Summer Reading Bookbag

We’re fast approaching the time of year when we pack our suitcases and carryon bags and travel to our favorite vacation spots. Whether we’re cruising to exotic locales, pitching a tent by a mountain stream or loading up the station wagon for a family reunion, we’re all focused on the same objective: to escape from life’s worries and stresses, if only for a short time.  And books fill the bill soooo well.

I recently returned from a sun-filled, sand-between-the-toes kind of getaway.  In the six days we were gone, I achieved that objective. Ahhh.  In that time, I finished two books and started two more. 

The first book was The Scarlet Pimpernel.  I found this classic at Target for $2.99. It was so different from my normal type of read - a rakish rogue saves innocents from the guillotine in the nick of time, with style and the love of a beautiful lady. I decided to save it for vacation.  (For awhile, I fought the impulse to read ‘P-P-P-Pumpernickel’ instead of ‘Pimpernel,’ thanks to Daffy Duck’s telling of the tale.) The book was a page turner and I will probably watch the movie (Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon) if it ever comes to Netflicks.  This story was the perfect escape, but I’m a sucker for characters like Robin Hood and Zorro.

From plot-driven to character-driven, the second book couldn’t have been more different: Sense and Sensibility.  I enjoyed this one, but Jane (Austen) made me work for it.  It’s amazing how much action she can create in her stories when you consider the lifestyle of her characters. Basically, their options for activity are walking in the lanes and fields, working needlepoint, visiting with neighbors, reading aloud and occasionally going to dances. But their futures are at stake, and she uses these largely sedentary activities to create tension between characters through dialogue, misinterpretation, expectations and misunderstanding.  I’ll admit, I did skim a teensy bit, but I was anxious to find out who the sisters ended up with.

Vacations give you permission to read something out of the norm.  To read a book in a flash, because you can.  With nothing pressing on the horizon, no job to interfere, no responsibilities to break up the flow, you can completely immerse yourself in the time period or the story world or the chain of events that make for great stories.

What books are in your summer reading carryon or loaded on your Kindle?  Do vacations give you ‘permission’ to change-up your reading choices? We’d love to hear.

If This Is What I Want As A Reader. . . A Novel Matters Roundtable

I'm trying to catch up on my TBR pile. I don't read long fiction while I'm writing a  novel because, inevitably, the novel I'm reading gets tangled up in the one I'm writing making for messy re-writes. This readathon happening at my house has made me realize that I've been living a double life. One as a reader, the other as a writer. What I look for in a novel and what I write (particularly in that lousy first draft) suffer disconnect. It's time to bridge the thinking gap and bring the reader and writer in me together!

If this is what I want as a reader: A story that introduces me to can't-look-away characters I fall in love with the moment I meet them,

 How come as a writer I: Piddle around with the opening of the story, adding all kinds of backstory, moody and unnecessary details about the weather, or long narratives from a god's-eye-view that don't bring the characters close?

Here's another one. If this is what I want as a reader: Complex novels that deal with human struggle on several levels at once.

How come as I writer I: Try to make myself think that a single problem should have a single answer? It's good for a novel to have a central question (theme), but it's yawnsville if I write as if the question has only one good answer.

Alright, ladies, 'fess up with your reader/writer disconnects. I'm not alone in this, am I?

Oh boy, Bonnie, I'm right there with you, but I'm asking the question a bit differently. As a reader, I don't pick up genre fiction. Yes, I read historical fiction, although I prefer near-history, but not historical romance. I'm most interested in a good story historical or not with complexity, like you, that challenges me to look at what I thought I knew differently. I do try to write those stories but never as well as I want to.

I'm ready to start my next project. All through the marketing of my present release, I've been frustrated with having to pigeonhole the story into a genre of two categories and seven keywords, so readers can find it. What I write doesn't fit the prescribed vocabulary of marketing. I'm so tempted to chuck it all and embrace a genre. But which one? Shouldn't I write what I read, even if I don't do it as well as I want to?

So, Bonnie, I'm definitely conflicted, and I'm at a crossroads. Please send chocolate.

Wow, this is more difficult than it sounds, but I'll give it a try.

