Author: Elizabeth Spann Craig

It’s Thursday, so that means I’m cooking up trouble at the Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen.

On the menu today is Frogmore Stew. No, I’m not kidding—it’s a Deep South specialty. If you want to know what it is, you’ll just have to click over.

Interestingly enough, I’m writing two series with two completely different protagonists. Well, duh, you’re saying. They’d better be different, since they’re different books for different publishers.

But the biggest thing that’s so different about them is that Myrtle (the Myrtle Clover series for Midnight Ink) is a horrible cook. Her cookbook’s pages get stuck together and she blithely continues cooking—not knowledgeable enough in the kitchen to realize the ingredients couldn’t possibly work well together. She sets off the smoke detector during a dinner party.

Lulu Taylor is totally different. In fact, she owns her own barbeque restaurant in Memphis. Her son mans the pit there and cooks up the best ribs in the South. Not only does she know how to cook, she’s renowned for it.

My cooking skills are somewhere in the middle. Let’s put it this way—what I know how to cook, I cook well.

Luckily for my family, I’m learning to cook wonderful recipes at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen.

And…bonus for foodie folks: The site is currently running a contest. Visit Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen to enter to win the weekly drawing. The prize is a $25 gift certificate to the Williams-Sonoma kitchenware and gourmet food store.

Good luck!

As a homemaker/household engineer/WHATever, sometimes it can be challenging to channel a sinister mood. Communion with the dark side is important if you’re creating murder. But it can be especially hard to channel if you’re in between laundry loads and oven timers and looking to write for 15 minutes. Nothing very foreboding about the house…well, except for the spider that sneaked under the hutch in the dining room. Or maybe that stain on the 7 year old’s cute new Kelly’s Kids skort that you have a sinking feeling won’t be coming out. You KNEW you shouldn’t have let her wear it to Bible School. They used paint there and it WASN’T the washable kind.

This is when it’s useful for me to close my eyes and conjure up something scary. It’s build-a-mood. Things like the Anderson County Fair–the 1970s version of it, anyway. Oh my. There were some scary looking folks that both attended and worked there…especially the fellow who wouldn’t stop the double Farris wheel ride, even though my little sister was about to puke. I mean, come on–we were the only kids on the ride, anyway…would it have killed him to have stopped it? He grinned a gap-toothed grin and ROUND we went again a few more times. Terrifying.

Fairs still scare me. They’re loud and I’m a quiet person. The flashing lights are alarming if you’re prone to migraines. The huge stuffed animals you win are frighteningly hefty if you lug them around for a couple of hours before you leave. The amount of money you pay to ride the rides, eat the greasy food, and park is also scary. There are hordes of people there and I’m an introvert. The nausea-inducing rides are absolutely diabolical (paired with tortuous shrieks). I used to run for the animal/agricultural areas to detox from the overstimulation. This blog has become a tribute to a phobia, but point being, the memory of the fair can transport me to a menacing place that sets the mood for murder.

Other genres also require various moods. Would it have been hard to write a chick-lit book like The Devil Wears Prada if you were slopping around the house in sweatpants? What about romance writers? They have to set an amorous mood in their books—maybe that’s hard to conjure if you’re miffed at your significant other.

So, I’m curious. How does everyone gear themselves up to write emotional scenes—whatever the genre? Inquiring minds want to know. :)

Unfortunately for him, my son came into my room a few minutes ago, flopped on my bed and said he was bored. He quickly revised that statement when he saw the gleam in my eye. “Wait. No, I’m not bored! Mommmm!”

I gave him my list of things to do. He picked ‘write blog.’

Here’s the post he wrote for my blog. It’s entitled “Wassup, People of the World?” :

Yo! Watz up, Diggy Dogs? Elizabeth Craig is in the house. Who wants to chitty chat with moi? Cmon…somebody HAS to want to chit chat with me?!?!?!?!?!?! :) Cmon, ask me a question about my book….whatever it is called, anyway. Let’s make the roof explode with questions!

Okay, Elizabeth is back now. Yes, the texting culture has definitely affected the next generation, if anyone wondered. And, no, my son isn’t a gangsta: he’s a 12 year old blond suburbanite.

But still, there are some things that Generation Next knows instinctively that took some learning on my part:

Adapt quickly. Media and applications are changing all the time.

Short and to-the-point updates. I’m thinking that William Faulkner and Henry James would have a hard time editing for the length and attention spans of 2009. But Ernest Hemingway? Maybe not so much. The point is, it’s not a good idea to ramble these days—not with blogs. And you couldn’t ramble with Twitter or Facebook status updates, even if you wanted to.

Have an appealing heading. If you want your post to stand out on Twitter or Networked Blogs, practice writing your headlines. Teasers seem to work best on Twitter.

Encourage a response. Maybe not so much of an appeal for response as my son penned in his blog post for me, but it’s good to encourage dialogue and a sharing of ideas. That’s the best part of social media, after all.

