Thoughts of Nature and Place

By Renea Winchester

Outside, a Cardinal declares the day shall be "pretty, pretty, pretty," a refreshing change from the dreary "wet, wet...you" accurate prediction of precipitation we've endured this winter. A Carolina Wren joins his song, drowning the forecast with tweets and clicks. She sings her gravely song with head held high, as she awakens daffodils from their slumber, giving me hope that finally, I've made it through another winter.

Nature plays an important role in not only establishing a sense of place, as was the case with my book, In The Garden With Billy: Lessons About Life, Love & Tomatoes, but providing the physical escape needed in order to create. I refer to myself as a "sensory-author," one who must feel (sometimes literally) that which she is writing about. Concerned that my memory would fail, I wrote portions of In The Garden With Billy on fast-food napkins. Scribbling frantically beneath the corn stalks while praying for a cooling breeze, I wrote clipped phrased I'd use later. Once I returned home, I'd unfold the napkin, brush aside the dirt wedged in the creases, and relive the day while working on my laptop.

Recently, I was awarded the Denny Plattner Award for my non-fiction essay. Remembering is a come-with-me story about the tradition of "Decoration Day;" a practice my family has maintained for over seventy-five years.

From Remembering:

The road narrows and turns to grass. I inhale deeply and fight back tears. I am home. Several generations of family members have loaded into the back of pickup trucks then parted a sea of tourists to visit a place we hold sacred. While others flock to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to play, we travel to a place few will ever see. We travel in part out of duty and respect. We travel to honor our heritage, and remember.

In this excerpt, I carry you into a secret place my people once called home. Without personally experiencing the moment, my feeble imagination can not envision anything as accurate as what I share. While I do not categorize myself as a "Nature Writer," everything I've written that has won awards has reflected my love of nature. Leaving me to ponder for a moment, Where am I finding this soul-feeding nutrient in the heart of Atlanta?

Often, I retreat into the woods behind my home. Carrying a blanket, water bottle, and a notebook (yes, I still put pen-to-paper), I escape to the trickle of a creek which is actually the overflow from a neighboring pond. Sitting beneath an enormous river birch, I imagine the whispering water is actually the deafening rush of the Oconaluftee River, or Indian Creek Falls. I must write quickly, because my mind is rarely fooled by this trickery.

Inevitably, this attempt at solace triggers my neighbor's need to cut his lawn. The whining Briggs and Stratton grates against my process like nails on chalk. It is, without fail, a promise that the moment I begin to write, he decides it's time to cut the grass (on a Sunday, no less). Shaking away this impediment, I try another route. Lacing my shoes tight, I grab the hand-held recorder, determined to walk myself into a creative moment. For me, walking has proven to be a highly effective means to generate ideas. Unfortunately, soon after I begin rambling off a list of ideas, the ear-piercing cry of an ambulance shatters the moment.

Desperate, I must escape into a place where I can not be found. Vanishing into a pathless place where busyness is not invited, I listen for the voices of those who have walked the land before me. I sit still, aware of everything and nothing. I must taste the sweetness of the moss, hug the calloused fragility of bark, and try not to cry as my face presses into the creases of the hemlock tree, all while knowing this species may vanish during my time on earth.

Overhead hemlocks are loosing their battle with the Wooly Adelgid. The once strong trees stand weak and anorexic. Only a few green branches remain. Surrounded in death, they bravely fight to survive the microscopic beetle’s attack. I notice the smell of the forest has changed. Something is missing. The honey fragrance of mountain laurel and honeysuckle travel on the breeze, but the heady smell of hemlock is less pungent. Tears fall as I wonder if the species will survive another season, or will their skeletons be all that welcomes me home next year.

Lacking the imagination of those much greater than I, my best offering to readers is an invitation into my world; one filled with yarn-spinning true-life characters, pristine places few will ever see, and the belief that everyone, every single one of us has a story that matters to someone. While I create this on paper, it is impossible for me to share it with you unless I first experience it through the eyes of Mother Nature.

Renea Winchester is an award-winning author whose book In The Garden With Billy: Lessons About Life, Love & Tomatoes was recently nominated for the SIBA award. She lives in Atlanta, but escapes to the Smoky Mountains at every possible opportunity.

