This week I had a ton of fun chatting with Booktastik’s Dione Lister. You’ll find my book special listed there under New Releases, along with a lot of other great deals. And today the podcast of my author interview is live. I talk about my latest book, my last book, my next book, and about my writing process. As well as other things, like inspiration, process, community and cats.
Check it out here!
I promised you food as part of my All-Italian blog week to celebrate the launch of The Art of Enchantment. And I woke up this morning with a serious craving for biscotti.
When I want biscotti, my go-to recipe is always by Christine Cushing. No need to re-invent the wheel here. If you are a biscotti fan, this is the BEST!
Lately I’ve seen a trend in coffee shops to monster-sized biscotti of strangely ubiquitous consistency and no discernible flavor. Be careful not to break your teeth.
This is not that.
The recipe is quick and easy. I laid out my ingredients first, since I just moved this week and I wanted to know that I could find everything. There are other versions, with hazelnuts, chocolate or whatever you like best, but today I wanted dried cherries and almonds. In my opinion, the secret ingredient that makes these cookies so good is the grape seed oil. Don’t substitute anything else for that. And don’t leave out the lemon zest or anise because the flavor is so Italy.
Basically I mix up the dry ingredients in one bowl, blend up the wet ingredients in the mixer, stir them together and presto!
Then I pour/drop/shape the sticky dough into two long, rather narrow logs on buttered parchment. Bake for about 20 minutes. It gets quite golden brown, but it’s still a bit soft inside.
After the first-baked slabs cool for fifteen minutes, slice on the diagonal into 3/4″ slices, lay them on their sides and bake again until crispy and dry. Yum. You can dip them in your caffe latte if you like them soft, but they are just as delicious eaten straight off the pan all by themselves. Buon appetito!
1 1/2 cups and 2 tbsp. all purpose flour (405ml)
2 tsp baking powder (10 ml)
1 tsp ground anise seed (5 ml)
pinch salt
grated zest of 2 lemons
1 cup sugar (250 ml)
1/3 cup grape seed oil (75 ml)
3 eggs
1 cup toasted whole almonds, skin on (250 ml)
1/2 cup dried cherries, coarsely chopped (125 ml)
butter, for brushing baking tray
Note: I used my new convection oven for the first time, so I adjusted the times down about 5 minutes per stage.
Let me know if you try the recipe and if you agree they are the best biscotti ever.
I hope you make yourself a nice coffee, sit down with a biscotti or two turn on your soundtrack and settle in to a good read, once you pick up your copy of my new release, The Art of Enchantment, on special this week for only .99. Ciao!
Life is a JourneyDo you love to travel to foreign locales? I do. I haven’t been everywhere, not even close. But over the years, I’ve been on a journey or three. And the places I haven’t been, I love reading about in novels.
Fiction brings facts alive for me. I always enjoy learning about new places, different cultures or customs, art and architecture and history. This is much better through the lens of a story than from a dry encyclopedia or text book. But that’s me.
So when I set out to write fiction, I couldn’t help but write stories about young women traveling or living abroad, perhaps studying, vacationing or on a personal quest of some kind. I’ve written three books like this.
The Art of Enchantment, though it wasn’t the first written, will be the first to be published on March 20th. I’m so excited to share it with readers at last.
Coming up with a series tagline that represented both the “journey” aspect, and the “personal growth” aspect of these stories was hard. I thought of and discarded two dozen options before finally settling on “Life is a Journey“. It may not be witty, but it captures everything that’s in my mind and in my heart when I write these books.
Because I love to travel, very often it’s those exotic, stimulating experiences and environments that inspire my story ideas. (That’s as good an excuse as any to plan another trip, if you ask me!) Writing the stories brings back memories, and enriches my original travel experiences. As do these photos from my journey.
A Dissimulation of Doves was inspired by a trip to York, England, back in 2006, and specifically by a charming old inn where we stayed. I still remember lying awake one night, restless with jet lag, imagining the people who owned and worked at the hotel.
What kinds of adventures might they have had, both in the past and present? And what would happen if a young Canadian woman came here to find out?
