This book trailer for PAYING THE PIPER was put together by someone who enjoyed the book. I like she used various images from the various editions of the book. I think it’s quite dramatic and effective. I hope you like it.
Categories: Uncategorized
Posts Tagged: readers
MILESTONE: My thriller THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY now has 20,000 ratings on GoodReads. Thanks to everyone who read it and more importantly to those who took the time to rate it.
Categories: Uncategorized
I’m going to be at this year’s Left Coast Crime convention held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada!! This is my appearance schedule.
Bar Stories aka The Not So Secret Life of Authors
With David Corbett, Robin Burcell, David Schlosser, Tim Hallinan, Catriona McPherson and with me emceeing
Friday, March 29th, 6:15pm-7:00pm
Four Dyslexics & an Aphantasiac Talk Writing
With Jamie Mason, Josh Stalling, Jay Stringer and me with Jacque Ben-Zekry moderating.
Saturday, March 30th, 5:15pm-6:00pm
If you’re coming, I do hope you’ll drop by and say hi.
Categories: Uncategorized
I don’t think readers don’t know the power they wield and how it can help their favorite writers. Here are five simple things readers can do to help any writer.
1. The first rule is Buy a Book. I know it’s a given, but if you want to keep your favorite writers in business, you have to buy a book.
2. The second rule is to borrow a book from the public library (and I bet you thought I was going with the buy a book thing again). Library book sales are good for the writer. They provide a backbone of sales that can make or break a writer’s next contract. Even if you’ve bought the book, still go and borrow it from the library and if the library doesn’t have it, request it. This helps not only the writer, but also the libraries. Increased demand ensures libraries stay open.
3. The third rule of reader’s club is to write a review. It doesn’t have to be an in-depth critical analysis or high school book report. Just a few sentences giving a title the thumb’s up is good, then put it up on Amazon, Barnesandnoble.com, etc. Share your thoughts on sites like Goodreads.com and Shelfari. Goodreads lets you recommend your favorite books to your fellow readers. Public opinion really carries weight and the information on these sites get used by other sites.
4. The fourth rule is to tell a friend. Word of mouth is gold. If you like a writer or a book, tell someone about it. It’s not a national secret.
5. The fifth and final rule is to buy another book. Don’t be one those people who say “yeah, I read a book once.” It won’t hurt to do it again and writers will thank you for it.
We all need our stories and without storytellers, we can’t have our stories. And don’t forget, if you’re going to start with someone, start with me. 🙂
Categories: shelf life
I don’t like discussing how many books I’ve sold. It’s boastful. I’m English. As a people, we don’t boast. But in the quieter moments of my day (usually around royalty statement time) I will tot up how many books I’ve sold. Not to boast (see the English thing), it’s quite a few nowadays. Not as many as I would like, but a lot better than I ever imagined. However, I find it hard picturing my readers. Say a thousand people buy a book of mine. By publishing standards, that’s not a lot, but you wouldn’t want to wait in line behind them for the toilet. So when it comes to things like this, you need a bit of perspective.
Ten years ago or so when my first book came out, I came up with a way of quantifying the number of people who bought my book. I chose NFL stadiums. The average NFL stadium runs what—80-100,000 seats? I liked to picture all my readers entering the stadium with a copy of my book under their arm. Yes, ambitious, but it gives some nice context. Unfortunately, sales for my first book wouldn’t have filled one section. Kinda sad, but I had a true sense of the physical size of my readership.
I’m happy to say that’s changed. In the last few years (and I do mean few), I’ve found a readership. Since 2011, my readers are just taking their seats in their twelfth stadium.
Can I be frank for a second? I can. Thanks. HOLY SHIT!!! That’s a bugger load of people. And even more frightening, that’s a bugger load of people I don’t know. There was a point when I knew every one of my readers. Not now. That’s an awesome feeling, but it also puts me in a cold sweat.
Excuse me, I have to leave the room for a second…
…Okay, I’m back. What was I talking about? Yes, readers.
I guess I’m a little freaked out because this has gotten bigger than I ever imagined and by the same token, this is serious business now. Writing is no longer a trivial pursuit. People expect a good book and I have to do my best to make that happen. It’s a little disconcerting to wrap my head around that.
Okay, time for a little more perspective; I’m nowhere near bestselling standards. Stephen King, Dean Koontz and John Grisham have each sold hundreds of millions of copies. That’s whole nations of people possessing their books. Now, that’s impressive.
But for me, I am, hand on heart, blown away by how many people have bought my books over the years. I’m grateful to every single one of you—and I promise to do my best to entertain you with each book and story to come. And for those who haven’t bought a book, try one. There’s a seat waiting for you in a stadium in my mind. 😀
Categories: shelf life
So THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY has been out for a month (two if you’re an Amazon Prime Member) and reader feedback has been coming in. Quite a lot of it actually. On Amazon.com, the book has racked up almost 2,000 reviews so far. This is understandable as TOTGA (as the cool kids aka my editor calls it) is by far my fastest and bestselling book so far. Phew! I may be in publishing for a little while longer.
But a lot more readers mean a lot more opinions. Luckily for me, people more often than not like TOTGA. Thank God for that. I was a little worried about reader feedback because there’d be a lot more people reading out of genre. More exposure is nice…as long as everyone is of the same opinion and a positive opinion at that. Well, it looks as if it is so.
Actually I’m quite pleased about TOTGA’s reception. People, by and large, got it. They embraced Zoë Sutton warts and all. I wasn’t sure readers would, considering she is someone suffering from PTSD, which makes her a little difficult to like or understand at times.
