Monthly Archives: March 2012

Writing short stories to promote your novels by RAYNE HALL

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Welcome Rayne Hall.  Thank you for blogging with me today.  I hope that everyone will comment.  The person chosen from the commenters will be able to choose whether they want “Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts” or “Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires”?

WRITING SHORT STORIES TO PROMOTE YOUR NOVELS

Short stories are excellent promotional tools. You can offer free stories to attract new readers. If they like the short, they’ll be hooked and look for more by the same author. Make the story free, and charge for the novel.
WHAT KIND OF STORY?

The story must appeal to the same readers as the novel. Don’t write children’s stories if you want to promote adult novels. Make the story as similar to the novel as you can. Here are some ideas:

* Same genre. This is important. Paranormal stories promote paranormal novels; horror stories promote horror novels; chicklit stories promote chicklit novels.

* Same mood. If the novel is funny, the story has to be funny too. If the novel is scary, gritty, thought-provoking, tear-jerking or sexy, then the story has to be scary, gritty, thought-provoking, tear-jerking or sexy.

* Same location. Are your novels set in South Carolina or in Hong Kong? Choose the same setting for the story.

* Same period. To promote contemporary novels, you need contemporary stories. If you write historicals, using the same period cuts down on research and has the greatest promotional effect.

* Same characters. Involving the heroine and hero in another story can bring problems, but minor characters are a safe choice. Consider promoting members of the novels’ supporting cast to a starring role in the story.
HOW TO PLOT THE STORY

If you’re new to writing short stories, here are some quick guidelines.

* Keep the story short. 750 – 5,000 words is ideal.

* Give the main character a goal, something they desperately want to achieve. Then give them obstacles they must overcome to reach their goal. The story ends when they have (or haven’t) achieved that goal. The more urgent and important the goal, the more exciting the story.

* Use few characters. Three to five are enough.

* Unlike a novel, a story doesn’t stretch over a long time. Ideally, everything happens in one day, or even in a single hour.

Of course, all the other guidelines for good fiction also apply.

 

HOW TO PUBLISH YOUR FREE STORY

* Upload it on your website, to give your visitors interesting content.

* Upload it on someone else’s website, to give their visitors interesting content, and to reach new readers who hadn’t heard of you before.

* Publish it as a free e-book, to attract new readers – the type who wouldn’t spend money on a book by an author they don’t know, but are keen to try new things if they don’t cost anything. If these readers like your free story, they’ll trust that your novel is worth money. (Note: making an e-book free at Amazon requires some jiggling).

* Submit it to magazine or e-zine, if possible one specialising in your genre. Some zines even pay for the use of stories. However, most editors are inundated with submissions, and you may get many rejections before you get an acceptance.

* Submit it to an anthology (a themed collection of short stories by different authors). Anthologies are even better than zines, because they have a longer shelf-life. An e-anthology will be available forever, and a print anthology will continue to circulate in second-hand bookstores. If you place your story in an anthology, it will continue to promote your writing for years. Genre fans love anthologies. They know that a book filled with stories in their favourite genre will contain at least some gems they’ll enjoy. Most anthology readers pick a favourite story or two, and look for more fiction by those authors. The drawback is that most anthology editors are inundated with submissions.

* Use the story as a giveaway. When you give author interviews or write guest blogs, the hosts may ask you to give a prize to a prize draw, or give away free copies of your book, or something like that. This stimulates interest. However, it’s an old marketing adage never to give away the product you want to sell. If you write a guest blog promoting your book, and offer to give away four free copies, then none of the blog readers may buy the book. If they’re interested, they’ll enter the prize draw, and hope to win it for free. By the time the winner is announced, they’ve already forgotten about your book and bought something else.
Consider promoting your book – and giving away free copies of your short story. This way, you get the benefits without the drawbacks.

* Donate it as a competition prize. There are lots of contests for all kinds of things, always looking for donations of prizes. You may want to favour contests which raise funds for charities, so you’re doing a good deed which doesn’t cost you anything. The best contests are the ones which target your typical reader. For example, a horse-painting contest for teenagers is perfect if your write YA fiction with horse-riding heroines.

