Feet Up!

If you have a life half as crazy as mine, then chances are: you had a long, pull-my-hair-out week. Maybe the kids were driving you (and your back) crazy, or you had trouble meeting a deadline, or your WIP is actually a WIL (work-in-limbo).

There's good news. It's the weekend. Time to let your hair down, put up your feet and say hello to a "fantabulous" book. Our first giveaway for the summer is The Convenient Groom by Denise Hunter.

A little info about the book:

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She wrote the book--literally--on finding the right mate. But does she really understand what love's about?

Five hours before her Nantucket beach wedding--and on the eve of her big book launch--celebrity marriage counselor Kate Lawrence has everything in place.

Everything, that is, but the groom. She might not have a career, either, when her nationwide audience finds out their marriage guru has been left at the altar.

Enter Lucas Wright, who offers to stand in for the missing husband-to-be and marry her. Kate's desperate enough to agree--although she's sure this Mr. Wright is completely wrong for her. But can they pull it off? And why would Lucas marry her in the first place?

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For your chance to win a copy of the book, leave a comment or email me at bookcontests at gmail . com (The contest ends June 6.)

Vocal Impressions

by
Eileen Astels
www.eileenastels.com

I’ve been thinking about voice a lot lately. I’m not talking about a writer’s voice that is acquired over years of writing and fine tuning their style, I’m referring to the audible voice of our characters.

There are many ways to reveal characterization, and we’re told to try and use as many of the five senses as possible within our novels to add richness and texture to our stories. Hearing is one sense that I often don’t utilize enough. Sure, I try and use onomatopoeia words when possible and describe the rev of an engine with its annoying clickity-clank to give reason for the next repair scene, but what about describing our characters’ unique auditory voice?

Is it enough to have our POV (point of view) character describe another character’s voice as melodic, raspy, alto, tenor, squeaky, high pitched? The list could definitely go on and on, but what about those single-word descriptions? Do they offer enough to give an auditory sense of how the character really sounds? Or is there another way to reveal our character’s voice that might resonate better with our readers?

I did some googling on this subject and discovered that there is a creative way to disclose your character’s voice beyond those general descriptions. If you take a look at this online article you’ll discover how some have described the voice of popular celebrities.

The one I like the best is Bill Malvitz’s description of Marilyn Munroe’s voice. He says: “A voice to make a 7-year-old boy think differently about girls.” If we want to convert that to a one-word description, the best I can come up with is sultry. But doesn’t Malvitz’s description provide a far superior “auditory picture” of Marilyn Munroe’s voice as well as reveal character of not only the one owning the voice, but of the POV character’s personality as well, as this is how he/she chooses to describe it to the readers after all. I’ll never forget this picture that Malvitz’s created through his description, but I’d definitely sweep over the word “sultry” in a novel. Would you?

So, the next time you come to a place in your wip (work in progress) where you’re wanting to describe a main character’s voice, consider doing so by painting a picture, using a simile, metaphor or even an analogy to reveal how this character’s voice is perceived by your POV character. Your readers may hear your characters in a richer, more personal state than they would have with the use of one of those more generic adjectives commonly used today.

I hope this offered some food for thought. I’d love to hear how you reveal your character’s voice in your novels. We can all learn from each other!

Blessings,

Eileen

Eileen Astels posts daily, Monday to Friday on her A Christian Romance Writer’s Journey blog where she offers study notes on writing resources, Authors-Helping-Writers Interviews with Giveaways and Musing’s Friday with Vocabulary Enhancement. She also writes book reviews for ACFW’s Afictionado E-zine.

Getting your book in to the hands of your readers

Hello and welcome!!

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Tiffany Colter and I have a marketing blog at www.WritingCareerCoach.com. I am honored that the Writer's Rest team has invited me to share some marketing tips with you each Tuesday.

I'm not sure how many of you have followed from my blog and how many of you are meeting me for the first time so I hope some of you will introduce yourselves in the comments.

Today we're going to start out by talking a little bit about what marketing is and is not.

