Hi. My name is Amy Atwell. I am a teller of stories.

You might have seen Part 1 of this blog two weeks ago, where I discussed my journey to publication and my realization that while the format of books may change, the concept of story remains the same. That realization had a big impact on me as I made the leap from not-yet-contracted to published in five short months.

Like many debut authors, I had to transition much of my online communication and, heck, my thinking, from trying to talk to editors and agents to talking to readers. I no longer needed to sell my one manuscript to a relatively small pool of industry professionals. Now, the goal was to connect as an author to a larger audience.

And here’s how story played into it.

For me, I view being published just like opening my own small business. I’m fortunate to have a non-profit marketing background (when you work in theater, you often do everything) as well as a production management background. This means I recognized that I needed to start with a plan.

I sat down in August, approximately three months before my release date, and I mapped out what I felt I needed to have in place for the big day.

1. Update my website and separate out my WritingGIAM group info from it
2. Create a personal blog to drive traffic to my site
3. Create a Facebook Fan page
4. Add more friends to my Facebook profile page
5. Figure out Twitter
6. Figure out the eHarlequin Community and build a presence
7. Update my presence on GoodReads and Shelfari
8. Build a presence on B&N and Amazon
9. Seek opportunities to guest blog around my launch date
10. Decide whether to join one of the group blogs that had invited me

All the above choices were predicated on the belief that, with a digital format book, I stood a chance of finding readers at any or all of them. Or, that readers would attempt to seek me out at some of these places.

There was only one slight hitch: I had no clear vision of how to present myself to readers. Presenting the book was easy, but I didn’t want to build my whole online image on that one book. I hope to write many more books, and don’t want readers to build an expectation of who I am as an author all on one story.

A quick example of my fear: growing up, I had a clear vision of what I thought a Cadillac was. It was a big four-door town car, very plush, very stylish. But now Cadillac makes SUVs—admittedly, plush and stylish, but I always shake my head over them. To me, SUV just doesn’t fit the image that I’d built of Cadillac.

So, I didn’t want to base how I presented myself to readers all on one humorous romantic suspense. I wanted to leave room to integrate different tones and different time periods in the future. This meant I had to sit down with paper and pencil and identify how I would “brand” myself.

Author branding seems to be a big buzzword nowadays. You’ve probably seen the taglines authors use in their signatures or on the website mastheads, something short and catchy that sums up their style and voice in 10 words or less. My recent personal favorite, erotic romance author Delilah Devlin uses Get in bed with Delilah. Everyone else has!

I cudgeled my brain for two days. Yes, cudgeled. I know there are scars. I listed all my manuscripts, even ideas I hadn’t started writing yet. With pencil poised, I wracked my brain (there were many implements of torture used during this process!). “My story is…” and I’d jot down a word, then cross it out. Words like love, romance, passionate, adventure, poignant. Each of the words might describe one story but not all my stories. I didn’t want to pigeon-hole myself.

Finally I wrote out “My story is…” hoping it would help me. And it did. The answer was right there.

STORY. I’d been thinking about it for days. Generations of storytellers conveying emotional stories to audiences. And so, I’ve tagged my brand: Getting to the heart of the story.

Some people might say it’s too vague, but I need the tagline more for myself than for anyone else at this point. More than a marketing phrase, it’s become my vision for how I work as an author. How I hope I’ll always work as an author. It’s a reminder to me of how to work with my story and how to work with my reading audience and fellow writers.

For my blog, I decided to focus on story, too. The goal at What’s the Story? is to create short posts that can launch some discussion, or not. I try to provide a lot of links to introduce or remind readers of terrific stories in lots of different mediums. The blog doesn’t generate a ton of comments, but I have steadily growing numbers on the RSS feed.