Viewed Through Nature

By Peggy Webb


This month, Kathy has asked the Southern authors to discuss the role nature plays in our writing process and/or our books. Boy, is this a ready made topic for me! Since I first began writing (I’ve been a published author for twenty-six years), I’ve always made certain that my desk is positioned so I can see out the window. Not across the room. Right beside the window, so that I feel sunlight and stormy skies alike.
The sweep of lawn and sky, the parade of birds that flock to swing on the trailing vines of my Lady Banks rose, the ever-changing bloom in my flower beds, the dragon suspended from my front porch ceiling, the unicorn reclining underneath my tea olive, the dance of chimes in the wind – all are sources of inspiration. In the little Mississipppi cottage where I currently live, my monitor backs up to double windows. Even while I’m immersed in creating a story and am not consciously cataloging the goings-on just beyond the blinking cursor, I feel – and on some level see the magnificence and mystery of nature pouring through my window. What I write and what I see are magically woven together so that the wonder of God’s creation finds its way onto the pages of my books.
“I lost myself quite in the upper air and clouds, seeming to pass an imaginary line which separates a hill, mere earth heaped up, from a mountain, into a subterranean grandeur and sublimity.” Henry David Thoreau, Journal.
That’s the way nature, even that merely seen through my window, makes me feel. “Lost in subterranean grandeur and sublimity.” Even when I’m not writing, I turn to nature - for the simple pleasure of sitting on the porch swing, for the satisfaction of plunging my hands into the earth and making things grow, for meditation and peace.
Do you like to walk barefoot in new Spring grass? Are you a swimmer? A hiker? A biker? A gardener? Does nature inspire you or make you think of chiggers and mosquitoes and snakes? Tell me your stories.

Peggy Webb has lost count of the number of books she has written, but she thinks it’s around seventy, and that’s just counting those published. Currently she writes the Southern Cousins Mystery series. Her own umpteen Southern cousins all send disclaimers that they are NOT the model for Lovie. (Lovie’s had more lovers than Elvis has fleas. That’s the dog in Peggy’s series, not the real King.) She invites you to visit her and enter her Spring contest at www.peggywebb.com. You can also follow her on Facebook.

The Three Rules of Publicity

By Andy Straka

Here are a few tokens of advice to new authors regarding publicity—for what they're worth.

There are three rules for publicizing your book. Unfortunately (with apologies to W. Somerset Maughan) no one knows what they are.

What do I mean by this? I mean that there are many reasons why a particular book may catch fire in the public’s imagination. There are many more reasons why it may not. Most of these reasons have little or nothing to do with the caliber of the book and little or nothing to do with publicity—at least publicity as we tend to think about it in the traditional business sense.

I have begun to wonder why so many of us—publishers included—have become so convinced that promotion leading to traditional publicity is the only reliable path to making a book successful. Has the track record of such efforts born this theory out? For many books and authors, the answer is obviously yes. But for many others the results are disappointing, or at best, mixed.

I’m not talking about building a big mailing list, working with a publicist, facebooking, twittering, blogging, etc. or traveling to lots of bookstores and conventions and the like—all of which have been eloquently discussed here of late and all of which may be beneficial if you can muster up the time and the budget to undertake them.

I’m talking instead about building long-term relationships (more on this in a moment) and attempting to look at your book—and maybe even yourself—with new eyes. I’m talking about discovering and developing your own particular brand.

Look at the example of our esteemed blog goddess Kathy Patrick. Here is a writer who is building herself, her store, book club, and her own book into a national presence. She has cultivated her own unique style that sets her apart as a colorful personality that many people want to hear from and get to know better.

But there is only one Kathy Patrick. What works for her won’t necessarily work for the rest of us. (I’ve tried donning one of those fancy hats while out hawking, but it just doesn’t work.) Maybe we each need to spend more time digging deeper into our own books and personalities to discover what it is about them that makes them truly unique and worthy of the public’s attention.