Another work in progress, currently titled Tempered by Love, was inspired by a summer stay in the south of France in 2009. Not Provence, which is perhaps more familiar to North American travelers. Rather Aquitaine, a very special province full of fascinating geology, pre-history, history and rich culture. In particular, an annual Medieval Festival in the village where we stayed conjured an almost magical atmosphere. Jugglers, acrobats and even giants might appear, and inspire life changing events for an unsuspecting traveller passing through.
Finally, a month long stay in Tuscany in 2012 was the inspiration for The Art of Enchantment. Tuscany is already so rich in art and history. It’s such a beautiful, living landscape, it can’t help but inspire storytelling. Strangely though, the seed for this idea came from an imaginary place – a crumbling Renaissance villa.
As we were driving along a scenic country road, I got to thinking about the fact that the artist Sting apparently owns an old villa somewhere, in Umbria, if I recall correctly. And I got to wondering about the fate of all those old buildings – who owns them now – what are they used for – and how do people, especially old families, afford the costs of upkeep and repairs (it’s the architect in me, I guess.) How would one go about rescuing it? That’s what got me thinking about old money and new money, a clash of worlds, and a way to give an old villa a new life by making it into a passion project for two creative dreamers. Thus Clio and Guillermo were born!
To celebrate the connection between travel, romance and storytelling, and get you in the mood for reading The Art of Enchantment, I’ve included a few photographs taken on my 2012 trip to Italy. Enjoy!
Tell me about your own travels in the comments section below! What exotic places have you visited that got you dreaming about what might have been, and what could be!
Who knows, maybe you’ll inspire my next book.
And don’t forget to pick up a copy of The Art of Enchantment, available for pre-sale right now. Be swept away on a journey of love…
I’ve just passed the midway point through my 30 day Kindle Scout campaign for my book Reconcilable Differences and am checking in with my results and experience thus far. If you didn’t catch my last post about my path to publishing, at the end I introduced my latest venture.
To recap: Amazon runs the Kindle Scout program to which authors submit unpublished works (title, cover, longline, 50 pp sample and an author bio/blurb) and, if selected, provides a 30 day opportunity to expose your book to the public and solicit nominations through your network/social media. After this time, they either offer to publish your book… or they don’t. The implication is that the number of nominations you receive affects the deal, but I’m not entirely convinced. More on this later.
As I was preparing Reconcilable Differences for independent publishing anyway, I figured there’d be no harm experimenting with this relatively new Amazon publishing program. Some early-adopter authors, such as self-publishing guru Martin Crosbie, and Lexi Revellian, have found success. If I were published by Amazon, it sounded to me like a very good option for a debut author with a smallish social network and a limited capacity for social media marketing. If I didn’t make the cut, well, back to Plan A.
Since I’ve been at it for quite a number of years (9-10?) I actually thought my social media reach would be reasonable. Despite being a lazy, infrequent blogger, I’m somewhat active on several platforms, including Twitter, FB, Pinterest, LinkedIn and now Instagram. What I’m discovering (not that I haven’t been told this before) is that you need a huge (as in thousands and thousands) of connections, OR a very loyal, devoted and passionate following of around a thousand. I have neither.
Possibly for this reason, despite shamelessly flogging my campaign this past 18 days, my “page view” results have been very, very modest. Quiet, one might say. As of Day 18 I’ve had only 363 page views. This has qualified me for the mysterious but vaguely desirable Hot & Trending list exactly ZERO hours so far. I can’t tell you what it’s like to drop-kick your baby out into the wide world and receive such a resounding… whisper.
Nevertheless, there are several terrific things that have come of the experience already.
