Real Life as Subplots in the Persephone Alcmedi Series

Back in the summer of 2009, the first Persephone Alcmedi novel VICIOUS CIRCLE hit the shelves. 

It doesn't seem like that long ago, and yet...we've come a long way since then. Most of my plotting revloves around Persephone and the intracasies of the witch council and Seph's own destiny, but there are many vampire and waerewolf characters in the mix.

When I learned about local Cleveland authorities planning to demolish one of the predominant buildings I used in the story, it seemed appropriate to include it.

EXCERPT:  WICKED CIRCLE, pg. 178

     Todd was blathering on about a meeting they’d just had with the Ohio Department of Transportation.

     ODOT had put a new compensation package on the table concerning their bid to buy and tear down the Cleveland Cold Storage building for the new I-90 project.   

I figured it was a great way to show that humans had their own notions and goals that had nothing to do with the non-humans. Yet at the same time, this allowed me to show their bias and hate by having the humans be snidely pleased that it was impacting the non-humans in a negative way. It also served as a mechanism to further explore and develop the heirarchy of waerewolves, as the big-wigs sent someone to negotiate for another prime location in Cleveland. 

Real World Events, Gewgaws, Ribbons, & Hot Glue: Fictitious Scrapbooks

Taking real-world non-fiction events and twisting them into a scene in a fantasy novel? Who does that?

Me. Totally me.

It's the twisting that's the fun part, then taking a hot glue gun to make little plastic bridges between the twists, and hoping the adhesive holds well enough that the whole story doesn't unravel. A little Modge Podge to seal it. A fashionable ribbon here. A pop-culture sticker there. Yep. Pretty much summarizes my writing process.

Yes. I absolutely burn my fingers on the glue. Yes, my hair, dog hair, and last week's mystery crumbs end up embedded in the scrapbook too. There's inevitably a ghosting fingerprint or twelve that'll identify me to the Thought Police.

In my defense, I try not to spill the bourbon on the scrapbook, 'cause that'd be alcohol abuse...and it eats through the glue. Though, it does make a great editing assistant and accidents happen.

So, scrapbooking in the figurative sense, I am a big fan.

Scrapbooking in the literal sense? Not it. No, that's wholly different talent.

scrapbooking

I suspect that every author is guilty of this to one level or another Scrapbooking is the fine art of using real life events (yours or someone else's) and incorporating them into a tale.

In my case the one case where I can consciously say I did this revolves around a story of mine called "Burden of Guilt: my Brother's Keeper." In the story I twins who are psychically linked. The catch is, one of them is a serial killer who keeps his brother in check via emotional blackmail.

The story came to me full blown when I was watching the eleven o'clock news and saw a piece n twin brothers who'd broken the rules, climbed the fence for a pool that was closed and, sadly, managed to get themselves drowned for their efforts. '

There isn't that much in common, really, but it was enough to get the creative juices flowing.

I looked at my wife, wished her a good night and wrote the 8,000 word story in one sitting.

For me it's a rarity that I use real life as a springboard and it's almost always accidental in that I don't seek the stories out but run across them.

But the process does make for interesting tales and I know several authors who are almost universally writing stories based on actual events that simply haunt them until they work out the details in their stories and novels.

What Blender Setting Do You Go For?

We've been on a long road trip this last week, seeing all kinds of family. And leaving the cats behind, like the monsters we are. Here is Jackson showing off his best Pitiful Abandoned Kitty face.

Thus, I'm late posting today. But so it goes!

I've shared this news elsewhere, but I'm happy to share again here! Many of you have asked what I'm up to with various writing projects, including a few delayed ones. (Yes, the next Sorcerous Moons books are coming - I promise!) Basically what happened is that I changed agents back in February/March. And then I worked up something entirely fresh for New Agent Sarah Younger. Basically I gave her a list of ideas, we debated them, and I wrote 100 pages of one of her top three choices - the one I loved best. We went back and forth on it with several revisions. That's a great benefit of working with an agent as sharp as Sarah. She gave me great feedback on the book, tightening it up and making it the best it could be. Basically we spent three months working on this.

Which meant I kept setting aside other writing projects to work on the next round of THRONE OF FLOWERS, THRONE OF ASH. Thus my entire schedule getting delayed and shuffled. The beautiful part is, when Sarah took this out on submission, we had tons of interest, multiple offers, and a sale two weeks later. And here it is!!

