This month on the Blood-Red Pencil we’re taking a look at unusual forms of marketing that you might be able to implement to give your sales a boost. Who doesn’t want to see their sales go up, right? Well, if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from all my years of publishing, it’s that the old adage “Writing is a solitary profession” isn’t as true as it sounds at first. In fact, the biggest boost to my career that I’ve had yet has come from working with friends. Me and some of my author friends. I swear, they told me not to smile for this picture Working with and cross-promoting for your fellow authors can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. First and foremost, it’s important to have a network of writers who write in your same genre. Whether you write Romance, Mystery, Science Fiction, or Literary Fiction, you need to have a like-minded group that you can go to for help and support, for beta-reading and feedback, and for help with promo. The easiest way that authors can cros...

Photo by Bonnie Burton, courtesy of the Star Wars photostream on Flickr The term ‘stage mom’ provokes an instant, visceral reaction in most of us. We immediately conjure up images of pushy parents, barging into agent’s offices or haranguing a director for more screen or stage time, or else we picture painfully young girls dressed in puffy dresses with make-up. It’s not necessarily a pretty sight. But I have to say, from my years in theater, there is a good side to stage mom-ery. Those are the moms who get up early every day, make sure their child has a nourishing breakfast, drives them to classes and lessons and auditions, and supports them every step of the way in their dream of greatness. As writers—yep, you guessed it—we need to be stage moms for our book babies. We’re the ones who brought them into the world, after all. We’re the ones who have to get them looking their best, make sure they’re ready to go out there in the world, and we’re the ones who have to be thei...

It still vaguely surprises me when I tell people I write Romance and they get that startled look. That look like Romance isn’t “real” writing or that it somehow cheapens what I do compared to what other authors do. Fortunately for me, that look generally only comes from fellow authors and academics, not readers. Readers love Romance, as proven by the gigantic percentage of the book market that Romance takes up. But do I write Romance because it sells so well, particularly in digital format for Indie authors? Nah, that’s icing on the cake. I write Romance because I love a good love story. I adore watching my heroes and heroines fall in love and overcome obstacles. And for the naysayers out there, yes, it’s escapism, and one could even argue it’s wildly unrealistic. But it’s the dream we would love to see become a reality. I love to dream. Okay, but why the heck do I write Historical Romance, let alone Western Historical Romance? Aren’t those genres, like, really, really dead? Tho...

The week before last, I had the pleasure of attending the RT Booklover’s Convention in Dallas, Texas. And while this is primarily a reader event for Romance lovers, there were quite a few workshops and networking opportunities for writers. I’d never been to this conference before, so I didn’t know what to expect. I had a fantastic time, though, and more importantly, I learned a lot about what’s going on in the industry for indie writers right now, today. Me gearing up for the book signing at RT Dallas The short answer to “What’s the state of indie publishing today?” is that things are constantly in flux. But then again, the same goes for the traditional publishing industry. One of the workshops I attended was presented by a panel of agents and editors from the big five publishers, all of whom agreed that trends are flipping and shifting faster than they ever have before. Where once any given sub-genre would stick around for a couple of years at the top of the popularity pile, no...

One of the biggest struggles that we have as authors is keeping focused on doing our job in a world that is full of distraction. And I’m talking about distractions like family, the day job, sleep, and the need to occasionally eat. Not having time to write (or procrastinating away that time) is one of the top problems that we writers have. I know that the busier I get, the harder it is for me to stick to my writing schedule. I’m sure the same goes for all of us. What’s a poor, busy writer to do? I’ve recently discovered a fabulous way to stay on task and to receive encouragement from other writers who are in the same boat as I am. You’ve heard of critique groups and writing partners, well, I recently joined an accountability group. We're all in this together photo by Liam Quinn via Flickr Commons So what’s an accountability group and how does that help the writing process? The accountability group that I belong to was organized as an off-shoot of another, much larger w...

Today is a special day in my writing world. It’s the anniversary of my mom’s death in 2001. And if you’re asking yourself how the anniversary of the death of someone so close to me can be important to my writing, well, it’s all about support. Writing is a solitary endeavor, but it takes an impressive support network to be able to push through the writer’s block and the deadlines, the rewrites and the rejection. That’s not even counting the life of a book after it’s published. But for a lot of us, the influence of family starts long before that. Raise your hand if you owe at least half of what you know in terms of human interactions, good and bad, to your family. I’m definitely raising my hand here. A wise friend of mine once said that we aren’t given our family as a source of unlimited support, we’re actually given our family so that we can experience every possible bad thing and trying emotion in a contained environment in order to prepare us for the world. In a writer’s best-...

March is Women’s History Month. When I found this out on that great well of information known as the internet, it got me to thinking about the great women authors who have influenced my writing over the years. Maybe it was because I attended an all-girls school, but as I look back on my literary education, it’s mostly classic authoresses, like Jane Austen, the Brontës, Emily Dickinson, and Harper Lee, who loom large in my imagination. Jane Austen - Image courtesy of Wikicommons There’s something about the unique emotional complexity of some of the great female authors that I believe all writers should study and try to emulate. In many cases, the worlds that women write about are far closer and more intimate than the worlds of their male counterparts. Jane Austen was something of a revolutionary for writing about the necessity of a good marriage and what the lack of one meant for women at the time she was writing. Harper Lee took on the injustices she saw around her through the ey...

I’m not sure why, but the genre of Romance tends to be an easy target for people who want to shoot down a particular genre. I’ve heard so much abuse of the genre for being cliché, escapist, unrealistic, and second-rate. Of course, the thing that makes me shake my head at the folks who throw that mud is that, as a genre, it’s supposed to be escapist, idealistic, and hopeful. That’s why Romance is routinely one of the highest-selling genres. So let’s embrace Romance as a genre. What do you need to know to join the ranks of those of us who can’t seem to write without writing a love story? What exactly is a Romance novel? According to the Romance Writers of America , a book qualifies for the Romance genre if it contains two things. Yep, just two things, and I quote (from the RWA website): “Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.” Having a central love story means that the crux of the plot revolves aro...