I’ve embraced this notion of being a sharer of stories in the social media, too. I share info about other authors’ releases, reviews, new covers, contests on Twitter and Facebook. I also share tidbits of my personal day and pictures of my two cats nicknamed Teabag and Squeaky. Um, the cats are drawing regular comments now on Facebook—and whenever I post about my cats, I gain new friend requests.
It’s a subtle dance mixing promotion with social networking. Like working an after-hours office party that goes 24/7. It reminds me of the days when I worked at my local community theater. There were times when I was absolutely working alongside my neighbors. But there were other times when I was just a local resident living life with my neighbors. Times when they needed my help, professionally or just as a friend.

So, to gather up my tumbling thoughts, here’s what you might glean from my experience:

• Identify who you are as a writer. What’s your recurring story or theme, and is there a way to fashion that to communicate to your prospective audience?
• Identify your comfort level with promotion. Which, if any, social media will work for you?
• Weigh money vs time. I chose to do all my web design myself because I wanted to fully understand how to update it. I saved money, but lost writing time. I have a consistent graphic look, but a professional designer could give me something better.
• Even if you haven’t sold yet, if you plan to use Facebook, Twitter or other social networks for any promotion, join now and figure out how to use them efficiently.
• Build a consistent look across all your social media “real estate.” Your website, blog, social network profile pages can all share a similar background, profile photo and bio information. Make it crystal clear for readers who don’t know you to recognize you. And be sure to work in your recurring story or theme. Tell them who you are.
• Protect the work. By this, I mean don’t let social media and blogging take over your time (this is a case of do what I say, not as I did—LOL). I would have been far better off if I’d started this process a year before I sold instead of packing it all into two months.
• Make a plan and assign deadlines. Like writing goals, your plan can be revised, but map out how often you want to blog, how often you’ll update your website, what times of day you want to get onto Facebook or Twitter and when you’ll write.
• Track your progress. Just like your word count grows on your wip, you should check your progress with social media. How many followers do you have on Twitter? How many friends on Facebook? How many RSS feeds subscribe to your blog? How many unique hits on your website? (I track my numbers every Monday and keep a log.)
• Understand that progress when you first start out will be slow. Go for steady growth. Occasionally, you can schedule an hour or two to go find more friends and followers.

I hope some will find this useful. I’ve met so many authors who do some or all the social media, but they do it haphazardly. They blog at random intervals with no clear motive—many say they were told they should. They have Twitter accounts but they find it overwhelming, so they avoid using it. They complain that it’s a drain on their time and it’s not effective. I think it’s hard to measure effectiveness if you haven’t established a plan at the beginning.

How about you? Do you have a tagline or “vision statement” for your writing? Do you plan your promotional efforts? Do you think social networking is effective in building an audience for your books?

Amy Atwell worked in professional theater for 15 years before turning from the stage to the page to write fiction. She now gives her imagination free rein in both contemporary and historical stories that combine adventure and romance while using her instinct to plan and organize in running the WritingGIAM online community. An Ohio native, Amy has lived all across the country and now resides on a barrier island in Florida with her husband and two Russian Blues. Visit her online at her www.amyatwell.com, What’s The Story? and Magical Musings blogs, Facebook, Twitter and/or GoodReads.

A year ago, I nearly gave up writing. I’d fallen prey to the negativity surrounding the tectonic shifts in the publishing industry, and at the time, I was sure there would never be a way to earn a living as an author. Who was I kidding? I would be far better off out of the business—better posture, better sleep.

But my hope blossomed right along with spring as I continued to follow the industry changes with curiosity. To my pleasure, I found the dire voices foretelling the doom of books was being dimmed by a more positive choir of voices singing the praises of how digital books and self-publishing were offering opportunities for more writers to connect directly with more readers.

And that’s when it hit me. I was wasting my time—not to mention a lot of psychic energy—on worrying whether eBooks would destroy or save the publishing industry, when in fact, publishing is merely a
delivery system for what I create. Despite how books may change, the stories remain the same.

Hi. My name is Amy Atwell. I am a teller of stories.

I once had an author fantasy: devoted fans laying a hardcover edition of my book on their coffee table or perhaps on their nightstand. Book clubs would contract special editions of my works. Readers would be so eager for their friends to enjoy the story, they’d share their battered paperback copies.

