writing it out

This is blog vacation week! And to celebrate, I've got a series of guest posts for this week...and a chance to win tons of free books! Today we're welcoming Anna Staniszewski, an agented author who has a lovely and professional blog here. Her topic, on whether or not books need happy ending, grabbed me right away. Thanks for blogging with me, Anna!

For much of my life, I’ve been a fan of ambiguous and dark endings: The Giver, Z for Zachariah, Feed. It’s not that I don’t enjoy a good happy ending once in a while, but I also appreciate endings that make me think and that encourage me to draw my own conclusions.

That’s why I was as surprised as anyone when the YA fairy tale retelling I was working on suddenly decided it wanted a happy ending. While the original tale had ended tragically, the closer I got to the ending of my retelling, the more I couldn’t bear to make my characters suffer any longer. Had I gone soft? Was I caving to the pressure of happy endings? Or was the happy ending simply what the story needed?

There is no doubt that some stories earn their happy endings. In the Harry Potter books, the characters go through so much in the series that it’s a relief to see things wrapped up nicely in the end. After all that turmoil, the characters can finally get some rest! In real life, however, those who suffer the most often don’t have a lot to be hopeful about. Should that reality be reflected in literature? Or should we focus on hope in books because it can be so rare in real life?

Often our reactions to stories are shaped by our expectations. Not too long ago, for example, I went to see Up in the Air. I loved the film and appreciated its realistic, fairly ambiguous ending. On the way out, I heard a woman complain, “That was so sad!” I was surprised by her reaction until I realized she’d come to the theater expecting a romantic comedy; she wasn’t prepared for a dose of reality. If stories are established as dark from the beginning, readers can anticipate the possibility of an equally dark ending and decide whether or not they want to read on.

Is there a danger in becoming too dependent on happy endings? I believe there might be. Last summer I heard Kristin Cashore give a great talk on her first novel, Graceling. At the end of her speech, someone in the audience asked, “Are you going to write a sequel about Katsa and Po?” Kristin looked slightly confused. “I think I wrapped things up pretty well,” she said. “What more would you want to know?” The woman responded, “I want to know what happened to Po and Katsa after the book ended.” Clearly this reader wasn’t satisfied with the story ending as it was. She wanted more. A slide show? The characters’ medical histories? This?


She wanted complete and total closure, which is, of course, impossible. But can we really blame her? With the YA market flooded with series that let us live alongside characters for years, is it any wonder that readers not only want to know what happens next, they also want every single loose end tied up? After you’ve invested so much time in characters, when they feel like real people, you want to know that everything turns out all right for them. This is a nice idea, but what kind of pressure does that put on stories and their creators? And might we be selling ourselves short if all our endings aim at the same thing?

It used to be that YA was a land of anything-goes. Books could be as dark and hopeless as they wanted to be, with no obligation to end happily, or even hopefully. (Just read The Chocolate War to see what I mean.) But these days, YA is expected to give us at least a hopeful, if not a full-out happy, ending. Given the ongoing influence of TV and film (which often rely on formulaic endings) I wonder if this trend will only continue to grow. If that is the case, where does that leave writers and readers? Should we go with the trend, or is there value in having a bit of reality in our endings once in a while?



Bio: Born in Poland and raised in the United States, Anna grew up enjoying stories in both Polish and English. After studying theater in college, she worked at the Eric Carle Museum where she rediscovered her love of children’s books. She’s been scribbling furiously ever since. Anna lives south of Boston and teaches at Simmons College. She is represented by Ammi-Joan Paquette of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency. You can visit her at www.annastan.com.

If you've not entered yet, be sure to enter before the end of this week. I'm getting a real kick out of seeing people's guesses for how many unread blogs I'll have in my feed reader. 

I'll say this much: one person's guess was so low I passed it in the first day...and one person's guess is so high I doubt I could get that many in a year! :) Definitely go enter--this is fun!

Now, go read Shelli's guest post, too--she was kind enough to let me coerce her into doing a topic I wanted her to post on :)

OK, back on vacay!

