TANIA’S TOP WRITING AND MARKETING TIPS

Today, I’m pleased to welcome a special guest to Tuesday Writing Tips.

Tania McCartney is an author, editor, publisher and founder of well-respected children’s literature site, Kids Book Review. She is an experienced speaker, magazine and web writer, photographer and marshmallow gobbler. She is the author of the popular Riley the Little Aviator series of travelogue picture books, and is both published and self-published in children’s fiction and adult non-fiction.

Tania is visiting my blog on her tour to celebrate the release of her latest book, Riley and the Grumpy Wombat (published by Ford Street Publishing)

As well as being an inspiring creator and marketer extraordinaire, Tania is also a kind and generous person and has agreed to share her tips here today.

TANIA’S TOP TEN WRITING TIPS

Some writers started young. Some started yesterday. Some are starting as I type, but they all have one thing in common: they write. And so begins the first of my Top 10 Writing Tips for anyone keen to make a dent in this tightly-crammed world of fabulous literary talent.

Tip Number 1 – Write

Yes, that’s right. Writers write. And they do so with tenacity, chutzpah and unfailing self-belief. Well, that’s the ideal, anyway. Truth be told, even the most established, successful and famous authors have doubts about their work.

Doubts, insecurities, uncertainty – any creative endeavor is fraught with these very real emotions – but it’s the writers who manage to overcome emotion and focus on productivity and writing from the heart, that truly succeed.

Work can always be edited and improved upon. It can’t be edited or improved upon if nothing has been written.

Tip Number 2 – Write What You Know

Write about the things that interest you, the things you adore, the things that make you smile, laugh or enliven you. It will show in your writing. It will make the words come alive.

I know some authors will tell you to explore what you don’t know – but I prefer to call this ‘research’. Sure, I could research and write about the evolution of the V8 engine, but I just don’t want to, thanksverymuch. I don’t know anything about V8s but I also don’t WANT to know. I want to write about what I know and love because I will do it well and here’s a thought – I’ll have fun doing it.

Writing should be fun, not a chore.

Tip Number 3 – Be Original

Don’t be tempted to ‘copy’ a successful idea that already exists on the market. Firstly, it simply may not resonate with your style, your voice or what you love to write about. Successful books are those written from the heart and with passion about the subject matter – not formatted against a pre-existing idea.

Publishers are always on the lookout for something ‘new’ – something that will stand out in an overstocked market… think outside the square when it comes to your book idea. Do we really need another fairy book on the market? What about a book on pixies instead? Often the greatest ‘original’ shift can be very simple.

Tip Number 4 – Develop Your Voice

Even the most original, clever and perfectly woven stories can suffer if they don’t ring out with a unique and beautiful voice. Incandescent, original writing that doesn’t rely on stereotypical or adjective-laden descriptives or mundane structure, allows the reader to skip along merrily with the text, and truly become absorbed in the storyline.

A book that plods along with clumsy or complicated writing is the equivalent of a popcorn-munching neighbour in a movie theatre – whose every crunch hauls you away from the magic of the film and back to ‘reality’.

Write clearly and creatively. Learn to edit and rework. Do it over and over again. Let your writing simmer, then come back to it later. Toss it up in the air and restructure it, if need be. And learn to let it go, if need be, and start all over again.

Work on the ‘voice’ of your work until it flows and meanders and doesn’t in the least bit get in the way of a great story.

Tip Number 5 – Know Your Target Market

Who are you writing for? Young adult? Primary school age? Toddlers? Who?

Carefully ponder this as you write and hold it close as the plot unfolds. Be certain you’re able to drag yourself back to this market as the story develops. Keep an eye on the words you use, the nature of the plot threads, the voice, the characterisations. Hone these elements to suit your audience, and you’ll save yourself a lot of rewrites later.

Never talk down to nor patronise when you write. Not even to toddlers.

Tip Number 6 – Watch Your Word Count

Whatever the style of book you’re writing, word count is a surprisingly large consideration.

Picture books should not exceed 500 to 600 words (for someone who reviews hundreds of children’s books a year, there’s nothing more frustrating to me than a picture book that is superfluous with the text, and fails to let the images do the talking). Junior Fiction generally runs between 10,000 and 30,000 words, depending on the age, and young adult may run anywhere from 30,000 to 70,000 words. Adult fiction – 70,000 to 100,000.

Whatever you write will probably be cut considerably by either yourself or your editor, so going a little over these figures is okay – but save yourself the time and energy of over-writing (and potentially complicating the plot) by keeping a solid eye on your word count.

Tip Number 7 – Push Through

Writer’s block? You better believe it exists, particularly if you’re working on a complicated novel.

Storyboarding or keeping a spreadsheet of the plot and characters may be helpful, but my own personal strategy for those agonizing moments of Blankdom, is to push through. Just keep writing. Don’t avoid writing, whatever you do. Don’t do the washing or go out. Keep going. It’s not easy, sure, but for me – pushing through and persisting, even if it means writing drivel, works every time. Suddenly, things begin to magically unfold – and the synchronicity and ease with which this happens never fails to astound me.

