Tag Archive for: Blog Tour

Unifying Themes – Seven Sinister Sisters Tour

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We’re the Seven Sinister Sisters and we’re on a mission:
Seven mystery authors; seven new releases; seven answers to a central question
at each stop on our tour. The Stiletto Gang is our second stop and our question
this week is…

Is
there a theme underlying or unifying your books?

Cathy
Perkins’ Holly Price mystery series revolves around family and loyalty.
After her father cliches a midlife brain-fart and absconds with his yoga
instructor, Holly agrees to temporarily return to her hometown in order to keep
the family business afloat. Clients can do the damnedest things, however,
making her question all relationships.
With the next book in the series, In It
For The Money, Holly’s cousin is the catalyst for her involvement in
another murder investigation. Refusing to believe the rumors flying around the
extreme sport circuit about his alleged treachery, she follows the money –
another consistent theme – to find the actual villain.   

Sue
Star
also writes about families in chaos. Nell Letterly is a menopausal single
mom, trying to raise her teenage daughter, as well as fielding well-intended
interference from the rest of the family, including Gramps and Nell’s
fashionista, soon-to-be ex sister-in-law. They all disagree how a teenager
should be raised, but as a family they have a special bond. In Murder by
Moose, Nell tries to protect her family from a killer on the loose while
she teaches a self-defense class at a dude ranch in the mountains. But when the
going gets tough, the family always comes together to help Nell solve the
mystery.  

In Biscuits and
Slashed Browns—as in the series as a whole—Edith Maxwell (writing as Maddie
Day) expands this family theme to community. How do friends and family
rally ’round when someone is at risk or wrongly accused? How does a country
store breakfast-and-lunch restaurant serve as a focal point for the community,
a gathering place? In this particular book, the father of one of her
protagonist’s employees is accused of murder. This motivates Robbie Jordan and
others in the small town of South Lick, Indiana to work together to find out
who is the killer.

As with all murder mysteries, Leslie Karst’s Sally Solari culinary series
concerns issues of truth and justice. Equally important, however, are themes of
family and the food movement, and how the two create a conflict between
Sally and her father. The Solaris are descended from one of the original
Italian fishermen who arrived in Santa Cruz in the 1890s, and Sally’s dad is
fiercely proud of the family’s traditional Italian seafood restaurant on the
historic wharf.  When Sally inherits her
aunt’s trendy restaurant, Gauguin, her father—hurt
that Sally no longer wants to work at Solari’s—becomes convinced she now looks
down on her family heritage.

Becky
Clark takes a different tack in her new series, the Mystery
Writer’s Mysteries series. Officially, all the books are set in the world of a
mystery author, so with Fiction Can Be
Murder, she pulls back that curtain for her readers. Unofficially, her
books always have the same underlying current, that of the reluctant hero. It
seems she likes to explore characters who are going about their boring, normal
lives when — BLAMMO — something bizarre happens to them. They’re way out of
their comfort zone and flounder for a while before forcing themselves to pull
up their big-girl undies and fix whatever the problem is.

Returning to our recurring family theme, a few things
always show up in Shawn McGuire’s work.
First, relationships – whether between family members, romance, best friends,
parent and child, co-workers, etc. – are a prime element to the story. Second,
there’s always humor of some kind because even in the most intense situations,
humor helps. Third, an element of truth or finding your path in life often
shows up. Then with each book, a theme unique to that story or series will
appear. With her Whispering Pines series, while she hadn’t originally planned
it, religion turned out to be a strong theme.

In the first two books in the Cole & Callahan PI
series, Pat Hale says religion plays
an underlying role. In The Church of
the Holy Child, (September 2017) the serial killer torments a priest
with information on the murders, knowing he’s bound by his holy orders not to
reveal what’s heard in the confessional. In Durable Goods, (April 15, 2018) young girls are drawn into a
sex trade organization under the guise of coming to a religious refuge for
indigent women. The sub-theme of both books considers the confines and
constructs found within religious doctrine and their use for good and
evil. 

Thanks so much to The Stiletto Gang and all their
readers for joining our tour. We’re happy to address any comments or questions.
And feel free to contact any of us through our websites. Our next stop
will be January 25th with MJB Reviewers. See you there!
http://www.cperkinswrites.com
http://www.rebeccawriter.blogspot.com
To
celebrate our new releases, the Seven Sinister Sisters are having a giveaway!
Seven
lucky winners will receive an ebook from one of us.
One
GRAND PRIZE winner will receive a signed copy from each of us!
Enter to win by leaving a comment below. Our tour runs from January 6th to
April 30th and we’re answering a different question at each blog.
Leave a comment at each blog for more entries! We’ll draw the winner from all
the combined comments at the end of our tour.