For the majority of us the effort of developing our own brand is still a work in progress. The type of book you write today may not be the same type of book you write tomorrow. It certainly won’t be the same book—at least one would hope not. Having spent more than a decade in sales and marketing prior to becoming a writer, I used to think I was pretty good at publicizing my books. But now I know better. My piddling marketing efforts are nothing but a drop in the bucket compared to the power of genuine imagination and brand building.

There is another sometimes overlooked way to truly publicize your book and yourself as an author. Some might even argue it is the most important ingredient in successful publicity. Unfortunately, it often only comes over time. That ingredient is the cultivation and development of quality personal relationships.

Relationships are the secret to many author's success. Relationships with everyone from readers to librarians to bookstore employees and to your UPS man. From your local newspaper columnist to editors and heads of publishing marketing departments. Some of us are naturally better at building and maintaining relationships than others. But we can all benefit from keeping this goal in mind.

A word of warning in this regard. Sometimes too much self-promotion can hurt relationships. No one wants to be around a constant self-promoter. Your relationship with someone is far more important than the particular book you may be pitching at the moment.

I implied at the beginning there were no rules, right? I do, however, want to close with a few hard-earned tips.

1) Keep writing
2) In your efforts at self-promotion, never, ever begin to think too much of yourself.
3) Always be gracious, kind, and courteous. Always be thankful for what you have.
4) Never fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others. Wherever you are on the totem poll of publishing success, there will always be plenty of people above and below you.
5) Above all, try your best to cultivate friendships and other positive relationships. Genuine promotion of you by others is always far more powerful than self-promotion—you never know what blessings may rebound.
6) Try your best to keep up with technology and social networking without cutting into your writing time.
7) Remember tip #1.

That’s it. That’s about all I know so far. I hope these ideas are of some help to you on your own journey to success.


A transplanted Southerner, Andy Straka is a native of upstate New York and a graduate of Williams College where, as co-captain of the basketball team, he "double-majored" in English and the crossover dribble.

A licensed falconer and co-founder of the popular Crime Wave at the annual Virginia Festival of the Book, he is the author of five novels. Four belong to the Frank Pavlicek mystery series featuring a former NYPD detective turned Virginia private investigator and falconer: A Witness Above (Anthony, Agatha, and Shamus Award finalist), A Killing Sky (Anthony Award Finalist), Cold Quarry (Shamus Award Winner,), and the most recent Kitty Hitter. A standalone novel, Record Of Wrongs, was also hailed by Mystery Scene magazine as "a first-rate thriller."

Andy lives with his family in Virginia. Current projects include a soon-to-be released Young Adult version of A Witness Above incorporating a falconry primer for teens published by Cedar Creek Press and a recently completed sixth novel. Andy is also at work on his Masters Degree in Creative Writing.

Discover more about Andy and his writing at www.andystraka.com

Hawking the Goods

WHY IS MY BOOK NOT GETTING THE LOVE?

By Susan Reinhardt



So you’ve written a book and your wondering, “Why isn’t my publicist getting me more interviews and radio shows?”

With my first book, “Not Tonight Honey, Wait ‘Til I’m a Size 6,” the atmosphere in New York was different. We weren’t in a recession. Positions, such a publicists, weren’t cut from the house’s budgets.

Plus, my topic was unusual and the media loves nothing more than something that’s different, that they’ve never heard before.

The more you can cull from the book that’s outlandish or never-before-told, the better the press release and the more newspapers and radio shows – even TV – will bite.

With my second book, “Don’t Sleep with a Bubba,” the recession was just beginning. My publicist had left the house I was with, and only a couple of people hawking for authors remained.

So “Bubba,” floated in the atmosphere of “Poor me. Nobody knows I’m even out here.” It got even worse with “Dishing with a Kitchen Virgin,” when my publicist did not get me ONE interview. Not even with a Podunk station in North Dakota.

Here’s the difference publicity makes. “Not Tonight” went into 7 printings. “Bubba” and “Dishing” are orphans trapped in Amazon with nobody to adopt them.

Those who do their own publishing with print-on-demand companies have an even harder time. But not by much these days. A lot of reporters (and I’m a columnist) won’t touch a book that is self-published. I think that’s snooty. If the book is good, the hook is exceptional, I’ll usually bite and do a piece.

