Amazon promotion sparks inner debate

Last week, Amazon quietly launched its big Sunshine Deals promotion, and my inner writer and reader began to argue.

If you haven't heard - and you probably have - Sunshine Deals is a promotion between Amazon and some traditional publishers, allowing Amazon to sell 600+ e-books by big-name authors for cheap, cheap, cheap (99 cents, $1.99 and $2.99) until June 15.

It's a great way to fill up your Kindle. In fact, that's the whole marketing campaign.

And so the reader inside me was ecstatic. Despite all the hype, bestsellers for Kindle often aren't really that cheap, at least not for skinflints like me. I mean, they're more inexpensive than the hard covers, sure, but they're not as drop-dead cheap as we might have been led to believe when e-readers first went on sale. (At least that's my opinion).

But the writer inside me - whiny little thing that she is - wasn't quite so thrilled. I'm a writer, after all. And I'm selling my e-book on Kindle for 99 cents. I have enough competition with other indie writers. Do I really need the big-name guys horning in on my price range? They have agents, publicists, probably massage therapists. Sheesh. Don't they get enough breaks as it is?

My inner writer was not pleased at all, no sirree.

But then I began perusing the site. I started shopping. I began filling up my Kindle with bargains. I realized I couldn't get mad at any promotion that promotes reading.

And I also realized the promotion hasn't really affected my sales. Hmm. Maybe me and the big boys don't share the same readership. Yet. : )

Writing? In this weather? Umm, maybe ...

Remember when you were in school and the sun would be shining and it would be warm outside, and everyone would raise their hands and say, "Can we have class outside today?!"

I'm getting that feeling all over again.

I've read a couple of posts from writers lately, talking about how the fresh, warm weather has sparked their creativity. I envy them. I'm finding myself distracted.

I love to write, sure. I need to. I have projects thisclose to being finished. And I have fun projects I want to start.

But after a long, cold Midwestern winter and an incredibly soggy spring, it's finally sunny and warm outside. I'm reveling in it. I can't get enough of the sunshine. I want to swim in the pool. I want to garden. I want to simply sit outside. I want to teach myself to take nature photos so when winter inevitably arrives again, I'll have a way to remember this time.

But I need to write. So I'm thinking of taking my laptop outside for a little bit of a compromise. And I'm forcing myself to focus.

Because if you'll remember, we didn't often get to have class outside.

It takes a village to raise an indie writer

I made a book trailer the other day for my book, Death on Deadline. It is 60 seconds long, and I forgot the words about seven times. It was shot by a professional videographer on his lunch break.

I'm paying him in cupcakes and effusive thanks.

My book cover was created by a friend (Claire Innes-Wilbur)who happens to be an extremely talented graphic artist. Her payment? My everlasting gratitude.

My book was edited literally dozens of times - by my husband, by my writer and editor friends and even by my ever-patient sisters. When it came time to format and post it, I was lost. My good friend Traci Bauer, who helps manage a daily newspaper, takes night classes and spends literally no time on herself, came to my rescue.

My next book cover is being drawn by an accomplished artist friend, Chuck Todd. He has a wonderful children's book out that he illustrated - There's a Hummingbird in my Backyard - and he and I are working out ways to cross-promote each other. I'm incredibly excited.

Writers - especially indie ones like me who are just starting out - need help. I'm happy to say we can often find it. I've found the indie authors I've met to be incredibly supportive.

The people who have helped me have been absolutely wonderful, even when I pestered them with e-mails and shoved sentence after sentence in their face, insisting they choose which feels better.

I talked to a good friend the other day, and when I mentioned to her that my book sales were up that month, she expressed surprise. Then she quickly explained herself. "It's just, well... there are so many e-books out there," she said.

I agreed. There are. And some are absolutely terrible. But many aren't.

With the right village of support around you, it's a lot easier to help readers tell the difference.

Write what you know - but know a lot

Write what you know - isn't that what we're told all the time?