This is blog vacation week! And to celebrate, I've got a series of guest posts for this week...and a chance to win tons of free books! Today we're welcoming Shelli Johannes-Wells, a top marketer and agented author who runs the super-popular blog Market my Words. Thank you for guest blogging with me, Shelli!

Marketing is something that happens throughout your career and it does change based on the phase you are moving through. Your target audience changes and therefore you need to adjust your marketing to fit the needs of the audiences. Here are a few things you can do in each stage:


Before signing with an agent
Your target is the agent. So keep that in mind as you begin your journey.

• Write a great book – without a “product” there is no point in targeting any “market” or searching for an agent. The best way to gauge your writing is to better your craft, use beta readers, and join critique groups.
• Write a good query letter with an irresitible hook – Elana Johnson has a great ebook and Casey McCormick does weekly agent spotlights
• Begin building your platform – do whatever you feel comfortable with to begin (join an organization and get involved, blog, participate in conferences etc.)
• Do your research – know the agents and their likes/dislikes. A lot of them are very active on Twitter and blogs and that gives you extra insight you may never get otherwise.

After the book deal (but before publication)
Now your goal is to figure your future target audience and how to reach them.

• Immerse yourself in networking
• Build a professional web presence – before you may have had a scarce web site or the beginning of a blog. Take it to the next level. Add a media kit, be sure your branding is consistent
• Start developing an extensive marketing plan. Who are your audiences, how do you reach them, what relationships do you need to develop
• Look at all the events around your publication date and start planning visits/signings/conference appearances/ etc at least 6 months in advance. It wont all be done but you want most of your stuff in place 3 months before publication.
• Meet with your publicist and be sure you understand their role. Be sure you partner with them and know what they are doing and where you can pick up.
• Focus on the larger target markets. Be sure your plan spans all avenues: online, in person, etc.

After publication
At this point, most of your marketing should already be in place.

• So it is a matter of executing it and making sure it is continuous.
• Find other ways to branch out of the mainstream marketing.
• Now you can focus on the smaller target audiences.

I guess my point is that how you market depends on who you are marketing to. Agents, editors, readers, writers, librarians, bloggers etc. You need to know the audience, find out how to best reach them and then target them directly. This will change throughout the phases of your career and it is an ongoing process.

This is blog vacation week! And to celebrate, I've got a series of guest posts for this week...and a chance to win tons of free books! Today we're welcoming Rebecca Carlson, a long-time friend and critique partner. Thank you for posting, Rebecca!

I teach my music students that there are four levels of performance:

1. Technical Accuracy - hit every note on the page, don't make any mistakes.

2. Interpretation - understand what the music means. Think about the emotions or images the music should create.

3. Expression - communicate your interpretation to the listener. The listener sees what you see, feels what you feel.

4. Power - something deep and true comes out of the music. Hearts are touched. Lives are changed. Spiritual communion through sound.

This is adapted from Clayne W. Robison's book, Beautiful Singing. It helps me get my students past banging out notes on the piano and on to making music. It brings wonderful moments, like my son finishing a Strauss waltz and calling out, "Could you see the roses, mom?"

Level one is a good foundation. No one wants to listen to a performance full of mistakes. But that's only the beginning. The performer should know what the music means, what it is trying to say. That’s level two. And then the performer needs to communicate that meaning to the audience, which is a different skill from both understanding the music and playing the notes correctly. Level three is being a good actor.

Level four? No one can make that happen. If it comes, it comes. It is like a gift. Get the first three levels going, and sometimes the fourth comes pouring in, leaving everyone in tears.

Thinking about these levels of performance can help me as a writer too. How often do I write at level one and never get beyond that? Oh, these sentences are all clear and easy to read, but am I feeling anything? Am I really seeing it in my own head?

And do those emotions and images come across to the reader?

And is there any power in it?

Technical accuracy is absolutely essential for a writer. Mistakes in the prose can kick a reader right out of the story. But even if the prose is perfect, if the writer has nothing to say then the reader won’t want to keep reading.

