Author: Elizabeth Spann Craig

Happy Sunday morning, everyone!

Today I’m being interviewed at the Author Exchange blog: a great place to find out more about your favorite authors. And now, it’s also a great place to post news on upcoming releases, announce contests, and post blogs. Author Linda M. Faulkner is the blog owner.

Hope you’ll pop over there and say hi.

My writing workshop yesterday went well. The audience was attentive and asked some great questions, and I learned a lot from the other authors there, too.

One of the questions I got was about how I balanced my online time (blogging, Twitter, Facebook) with my writing time and family time. I was also asked whether I found social media useful.

To me, the time I spend online on blogging and social media is promotional and networking time for me. Not only is promoting part of my job as a published writer, it’s also become a lot more enjoyable to me through online media.

Facebook: I started out using Facebook as a conduit to connect with family members and old friends who used it. I quickly discovered that I needed a separate page for my professional profile. My husband and I agreed that I would keep the kids’ and my husband’s image/names off the net as much as possible and let them enjoy their anonymity. (They didn’t sign up to be as public as me.)

This method has worked really well for me. I have a professional FB page as Elizabeth Spann Craig Author and have made a lot of connections there. Also, I’m figuring out Networked Blogs and have enjoyed discovering new blogs to read and new people to follow.

Twitter: I was a big pooh-pooher of Twitter, but have been surprised to find a niche there. If you want, you can use Twitter only to connect to readers, writers, and industry professionals. It’s a painless way to keep up with industry news via links, connect with other writers, etc. I was thrilled yesterday when someone tweeted that they’d just bought my book. That kind of connection with a reader was just unheard of before. Plus, I’ve gotten several book reviews written about my book because of my Twitter identity.

Blogging—Admittedly, blogging can take up a lot of time. There again, though, the rewards have been tremendous. I’ve connected with other writers and readers from around the world and have really enjoyed the experience.

Anyone else become a social media convert?

I was asked (or….maybe I should say my dog was asked to be interviewed for the fun site, Coffee with a Canine.  It’s a fun place to promote a book because your appearance there revolves around a date with your dog.

Chloe, the corgi, was wildly excited to participate.  She got lots of attention in downtown Matthews from passersby, and even drank some of my chai tea latte (which I did not plan.) 

The point here is that sometimes it’s fun to take a detour from your usual blog haunts to try something different and reach out to another audience. 

This morning I’m off to give a writers’ workshop in Concord, NC at the library there.  I’m in a promotional group of other Carolina mystery writers (the Carolina Conspiracy) and find it’s much easier for me to participate in a promotional group.  I’m far from being a natural public speaker and being with several other writers really seems to help me out. 

Basically, our promotional group works this way: everyone helps find opportunities for appearances.  These might be signings, workshops, craft fairs, or other events.  We promote the event on our website and encourage the event organizers to promote it on their end. We bring our own bookmarks, books, and promo materials. 

Some appearances are better attended than others.  Even the ones that are poorly attended are still useful to me—I share ideas and information with the other authors there. 

I love mysteries. I always have. I started out with those Encyclopedia Brown books in first grade. I thought it was so clever the way Encyclopedia solved one case by realizing the reflection in a spoon is upside down.

Then I moved on to Nancy Drew. Nancy was it for a long time. She was determined, smart, had great titian hair (a word I had to look up in the dictionary in second grade), and even had a neat boyfriend, Ned (who wisely didn’t discourage Nancy from crime-fighting.) The books had just the right level of spookiness and danger. Sometimes I had trouble going to sleep, but that was mostly because I wanted to go on reading and find out what happened next. I read all of the books in the series–many more than once.

After Nancy came Trixie Belden. Trixie was different. She sometimes got in trouble with her parents, and even with her much-older brother, Brian. They were more of the “meddlesome kid” variety of detective (sort of like the Scooby Doo kids.) These books had strong characterizations, cool plots, but maybe weren’t quite as spooky as Nancy. Well, there was one in particular that gave me chills, but I’m talking generalities here.

