by Lynne | Aug 18, 2015 | Uncategorized
Writing a good book is the first step. The most important one. Publishing it so it looks professional is step two. The third–marketing.
I’ve read books on Indie marketing and ideas range from developing a top-notch website, creating YouTubes, or audiobooks, and taking advantage of free social media, or paying for advertising, both digital and in print. So far, I’ve got a really good website. No YouTubes or audiobooks, yet. I use social media a great deal, but not paid advertising.
What I did do, however, on one of my books, was write a press release. But I didn’t write the release about my book per se. I took a concept from my book and capitalized on that. I found a “hook,” that I thought would be of interest to a wide audience.
DEADLY PROVENANCE is about the Nazi confiscation of art and a missing Van Gogh painting. It is actually still missing so I decided to go on a hunt for it. Seemed like a good angle: “Mystery Writer on Hunt for Missing Van Gogh.” Now what?
I created a press release, weaving my book concept into this “hook” so it didn’t appear to be just a “buy my book” message. Now, what do I do with it? I can send it to local papers and news stations. Not too hard. Find the feature editors, senior editors, etc. But what about a more widespread release? Throughout the city, state, country?
I investigated some marketing companies. I found one called PRWeb.com and decided to go with them. For under $500, they helped me tune up my release, target my audience, and release it on a certain date to many thousands of publications around the country. They also followed up with analytics to show who picked it up, how many hits, impressions, interactives (forwards, prints, etc.) took place.
How did I do? I was somewhat disappointed in the results. Most of the sites that picked up the story were online journals and digital newsletters. Certainly not the New York Times. A couple of biggies did pick it up: Miami Herald and the Boston Globe. But when I clicked on the sites and tried to find the article, they didn’t show up. Hmmm. Using Google and Google Alerts, I tried to find who picked up my press release. Still not a clear picture. Maybe I’m just tech-challenged.
My next step was to take the release and blast it to local press avenues. There I had more success. I snagged a radio interview at KPBS and astoundingly, landed on the front page of the San Diego Union Tribune. Terrific story by an excellent columnist who took my press release, interviewed me and then wrote his own article. I was flying high. Although anyone who knows San Diego’s U/T would probably laugh.
Then it was over. In one day, I was no longer a cover story. I was back to being one author amongst many. What now? Peddle the press release along with my one day of fame, to new sites or repeat sites? Write a new press release? Or do I hire a publicist who knows the appropriate next steps?
At this point, I have focused on writing the best books I could: delving into the research, creating new plots and interesting characters, and using social media to market. I’m not a New York Times bestselling author yet, but I’ve done pretty well. More important–I’ve enjoyed the entire process!
Ideas welcome!
by Lynne | Aug 11, 2015 | Uncategorized
I’ve heard that when writing fiction, anything goes. You can kill a character off in one book, bring him back in another. You can change locations, character occupations, family history, personality traits, hair color and even their choice of Ben and Jerry’s, from one page to another. Easy.
But what happens when you take (inconvenient) historic events and twist them to fit your story? Unless you explain your deviation from fact as an afterword to your book, you might engender reader outrage.
Anne Perry writes mysteries of Victorian England in which the Pitts, a policeman and his wife, a clever sleuth in her own right, solve crimes. Perry makes it clear that the wife, Charlotte, must face myriad obstacles to insert her ideas into the case. After all, except for the society columns, women weren’t even allowed to read the newspapers. Perry gives us a true picture of the attitudes of the times.
Several other books come to mind that portray history authentically. The Sharon Kay Penman Justin De Quincy series of mysteries is well-researched (like her other historical novels) and you get a true, albeit, grim sense of the medieval English times.
In my own mysteries, I used actual events in real times to create a fictional story. In TIME EXPOSURE, I fashioned a tale woven around Civil War photography. The characters were real, the battles were real, the locations were real. The killer was not. Plus, I created an alternative ending to history as we know it. I did add an author’s note at the end, however, to own up to my fiction vs. fact.
Authentic history can lend atmosphere, suspense, and incredibly interesting real characters to a novel. It can give readers a feeling for the time, a revelatory understanding of people of the time, and a sense of how we’ve come to be who we are as a culture today. This is why some books do us a disservice in this area. They portray a time period as something other than it was. I know some of you will be horrified by my suggestion here, but, to me, GONE WITH THE WIND, is just such a book.
GONE WITH THE WIND, while in some ways, an engrossing read, is not the true story of the Civil War. First of all, less than one percent of the southerners portrayed owned plantations. Even fewer than that treated their slaves as depicted (all one big happy family). There were other inconsistencies with historical fact that I will not go into here, but I was sadly discouraged when I got a note from a reader on a Civil War site in which he claimed that he learned everything he knew about the Civil War from Margaret Mitchell’s book.
When I talk about twisting history in a novel, I’m not referring to fantasy books like the OUTLANDER series, or ABE LINCOLN, VAMPIRE SLAYER. These books, while they may use history as a backdrop, have a more fantastical story to tell.