These books won't start coming out until 2019, so now I can go back to a regular schedule. Which absolutely means finishing both the Sorcerous Moons and Missed Connections series. The other thing that happened is that Kensington, who published my Twelve Kingdoms and Uncharted Realms books, started up a new SFF (Science Fiction and Fantasy) imprint called Rebel Base Books. They wanted to publish THE SHIFT OF THE TIDE, but that would have delayed its release until March of 2018 and I knew you all would have fits. (See? I do love you and want you to be happy. I really do!)

So, we said no on that, but they really wanted me to be part of this new imprint, so we settled on me writing a trilogy for them set in the Twelve Kingdoms world. It will be high fantasy, which means less of a romance arc. BUT, I'm pretty sure it will be Jenna's story. For those of you who know what that means! We finished talking about that right before the other submission, so that got announced at the same time.








All that taken care of, our topic this week is Scrapbooking—taking stories from real life as the springboard for your stories and subplots. I'm going to keep this short, mostly to kick off the topic. I love Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman's thoughts on "blender settings." Basically they say that all creative types take our real life experiences and metaphorically put them in a blender which produces the smoothie of our art. The big difference is what "setting" we put the blender on.

They've had to figure this out in their marriage, because they have such different blender settings. Amanda, a singer/songwriter and performance artist, has a very low blender setting. What she experiences, she turns around and shares in big chunks that are recognizably her art. Neil, as a writer of fantasy, has a very high setting - you almost can't recognize his real life in the final stories.

Neither is right or wrong - both of them are accomplished artists - but it took some doing for them to come to terms with how they each processed experiences. Especially for him with her putting so much of her - now their - personal life out there as part of her art.

What's most important is to find what works for you. My standard advice: discover your process and own it!

Ins and Outs of My Newsletters

From DepositPhoto

The topic this week is author newsletters.

I have one, with about 3000 people on the e mail list and I have a separate list of about 1000 people who indicated interest in audiobooks only. The mail newsletter list is primarily ‘organic’, in that readers have signed up for it from my blog over the last five years, but I did add a few hundred people from various cross promo, list building events I tried last year.  I decided fairly quickly those events weren’t for me. There are many people in the world who sign up for these events for the prizes offered and then really didn’t want to continue to hear from the authors, so they unsubscribe and/or mark newsletters as spam. The audiobook list came entirely from a 2016 audiobook list builder giveaway and the first time I sent out audiobook news, there were about 40 unsubscribes, which wasn’t too bad. So I regard it as a solid list and feel the audiobook listeners genuinely do want to receive that content.

I only send out a newsletter when I have a new release OR some significant piece of news about something writing-related-to-Veronica Scott. On rare occasions I’ll do an NL in connection with a big, multi author promo event if I feel it would be of interest to, and potentially benefit my readers. I don’t ordinarily do NL swaps with other authors (on rare occasions I will, if it’s for an author I personally love), I never accept paid placement in my NL, I run no ads, I have no excerpts, freebies, contests or giveaways. I don’t share recipes, family news, personal stuff.

This does limit me from being involved in certain author cross promo events where part of the deal is the mandatory requirement to send out a newsletter. I will very rarely do that – it’s not my ‘deal’ with my readers who signed up, so I can't participate.

I’m just not a newsletter person. To me a NL is a ‘purely the facts’ kind of communication vehicle and the main reason I’d use it is for new release updates. The golden rule of promo to me is not to do the types that don’t come naturally.

From DepositPhoto

To balance that, I’m very active daily on twitter and on Facebook (on my Veronica Scott page) and in various scifi and fantasy romance FB groups, as well as author groups. I blog in three places regularly and I write posts for USA Today/HEA, Heroes & Heartbreakers, Romance University and Amazing Stories, plus occasional guest posts. I figure that’s enough Veronica Scott for most people!

So why do I even maintain a NL list? Yes, Amazon and BookBub and even Goodreads will send out new release alerts to people who have followed me on their sites. Three problems – the alerts don’t go out reliably or timely. In each place I have smaller numbers of followers than on my own list. Those lists ‘belong’ to the site, not me. I don’t even have access to who the people are. So I need my own list to ensure that in these constantly changing times, I can reach my readers who’ve expressed an interest in keeping up with my new releases. Or other book-related news, if something cool happens.

