Blatant Self-Promotion and Applause for a Good Cause

 

cj Sez: The ePub version of Choosing Carter is on track to launch August 17, and Amazon will accept pre-orders on or about August 5.

But I’m one of those “I’ll believe it when I see it” people. Still, I’m about to get excited. There are three August birthdays in my family, and this gives me more reasons to celebrate this month! 

I now have a finished ePub version in hand, and I will gladly trade off a copy to three someones willing to give me a review on Amazon once it launches. Good, bad, indifferent; all reviews are important, to all writers. So I guess the requirement is that you have to be able to provide an Amazon review . . . maybe real soon after the launch date(?). If you’d like to participate in the trade, just eMail me at cjpetterson@gmail.com before August 5, and I’ll send you a copy. I have a similar challenge going on a couple of Facebook pages as well, so be sure to tell me on which site you’ve seen the note (they have different cut-off dates).

I can’t go another week without giving a big, appreciative SA-LUTE to one of my local grocery stores: Winn-Dixie.

 

Well, actually, it’s a chain that has several stores in my area. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, they did a charity event where all the proceeds of their nationwide sales on a particular Saturday went to Wounded Warrior Project.

 

And here’s their response: 

 

 

On a personal note, my 70-something neighbor tripped over a lamp cord and fell headfirst into a wall, breaking both shoulders. Yes, both of them, and I can’t visualize how that happened without her breaking her neck as well, but hallelujah, she didn't. A huge injury for anyone, and especially so for someone in her seventh decade. She underwent surgery yesterday. Amazing how our lives can completely change in an instant. Do give your loved ones a hug, and please include Miz Miller in your prayers. Thanks.

Okay, you-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

cj

cjpetterson@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/CjPettersonAuthor

DEADLY STAR (Publisher: Crimson Romance)  

    http://bit.ly/19QDQq3   (B&N.com)
    http://amzn.to/1LRRwC9  (Amazon.com)

Electronics is us

I've spent the last few weeks in a Wordpress class, and the eMails have been flying fast and furious. There's so much to learn, unlearn, and relearn. I look forward to this latest blast of technology helping me market my books going forward.

How much do you do online? Do you Facebook? Twitter? Blogs? Make a purchase? Even if you don't buy something online, chances are that you check out a product there. Electronics is us.

If a writer starts the story with a generic computer (pen and paper, and there are some who do), the scribbles are most certainly transferred to some software platform, sooner if not later. Many, if not most, agents and publishers now request submissions via eMail. If you're a writer who's been offered a contract (congratulations!), the manuscript may have to be sent via eMail to the publisher's editor. If you've made a decision to self-publish, I would advise you to acquire the services of a professional editor, and then, very often, the manuscript may be transmitted via some type of electronics...maybe a flashcard.

Marketing online is next. So, how does a writer get readers to buy the book, whether it's a hardcopy or an eBook? Writers have to define their target audience. Ideally, everyone would want to read your book, but we all know that's not going to happen. Writers have to know what they are writing—mystery, thriller, romance, memoir, police procedural, etc.—then ask themselves: What kind of reader would want to read/buy my novel? Female, male, teenager (boy or girl?), someone who wants a quick story to read on vacation? Important questions, and the answer is vital to marketing. Who the reader is determines how and where you market the story. It'd be rare that you'd be asked to talk about your teenaged-angst novel to a book club at the Senior Citizen Center. But there is one place that is universal. Online.

An online presence introduces a writer's name and work to potential readers. I took advantage of the online book retailers of Deadly Star by adding my profile to their author pages: Amazon, Facebook, Goodreads, and the publisher, Crimson Romance. There are others, of course. On your blog and bio, use key words, tags, and labels that appeal to your audience. When those potential readers/buyers do an online search, they search for books by genre, or title, or certain phrases. Those key words, tags, and labels are important triggers for the search engine, and up pops you or your work. If you haven't done it already, try it. Search your own name and be surprised at what you find.