Interpretation is a matter of imagination. Get in deep. Touch it, taste it, feel it. Become your characters, see through their eyes. Know what it was like to be there.

Then turn it into words—communicate! This is the hard part, and you won’t know if you’ve done it until you talk to someone else who read what you wrote. It takes lots of hard work, plus some trial and error, to learn to take what’s in your head and put it down on the page so that someone else can understand it.

But keep trying, because if you can do it, then somewhere, someday, someone will be sitting there with your book in their lap, dripping tears onto the page, because they feel how you felt when you wrote those words, and the power is coming through.

Bio: Rebecca writes science fiction and fantasy, reviews books for young readers every Monday at rebeccasrecommendedreads.blogspot.com, and posts on Tuesdays at mormonmommywriters.blogspot.com.

Hey guys! Contest information at the bottom of this post!

I've not taken a blog vacay too often, but this month is stacking up to be monumental in proportions.

I've got five wonderful friends lined up to do guest posts all week (yay!) but I won't be around--on this blog or any other blog.

Conveniently enough, this is also about the same time that my To-Be-Read pile is about to collapse in upon itself, forming a black hole of destruction.

SO...to celebrate my first blog vacation in a loooooong time, I'm going to be giving away some books from my TBR pile! And to keep things interesting...I'm not gonna tell you which ones. It's safe to say they're none of the ones that I've reviewed (as I've not read them yet, obvs) but that they ARE similar to the books I read and review. So--probably YA/MG, a few really select good adult titles, a combo of ARC, hardback and paper back.

AND...there will be THREE winners.

Winner One: For the winner of this contest, you need to guess how big my feed reader is going to get. I subscribe to LOTS of blogs--and try to keep up. But this week--from Sunday to Sunday--I'm not going to check a single one. Which means they'll pile up in my Google Feed Reader. Whoever gets closest--without going over--to the actual number of unread blogs I've got in my Feed Reader by noon next Sunday, will win three random books.

Winner Two: Just because I'm not going to be around doesn't mean I don't want to be in the loop. I love learning new and interesting things about writing, publishing, and the market. I also love random things like technology (omg: still nerd spazzing), comics, and other funny things. Y'all know what I like. To win this entry, you need to find the coolest, most amazing thing on the internet and post a link in the comment section TO THIS POST. Whoever leaves me the coolest, most amazing thing on the internet (links to websites, videos, blogs, whatever) wins one random book--but if I really like it, I might just throw in more. PS: This one is totally subjective to my whims and fancies. Yay, random!

Winner Three:  Finally, I don't want to forget my lazy people who don't want to guess random numbers or find cool things on the interwebs for me. So, if you just want to enter for a random prize, then just sign up for one and you might win three random books! There are definitely extra entry options on this one, too.

...buh-what?! Winner FOUR:  I like nice round numbers. AND 3 is my lucky number. So...if I get just 23 more followers--enough to get 300 followers--by next Sunday, one of my lucky 300 followers will get two completely awesome and yet totally random prizes that aren't books but are really cool and if you were a subscriber to my newsletter, you'd totally know what one of the prizes was.

And, yes, you can enter all four contests. Contest closes next Sunday at noon. Winners announced soonish after that.

TO ENTER: Fill in the form below. I'm ONLY accepting entries on the form below.

Okay. OKAY. I KNOW that I went all nerd spaz over the iPad.

And I still think the iPad is pretty darn cool. I trust the Apple name, and I seriously considered buying one.


But then I saw this.

OMG YOU GUYS. OHMYGOSH.

enTourage eDGe.
(Why isn't there a chorus of angels signing every time someone says its name?)

I AM SO GOING TO BUY ONE OF THESE AS SOON AS MY TAX MONEY COMES BACK. (And PS: it's not that expensive. About $500. Really--for what it does, not bad AT ALL.)

It is everything I ever dreamed of.

It is--essentially--a Kindle and an iPad COMBINED.

If a netbook and an e-reader got drunk one night and had a love child, THIS IS IT.

