The Faceless Voice

This week we’re supposed to talk about how to respond when a fellow party-goer learns you’re a writer and asks: “have I heard of you?”.

I would have so much fun with that question, but since my first release came out during a pandemic there hasn’t been options for going out much less any parties. If I were to be asked that my gut reaction is like Jeffe’s, I’d find out if they’re a reader. 

I absolutely love recommending books to people and when they end up enjoying my suggestion I walk on clouds for the rest of the day! Yes, I’m a bookworm and I’m not afraid to read what I like or tell people about it. 

I’m on a roll getting people to read my fellow author’s works. High-five to myself! But I’m not very good at suggesting my audiobook. Why? Aren’t I proud of it? Don’t I want to shout it to the sky that I have an audiobook out in the world? 

I’d rather be the faceless voice that transports you 

out of the mundane, 

into heart-pounding adventure. 

So I’ll do a little practice—for, you know, that day when I eventually get invited out of the house. Let’s see…if we were to strike up a conversation this might be a good starting point:

Do you read? (note: the correct answer here is YES, but reality is most people choose watching tv over reading) 

Which leads to the second question: Do you like movies like The Martian and The Day After Tomorrow? (the correct answer would again be YES, because what’s not to love?!)

Do you like a little romance in the storyline? If they give confusion-face, follow up with: Romance like Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck in Armageddon or Aragorn and Arwen in Lord of the Rings? (the correct answer would of course be YES)

Do you like medical thrillers—Outbreak, Kay Scarpetta series, Forensic Files show? (again—YES)

Then you’ll like my audiobook about a lab girl fighting to put a stop to an alien organism that’s wiping out Earth—The Mars Strain! 

Whew! Maybe that won’t be so bad after all. Now, if I can only remember what it’s like to get dressed up and go out. 

How about you? How do you answer “have I heard of you”?

Are You a Reader?

via GIPHY

This week at the SFF Seven, we're posing the question: How do you answer when people at parties ask “have I heard of you?”

I confess that I posed this question of the group, since I get this question frequently and I'm usually at a loss as to how to answer. So for a while there I was going around asking other authors how they handle this.

My friend, Jim Sorenson, master of the witty comeback, suggested Sam Malone's line from Cheers, "Not many people know this, but I'm kind of a big deal." I couldn't find a gif of that one though. The line is a good litmus test for how much someone is paying attention. 

But in actuality, I've ended up going with a tiered response, much like KAK suggested yesterday, only a bit less... snarky. Most of the time, I've found, people are asking the question as a rote response to discovering the person they're talking to just might be famous in some way. Where writers are concerned, the answer is almost always "no."

I have, however, found another litmus test response. I return the question by asking if they're a reader. This small-talk gambit works for a multitude of scenarios. Most of the time, the person is NOT a reader, and asking this question will elicit a - sometimes long - explanation of why they don't read. It works really well for the principle that the easiest way to engage someone in conversation is to ask about themselves. People who don't read will often talk about the last book they DID read, or how they hated being forced to read in school, or how busy their lives are. This gives rich fodder for letting them talk about their lives. If they're not actually interested in the fact that I'm a writer, this lets them gracefully never return to the topic and saves me the painful sorting of the fact that, no, they haven't heard of me.

If they ARE a reader, well! Now the conversation gets interesting. I can what genres they read and we talk books. We drill down pretty quickly to whether they read my genre and, if they haven't read my books, they usually end up by whipping out their phone and buying one. Happy outcome!

Speaking of buying books, I'm happy to report that I've finished the draft of my novella for the upcoming FIRE OF THE FROST anthology! I still need to settle on a title, but it takes place at Convocation Academy in my Bonds of Magic world, taking place at roughly the same time as DARK WIZARD. You can preorder the anthology now to have it slip into your eReader in December! (Print will be available, but you can only preorder through my website right now. Print will be available via the usual retailers on release day, just not for preorder.)

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