I’ve also gotten some very lovely reader mail back after a NL goes out.

In today’s world of publishing, everyone is looking for the next new thing. Somewhere in 2016, from my standpoint, the whole newsletter concept exploded, and authors were doing these huge list building events. I began to see certain unintended, unexpected side effects occurring, as discussed in various author groups I belong to. One effect, I mentioned above, was the set of ‘professional giveaway entering people’ who’d sign up for the prizes and then promptly unsubscribe. Another was the author getting in trouble for too many people marking their NL e mail as spam, versus simply unsubscribing. Third, readers were burning out – if there were 100 authors in an event, the poor reader might get inundated with 100 newsletters right after the event ended!  Fourth, readers are busy people and they might forget they’d even signed up for a NL as part of a giveaway weeks ago (or it wasn’t made clear to them their e mail was being harvested, which is a no-no, you have to disclose that) so when NL’s they had no memory of asking for hit their inbox, the person might get pretty upset.

And then there’s this whole idea of the ‘drip campaign’ which as I understand it, is where the author sends the poor reader a series of a mails, like gates to go through…add to that author frustration I’ve seen over “people don’t even read the NL, I’m going to delete half my list”…well, maybe the readers  ARE reading the NL, but in their e mail previewer, which might not count as an open in your particular NL tool…some people send NL’s weekly (!!!), bi-weekly….

Hello, I write books. I need to spend my time writing the books, and relevant posts for the big platforms where many readers hang out, not newsletters. I do have a PA help me with the technical part of sending the NL out, but I write the content. I don’t have the time in my life, or the patience, to manage drip campaigns and click thru rates and developing unique content just for the NL….I prioritize what works for me as a person and indie author.

I guess it sounds by now as if I’m pretty down on newsletters. I know some authors are very successful with NL’s and have forged terrific relationships with their readers because that format works so well and is a natural fit for their personality and communications style. SE Smith is an excellent example. I also love Nalini Singh’s and am happy to see a new one in my e mail whenever they show up.

After ALL that, if you’d like to sign up for my newsletter and be assured you’ll only see new releases info, with a smattering of other content, here’s the LINK. The sign up box is on my blog, at the top of the Home page.

And if you are into audiobooks, a group of authors from various genres has gotten together on Facebook and Twitter to do a giveaway July 15th through 30th. Just look for the hashtag #summeraudio

All I Do Not Know

The cat is back. Her feeding tube is out and she's recovering really, really well. My heart, however, is now in for some serious stress testing, apparently.

Aaaand, had you been subbed into my newsletter, you'd know all of this already because I just sent out a newsletter (the third in like three years) this past week. This is to say that when it comes to email lists and newsletters, I'm a learner, not a master. My email list is tiny. As in double digits tiny.

Finding how to subscribe to my email list is probably more difficult than it should be. KAK's excellent write up made that plain to me. Also plain to me is that getting my sign up put up as easily as Marshall did his? Yeah. It's not a thing. I have no way to grab my sign up box and put it where I want it. I have to send you to the Contact page on my website. Not sure why mine is coded that way. Dumb. But there you go. I will be asking my web mistress, I assure you.

My main issue with the whole newsletter/email list thing is that I have no earthly clue what to say. Ever. So my newsletter subscribers are mostly people who already know me from other endeavors - the international cat fancier's list I belong to, for example. So yes. My cats star in my newsletters. Kinda like they do everything else. As a result, I haven't ever really pushed for email sign ups.

The other issue is that I am scattered across a wide array of genres. SFR. UF. Fantasy. Paranormal Romance. In no case have any of my series been completed past two books. Usually, in a push for email sign ups, an author has something to offer - a free book, short, novella, something. And I do. But it is the sole example of sword and sorcery that I've written. So it's an odd lead-in to the rest of my list, right?

Sigh.

I think if we want to be really straight here, this is me. Drowning in all I do not know.

Mailing Lists, Black Gate and Imminent Imposters

So the topic on hand this week is Mailing Lists, and how to do them well. Frankly, I'm still learning that one. I've only recently launched my mailing list, and my main rule of thumb is "only post when there's news".  Just today I saw a friend comment that she's on a writer's mailing list that has multiple posts a day.  That, my friends, is spamming.  I won't do that.  Heck, emailing more than once a month seems overzealous to me.

