Writers in the Storm

I’ve been in a bad place lately. And admitting that in public is a big deal for me. See, I’m the equivalent of a golden retriever named Pollyanna.  My glass is way full. Except lately.

417 rejections before I finally sold earned me a pretty tough skin. So how could I find myself here - lower than octopus poop in the Mariana Trench, glowering at those swimming above?

I’m writing a book. A book that was handed to me by the unseen current over our heads that Stephen King talks about. I’ve always written blue collar. This one involves a Molecular Biologist and the head of the Governor’s Task Force on Women. My books are not high-concept. This one is HUGE concept. My books are emotional, but this one will knock you on your butt. I haven’t believed in a book like this since The Sweet Spot, my RITA winner.

I put together the proposal, tidied its bow, patted it on the ass, and sent it to my agent, knowing it would find a seat in the front row of my dream publisher.

Then I got rejected.

Now, it was one of those oxymoronic rave rejections, but still . . .  And my agent is shopping it elsewhere (hello, Jodi Picoult’s publisher), but I had my heart set on that original one. Which brings me to my first point:

 

Expectations are joy killers. 

Why do you think little kids are so happy? Because they don't know or give a flying diarrhea diaper about expectations. They wake up every morning, happy to see what's going to happen today.

I'd decided how this was going to happen. Big mistake. Reminds me of the old Jewish saying - 'Man plans, God laughs.'

I have enough experience in this life (and industry) to know that when this book is successful, it won't matter how I got there. This is short-term thinking that I need to get over.

Now.

 

 

Wallowing doesn't help

Everyone loves commiseration, and I'm no exception. What good are friends if you can't whine to them, right? :/ A bit of that is necessary, I think, to help soothe your singed nerves. But keep at it too long, and you feel worse.

What's lower than the Mariana Trench? I don't know, and I'm not going there. Give yourself one 'Oh shit' conversation with a friend - maybe two, but no more. It puts your feet in cement and makes it harder to kick off from the bottom.

Trust me on this.

 

 

 

 

It takes a lot to take me to ‘The Green Side’. I don’t believe in jealousy.

Because there IS enough to go around.

It’s like loving your kids…did you run out after the first one? I didn’t think so. It’s the same with success. Your success has no bearing on my ability to achieve it – therefore I’m free to be happy for you, and help you celebrate.

I really believe that.

 

 

 

But there's another hard-won lesson I've learned over the years that will help me more than all the above.

When I'm focusing on what I don't have, or what others have, or what I should have,

I'm giving away my power. 

Because I have a choice in my focus, my power isn't being taken from me, I'm giving it away.

Have you ever noticed that if you don't sit down to write, you're not happy? You're guilty and snippy, and end up cleaning toilets to do penance.

But sitting down and hammering out your daily word count leaves you fulfilled and happy?

The only way I can influence my future is to write the best f'n book I'm capable of. That is where my power lies. If I'm focusing on anything else, I'm not only wasting my time, I'm draining my energy. It's kryptonite to the creative process.

So I'm going to write now. And I wish you all the focus. All the power. Go forth and

So what say you, WITS readers? What helps you when you're down?

photo credit: Misery Loves Company via photopin (license)
photo credit: February 22, 2015 via photopin (license)

Photo credit:http://blackheartmagazine.com/2014/02/28/lets-talk-book-promo-by-susan-tepper/

A bit about Laura's latest release - Days Made of Glass:

Harlie Cooper raised her sister, Angel, even before their mother died. When their guardian is killed in a fire, rather than be separated by Social Services, they run. Life in off the grid in L.A. isn’t easy, but worse, there’s something wrong with Angel.

Harlie walks in to find their apartment scattered with shattered and glass and Angel, a bloody rag doll in a corner. The doctor orders institutionalization in a state facility. Harlie’s not leaving her sister in that human warehouse. But something better takes money. Lots of it.

When a rep from the Pro Bull Riding Circuit suggests she train as a bullfighter, rescuing downed cowboys from their rampaging charges, she can’t let the fact that she’d be the first woman to attempt this stop her. Angel is depending on her.