Tip Number 8 – Let it Simmer

So you’ve written a best seller and you think you’re kind of done, but you’re still not sure. OR you’ve sent it to a million publishers and you’ve got nothing but rejections. What to do?

Put it away. Let it simmer. Let the flavours deepen, and go back to it later. This could be a month later, or twenty years later. Looking at your work with a fresh eye is often just the tonic a book needs to become something More – something publishers will want to publish.

Tip Number 9 – Network

Share the agony with other agonized writers. Get some empathy happening here. Groan, moan, laugh, share, learn. Join your local writers’ group. Set up your own group. Network online and in person. Sharing your processes, your frustrations, your joy – your WORK – with others is absolutely priceless for your work and your sanity.

And you may just make some lifelong friends.

Tip Number 10 – Be Tenacious

My number one piece of advice when it comes to writing books is one word: tenacity. If at first you don’t succeed… If it took Andy Griffiths ten years to have Just Tricking! accepted for publication, then you simply must accept, in your heart, that a rejection slip simply DOES NOT define the quality of your work.

Keep at it. Dust yourself off and keep going. A wise golfer once said “a hole-in-one is absolutely achievable – it just depends on how many times you’re willing to hit the ball.”

Polish up those golf clubs and keep on swinging.

For more, see www.taniamccartney.com and www.fordstreetpublishing.com.

TANIA’S TOP TEN MARKETING TIPS

Writing a book? EASY! Selling it? Not so easy. Whether you’re published or self-published, these tips on marketing your work effectively will hopefully nudge your sales in a positive direction.

Tip Number 1 – Branding

Your book is important, but let’s face it – it’s often the name of the author or illustrator that really carries the majority of sales. Thinking of yourself as a human ‘brand’ can help you maximize exposure so that every book you produce will fall under the umbrella of your authorship, and so attract a potentially larger market. People relate to people – and developing a personable presence is a wise and unexpected way to maximize your marketing potential.

Branding involves visuals – logos, colour, images – in a consistent, repetitive way. Do you have a logo for your business as an author or illustrator? Do you have a website and blog and other online presence that are visually tied together with colour or images or style? Are your book covers reflective of your brand (picture an Andy Griffiths book cover and you’ll know what I mean)? Do your emails have branded signatures? Your business cards and flyers and book trailers?

Think about this branding issue and how you can hone it to work for you. When someone glances at your book, do they instantly know it’s yours?

Tip Number 2 – Excellence

Always, always, always do everything with excellence. Dedicate your time and energy to your interviews, your websites, your events, your readings. Half-hearted effort will reap parallel results. Do a great job and you’ll be asked back again and again and will develop a reputation for being wonderful to work with – and producing great work. Make yourself an asset.

Tip Number 3 – Events

Events are a truly fabulous way to promote your work. And they don’t have to be expensive or difficult to produce. Book readings at schools, libraries or bookstores usually cost nothing but your time. Organising sponsorship for book launches (food, giveaways, goodie bag stuffing, entertainment) is surprisingly easy – and cost free.

Online events like this blog tour require nothing more than dedication to writing a stack of great articles.

Tip Number 4 – Online Presence

This, of course, is a given. It’s almost free – just takes a little time – and has the potential for world-wide, constant market saturation.

Websites are nowhere near as daunting as they used to be. Blogger offers incredibly simple blog templates that can be played around with before publishing online, and for just US$10 a year, can be converted to an official website domain, complete with email addresses. For those not-so-confident net-users, almost any website-production process, like writing html, can be googled for instant answers.

It’s well worth the time investment of exploring the option of running your own site – it will save you much time and money – and is an essential and far-reaching marketing tool.

Tip Number 5 – Networking

Priceless. It’s the new word-of-mouth. Not only does it help you with market saturation, it is the best writing and book marketing school in the world. Authors and illustrators are notoriously supportive of each other (they ‘know what it’s like’!) and you will only be failing yourself if you don’t get involved on the social networking scene. You don’t need to live and breathe it – but at least set it in place and contribute regularly. You may just make some glorious friendships, too.

Number 6 – Book Trailers

Book trailers are the new calling card. They are quick and easy to make – you can either learn to do it yourself (Windows Movie Maker is good) or source someone to do it for you, relatively inexpensively. And trailers are yet another avenue for marketing your work. Kids and teachers love them and you can splash them all over YouTube – one of the busiest ‘marketplaces’ on the web.

Number 7 – Author Photo

Do you really want to represent your brand with a blurred, be-sunglassed photo of you on holiday in Ibiza fifteen years ago? That’s not branding.

Get yourself a bottle of wine, a friend who’s slightly handy with a camera, a neutral backdrop (bookshelves and a white, collared shirt, if you really must) and a series of props that relate to YOU and your work – and get snapping. Taking hundreds of photos, in natural light – and you’ll be surprised at how easily you’ll achieve a great author shot with little effort and expense.

If you create illustrated books, consider asking your wonderful illustrator to draw in your book characters, as Kieron Pratt has so expertly done with my own author photo. Oh – and keep the photo current.

