H is for Help for Writers

H

Writing is a solitary task, but you don't have to be alone. Sometimes we need help to motivate us, help with techniques and help with evaluating our work. Here are just few ways writers can get help:

• Join your Writers Centre, I'm a member of QWC, they hold workshops, seminars and provide lots of services for its members.
• Books, there are lots of books that offer help for writers, including this one: 

• Writing courses, there are some online, or in person, through your writer's centre or educational centre (like TAFE or Uni). If you're looking for online courses, here's some I've tried and liked:

Sydney Writers Centre

How to Think Sideways - by Holly Lisle

• Blogs. I get the most help from other bloggers. So many offer help for writers, here's a couple of helpful posts:

Max Barry - Help for Writers

Lifehack - Fifty Tools which can Help you in Writing

Write Help - Help for Writers

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G is for Google and Goodreads for Writers

Had a conversation with my dad last week about the marvels of Google. He said he can still remember having to research in libraries, and even then you were very limited to the books that library had in stock. Now he's writing humorous, military thrillers, he often needs to check information and dates of political events and underworld activity. I have to agree. I grew up with computers only being able to move two white lines up and down the sides of the screen to hit a digital ball that bounced between them (go Atari!), and became very impressed with those tables that showed Space Invaders and Pacman. 

But now you can find out whatever you need from Google. But Google has plenty more to offer writers than just a search engine:

• Google Maps - actually see the street where you're setting your story without ever going there.
• Gmail - I got sick of my email changing every time I changed Internet providers. I've had my gmail account for years now and love the stability.
• Google Docs - If you work on your manuscripts at work and home or out and about, by putting them on Google Docs you can access them on the go and never worry about loosing your manuscript. I used this before I became a dedicated Scrivener user.
• Images - A great way to find pictures of your characters to add to their profile.
• Google+ - Social media site where you can connect and sort your followers into groups, such as writers or readers.

Another important G site for writers is Goodreads. This is a community of readers and writers where you can record the books you're reading. On Goodreads you can set up an author account, write your bio and have your own book launch or giveaways. Make sure your book is listed on there!

Now I have to figure out where to hide the chocolate eggs for my kids. It never failed to intrigue me why kids aren't scared of this giant rabbit that sneaks into their home at night and leaves chocolate eggs - Don't want to bust that bubble, but bunnies don't lay eggs, if they do leave round chocolate-coloured things... not sure you should eat them.

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F is for Free

F is for Fossil, the inspiration for the MY ZOMBIE DOG

If you've been following my blog, twitter or wireless telegraphs, you'll probably know I've release My Zombie Dog and have tried a few different promotions with this book. One of those promotions was the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) FREE day. For the three months that you sign your book solely to Kindle, you can elect up to five days to have your ebook available for FREE on Amazon. 

I have no concerns about trying different marketing/promotions with this book. It's my first release and I'm happy to learn from the experience for the next books coming out this year. I do have concerns sometimes about the bigger picture. I need to make sure the decisions I make are not positive for this one book but detrimental to the Indie ebook industry as a whole. 

My concern with free is an old philosophy I have, 'don't think you're doing your client/employer a favour by decreasing the cost of your service, in the end that is what they will think it is worth and will resent paying normal price'. I came across this article that made me worry that free, 99c, $1.99 ebooks are devaluing the book as a concept.

So what if my book is downloaded thousands of times, if it's free is that helping sales? Turns out it does. 

• Each time someone downloads my book it lifts in the rankings, bringing it to more people's attention. MY ZOMBIE DOG reached number 2 in children's free 'Spine-chilling Horror'.
• People download multiple books, so in future when someone is browsing a book, underneath it says Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought... and you increase the chance of your book showing up there.
• My book received a lot of tweets and sales at regular price spiked the next day. This was my second best day of sales since release.

As a customer, for me the novelty of free books is wearing off, I don't mind paying for books, in fact I prefer to. But obviously free is still popular with a lot of readers. Perhaps it will also result in more reviews which may help sales as well. 

I'm still investigating the affect of free on the Indie book industry, but here are two articles with varying opinions:

Are eBooks Too Cheap?