As a writer, I am also a reader and want to pay it forward and do so with reviews. Online reviews go a long way toward increasing sales and readership. I suggest that when you've read a book, be sure to review it for the author on Goodreads, Amazon, BN.com, or wherever you purchased it. Good, bad, or indifferent, reviews are important.

ON to another topic...if you've got an interest in YA, here are some YA publishing industry notes that crossed my desk (I'm a member of SCBWI): Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins Christian Publishing is launching a new YA imprint, Blink. The imprint is designed for the general trade but won't go as dark as some other YAs. They plan on five or six titles a year. Enslow Publishing is launching its new YA (grade 6 and up), Scarlet Voyage. They request queries and submissions be sent via their website www.scarletvoyage.com   Also Feiwel & Friends (Macmillan Publishing Group) is launching a YA romance imprint, Swoon Reads. The website launches in 2013 and they plan to release the first novels, paperback and eBook, in 2014.

You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I'll try to do the same.

cj

Book launch day

Today is launch day for my eBook, DEADLY STAR. Available on Amazon, BN.com, iTunes, Google, Sony and other platforms. The POD is scheduled for later in the year.

      For me, writing this story, writing any story for that matter, is all about editing and change—once you get through the concept and research stage, of course. Sometimes, I see a "need" to change a character's name, a story thread, a sentence structure, or, as is true for Deadly Star, the whole genre. 

Deadly Star didn't start off as a romance. Over the years' long course of writing and editing the manuscript, one of my critique partners thought the story might be marketed as an action/adventure ... another said it was a woman-in-peril ... a third said it's a political thriller. Someone even floated the idea that it was sci fi (it isn't).

Hoping for some critiques beyond my writer's group, I recklessly entered excerpts of the manuscript into two romance contests. The judges in each though the concept and the story were good, except it needed a happily ever after ending. (One judge wrote on her evaluation sheet that she felt like throwing the pages against the wall when she got to the end! That forced me to take another long look at what I had written. Yep, there was a good love story there. Yep, it could, indeed, work as a romance novel if I made a change, or three, or four within the manuscript and, of course, changed the ending.

I reworked it and submitted it to Crimson Romance. They offered me a contract about three weeks after I first submitted my e-query and synopsis, and I knew I'd stumbled (been pushed) into the correct genre.

Today's romance fans, I think, like to see their heroines as more life-like and a little flawed, someone they can relate to and also, perhaps, admire from afar. On the other hand, they still seem to expect their heroes to be nigh-unto perfect.

Deadly Star is not about a perfectly imperfect woman or a perfectly perfect man. It's about a vaguely dysfunctional couple who, when sharing an imminent danger, find common ground in their love for each other. 

Mirabel Campbell, the protagonist, is a little flawed—she's no longer a svelte twenty-something, no longer gaga in love with a husband, hasn't been in a real relationship for a long time, and is a bit of a nerd. But she's also sassy, clever, loyal, and determined. 

Robert O'Sullivan, known to everyone as Sully, is an exciting hero, a ruggedly handsome CIA agent assigned to protect Mirabel. On the flip side, he's a bit of a bad boy, a controller, and a liar.

The connection between these two disparate people  share in the beginning of Deadly Star is Mirabel's accidental sighting of a secret government satellite and the fact that they were once married ... to each other.

In Deadly Star, Mirabel and Sully rediscover their love in the midst of a story about awesome 21st Century technology and international political gangsterism—where a sociopath's money can build a bioweapon, buy a friend's loyalty, and hire an assassin.

I was amazed when Mother Nature recently gave the book a promo. The reality of the asteroid flyby and the meteor strike in Russia that no one saw coming seem to make a Deadly Star even more possible.

I hope readers find the story as enjoyable and intriguing to read as I did to write.

Now, you-all guys keep on keeping on, and I'll try to do the same. 

cj

PS:  Maybe it picked up a cue from me changing my mind, but now I have to figure out why this blog has decided to change its own background. Sorry about that