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Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ – Oh My, Oh My, Oh My!!

May 2, 2014 by Jann Ryan in category Jann says . . . tagged as Azalea March Mysteries, Beth Yarnall, Elena Dillon, Facebook, Google+, Jann Audiss, Jann Ryan, romantic suspense, Social Media, The Misadventures of Maggie Mae, The Pleasure at Home Series, Twitter, YA

I’m technology challenged. When it comes to the social media world I’m plain scared. Just the thought of posting something incorrectly has stopped me dipping my toe into the water for years. My goal is to break through the fear. When OCC announced its Online Class schedule I was thrilled. There it was– April’s class–Social Media for the Confused and Terrified presented by Elena Dillon. No more excuses by golly. I signed up.

Week 1 – The class started with Facebook, and for four days straight I had my desktop and laptop computers running side by side. Reading lessons and asking questions on one, doing class assignments on the other. I was learning about personal pages and author pages, friending and liking. Even though I’ve had a personal FB page for several years, I’ve never really interacted on it. I had started an author page (Jann Ryan), but hadn’t made it public to the world because I’m not a published author. Well, I hit the published button and it’s now live. To support my fellow classmates (which are a terrific group), I’m friending and liking and trying to comment on posts.

By the fourth day, I was on Facebook overload. I needed a bit of a break, so I thought I would start going through a couple of my file boxes filled with years of writing paraphernalia (handouts, conference stuff, articles and pages of stories.) It was suggested by a good friend to scan what I wanted to keep and toss the rest. I DIDN’T COME OUT OF THE ROOM FOR 4 DAYS! I was scanning and tossing from morning till way into the night. My determination to master FB was transferred to cleaning out paper. I couldn’t stop myself. From the file boxes, I moved to the bookshelves, then back to the file boxes. I was obsessed.

Week 2 – Monday, I came up for air only to be confronted with the next week’s class–TWITTER. I hadn’t conquered Facebook, now I was facing the Twitter monster with its hashtags, retweets and Tweet chats. Thanks to the wonderful instruction and guidance from my teacher Elena, I marched into the Twitter world. I installed Tweetdeck and selected people to follow. I was fortunate to see meet up Beth Yarnall, author of the Azalea March Mysteries, The Misadventures of Maggie Mae and the Pleasure at Home Series, who gave me some hands-on instructions. Check out her website http://www.bethyarnall.com/ . I’m still feeling awkward with Twitter, but I know I’ll be Twittering up a storm soon.

Week 3 – My Waterloo is Google+. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been receiving great instructions, but I realize I need hands on instructions when walking into the unknown. I get the overall idea, but just can’t seem to figure it all out. I need to spend more time on my lessons and work with it more, but life is getting in the way this week. It’s similar to FB, but now I Hangout with a Circle of Friends (actually, I’m not hanging anywhere yet).

I have one more week to go and one more social media item to learn. Heaven help me.

All that being said, I’m happy I ventured into this new world. I have some wonderful classmates and a great teacher, Young Adult Romantic Suspense author Elena Dillon. Stop by her website http://elenadillon.com/.

Go forth and conquer!

Jann Ryan grew up with the smell of orange blossoms in Orange County in sunny Southern California, where she has lived her entire life and dreamed up stories since she was a young girl. Never an avid reader, she was in her thirties when she picked up her first romance quite by accident. She fell in love with happily ever after and has been reading romances ever since.

Wanting to put pen to paper, Jann joined Romance Writers of America. Currently, she is working on a romantic suspense series set in Stellar Bay, a fictitious town along the California central coast to fulfill her publishing dream.

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Show and Tell, OCCRWA’s May Online Class with Shannon Donnelly

April 27, 2014 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as Online Class, Shannon Donnelly, writing craft

Shannon Donnelly is with us today to talk about her upcoming OCCRWA online class, Show and Tell, an Interactive Workshop. Take it away, Shannon!

Thanks Alina. Weâ€™ve all heard â€œshow, donâ€™t tellâ€ and there is value in that advice. If all you do is tell a story, how does the reader participate with his or her imagination? However, a book is not a movie. While a movie requires everything to be shown (or an often awkward voice-over to be added if itâ€™s not showing enough), a book has the luxury of being able to use narrative. And thatâ€™s where I usually get folks who are utterly confused.

Narrative seems to have gone out of fashion. It doesnâ€™t seem to be taught, and no one seems to really get what it is. So letâ€™s make it easy.

Merriam-Webster gives us the root for narrative/narrating as the â€œLatin narratus,past participle of narrare, from Latin gnarus knowing; akin to Latin gnoscere, noscere to know.â€

This means itâ€™s basically the author telling the reader the information the author knows, which the reader also needs to know. And now, you ask, what does the reader need to know, and when does the reader need it, and how much does the reader need. This is where narrative becomes an art.

