Word-of-Mouth Sales?

This week, I ran out and got Alex Marwood’s THE DARKEST SECRET. I’ve started reading and am enjoying it. I heard about it via word of mouth.

Well, kind of.

You see, I saw the following tweet by Stephen King: Rereading THE DARKEST SECRET, by Alex Marwood. If there has been a better mystery-suspense story written in this decade, I can’t think of it. Maybe THE PAYING GUESTS, by Sarah Waters. Both transcend the genre.

The book is living up to Mr. King’s praise. All of which has me wondering about the role of social media on book sales. How many times have I bought a book because a friend recommended it? Often times, this comes in the form of an author friend: Reed Farrell Coleman suggested Megan Abbott; SJ Rozan suggested Naomi Hirahara.

Maybe this is all a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same. People have, after all, been swapping and recommending books forever. Goodreads has 65 million members and was born of this long-standing tradition.

Yet Goodreads, even with its seemingly large membership, is designed for –– and serves –– book lovers. But does success on Goodreads (strong reviews, etc) lead to sales? The data indicates this can be hit or miss, while NPR radio mentions and reviews in large-scale mainstream publications will produce noticeable results. One interesting item: 84% of Twitter users say they use the platform to look for deals, especially during the holidays.

So where does Stephen King’s twitter praise rank? Certainly, he’s not your typical word-of-mouth promoter. (I follow him mostly because his Donald Trump tweets make me laugh. And think.) I have no way of knowing how many sales it generated for Alex Marwood, but she was sure to tweet back.

Oh, thanks so much!

So I’m assuming King’s praise didn’t hurt.

Summer Musings

Summer is nearing the end, and it’s time to reflect.

It was a summer of travel –– my day job took me to Tampa, Fl.; Bozeman, Mt.; and Fitchburg, Mass.; vacation took me to Baxter State Park and Old Orchard Beach, Maine. I spent lots of time with my family, including the real DA Keeley (daughters Delaney, Audrey, and Keeley).

(from left) Delaney, Audrey, and Keeley

I wrote about 125 pages, not as much as I’d hoped. There have been summers where I cranked out 125 pages of rough copy in two weeks. But that meant sitting on my writing chair, behind a closed door, eight to 10 hours a day. I’m writing my current book on spec, and my oldest daughter is talking about a summer internship next year that could take her anywhere in the nation (and, thus, far away from my wife and me) Therefore, this might be the last summer with all three girls at home. So, no, I didn’t finish the book, but the end is near.

One thing I’ve most enjoyed about this new book is that I’m writing in present tense. I’ve always been intrigued by the present-tense narrative voice. Recent Type M guest blogger Naomi Hirahara is an author I enjoy. Her Ellie Rush series is told in the present, and I love the immediacy and the tension that creates. Also, I’ve taken baby steps into screenwriting, which requires present tense, so I grasp (and appreciate) the impact this unique tense has on readers and viewers. But the switch from past to present wasn’t easy. It took a long time (and three different POVs) to get the voice right (I probably wrote 100 pages no one will ever see to do so). But I’m nearing 70,000 words now, and the sun is shining.

Ann Whestone and Paula Keeney (right)

On August 12, I read and signed at Mainely Murders bookstore, in Kennebunk, Maine. It’s a must-visit, if you’re in southern Maine (and worth the drive, if you’re not). The store is everything that is great about independent booksellers. Owners Paula Keeney and Ann Whetstone retired, renovated a one-car garage to a small store with an eclectic inventory of 3,500 books, and travel widely to find new authors. They have a rock-solid loyal following. (One customer told me she routinely buys a used book from them and gives it back so they can sell it again, all part of an effort to support the store.) Above all, Keeney and Whetstone love mysteries and their writers. Whether you’re a fan or writer, I highly recommend seeking this store out.

With Audrey, one-third of the "real" DA Keeley

Signing at Mainely Murders

Now it’s time to get back to school and time to finish the book.

Going Places

One of the great things about the crime fiction genre these days is that it is so diversified readers can both see themselves in books and experience (virtually) societies and people who live in worlds far from their own.

Therefore, when I buy a crime novel, I’m more interested in character and setting than I am in crime and plot. I want a novel to take me to a real world I haven’t explored yet.

Naomi Hirahara gives me this. She explores the Vietnamese-American culture in Los Angeles in a fascinating and interesting way in her Ellie Rush series. (SJ Rozan, who does New York City pretty darn well herself, suggested Naomi’s books to me.)

Hirahara’s parent-child relationships illustrate the potentially-tense dynamics among a generation that wants for their children all that America offers but also needs for those same children to appreciate their Vietnamese heritage. A familial conflict is always simmering, ready to boil over.

Similarly, I’m rereading A Corpse in the Koryo, by James Church, who according to the author bio on his books was "a former Western intelligence officer with decades of experience in Asia." That’s about all I can find on the guy. No pictures. No further info. Church offers North Korea in a way the makes his respect and love for the citizens their obvious. Here’s a teaser: “Trees are not like people.” His lips tightened, and his cheeks lost their color. “They’re more civilized. People lose someone, what do they do? Nothing, they just keep going. Some people lose everything, everything. They lose everything, they keep going. Not trees. Trees don't do that. They live together, they don't move away, they know each other, they feel the wind and the rain at the same time, they can't bear it when one of them dies. So the whole group just stops living.” He paused while the train went past a patch of open ground with an abandoned log cabin. “Don't listen to anyone who tells you about loyalty to an idea. You're alone,” he said. “Without your family you're alone.” (101)

Wonderful metaphor. Fascinating illustration and exploration of culture and society. Church is an impressive prose stylist who offers North Korea (in a novel written in English, no less) in a manner similar to Dostoyevsky's handling of Russia (in translation). North Korea’s people, politics, and landscape are presented in a nuanced and subtle way that only decades spent on the ground observing can provide. Will I ever get to North Korea? I bet most of us won’t, but Church takes us there.