Nowadays, people across the globe can download books onto their eReader devices. They can travel with an entire library at their fingertips. And the latest audio book stats I’m seeing say that sales of CD editions of books are dropping while audio book downloads are on the rise. In our fast-paced society, more and more people are opting to buy fewer tangible books, yet their buying more stories than ever before.

Bookstores may close. Publishers may falter. But story isn’t going anywhere.

Think of it—story started out as tales told around a campfire. As hieroglyphics on cave walls. It developed as classic drama then epic poetry and ballads shared by troubadours. When the printing press came along, people slowly turned to reading stories instead of watching or listening to them.

Drama, opera and ballet evolved as forms of story. It’s no wonder that movies, radio and television became storytelling venues. After all, at its heart, storytelling was a communal activity—one teller to a broad audience in a shared experience. In a way, traditional books have been the odd man out with their storyteller to one reader at a time style. I don’t think it should surprise us that more options for this one-to-one type of story sharing are becoming available.

As an author, I want to evoke emotion, incite curiosity and convey the images and voices I see and hear so readers can share my excitement about these characters (whoever they are) in this plot (whatever it may be). I finally had a story I felt was ready to bring to a broad audience—and for that, I needed distribution. The exact format was less important to me than finding an editorial team who would embrace the story pretty much as I’d written it and would give me fair royalties. Print or digital or semaphore (possibly the only right my publisher missed buying) was now the least of my worries.

As a writer, I’m now experiencing an almost giddy fear at the possibilities out there. I think many of us will agree that the traditional publishers have, because of their financial needs, tightened the scope of what stories they’ll buy. I remember pitching to an editor from St. Martin’s Press at a conference. She waved off my first storyline. She shook her head at the second. She pursed her lips at the third. Bottom line, they weren’t what she was looking for.

With more curiosity than frustration, I asked her what she was looking for.

“I’m sure you’re a good writer, after all, you have lots of contest wins. But we’re not looking for good writing. We’re looking for bestsellers.”

I’d failed to hook her with the story premise in 25 words. I felt like she’d just handed me a pair of big-girl panties, which I clutched gratefully and carried away.

A year later, I wasn’t surprised when my agented submissions of two different books failed to garner an offer from the traditional publishers. My stories were long (yes, I still write over 100K words!). They had large casts. Multiple POVs. Romance was there, but not always at the forefront. My romantic suspense had dark comedy and mystery elements. My historical was too mainstream to be a romance, but had too much romance to be a mainstream.

I toyed with both stories, contemplating ways to make them better fit the molds of traditional publishing. Until one day last spring, in the midst of one of those “giddy with possibility” moments, I realized the truth. I’d told the story I wanted to tell. I didn’t want to write the story some other way to publish and share it with readers. I wanted readers to read my story. And in the end, I found a way, thanks to Carina Press.

Writers will always have stories within them to tell. And readers will always be seeking fresh stories in which they can escape. That connection between teller and audience will continue to be a magic thread. And I, for one, will continue to embroider the elaborate tales I love to share.

I’m curious to hear whether you believe you’ve compromised the STORY within you in order to sell it or held firm to your voice and concept. Are you, as yet, unpublished because your story doesn’t quite fit? Do you think the publishing industry’s broader options for formatting and distributing books will help or hinder authors?

I hope you’ll come back to the blog in two weeks for Part 2 of this blog. I’ll be discussing how I established the importance of STORY as the keystone of my author branding.

Amy Atwell worked in professional theater for 15 years before turning from the stage to the page to write fiction. She now gives her imagination free rein in both contemporary and historical stories that combine adventure and romance. An Ohio native, Amy has lived all across the country and now resides on a barrier island in Florida with her husband and two Russian Blues. Her debut romantic suspense (with dark comedy and mystery elements), Lying Eyes, officially releases today from Carina Press. Visit her online at her www.amyatwell.com, What’s The Story? and Magical Musings blogs, Facebook, Twitter and/or GoodReads.