* Upload it as free reading at Wattpad. People who like the free story may become fans who buy your books. Wattpad has can give your story exposure to a huge potential audience, and works especially well for YA and Paranormal Romance.

* Upload it at various other sites.
THINK ABOUT THE RIGHTS

When you allow someone to publish your story, you need to know which rights they claim.

“Non-exclusive rights”: This means they may publish the story only in this book or on this website. You own all rights and can publish the story elsewhere. This is ideal for promotional stories.

“Exclusive rights for a certain period”: This means you can’t publish the story for a year or whatever that period is. This is often the case with magazines and e-zines. If the magazine has many readers, or if the readers are your target audience, it’s worth it.

“First serial rights”: This is tricky. It means the publisher wants to be the first. It’s the story’s virginity: you can give it away only once. Some prestigious magazines demand first serial rights. It can be worth it because it gives your story first-class exposure. The editors will probably pay for the story, too. The problem is that this type of magazine has a long response time. You may have to wait for a year before you hear from them, and in the meantime, you can’t use the story anywhere else.

“Exclusive rights” or “All rights”: Caution! This means you will never be able to publish the story anywhere else, ever. This is seldom a good idea. Agree to this only if it’s a very prestigious publication and if they offer you a lot of money.
PLAN YOUR STRATEGY

You can combine several of these actions, but some exclude others.

For example, if you make your book available free on your website, you can’t offer it as a prize or giveaway.

If you submit it to an anthology which demands exclusive rights, you can’t also publish it in a magazine, at Wattpad, or on your website.

When planning your strategy, consider this as your guideline:
“How do I get this story read by as many people as possible who are my target audience?”

You may be able to do a lot of things with your story, as long as you do it in the right order.

Here’s the most effective strategy

You may be lucky and a prestigious genre magazine publishes it on a “First rights, exclusive for a certain period” basis. Once that period is over, you get it published in other magazines and anthologies on a non-exclusive basis. At the same time, you offer it as a giveaway for guest blogs, prize draws, and contests. Let a few more months pass, then upload it as free content on your own website, as well as on friends’ websites and Wattpad.

However, this strategy requires luck: Your chance of getting a story accepted by a prestigious magazine may be as small as one in ten thousand. Even the more modest publications are taking months to respond and accept only one in a hundred or one in a thousand. It also requires patience: Some magazines and e-zines keep you waiting for months before they give you a decision. Since most refuse simultaneous submissions, you can only submit to one at a time, which may force you to wait for a decade before the story is published – and in that time, the story could earn its keep in other ways.

Here’s the easiest strategy:

Upload the story at once on your website, at Smashwords, at Wattpad etc, without bothering with magazines, e-zines, anthologies or giveaways. This puts the story to work immediately.
But it limits what you can do with it. Once the story is published, it has lost its virginity and you can never submit it to a “first rights” market, and if it’s free, people won’t value it as a giveaway or contest prize.
ABOUT RAYNE HALL

Rayne lives in a small seaside town on the south coast of England. She has written more than twenty books under several pen names, published in several languages by several publishers, as well as many short stories, mostly in the fantasy and horror genres. A seasoned professional in the publishing industry, she has edited magazines and anthologies. Her most recent anthologies are Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts and Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires.

She teaches online classes on Writing Fight Scenes, Editing Your Writing, Writing Scary Scenes, Writing about Magic and Magicians and more. For an up-to-date schedule of her workshops, see
https://sites.google.com/site/writingworkshopswithraynehall/
===========================
http://www.amazon.com/Haunted-Ten-Tales-Ghosts-ebook/dp/B006PW4TNG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1331123194&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Bites-Ten-Tales-Vampires-ebook/dp/B007A3HBWU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331123087&sr=8-1

 

Head hopping, is it okay?

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First this is the cover of my new book that will be coming out next week.  I’ll be giving away a Smashwords coupon for the book.  I’m really excited about this book.  It’s quickly become one of my favorites.  There is an excerpt after the blog.

 

Blog:

I’ve been reading one of my all time favorite books. Gentle Warrior by Julie Garwood. Now that I’m an author too, it’s amazing the things I see, even in my favorite books.