Using free ebooks as a marketing tool

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E is for Easter and Editing

Love vintage? You HAVE to check out French, Pink, Poodles and Pearls

Tomorrow begins Easter weekend and for me, time to edit. There's a few manuscripts backed up to edit, and a few more waiting to be written, but this weekend I'm focusing on some short stories. I don't usually read short stories or write them, but I've been dabbling as a way of tightening my skills. Editing is its own skill that needs to be strengthened. There's a few ways you can do this:

1. Search the Net - There's loads of great sites out there, try this one: The Editor's Blog
2. Take a workshop - Look up your local writer's centre, mine is QWC
3. Read a book - Grab something like Revision and Self-editing by James Scott Bell
4. Get professional help - This is what I recommend if you funds allow. I have a wonderful manuscript editor helping me with my girls' mystery novel. Through this process I'm learning a lot and my manuscript is becoming much tighter. It's important you find someone you're comfortable working with, I'm very appreciative to my editing angel, Margot Finke.

Enjoy your weekend, and your chocolate!

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D is for Detectives

My last post was on chaos and that might be appropriate, because today is detectives and the good ones have this uncanny ability of being able to tune out the chaos, the static noise and busyness to focus on a single point, a clue.

I love detective stories and most of my novels have a mystery to solve involving clues. At the moment I'm editing the first book in the Dog Show Detective series called DOGNAPPED? In this mystery series, 12 yr old Kitty, with the help of her mischievous mini schnauzer called Spade, solves the mysteries that come her way. You'd be surprised how many times a young girl can be involved in a murder mystery (especially in small country towns, happens all the time). Here's my favourite detectives, which ones are yours?

1. Dexter. Dark, disturbing, deadly Dexter. I'm enjoying the books and love the tv series (they're quite different except for the premise and characters). Dexter is a serial killer, but he's a good guy, he has a code - only kill people who are... serial killers.
2. Columbo. I just loved this show. He was so clumsy, ragged and had no social skills. But boy, his 'one last thing' was always a showstopper.
3. Miss Marple. Old and frail, but incredibly quick witted.
4. House. The Sherlock Holmes of today, with Wilson as his Watson. House is not a people person. He is selfish and rude. No mysterious illness can stump him.
5. Harry Dresden. I have the audiobooks for The Dresden Files, Sam Spade style detective, only, more of a coward and he's also a wizard with a few enemies.
6. Christopher Boone. Christopher is a 15yr old boy who decides to solve the mystery of the death of the neighbors dog. He is a mathematical wiz and able to analyze all the clues, he's also autistic.
7. Castle. Alright, I just think he's yummy.
8. Trixie Beldon. Childhood favourite. Trixie is a teen tomboy who solves lots of mysteries with her best friends and brothers. For some reason I could never warm to Nancy Drew.

Click here to visit the source for this pic

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C is for Create Chaos

Chaos. Doesn't matter how much we try to avoid it, we are enveloped by it constantly. It's hard to ignore, we worry that it will prevent us from finishing our manuscript, from getting to our workshop on time or from even finding where we saved that darn WIP. But Chaos can be our friend. Chaos is creative.

The popular film I Don't Know How She Does It uses chaos as the conflict in the plot. It's the chaos in Oliver Twist's journey that added colour to an otherwise drab and grey environment. I'm a plotter, and one of the drawbacks of that method is creating carefully planned events to form a plot. Sometimes I need to just let go and let chaos take over my WIP. This way my characters end up in predicaments that take me days to figure out how get them to rescue themselves. I need chaos in my writing, and, in my writing practice.

How can you write chaos if you don't experience it. Do you go somewhere peaceful and quiet to write? I do. But what about heading into a crowded loud place, like a food court at the shopping centre? Don't ignore the chaos, soak it up and write it! Describe the calamity, the overlapping conversations, the movement and mixture of smells.

Order and planning lives in the left-brain, while chaos sprouts from the right side of the brain, the same side creativity resides in.

"Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish." Chuck Palahniuk.

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B is for Bargain Books

Bargains are always popular and as part of the KDP program (Kindle Direct Publishing) I've elected a FREE day for MY ZOMBIE DOG.

For today only (April 2nd PST) you can download MY ZOMBIE DOG for FREE. Yep $0. This is only for today, tomorrow the humorous horror novel about the bond between 14yr old Zane and his undead dog will return to the regular (and still amazingly inexpensive) price of $2.99.  

Why free? For me it's just for the fun of it. I'm trying loads of different promotions with this book as it's my first published. There's a whole pricing debate on free and cheap books and I'll cover that later (maybe F for Free or P for Pricing?).

So if you haven't already grabbed MY ZOMBIE DOG in Kindle format, head over NOW and please let all your twitter friends know too!

To see the top selling free books on Amazon you go to this link, it's updated all the time:

Amazon Best Sellers

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