If this is what I want as a reader:  Complex plots that are interwoven between compelling characters,

How come as a writer I: write novels with simpler plots, focusing on the problem of one major character? Answer: because complex plots are dang hard to pull off! I don't take the time to develop all, or most, of my characters to the same level. But when you think about it, each one has his or her own drama going on, his or her own catastrophe, his or her own long-fought-for success. Each character should have the potential of The Main Character, and yet I narrow the scope of my stories when it comes to the supporting cast. I know that about myself, but the problem is that I'm not good at juggling. Maybe with my new WIP I'll be more mindful of what's going on in the lives of my other characters and see how good I can become at weaving.

I love this exercise, Bonnie - thanks for bringing it up. So my question is: If what I want as a reader is characters who take my breath away (think Corrigan in Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann) - well, I do start with the character, and with practice, may yet write a Corrigan one day.

I'll start over, and better this time: If what I love best is a high wire act*, a lavish risk that achieves the spectacular when it succeeds (think The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak) then why do I take so few risks when I write? I'm working on becoming fearless.

Pray for me.

Okay, so I want exotic, mysterious, suspenseful, rich, multilayered characters and settings. I want people with secrets and secrets with landscape. I want the rug pulled out from underneath me at least twice and as I sit rubbing my bum, I want to tell myself I should have seen it coming. And then step on another rug without looking at it.

That's what I want. That's what I try to write. But I certainly don't do it up to my own expectations of the writings of others-- or of myself.

Ever Come Unraveled?

I was speaking to a small women's group soon after Unraveled was released. As a way to lead to my introduction, the moderator of the meeting went around the tables and asked the women to say something that makes them come unraveled, which I thought was a clever and innovative way to begin. Mostly the women stated their pet peeves rather than describing something that really rattles them. So after my introduction, before I got on with what I'd prepared to say, I told a story that, a few years earlier, had caused me to come unraveled, in a big way. As a fun way to spend our Friday together, I'm sharing that with you today.

I have to say, the one unanswerable question in the universe is, "Where is a man when you need one?" The answer for me might be Jamaica, Cuba, Siberia ... anywhere but home. When this particular story occurred, my husband was in the Philippines. It was the mid-nineties and Rick and I were brand new empty-nesters. My husband, who is a builder, decided he wanted to live in the country, so he built us a beautiful home on five acres a few miles out of town. We lived there three agonizingly long years. I wrote "Back Side of the Moon" as my return address on all correspondence, because that's how it felt to me -- like I was living on the back side of the moon. It took 15 minutes at 60 mph one way to get a gallon of milk. It was definitely not my cup of tea. But Rick was in country heaven and decided to fulfill a longtime dream: he began growing a herd of Texas Longhorn cattle. Moo.

So we got a couple of Longhorn cows ... that we named after our granddaughters. Don't you know those were the safest cows in the county? They weren't ending up on anyone's dinner plate. Every morning and evening Rick would go out and feed them, and put a special blend of oats in their feeding trough. Then he'd bang the can and they'd come running from whatever corner of the pasture they were in to enjoy their treat.

Whenever he was away, it became my job to do this. But I wasn't quite so cozy with our cows. No, I'd wait till they were in the furthest part of the pasture, then I'd tiptoe to the feeding area, pour their oats into the trough as quietly as I could, and hightail it out of the pasture before they got a whiff and came running. Remember, they had horns. Long horns.

Well, as I said, my husband was in the Philippines for a few weeks doing some sort of ministry, and one morning the phone rang at 6:00, waking me from a dead sleep. A woman on the other end of the line said, "Your cows are in my yard," then she hung up. I laid there half-asleep, trying to make sense of the call. Your cows are in my yard ... your cows are in my ... Wait! What?! "MY COWS ARE IN YOUR YARD?!" I jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes, popped my contacts into my eyes, grabbed my keys, and hauled out of the driveway. Then I hit my brakes and thought, "Wait. Who called?

Whose yard are my cows in?!" I had no clue. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I drove around looking for two runaway cows, feeling like Little Bo Peep, because I. Can't. Find. Them! Anywhere. And the things I was saying out loud to Rick ... well, I won't repeat them here.