Many writers cringe when they hear the word "Marketing". We are authors. We are artists. We don't want to commercialize!!!

Well, without marketing our hourse laboring at a computer and bleeding on the page will have been for nothing. So throw away your previous ideas about marketing. It is NOT a bad thing. In fact, I enjoy many aspects of marketing my writing [one of them I'm doing right now!!] Simply put, marketing is getting your work in to the hands of your readers. So think about who your readers are and how best to communicate with them.

That is marketing!!

Now let me tell you what marketing is NOT. Marketing is NOT hardselling, brow beating or cold calling!! I, like many other shy people, have major phone fear. I cannot talk to a person I don't know on the phone. It simply terrifies me. So if you're the same way then rest assured-we'll talk about other ways to reach our readers.

So to begin marketing start to think about who your reader is, what they like to do and where they are.

Then we'll talk about it more next Tuesday!!

I hope you will all introduce yourselves and next week I'll share a bit more about me and some more ways you can build your writing business.

I have to go now, I have relaxing to do.

Your coach for the Journey, Tiffany Colter

Tiffany Colter can be seen weekdays at www.WritingCareerCoach.com on her blog. If you'd like to know more about her or her products for writers you can visit the same website.

Rest Anywhere

While we visited Cha 'Am, Thailand recently, we passed this restaurant. No one was eating. The family was sleeping at the table. It was hot, muggy, and raining hard outside.

At this beachside resort, people literally rest when they are tired. (As you see above.)

We even found vendors asleep at their little booths of magazines or trinkets.

These people aren't lazy! In fact, we observed the wee hours and late nights of these workers.

But in Thailand, they eat and sleep as they have need. A completely foreign concept to Americans.

What would happen if we really followed the needs of our bodies? Would our economy come to a standstill? Or might we be more productive?

I'm beginning to listen to my body more. I eat 5-6 times a day (lol, small servings) and I've actually taken a few naps!

Hmm,
What's your opinion?

Could you take a baby step into a little more awareness in meeting your physical needs?

How would that work?

Angie
PS For more Thailand photos and travel tips, please visit me over at God Uses Broken Vessels

Small Book Publishers

by
Molly Noble Bull
www.mollynoblebull.com

What has been written about small presses is only partly right.
My new publisher, Tsaba House, is a small publisher, and they have a wonderful artist do all the covers for their books. The covers are truly beautiful and unique. All you have to do is visit my website and see Sanctuary's cover to see what I mean. The quality of the paper and the printing is excellent, too.
But all these extras cost money. Therefore, Sanctuary costs more than other novels of the same length, and that means my sales for Sanctuary might not be as good they might be at a larger publishing house. However, this sharp edge eventually rounds out since Sanctuary will be reprinted for as long as there is a market for it.
Yes, book promotions are very important if you want your small press novel to succeed, and the print runs are not as big. But when you consider that these books will be reprinted again and again, it balances out. And since Sanctuary won a national 2008 contest for published authors, I am hoping there will be a market for Sanctuary for years to come.
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Sanctuary by Molly Noble Bull won the 2008 Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence in the Inspirational category for published novelists.
www.mollynoblebull.com
www.shoutlife.com/mollynoblebull

Taking it to the Limit

My husband and I just spent the last 10 days traveling to and through Thailand with my daughter. We call it our sampler platter. We had the chance to sample a little of several different places and many different foods.

The whirlwind tour was worth it! However, I was intensely dizzy with exhaustion. Travel there-2 hours early in Spokane, 1 hour flight, 3 hour layover in Seattle (then delayed almost 2 hours), 10 and 1/2 hour flight to Tokyo, race to the next plane so as not to miss it. The next leg was 7 and 1/2 hours to Bangkok, an 8 hour layover, then the final one hour flight to Chiang Mai. All in all, 35 hours of travel.

We arrived in the early morning. So to avoid jet lag to the best of our ability, we stayed up. (It helps you acclimate faster.)