One thing I’ve noticed is those with big budgets who can hire Super Duper PR firms like Steve Harrison and Annie Jennings and the like, may be out 10 grand, but they will probably get some attention if the book is good enough.

Some also hire local public relations companies, but these can be kind of iffy.

Now, if you’re like me and semi-poor, there are free sites that give great information.

I receive the Steve Harrison newsletters and free phone seminars. I also subscribed to PitchRate.com and the Reporter Connection. These are just two of the countless blogs and sites devoted FREE to helping you get that book out of the warehouses and into people’s homes.

Susan Reinhardt can be reached at susan@susanreinhardt.com or www.susanreinhardt.com

"Book publicity is like a seven course meal...

“...You start slowly, testing the waters, then move onto the next course. You proceed in a steady, measured manner, enjoying every course while building confidence, momentum, and sales.”

That’s from The Seven Deadly Sins of Book Marketing. 

I like that quote. It suggests that it’s okay to have a learning curve in book promotion. So many new writers I encounter are fearful that they must become instant social marketing experts, have 3,000 virtual friends and be prolific bloggers with lots to say. This fear starts to eat their joy of the whole book publishing experience. Alas, it should be like a seven course meal that is savored and enjoyed.

When my novel, Janeology, came out in 2008, I was on a steep learning curve. I tried many things I’d observed from others until I figured out what worked best for me. Not every type of promotion fit my personality, mostly because I am shy by nature. Just standing behind a book signing table at Barnes & Noble gave me monumental anxiety. It takes a certain finesse to stand under fluorescence and smile as patrons 1/ try to avoid your gaze,  2/ ask you where the bathroom is, or, 3/ ask you “is this another x87% book about Jane Austen?

The same was true for speaking engagements. Though I’m a former speechwriter, I suck at public speaking. There I said it. (Is there a support group for this, I wonder?)

It came to me that just as it took me a while to find my writing voice, it would take me a while to find my book marketing voice. I tested the waters. Tried many things. And what worked for me was a slow, steady world of blogging. Initially, I started a blog because my publisher told me to do so. Three years later, I do it because I enjoy it. 

So what do I blog about?

• Books I love
• The writer’s life
• Book giveaways (both mine and other authors)
• Guest posts by other authors (could this be you?)
• Open threads: writers of all stripes are invited to post the first sentence of a work in progress
• What I find inspirational in life
• Vintage photographs from my family albums
• How my children make me more precise writer
• How I’m progressing on new works
• And I found this old post – 8 Tips for the Debut Author, which includes the basic path I followed. 

  

It took a little time to find this rhythm. I learned from other bloggers. I caught on to the weekly memes that are out there. A meme is a weekly blog-chain that hundreds of other blogs are attached to. For example, there’s a Wordless Wednesday meme where folks from all over the world post photos. This was easy for me to join. I began featuring vintage photos from my own family albums because this correlated directly to the genealogy theme of my novel. There's a Booking Through Thursday meme that asks a variety of book related questions like "Who is your favorite literary couple?" or "What's the worst book you've ever read and why?" 

I like the interaction with other blogs. They are a serious community of bibliophiles. The majority of my readers are, well, readers. And these readers host an annual event called Book Bloggers Appreciation Week. My humble blog is only three years old, but has twice been short-listed alongside authors Beth Kephart, John Scalzi and Neil Gaiman as “Favorite Author Blog” by the book blogging community. My slow, steady progress has been very rewarding. In fact, I credit my blog as the reason people continue to discover my book, three years after its release. This is particularly satisfying in the wake of my publisher going out of business. And when I have a new book to announce, I'll have a wonderful platform in which to make a big hoopla.

I’m not the only one who thinks blogging is a valuable marketing tool  A recent issue of The Book Deal      elaborated on how the growing community of book bloggers has a real impact on a book’s visibility. Within that article:

“We think book bloggers are the absolute best way to get your book to exactly the right people who are interested in your topic, whatever it is,” says Samantha Rubenstein, a publicist at John Wiley & Sons. “Reaching out to specific book bloggers is a large and important part of a book’s publicity and increasing by leaps and bounds every six months.”