This means any writer of fiction needs not only showing but telling as well. Whatâ€™s the secret in knowing when to show and when to tell? This is something Iâ€™ll be covering in the May workshop, but here are a few tips:

WHAT TO TELL:

– Where are we? (Place and world â€“ the reader needs to be placed into the scene, otherwise itâ€™s confusing to the reader. Do not throw your readers into the deep end without giving them some help.)

– When are we? (Whatâ€™s the era, the time of the year, the month, the day, the hour? We need everything that helps the reader settle into the scene as if this moment in time really exists.)

– Who is here?(An introduction to the characters, particularly to the main characters for that scene, and for the story.)

– Why are we were? (This doesnâ€™t have to be greatly detailed information, but you need enough details to make a reader care. Think of it this wayâ€”too little and you starve the readerâ€™s imagination; too much and the reader quickly fills up and drops the book down.)

All this needs to be woven together, stitched in with careful threads, not dumped on the reader in big clumps. Or, to put it another way, feed the reader your tellingâ€”your narrativeâ€”with a teaspoon, not a soup bowl.

WHAT TO SHOW:

– Your characters in actionâ€”scenes are always stronger when you show a character expressing emotion with physical reactions.

– The world through a characterâ€™s sensesâ€”we all lean too much on sights and showing what a character sees, but go beyond this to show smells, tastes, touches, and sounds. Use all a characterâ€™s senses to not only make the world more vivid for the reader but to also show what your character notices.

– Your characterâ€™s emotions through words. Dialogue should never just be there to advance the plot or you end up with a character that seems stiff on the page. Just as you want to show emotions through actions, you also want to show emotion through wordsâ€”this includes what someone avoids talking about, too.

Showing and telling do not have to be absolutes; mix show, use more show than tell, or use more tell than show; part of the choice is your style, and part is the effect you want to have on the reader.

Alina again here.

Thanks Shannon for giving us a taste of your upcoming lessons. This four-week class starts May 12, 2014 and registration is now open here.

About Shannon Donnelly:

Shannon Donnelly’s writing has won numerous awards, including a RITA nomination for Best Regency, the Grand Prize in the “Minute Maid Sensational Romance Writer” contest, judged by Nora Roberts, RWA’s Golden Heart, and others. Her writing has repeatedly earned 4Â½ Star Top Pick reviews from Romantic Times magazine, as well as praise from Booklist and other reviewers, who note: “simply superb”…”wonderfully uplifting”….and “beautifully written.”

Her Regency Historical Romance, Paths of Desire, can be found as an ebooks on Kindle, Nook and at Smashwords, along with her Regency romances.

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Winter Trees

April 24, 2014 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives

Spring is a fickle and flirtatious season, luring us with the promise of warmth, rebirth and new beginnings. But for everything you gain, there is always an element of loss.

And while the sight of new buds and flowers is lovely, I love winter trees. I treasure their beauty and mourn the loss, the elegance, the sculptural beauty, each as unique as a fingerprint, etched against the sky…soon to be all covered up by a mass of green fuzz.

Yes, I know I am lacking in the formatting department, but below are some winter trees to enjoy before they disappear….

Happy Spring!

And remember, no matter how fabulous the covering is, it’s the structure & the bones underneath that deliver throughout the year…

Isabel Swift

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Ten Things NEVER TO DO When Writing a Book

April 16, 2014 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as writing craft

10. Never Stop Reading: After a long day of reading your own work the last thing you want to do is pick up someone elseâ€™s, but do it! You will stay motivated and learn something, too.

9. Never Rely on Inspiration: The best moments in writing a book come when inspiration finds you working. Sit down, get to work, and inspiration will come calling.

8. Never Neglect Genre: Itâ€™s tempting to walk in between genres. What would be better than a science fiction, erotic, mystery right? But remember, if you want to find passionate and engaged readers, you should find the genre that you want to write and stick with it.

7. Never Get Bored: If youâ€™re bored writing your book, chances are that your readers will be bored reading it. If you find yourself becoming bored, or your main character is skating through the plot with ease, throw some roadblocks in the way. Conflict moves stories.

6. Never Rely on Pretty People: Men don’t always have to be fearless and women don’t always have to be sexy. Your readers will spend a lot of time with your characters so make sure there is something going on in their heads and their hearts. Readers love characters for their imperfections and their shortcomings just as much as their looks.

5. Never Lose the Through Line:Remember what story youâ€™re writing. Be careful of veering off the path because that’s the surest way to lose your readers.

