Risky Regencies

Scary!

Updated on October 29, 2010 by megan

. . . And I’m not talking Halloween (which, by the way, I have not one, but TWO costumes for; on Saturday, I’m heading to a party with my pal Liz Maverick, and will be dressed as Bea Arthur‘s Maude, which only takes me making my hair gray somehow, since I already have the loud ’70s clothing. Then on Sunday, my son is a samurai, so I’m borrowing a Japanese geisha type top from Liz and will be making myself even whiter than usual in a vague attempt to match him).

No. I am admitting that, for the first time, I’ve signed on to participate in NaNoWriMo, the month-long write 50K words in 30 days event. Why? Why would I do such a thing? Peer pressure. And not even pressure; my friend Kwana said she was gonna, and why didn’t I? Not really pressure so much as a simple question.

So I joined up. And am hoping not to disgrace myself and fail utterly at the task. I already know I won’t write fifty thousand words, but I am hoping the competition will get me to the keyboard rather than waving my hand and saying, ‘why bother?’

I am competitive, in an odd way, and if I know other people are suffering with their word counts it’ll make me feel better (very sschadenfreude-y of me, but I admit my faults).

Plus a newly-made friend (at RWA, but she lives here in Park Slope) told me there are NaNoWriMo write-ins in my neighborhood, so maybe I can go hang out with other sufferers at some point. Whee!

Are you good with deadlines? Do you like the pressure? Do you hate them? How do you force yourself to get things done on time?

Megan

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Megan | 14 Replies

What makes a good booksigning?

Updated on October 28, 2010 by Janet Mullany

I’m doing a few booksignings over the next few weekends and I wanted to ask you what makes a good booksigning, from both sides of the table.
I signed recently at the New Jersey RWA Literacy Bookfair which was a lot of fun. I sat next to Colleen Gleason, one of the authors for Bespelling Jane Austen. We had chocolate. We had bookmarks, magnets, coverflats and big grins on our faces. We had great tottering piles of books and signs with our names on them that tended to fall over.

I’m happy to report that the piles of books did become slightly smaller as time went on and I had time to wander around, admire others’ covers, and even buy a couple of books myself.

So what makes a good signing? First, you have to sell books. Second, you need to know where the bathroom is because, particularly in bookstores, people always ask. You must have things around other than the books, because even if people throw out the bookmarks as soon as they get home, the subliminal message of buy my books for all your friends, pay off my daughter’s college loans, and vote Democrat has imprinted on their brains. In another post I’ll tell you how to design the subliminal message.

I like to do group signings because if a customer approaches you can ask them what they like to read and engage them in conversation, which is the best possible thing you can do. If they don’t read books like yours, you can refer them to the other writers at the table, and they may buy yours anyway. I find I do better at engaging a customer by standing up, smiling, and offering chocolate. I’ve even walked around the bookstore and chatted to people who are browsing and invited them to the table. For me the worst possible scenario is the single lonely writer sitting behind a pile of books and occasionally directing someone to the bathroom.

If I go to a signing I like to feel that I have shared a few seconds or moments exclusively with the writer(s) and that I’m not part of some sort of signing conveyor belt.

I’m signing this Saturday at Borders, Bowie MD, from 2:00–4:00 pm at a Halloween signing. I shall wear special earrings. My partners in crime are Rebecca York, Pamela Palmer, and Catherine Asaro. Members of my local RWA® chapter will appear as costumed minions to herd people over to the table and the store staff will also dress up.

Also the multitalented Catherine Asaro will perform songs from the companion CD to her latest release Diamond Star.

I hope if you’re in the area you’ll drop by. It should be a lot of fun.

What have been your good booksigning experiences? Your worst?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Bespelling Jane Austen, booksignings, Catherine Asaro, Colleen Gleason, Pamela Palmer, Rebecca York | 9 Replies

A Contrarian Voice

Updated on October 27, 2010 by carolyn

On Monday, Diana put up a great post about piracy with link to a site for commenting on Senate Bill 3804, The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act. Here is a link to the text of the bill.

Although I agree there are good reasons behind the bill, I don’t necessarily agree with THIS bill or even with the intent behind it. I also don’t think the bill, should it pass, will be effective.

The effects of book piracy are NOT well understood. The only rigorous study on the subject to date concluded that piracy INCREASES book sales except for the very best selling authors– which is not most of us.