Number 8 – Ancillary Products and Resources

You don’t need to set up a production line in China, but offering that little something ‘extra’ – whether it be teachers’ notes, magnets, printable paper dolls of your book character, colouring sheets, online writing workshops (the list is endless) – is a prime way to attract a whole other market to your work. Offering ’something for nothing’ is a great route to more market saturation.

Number 9 – Produce More

Product sells product. This is why book series do so well – both from a branding perspective and from a ‘well-stocked’ perspective. If you have more in the pipeline, more on the shelves, more coming, you will receive more exposure, and each book will link into the next. You don’t want to be a one-hit wonder – more books sell more books.

Number 10 – Keep At It

Unless you want to change your career path, you can’t stop marketing your books. Ever. A publisher can only do so much (they have other books to promote, too, and most books have a relatively short shelf life), and a proactive self-promoting author can sometimes make or break a book’s success. Commitment to promoting your own work is a truly vital marketing component.

For more, see www.taniamccartney.com and www.fordstreetpublishing.com.

As you can see, Tania is a wealth of information and ideas. If you’d like to follow the rest of her blog tour, you can find her itinerary here.  Tomorrow, Tania and Riley are visiting my other blog, Kids’ Book Capers on their journey through cyberspace.

MY LA ADVENTURE – PART FOUR – INTERNET PROMOTION FOR AUTHORS

Catching up with international online writing buddies

VERLA KAY’S WORKSHOP – PROMOTING YOUR BOOKS USING THE INTERNET

I was particularly interested in this workshop as I wanted to know how differently authors promote themselves in USA versus how they do things in Australia.

Verla is the award winning author of  nine books and her website has twice been named one of the 101 best sites for writers by Writers’ Digest and her message board has around 2000 members and gets about 1 million hits per month.

She had heaps of useful information about improving your website.

VERLA’S CRITERIA FOR JUDGING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF YOUR WEBSITE

• Can you quickly change information on your website without major effort?
• Is it professional looking?
• Do images load fast on pages
• Can visitors navigate easily through your website
• Are your pages too busy?
• Are your colours hard on viewer’s eyes?
• Does your site welcome visitors?
• Is it hard for viewers to navigate?

THINGS TO ENHANCE YOUR WEBSITE 

• Does your website have a theme?
• Librarian information
• Writer and/or illustrator information
• Children’s activity or fan club pages.
• Information helpful to teachers and/or pages containing lessons
• About the Author pages for kids doing school projects
• Addictive fun games or videoes etc – something people will want to come back to again?
• A subject that ‘matches’ your book

 

At the SCBWI Pyjama Ball

AUTOMATIC ACTIVE CONTENT

• Constantly changing content will create pages that people want to visit multiple times
• Some pages can change or be active without requiring a lot of effort
• Have an on-going monthly contest with fun prizes (can’t give things away for children under 13 or let them go in comp)
• Activity page for kids with games, puzzles, colouring pages
• For kids over 13 an interactive Fan Club Page
• Get teens to create book trailers and link to it – have fun comp.
• Get trailer made by kids

 VERLA KAY’S BLUEBOARD

Verla Kay is probably best known in the writing and illustrating community for her Blueboard. She set it up as “A safe, friendly place where children’s writers & illustrators could share information with each other”.

http://www.verlakay.com/boards/index.php

Since Verla started her Blue Board it has expanded rapidly and now has 4 administrators and 12-15 moderators. There are more than 1500 active members, and over 13,400 people have registered since its conception.

The site attracts 800,000 to 1 million hits every month

SEARCH ENGINES

• Search engines are vitally important to you
• You need your site to show on search engines
• Effective use of meta tags will get your site linked to as many other active sites as possible
• websitegrader.com – tells you what weaknesses on website are
• bloggrader.com tells you weaknesses on your blog.
• Link to as many other sites as possible. This helps bring your site to the top of the search engines

Rabbit slippers were popular at the ball

After a big day, there was a showcase of the amazing illustrator portfolios. This year there were around 190 entries.

It was time for the Pyjama cocktail party where there were some very inventive costumes. Everything from pink rabbits to a flock of around 20 sheep.

After another big day I crawled into bed around 11.30pm

HOW TO FINISH A SERIES – TUESDAY WRITING TIP

Today’s great tips and guest post were provided by popular Australian author, Ian Irvine. Ian is visiting on a blog tour to celebrate the release of The Calamitous Queen, the last book in his Grim & Grimmer series.

HOW TO FINISH A SERIES

By Ian Irvine

1. Tying up all the loose ends

There’s nothing more annoying than getting to the end of a series and discovering that half your questions remain unanswered, either because the author forget that he’d raised them in earlier books, or didn’t know how to answer them and hoped no one would notice.

One way to keep track of all the plot threads is to simply read the book through, note down all the questions raised and tick them off as they’re answered. A more visual approach, because you can see how all the threads interact, is to mark them on a huge wall chart. You can also keep them on index cards or in a spreadsheet or database. It doesn’t matter what system you use, as long as you have one.

And this isn’t always easy. My epic fantasy quartet, The Well of Echoes, is 910,000 words, and itself forms the middle section of the 11-book Three Worlds sequence which all up is over 7,000 pages. It would have been impossible to keep track of all the questions raised and loose ends without a good system. More about these books, and the first chapters, here: http://www.ian-irvine.com/threeworlds.html.