Have fun. That’s one of the hardest things for me to remember. I tend to look at nearly everything in terms of work and minutes used to complete a task. But to Gen Next, this is fun….all they want to do is to network with other people. And they’re very good at it.

For us to compete in their world and stay relevant, we’re going to need to find the fun in social media. Because it’s going to be around, in some form or fashion, from here on out.

This is Elizabeth Diggy Dog, signing out, yo.

The best ways to get your book on a bookstore’s shelves are personal visits to the store, phone calls, and emails.

In 2005, there were 172,000 books published in the United States (I couldn’t find more recent data.) Even with mid-size to large publishers, unless you have a bestseller, your book won’t make its way to all the stores.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a natural promoter. When my husband and I were in the mountains a week ago, we walked into an independent bookstore. I was busily burying myself in the shelves when my husband said, “Hey, E, aren’t you going to tell them about your book?” I glared at him. “No! Shh!”

The next thing I knew, he was at the front desk, politely asking for the manager, telling him all about my book, and prompting me to hand them my card.

That’s why he makes the money for the family.

So here, for my fellow reluctant promoters, are my tips for a job you really must do:

If you’re going in person, bring your business cards. Either write the ISBN # of your book on your card, or have it printed there. If you think you might chicken out of a face-to-face encounter (like me), then bring along a spouse or friend.

On the phone: Large chains have community relations managers (CRMs). Ask for them when you call or else your spiel will be wasted on someone who has a line at the cash register and wants you to call back later.

Small stores get busy and don’t have large staffs. Be sure to ask if it’s a good time for you to talk to them about your book.

Have a script: After getting the CRM on the phone and making sure it’s a good time for them to talk, I usually say something like this:

My name. That I have an upcoming release on ______date for my _____ genre book. Could they order a couple of copies for their shelves? I mention my publisher’s name. I give them the ISBN. While they look up the ISBN on the computer (to see if it’s in their warehouse), I briefly share my good reviews. I have quick summary ready if they ask what the book is about. Sometimes they ask if I’m interested in a signing, so I have my day planner near.

Tip: Barnes and Noble wanted all of the information emailed to their CRM. This was very easy for me. Maybe it was easy for them to delete, too? If I don’t hear back from them via email I’ll have to do a follow-up call.

Tip: Independent bookstores sometimes ask the price of the book, its format (trade paperback, hardback, etc.) and whether it’s possible to get signed copies. Be ready to answer those questions. Link to IndyBound on your website instead of Amazon. Be a friend to independent booksellers.

Tip: Use the American Booksellers Association to aid you in your search. Put in your genre for a listing of bookstores that sell it. Not all stores are members of the ABA, but you get a substantial listing. Don’t spam them…use the site as a tool for focused promotion.

I like to stay organized, but occasionally I get off-course. That’s what happened this past week.

I have a September 1 deadline coming up. Everything looks good, but I decided to write in a subplot. I know…editing is for taking out. But this is a good addition. Really. :)

I have a book coming out on Aug. 1. That’s….Saturday.

I’m about to go out of town to research my Memphis setting for the book due Sept. 1.

And, completely unrelated but just as important—there was a sudden avalanche of dirty laundry. My husband and I returned from our short trip away, my daughter came back from Brownie camp (how could one little girl make so much laundry during a 2-night stay?), and—the mother of all dirty laundry nightmares: my son returned from a week at a rustic Boy Scout camp. He’d conveniently put his horrid, reeking refuse (which used to be clothing) in a black garbage bag. I seriously considered transporting it to the dumpster. I’m proud to say it’s now in the washer sloshing around with about $20 worth of Tide, Biz, and Shout.

So…what to do? It’s no good prioritizing what’s most important. They’re all important.

What to do when it all happens at once:

Empty my mind of everything I can think of that I need to do. If I don’t do this, my mind keeps whirring (especially at night.) Everything goes on the master list. This list is not prioritized in any way. ‘Make reservation at the dog’s kennel’ is right over ‘email agent about next due date for Midnight Ink.’

Break down the tasks into steps. Take, for instance, the August 1 release. I have a couple of interviews to give, several ARCs to send out, guest blog posts to write, bookstores to call, etc. It helps to see it written out instead of having something on my to-do list that says “Promote Book”.”

Prioritize the steps. First I should call some bookstores—the chains, anyway. They’re open Sundays. Then I should send out the ARCs (Monday morning, when the shipping offices open.) Then I should prepare for my interviews and write my guest posts. Then…

Assign days for each task to be completed. I get my day planner out for this part. This goes hand in hand with the prioritization of the steps.

Delegate. No one can write our book for us. But they can blog for us. I want to give a big thanks to Alan Orloff and Galen Kindley for posting such an informative series on getting the most from your writers’ conference experience. I really learned a lot and plan on using my newly-gained wisdom at conferences next year. And…they helped me out when I was getting pressed for time.

My family has helped me out with cleaning, laundry, and errand-running. I’ve had a couple of friends invite my daughter over for playdates the last few days.

I’ve found that I feel back on track and it’s mostly due to having an organized plan of attack. And having some help in the trenches. :)