Nor am I thinking of books like THE DAVINCI CODE, or NATIONAL TREASURE. These are thrillers that use bits and pieces of history (true or not) to build a suspenseful, action-packed story that makes a great movie.
Novels can give us an authentic feel for the past. Here are a few great books that I believe stay true to history: PILLARS OF THE EARTH, LONESOME DOVE, THE OTHER BOLYN GIRL, and COLD MOUNTAIN. Please share others. Ideas always welcome.
by Lynne | Aug 4, 2015 | Uncategorized
This is a reprint of an earlier blog of mine that hit a nerve with many writers. The dilemma of spending time marketing your books vs. writing your books clearly resonated and drew lots of responses. I’ve tried to practice what I preached in that post and have cut down my time on social media. Some. Yet, here I am writing something that is not my next book. How effective is this use of my time?
There are two sides to this new dilemma of blogging. Both sides take time from writing your book. The first is writing blogs. The second is reading them — other writers’ blogs, that is. Writing them takes a great deal more time. Is it worth it? Actually, yes. It’s difficult to know whether my blogs drive sales, but I do know it drives people to my web site. I can measure the number of hits on the actual blog. That’s a good thing.
The other positive about writing blogs is that I actually learn from my own blogs. When I write about characters or scene or POV, I am focusing on the good, the bad and the mediocre. I am reading and re-reading other writers’ to see what works and what doesn’t, which characters shine and which fall flat, which scenes and settings have atmosphere or how point of view affects the story.
One of my blogs was about how to use animals to give your characters character. The topic forced me to think about my animals. How does my character interact with her dog or his parrot? What does it say about them if they leave them alone for days at a time, or if they are constantly worried about them? Great device for character development.
Another blog dealt with the forensics of fire. The fire took place in 1911. What was arson forensics like then? The blog helped me organize the details of my research so I could determine what was missing in the mystery.
So, the answer to the first side of this dilemma, is yes, writing blogs can be very valuable to the writer. After all, it is writing. However, I have no hard evidence that it drives book sales. As to the second part of the conundrum, reading blogs can also be a valuable use of time. There are some blogs I find extremely helpful. A good blog has a message that is of particular interest to me as a writer. I probably won’t read a blog about cookbook recipes, auto mechanics or pit bull fighting.
I will definitely read blogs on forensics, crime-solving, digital photography, art, and many historical subjects. Once the topic is of interest to me, I will take the time to read a well-written blog (yes, that’s important), and hopefully, one with a sense of humor. I will often share those with writer friends. Here are a few I can share right now:
http://barbararogan.com/blog/?p=711#! Specifically on how to create a good scene.
http://writersforensicsblog.wordpress.com/ Great, knowledgeable forensics Q&A and more.
http://www.blogher.com/bloggers-beware-you-can-get-sued-using-photos-your-blog-my-story – How not to get sued as a writer using photographs. Handy info.
For the moment my dilemma is solved. I’ll keep writing weekly blogs as long as folks keep reading them. I’ll keep reading blogs that can help me write better. In the end, I hope both of these activities will help drive book sales.
by Lynne | Jul 27, 2015 | Uncategorized
A few years ago, my third book, Deadly Provenance, was published. I had originally titled it Provenance until a friend thought readers might confuse it with a city in Rhode Island. Of course it is a 
mystery and contains several murders, so I decided to call it Deadly Provenance. The story revolves around the confiscation of art during WWII and a missing Van Gogh painting. “Still Life: Vase with Oleanders” is an actual painting by Vincent, which disappeared around 1944, and is, in fact, still missing.
The research on this book provided so many possible avenues to explore, it was hard to know where to begin. First, there was the Nazi confiscation of art: the logistics of stealing, storing and moving millions of pieces of precious artworks. Next, what happened to all that displaced art? How much was recovered and how? How much is still missing? Then there’s my world — the museum world. How have museums been involved? Have they helped or hindered the search for missing pieces of art?
Then there are the players. An important character in the historic part of the book is Rose Valland, a woman whose heroic efforts during the war truly saved a great deal of artwork. She is portrayed in Deadly Provenance as the heroine she truly was. Like Rose, another real character in history is Han van Meegeren, art forger extraordinaire. Van Meegeren, a Dutch painter, bamboozled the art world in the 40s with a series of false Vermeers. Did he ever forge a van Gogh? In my book he did.
There is the modern story, where the mystery is solved years later. Protagonist, Maggie Thornhill, a digital photographer, must try to identify and authenticate the painting from a photograph. Can it be done? Has it ever been done? What is the science of art authentication today? How are x-rays, infrared and multi-spectral imaging used in scientific analysis? Don’t freak. I won’t get into this too deeply here.