Yes, we’re writers, but we’re readers first. Part of the reason I wanted to write was to give others the transporting experience I’ve had, reading a wonderful book, and ‘waking up’ hours later, unaware of my surroundings. Or consciously slowing down, toward the end of a book, just so I won’t be done. Yes, I can reread it, but I’ll never again experience it for the first time.

So I started thinking . . . If I were stuck on a deserted island, all alone, what books would I want with me?

I don’t mean survivalist literature – I’m talking, ‘keep me sane while I’m waiting for the cavalry to show up’ books. I chose an arbitrary limit of 10, then tried to decide. The first couple were easy – they popped right into my head.

• Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
• The Stand – Stephen King
• A Gift Upon the Shore – M.K. Wren (if you’re a writer, you should read this dystopian novel-what would happen to the books if the world crumbled?)
• Malevil – Robert Merle Okay, shoot me, I love end of the world scenarios.

But after that it got tougher.

• Timeline – Michael Crichton
• King’s Oak – Ann Rivers Siddons
• Any of the Outlander books by Diana Gabaldon
• Most anything by Barbara Samuels / Barbara O’Neal
• Violin – Ann Rice Or The Feast of All Saints – I can’t decide
• South of Broad – or anything by Pat Conroy. Maybe if I were lucky, he’d have a new one out I hadn’t yet read….

See how I got flaky at the end? Too many good books!!!

What are your Deserted Island Books? I’d love to hear about them.

Laura Drake

Publish or perish, the anthem of academia is also the bane of our existence.

Today, I want to play with the juxtaposition of words. Doubt and worry for instance, or if you prefer … worry and doubt. I do these two very well and can extemporaneously drop a few hundred words defining my particular flavors of each.

When no one is around, no group, no e-mails to sort, no task to complete, do you worry you have lost your mind. When there is nothing on the page but blank white space and you sit creating gibberish in a lonely vacuum … do you doubt the sanity of what you are doing?

The doubt that I am not good enough, the worry it may never happen and someone will read me and laugh at the parts I had not intended to be funny. What is it about this world of words that worries me and causes me to doubt I can find a place, in a world where I am still a voyeur, an interloper and an outsider?

It seems I worry enough for a convent of nuns. That deep Italian/Jewish kind of worry, the early, neurotic Woody Allen worry, becomes rich fodder for my tortured mind. The old penguins who continue to haunt my dreams, the medieval Catholic rituals I rejected, follow me into a dark and lonely night. When without defense or awareness, they slip into my dreams; I sit bolt straight in my bed and wonder … what the hell are you doing now?

Writers, beset daily with random thoughts, collect loose words and dangling phrases, grammatically correct or not. We collect them, store them in a warm, dry corner of our minds, and nurture them until they sprout wings and take us into the realms of our greatest imaginings.

Today, it is these same random thoughts that haunt me with self-doubt, laughing at the folly of my pursuit, snarky and snide, self-doubt wraps itself around my legs like a creeping vine of poison ivy.

Worry follows behind and nags me like a mother-in-law, the whine of a discontented child, the acid laughter of my most dreaded nemesis. Tomorrow all this may change.

There is a validation which comes with another word … publish. To publish, to bring the task to fruition, happily resting between the covers on the actual object you caress in your hands, or the virtual images lovingly stored with millions of bits in cyber space.

Words, my best friends or my worst enemies?

Words, strung together like lights on a tree, pearls around your neck, moonbeams dancing in your head. The good and the bad of them might drive us crazy, but they also give us the reason for what we do.

Still waiting for the magic of the word publish, I determine with wit and will, I shall not perish.

Florence Fois. I am a full time writer seeking a literary agent. My novels are about NYC women on the edge of discovery, danger and fun. I am learning how to write the perfect query and synopsis, the best first sentence, the tightest first twenty-five pages and ultimately the best ready-to-wear manuscript.

I am unpublished and unabashedly, insanely, optimistically waiting for that one magic moment.
http://ramblingsfromtheleft.wordpress.com/

When I learned that the first RWA-WF critique training would take place during my son’s season-ending baseball tournament in Orlando, Florida, I considered waiting until the next one came along to participate. However, as the emails to join the training kept arriving in my inbox, I decided to carve out some “me” time during our pseudo-vacation.