The first is that I forced myself to go out there and actually promote my own work, something many an introverted writer will tell you is akin to sticking pins in your eyes. I posted on comfy and familiar channels, such as Facebook, where presumably my “friends” are fairly indulgent and supportive, although I suspect their patience is wearing thin. I personally solicited family and friends by email. I’ve tweeted to a broader mixed audience, and I’ve even mentioned it quietly on LinkedIn, a professional networking environment seemingly more conducive to the exchange of ideas than the flogging of wares. I’ve also pinned it on Pinterest but I don’t think I’ve had any page views linked from that source, and created ‘events’ on Goodreads and had some results. Some of this data is made available to Kindle Scout authors through statistics that update every 24 hours. For me this occurs somewhere between 3 and 3:30 am. And no, I don’t get up to check. It’s just not that exciting.
It’s interesting to see where the external traffic comes from though. The range of externally linked traffic gives some idea of how effective my marketing efforts have been. Although the effect is small, this is still very useful information going forward. If I make noise, who is listening? And who is more likely to take action? During the 18 days of my campaign so far, the split between internal Kindle Scout traffic and external links has remained constant at approximately 40-60.
So what does it all mean, and what is likely to happen next?
I’ve also participated on a number of writer forums, such as KindleBoards, writer’s group’s such as RWA, WFWA, Writer Unboxed and author blogs, and got involved in a few discussions. There are a variety of opinions out there among authors about the risks and rewards of the Kindle Scout program.
It seems to me those that take a cynical approach are likely in the habit of hedging their bets, and not allowing their hope too much reign. It’s easy to get hurt in this business. Too easy to be deeply disappointed yet again. So never letting yourself expect much might seem the safest bet of all. Those of you who are writers will understand that’s it’s never easy, no matter which route you choose to publishing, or how you go about managing your business afterwards. The facts of Kindle Scout are more optimistic.
Popular topics of discussion among participant authors include whether being on the Hot & Trending list is important for selection, and what the most important factors for selection might actually be. Reports from the battlefield indicate that no, the Hot & Trending list doesn’t matter. There are reported cases of books that spend a full 30 days on the Hot & Trending list getting a pass, and books that never hit the Hot & Trending list getting publishing deals.
While this is especially encouraging in my case, it’s interesting to speculate why. This seems obvious to me. Everyone knows you can buy supporters and reviews, and even buyers of books. Amazon knows this too. This is one of the reasons there are so many rules around who can leave book reviews on their site, and why those rules keep changing. They’re interested in staying one step ahead of the players, hackers and scammers who think they’re clever enough to “work the system.” Even earnest, hard working authors who try simply to understand how things work in order to do better have the rug pulled out from under them on a regular basis.
Which leads me to believe that a) you can’t really fool an organization a large and powerful as Amazon, and b) they are ultimately interested in your book succeeding on it’s own merits. Not that they won’t help you along if they want to. It’s the power of Amazon marketing that makes publishing through them so desirable.
And if that’s true, then what really makes your book competitive?
I have theorized that Amazon may be interested in evaluating potential authors’ social reach and social media marketing savvy, and use the campaign results to do so, but others disagree with me. They may also be interested in the general public appeal of the candidates as a measure of their future success. But as was pointed out to me, why would Amazon care about this? If they want to sell something, they know how. Unlike most other publishers, they don’t need our help. Point taken.
Also, so many of the book covers are amateurish or just plain awful, that I wonder if what attracts page views has more to do with which genres are popular with the demographics that are more likely to hang out at Kindle Scout or respond to social media appeals than they are with the books themselves. Do the people nominating books actually take the time to read the sample pages? It also makes me wonder if nominations are weighted by Amazon according to the online behavior, nomination history, and perhaps most important, past book-buying practices, including the relevance of genre to the candidate’s.
One other marketing experiment I tried was to create a HeadTalker campaign. HeadTalker is a crowd-sourced promotion tool, like crowd-funding, that leverages the social networks of your supporters to send out a huge blast of announcements. I managed to get 25 supporters for my campaign within the deadline, so I’ll see within the next day or two whether the 969,780 reach makes an impression on my Kindle Scout campaign. And ultimately, whether this kind of social support makes a difference to Amazon.