EDITED TO ADD: I know that one of the commenters to Diana’s post referred obliquely to this claim so let me clarify. The study was done by Brian O’Leary of Magellan Research. When I found out his study was $99.00 I emailed him and told him I was sorry I couldn’t afford his study but suggested he contact RWA to talk about getting even better data. He told me he was already in contact with them. Mr. O’Leary was kind enough to send me his study, which I have personally read. The study was based on actual sales numbers as opposed to the made up estimates typically bandied about. Within the parameters of his study, the numbers showed that, indeed, piracy helps the midlist author.

I’ve posted at length at my blog about this (you can go here to read it, but I warn you, it’s a long post. Right now, my position is that authors should demand good solid studies before they spend even five minutes chasing down pirates on their own. Setting aside the ethics of piracy, to date, the good data (by which I mean not the inflated trumped up numbers and conclusions pulled from the ether by companies selling their anti-piracy solution) does not support the conclusion that piracy hurts books sales.

In the very near future I hope to have my opinion changed and informed by rigorous studies by third parties with no financial interest in the results and conclusions.

Book piracy, by the way, goes way back. Publishers have been complaining about this since the 1700’s. That’s why it’s call piracy. Because that was the model they had way back when. If it was new, we’d probably call it something else. The book pirates back then, by the way, were other publishers and Britain itself was a leading pirate of books. Just ask Germany.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged pirating books | 9 Replies

Spooky Tuesday Part Four

Updated on October 26, 2010 by Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

Happy Halloween week, everyone! I can’t believe the holiday is getting so close, I need to go buy more candy and put the finishing touches on the decorations. The weather is finally cooperating here, getting cool and crisp, with leaves drifting to the ground and cloudy, spooky evenings, perfect for little trick or treaters…

I thought, since we’ve looked at various haunts and ghosts this month, we’d wrap up with a little info about the Halloween traditions we still do today. For one–costumes! This is my favorite part of the holiday, since I love to dress up. (This is my Alice in Wonderland costume, which I wore to the Ghouls Gone Wild Halloween parade last weekend! You can’t see it in this pic, but I have a great Alice headband I bought at the Disney Store). The practice of dressing up in costumes and going door to door asking for treats dates back to the Middle Ages (though not quite in the same form we use today!) and is part of the same tradition as Christmas wassailing. Then it was called “souling” and people would go from village house to village house on Hallowmas (November 1), asking for food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2). This seems to have originated in Ireland and England, but there are details that show it was in practice as far south as Italy. In Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare has a line about “puling like a beggar at Hallowmas.” Wearing costumes can be traced back to an ancient Celtic tradition of wearing masks and disguises to fool the spirits on this day, when the veil between the two worlds was thinnest.

“Souling” also involved using candle lanterns carved from turnips to commemorate the dead. Large turnips were hollowed out and carved with scary faces, then placed in windows to keep spirits away. (Pumpkins started being used in the New World, where they were widely available and larger, thus easier to carve than turnips!). I don’t think Hello Kitty was a motif used back then, but I love this pic…

There always seem to be games at Halloween parties, like bobbing for apples. Traditional games seem to involve divination of some sort–a traditional Scottish practice said that to divine one’s future spouse you should peel an apple in one long strip, then toss it over your shoulder. It will form the spouse’s initials. (This seems pretty iffy to me!). Unmarried ladies were also told if they sat in a dark room and looked into a mirror on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror. But if they were to die before they married, a skull would appear instead! (This seems to be a variation of the “Bloody Mary” game so beloved of slumber parties…). Thsi sort of thing seemed so popular in Victorian/Edwardian times that there was a wide range of postcards available for the holiday.

I have a couple of great books that tell more of the history and traditions of Halloween! If you’d like to read more, check out Nicholas Rogers’s Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night and David J. Skal’s Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween.

If you happen to be in the UK for the holiday (as I wish I was!), Hampton Court is offering Ghost Tours, and the Tower is having rare after-dark Twilight Tours I will just be dressing up my dogs in their costumes and handing out candy to trick or treaters, but I guess I can pretend it’s the Tower….

What are your plans for the holiday??? (And don’t forget, I will be back here on Sunday, the 31st to talk about my November releases, a new “Undone” short story, To Court, Capture, and Conquer and “Snowbound and Seduced” in Regency Christmas Proposals. I’ll be giving away copies, too–a sort of Halloween treat…)

Posted in Risky Regencies | Tagged Uncategorized | 6 Replies