When you’re writing a series, remember that you have both story questions and series questions to answer. The story questions must be answered at the end of each book, but the series questions can’t be fully answered until the climax of the final book. The series questions (e.g., will Harry Potter finally defeat Voldemort, and can Harry survive it?) create the suspense that keeps your readers reading to the end.

In Grim and Grimmer, the key story question in Book 1, The Headless Highwayman, is: can Useless Ike overcome his name and nature and make up for accidentally betraying Princess Aurora by rescuing her, or will the Fey Queen kill the princess first? This question is answered at the end of the book (though not to Ike’s entire satisfaction. In the great storytelling tradition, this victory actually makes things worse).

There are three series questions: Can Ike free the Collected Children from the wicked Fey Queen? Can he clear his parents’ names? And can he discover the secret of the Gate Guardians in time to free Grimmery? Despite striving with all his might, Ike makes little progress on any of these goals until well into the final book, The Calamitous Queen. He can’t make better progress, because if he did it would destroy the suspense and readers would feel so let down they might not bother to read on. Covers, blurbs, reviews and first chapters can be found here: http://www.ian-irvine.com/grimgrimmer.html.

2. Deciding when and how to end a series

I normally know how each book and the series is going to end before I begin writing, though I rarely know how I’m going to get to the ending. I do a lot of planning for the first book in a series, but when I start writing I have little idea what will happen in the remaining books. This is deliberate. Planning a book can be a dry and largely analytical process, and for me the story never seems real at this stage. It only becomes real once I’ve written the first draft. In writing it I often have much better ideas than I could have in the planning stage, and I create new characters whose individual choices take the story to places I could not have imagined in advance.

This is an important point to bear in mind – different characters must, necessarily, make different choices in difficult situations, thus taking the story in different directions. Therefore, for me, detailed planning of later books at the beginning is a wasted effort. I only plan each book as I’m about to write it.

But a series isn’t always under the author’s control. I originally planned Grim and Grimmer as a 6-book series, but when I sent my proposal in, in the middle of the GFC, the publisher was concerned about the economic situation and reluctant to commit to more than four books. If I’d planned the series in detail I would have had a lot of cutting to do. Also, it’s not common, if a series is not selling well, for a publisher to suggest that it be cut short. Sometimes the author feels burnt out and can’t bear to write any more in the series, and pulls the plug.

On more felicitous occasions, if a series is doing brilliantly, readers and the publisher will be clamouring for more. For all the above reasons, it pays to not close off the story options too finally, as Conan Doyle did. He killed off Sherlock Holmes when he couldn’t bear to write about him any more, then, after being deafened by the clamour for more Holmes stories, had to find a plausible way to bring the great detective back to life.

3. Deciding outcomes for your characters

Though they’re relatively short books, the Grim and Grimmers have a considerable cast of wild and zany and outright mad characters, and because these were humorous books I wanted to bring all the key characters back at the end (at least, all those who have survived) so I could devise suitably humorous farewells or ironic fates for them.

In The Calamitous Queen there’s a gigantic feast and honours night at the end, after Grimmery has been saved (and most of the story questions resolved), and everyone is there. Not just Ike’s allies, but also his enemies Emajicka the Fey Queen, Grogire the firewyrm, the vicious little imp, Nuckl, plus a host of demons and other villains. This gave me the opportunity to show what happens to each character – such as the fateful romance between the disgustingly unwashed hermit, Gorm, and the violent but fussy old granny, Fluffia Tralalee, each manipulating the other to try and get what they want, and each doomed to failure.

And I wanted to send Ike off with full, humorous honours. He does achieve all his goals in the end. Then, in what is supposed to be Ike’s proudest moment, he’s about to come down the stairs from the upper stage, to be honoured by a grateful princess, when he’s waylaid by our old friend Creepy Cripts the hunchbacked troll. Creepy Cripts demands that Ike fix the troll-bum door he created at the end of The Headless Highwayman. And the only way it can be fixed is from the inside, in front of the assembled nobility and Ike’s gleeful enemies.

4. What happens to the author once the series is finished

I’ve been known to finish a big fantasy series in the morning and start another one that afternoon, though that was a while back and I dare say I’m not so obsessive these days. I know writers who immediately go down with the flu (or total immune system collapse) and can’t get up for days. Others spend a week grieving for the world and the characters they’ve spent years and thousands of hours immersed in. Or run amok. Or get drunk.

I can’t say I’ve ever felt the need for any of the above, but it is important to both celebrate the ending of the series, and punctuate your writing career. Celebrate the ending with a night out or a trip overseas, a massage or a special little reward for all your hard work. And punctuate your career by having a total break from writing for a day, a week, a month or whatever is needed.

Finally, don’t forget to look after the friends and family who have been neglected in your single-minded drive for the perfect ending. They deserve some thought as well.

Then, while you’re waiting for the final book to appear, start work on the next series. And if you have some free time, do pop by to my Facebook author site, where I’m giving away 10 of my books a week all year, plus there’s plenty of other fun things going on: http://www.facebook.com/ianirvine.author.