I looked everywhere I could think to look, but no luck. So I drove back home, wondering, What do I do now?! I no sooner got back in the house when the phone rang again. This time it was my neighbor who lived on the acreage to the south of us, and who was the self-appointed, unofficial Neighborhood Watch Captain, because she knew everything about everything that went on anywhere within range of her binoculars. And she said to me, "Sharon, are you looking for your cows?" I swear, I'm not making this up. I looked at the phone in my hand. Am I looking for my cows? Are you serious? How could you know this?! "Yes, I am. I'm looking for my cows." And she said, "They're in so-and-so's yard." So I drove down there, and sure as the world, there were Haleigh and Katelyn in so-and-so's yard.

So what do I do now? I am not a country girl. I don't even own a pair of boots. Nor am I the Pied Piper. And they are not going to fit in my Explorer. And then it hit me. One of the guys who worked for my husband was a cowboy! A real one. With a horse and everything. So I called him. "Choya!" (He was even named for a character in an old western his mom had liked.) "You have to help me." And he did. He drove twenty or so miles to get from his place to ours, rounded up the herd, and got them back in our pasture. Then he mended the fence and made sure things were good the rest of the time Rick was away. God. Bless. Him.

Well, that's the kind of thing that happens regularly when Rick is on a trip, and it's one of the things that unravels me.

We sold the place shortly after that.

What unravels you? Share and I'll put your name in a drawing for a copy of Unraveled.

Shh, Marketing Books Through Reviews

Many thanks to Ariel Lawhon for Monday's post on Reading Rules. She set a lovely tone for doing our part in talking about the books we read.

Shh. This knowledge is for Novel Matters readers only: Goodness and Mercy is now a "real" Kindle book and ready for purchase. I couldn't be prouder or more relieved. After all, I survived self-publishing, so far.






Now, on to marketing. I couldn't be more intimidated.

Word on the web and in the myriad of marketing books I've read on the subject is that two things sell ebooks. The first are reviews by bloggers, especially bloggers who specialize in ebooks.

People who prefer indie books flock to these blog sites for what's latest in ebooks. But these specialized bloggers won't post about your book unless you have the second key ingredient in your marketing plan already in place: reviews on Amazon.

As for reviews, I have none. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Ugh.

But only you know the book is up and ready for sale, so I'm not too worried...yet.

My plan was to give away 50 ebooks to Novel Matters readers and ask you to write a review for Amazon--only if you liked the book (more on that later). But if I give away books to potential reviewers, the reviews won't have that "Verified Amazon Purchase" label that adds credibility to the  review.

So I posted the book for the next best thing to free. It's .99 through Sunday.

Since some of you are considering self-publishing, let me share why these reviews are so important and why I thought of you, the Novel Matters readers as the best people to ask to write them.

Let's imagine we're together (Wouldn't that be a treat?) at the checkout counter at our favorite coffee shop, The Novel Matters, where there are free wi-fi and ergonomic chairs for all novelists.

There's a tip jar at eye level with a few dollars and some shiny coins in the bottom. We think, People who buy coffee here are tippers. We should drop something in the jar.

Fact is, savvy waitstaff will seed the tip jar with a few dollars and some shiny coins because they understand the power of social proof.

Social proof is how humans give behavioral cues. A healthy number  of reviews on Amazon is social proof that a book is worth reading and worth writing a helpful review for.

But only if you like the story.

Of all the people I could ask, here's why I chose you: First, the goal is to provide honest reviews of Goodness & Mercy, warts and all. Over the years, I've learned you are honest about books because you care so much about the craft and art of storytelling. Second, I want insightful comments about the story and characters. You people are brilliant! And I'm not just saying that to butter you up.

To help you along, here are elements of a great book review:

1. Brief synopsis with no spoilers
2. The basic theme or themes of the story
3. A judgment on writing style
4. How did the book make you feel?
5. What you loved or hated and why
6. Whether you would recommend the book to others

Obviously, I'm hoping to average 4.5 stars as I have with my other novels. That means you won't all give me 5 stars, and I hope you don't. No book is perfect, even the ones we love. I just finished Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. I've recommended the book with no reservations, even though I thought the middle dragged a bit. Did some skimming. But I LOVED the story. 4 stars!

Is this ethical?

All businesses understand and use social proof, whether they do so consciously or not. We own a garden center. Every year, the local newspaper publishes a survey on which are the best restaurants, hardware stores, beauty parlors, and garden centers (among many other categories) in town. Readers vote and the winners are announced in a flashy insert in the newspaper. We've won the Best of the West Peoples Choice award for garden centers year after year.