Bottom line, the story and the writing, as always, are most important. Every book will find its readers eventually, even a quiet one. And the measure of a reader’s satisfaction rests with the story itself. You may need a little editing, and help designing a more appealing cover, but Amazon, like other publishers, will help you with that. It’s in their interest to do so. You may get only 50% royalties, but they get the other half, so your success is theirs as well. But the books, and the authors, that will sell are the ones that people want to read, and enjoy. So after all is said and done, I think I’ll put my faith and hard work into more and better writing, and leave the mysteries of marketing to others.
My impressions are that writers who’ve been selected for publication have been treated well by a professional and supportive team of editors, designers and marketers at Amazon, and have no regrets about participation in the program. Whether you see it as a loss leader, a great way to launch, or a reliable and relatively pain-free way to pursue publishing for all of your projects, you won’t do worse with Amazon than on your own, with the big five or a boutique digital press, and you might actually do better.
Reconcilable Differences cover
You can help my campaign, and perhaps help Reconcilable Differences get published. Please click the link and have a look, and if you think the book is worthy, give it your vote. Also please pass this along to friends, family and other readers who might be interested in helping out. As a bonus, those who vote for a successful candidate receive a free e-book as thanks. So we all win! If you don’t mind checking out the book, here’s the link: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/JXXN1LUS2SHW
Today I listened to the ProBlogger podcast PB052: 10 Writing Tips to Help You Sound More Human, here. You can go there later to listen to the whole thing, but stay with me for a bit to think about this one idea.
ProBlogger Darren Rouse
It’s full of great advice from “Beth Dunn, Product Editor-in-Chief at HubSpot. In [this] podcast episode, Beth shares really practical tips and strategies you can use for helping you sound more human in the way you write your blog content.”
Overall I found this very helpful for someone like me that’s still (perpetually – um, I mean always) struggling to figure out how to blog, and blog well. All of these tips are intended to build your brand through managing how your readers perceive (see) you.
But there was one tip that I really related to, and that was #2: Convey that you’re honest. How? Beth suggests that the way to do this is to use simpler, shorter words, which go a long way to making you sound more trustworthy. Moreover, using long, complex words takes more brain power both to read and to understand. This “cognitive burden” as ProBlogger host Darren Rouse suggests, takes more time and energy, neither of which your readers – that is my readers – you – have to spare.
But first I have to confess that, as a child, I was a really annoying little prig. I didn’t know this at the time, of course. But with my blue eyes, and blonde ringlets, my Pollyanna notions and goody-two-shoes righteousness, I must have been obnoxious. I was one of those kids who didn’t like dirt, noise, old people, other kids—especially boys, sharing my things, not getting my own way, or my food touching. Yeah, like that.
Not me – but you get the idea
I can remember a time, about grade four maybe, when some kid in the back of class pitched a rubber eraser at some girl’s head and made her cry, and no one would fess up. Classic scenario. The poor beleaguered (er, I mean long-suffering) nuns (yes, I know, Catholic school *eye roll*) decided to haul each and every kid in the class down to the principal’s office, one at a time, trying to intimidate (scare?) a confession out of someone, anyone, by threatening the strap.
By the time my turn came, my stiff little back was up and those nuns didn’t stand a chance. I strode in there and announced (in my undoubtedly squeaky, righteous little girl voice): “I didn’t do anything wrong and you have NO RIGHT to strap me!” They smiled and thanked me (probably laughing into their wimples) and sent me back to class. Presumably that’s what happened to everyone else too, but in my arrogant little mind, it was the way I’d handled it. I’d told them!
I was a word-nerd from the start, and because I loved words, ideas, books and learning, of course I loved school. That right there was enough to make me unpopular.
I wasn’t unpopular, though. Not really. I wasn’t Miss Congeniality, but I always had friends. And I didn’t mind be the teacher’s pet. I wasn’t mean or rude or a snob. I was polite to everyone and never stepped out of bounds, so my nose was squeaky clean.
When I was nine years old, we moved to a new, faraway neighborhood. For about a year and a half, I bussed into town to the same school. But after a while, I got to know some local kids and decided I wanted to go to the local elementary school. Now picture grade six.
NOT my Grade 6 class photo, but gosh it could be! Right down to the teacher Mr. Now.