Then we toured and toured with short cat naps in the car (driven by Thai Rotary members) or the rented van (often hired by the Rotary.) We saw Chiang Mai, Kamp Phaeng Phet, Cha'am, and much of Bangkok. We climbed to visit Karen Hill Tribes, rode elephants, and shopped in a floating market.

Then we traveled home. We stayed up again because we had to be at the Bangkok airport at 3 a.m. Our flight took less time because we had tail winds to Tokyo, only 6 and 1/2 hours. Then the 2 hour layover and another 10 hour flight to Spokane. A three hour layover there until the last flight-just one more hour. And then the 3 hour drive home. Ufta! (That means something like Oh My Goodness in Swedish.)

I actually fell from side to side on the last leg of the journey in our car. Dizzy with fatigue, sick to my stomach, and completely disoriented.

But it was worth it. I had the opportunity to experience just a sampler platter of my daughter's exchange in Thailand. I had the opportunity to fall in love with a people in another country. I had the joy of understanding the Thai Rotary's theme: Bringing peace to the world one exchange student at a time.

We stayed up with almost no sleep throughout the week. No cell phone. No Lila (my laptop for writing.) A forced vacation from my regular technology. Tough on me. Sometimes my fingers itched to type. Some ideas that flitted through never to be recalled.

But it was worth it.

I saw and ate things I loved. I went places and met people I never foresaw. And learned through finding crabs on mountains that things are not always as I think they are. Sometimes, they are very different. Sometimes I reaffirm what I've already learned.

I love adventure, new things, new foods, and my nap today...it was so satisfying!

I'd charge you to explore to the point of exhaustion, push past it, maintain your graciousness (not so easy when you are over tired) and then sleep in satisfied peace.

Angie
PS For more on adventures in Thailand, keep up with me this week over at my personal blog:
God Uses Broken Vessels

The No-Spin Zone

by
Molly Noble Bull
www.mollynoblebull.com

I told myself that I was not going to add anything more to the Sweet or Sexy thread. I am contracted to write two more long historical novels in the Faith of Our Fathers series, and the sequel to Sanctuary isn’t finished because I had to write two other books first. At the same time, there is more I want to say.
WARNING: YOU ARE ABOUT TO ENTER THE “NO SPIN” ZONE.
Before inspirational novels were available, I read a lot of sweet secular romance novels. I especially liked the cute and funny Regencies. No sex scenes, no petting scenes and plenty of romance. I couldn’t get enough of them and read about six or seven short novels a week.
But all at once the line I was reading also put out novels that contained the very elements I didn’t want to read. Therefore, I couldn’t tell which novels in the series I was going to like and which I was going to dump.
For a while, I played games with myself. I would read along and if the scene seemed to be going in a direction I didn’t like, I simply skipped the next few pages. Trouble was, I never knew how many pages to skip. Often I found myself in the middle of a second by second account of a situation I didn’t want to read about. At other times, I accidentally read a scene I didn’t want to read. At those times, I would mentally rewrite the scene.
He didn’t really touch her breast, he invited her to go on a foxhunt.
After a while, I got tired of skipping pages. By the time I took out everything I didn’t care to read, a two hundred-page book became a twenty-page hop-skip-and jump. And I was tired of creating scenes in novels that didn’t exist. If I was going to do that, I might as well write the entire novel. So that is what I did.
And I stopped reading secular novels. Seven books a week became maybe one novel a month—if that many.
If any editors are reading this, I hope that consider my conclusions.
A romance line for readers like me must be true to my reading interests at all times. I don’t have money to toss on the “maybe this book is what I want to read” pile. I want to know for sure that I am getting what I paid for. No exceptions.
If inspirational romance lines want to put out books that some readers will object to reading, put a product warning on the cover.
THIS NOVEL MIGHT BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME READERS.
Otherwise, readers like me won’t buy their books.
I am going to say good-bye for now and start working on my novel.
And remember, the spin stops here.
Love,
Molly

Sanctuary by Molly Noble Bull is available at most online bookstores like Amazon and Christianbook.com. Just write Molly Noble Bull in the search slot. Or ask for books by Molly Noble Bull at any walk-in bookstore.