Until two years ago. Home Depot won! Two years in a row! Boo! Hiss!

So we started asking our customers to consider voting for us as best garden center. (You can bet Home Depot encouraged their employees to vote.)  I'm happy to report that Goliath fell this year. Our customers were more than happy to vote for us because we know them by name, we help them grow great gardens, we carry superior products, and we know how to use them.

So, if you think I've written a story worth recommending, would you consider writing a review on Amazon? If you think it's a stinker, kindly keep that to yourself. If you're too busy to write a thoughtful review, I would happily receive a Yipee! 

Also, I promise to be very, very quiet about Goodness & Mercy from now on. Thanks for listening and thank you for considering helping me this way.

Remember, Sharon Souza and Latayne Scott also have new releases on Amazon and would love a positive review. And if you've enjoyed a book by anyone, the best thing you can do to vote for that books--besides buying the book--is writing a review. A review is a kiss on the lips for authors.

Kiss an author today!

Besides offering the book for free on it's release date (6/12) and occasionally thereafter, my plan is to pray that the book will end up in the hands God wants. Period. I'm too eager to get back to writing to overdo this marketing thing. BTW, the paperback will release on the same day...or whenever I get my act together. Find Goodness & Mercy here.

Is giving you a lower price and asking you to write a review (4 or 5 stars only) ethical? Is there a better way to garner reviews? What have you done that worked? Didn't work? What marketing have you seen that piqued your interest in a book enough to buy it? How important are reviews to you in the book buying process? 

The Reading Rules--Guest Post by Ariel Allison Lawhon of She Reads

There’s a game I play with my children every time we sit down to read. I call it “The Reading Rules” because the four boisterous children I’ve been given need reminding of what is (and is not) civilized behavior while reading a story.

Consider this recent episode:

Me: “Boys, what are the reading rules?”

Boy #1 (ten-years-old): “No talking while you read.”

Boy #2 (eight-years-old): “No asking questions til’ you’re done.”

Boy #3 (six-years-old): “No hitting.”

Boy #4 (four-years-old): “I tooted.”

This, as you can imagine, sent the entire conversation down the toilet (pun intended). Spasms of giggles. One child plugged his nose and rand around the couch. Someone else flailed on the floor. But now they were inspired. And hyper.

Boy #1: “And no picking our nose.”

Boy #2: “And no eating our boogers.”

Boy #3: “Boogers taste yucky.”

Me: “Please don’t tell me how you know that.”

Boys 3 and 4 had, by this point, twisted off to the point where they were unmanageable and had to be sent to bed. It took an additional five minutes to corral the attention of the older two back to the task at hand: learning which of the four houses the Sorting Hat assigned Harry Potter. They are sensitive enough to plot even at this age that they rooted for Gryffindor. And of course, by the time we reached the end of the chapter, they were not disappointed.

What does this have to do with a literary blog you say? As a novelist, avid reader, co-director of a national book club, and a contributor to this fine establishment, I wanted to suggest that my children are not the only uncivilized readers out there. Many of us could use a few Reading Rules as well. Here a few that come to mind:

Rule #1: No Judging A Book Unless You’ve Read It

I will confess I’ve done this very thing. I’ve read reviews and heard my fellow writers/readers pan a book and formed an opinion on something I’ve not so much as held. This rule can be tricky considering my role at She Reads. I have the opportunity to read dozens of books every month. And the truth is that I often find myself in the position where I do not care to finish them. But if I’m being honest, that does not put me in a position to judge the entire book – only the portion I’ve read. I could name more than one novel that began better than it ended. Or vice versa. Recently I was so irritated by the first line of a novel that I snapped it shut and haven’t picked it up again. By doing so I disqualified myself from all intelligent conversation on that novel. So the rule that I apply to unread or unfinished books is to say, “I’ve not read the novel,” or “What I read didn’t interest me.” And I leave it at that. Anything less is unfair to the author and the book.

Rule #2: Think Before You Review

This rule could also be stated “think before you request.” With programs such as Amazon Vine and mass blog tours, readers are now in a position to acquire books they would normally never purchase. Not always a bad thing perhaps, but it’s easy to request a novel when there is no personal cost, only to toss it aside later or give it the dreaded one star rating because it fell outside the bounds of personal taste. I could give you a list of novels and authors and genres that I go out of my way to avoid. But to do so would be unfair. See Rule #1.