BLOG TOUR SCHEDULE

Here are the other great blogs Ian is visiting or has visited already on his tour.

CATRIONA HOY’S TIPS ON WRITING OUR GAGS

Catriona Hoy is the author of many wonderful picture books including My Grandad Marches on ANZAC Day, The Music Tree, Mummies are Amazing, Daddies, Puggle and George and Ghost.

Her latest book, Our Gags is her first venture into longer works and it’s published by Walker Books.

Today, Catriona is kindly sharing her tips on how she made the transition from picture books to Walker Stories.

Catriona, your other titles so far have been picture books, while ‘Our Gags’ is an early reader, comprising three short stories. Tell us about it’s journey to publication.

Thanks for having me here today Dee, to talk about my new book… it has had a long journey to publication.

I originally wrote the first of the three stories as a picture book. I submitted it to my editor at the time but sadly it didn’t make it past the aquisitions meeting, so it went back to languish in a bottom drawer. The feedback that I got was that the voice was too old to be a picture book.

After a while, I took it out again, looked at it with fresh eyes and sent it off to another publisher. Again, it got all the way to aquisitions but was ultimately rejected.

However, that publisher soon folded and the editor, Sue Whiting, moved on to Walker Books. I sent Our Gags to Sue again at Walker after another revamp and….then we had an interesting conversation.

Sue told me that she didn’t think it was a picture book either and that in fact, she had probably thought more about my book and analysed it than I had. She thought that it would actually work better in the format that Walker was bring out for early readers, with three short stories. I was asked to submit two other stories about the same characters, with a central theme. And eventually, that’s how it ended up.

So it’s always worth revisiting some old stories in a bottom drawer but also important to listen to feed back

How did writing ‘Our Gags,’ differ from writing a picture book?

It offered more flexibility in terms of the writing as I didn’t have to think so visually. I listened to the voice of the character in my head but didn’t need to be so conscious of pagination and whether or not there were the right number of pages and illustrations.

When I write a picture book, I’m very much thinking in terms of 16 openings and possibilities or opportunities for varied illustrations.

It also offered more opportunity for character development and plot.

Did you experience any difficuties in writing this book, particularly since it had started as a picture book?

At first, I found it difficult to get back into the character’s head. When I first wrote it, I really was almost in that position of being a mum with a new baby. By the time I had to write the second stories, the ‘baby’ was at school.

By the time the revisions came around, we had moved overseas and my girls were quite big! This isn’t unusual though, as often writers need to put works away until they can look at it with fresh eyes.

I also had to have a consistent style and that was something that I had to work at with the three stories. There had to be progression and development over those stories, while still keeping the same overall feel. 

The author and her family featured in the book

How true is the story and do you think that this is important in writing?

I like to write about things that I know, so my family often features in my books. This is the story of how my Mum used to come to help when I had a new baby and struggled with breastfeeding and juggling an energetic toddler. Caitlyn was sometimes babysat by a video, however, my Mum was great and would come and play with Caitlyn, while simultaneously managing to get all my washing off the floors, into the machine, onto the line, dried, folded and put away.

It’s not just about the cleaning though, it’s about the wonderful relationship that my mum formed with her grandchildren. They still love to go to their ‘Gags’ for a sleepover, grab a movie and have a girl’s night in. My mum is getting a bit tiredr but she can be a crocodile, or a horse as needs be for my little niece.

What’s important about all this in writing is that I am familiar with my characters and I’m writing about something I love.

Were there embellishments?

Mum did play great games at the park, including pirates and billy goat’s gruff.

However, she didn’t actually ever have a man think she was having a heart attack when she was pretending to be sat on by an elephant. Although she could do a great ‘death scene,’ complete with flailing arms and groans if the occasion demanded.

How do you find your ‘voice’?

I think you have to know your character from the inside out and be in their head. You have to hear them talking…although I don’t read aloud, I’ll repeat it in my head to see whether I think this is how a child would talk. Although I’m in the book as the mother character, I never actually saw myself as her funnily enough. I was always my little girl Caitlyn.

In terms of the voice for this book, I can now see what those early comments meant in terms of the age of the character. It is very important to own your character and see life through their eyes.

Thanks for sharing your Our Gags journey, Catriona. It’s a wonderful book about the grandmother every family needs. Some great tips too about voice and character.

 

FOR YOU MUM – PEOPLE YOU LOVE CAN INSPIRE YOUR BEST WRITING

Travelling Mum in WA on our "Around Australia Trip"

Mother’s Day is always a bitter sweet time for me. I love being a mum and spending special time with my family, but it also reminds my how much I miss my own mother who never got to know my children or see my first book published .

We used to go on writing retreats together and apart from sharing  a special mother/daughter bond, we shared our creativity and love for storytelling.

That’s why I could really connect with Alison Reynold’s new book, For You Mum, released just in time for Mother’s Day. It’s a collection of pieces that reflect who mums are and what they mean to us.

For You Mum takes you on a journey from conception, through pregnancy, morphing into your mother and even how to feng shui your house against mother-in-laws.