But with every book, I get feedback that I wasn’t quite expecting. So here are a few findings:
- Quite a few people want or think TOTGA is the first in a new series. I didn’t have any plans to make Zoë Sutton a series character but now you’ve got me thinking. At this point I don’t know how I would take Zoë forward and maintain the same level of danger.
- I’m surprised and amused by how many women have said they’re going to take fight classes after seeing what happened to Zoë. So be warned predatory men, the ladies are no pushover.
- I’m touched by the therapists and victims of violence/stalkers thought I got Zoë right. This was a tough book to write because I tried to interview a number of victim support groups and all of them declined to speak to me so I’m glad people feel I got it right.
- Some people have thought the violence is quite graphic and to be honest, most of the violence is off the page. It’s like Psycho, you see the knife but you don’t see anyone get stabbed. It’s your mind embellishes the rest.
- And speaking of embellishments, I’ve had a few emails describe scenes/events that never took place. It happens with every book. People always bring something to the story.
- People think the book is short but it’s longer than my last three and quite a bit longer than the average James Patterson. It’s a product of my writing style that it’s focused and pacey so it tends to feel brief.
When a book meets the public, it’s exciting and daunting because it’s an interpretive voyage of discovery…and the discovery will continue as the book continues to travel.
Categories: book of the month shelf life
I can’t send anything out unless someone has read it. I don’t have the confidence or the objectivity that what I’ve written is good enough to send out. On one hand, I’m bound to have made some daft error that will condemn me in the eyes of an editor. Many years ago, I submitted a manuscript with all my notes written in the margins and my crossings out. I’d picked up the wrong draft and sent it by mistake. On the other hand, I might think the story is ready, when it’s still over-wordy or something. So I need a second set of eyes to look my stuff over.
Like I’ve mentioned before, Julie is my primary reader and editor. She works very closely with me on everything. She doesn’t even like me leaving the house by myself. I get into trouble very easily. Julie, Julie, these men said I couldn’t swallow all these balloons full of white powder, but I proved them wrong. I’ll be home late tonight. I’m off to Columbia. For this reason and many others, she goes through my work, correcting grammar and logic issues. Julie’s great for this, because she’s a technical person. Her talents lie in correcting structure.
But this is only one part of the review. Julie gets too close to the material after a while, so I need a number of readers for other aspects. If I’m having trouble with certain scenes, chapters, what have you, I have a number of experienced authors who’ll give it the once over. They know what works and what doesn’t.
Until recently, I had a grammartologist on staff. Me and grammar, well, we shook hands once at a party, but I’m not sure I’d recognize grammar if it said hi, so I need help. Julie’s late father stepped in there. He’d tear through the manuscript and make all the final adjustments that wouldn’t get me laughed out of an editor’s office.
I have a couple of people who are just fans of the genre. They’re veracious readers and that’s good for me. The more I write, the less I get to read. There isn’t the time, so I need a couple of buddies that read everything to help keep me current. I send my manuscripts their way for a reader’s gut reaction. All I want to know from them is whether they liked it. Was it fun, different, a page-turner? The problem of staying within the circle of editors and other professionals is that you get a one-sided view. My reader readers give me a feel for what likely readers are to think.
I need all these people for their various skills, but I just can’t pick anyone. Their input is vital. I need people who are brutally honest. I can’t afford to have people be kind. My special readers have no qualms about telling me how much I suck. Sometimes, I think they enjoy their jobs a little too much.
The reason I go through this is that first impressions count–especially in publishing. I want everything I turn in to an editor to be better than the last thing I turned in, even if I have a contract for it, or they’re going to change or tweak something anyway (and they will). It doesn’t matter. I don’t want him thinking I’m sloppy. I want to make the editor’s job easier. The less time he has to correct the obvious, the more time can be spent on correcting the not so obvious. I want all these people to make me a better writer.
So please join me in giving all my readers a round of applause, because none of them are getting a cut of the royalties…
Categories: shelf life
I don’t readers don’t know the power they wield and how it can help their favorite writers. Here are five simple things readers can do to help any writer.
1. The first rule is Buy a Book. I know it’s a given, but if you want to keep your favorite writers in business, you have to buy a book.
2. The second rule is to borrow a book from the public library (and I bet you thought I was going with the buy a book thing again). Library book sales are good for the writer. They provide a backbone of sales that can make or break a writer’s next contract. Even if you’ve bought the book, still go and borrow it from the library and if the library doesn’t have it, request it. This helps not only the writer, but also the libraries. Increased demand ensures libraries stay open.
3. The third rule of reader’s club is to write a review. It doesn’t have to be an in-depth critical analysis or high school book report. Just a few sentences giving a title the thumb’s up is good, then put it up on Amazon, Barnesandnoble.com, etc. Share your thoughts on sites like Goodreads.com and Shelfari. Goodreads lets you recommend your favorite books to your fellow readers. Public opinion really carries weight and the information on these sites get used by other sites.
4. The fourth rule is to tell a friend. Word of mouth is gold. If you like a writer or a book, tell someone about it. It’s not a national secret.
5. The fifth and final rule is to buy another book. Don’t be one those people who say “yeah, I read a book once.” It won’t hurt to do it again and writers will thank you for it.
We all need our stories and without storytellers, we can’t have our stories. And don’t forget, if you’re going to start with someone, start with me. 🙂
Categories: shelf life