Writing is a solitary profession. With the exception of a few remarkable people who work in writing teams, few people can conceive of an idea, draft it, and then edit and revise to create a finished project. This much is obvious. But what about when that initial stage is over and your book is out there in the world? For those of us who are self-published especially, once you click “publish,” approaching a writing career as a solitary endeavor might not be the best plan of action. Only one person can bring a book into the world, but sometimes it takes a little help to get it to soar. This is where publicists and author assistants come in mighty handy. You hear about a lot of the big names having assistants, but the truth is, even someone who is just starting out or who is building an indie career can use the professional help of someone whose job it is to build up the work you’ve already done. Working with a publicist has been one of the best professional decisions I’ve ever made....

photo courtesy of Quinn Dombrowski via flickr Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb. J.K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith. Jayne Ann Krentz and Jayne Castle AND Amanda Quick. There is a whole world of authors out there writing different genres under different pen names. As if launching and nurturing one career identity wasn’t enough! The thing is, as we enter this new year, I’m about to create a new persona in a new genre myself. So before I dig myself into a hole as I turn over this new leaf, I thought I’d do my research and ask for some advice from author friends who are already balancing multiple identities. One of the things that I remember being told early on in my writing and publishing journey was that I had better pick just one genre that I could write in prolifically and that I should be willing to part with all of the other genres that I could be writing. I never liked that answer, and as it turns out, neither did a lot of the authors I know. The main reason my author friends cit...

photo by Jlhopgood , via Flickr   When I first started this journey of writing for publication many years ago, I had one major fear that loomed large above all of the others. I wasn’t afraid of meeting deadlines, I wasn’t afraid of having my work evaluated and edited by a professional, and I wasn’t afraid that my work wasn’t good enough. Nope. What I really feared was that someday, someone would come along and publically trash my baby. Because I knew it was going to happen at some point. I knew it. I think it’s physically impossible not to have someone at some point give you a really, really bad review. I mean, J.K. Rowling has 1-star reviews for Harry Potter . Heck, The Goldfinch , a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, had 1,604 1-star reviews when I checked for this post. Not everybody likes every book, and books don’t come with a mind-meld sensor that warns the reader that what they’re about to read really isn’t for them. Bad reviews are a fact of life as a writer. I told m...

photo by KAZ Vorpal , via Flickr I stopped watching commercial tv on December 21 st , 2007. I did it for two reasons. One, 2008 was an election year and there is nothing I hate more than political commercials. Two, I could no longer handle the time suck that was taking me away from writing. Yes, I traded in my TV set for my keyboard, and I’ve never regretted the decision. Of course, I’ve never regretted the decision because I didn’t stop watching TV entirely. When I watch now, it’s on DVD or Amazon Prime, and nine times out of ten, I’ve paid for what I’m watching. I don’t mind paying either, because as horrific and distracting as most TV is, sometimes a good show is pure gold to a writer. How can watching TV or movies make you a better writer? Wow, there are so many answers to that question. Both movies and episodes of TV shows are the most brilliant, time-sensitive ways to study the three-act structure, for one. Paying close attention to the arc of the segments between comm...

Image by Helfin Owen via Flickr We hear it all the time, and I mean ALL the time: write what you love. Just about every writing advice guide out there tells us to learn the craft, pay attention to the industry, but in the end, write what we love. Because if you try to chase trends or if you write solely for the Benjamins, your heart will not show through in your work and it will fall flat. And I believe this. Really, I do. But I also write historical western romance. Have you ever tried to pitch historical western romance to a traditional publisher? Let me just tell you, it’s not pretty. The thing I hear over and over in the romance world—seriously, like a broken record—is that the hot genres in romance right now are contemporary and erotica (and that vampires are dead, historicals are on their way out, and westerns were DOA years ago). To a certain extent, sales reflect this, although not nearly to the extent that the industry would have us believe. The problem remains, what ...

Image by Karen Woodward , via Flickr Okay, I have a confession to make. I’m in the process of going against everything I believed about my writing style. As long as I can remember, I’ve started the writing process with nothing but my characters and a situation in mind. It’s the way things have always been. I, Merry Farmer, was a pantser. As comfortable as pantsing has been, though, I’ve had this sense that there might be a more efficient way to do this novel-writing thing. Over the years my pure pantsing style has evolved to having a clear idea of the end of the book and a few major plot points along the way, then writing notes about what I’m writing as I write it to make sure I’m still on track. It’s served me well…and caused a lot of editing and revision. This summer, a light bulb of sorts went off for me. I started talking to several authors who write super fast. The common thread between them is that they outline their stories extensively before they start writing. So I t...

Photo by Andre Chinn , via Flickr Firsts are exciting. They’re the things you remember forever, right? I was racking my brain, trying to think what I wanted my first post for Blood-Red Pencil to be about. Should I write about my self-publishing experiences? How I’ve been writing since I was 10? The pitfalls I’ve encountered or the tricks that keep me from getting writer’s block? Or should I write about Romance and the beauty of genre fiction? While I was contemplating all this, a first of epic proportions happened. It was a first that could change everything. I knew I had to write about that. Because on Saturday, July 26 th , a novel called Off the Edge by Carolyn Crane became the first self-published novel to win a RITA award. That’s right, a self-published novel just won a major industry award. So why is this important? Why is it important for you? Obviously, when a self-published novel is judged by two rounds of peer readers to be the very best in its sub-genre, it sends ...