Maggie Pill Mysteries

  You wrote a book. Hooray! Now comes selling the book. Let's talk about that. If you go traditional, your publisher will do some of the work needed to sell your book. My (now former) publisher arranged reviews, announced the book’s release to libraries, and featured it on their website. I learned I was expected to help get the word out, which surprised me. I thought books sold themselves. It takes effort to get a book noticed, and whether you publish independently, traditionally, or somewhere in the middle, you're the one who cares most about your work. You can pay people to promote for you, but that’s expensive and often doesn’t result in the sales authors hope for. You can promote for yourself, choosing how much time and effort you want to put into it. Here are a few ways that can happen. Book tours : Authors do tours so they can talk about their books to audiences. These can be virtual or physical. The author sets up dates and places where readers go to hear about t...

I went to see SOMETHING ROTTEN this week, a very enjoyable show. In it there's a number in which Shakespeare sings about it being "Hard to Be the Bard." That got me thinking about writing and the levels of difficulty involved. It is hard, but it's also fun. It's hard to write the whole thing . I can't tell you how many people I've met who have three (or five or eight) chapters of a novel written but just can't go farther. Writers get that, but they also get past it. It's hard to make it good . Writing well takes a lot of understanding of language, story, syntax, conversation, style, character--all those things your English teacher used to go on about. They matter. It might be true that everyone has a story inside, but not everyone is ready to tell it well enough that others want to read it. It's hard to make it better. Another group I meet a lot are those who have written their masterpiece and can see absolutely nothing wrong with it. Fi...

  A fan wrote to say she read SLEUTHING AT SWEET SPRINGS in one day. She was ready for the next one and wanted to know when to expect it. You're ready; I'm willing, but here's the thing. It takes a LOT longer to write a book than it does to read it.  First, I need a plot idea. Now, a series is nice because the characters are already there, but they have to do something interesting in each book. I won't write the same plot over and over, and I want it to be a true mystery, with clues for the reader and a logical conclusion. I like the subplots (in the case of the Sleuth Sisters, the grammar thing is big) to be interesting, too. Second, I need time to write it down . The story forms in my head, but the writing-down part always creates problems I didn't imagine. Again, the Sleuth Sisters is tricky because of three points of view. Does Retta know what Faye and Barb did last night? If not, how does she find out? Third, I edit, re-edit, and edit again . I h...