4. Never Be Afraid to Cut: Cut close to the bone. Slice away. Make the tough choices even if it means taking out things you really love. They may be great- maybe just not great that book. Know the difference.

3. Never Throw in the Towel: Too many people have unfinished books floating around on their hard drives. The easiest thing in the world is starting a book; the hardest thing is finishing one.

2. Never Let your Characters Off Easy: Just because you love your characters doesnâ€™t mean you have to go easy on them. A reader wants to see characters struggle and sometimes fail. Give them a goal to work towards, make it hard to get, and you canâ€™t go wrong.

1. Never Beat Yourself Up: The book isnâ€™t shaping up the way you wanted it to? Someone read a chapter and didnâ€™t care for it? Feel like jumping off a cliff? Thatâ€™s fine. Those days happen. Every day that youâ€™re thinking, â€œwoe is me,â€ is another day that you could be spent finishing a chapter or polishing a plot point. You can spend your time beating yourself up, or beating your characters up. I do a lot of the former but I am trying to stop.

Happy Writing.

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My Results Using Ads and Specials by Kitty Bucholtz

April 10, 2014 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as advertising, It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, Little Miss Lovesick, promotion, self-publishing, Unexpected Superhero

Most writers are curious about what is and isn’t working for other writers when it comes to selling books. I’m grateful for what others have been willing to share, so it’s only fair to share in return. Even though my results are a bit embarrassing.

I’ve only bought ads three times. I bought an ad last year with The Wordsmith Journal Magazine (online) for Little Miss Lovesick. After one month, I had zero new sales. Ouch.

In August, while Unexpected Superhero was enrolled in the KDP Select program (meaning it was only for sale on Amazon for the first 90 days), I took advantage of the program’s free days option and made the book free for five days in a row at the end of a conference I was attending. I also bought an ad from BookBub that appeared on the first day of the promotion.

There were a whopping 17,561 free downloads during those five days! Over 10,000 copies were downloaded the first day, which I attribute primarily to the BookBub ad. During the next two weeks, I sold only 24 more copies when the book went off sale (back to $3.99). Then the sales dropped back to the 0-3 per week average that has been more common for my books so far.

A month or two ago, I dropped the price of Unexpected Superhero from $3.99 to $2.99 to see if I could see a change in sales. There might have been a slight increase. At 0-3 sales per week, it’s a bit hard to say. 🙂

My third promotion-with-paid-advertisement was last week. I dropped the price on Little Miss Lovesick and promoted it with 19 other lovely romance authors and their books last Friday. I also took out a then-free ad from eBookSoda, a newer email list like BookBub that advertises free and reduced-price books. (The ads were free, then $5, and I’m sure they’ll keep increasing in price as they grow their list. The problem with this ad is that I don’t know if it went to 100 people, 1000, or 20,000.)

I dropped the price from $2.99 to 99 cents a week before the promo with Smashwords so it would be 99 cents at the other outlets by the day of the promo. I decreased the price on Amazon two days before, and it went into effect the day before. I saw that I sold one copy on Amazon a day or two before the promotion, then two more copies total during the weekend of the promotion and ad.

That’s it – 3 sales. At the high end of “usual” for me.

Little Miss Lovesick got a new (second) cover a few months ago, but it’s barely changed the sales. Unexpected Superhero got a new (second) cover at the end of March, too early to tell if it has affected sales yet. I took out another eBookSoda ad (the free ad that went to $5 when I did it this time) for Sunday, May 4 (my third choice date, Fantasy category, same as last year’s BookBub ad). I’ll leave Superhero at its current $2.99 price and see if anything happens when it’s not on sale but advertised.

And that’s about all I know so far. My second superhero book was to be ready next week for WonderCon, and which I expected to help sales of the first book. But my husband’s motorcycle accident and injuries trumped anything and everything that used to be on my To Do list. 🙂

I’ll keep you updated so you get a well-rounded view of self-publishing and advertising. (It’s less embarrassing to write about your successes, so there are a lot more of those stories out there.) It would appear that my experience underscores what other successful writers have said about success coming after you have several books out. Unfortunately, “life” has thrown a wrench in making that happen soon, but as the Brits (used to) say, Keep Calm and Carry On.

And keep writing! 🙂

Kitty Bucholtz decided to combine her undergraduate degree in business, her years of experience in accounting and finance, and her graduate degree in creative writing to become a writer-turned-independent-publisher. Her novels, Little Miss Lovesick and Unexpected Superhero, and the free short story “Superhero in Disguise,” are now available at most online retail sites. Superhero in the Making will be released this summer.