It was a pretty hip school, with open areas and blended grades and other new-agey ideas from the 1970’s that probably had merit, but didn’t amount to much teaching and learning. Coming from my strict Catholic school culture, I was light years ahead academically.
And, apparently, I used really big words. My new classmates were quick to point this out, and to ridicule me relentlessly (um, non-stop) for it. It hurt. After all, I was just being my genuinely priggish little self. I wasn’t a snob or trying to lord it over them. Just using my “god-given” talents.
Think about it for a sec. If you ask someone like Malcolm Gladwell or educator and author of The Element Ken Robinson they’ll tell you that it’s the combination of a spark of talent, a lot of passion and a thousand hours of practice that create success. So if you take someone like, I don’t know, Keith Richards say, who’s spent his long, long, long life playing the guitar and singing, you’d expect him to be pretty good at it. You wouldn’t say to him that he should pull his punches so he doesn’t look like a snob, or like he’s trying too hard. Would you?
Back to my story. Wishing to be at least somewhat popular, I quickly adapted to this new hostile environment by dumbing down my language. I used simpler, shorter words, learned to speak some kind of regular kid vernacular (slang?), and spiced things up with vulgar swear words to be safe. I still speak a little like this, though I do know how to write “proper English.”
Later on in life, I thought I’d probably short-changed myself. With more support, maybe I could have taken that edge and turned it into future opportunities: scholarships, better jobs, an earlier start to my writing career, maybe. Who knows?
I’m not saying you can’t communicate intelligent ideas with simple words. But the English language has so many. It just seems like such a waste. What do you think? If this is true, and apparently it is, where can a person put a good education use?
I promised myself that I would never again be untrue to myself. I would never pretend to be something that I was not. And I would never sell my own strengths and talents short. And if people didn’t like it, well, too bad for them. That was who I was.
And now they’re telling me I have to exchange my hard-earned vocabulary for a simpler, more reader-friendly one in order to appear honest and trustworthy. My inner prig is pouting.
I want to throw a party for other disadvantaged over-educated intellectual snobs so everyone can show off their language mastery and toss as many big words around as they like. It would be very exclusive. No wait, that sounds like a university faculty party full of boring and pretentious boors. Bad idea.
Tell me what you think. Were you every ridiculed for being too good at something? Do you prefer to read blog posts and articles that use simple shorter words rather than stretching your knowledge of the English language and keeping the bar high? I look forward to hearing your opinion.
I’ve been tagged by friend, colleague and crit partner @donnabarker in the on again/off again 7 x 7 x 7 seven line challenge that goes around writers’ circles. Donna was recently tagged by Amy Sedgemore.
view of the city of York
Since I was just notified last week that my manuscript A Dissimulation of Doves has won first place in the YA/NA category of the Chatelaine Writing Contest for Women’s Fiction and Romance run by Chanticleer Book Reviews, I’ve chosen the excerpt from that book.
Ok. So here goes (btw: it looks like more than 7 lines because of formatting):
I twist out of his grasp impatient with his diplomacy. “Do you have to jump on every bandwagon that rolls into town? Can’t you and I just be our own show sometimes?”
His eyes glower and he shrugs. A huge shrug. A shrug with huge attitude and arrogance. “You want independence, eh? Isn’t dat what you fight with your family about? Dat’s why you come wit’ me, no? But you ‘ang on me like a leach. You can’t do anyt’ing wit’out me. I’m suffocating!”
I suck in a deep breath. My heart thumps, slow and hard, filling my chest, aching. I step back…
Aaand, that’s all folks.
Stay tuned for more info about the Chatelaine prize. I’ll be heading to Bellingham for the Chanticleer Authors Conference September 26-29.
Before then I’ll be putting up a new landing page here with a beautiful new book cover for A Dissimulation of Doves. You’ll be able to sign up for my email list to receive advanced notice of publication of this *ahem* award winning book.
Let me know in the comments section what these seven lines make you think of. What questions arise in your mind? Are you curious to read more of A Dissimulation of Doves?