Turns out the only “me” time occurred after everyone in my family had passed out from a blend of heat stroke and baseball induced exhaustion and the clock ticked perilously close to midnight. Since I’ve never been one to let a little sleep deprivation keep me from something I want (I am a writer, after all), I submitted my two sample critiques, read over the other submissions with interest, and a short week later became a member of my very first online critique group.

I should preface this discussion of my RWA-WF critique group experience by mentioning that I already belong to a live, in-person critique group and have for over two years now. My local critique partners and I have become very close friends and conference roommates. There is no better support system for a writer than another writer. So as a satisfied member of a very successful critique group, why did I choose to participate in the RWA-WF online critique? Because as many of you already know, feedback is essential in this business and I believe honest, supportive and helpful critiques can improve a writer’s work, no matter how far along we are in our quest for publication.

We started with a group of four writers from different parts of the country and different stages of our career. We had one agented author and three un-agented authors. Some of us had been at this for awhile, while one member was pretty new to the game. We began by further introducing ourselves through emails and very briefly describing our works-in-progress. When I say brief, I mean brief; we wanted our stories to unfold for each other as they do for a reader. Two months into this process, I still feel as though not sharing too many details of our story was a very good decision. My local critique partners know my stories so well they may overlook holes in the plot or other errors because they already know where the story is going and are way too familiar with my habits.

Unfortunately we did lose an author from our group when someone’s feelings got hurt by a critique. RWA-WF’s uber-VP of Programs, Maggie Marr, guided us in the critique training to use the sandwich method of critique: positive comments first, constructive advice for improvement second, and a final encouraging wrap-up. When implemented successfully, this method allows the author who submitted pages to begin and end what can be an anxiety filled exercise with positivity. That being said, potential participants in any critique group need to understand their role in the group as both submitter and critiquer. One of our group’s members recently quoted Sol Stein from Stein on Writing,

“It took some time for me to learn the lesson that a writer, shy or not, needs a tough skin, for no matter how advanced one’s experience and career, expert criticism cuts to the quick, and one learns to endure and to perfect, if for no other reason than to challenge the pain maker.”

In the end, I think we will all be better writers and critiquers because of having gone through this experience. If you are willing to put yourself out there in order to better your work and the work of your fellow RWA-WFers, then I highly recommend participating in the training. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain!

Christy Hayes

Every writer dreams of getting The Call.

I can’t think of a single writing friend immune to this phenomenon.

When it happens, it IS great. But what comes next? This is the one question I never thought to ask.

After I received The Call on April 21, I expected to be bombarded by emails and phone calls from my agent and editor for the next week or two. My reality–The Silence. For three, long months.

Time plays tricks with a writer’s mind. Here are some of the crazy, mind-tormenting thoughts that invaded my writer’s mind when surrounded by The Silence:
• Was it all a big, nasty dream?
• Are my agent and editor stalled over some irreconcilable difference in the contract?
• Did my publisher send the contract to my agent?
• Is my agent still reviewing the contract?
• Should I touch base to see how things are going, or should I wait for them to update me?
• When are my deadlines for Book 1 revisions and delivery for Books 2 and 3?
• When will I get my revisions letter?
• How drastic will the revisions be?
• Do I have the chops to make the requested revisions?
• And most importantly–Did they contact the wrong Tracey Devlyn?

But finally, logic took hold and I realized publishing is much like government (my day job)–everything moves at a snail’s pace. It’s a pain in the author’s patoot , but important documents must be seen and approved by a number of people. If those people are attending conferences, taking vacations, or burdened by a multitude of other tasks in this lean economy, contracts will take three months–sometimes more–to process. The key to overcoming this nail-biting waiting period is to focus your attention on the next book.

So while my agent and editor were sorting out the details of my contract, I began plotting and building character profiles for Book 2 in the series. A relative first for me.