It does take time to blog and build up a readership. But here's another good point to remember: it's very simple to let one blog post do a lot of walkin’ all over the Internet. I set up instant feeds on other sites so that one post travels to FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace, Goodreads and CafeMom. One post. Five locations. 

So what do you think? Are you a blogging fan? And do leave a comment and link to your blog so I can visit you there. Meanwhile, you can find me here.

--


Karen Harrington authored and published There's A Dog In The Doorway, a children's book created expressly for the "MyStuff Bags" foundation. "My Stuff" bags go to children in need who must leave their homes due to abuse, neglect or abandonment. Her debut novel, JANEOLOGY, asks the question: what would you do if the spouse you THOUGHT you knew committed an incomprehensible act? Read more about this novel at Karen's website: www.karenharringtonbooks.com. She also blogs daily at www.scobberlotch.blogspot.com

Judging a Book By its Cover Info: Does a Title Sell the Book?

by Augusta Scattergood

This go-around’s topic is Advice to New Authors About How to Market a Book.

I’ll be reading these posts very carefully. That new author looking for advice would be me.

When my book comes out in one year, I’ll have memorized fellow middle-grade novelist Kerry Madden’s helpful post on the topic. (Thanks, Kerry, and I already have my bag of props ready!) And I’ll scour the internet, pick my writer friends’ brains, listen to my publisher’s publicity people—anything that helps my book get into the hand of young readers.

In the meantime, I’m working hard to make it the best written book I could possibly imagine. Many edits. Much research. But there’s one more thing I think I can do, very early on, to make my book stand out among the hundreds of debut novels hitting the shelves next year.

Although I suspect I’ll have minimal control over my book’s cover, I do have some say about the title. Right now. Since my editor didn’t love my working title—and true confessions, neither did I— we’re working on something new.

Sadly, I Stink at Titles.

I know a lot of tricks for choosing them, but I need much inspiration and lots of help from my friends. 

In fact, I’ve compiled a list of Ways to Choose Titles. The problem is, especially with kids or Young Adult books, these suggestions can become dated very fast.

But here are a few timeless, or perhaps timely, ideas for mulling over your book’s moniker. My abbreviated list:

1.     Ask a question

2.     Create a mood

3.     Combine opposites

4.     Pay attention to the sounds

5.     Tease your audience

6.     Put Google to work for you (Google movie quotes, top ten book lists, Best sellers, etc. Then play around with combinations.)

As I mull over my upcoming middle-grade novel's title, I’m thinking:

Does a preposition in the title help? Moon Over Manifest just won the Newbery Award. Can’t argue with that. 

How about using a character’s name? A dog’s name? As tricky as this title is, nobody ever forgets Because of Winn-Dixie.

I spent most of my library career at schools filled with excited readers. They traded favorite titles like the coolest silly bandz. Sometimes the exact words of a title eluded them, but if a student loved a book, she talked about it to her friends, spreading the word. And if the title was a zinger, they never forgot it, or the book. Nobody ever stumbled over Nothing’s Fair in Fifth Grade or Judy Blume’s Blubber. Kids loved asking for The Candymakers and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. And why not? Great, appealing, kid-like titles.

Then again, one of my favorite recent books was When You Reach Me. And I cannot for the life of me be sure that’s the exact title. It just does not stick in my brain the way How to Steal a Dog does. And I’ve read When You Reach Me at least three times.

Consider poor Stieg Larsson. Ha. Not poor in the least. But also not so great at title-picking. As reported in a just-translated memoir by Kurdo Baksi, Stieg Larsson, My Friend, his working titles were the feeble The Witch Who Dreamt of a Can of Petrol and Matches and The Exploding Castle in the Air...

Ugh. Give me Girl With The Dragon Tattoo over those dogs of titles anytime.

And speaking of Dog Titles- Here’s a website that offers a different take on choosing titles.

I suspect book jacket art has more sway with purchasers, as do personal recommendations, love of the author, general chatter about a book-- not to mention glowing reviews. At least that’s my feeling about how kids (their parents and their librarians) choose books.

And, still,  I’m wondering, how much does a title influence a book’s sales? Do you gravitate toward a book because of the cover and particularly the title? What are your worst titles ever?  Your best?

Because I sure would like to nail this title thing. And I sure do stink at finding a great one.

