On Community

'Way back in 2001 when I first started writing, the only other person I knew who wrote was a friend from college.  We were both busy raising kids and living life, so we rarely talked about our work, especially since we were limited to regular mail, then email (note, this was a while ago!). Once I started working, I had to move rooms after about 5 years in the building, and the person on the other side of the wall was our ESL teacher.  We got to talking, probably at lunch or before a meeting, and I learned that she wrote, too!  That was about it for community, however.  I worked alone, struggled through challenges alone, prepared my books for publication alone.

All that has now changed.  I have more unscheduled time, having retired from full time teaching, and have joined a small writers' group here in our little town.  They've been awesome, encouraging/prodding/figuratively kicking me in the behind me to branch out to BookTok, and we spend time in our meetings talking over the triumphs and frustrations of writing.

The other big change has been the community on BookTok.  Every day I meet new people (kinda weird for this happy introvert) who are kind, helpful, and, most of all, they GET ME.  haha!  There's nothing more affirming than finding your tribe.  In a certain sense it's like being in grad school again.  I've been chatting with people from all over the world, both on BookTok and on the phone, and it's a huge boost.  I used to teach French, and I understand well the struggle of getting people to understand what you're talking about.  I suppose that's every writer's ultimate goal: comprehension on the other side of the page.  Stephen King called it the most durable kind of magic.  It's fantastic when the trick lands right.

Hanging at the Cool Kids' Table

 About a month ago I, filled with angst and trepidation, joined TikTok.  To be completely honest, I've mocked and scorned what I called TikGram and InstaTok in my classes, and I still despise what they've done and continue to do to our kids' minds.  That said, BookTok is an incredible boon for readers and writers alike, providing a platform for reviewers and authors to get their work known, and it's for this reason that I joined.  My most recent novel, I, Christine, never really took off, despite decent reviews from several bloggers, and I hated seeing it languish when I poured body and soul into it.  It's a good story of a fascinating, brilliant woman whose life and work is largely unknown beyond the ivory tower.  

So, where are we, a month or so in? Well, I've gotten used to talking to my phone and have learned a little about video editing.  With the help of a few generous indie author supporters (@MommaD, @alexandrashawauthor2, @oshanwaters4, and @A_Brew_Story, I'm looking at you!) I know have 186 followers, gaining about 10 new followers every day, and I've connected with several reviewers who have agreed to read and review Christine!  Yesterday I picked up @bethanys_bookshelf92, and when I saw she had twenty thousand followers, I had to ask, and yes! Although she generally reads and reviews fantasy, she's going to review Christine for me!  Even if 10% get the book, it'll be 2000 new readers.  This for a book that's sold maybe a few dozen copies.  Four other readers will also be posting their reviews to another 40,000 followers.  I also ran a Goodreads Giveaway of the ebook.  That cost some money, but if 10% of them review (Goodreads carries the freight on that one, prodding recipients to review) it'll be far more activity than the book's seen in probably a year.

Now, could it all disappear into the ether, among the thousands of romance, fantasy, romantasy, etc. published and promoted on BookTok every day?  Possibly, but I choose optimism.  And, with a healthy roster of followers, it'll be easier to promote my next book with a ready-made audience.  On we go, courageously into the 21st century!

 It seems I spend a lot of time explaining why I'm not keeping up with this blog.  To be perfectly honest, when I deep in writer's mode, I forget this even exists.  I'm sure I said in an earlier post that I much prefer writing to writing about writing, however...the world has turned, and things have changed.  One can't simply toss a novel up on Amazon and hope for the best.  There's too much competition out there, with millions of desperate authors clamoring for the attention of readers.

And so I return to the blog, so I can reach out to potential readers.  Word on the street is, some traditional publishers won't even consider you unless you bring along a couple thousand devoted followers/subscribers with a healthy social media footprint.  Okay, fine.  As is usual for me, I started researching, and quickly learned that one ignores the BookTok world at one's peril.  There are literally billions of users and millions of videos, and I don't know how many influencers out there reviewing books like crazy.

As of today, I've been on BookTok for 2 weeks.  At first, making videos gave me unpleasant reminders of teaching remotely during the pandemic--not that it's technically very difficult, but it felt a lot like whistling in the wind, wondering if anyone was listening.  I picked up a few likes, and a few followers...and then yesterday I commented on a video by indie author supporter A_Brew_Story, mentioning the difficulty I was having getting traction for I, Christine.  She responded with, "Message me, dear," and we were off to the races!

She's going to promote my book to her 28,000 viewers, and she was kind enough to tell me about a few other indie authors in my area.  I reached out to them, got some encouraging advice, and was put in touch with another indie promoter who will have me on her live feed in a week or so in front of her 20,000+ followers.  We've gone from zero to 100 overnight!  Yesterday I was about ready to give up and just write because I enjoy the intellectual exercise.  Today, it's a whole new world.

Whose Identity Is It, Anyway?

For as long as I can remember, I have read for a while before going to sleep.  No doubt my mom took the book from my hands, took off my glasses, and turned off the bedside lamp more times than she would have liked.  These days I aim my wee little reader's light directly at the book so as not to annoy Patient Husband.  I'm currently reading a modern French translation of a work by the woman who will be my next main character, and I'm enjoying it immensely because, although I've read dozens of her poems, this work in particular has given me special insight into her mind. I was starting to wonder if she would come to life for me--and through this work, she has--but it wasn't until I turned off the light that I realized something else.