It’s not just the danger and taking on a man’s career that challenges Harlie. She must learn to trust—her partner and herself, and learn to let go of what’s not hers to save.

A story of family and friendship, trust and truth.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m always amused when friends or family read my work and try to piece together who a certain character is modeled after. My standard answer is, “no one and everyone.”

Whether it’s characters or locations, situations or details, there’s always a hint of my life in every book I write.

Characters.
I'm going to put it out there front and center -- none of my characters are carbon copies of real people. Hey, I don’t want to get sued or lose friends and family.

But I enjoy giving a nod to people I care about in some form. For example, in one book, there’s a feisty older lady who volunteers her time at a coffee kiosk in the retirement home where she lives. I named her after a good friend who is absolutely not of retirement age but shares my love for coffee and has a wicked personality like the character in the book.

In The Memory of Hoofbeats, coming out in 2017 from Forge, I have a young male rider named for my son. Because he asked, he loves horses, and I how could I possibly say no? There’s another young rider named after a friend’s daughter because the young lady rides and her mom has been an amazing supporter and friend throughout my downs and ups in the writing process.

Locations.
It's always fun to read a book where I know the location the story takes place. But interestingly enough, when I write, the pictures in my brain are mish-mashes of multiple places.

The Memory of Hoofbeats takes place in a fictional town in Maryland and the stable is a combination of a couple of barns where I’ve had the pleasure of riding. Each “visit” to the stable when I sat to write was a trip to a happy place. I didn’t have many opportunities to visit the stable during the period I wrote this book, but my fingers and imagination could beam me up at any moment.

Another book takes place in a Delaware beach town that was inspired by Rehoboth. It’s not exact, but there are restaurants and the boardwalk and a couple of houses that I fell in love with and had to work into the story.  One house in particular caught my attention. It’s ocean front and has a deck on the second level, beautiful French doors, and inviting wood furniture. Every morning on our vacation, I’d get a cup of coffee at a nearby coffee shop then walk the beach and stop not far from this house. The main character in my book imagines what it would be like to be the person living in that house.

Situations.
This is a wee bit more complicated. Last year I wrote a post about using my fiction to explore how I feel about things, people, me. I’ve never gone through what my characters go through, at least to the extent they go through it, but some of those situations stem from real life experiences.

In The Memory of Hoofbeats, the main character Emma has to face her childhood best friend who betrayed her and turned her back on her. Thankfully, I’ve never had a friend be this awful but I’ve had to sort through hurt feelings when a friend I thought was close turned away from our friendship for reasons I didn’t understand. Through Emma, I could say the things I wish I could have told that so called friend.

One of my favorite characters is an old carousel builder who has Alzheimer’s. My grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s and Hank became my emotional outlet and connection to someone I lost. Writing his thoughts, I heard her voice.

Details.
These are the little things that make your characters and settings come to life. In my work in progress, for example, the main character uses the Star Wars theme song as her ring tone for her best friend. Yup, you guessed it, I have that same ring tone.

In every book at least one character ends up with curly hair. That’s usually where the physical likeness stops though since most of my characters are fit and athletic, two things I’m still wondering if I can regain. :-)

In one book, the main character shares my love for Chris Botti. In my WIP, the grandmother listens to the same opera over and over. My mom loves opera although she doesn’t listen to the same as obsessively. It was with her that I saw La Boheme (the opera Grams in the book has on autoplay) for the first time.

In The Memory of Hoofbeats, my main character has a thing for hazelnut lattes and discovers the zen in crocheting. Anyone need a scarf or hat (I've been searching for that zen a lot lately)?

Now you … do you write in personal tidbits into your books? Give a nod to a friend or relative? Kill off a friend or relative (no names please! :-) )?

About Orly

After years of pushing the creativity boundary in corporate communications, Orly decided it was time for a new challenge. Three women’s fiction manuscripts later (plus a handful of picture books), it’s safe to say she’s found her creative outlet. When she’s not talking to her imaginary friends, she’s reading or at least trying to ignore everyone around her long enough to finish “just one more paragraph.” Orly is the founding president of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. She is rep’d by Marlene Stringer, Stringer Literary Agency LLC.

