Tag Archives: readers

Writers Marketing Group Blog Exchange

Posted on March 10, 2011 | 2 comments

If you aren’t Stephen King or Nora Roberts, chances are you’ll have to do much of your own promotional work on your own dime. More and more authors are saving their dimes and scheduling blog book tours. Some authors pay other people to arrange these things while others, like me and quite a few of my friends, arrange our own. The difficult part is finding new websites to guest blog once you’ve hammered away a few times at each of your friends’ websites!

Knowing that most authors run into this same predicament, I thought it might be a good idea to create a community where writers can network for the purpose of guest blogging and learning how to promote themselves inexpensively and cooperatively.

That community is called the Writers Marketing Group (http://writersmarketinggroup.com/). Several free services will be available to authors through this program. The first one is The Writers Marketing Group Blog Exchange (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WMGBlogExchange/).

The Writers Marketing Group Blog Exchange is a database of participating writers who are willing to host guest bloggers on a one-for-one exchange (you host them on your blog one day and they host you on their blog one day). This means no more wasting time hunting for new venues to guest blog when you have a new book release or taking precious writing time to seek out new authors to guest blog on your site when you need them. There are no fees, no charge to register, and you can use the database as much as you like.

I hope you’ll consider joining The Writers Marketing Group Blog Exchange and help me spread the word to other writers – No matter what genre, from YA to erotica, we’ve got it covered. While it is a Yahoo group, it is not a discussion list that will fill your mailbox or suck up your time. I send a maximum of one email per week with guest blogging tips and special guest blogging opportunities passed on by members. Just think of it as a really big tool in your promotional toolbox.

Please join now by going to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WMGBlogExchange/

Thanks for your time!

Lisa Pietsch
Follow my blog at http://www.LisaPietsch.com
Seven Souls-a-Leapingis now available from Sapphire Blue Publishing
Join the Writers Marketing Group Blog Exchange!

2 Comments

Posted in Blatherings, Guest Bloggers, Just for Fun, Marketing, Writing

Tagged author, authors, Bloggers, blogging, blogs, books, publishing, readers, reading, sales, writers, Writing

Would You Care for Some Humor With Your Homicide, Madam?

Posted on March 1, 2011 | 30 comments

Click Cover to Buy Now!

I’ve been addicted to murder mysteries since the age of six when I discovered the Nancy Drew series was far more intriguing than the adventures of Dick and Jane. My first manuscript, “Cindy Parker and the Haunted Mansion,” was written when I turned my third-grade spelling words into a sixteen page novella. If my mother hadn’t made me go to bed at 8:30, who knows what kind of masterpiece I could have created. When the teacher gave me an A plus, I was officially bitten by the writing bug. It’s somewhat similar to malaria. Once you’re bitten, it may go dormant for awhile, but it will never totally go away.

Although a corporate career, marriage, children, and divorce intervened, my personal anti-depressant has always been to read a mystery by one of my favorite authors, a group of writers who not only devised a puzzle for me to solve, but also kept me laughing. They could turn the gloomiest day or mood into pure sunshine. When I sat down to write my first novel, I had one goal in mind. To write an intriguing murder mystery that also provided plenty of giggles. Seems simple, right? NOT!

I discovered it wasn’t that easy to mesh the suspense of a murder investigation with those special laugh-out-loud moments. We can’t have our heroine blithely tripping over dead bodies, right and left. While the premise of mid-life dating itself can provide laughs (ah, the true stories I could share) there is still a definite fear factor involved. What if you don’t meet Mr. Right and instead meet Mr. Wrong?

It’s critical that readers identify with and root for the protagonist as she searches for the killer. She may be forced to do so to save her reputation or to stay out of jail. It definitely helps if your protagonist is relatable to her readers. In one scene in DYING FOR A DATE, Laurel McKay discovers that when faced with a gun, she didn’t want to flee, she just wanted to pee. I know I’m not the only member of the “hot flash” set who can relate to that.

There’s also the romance factor. How do you maintain conflict and tension between your protagonist and the investigating detective? Especially when he can’t decide if he should arrest the adorable soccer mom, or kiss her? We need to keep the audience engaged in the mystery but still provide those moments that sizzle and sparkle with laughter.

I would love to hear from both mystery readers and authors. Does anyone else enjoy a little slice of humor with their homicide?

Although Cindy Sample’s initial dream was to be a mystery writer, she put aside her literary longings and applied for a job as a receptionist with a real estate office. Her career eventually led to President of a national mortgage banking company. After one too many corporate mergers, Cindy decided it was more fun to plot murder than plod through paperwork. Her experiences with on-line dating sites fueled the concept for Dying for a Date, a humorous romantic mystery set in the California gold country.

Cindy writes a column entitled Hot Flash for the Gold River Community Newspaper. She is a past president of the Sacramento chapter of Sisters in Crime and is the co-chair of the Left Coast Crime Convention, which will be held in Sacramento in 2012. If you’re interesting in volunteering, she’d love to hear from you. Contact Cindy at www.cindysamplebooks.com

30 Comments

Posted in Guest Bloggers, Just for Fun

Tagged Cindy Sample, Dying for a Date, fiction, humor, mystery, readers, reading, writers

Why Would You Do That? (Guest Blog: Marian Allen)

Posted on February 28, 2011 | 5 comments

Click Cover to Buy eBook Now!

I like a good piece of literary fiction as much as the next person, and better than a lot of next persons, depending on who the next person is. But come on.

Any fiction–literary or genre–needs to do certain things:

Have characters who do things for reasons that make sense to them. The reasons don’t have to make sense to the reader, but they have to–believably–make sense to the characters.
Have a plot arc with a beginning, a middle and an end. The plot arc may be all chopped up and shuffled around, the ending may be arbitrary because real life doesn’t have neat endings, but the story must have shape, or else it isn’t a story.
Contain no elements that don’t serve the story. I don’t care how much you know about anything; if what you know doesn’t enrich your tale, save it for a cocktail party. If I’m too undereducated to get your allusions, that’s my hard luck, but don’t make me look something up for nothing. Just don’t.
Not have too many words. That doesn’t mean “write short”. That means use as many words as you need, but don’t use more. Not a vast deal more, anyway. Beautiful language in a story is like butter on a potato. I’m partial to it, but I want more potato than butter. Way more.

When I finish your fiction, I don’t mind saying, “I’m not sure I got that.” I don’t mind saying, “I guess I’ll need to chew that over and read it again to get the most out of it.” I do mind saying, “There’s hours of my life I’ll never see again.”

Marian Allen writes science fiction, fantasy, mystery, humor, horror, mainstream, and anything else she can wrestle into fixed form.

Allen has had stories in on-line and print publications, on coffee cans and the wall of an Indian restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky. On Tuesdays, she posts on the group blog Fatal Foodies. Her novel, EEL’S REVERENCE, a science fiction/fantasy, is available through Echelon Press in various electronic formats.

Allen is a member of the Green River Writers and the Southern Indiana Writers Group, and is a regular contributor to SIW’s annual anthology.