I’ve never had to deal with the ‘evil mother-in-law’ syndrome because my MIL has always been wonderful, but I love Alison’s diagnosis of Pentheraphobia which is the “profound fear of the mother-in-law.”

Apparently, this reasonably common condition manifests itself in the following symptoms: dread, air hunger, elevated or irregular heart rates, trembling, irritation, anger, nausea and sweating.  If you want the cure, you’re going to have to read Alison’s book.

Understandably, housework also rates a mention. My favourite quote on this subject from For You Mum is probably an anonymous quote, “My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance”.

In this book there are even Mum’s household tips on how to get rid of cockroaches and mice and even how to use tin foil to sharpen your scissors.

I guess my favourite section of For You Mum would have to be the one on Remarkable Mums because that’s what mums are. There are the mums who save their children, those who save other people’s and the mothers who never forget.

For You Mum is also full of great Mum and child rearing tips

Some pieces are moving, some are surprising and some are just downright hilarious. There’s everything from how to guess the gender of the baby you’re having to what to buy your mum for Mother’s Day (apart from Alison Reynold’s wonderful new book).

For You Mum is a beautiful looking hardback book published by The Five Mile Press. Author, Alison Reynolds dedicates it with love to her own mum, and this affection shows through in her writing.

Many years after losing my mother I wrote a short story about what she meant to me, and it was highly commended in the Cancer Council’s Daffodil Day short story award.

Don’t be afraid to allow the people you love and have loved to be your inspiration. You might find that the words that flow from your fingers are the best you’ve ever written.

Are there people who have inspired your writing? We’d love to hear about them. Feel free to share your comments and stories at the end of this post.

Happy writing:)

Dee

BEST AUSTRALIAN BLOGS – MY DILEMMA

I was very excited when this blog was nominated by a reader for the Best Australian Blog Awards.

I’m still thrilled and very grateful to the reader who thought my blog was worthy of the nomination. But now that voting has started, I have mixed feelings. I compete with my fellow authors every time I submit to a publisher, but not in such a direct and blatant way as a competition like this.

My dilemma is not only do I personally know many of my competitors in this competition but I think that their blogs are just as worthy as mine.

DeeScribewriting blog was started by me to share my writer’s journey in the hope that it would help others on a road that’s not always easy.

I guess if this competition lets more people know about my blog and it helps them with their writing then that’s a good thing, right?

If you enjoy reading my blog, you can vote for me by clicking the “Vote for Me Now” button in the lefthand column of my blog.

But you don’t have to just vote for me in this competition. There are so many great blogs out there and you can vote for all your favourites as long as you do it in one hit because you can only register once.

Have you ever been in this position – where you’d love to win but you want someone else to as well?

I’d love to hear about it in the comments section of this blog.

Happy writing and blogging:)

Dee

HAZARD RIVER BOOKS ON TOUR

Brisbane author, J.E. Fison, launches two new books in the Hazard River series this month. Tiger Terror and Bat Attack follow the action-packed holiday adventures of Jack Wilde and his friends. J.E. has embarked on a virtual book tour after reading my post on blog tours. She stops by to share some tips on touring and explain the inspiration for her new books.

It’s no secret that marketing plays a large part in the success of a book. So I shouldn’t  have been surprised when my publisher asked me to write an article for a children’s literature magazine to promote the Hazard River series. But I was. I was also surprised when he asked me present at a book distributers’ conference and appear at a Scotch College literary festival in Melbourne. I was a brand new author – I’d been a journalist, marketing manager and mother for the previous two decades. What could I possibly tell an audience about writing? The same applies to a blog tour. What to blog about?

After much soul searching and several interviews I’ve come up with a better idea of what readers want to know. Writing blogs, articles and doing talks is like anything else, you have to know your audience. But generally you can assume that they’ll want to know something about your background and the inspiration for your book.

I know that if I’ve enjoyed a book I want to find out more about the real story behind the story – not just because I’m a sticky beak, but also to uncover the author’s credentials for writing a book. No one tells a story like someone with first-hand experience of the issue, the characters or the setting.

Writing and literature blogs are an obvious choice for hosting a blog tour, but they’re not the only choice. Take the themes in your book or your life and look for relevant blogs outside the writing world. As long as you put together a sensible and well-written piece, anything you blog on will give your book a bit more exposure that will hopefully translate into more sales.

I’m kicking off my virtual book tour on Dee Scribe writing because the book tour was Dee’s idea (and a great one at that). And I’ll get things started at the start, with the inspiration for the first paragraph of my new book Tiger Terror.

It was probably my mother’s screaming that frightened the cat. It’s just a guess. No one knows for sure why a cat fell from a ten-storey building onto my head. It was about the last thing I was expecting on my visit to Summercity. I wasn’t expecting to get mixed up with tigers either. I live in Australia. A tiger is one dangerous animal I shouldn’t have to worry about. But the cat changed all that.

The curious incident of the falling cat might sound like the product of an author’s  imagination, but it was actually inspired by a true story. Some years back a cat fell from a high rise apartment block in China, hitting and injuring a woman. The event triggered calls for pets to be banned from apartment blocks. I have no idea how things panned out for the cat, the woman or pets in China, in general, but the story stuck in my mind. Eventually I found a home for it in Tiger Terror.