Once I found Agatha Christie, I was hooked. I had to read all of her books immediately. Hercule Poirot and his odd idiosyncrasies was my favorite, but Miss Marple came in as a close second. Some of her books scared me to death. I really couldn’t sleep after several of them, and it wasn’t just because I wanted to go on reading. It was because Mrs. Christie had totally freaked me out. I remember one, not even one of her well-known books, where we discovered at the end that the narrator was the killer…he was psychotic. Arghhhhh!! I was up for hours. And loved it.

Since then, I’ve had many favorite mystery series. Mysteries remain my favorite genre for one major reason: escapism. By identifying with the sleuth/detective/police, I can be plunged into danger in the pages of a book and escape by the skin of my teeth. It’s terrific stress relief. All of your tension can be tied up in this one place….and you know that somehow everything will work out in the end.

By the time I wrote my first mystery, I felt I’d read enough through the years to know what makes a good mystery. I didn’t feel like I had as much of a handle on other genres, which is why I didn’t take a stab at them.

I felt most at home writing mysteries. I think familiarity with a genre gives us confidence when writing it.

We were on I-40 on Sunday, driving back to Charlotte from my research trip to Memphis when my husband drove up on a completely-stopped line of cars on the interstate. Obviously, there’d been a wreck or some sort of accident. We’d already been on the road about 7 hours at this point and I got it into my head that I was not going to sit in that line.

“Exit right here!” I said in an urgent voice.

“But we don’t know where that exit goes,” answered my husband in a very reasonable tone.

“It’ll be okay,” I said. “If we get stuck in that pile of traffic then both kids will have to go to the bathroom and I will, too.”

Soooo…..we got off on this exit. We drove along the curvy rural highway, through a tiny downtown, some beautiful rolling countryside, past a scary-looking redneck grinning at us from a ditch, and then—up a mountain. And up a mountain. We then saw a little sign that said we were at 4500 ft. My husband looked over at me. I gave a weak smile. “Mr. Toad’s wild ride,” he said. “But it’s pretty,” I said stubbornly, as the time we’d spent on our little bypass neared an hour.

This was followed by my sudden realization we were at Looking Glass Falls near Brevard, NC (no, that wasn’t exactly on our way home.) I dragged the half-asleep children and my very patient husband (who was rapidly getting more exasperated with me, though) out of the car to take pictures of them in front of the waterfalls…it was almost 8:30 p.m. and pretty dark then, but I got the shot, by golly.

Yes, I am becoming the stereotype of the crazy writer.

The above story illustrates the sad fact that I’m hard-headed. It’s very difficult to change my mind about anything. Except my writing. I’ve learned not to mind about not getting my way when going through revisions. I’ve gotten over it.

Here’s why I’ve gotten over being hard-headed about revisions:

The editors and my agent care about my book possibly even more than I do. Yes, I do love my books. But my editor and agent are industry professionals who really care about the project their names are associated with. After all, it’s their job on the line if they take on a series of substandard books.

In my experience, the revision requests are handled very professionally. The first round of revisions I received for Pretty is as Pretty dies was in early fall last year. The wording of the requested revisions was very polite: “Would I consider changing…?” And it was all done in writing, which is my favorite way of doing business.

Their suggestions made my book better. Every time. After all, they read more than I do. Sometimes I could not figure out why the heck they wanted me to make a change. I rewrote the scene with the change to see what I thought and every time I was amazed at how much better it read.

This is a commercial endeavor. I know we’re all artists. But as soon as I came to the realization that these books have got to be able to sell or else no one is going to get an opportunity to read them, I was totally on board.

Being open to others’ revisions has made me a better writer. Now if I can only get over my stubbornness in the other areas of my life…

I’m researching Memphis for my Memphis barbeque series and just returned from a 5 day visit. One of my Memphis discoveries? Red beans and rice (not the Creole version, but the Memphis one.) Please visit me today at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen for a recipe that will make your taste buds sing.