Love them or hate them, book signings have become a necessary part of what it means to be a published writer.

I think that even if you’re an extrovert (not that many writers are—which is why we spend hours at a solitary activity), there are stressful aspects of book signings. How many people will be there? Will people give you the cold shoulder or come up to your table? Will it be worth the gas money you spent getting there?

Today I’m signing books at Books-A-Million in Anderson, SC (where I grew up.) Unfortunately, the publicity I carefully sent out in advance didn’t run (with the whittling down of news room reporters, the stacks of paper on individuals’ desks and emails in their inboxes has grown.) So…no publicity set up. I’m not even sure if the store has a sign up on their door announcing my signing or not.

Can this book signing be saved?

I think so. But I have to adjust my expectations going in.

Things I know:

Any buzz generated about my signing there will be carefully orchestrated by my parents, who still live in Anderson. Thanks, Mama and Daddy! It does help when you’re doing a signing in your hometown or a town where you were a former resident.

Most shoppers are not going to come up to my little table. I’ll have some bookmarks and other publicity info to hand out for them. Sometimes that makes people chat with me for a few minutes.

There will be several people who come up and ask me what my book’s about. I’ll have a snappy, quickie answer for them.

There will be several people who will ask me where the self-help/humor/children’s literature sections are. At least two people will ask me where the restroom is. But later on, they sometimes come back near me (in this bookstore, they usually have me close to the cash register.)

Still, there’s something exciting about being in a bookstore. I enjoy being in a bookstore at any time—I could cheerfully kill a day there. My biggest problem is staying near my little table instead of wandering around the store.

With my Myrtle Clover series, I developed a protagonist who is a very dominant main character. The characters alongside her are far weaker in every way. Even when Myrtle is pitted against a killer, she’s the dominant force in the scene.

With the Memphis series, I wanted a different kind of protagonist. I planned to create a solid center for the storm of activity that whirls around Aunt Pat’s Barbeque Restaurant. After all, someone needs to solve the murders.

The big challenge was the colorful cast of characters that surrounded my straight-‘man,’ Lulu. I have a bubbly group of docents from Graceland, a trio of retired blues musicians, and some really animated suspects. I worried a little that Lulu was going to fade in comparison, although she’s the book’s key player.

I’m hoping my editor at Berkley thinks I did a good job keeping my secondary characters under control.

My approach with this:

• If the secondary character is the focal point of a scene, make sure my protagonist is the one asking the questions and in control of their conversation.
• If a conversation takes place between several secondary characters, ensure my protagonist is making observations (even mentally) so that the reader views the scene through her perspective.
• Show the importance of the book’s central character to the secondary characters. If a secondary character wants advice, a shoulder to cry on, or someone fun to go out with, they call Lulu.

Do you have any scene-stealing bit characters? How do you wrangle them?

It’s Thursday! Today’s Heart Attack on a Plate is sponsored by “Southern Apple Cobbler.” Want to know how much sugar is in this recipe? Pop on over and find out! :)

Revision Notes:

So I’m working on this manuscript that I haven’t worked on since March. I did a quick read-through and didn’t micro-edit at all. My writing friend Jane Kennedy Sutton recommended I treat it as if it weren’t my manuscript. I did that, and it worked beautifully.

During my quick read-through to reacquaint myself with the manuscript, I marked scenes with a simple “weak, good, strong.” If I saw a real problem, I highlighted it in the Word program.

The second go-round:

I went back to the scenes I’d marked as weak and rewrote them. I kept my only vague impression of the old scene…I didn’t re-read it. That way, I had the gist of the scene but rewrote it in a fresh way.

I made notes for additions I’d like to make. New scenes, new subplots.

I realized I needed 20 more pages. I made some quick notes on areas that needed fluffing out.

I still haven’t micro-edited for punctuation, typos, etc. I don’t see any reason to until I’ve put the additional scenes in. Otherwise, I have to do it twice.

Yesterday’s schedule approach for the stay-at-home writer? I did hard writing first (tough revision, scene rewriting, new scenes). Then I did housework. I never did make it to the grocery store. Pros—I felt like I’d accomplished a lot with my writing. Cons— But I felt like I’d dropped the ball on other things. Oh….how long was this laundry in the washer? Oops. Supper planned? Oops. So far I like Tuesday’s approach of putting pressing household matters first before writing. Tomorrow I’m going to try to meld the two and see how that goes. It seems like that would work out best—but then I’m not doing either one 100% well.