In the story, the falling cat puts Hazard River’s narrator, Jack Wilde, in hospital. But just before it does so, Jack spots two men in a traditional medicine shop handling a tiger’s paw. The Hazard River gang must track down the men before they kill another tiger. The action is fictitious, but it was inspired by a worrying fact. Tigers are on the verge of extinction. One hundred years ago more than 100,000 tigers roamed Asia, now the numbers have dropped to around 3,000. Three subspecies of tigers have already become extinct. The rest live in isolated populations, threatened by poachers and habitat destruction.

The whole Hazard River series is firmly rooted in the real world. It came out of a family holiday on the Noosa River. My sons teamed up with friends and spent the summer exploring sand banks, dodging sting rays, building camps, getting stuck in quicksand, discovering abandoned boats, finding a whole lot of thongs (where do they come from) and having a Boys Versus Wild adventure.  I had to write about it.

My children are a constant source of inspiration, but I don’t just rely on my kids’ adventures. I look back to my own misadventures as a journalist in Asia, Europe and Australia. I also keep an open mind, whatever I’m doing – reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, checking a news website. I’m always looking out for a bizarre story or a quirky tale that I can incorporate into one of my adventures. As we all know – the  truth is often stranger than fiction.

For more details on J.E. Fison’s Hazard River series visit www.hazardriver.com

See the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZP4wqrSQSk

Stop by my blog at www.juliefison.wordpress.com

Hazard River virtual book tour dates:

14/3/2011 Review of Tiger Terror and Bat Attack http://content.boomerangbooks.com.au/kids-book-capers-blog/friday-book-feature-more-great-hazard-river-adventures/2011/03

15/3/2011 Inspiration – it’s all around us www.deescribewriting.wordpress.com

16/3/2011 Interview http://www.needtoreadthis.com/randomacts.html

17/3/2011Writing for kids helped me become a better parent http://www.womensvillage.com/profiles/blogs/childrens-author-je-fison

18/3/2011 Does my front cover look too scary in this? http://content.boomerangbooks.com.au/literary-clutter-blog/

CATRIONA HOY TALKS ABOUT THE BEST BITS OF HER BLOG TOUR

Today we are pleased to welcome a guest poster at DeeScribewriting.

My good friend and writerly colleague, Catriona Hoy is here to talk about her experiences with blog touring. Catriona is currently on her second blog tour with her beautiful new picture book, George and Ghost.

WHAT BLOG TOURING IS REALLY LIKE

by Catriona Hoy

I’m fairly new to the blogging world myself and only blog sporadically so the thought of starting a blog tour last year was something that was fairly daunting. I am in awe of those bloggers like Dee, here, who have the dedication and drive to come up with new and interesting things to talk about.

So the first thing about starting a blog tour was to get over the guilt… that I myself wasn’t a great blogger.

Next, I had to conquer the fear that I people wouldn’t be interested or that I wouldn’t find anything to say. Eventually, as with many of those non-writing aspects of being a writer, I just had to decide to jump in with both feet.

By the end of my blog tour for my picture book, Puggle ,  I’d learnt a lot. Firstly that there are lots of bloggers out there and lots of people who read blogs. I really enjoyed some of the questions that were thrown at me and I found the comments interesting that other people made about my book.

So this year when I start my blog tour for my new picture book, George and Ghost, I’ll be doing so with renewed enthusiasm. I’ll make sure I publicise as widely as I can. I’ve also organized for the publisher to include a few give aways.

All in all, I still like a book launch but a blog tour is a way to reach many more people and meet new people along the way.

Things I’ve tried to think about have been varying the type of blog that you visit. While it’s great to generate interest amongst the writing fraternity, it’s important to reach a wider audience.

Also I’ve made the tour shorter as last year I was exhausted by the end. I’ve tried not to repeat myself too much, although inevitable there are some types of similar questions.

In the week before the blog tour, some of the bloggers that I was going to visit put up tasters on their blogs, so that also helps to advertise. So…when I self-googled (we all do, don’t we?) there were a lot more listing for the book. It also creates an opportunity to refer to older titles and hopefully generate some re interest in those.

Thanks for letting me ramble on Dee. I’m no expert but I certainly see the value in blog tours. I’m on a learning journey like everyone else.

My next foray will be into the world of book trailers…I think!

Thanks for visiting, Catriona and sharing your experiences with us.

Catriona is now popping over to my other blog at http://content.boomerangbooks.com.au/kids-book-capers-blog/ where she’s going to be talking about ghosts and you can win one of FIVE copies of Catriona’s fabulous new book!

A HOST OF ACTIVITIES FOR BLOG TOUR HOSTS

Congratulations! You have a copy of your new book in your hand and now you have decided to take it on a blog tour so you can share it with the rest of the reading world.

As I have mentioned in last week’s post, a blog tour can lead to direct sales of your book. A blog tour might sound a bit scary, but seriously they are a lot of fun. You visit different blogs and you get to talk about your new book baby and show pics. But the key to a successful blog tour is variety.