Watch
our Facebook page for the next stop on the tour.

One More Blog Tour Over, Phew!

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I just finished a blog tour for my latest Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery, Spirit Shapes.

 

Because it takes a long time to both arrange the tour stops and write the blog posts I started about two months ago. This particular tour had a bunch of problems and hitches. Did I learn anything, yes.

One is to make sure the person who volunteers to host actually has a blog they know how to use.

It also helps if the blog host puts the blog and all photos etc. up ahead of time and dates it for the time it’s supposed to appear. Not everyone does this and sometimes he or she forgets.

I learned to send an email a day or two ahead of time to remind the person so that he or she didn’t have to scramble at the last minute.

Even though I asked each person to tell me when they received my material and the did, I had a couple tell me they never heard from me.

I am not being critical because goodness knows that I screw up at times too.

A month with a blog every single day is too long. I’d planned to skip the weekends, then I ran into blog hosts who wanted to have me on a weekend. I also had someone tell me weekends get the most hits, but I’m not sure that’s true.

Going on a trip while you’re on a blog tour complicates things. And of course I did. I drove to Portland OR with my publisher and was on the road and in hotels for 6 days. I took along my iPad and when I could get wifi I tracked the blogs and made comments on them and promoted as best I could.

It also helps if your computer doesn’t die while you’re on a blog tour. Mine got infected by a virus when I downloaded what I thought were updates to Windows. The computer was in the shop for over a week–drove me a bit crazy. The tech worked on it, brought it back home, worked on it some more, then worked on it remotely. It’s fixed, though there are some changes that I haven’t completely gotten used to yet.

One thing that always surprised me is when I go to the blog of the day and read the post I’ve written (sometimes finding a typo) I’ve forgotten what I wrote and it’s fun to read it again.

So, though I had fun, had a lot of followers along the way and one of them will have her name used for a character in my next Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery, I am relieved it’s over. Has it resulted in sales? I have no idea. Couldn’t see much difference in the Amazon ratings. I think I’ll have to wait for the royalty report to see if it helped.

Will I do another blog tour? I’m not sure. There may be other things that aren’t so time consuming that are more profitable. But then again, I kind of like doing them.

And here’s a link to a trailer for Spirit Shapes:

.http://bookvideos.wordpress.com/2013/10/26/book-trailer-spirit-shapes-by-marilyn-meredith/

From an exhausted, Marilyn

Crap shoot

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by: Joelle Charbonneau

Skating On The Edge launches a week from today.  EEK!  A
book launch brings with it lots of excitement and nail biting.  Before I started writing, I thought book
tours sounded so glamorous.  The idea of
people standing in line for hours waiting to get a book signed by an author was
pretty cool.  Of course, that is before I
got to know the business a bit better and learned that those lines are the
exception to the rule.  More often than
not, an author on tour hopes he or she won’t be sitting alone in the bookstore
when the signing starts.  You hope
someone – anyone – will come, talk to you and hopefully buy a copy of your
book.  If not – well, that’s the way it
goes sometimes.  Even for the big
names.  Some days the line is around the block.  Other days there are crickets.
The same can be said for blog tours.  You write posts and hope that people who have
no idea who you are read them.  Sometimes
they do.  Other times it’s just your
mother and other members of your family who click on the link and comment on
what you say.
I admit that when I was just a reader, I never even
considered how difficult it was for a book to make it into the hands of a
reader.  I assumed a book was written,
bought, edited and then every store in the country carried it.
Yeah—I was silly back then.
Getting a bookseller to carry your book even if it is
published by a big publisher is a trick. 
Some bookstores or chains don’t like carrying books by authors who don’t
have a strong sales history with them. 
Well, if you are a debut, or in my case a sophomore, author you haven’t
had a lot of time to develop a sales history. 
They only have so much shelf space. 
They want it dedicated to books that will sell.  If you don’t have a sales history or you don’t
live in the region – they don’t trust it will sell.
Tricky, right? 
So paying a visit to the stores, meeting the booksellers and
letting them know you are more than a name on a page is important.  Since you can’t do this for every story in
the country you have to pick your battles and know that most of the battles
will never be fought.  You can only hope
that a reader who wants your book will go into those unknown stores, ask for your
book and order it thereby getting your name in front of the person who places
the orders for stock.  Maybe they’ll
decide to look your book up, think it sounds like something their other readers
might like and order a few extra copies. 
Or not.
E-books are just as tricky. 
There are price adjustments, free days, the hope that some miracle of
marketing will help the book land on a list that will attract new readers since
there isn’t a physical shelf to browse.
Face it—it’s all a crap shoot.  Physical touring, blog tours, advertising,
tweeting, Facebook posts and everything else done to promote books are all crap
shoots.  Some might work some of the
time.  Others might not work at all.  And no one can tell you when and where those
things will work for you.  Fun right?