As a writer, I naturally create characters, the world they inhabit, and the problems they face.  Even picking real people and situations from history, I have to ensure my characters are fully, believably human.  This became less of a worry when I realized that my characters represent facets of myself in one way or another.  To me that's a big part of the fun, but what I realized last night is I must identify with my main character.  She can't come to life in my mind unless we become friends, as it were.  I need to know what motivates her, what her fears are, what keeps her up at night--and at least some of those things we need to share.  Last night as I lay thinking about what I had read, I was stunned to realize how similar she and I really are, even at a remove of some 600 years.  Even my fictional depiction of my grandfather from For Two Cents, I'll Go With You resembled me as much as I resemble him--although I didn't realize it before I wrote the book.  It didn't matter that the character was male.  As I read his letters home from the war and learned about what he did in France I came to understand that we share DNA both in real life and in the fictional world I created, and it's awesome.

Of course, human nature hasn't changed over the millennia; that's why we can read the epic of Gilgamesh, Greek theatre, or The Art of War and the works will still speak to us.  As Stephen King said, "All the arts depend on telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing offers the purest distillation."  Because human beings figured out how to put little bugs on paper--to borrow Edgar Rice Burroughs' phrase--in ways that mean something, we can pick up something as simple and as cheap as a book and instantly enter someone else's mind.  Now I know that someone is both the author and his/her creation.  No wonder I miss them when I finish writing.

Forging Ahead

Well, the Facebook page merge finally happened.  I'm not sure why they called it a merge, since everything from the second page disappeared, but at least now I only have one page to maintain.  I need to rename the page now so it's associated with me as an author instead of with just my first novel, especially since I have two books and the audiobook should appear any day now.

I'm also continuing to research my next work, and it's going very well.  I found three volumes of late-medieval poetry that have helped me enormously.  They date from 1886, and the Luddite in me rejoices that an old technology still works.  It was a real thrill finding them for sale online, thanks to alibris.com.  Most of the texts I need are available online, but I find it hard to read a screen for any length of time.  They're not the oldest books I own (that dates from 1865, and belonged to my great-grandfather) but they're in excellent shape, having been on the shelves of the Butler University library from 1925 according to the bookplate.  I also bought a translation of another of my main character's works in prose and another book about her life during the Hundred Years' War.  It examines her from a different perspective that I've found very interesting.  All of these books I found in reading the notes of another book, which is a large part of the fun I have researching.  My students simply plug something into Google; they never had to flip through a card catalog or dig through an editor's notes in search of ancillary texts.  I also find it very cool to read the work of people who put their words and thoughts onto paper centuries ago.  To my mind it's the ultimate form of immortality, and one I hope to establish for myself one day.

Happy Holidays, and Happy Reading!

I know it's been a long time since I posted something, so here goes. In case you've been wondering, I've been elbow-deep in editing TRQ's audiobook, which I finally finished yesterday. Woohoo! It's now back in the hands of the producer to make final corrections before hopefully going live in a few weeks--just in time for the holiday season.

With that off my plate, I can dig back in to research for my current project, which is set in France during the Hundred Years' War. Lordy, what an endless series of disasters that was. Just like when I was researching my novella on World War I, I had a lot to learn, but for me that's half the fun!  I just finished Juliet Barker's book on Agincourt--very well-researched and well-written. I need to go back and review the research I've already done to get the synapses firing again, then see what else I need to read. It really helps to be able to read French--modern and medieval--which also gives me the gift of a different perspective.

 This week's mini-project has been merging my two book pages on Facebook, which is a lot more complicated than it should be, I think, but then again I'm not the most tech-savvy person on the planet.  I had to retitle both pages, then set the merge in motion.  So far nothing seems to have happened.  I guess these things take time.

It's a windy, rainy, grey day here. Perfect for reading and reflection. Peace.

What Have I Been Doing??

Holy moley, it's been a year since I posted anything here.  What have I been doing, you ask?  Well, in the spring of this year I finished corrections and published the French translation of my WWI novella, For Two Cents, I'll Go With You.  I decided to "go wide", meaning that it would be available on as many outlets as I could find.  Direct2Digital is great for this, offering seven different e-publishers, including Kobo, iTunes, and B&N.  I did this because they also publish for the European firm Tolino.  Since the book is in French and Tolino is a strong competitor for Kindle in Europe, I thought it would be a good idea to try and tap into that market.  Unfortunately, the book has not gotten much traction anywhere, in English or in French.  I believe this is because war stories are just not very popular.  Top-selling genres are as follows (from strongest to weakest): suspense/thrillers, general fiction, classics, mystery, action/adventure, sci fi, romance, fantasy, religion, horror, graphic novels, and Westerns.  I did class it under action/adventure in choosing my key words, but since women are far and away the largest book-buying audience, it's been a hard sell.

I had already started working on a third novel on an early aviation pioneer, but having learned my lesson with Two Cents I changed direction and am currently reading and researching for a novel with a strong female lead set in the late medieval period.  It's been fun, digging into my grad school notes and texts and refreshing my knowledge of Old French.  As Stephen King advised in his memoir On Writing, write what you know.

I've also delved into audiobook production this spring, offering The Rogue Queen on ACX.  The book is currently being produced, and will hopefully be offered for sale within a month or six weeks.  I made the decision to try the audiobook market because, frankly, I ended up giving a lot of my e-book royalties from last year to the IRS.  I did plan appropriately for taxes on my royalties; I did not know I would have to shell out several grand to cover interest on savings bonds used to pay for our daughter's college tuition.  Once upon a time said interest was deductible if used for education, but no more.  We should have cashed in a few each year instead of waiting until her senior year, but live and learn.  Luckily I had the money available.  Hoping to tap into another revenue stream, I headed over to ACX (another Amazon company), where they make it easy to find producers willing to narrate in a clear step-by-step process.  As soon as school is out I'll be reviewing the recording as well as working on research, so it looks to be a busy summer.  I'll let y'all know how it goes.