However, if you want a not-too-inconvenient mailing list:

Enter your email address

In other news, Black Gate Magazine just recently posted a nice write-up detailing all the books, including the upcoming ones, of the full Maradaine sequence.

And speaking of upcoming books, The Imposters of Aventil is less than three months away.   And if you have access to NetGalley, it's already available to review.  And I should have ARCs to give away in the near future.  You know you want an ARC, don't you?  Of course you do.

Email Lists & Selling That Book You Wrote: 5 Tips

Give me your email address! All the email addresses! One address. Two address. Three address!

Yeah, I know sometimes it feels like you can't go anywhere on the web without someone demanding your email address, and you don't want to be one of those people. Yet, you kind of, sort of, awfully badly want to be one of those people whose books sell.

Here's the thing, second only to writing the next book, email lists are the best marketing tool. To make it sound less sales-oriented and more about connecting with the reader, the authorverse often refers to email lists as newsletter subscribers. In the world of marketing, there is a difference, but for the sake of this post, I'll use the terms interchangeably.

If you're feeling skeevy about email lists think of them this way: these are people who want you to tell them when you have a new book out. They want to buy your book. Why wouldn't you tell them?

SPAM. 

As in, you don't want to be spammy. You hate being spammed by overenthusiastic authors who somehow got your email address and now they're like your crazy aunt who won't stop emailing you.

There are scads of How To Build Your Newsletter Subscribers classes out there, and too many of them advocate mailing campaigns that are better suited for retailers than authors. There absolutely is such a monster as Too Much Communication, especially when there is no value-add for the customer. Want to know how to tell when a Big Retailer has someone on-the-ball in heir marketing department? Their newsletter settings allow the customer to define how often the company contacts them: Daily. Weekly. Monthly. Quarterly. Only When There's Big News. Do I think you need to have that setting? No.

You're an author not a retailer.  

Anything you do that takes away from writing the next book, better have a high Return On Investment (ROI). That is why I am a proponent of less is more. I believe strongly in the unspoken agreement between reader and author. One part of that agreement is the author will never abuse information given to them by a reader. This includes their email address.

How often you should send a newsletter and the content of your newsletters are different posts for different days, but the short version is: send when you have a new book to sell. If you are a writer who drops a new book every month, then you have a reason to send a monthly newsletter. Same thing for quarterly. If you're releasing serialized works in addition to novels, those two lists should be separate.

5 Things To Do To Build Your Email List

• Make it easy for people to subscribe. Put a link to your subscription page in the back matter of your ebooks. Put the subscribe box on the main page of your website. 
• Note: Popovers (those windows that appear over the web page) do generate a lot of subscribers but they also turn away a lot of potential readers. The jury is split on their effectiveness. It's the latest way to combat "sidebar-blindness" in which the visitor ignores whatever is in the sidebar/header/footer, etc.
• Cross-promote in author newsletters that are in the same genre as your book
• Note: That promotion should go to a landing page that should include your subscription widget. Same applies to landing pages from ad campaigns: they should always include the option to subscribe to your newsletter.
• Offer a free short story exclusive to subscribers
• Note: Some authors offer other freebies with a "chance to win" to "new subscribers only." Some offer offline-tangible things (like swag). Do what's right for you. Keep in mind, you're an author, the product you're selling is your stories, so no need to go overboard with prizes. Don't make it complicated. 
• Remind your social media followers to subscribe. Remind them there are things in the newsletter they won't see in 140 characters and a gif. 
• Note: Be selective about when you do it, say a week before you drop a newsletter. Don't do it daily or weekly, it becomes noise that's easy to ignore.
• Plug it. Pin it. Embed it. Everywhere your author bio appears should also include a reminder to subscribe. If it's digital, then include the link to the subscription page. Twitter and Facebook had "pinned" posts option, rotate in a subscription promo when you're in the lull after new release promo. Offline, verbally encourage subscriptions. Remind readers of the benefits. 

Remember it's quality over quantity. Valuable subscribers are the ones who actually open your emails, then go buy your books. Brace yourself. Open Rates are a small fraction of your total list. Click Thru Rates (CTR) are a fraction of the Open Rates. Buy Rates are an even smaller fraction of CTR.  

Never, ever, ever sign people up for your newsletter without their consent. 

In some states, that is how you run afoul of anti-spam laws. 

Keep your efforts focused on your primary goal: Sell Your Books.