Author: Elizabeth Spann Craig

It’s a snap to market yourself online. There are taglines, links, promo photos, blogs, etc. that make it incredibly simple.

Then there’s real-time marketing. For me, it’s the real-time promoting that poses a problem. Here are my issues:

Phones: Life falls apart when Mom gets on the phone. As I mentioned to my author friend Galen Kindley yesterday, the local press called me to set up an interview for my August 1 release. At that very moment, the smoke detector went off because I was cooking pasta and it always goes off when I’m cooking pasta. Then the dog (pictured) started barking hysterically to alert me to the alarm (as if I were deaf to the alarm, but had functional hearing when it came to her.)

My kids have a rule—when Mom is on the phone, there must be an emergency. No one throws up, makes the toilet or bathtub overflow, or needs me desperately in any way until I’m on the phone.

Face to Face Promoting: I feel uncomfortable mentioning my book when people ask what I do.

Conferences: I’m a stay-at-home mom. It’s complicated.

Book Signings: When I do book signings, customers think I work at the bookstore. I guess I’m not very authorly-looking. Many of them ask me where the restrooms are.

My Solutions:

Phone: Tell my kids that unless they’re bleeding to death or the house is on fire, they should leave me alone when I’m on the phone. Or talk on the phone while sitting in my closet. Put the dog outside. Don’t cook pasta. :)

Face to Face promotion: Business cards. I don’t have to say much…the cards have my contact info on them, a pic of the book, even my pseudonym for the books next year. I can stuff it in their hand and run away.

Conferences: Online conferences are my new thing. If it’s online, I’m there. Oh…but I’ll probably make Malice in the spring. Think I need to go there for sure.

Book signings: I book signings where I’m one of a panel of writers. I’m much more comfortable and less self-conscious. But I do still learn where the restrooms are, since people are sure to ask me.

Does anyone else have promoting obstacles? How do you get past them?

What we have here is a failure to communicate. :Cool Hand Luke.

I don’t like to really sugarcoat my shortcomings.

When I’ve flunked at something, I’d rather acknowledge it and try something completely different.

As you can tell from the picture, I’m a lousy gardener.

Yes, it’s hot here in North Carolina. But I fry things on a regular basis. I should never be allowed to grow anything in a pot. It will die a horrid death because I’ll water it once a week.

I’m that way with reading and writing. I’m an impatient reader: if the author hasn’t connected with me after chapter two, I’m outta there.

If I’m failing to communicate with a scene, a bit of dialogue, a plot direction, I’ll scrap that, too. The longer I spend trying to write myself out of a box, the farther I seem to go into it.

Better to just jettison the weak part and bring in something new. I changed my murderer in mid-stream a couple of times last year. I kept wondering, “Now why did this person do it, again?” I kept fiddling with the manuscript and fiddling with it, trying to force this suspect to have committed the crime. A clear sign the person shouldn’t have done it at all. New killer! Nexttt!

Signs Something Isn’t Working:

• You can’t logically explain what motivates the protagonist’s behavior.
• Along the same lines, your character has completely changed with no reasonable explanation.
• You can’t get into the protagonist’s head. They seem flat. You can’t identify with them at all.
• The plot limps along with no discernable conflict.
• There’s too much conflict and it changes from one thing to another. There’s no primary focus. There’s no theme, just ‘the world vs. John Smith.’
• There’s only external conflict and no internal conflict for the main character.
• The protagonist is unlikeable.
• There’s no readily-identifiable antagonist. There’s just bad stuff that happens.
• Your content is a mess with flashbacks, backstory, telling instead of showing, too many dialogue tags, and point of view issues.
• Your characters aren’t original. They’re more like stock characters (the alcoholic cop, the snooty society lady, the shy librarian).

I think we’re raised to avoid failure at all costs. But I believe it’s better in writing to just recognize a failure to communicate quickly and ruthlessly revise the problems in our stories. The earlier we recognize the problem, the sooner we can eliminate it.

Because I don’t want my books to go off to the editor looking like my potted plants.

There are good things and bad things about long-term relationships.

On August 7, my husband and I will have been married 16 years.

