Authors labor long and hard over a book, and once it’s been written and published, the next part takes a bit more work: promoting it. One of the best ways to entice readers is through offering excerpts.  

The Great American Novel

I won’t touch on how to pick the right excerpt from your book today. Instead, I’d like to show you a technical tip for posting them in a readable fashion. Fonts and special characters can cause real problems, especially when transferring them into email to send to a group.

Have you ever come across an excerpt that looks like this:
&*%$He loves her&*%$ it&*%$s obvious.&*%$

 It should read: “He loves her; it’s obvious.”

How easy was it to read that in the first sample above? Imagine an entire page like that! How long would you read before giving up and going to the next one?

When posting excerpts or quotes on a group message or bulletin board such as Yahoo! Groups, the service strips out curly quotes – the kind that curl one way in front and the other way in back. Many email programs replace these with the ascii code for that command.

A font that readers don’t possess can cause the same thing. For example, something frilly and fancy like a handwritten-looking font changes to courier with all the codes as above.

When posting, use Arial, Times, or Times New Roman, and turn off the curly quotes feature on your word processor. This will ensure your excerpts and posts come out readable and clear. I’m sure they look lovely on your computer, but how will they look online?

If you have questions or problems with posts, feel free to share them. If I can answer them, I will. If I can’t, I’ll do my best to find out from someone else. When you leave a comment, it will trigger a notice via my email, and I’ll drop in as soon as possible to post a response.

 If you’ve ever had to transfer to a new base, you know that it can be exciting, especially when moving to a place you’ve always wanted to live. However, uprooting from a group of people you’ve come to love can also be difficult. Even if you’re not career military, you may end up with a permanent change of station (PCS) within one tour. According to http://military.com here are the various transportation groups who will ultimately be in charge of your move.

OK, the writing itself isn’t a team effort but writing for publication most certainly is a team effort.  Let me tell you about my team:

Sapphire Blue Publishing

My publisher took a chance on me.  My first manuscript was rough and needed an immense amount of work but they saw something in it and chose to work with me.

Line Editor

My manuscript was assigned a line editor and we did several rounds of edits.  She’d point out issues, I’d either correct the issues ow we’d discuss why I felt they were important to the story.  Together we refined my original manuscript.

Copy Editor

Once line edits were completed to our mutual satisfaction, the manuscript was assigned to a copy editor who graciously pointed out where I started four paragraphs with the same word or scrambled my timeline.  Details like that can ruin the experience for a reader.

Cover Artist

Sapphire Blue Publishing has a specific cover artist who creates all their covers.  Kendra Egert is the woman responsible for my covers and likely a good portion of my sales.  I’ve seen bad covers but never from Kendra.

Reviewers

Reviewers don’t get paid for their work (and they usually buy the books they review) but their service to the publishing industry is invaluable.  Without reviewers, most readers would never hear about our books.  They can make the difference between a book that sells and one that bombs.

Other Authors

For a career that is, for the most part, solitary, we do a great deal of leaning on each other.  Other authors read our books, review them, help us promote them and even allow us to guest blog on their websites.  This level of cooperation is unheard of in other career fields.

The Reader

Like the proverbal tree in the woods, if a novel were published but nobody read it, would it still be a novel?  Writers would be lost without readers and publishers, editors and cover artists wouldn’t work.

So, you see, the writing itself is done as a solitary endeavor but writing for publication is a team sport.

Personally, I am grateful to be on such a fantastic team.

For more information about me and my team, please visit my website at www.LisaPietsch.com.

Judy Anderson

Virginia C

Kathy Yates

Please send your addy to Joann AT joannross.com

Congrats to our winners and thanks so much to everyone who stopped by today! I hope you’ll come back to RRC and check out some of our other authors!

One of the questions I’m often asked by readers is “What’s your favorite of all your books?” Which 
is a bit like asking a mother to name her favorite child and impossible to answer.

That said, I’ll admit that The Homecoming, the first in my Shelter Bay series, is very personal to me. Partly because it’s set on the magnificent Oregon coast, where my husband once bought me a bag of salt-water taffy, then proposed. Decades later, not only is the candy store still there, I’m so glad I said yes! Combining my hobbies of photography and scrapbooking, I created a video virtual tour of Shelter Bay on my website at http://joannross.com. If that red-roofed house on the tour looks familiar, it’s because Signet’s art department used it on The Homecoming’s cover.

Another question I get a lot is why I chose to write about military heroes. That’s a complex question, but one reason is that I’ve always been a sucker for a guy in uniform. When I was growing up, nearly every male I knew got drafted into the military. Even Elvis didn’t get a pass. After going through Army boot camp, he was sent to Germany, where he met a teenage Priscilla, and well, we all know how that turned out.

Along with several military men and women we’ve “adopted” through Soldiers Angels over the years, we also have two nephews in the Army — Patrick, who completed two Iraq tours and Kyle, who’s already “done” Iraq and is currently serving as a medevac in Afghanistan. Needless to say, having them in harm’s way these past years has made my High Risk books, and now my Shelter Bay stories, extremely personal.

Ongoing concern for them is also partly why I’ve returned to my more emotional family-centric romance roots after the murder and mayhem of romantic suspense. Since writing about serial killers eventually gets depressing, I’m so happy to be back telling feel-good stories about good things happening to nice, but flawed people.

Another reason I like to write about military heroes (along with a military heroine in Shattered) is because they possess something that seems to be in short supply these days – honor.

I firmly believe that a man capable of committing to something outside himself can also commit to a mate and, as a woman, I find that really appealing
The hero I like to write about doesn’t have any personal desire to create conflict or aggression, but he does possess an unwavering code that has him not hesitating to put himself in harm’s way and risk being wounded — physically, emotionally, or both — to protect, defend, and fight for what’s right. He’s self-disciplined, decisive (though he often has to battle his own internal demons, as The Homecoming’s Sex Douchett does) and along with an integrity as tough as his body, he’s unwaveringly loyal and self-confident enough to appreciate and support the equally strong woman who manages to win his guarded heart.

Many readers might be surprised to learn that I’ve been writing military heroes since I wrote a male point-of-view romance about a former Vietnam POW in the mid ‘80s, which was a groundbreaking subject for the genre and still remains on many must-read lists. Since then, though I don’t always mention the fact, most of the heroes in my books have been veterans.

One of the things I’m enjoying exploring in my Shelter Bay books is life after war. As hopefully more and more of our troops begin returning home, there are some wonderful stories waiting to be told, and I can’t wait to write some of them.

In The Homecoming, both Sax Douchett and Kara Conway have returned to their small coastal hometown seeking healing and closure. The ocean has always provided a shelter from emotional storms for me. It’s where I go to unwind and put my life in perspective, which is why I named my fictional coastal town Shelter Bay. Do you have some special place where you feel at peace? A place that, at least in your heart, feels like home?

To celebrate the book’s release day, three people who respond (chosen at random), will receive an autographed copy of The Homecoming.