And, finally, there’s The Sympathizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Edgar Award, written by Viet Thanh Nguyen. This book is a huge step forward for crime fiction. It wasn’t too long ago, after all, that my grad school professor told me that if I wanted to teach at the college level I needed to “write a mainstream novel.” (I asked why if I wrote a mainstream novel, I was doing the acceptable thing, but if he wrote a crime novel, he was becoming a commercial sellout.) I never got an answer that day. The Sympathizer shows a great crime novel can be a great novel.

So many contemporary crime novels offer setting in rich and interesting ways that plot really does become secondary, at least for me. I’d love to hear what my Type M colleagues are reading and what they and others look for in contemporary crime-fiction novels.

Technical Goulash

I'm nearing the 10,000-word mark of a new project that is very different from other books I've written for a number of reasons, the first being that I'm writing in present tense.

Goodreads List of Present-Tense Novels

Interestingly, I taught Naomi Hirahara's Murder on Bamboo Lane this past year, and none of my students noticed the tense (or mentioned it until I did). As a teacher, that was frustrating; as a writer (nice job, Naomi!), that's a good thing. I know if I'm consistent in voice, point-of-view, and tense, I'll go unnoticed, something I'm always striking for: I want readers to be so lost in the story they forget they're turning pages at all.

Writing present tense is interesting on many levels. The syntax, for one, has changed. Sentences are shorter (for me, that's never a bad thing.) I find myself writing a lot of fragments (missing subjects). This is happening naturally. Just riding the rhythm of the book. And my nemesis, the To Be verb, is getting very little airtime, something that pleases me immensely. The chapters are averaging less than a thousand words.

Additionally, the pace of the book is faster because of the tense choice. Dialogue propels the action for me, as always. But the I see this book being shorter than some others I've written in recent years. (Whether that holds up or not remains to be seen. Every time I start a book I tell myself this time I'll be really efficient.)

Like any writer, I will do my best to show and not tell: 

My second-floor classroom looked out onto the quad. There was a grass courtyard nearly the size of a soccer pitch and boxed in by brick dorms and brick office and academic buildings. Morning sunlight reflected off benches that glistened with ice and snow. Christmas was a full three weeks away, but twenty inches of snow had already fallen. Parents' Weekend took place only a month earlier, when cobblestone paths were ablaze with autumn's fallen leaves and playing fields' sidelines were awash in light blue swag and proud parental voices. That seemed a distant memory.

My second-floor classroom looks out onto the quad, a grass courtyard nearly the size of a soccer pitch, boxed in by brick dorms and brick office and academic buildings. Morning sunlight reflects off benches glistening with ice and snow. Christmas is a full three weeks away, but twenty inches of snow have already fallen. Parents' Weekend – only a month ago, when cobblestone paths were ablaze with autumn's fallen leaves and playing fields' sidelines were awash in light blue swag and proud parental voices – seems a distant memory.

The differences are evident. Immediacy being the most obvious. No surprise there. But more subtly, the imagery, particularly of the final line, is punched up. The present tense version in the second paragraph is more forceful.

Now I put the challenge to you: Take a paragraph you've written recently, and rewrite it in the present tense. What differences do you find? This might serve as another technique for your toolbox. After all, a present-tense scene well-placed in a past-tense novel might heighten suspense and add to your reader's experience.

I'd love to hear readers' thoughts on this and my Type M colleagues' opinions.

Virtual Book Club Talk

I've begun setting up my June book tour for Destiny's Pawn, and like any frugal author, I'm trying to get the most bang for my buck.

My pilgrimage north usually takes a week, starting in western Massachusetts and concluding in northern Maine – some 600 miles later – where the Peyton Cote novels are set. I sign at various stores, street events, read, and this year will even host an "author luncheon" to benefit a local library. As you can imagine, it's a costly friend-raising journey. Last summer, I had $500 into the trip before hotel costs.

Something happened last week that has me (almost) rethinking this whole thing: Laura Cummings, at White Birch Bookstore, reached out to host a signing on said tour and mentioned her store's book club was discussing Bitter Crossing. Coincidentally, after my students recently read Naomi Hirahara's terrific Murder of Bamboo Lane, I shot Naomi an e-mail to see if she'd be interested in hosting a Google Hangout session Q@A with my students. She said sure, and we successfully used Google.

So when Laura mentioned her book club, I offered to do the same. We used Google Hangouts for this event, too, and it worked reasonably well.

A new business model? A more cost-effective one for sure.

Can a virtual author visit replace a face-to-face interaction? No way. But North Conway, NH, is three hours from my house. I spoke to maybe ten readers and answered questions for 30 minutes. And I was still home to read my 7-year-old daughter a story and kiss her goodnight. And the trip didn't cost so much as one cup of coffee, let alone gas expenses.

Will the virtual author visit replace the real deal? Not anytime soon. But there's a definite upside to this structure. And it makes me wonder how authors will be interacting with readers in the future.