That’s what’s nice about this blog where I can ask you—what
works for you?  How do you find new books
to read?  Do you pay attention to Amazon’s
suggestions?  Do you take recommendations
off of Twitter, this blog and Facebook posts? 
Do you go into bookstores and look for the cover that attracts your eye?  What works for you?  I’m dying to know

Left Coast Crime Report

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Today I came home from Left Coast Crime in Sacramento. I arrived by train in California’s capital 1t 12:30 p.m. and my panel was at 2:45. Whew! I checked into the hotel, took my suitcases to my room, headed back down to the reception area and registered for the conference.

I’m not exactly sure what else I did, probably found something to eat, but it was soon time to head for the room where my panel was located. Going anywhere involved going up or down two flights of stairs (until someone pointed out the way to use the elevators–unfortunately on my 3rd day at the con.)

My fellow panelists are in the back row from left to right:
Susan C. Miller, Clark Lohr, Vicki Doudera
Front row left to right: Me and Madeline Gornell

Our subject was Writing for Small Presses

The room was packed, and I think we did a great job telling why we’d gone with small presses, our experiences good and bad, and we were asked many, many questions. I even had one your woman ask to pick my brain privately. Of course I agreed and she talked to me for about 20 minutes.

Was this good way to sell books? Not particularly because we were told not to bring our books to show despite the fact that we were herded to the book room to sign books that no one really knew what to look for.

However, that did not keep me from have a grand time. Best of all was seeing so many author and reader friends that I haven’t seen for far too long. I received and gave so many hugs, sat in the lounge and gabbed away, ate goodies and talked some more in the hospitality room, shared wonderful meals with so many friends.

All the panels I attended were great, the author sparkled.

Everyone asked about my husband who stayed home to fix our oven. It’s amazing how many remember his name.

Monday morning I received my 4 a.m. wake up call. Got ready, finished packing. Looked over the hotel bill they’d shoved under the door–and of course it was wrong. So before I could check out I had to spend time with the desk clerk explaining what was my part of the bill and what belonged to my roommate. A taxi took me to the train station and I was on my way home by 6:45 a.m. The train sure beats going by air and it was lots cheaper.

Now that I’m home, I playing catch-up like crazy. And tomorrow is the first day of my blog tour for No Bells. The first stop is here: http://blog.marjamcgraw.com/

I’m giving away copies of prior books in the Rocky Bluff P.D. series to the person who comments on the most blogs. You can find the schedule on my blog site,Marilyn’s Musings

 To tell the truth, I think I’ve got far too much to do. 


Marilyn a.k.a. F. M. Meredith

 

Preparing for a Virtual Blog Tour and Freezing

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Because I’m going to have a blog tour in March for No Sanctuary, I’ve been answering interviews and writing articles. Did some yesterday and finished the rest that I’d been given today.

Meanwhile our gas heater quit working on Sunday–that’s the main heater for the house. Fortunately for me, there’s another heater, down the hall and near my office, so if I close the door into the living room, it keeps the office fairly decent.

Sunday night, went to bed early to keep warm–did some editing and watched TV.

Hate to complain since the rest of you have snow and ice and all that cold stuff. It was 38 when I got up this morning and it’s been raining all day. Had some thunder and it got dark as night at 3 p.m.

The guy from the Gas Co. arrived a bit ago right in the middle of the biggest downpour. He fixed the heater–yeah, already warmer. And it’s stopped raining, at least for awhile.

We need rain desperately–they tell us it’s our(California’s) third year of drought. Hope all the rain we’ve been having lately (along with the snow in the mountains) will take care of the problem.

My new publisher has put an old romance of mine, Lingering Spirit, on the Kindle, wish I had one to take a look at it. I know some of my mysteries are already there.

Yes, I do love electronic gadgets, it just takes me awhile to figure out how to use them. When all else fails, I ask my 18 year old granddaughter and she always seems to know the answer.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com