Orly’s debut, The Memory of Hoofbeats, will be released by Forge in 2017.

You can find her on Twitter at @OrlyKonig, on Facebook at OrlyKonigAuthor, or on her website, www.orlykonig.com.

June Stevens Westerfield

Say you're a reader whose friend told you about an author they love, named “Great Author" (insert YOUR name here). So you, the reader, go to Google and you type in “Great Author”. Bam, there’s the authors website, they also have Facebook page, and there are some links to some books. You might click directly on the Amazon link to the book your friend recommended. But it is more likely that you will click on something with the author's name. So you click on the author's website.

First Impressions Matter

Have you ever looked for a product online, clicked on a store website, only to discover it looked amateurish and outdated, so you immediately closed that out and found somewhere else to purchase your item? If you have, why? Because you weren’t sure you would get a good product.
Well, your author website is the same. To instill confidence in the reader it should have a clean, updated look and should be properly branded. (You can read my post on WITS about branding here.)

What’s 'Above the Fold'?

Let’s forget branding for a moment and just look at the basics.  We're going to look at the “above the fold” information on the front page.  What does that mean?

Above the fold is whatever the visitor sees when the page first loads, without scrolling down.  It is your first chance to grab the visitor and potentially turn them into a reader.

It should go without saying that your author name should be somewhere near the top, clearly visible (preferably in the header as the “title” of the website) so the reader knows they have reached the right place.

Every item in the 'above the fold' view of your website should be appealing to look at, informative, and clickable.

What is Clickability?

It’s a word I made up.  It refers to how clickable your website is.  Clickable means there are plenty of appropriately labeled links or images linked to other places on your website or to external websites.  Why does that matter?  Well, for one, you can’t have all of the information you need on one page.  There has to be other pages, and your readers have to actually press their mouse (click) to get there.  Clickability is just how “appealing” something is to make the visitor want to click, in addition to whether or not they CAN click.

Clickable elements in the top your front page can (and should) include:

• Clear menus with appropriately labeled pages and individual book pages (as a submenu).
• Social Media Links - preferably as icons, not word links.
• Search button or field. This encourages a visitor to search for a specific book page, or blog post on your site.
• Newsletter subscribe form. Give visitors a way to get more information from you.

An eye catching image.  Whether it is book cover images or, my personal suggestion, an image slider with information about different books, or events. Whatever it is, it should click to a correlating page on your website.

Laura Drake was kind enough to let me assess her website in order to demonstrate  a great first impression, with good clickability above the fold.

In truth, I wish she’d had more areas for improvement for the purposes of this blog. She got a solid A+ for first impressions.  But she did get a B on clickability.  Why?

She has an eye catching slider with images that represent the two genres she writes.  That is great.  The not-so-great is that other than branding, the slider serves no real purpose.  It has zero clickability.  And it SHOULD HAVE.  As you see those images scroll through, your eye is drawn to them and you want to put your mouse over them and click to see what more you can find out.  The images should each link directly to the correlating pages on the website, Women’s Fiction, and Romance.

The Bottom Line of Clickability

Clickability sells books.  Because clickability means that your website was appealing enough to the reader that they wanted to learn more.  They'll click for more information.  And if your book pages are also clickable, then they will click your purchase links and then, ultimately, BUY YOUR BOOK. (You can see my anatomy of a book page series on the Author Branding Essentials Website, HERE.)

There are many more elements that make your website’s front page informative, clickable, and ultimately, help you sell books.  But that is another blog post for another time.  You can follow the Author Branding Essentials Blog to be notified when that, and other informative posts, are available.

More Examples of Above the Fold Clickability

To wrap up, I’ve grabbed screenshots of three of my favorite authors’ websites to show how they each have a great first impression with good clickability above the fold, and they each do it in their own, unique way.

 

 

About ABE

Author Branding Essentials is dedicated to offering comprehensive author centric branding and design services at competitive prices.  As an Author, your name is your brand. Building your Author Brand is key to success. Many agents encourage authors to begin building that brand long before they are published. At Author Branding Essentials we understand the unique criteria it takes to build an author brand, versus another type of business.  We can help you decide on the best options for your author brand and help you implement them.