This week I’m going to be trying some new things.

One thing I’m going to do is practice doing live interviews. I’m not a fan of live interviews, I have to admit. I remember from my journalism years how easy it is to get flustered and for journalists to take things out of context.

My last phone interview was so-so. For one thing, I hate phones with a passion. If I have to be on a phone, I’m usually texting, not talking. For another, I don’t think the interviewer was exactly the most seasoned person on the news or entertainment desk. One of her questions was: “Where do you see yourself in five years?” and another was “What’s been your biggest accomplishment?” She sounded like she was reciting the questions she’d been asked for her job interview. So my answers were “writing” and “getting published.” I just couldn’t tell what she wanted from me.

My interview tomorrow looks to be a lot more thorough. I don’t want to be stammering my way through it. I started thinking about Presidential press conferences and how they usually stay on the topic the President wants to talk about. No matter how the questions starts out, it ends up on his talking points.

I’m going to make some note cards with some likely questions (frequently there is some overlap with interview questions—understandably.) I’m going to pen some succinct answers. I hate going “uh-uh-uh” on the phone.

Along these same lines is a radio show (podcast) I’ll be doing in a month or so. My reservations about that is that it’s live so any stupidity of mine will run, unedited. Also—my Southern accent. I do drawl, but it’s not remotely heavy…to me, anyway. But on the answering machine and other times when I hear my voice recorded, I can tell it’s thicker than I think. Those automated customer service reps? The bots never understand me.

My practice for that will be similar to the phone interview. I’m going to come up with my very own set of talking points. I’ll be a lot less nervous if I’m prepared, after all. And if I’m not nervous, I can stray off-topic and I’ll be fine and dandy. It’s just when I’m not prepared that I’m a wreck.

I’m also playing around with new schedules for my writing—I’m vetting a different schedule each day. Yesterday I decided I’d get all the ordinary household stuff out of the way first—it’s necessary, after all, and some days it hangs over me while I write. So I did laundry, made doctor appointment phone calls, sent off bill payments, etc. first. Then I did blog stuff, then I wrote. Pros—I felt like I’d accomplished a lot in an hour’s time. I was energized after running around the house and it translated into my writing. Cons—I didn’t start writing until 10ish. That’s late for me.

Today I’m going to try something different and see how it goes. I never know how my little experiments are going to go, but I’m willing to try anything that might work with my problem areas (phone and live interviews, and my busy schedule.)

There was a funny episode of Seinfeld ages ago where George Constanza decides that all his instincts in life are misguided and that every life decision has been wrong. His life is the direct opposite from everything he’s set out to accomplish.

His solution? Do the complete opposite from every instinct he feels. He approaches attractive women and asks them out, introducing himself : “My name is George. I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.” Immediately he encounters great success with this method and begins applying it to job-hunting (“My last job was in publishing … I got fired for having sex in my office with the cleaning woman..” he confesses during his interview), and even his choice in food (“Nothing’s ever worked out for me with tuna on toast. I want the complete opposite of tuna on toast. Chicken salad, on rye, untoasted … and a cup of tea…”).

Sometimes I feel like I know my characters so well that I’ve stuck them in a rut. It’s particularly easy to stick them in a rut since I’m writing series. I know what they would do when faced with a dangerous snake in their yard. I know which ones would run off screaming, which would shoo it off and continue gardening, and which would get a hoe and commence whacking the creature to death.

What interests me is eliciting different reactions from characters. The bigger the stretch, the better:

Timid, tiny Tina flings herself at the armed man because her small son is threatened. (Unusual courage under duress.)

Stern Gertrude bites her tongue instead of scolding her sassy son-in-law Simon during Thanksgiving dinner. But her restraint results in a wild rainbow of color across her face. (For comedic effect.)

These are cardboard cutout examples, but I’m going to spend time today playing around with the idea.

What I don’t want to do is manipulate the character in an unnatural way (the usually intelligent heroine irrationally descends into the dark basement after hearing a suspicious noise scenario.) That’s the kind of thing that makes me throw books across a room.

But I also don’t want my regular characters to become predictable. Maybe they won’t have the success with their opposite-day approach that George did, but it might provide them with some opportunities for growth.

And, I think it could be fun. A bonus is extra internal character conflict. It’s stressful to leave our comfort zone(although, maybe, not for George Costanza.)