One of the questions I get asked most frequently about doing tours is:

How do you stop the tour from becoming boring?

The difference between a real tour and a virtual tour are that in a real tour, readers are unlikely to follow your around the country and go to every bookshop or library you stop at.

But in a virtual or blog tour, it is quite common for readers to visit a number of stops along the way to find out more and more about your book.

Readers also like to find out all the interesting things about you the author and about your journey to publication.

Spice Up Your Blog Tour

The simplest way to stop your blog tour from becoming boring is variety. Give your hosts a list of different topics to choose from. If each host chooses a different topic then they will be encouraged to ask you different questions from other hosts

Vary the content

You can stop your blog tour from becoming boring by varying the content – make it look and sound different. Some other things you might like to consider besides straight question and answer interviews by you or straight reviews are:

1.            Puzzles and classroom activities. I invented a word search for my Letters to Leonardo blog tour

2.            Upload excerpts from the book

3.            Upload a book trailer and talk about how you made it.

4.            Get some young readers to do advance reviews and include them on the site

5.            Hold competitions and giveaways – they can include a copy of the book or related merchandise.

6.            Upload YouTube clips showing how you wrote the book or related to the subject matter

7.            Upload podcast reviews of your book

8.            Encourage school blogs to participate and have an online chat with a class about your book

There are no limitations to what you or your blog host can do to make your blog tour fun and exciting. Go wild and have fun!

If you have any blog touring questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section of this post.

Happy writing and blog touring:)

Dee

On Friday at DeeScribe Writing (that’s here:) PB author, Catriona Hoy is visiting to talk about her blog touring experiences. Hope you can join us then:)

YOUR BOOK DESERVES A BLOG TOUR

It’s the start of the year and the season for book launches so I thought a blog tour post might be timely.

So much work has gone into creating your new book and now it’s time for celebration – time to send your new baby out into the world. Time to let people know that you HAVE A NEW BOOK! (Congratulations by the way. Whether you’re a writer, illustrator, editor or publisher, a new book is a massive achievement.)

At this point, you’re probably asking yourself, is a blog tour really worth all that effort and how much is it going to cost me?

DO BLOG TOURS REALLY WORK?

A recent Publisher’s Weekly post http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/46185-harlequin-teen-tells-and-sells-a-modern-fairy-tale.html?utm_source=Publishers+Weekly%27s+Children%27s+Bookshelf reported that a blog tour has been instrumental in selling 450,000 copies of Julie Kagawa’s Iron Fey series.

Of course giving away original artwork by the author and the odd iPod or two might have helped the promotion along and admittedly, most of us can’t afford these kind of giveaways, but I can tell you from experience that the average author can have a successful blog tour – just on a smaller scale.

My blog tour with my YA novel, Letters to Leonardo was done on a zero budget but it led to many hits on my blog and proven sales. It introduced me and my work to other bloggers and a whole new set of readers. How do I know there were direct sales? Because people bought my book at subsequent festivals and conferences saying they had read about it on my blog tour.

WHAT IS A BLOG TOUR?

It’s an event that can go for several days or even a month. (A warning, that readership seems to drop off if your tour goes for more than about ten days – unless you have the resources to offer exotic giveaways daily.)

It’s like going on a ‘real’ author tour where you visit different places talking about your book. The good thing about a blog tour is that you don’t have to leave the comfort of your own home. There are no airline ticket costs, no excess luggage, now waiting in airports for a flight home:)

Before you start the tour, you need to select your blog hosts. These might include other authors and illustrators (overseas as well as in your own country), blogs on the theme of your book and class blogs (lots of schools blog now and are looking for fun things to do).

Facebook and Twitter are great places to connect with possible blog hosts. There’s also nothing to stop you doing a google search and approaching people whose blog you like the look of and asking if they would host you.

SCHEDULING THE TOUR

Once you have found a selection of willing hosts you need to agree on dates and also materials. When I’m arranging a blog tour,  I  try and offer my hosts topics to choose from. That way the content is less likely to overlap so there will be variety for readers following the tour.

Don’t stress about holding a tour the day your book comes out. It won’t matter if it’s a week late and you can generate interest prior to the tour by blogging, Facebooking and Tweeting about any actual launches or other book release activities.

You might want to offer competitions and giveaways on your tour just make sure you factor these into your promotion’s budget.

YOUR OBLIGATIONS AS THE PERSON TOURING

1. Put an excerpt on your blog advertising the tour including tour dates and destinations
2. Provide photo of you and your book cover to put on blog and any links for other materials like book trailers that you may want to publicise too.
3. Provide materials to blog hosts including answers to interview questions, books for reviews etc
4. Provide every blog host with a schedule so they can put that on their blog so readers will know where to go next on the tour and where you have already been. That way you are not just promoting yourself and your book, you are also promoting your hosts.
5. Return to host sites for next four to seven days to answer questions and comments from blog readers
6. Always remember to thank your blog hosts and be prepared to host them in return
7. Blog, tweet, Facebook and promote the blog tour  any way you can.

If you have any questions about blog tours or would like more information, feel free to leave your questions and responses in the comments section of this post.

Happy writing and blog touring:)

Dee