Julie writes in the style that was popular in the day. She does a lot of ‘head hopping’. This is where the point of view changes. In this case it sometimes changes in the same paragraph. According to everything I’ve learned over the last 11 years, since joining Romance Writers of America and Colorado Romance Writers, this is wrong. A big no-no. But you know what? It doesn’t matter in my enjoyment of the book. It works for this book.

I don’t know if it would work for my books, though I seem to naturally gravitate to that form of writing. Maybe because all my favorite authors tend to write that way.

The writing guru’s will tell you that you need to stay in one persons’ point of view for the entire scene. I say hogwash.

You need to be in whoever’s head it needs to be in for that moment. I like the ‘headhopping’. I like knowing immediately what my h/h is thinking about what the other might have just said or done. I don’t want to switch to another scene to find this out.

I like knowing immediately how it felt when he made love to her and she to him. It’s a necessary part of my pleasure.

Do I head hop in my scenes? No, not if I can help it. Though since I self publish, I might try it, who knows?

Times have changed in more ways than one and we are now supposed to stay in one persons head for the whole scene. This is not as easy as it sounds. If it was easy everyone would do it instead of looking for different ways to tell the story (i.e. first person).

I haven’t written in first person, but I’m going to try it on one of my books. I think it would be interesting and easier to write because you are always in the same persons head. I say easier only because I’ve never done it. I know that for me it will actually be hard to remain consistent and not fall back into writing in third person.

Wish me luck.

 

EXCERPT

They was about to hang his brother.

Harry’s stomach roiled with nausea. From the alley next to the saloon, he watched the Ranger, Sam Colter, march Frank up the gallows steps. Watched the hangman put a noose around his brother’s neck and ask if he had any last words. Watched, helpless to do a damn thing about it.

It weren’t Frank’s doin’ that Colter’s wife and kids had died in that fire. They’d only wanted to have a bit of fun with the woman, make a little money, that was all. They hadn’t wanted to see her and those girls die. That was never the plan.

Fool woman. If only she’d waited. Her father would have paid the ransom. A bank president could afford it. Instead, she’d broken loose. Thrown that lamp at his head, trying to kill him and killed herself instead.

The fire had been fierce. It moved so fast like the house was made from kindling. He rubbed the puckering skin on his arm, feeling the sting of the flames all over again as his flesh charred. He couldn’t have saved them, not and gotten himself out in time. Harry clenched his fists. It wasn’t his fault. And it wasn’t Frank’s either. It wasn’t. She was to blame. Frank shouldn’t have to die for something she’d done to herself.

He had to stop this from happening. He had to save Frank.

Harry shifted away from the gloom of the alley and his brother looked at him from the gallows; met him square in the eye and shook his head. He didn’t want Harry to die too, trying to save him. He’d always been like that. Always looked out for him. Even when it could have saved his own life, he hadn’t given his little brother up. Swallowing hard, Harry slid back into the shadows, his heart pounding.

Time slowed as the hangman stepped up to the lever and gave it a sharp pull. His brother dropped through the trap door, kicking and struggling, his neck not broke clean. Fear strangled Harry, like he was on the end of the rope, trying to breathe, trying to live. Hot tears tracked down his cheeks and bile rose into his throat as his brother’s face turned purple and then his eyes bulged out, legs thrashing wildly at the air.

This weren’t right. None of it was. Damn Colter. Damn him to hell.
The bile in his throat burned all the way to his stomach. He barely got himself hid behind a pile of old beer barrels before he threw his guts up into the mud. Minutes later, shaking and sweating, Harry wiped the vile stuff from his chin. Fury and grief gripped him, making his chest hurt. His brother was gone. Dead. And Sam Colter was to blame for it.

He forced himself to look at Frank’s body, spinning almost lazily now from the end of the rope. He never wanted to forget what had happened today. He wanted to hold onto the icy hatred settling over him like armor–let it protect him and keep the awful feeling of helplessness away. He wanted revenge.

“I’ll get even for you Frank,” he vowed quietly. “Colter will pay for what he done today. He’ll pay for hangin’ you.”

