm guessing below the fold since the 'above the fold' books all seemed to be trad-pub.  I received their newsletter for a while before I noticed there were other books down there.

If you're not familiar with Book Gorilla, I believe you have to pay for an ad with Kindle Nation Daily to get a free spot at BG.  And KND ads are expensive.  And I've been unimpressed with KND's offerings, for whatever that's worth.


ebooksdealsdaily only has like two books per email and they haven't been really interesting to me.  Booktastik is about the same.  The Fussy Librarian has a lot of books, but so far, only one that grabbed my interest enough to download it.  Omnimystery News also has a few books, but their last offering was mostly trad-pub and nothing I found really new or exciting.  (The first book was a "The Cat Who..." novel.  :shrug:)

ReadCheaply has a quality newsletter with some good books to offer, but again, nothing so far that's excited me enough to buy.  I'm a hard sell, though, and I've been looking for some very specific types of books*.

Goodkindles seems to be the worst for me, so far.  Their last offering was mostly self help and the fiction wasn't blowing my skirt up.  At all.

Paranormal and Urban Fantasy Bargains has an okay newsletter, but their main worth is in the FB page, I think.  I know I've gotten some nice sales numbers advertising there and I've picked up a couple books to read.

I follow Pixels of Ink on FB.  Not sure why.  In order to get an ad there, you have to sacrifice a virgin to the gods of internet advertising or something.  And I never seem to see any books in their ads that make me run off to spend money.  

Naturally, the best sales I've gotten from marketing with any of these places were through ENT.  They seem to be doing it right - both from a writer and a reader standpoint.

As always, this is just my opinion and personal observations.  Your experience with any of these places may be totally different.

So, tell me, do you subscribe to any book marketing newsletters?  I'm always on the lookout for new places to find books and new places to market.  Share away.


*New to me and underappreciated - which means less than like 30 reviews or whatever.  And 99c or free.  I'll pick up books that don't meet these requirements, but the cover copy really has to excite me.

Back to Work

Yeah, I know the 'holiday' weekend isn't over yet.  I've always been a bit confused about taking a day off to celebrate working, but that's a post for an alternate universe.  Anyway, writers don't work like other people, so weekends and holidays are often still work days.

So, of course, I'm working.  Not as hard as I have at other times this year, and not as diligently as I should be working, but I am working.  Right now, I'm reading through the beginning I already wrote for the next book in the SCIU series - a sort of unattached sequel to Dying Embers.  It's called Fertile Ground.  And it stars Agent Teri Buchanan - a rape victim assigned to catch a serial rapist.  (See a pattern?  Pyrophobic agent goes after serial arsonist/murder.)  It's a hard book to write and it's one the mainstream would probably toss me out on my ass for, but I think it's one that needs to be written, so I'm writing it.  Look for this one to release in maybe May 2016.

To the end of getting this book right, I watched an interesting show about serial rapist/murderer Dusty Rhodes last night.  A forensic psychologist interviewed him.  It was gratifying to know I'm already on the right track with my own villain. 

Also, I sent Bloodflow off to the editor this past week.  She already sent me a note saying she dove right in when she was supposed to be doing something else and loves it so far, which is always good.  I've been working on the cover copy for that, too.  Busy busy.  This book will release in November - good lord willin' and the creek don't rise.  I'll share the copy later.  I read it to Hubs, and he said 'Ooo, good one!', so I got that going for me.

What were you up to over the weekend?  What's on the schedule for this week?

The Research Distraction

Writers are easily distracted.  I mean, it kind of goes with the territory, don't ya think? I think our brains are wired to notice all the shiny, pretty things. Only the most hardcore and committed among us (I'm not one of them) can keep our mind on the task in front of us for protracted amounts of time.  I can think of a few, but I think they're the exception to the rule.  And the worst distractor - when it comes to writing (and not the rest of life which is full of shiny, pretty things) - is research.

Research is necessary part of writing.  Obviously, we write about all sorts of things we cannot necessarily have personal experience with.  And then there are the things we do have personal experience with, but we want to make sure we're writing it right, or saying it right, to give readers a richer experience.  Needless to say, research - while necessary - can certainly take us away from the task at hand.  Whatever that task may be.

Yesterday, I got distracted researching something from Dying Embers - which is already out and people are buying it and reading it, so this isn't even something I NEED to research.  It was phrasing I had used that a reader had a question about.  And then I had to know where the phrase originated and perhaps how it got inserted into my lexicon.  :shrug:

This morning, I got distracted looking for something to talk about on this blog.  All I wanted was a psychological disorder that might lead one to a life of crime.  Instead I followed the rabbit down this path and that path... Did you know there's a study linking psychological disorders and traumatic brain injury?  Oh, and that anti-social personality disorder is now called 'sociopathy'?  And that according to Slate, 'abnormal is the new normal' and they're totally okay with that?  And there's something called Avoidant Personality Disorder - which I'm pretty sure I'm in recovery from...

Ahem.  Where was I?

Ah, yes, the research distraction.  I've had many a time when I was writing along nicely, churning the words out, when some tiny aspect of the story needed a little research.  I spent an unmentionable amount of time researching big, white dog breeds for Wish in One Hand, for instance.  (Research combined with a personal interest is the worst.  Decided on the Kuvasz, btw.)  Coming back to the writing after that is sometimes hard and occasionally, the whole writing session can be derailed due to one little thing, which leads to another little thing, which leads to another little thing until you start out researching varieties of wild mushrooms because the gal who found the body was trying to teach a client which ones are edible and which are poisonous, and you find yourself hours later looking at YouTube videos of cats.

One thing I've learned to do, and what the hardcore, committed writers seem to do, is instead of going off to chase the rabbit, you put a placemarker in the writing - and then keep writing.  When you edit, you do the research then, so as not to interrupt the flow.  And lord knows, for me, there's usually no editing flow to interrupt.  Of course, that only helps when you're actually in the writing groove.  If you're doing something else, and the research bunny hops in your path, you're pretty much screwed.

SQUIRREL!

How do you deal with distractions?  Have you ever started out looking up one thing online and then followed the rabbit down a twisted path?  Where's you end up?