 

Augusta Scattergood’s first middle grade novel, 
historical fiction set in 1964 Mississippi, 
will be published by Scholastic in Spring, 2012. 
It is, as yet, untitled.

Tweeting the Quack

by Zachary Steele

This is a duck.  His name is Ducky Thomas.  He is a duck named Thomas.

He's stuffed full of cute, loves adventures, and is quite convinced that the world is the most fantastic thing a duck could ever hope for.  He also loves the cat who loves him most.

This is a video about a bookstore.  It has nothing to do with ducks--not yet anyway I guess I must admit--but does indeed have a lot to do with the point.

They both have something in common.  They have nothing directly to do with the books I write, but have everything to do with me as a writer.  They are independent of what is published, but a vital cog in the publicity of who I am.  And they aren't the end or the beginning.  They are the journey.

There.  I've waxed poetic.  Now I can get on with the point.

We all know about Twitter.  If you have the time and patience, you can gather a following, make a name for yourself, your opinions, and your work.  The same can be said for Facebook, albeit in a more centralized, and long-term kind of way.  You're going to make your friends, have your followers, talk about anything from The Simpsons and their obvious lack of relevance to Obama and his quest for health care.  You'll be "liked", have the "@" symbol thrown your way, tagged, or even re-posted/re-tweeted.  People will laugh with you, at you, talk about why your opinion is pointless and not at all as potent as what they have to say, and send messages to one another about whatever it is you posted last.  Above all, they will know you as a writer, and understand you as a person in ways readers never could before, and they will look forward to what you have to post next.

But they are merely one step toward lifting you, as a writer, into the conversations of the world. 

We live in a digital age.  One in which communication is almost entirely of the written word.  We view Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Plancast, Tumbler, and so on as pure facets of publicity, meant to broaden our audience and stamp a nice, fancy, little brand upon our heads.  All of which is most certainly true.  But it's not the mere existence of our digital selves on these sites that makes full embrace of what they offer us.  It's what we write.  It's how we use them.  It's taking the blank slate and filling it with content that both evolves who we are as writers, and demonstrates fully what we can do with the words we are blessed with.  True, starting a blog and writing about anything--anything at all--is exactly the right approach.  But it isn't the endpoint. 

When I first started blogging, I didn't intend on writing about the adventures of a stuffed duck, and I had no plans to begin at first a blog, and then a series of videos about life in a bookstore.  But the more I worked through my personal blog, the more I came to see each entry as a script of my life--pages of the mind fluttering from the inner sanctum of thought to the public forum offered to me.  Each entry was another showcase of what I could offer.  In a very real sense, each time I posted a blog, I was adding to my resume.  Obviously, it is every writer's great hope that each book that is published will further enhance the aura and legacy of who they are (read in: you will become instantly uber-famous, and own two castles in a decade).  But it doesn't have to end there any more.  In fact, the sheer number of books that are being published by extension of the popularity of a blog speak volumes to the time in which we live.  Used to be that you had to find a press to print your article, or a series of collected works in which to be included in order to broaden the scope of your work.  Now you have the internet, and whatever time you offer it.  Work it all in unison and not only do people start to pay attention--no matter how small your collective--but they start to anticipate what's to come.  Then that audience can grow as people share what you have to offer--which is far less work than what you will put into creating it, given that the sharing aspect of it is usually accommodated by the gratifying click of a button.

It's so very cliche, but the truth is, you never know who is watching, who is reading, who will share what you have to say, who is paying attention to as you scream from every corner of the internet you can crawl from, "HEY! PAY ATTENTION TO ME!"  So, go.  Do.  Find your inner duck.  And make every word count.  Your future readers will take note.
-----

Zachary Steele is usually a lot funnier than this, but, oh well, what are you going to do, right?  He is the author of Anointed: The Passion of Timmy Christ, CEO, and the forthcoming Flutter: An Epic of Mass Distraction, and has been featured on NPR and in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Publisher's Weekly, and Shelf Awareness. He can be found boring the world with his thoughts on his blog,The Further Promotion of ME, as well as the bookstore-life blog, There Are No Words, and the newly minted Adventures of Ducky Thomas.