Rule #3: If You Don’t Like A Book Tell Us Why

There are few things less trustworthy than a book reader/reviewer who loves or hates every book. I’ve found some blog tour participants to be guilty of this and I would wager it has to do with workload. Much easier to slap up the book cover and a few sugar/acid coated thoughts about the novel. Yet honest critique is invaluable to an author. If we’re going to publically critique the work of another let’s be honest, intelligent, thoughtful. And fair. 

So what do you think? Do you disagree with any of these rules? Or feel others should be added to the list? For the advancement of civilized reading, please do share!

Morning-After Reading Regrets

A while back we had a fabulous guest author here, crime fiction writer Hallie Ephron. Like we NovelMatters ladies, she blogs with some fellow authors at their site, Jungle Red Writers. 

Recently they asked their readers which movies they had watched that they wished they hadn’t. Their readers were enthusiastic in their stories about everything from being ambushed by gross-out films, to those which were an unremarkable waste of time except for one image or one line that lingered as persistently as garlic on a stranger’s breath in the morning.

Books are that way, too. Sometimes we stop reading something—or keep reading something and are filled with regret later. (I was such an ignorant prude that I threw away my copy of The Good Earth when I was 13 years old because it actually suggested that Chinese people had sex with one another. Never did finish that one. But I do remember something about them eating mud during a famine.)

So – X-rated books aside, which books are so remarkable in your memory that you wish you’d never read them? Do tell. Give titles. Describe details—unless they involve sex and mud and anything else that might gross me out. 

The Details of How We Live And Die

“A writer’s obituary should read: He wrote books then he died.” ~William Faulkner

Gosh, really? I’d hoped mine would say a bit more, something perhaps about sucking the marrow from the bones of life (that’s Thoreau). Or perhaps simply that I loved my family and friends even more than my books.

The day I first read this, I looked Faulkner up on Wikipedia, to see if he’d gotten much done besides writing, and the answer was yes, he had. He’d won two National Book Awards, two Pulitzers, and The Nobel Prize in Literature. Of course, you could argue that his awards only meant that he had written very good books, so his record was safe from clutter. Earlier in life, he’d joined first the Canadian and then the British Royal Air Force (too short for the US military), but had not seen any action. Ah, but then, once he’d won his awards, he’d gone and donated part of the prize money to establish scholarships for African-American education majors as well as the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction. A writer who wants his obituary to span no more than six words should be more careful. After all, if you run a print preview of his entry on Wikipedia, you get nine pages of material.

Ernest Hemingway would have pointed out that the military experience - paltry though it was, compared with his own - would come in handy for a writer penning war novels. He himself had won the Silver Medal of Honor during WWI, the Bronze Star during WWII, and two medals for bull-fighting! Oh, and he’d won an Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Pulitzer and The Nobel Prize in Literature as well.

Know how many pages you could print out about him on Wikipedia? Nineteen, more than double that of the modest Faulkner.

He had his own take on the life and death question:

“Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.” ~Ernest Hemingway

For myself, I think I could gladly leave off the bull fights from my life story. And I’m sure I’d make a terrible soldier. In fact, if I had to live Hemingway’s life to be an author, I might be tempted to give up writing and take up cross-stitch.

Perhaps the author who best exemplifies Faulkner’s ideal would be Emily Dickenson. She spent most of her adult life voluntarily confined to her home, caring for her parents while they lived, writing poems she never meant to publish, lowering gingerbread to children on the street by means of a rope and a basket. She wrote poems - that were later put into books - and she died.

No Nobel Prizes. No Pulitzers. But in the hundred and some years since her death, people have described this poet with her basketful of cookies as “daring,” “sophisticated,” “pre-modernist.” William Dean Howells once wrote that "If nothing else had come out of our life but this strange poetry, we should feel that in the work of Emily Dickinson, America, or New England rather, had made a distinctive addition to the literature of the world, and could not be left out of any record of it."

Sixteen pages on Wikipedia. This woman who asked that her poems be burned when she died. What was her answer to Faulkner and Hemingway?

“Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.” ~Emily Dickenson

What’s your answer? How ought a writer live her life?

We’d love to read your thoughts.