Writers and Their Imaginary Friends by Lisa Mondello

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I want to thank Cindy for having me on her blog today. Although I’ve known Cindy a while now, I love meeting new people. So if you don’t know me, give a shout out hello! Today I will be giving away a copy of my book Her Heart for the Asking which is Book 1 in my Texas Hearts series to one commenter. So don’t be shy. Leave a comment for a chance to win!

Writers and Their Imaginary Friends! by Lisa Mondello

Picture this conversation between me and my husband.

“Honey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say as I wipe a tear from my eyes. I’m standing at the kitchen sink washing a pan from dinner.

“Then why are you crying?”

“I said it’s nothing.”

“Something is wrong or you wouldn’t be upset. What it is?”

I can’t speak at this point. Washing dishes, or doing no-mind work, always seems to open my creative brain, enabling me to plot out my stories. The attention my husband is giving me, and the concerned look on his face, has made my emotions go into overdrive and I start sobbing. I’m too deep into thinking about my story. But he just doesn’t “get” why I get so emotional when I’m thinking about my stories. And being a guy, he wants to fix things.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I shake my head.

My husband gives me that “look”. “Should I be worried about these tears or are they for fake people?”

I manage to mumble that I’m okay. I think I even manage the word plotting. By now he knows what that means.

He gives me a kiss. “Okay, let me know if you need me.”

Fake people…or more affectionately known to writers as our imaginary friends…are the characters we live and breathe every day when we write. We hang out with them all day for months on end. I know for myself that I can get so wrapped up in the pain a character feels that I burst into tears when I have to write a particular sad scene, just as I laugh when something goofy happens in a story, or cheer when the hero/heroine bests the villain that has been making their lives miserable.

Now, I know that my imaginary friends aren’t real. But it’s really cool to hang out with them all day. Think of it. When we’re young, we’re taught that imaginary play is good. Then when we get older, we’re grownups and need to act mature. Mature is way overrated when I can have a blast hanging with imaginary friends. My emotions may get the better of me some days, but as a writer, I’ve got the best job in the world.

As a writer, I think it’s important to get wrapped up in the lives of my imaginary friends. If I’m not invested and deeply moved while I’m writing the story, how can the reader be pulled in and care about what happens.

What about you? Are you a writer who gets wrapped up in the lives of your imaginary friends? Are you a reader who worries about your characters until you get to the end of the story, and then secretly wonder how your characters are getting along after the story? (Incidentally, that’s why we write series books. We just can’t let go of our imaginary friends.) Leave a comment and let me know!

Her Heart for the Asking – Book 1 – Texas HeartsMandy Morgan swore she’d never step foot in Texas again after Beau Gentry left her for life on the rodeo circuit eight years before. But now her uncle’s heart is failing and she has to convince him that surgery will save his life. She never dreamed the first thing she’d see when she stepped off the plane would be her biggest nightmare…the one man she’d never stopped loving.

Beau Gentry had the fever for two things: the rodeo and Mandy Morgan. But for Beau, loving Mandy was complicated by his father’s vendetta against her uncle. This led him to make the hardest decision of his life and he can still see the bitterness and hurt on Mandy’s face. All these years it has killed him to think Mandy had forgotten him and moved as far away as possible from him. But now they’re back in Texas, and he’s going to do all he can to win back her love.

Available at:

Barnes and Noble http://ow.ly/8WReM
BIO:
Lisa Mondello is the best selling author of 13 published books. Her first published book, the award winning ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU, was recently reissued as an ebook and has had over 350,000 downloads worldwide. In addition to publishing her Fate with a Helping Hand series, which includes THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT and THE KNIGHT AND MAGGIE’S BABY, she is releasing her popular Texas Hearts Romance series as ebooks in early 2012, which includes HER HEART FOR THE ASKING, HIS HEART FOR THE TRUSTING and THE MORE I SEE. She currently writes for Harlequin Books and is collaborating with a film producer/screenwriter on a screenplay.She loves to hear from readers. You can email her at LisaMondello@aol.com, find her on her blog talking about writing, movies and music at http://www.lisamondello.blogspot.com or chat on Twitter at @LisaMondello.