There are very few surprises. For someone who likes predictability, this is a good thing. We have long-standing routines: he comes home from the office, we eat supper. The children tell him about their day. He and I watch “Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour” on PBS. He fusses about CEOs in large corporations and I fret about public education.

It’s predictable. It’s comforting. Is it…boring, though? And sometimes while we’re in our predictable, comforting routine…we get on each others’ nerves.

With series, we’re inviting our readers to join us in a long-term relationship. Here are my thoughts (mostly as an avid series reader) on series do’s and don’ts:

Don’t make your protagonist’s quirks too irritating.

If you use recurring characters, do have inside jokes from book to book. It’s fun to have a chatty character we know other characters will avoid. Or, when a character purchases a new appliance we know they won’t be able to figure out how to use it and will be cursing the thing in the next chapter. As a reader, it makes me feel very smug that I’m an insider.

Do show your character’s personal growth from book to book. If he doesn’t change at all, he’s just dead wood. If your character always falls in love with the wrong person, he might annoy your reader after a couple of books—“Hasn’t he learned anything?” Even if things happen to these characters, if they’re not developing as people, will the readers really care?

Do have an engaging setting that readers want to keep visiting. Louise Penny’s Three Pines, M.C. Beaton’s Scottish Lochdubh, Agatha Christe’s St. Mary Mead provide wonderful escapes for their readers.

Do introduce new characters. But not too many. I enjoy recurring characters, but if there’s no one new, I get tired of the old gang after a few books. On the other hand, if there are too many new characters, I lose track of who they all are.

Don’t assume your readers remember details from book to book. Sometimes I’m reading a series as it’s published so there might be a break of 9-12 months between reading them. A small tag for characters (Ben was the preacher’s son, etc.) is really appreciated.

Don’t assume your readers remember nothing from book to book. If the author goes over lots of backstory that I’m already well-acquainted with, that’s tiresome, too. I think it’s a delicate balance.

I try to keep my series pet peeves and preferences in my head as I write. Because I don’t want readers’ familiarity with my books to breed contempt.

I’d never have met my husband if it hadn’t been for that freshman math requirement at my liberal arts college.

I’d never have even gone in the math building. 

He was a junior and I was a freshman and that was the only class we ever shared.  Without that class, I wouldn’t have met him, married him, wouldn’t have two children who look like him.  Maybe I’d be working now and not have as much time to write.

Some ascribe to the notion that you’re destined to follow a particular path no matter what—that maybe he and I wouldn’t have met in a classroom without that math requirement, but we’d have met at a party instead and I’d have still ended up where I am now.

I don’t think I believe that.

I like writing in little twists of fate in for my characters.  My character recently had a day that could be charted like this: got up, went to the main setting, witnessed the soon-to-be-murder-victim behaving badly, went back home. 

The path was boring, so I shook it up with a flat tire and a good Samaritan. Not only did I throw up an obstacle for my protagonist, but I forced her to be late for an event that she needed to get to. I sent her day on a different trajectory.

We can’t do this type of thing to change the ultimate course of the book or save the protagonist—this reeks of deus ex machina and is incredibly frustrating for readers.  Actually, it would never get to the reader because the editor would take that sucker right out.

But if  my book is getting predictable, if my characters are stuck in a rut, if my middle is a little saggy, I like to introduce a small twist to send them off in a different direction.  They’re initially reluctant to follow that direction (like I was reluctant to take college mathematics), but the end result is more satisfying to read. 

  When you’re cleaning up your house, do you ever skip over the same things over and over again? 

If something is out of place but it stays in the wrong place for days then do you stop seeing it after a while?

I do.  My eyes just pass right over the misplaced item as if it weren’t even there.

This is how a plastic, orange whistle, designed to look like fake lips ended up on my table for weeks. 

The children left it there.  I did notice it for the first few days (“What the *&%$??”), but I always seemed to have my arms full of laundry, groceries, or library books.

Then I just didn’t see the plastic, orange lip whistle anymore.  Until yesterday, when I finally tossed it back in my daughter’s room.

Editing is like this for me.  I read my manuscript over and over and over…but sometimes skip over the same mistakes each time.

The only ways I’ve found to counteract this issue is to read my manuscript aloud and to give it to other people to read (family, friends, agent) before my editor gets it. 

Otherwise, our work in progress may have a bunch of plastic lips in it.