Dude. DUDE. LOOKIT.

On the left side is the e-book--with the e-ink technology Kindle uses--AND AND AND it has the ability to scribble notes on WITH A STYLUS or a ON-BOARD KEYBOARD and it can highlight and basically fulfill your dreams. On the right-side is a netbook--although this is limited. You don't have the fancy apps that iPad has, and it's mostly internet-able (as opposed to work-ready. No word processor that I could see. Which--I admit--is the only thing I see as a detrimental factor. But it does have the ability to hook up to a USB keyboard, and access to Google, so I could always use Google Docs if I wanted to type.)

And it's pretty.

For reals.

This is what I want.

It's practically perfect.

I want an e-reader that can do the following:

• Read books with low battery usage
• If I just wanna read for fun, I want a simple e-reader (iPad fails at this)
• HAVE THE ABILITY TO SCRIBBLE NOTES ON TEXT WITH A STYLUS 
• This is because I plan on uploading my own work and using this to edit. Also: manuscript critique. OMG how much easier would crits be with this feature?! (Kindle fails at this. There's a note feature, but not a handwriting note feature.)
• Have both e-ink and color
• IPad and Kindle fail at this. It's one or the other with them.
• Be able to check email, surf, and type longer documents than in-text notes
• If I want to add a chapter to the manuscript I'm editing, I want to be able to type it on a decent keyboard. This device does this.
• Kindle does not at all do this
• iPad sort of does this--but not simultaneously, with the ability to see both the document and the type screen.

The enTourage eDGe does all this.

AND MORE.

Seriously guys. Go check out this link. DO IT. It's a demo of all the stuff enTourage eDGe can do.

cNet did a bit of a review here.

Edited to add:
A bit more research shows that this thing is EVEN MORE PERFECT for writers than I originally thought. It is going to be shipped with a program that enables MS Office document creation.

A few months ago when we first spoke with the folks behind the Entourage eDGe dual-screen eReader/netbook/tablet they told us they were working with Android app developers to create or modify apps that would work on the device’s larger screens. One such app they hoped to procure for the launch was Documents To Go by DataViz which would allow eDGe users to open, edit and create MS Office documents out of the box. Today the company officially announced that the software will be available on the dualbook and, even better news, users won’t have to pay extra. 

Guys. It reads. It writes. It plays music and video. It has a recorder and camera (conferencing ans Skype, anyone?). It even has the mighty intarwebs.

What more can we want?!

Hey! There's a poll at the end of this post--I'd really appreciate it if you'd vote and give me some of your thoughts. kthxbaiurock.

So, I recently read this article at Salon about whether or not book trailers were actually good marketing tools for writers. They made the point that while some book trailers are well done (including Scott Westerfeld's latest one for Leviathan), it might not really do much good.

And even so, how many readers outside of Westerfeld's devoted fan base are likely to see it? As a general rule, people don't go looking for ads on the Web (unless they're -- inexplicably -- seeking commercials they've already seen and liked on TV). If they are motivated enough to search for Westerfeld's name on YouTube, look his books up on Amazon or seek out his Web site, they've already made it past the most formidable barrier: the crushing obscurity in which the vast majority of authors languish.

The article did make an interesting point, though--that a well-done author interview can be more effective than a high priced book trailer.

And I thought: why not compare?

Here's an author interview with Maria Snyder that's just been released in which she talks about her latest book Sea Glass. I found it really interesting--especially (did you know?) because I learned that Maria's husband was a food taster. How cool! And I liked the touch with Orlando Bloom... :)


But there's also an excellent book trailer out with Maria's Storm Glass. It is actually really one of the better book trailers out there--you guys know I'm picky, so that fact that I'm giving this one the Beth Seal of Approval should count for something.


And, lest we forget, there's the tool that I mentioned earlier: one of the best widgets for a book promo I've ever seen. It isn't a simple countdown--it's a dynamic marketing tool.



So, there you have it: three different online marketing tools by the same author for the same book series of the same high quality.

Which one do YOU think sells the book the best?