I had dabbled with character profiles before, but nothing as extensive as I have done for Book 2. And plotting a book? *snort*

Before long, I had a road map from which to build a story. Not a complete one–just enough of the journey to get me to the midpoint. I could see the Rockies, but not the Pacific Ocean. Once I knew a few dips and turns in the road, the prospect of writing Book 2 on deadline didn’t feel as overwhelming. Then I began writing.

I wrote. I tweaked. I outlined. I wrote some more, tweaked some more, and so on until I had a chance to speak with my agent at the Romance Writers of America conference and get many of my questions answered. By this time, I had about 25,000 words written for Book 2. Had I waited, had I allowed The Silence to paralyze me, I wouldn’t now be friends with the characters in Book 2. I wouldn’t know their quirks and strengths. Wouldn’t know chapter one should actually be chapter four.

The Silence can make mental cases of us all.

Push past the doubt and focus on the next step. Do like I did–create self-imposed deadlines and expectations. Talk to your agent or editor.

The calm before the storm can be unpleasant. Instead of caving to insecurities, fill the time with positive actions and thoughts.

Most of all–believe in yourself, as your editor and agent do. Why else would they have called you in the first place?

Bio:
Tracey Devlyn writes historical romance with a dash of danger. She’s a member of Romance Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and Windy City, Hearts Through History, The Beau Monde and Kiss of Death Romance Writers of America chapters. Tracey’s also a co-founder for Romance University, a group blog dedicated empowering writers, entertaining readers, and understanding men.

Tracey’s first release, A Lady’s Revenge, hits the bookstores Fall 2011.

Tracey lives in the Midwest with her once-in-a-lifetime husband and their alpha puppy.

Please visit http://TraceyDevlyn.com or http://RomanceUnivesity.org for more details.

I was doing my version of a walkabout. Yeah, I know the Queen of England does walkabouts, so what makes me think I’m so special? I’m not. It’s simply how I describe those few moments I grab with gusto, moments away from writing, family stuff or people stuff. Anyway, I was in the grocery store, pondering a magnificent pyramid of oranges when it struck me that I was just a few weeks away from a major high school class reunion. How could I have been so forgetful? Was this a harbinger of my life to come?

Never mind the immediate panic over what I would wear, or how many pounds I could lose if I gave up eating for the next few weeks, or where could I find industrial strength make-up that will hide the crow’s feet lurking at the corners of my eyes.

These were all issues dwarfed by the biggest one -facing my lagging self-esteem.

How would I feel when I faced THE MAN of my teenage dreams? Aside from all the fretting over how I looked, how he looked, what we’d say and all that sort of thing, I couldn’t help but wonder how I’d feel when I saw him for the first time in fifteen years.

My first thought was that I should get to the school gym first, take up a strategic spot near some sort of obstacle that would shelter me from view while I decided whether or not to strike out across the room, a smile stretching my face, anxiety skewing my eyebrows.

I had originally planned to be part of the organizing committee so that I’d be cool and much in demand when THE MAN crossed the threshold back into my life. But that fell through when a book deadline took over my life.

The things I do for my struggling career!

I was still in my half-dream, half-reality-fear mode when the mound of oranges suddenly tumbled onto my feet, some of them plopping into my grocery cart and splitting their sides, spraying orange juice all over every thing! A nice young man showed up at my shoulder, and between us we got the pyramid reassembled, minus the broken and bruised fruit. My face still burning red, I scurried through the checkout and headed home, my mind still focused on how it would feel to see him again…

So, what is it about that first relationship? Is it the fact that we miss that man? Are we sorry it didn’t work out? Or are we simply reaching back to our youth, to a time when everything in life seemed possible, including the dream idea that our first love would last forever?

I don’t know, but I do like to write reunion stories where a man and a woman rekindle their love for each other. A CHILD CHANGES EVERYTHING is one of those. It will be in the stores on August 10th.

How do you feel about the first man you loved? Did you marry him?

Or do you look back and rate him on your personal dork-o-meter?

Or do you still sometimes wonder what life would have been like if you’d married him?

Stella MacLean
www.StellaMacLean.com