But I wonder about that advice. I understand the premise, but I think it falls just a bit short. After all, if I wrote what I knew on a daily basis, I'd be penning a fascinating tome on cubicles and cafeteria lines. Isn't the real trick to stretch and learn and know more?

When I wrote Death on Deadline, I put my protagonist in a newsroom because I was a reporter for so many years. I felt confident in that environment. That's what I knew. But I needed more drama - more mayhem. However ... I hadn't killed any editors. (Although I'd been tempted.) So I researched poisons, contemplated motives, debated logistics.

I think I was starting to give my husband the creeps, but in the end, I did feel like I was writing what I knew - just in a different way.

I didn't realize how important believability in fiction was until I heard something that rang false.

I attended a writing group once where a young man brought his manuscript; he read aloud from a part where a woman received a prenatal ultrasound. But it was obvious he had no idea how an ultrasound worked. I was pregnant at the time, and this bothered me immensely. But when I politely questioned his description, he was openly hostile.

"That's how it works in my book," he said stubbornly. Fine, I thought. But will it work for your readers?

New projects go word by word, bird by bird

Starting a new writing project can be so daunting. All those ideas in your head, waiting to be organized. All those blank pages. All that ... nothingness.

I think it's so hard to start over. In fact, I try not to even think of it that way, to even use those words. I try to look at it as just more storytelling, another chance to share what I'm thinking with a new group of friends.

I take it page by page, sentence by sentence, word by word, if I have to.

For motivation, I think of a story from one of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott. She tells this story in her wonderful bestseller, Bird by Bird:

"My older brother, who was 10 at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at the family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."

Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

When do deadlines really become deadly?

Years ago, I watched a cocky young reporter have a meltdown while covering a major election. The clock was ticking, editors were hovering and he realized, suddenly and sickeningly, that no coursework had prepared him for pressure like this.

He started to cry. Then he started to hyperventilate. It wasn't pretty.

And this was when newspapers were relatively fat and happy, when seats were filled and shareholders were content. Not like now, when executives have sliced and diced newsrooms, leaving only the few, the brave and the very, very tired.

I was thinking about that the other day as I read David Callahan's piece in The Huffington Post, one that analyzed the case of Sari Horwitz - the Washington Post reporter recently suspended for plagiarism that occurred while she was covering the Arizona shootings.

See, Horwitz isn't some young hotshot. She's a Pulitzer Prize winner. And in her apology, Horwitz mentioned the stress of the tight deadlines she was under. But plagiarism? This is ... worrisome.

I don't know Horwitz; I don't know anything about the situation. But I know deadlines. I know that feeling of rising panic and the power it takes to quell it. I still remember how my heart would start beating faster and how I would count backwards to calm myself and slow things down. I know the feeling of how everyone is counting on you and how you better not screw up.

I don't work in a newsroom anymore. I can't even imagine how tough it is today - with staffs that are skeletal and expectations that are still sky-high.

I would never condone plagiarism, obviously. It's inexcusable. In Death on Deadline, plagiarism and the power of information are a big part of the story. That's fiction, of course. But I have to wonder if the issues caused by tight deadlines and corporate cutting might just be bleeding into real life.

E-book world is easy, even for techno-saurs

I'll be the first to tell you I'm a writer, not a salesperson. And I'm sure not the technical type.

But I finally, yes finally, put my book up for sale in Amazon's Kindle store. I had hemmed and hawed forever. I thought it would be too technical. I wouldn't know what to do. I'd get confused. Blah, blah, blah ... excuse, excuse, excuse. Then one day, I just realized that nobody was going to do it for me.

So I ventured tentatively onto the KDP site, the Kindle Digital Platform for self-publishing. http://kdp.amazon.com
After a few false starts, I uploaded my book. Just. Like. That. It was actually pretty easy, even for a techno-saur like me. And I'm even selling a few copies - not only here, but on Kindle UK. (Go figure). Maybe I'll be realy popular in Europe - you know, the David Hasselhoff of self-publishers, if you will. Or ... not.

So if your e book is completed and you just have a case of nerves, take a deep breath and dive in. It's really not that bad. I swear.