As mentioned in a former blog, I always visit the places I write about. During WWII, a great deal of art was stolen from Jews and other “undesirables” and stored in the Room of Martyrs at the
Confiscated degenerate art stored at Jeu de Paume. Photo: Archives des Musees Nationaux
Musée du Jeu de Paume in Paris. The museum is located on the west side of the Tuileries Gardens and is now a museum of Contemporary Art. Visiting was a treat, although the “Room” is no longer there. Most of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works originally housed there are now on display at the Musée d’Orsay, on the banks of the Seine, in an old converted railway station.
And last but central to the story line, is Vincent van Gogh, the mad genius whose painting is lost, perhaps forever. “Vase with Oleanders” is not typical of his vibrant colors, his wheat fields or his starry nights. But there’s no doubt this is Vincent’s work, even if his signature wasn’t in the lower left corner of the painting. Which it is.
The painting was owned by the Bernheim-Jeunes, a French Jewish family of art collectors. When they realized their art was about to be confiscated by the Nazis, they hid their collection, including the Van Gogh, at a friend’s mansion – The Chateau de Rastignac, near Bordeaux. Unfortunately, in 1944, the Nazis raided and looted the Chateau then burned it to the ground. Was the Van Gogh trundled aboard a Nazi truck and whisked away? Did a soldier steal it? A civilian in the town? Was it burned with the Chateau?
Today, there is still a great deal of interest in this subject and the world of art looting and theft. I’ve spoken about it to a number of different audiences and each time I must update it because new information appears almost weekly in the news. Lost paintings found, fought over by heirs in the courts, and, sometimes, won. Like Maria Altmann and the portrait of her aunt, The Woman in 
Gold.
History can never remain solely in the past. Past events have a profound influence on the present and the future. I believe they should.
Your thoughts welcome.
by Lynne | Jul 13, 2015 | Uncategorized
My second mystery, Time Exposure, takes place during the Civil War. I wanted readers to abandon the present and immerse themselves in those brutal, tumultuous years of the mid-nineteenth century. Scene by scene, chapter by chapter. Since I wasn’t there, how could I paint a picture of that time period, accurately, vividly, and with painstaking detail?
Research, of course, but research using primary sources whenever possible. What does that mean? There are many books written about the Civil War. About the battles, about the people, about the politics — the operative word being “about.” These sources are written today by historians looking back in time. I wanted to go back there myself. How?
Primary sources are the ones that deliver the information firsthand. Let’s look at a few. Photographs are an excellent way to learn about the past. In my case, tens of thousands of Civil War photographs are available, yes, through books and online, but also at the Library of Congress, where there are drawers upon drawers filled with folders of photos taken back then. The originals, if you can imagine!
Other primary sources of an historic period are letters or journals. Using the Civil War as an example, there are books of letters to and from soldiers and their loved ones. If you use credible authors, ie: Ken Burns, you can be sure these are the true words of the people of the time. If you are really lucky, you may be able to track down a diary written from the time period. A friend of mine’s ancestor was a soldier in the War and he passed down some interesting paraphernalia (no journal, unfortunately.)
Very important primary sources are books written by someone of the time period. An example, which helped me shape my scene at the Union Hotel Hospital, was a precious thin book called Hospital Sketches, by Louisa May Alcott. Louisa May was actually a minor character in my book. If you ever wondered what it would be like to volunteer as a nurse in a hospital during the Civil War, listen to Louisa May:
“My three days experience had begun with a death, and, owing to the defalcation (I had to look this one up!) of another nurse, a somewhat abrupt plunge into the superintendence of a ward containing forty beds, where I spent my shining hours washing faces, serving rations, giving medicine, and sitting in a very hard chair, with pneumonia on one side, diphtheria on the other, two typhoids opposite, and a dozen dilapidated patients, hopping, lying and lounging about, all staring more or less at the new ‘nuss,’ who suffered untold agonies, but concealed them under as matronly as a spinster could assume, and blundered through her trying labors with a Spartan firmness, which I hope they appreciated, but am afraid they didn’t.”
From this one simple paragraph, I learned about the hospital, the patients, the illnesses and Louisa May’s (and other nurses’?) attitude toward them all.
In addition to Louisa May Alcott’s writings, I examined photographs, I read letters, poems and the words of songs written during the time. As I kept reading, I got a feel for the rhythm of speech of the period. I learned some of the basics: what the people of the time ate, drank, smoked, what they wore, how they amused themselves when they weren’t killing each other on the field, what their sex lives were like (there are some bawdy postcards out there!) Essentially, I learned how they lived and, sadly, how they died.
Bottom line: If you write historical stories, (or even modern stories about places you’re not familiar with,) what you don’t know can hurt you. The best way to find out what things were really like, is to do your research through the eyes of those who lived it.
There are no shortcuts.
What I did do, however, on one of my books, was write a press release. But I didn’t write the release about my book per se. I took a concept from my book and capitalized on that. I found a “hook,” that I thought would be of interest to a wide audience.
