My Publicity Campaign: What the heck am I doing?

My latest project involves trying to get the message out. No, I’m not running a political campaign, I’m trying to sell my book, The Chronicles of Anaedor: The Prophecies (see how I stuck that in there, repeating it yet again? That’s marketing, my friends!). My book hasn’t been published yet, so I guess what I’m trying to do is build up "hype." That’s the latest lingo for getting people really excited. Too bad I don’t have a big merry-go-round. That tends to get people excited. Or maybe I should get myself a posse. People with posses always attract attention. Right now my posse consists of an adult male, 3 small boys, 3 cats (one with an attitude problem) and a fish that refuses to die. Those are my peeps.

Hm. I think I’m going to need to try another tactic.

So I’m heading for Youtube. The place where all us hams can let out our inner hammyness. It’s a great forum for all those talented people in the world to go to express themselves. It’s also where less talented people (such as myself) can go to "hype" themselves. So I am going to release 3 videos on Youtube of me reading Chapter One of my book The Chronicles of Anaedor: The Prophecies (Here’s that title again–I’ll bet you didn’t even know you were being marketed to…that’s just how subtle I am). Instead of a reading, I’m going to call it a video reading. Clever, huh? The hard part is that Youtube only allows 10 minutes or 100 somethings (MB?) per video. So I have to split the reading up into 3 parts. I am also going to release a couple video commercials to advertise the book. I hope they’re at least entertaining. I’d hate to put out boring videos. Doesn’t say much for me, does it?

I’ve already videotaped the book reading. It was an interesting process. Why I decided to do the taping when it’s 90 degrees outside, I don’t know. Here I am, trying to look intellectual (or at least not too dense) and all I want to do is scratch my nose which is itching like mad, push up my glasses, which keep sliding down from all that sweat, and wipe my upper lip because of the aforementioned sweat. Then, when I’m reading the book, I spot a typo. I’ve got to remember where that typo is so I can fix it later! Of course, I’m thinking about this while I’m trying to read the book out loud. Then I hear a noise outside. What’s that? Not a raccoon, I hope. Or a bear. Focus, Kristina! But it’s getting harder. Can bears break through screens? Of course, they can!

Then there were all the kid interruptions. I should have done a blooper reel. Take one. I’m sitting there reading to the camera when my kids, who are supposed to be in bed, decide to come down for a visit. There’s me on the videotape, reading in dramatic style, then saying, "What are you two doing down here? Get back up to bed! Shoo, now. Go on!" I look mad. Take 2. Oops, I forgot to say the title. Take 3. Oops, I forgot to say my own name. Dang. Take 4. Things are going well… Then one of my cats jumps up right in front of me, sticking her backside right in my face. Take 5, and so on…

So, progress is slow. I wonder how the commercial taping will go. Being that I’m the actress (and not a very good one), the sound and light crew, the videographer, director and producer, I’m not going to be able to do that many takes. The end result could be quite interesting. Or end up looking like some amateur production…

Off to the Printers! Or, The editing process stinks.

My publisher sent my book off to the printers yesterday. I feel sick. I am a bit of an overachiever, you see. And the idea of sending off my work, to transform it into permanent ink on paper, freaks me out. I edited the living bejeebers out of that book. Then other people edited it. Then, a person who gets paid to edit it, edited it. So, after making changes, putting back some ‘thats’ that I had taken out because I thought you were supposed to use as few thats as possible, I was done editing!

Then my publisher changed the book’s font and its formatting, too…

Which meant new problems. I suppose everyone else out there knows that Word does automatic hyphenating? Well, I didn’t. So, being the overachiever that I am, I manually hyphenated my work after justifying it. If you don’t hyphenate, some of your sentences will look gappy (that’s an extremely technical term that means lots of space between words). So guess what happened when he reformated the work… Yepper, lots of words in the middle of sentences looking like this: Auto- matically. He was very diplomatic about it when I told him what I’d done. I think his response was, "Huh?" I could feel the sympathetic waves coming off him.

There were other spacing problems, as well, of course. I just hope I found them all. I did the spell-check and grammar check yet again. I looked it over one last time. But I just know there’s a typo in there somewhere, lurking, waiting to expose me for the fraud that I am.

So, yes, I’m a bit of an overachiever.

Being an overachiever has its advantages. It means I’m going to do a lot of editing to get things just right. I actually kind of like editing. That is, until I have to present my work to other people in the form of a published book that they paid money for. They’re going to react just like I do when I find typos in a book. Didn’t you spell-check this? Jeez! It’s, like, the easiest thing you can do! You didn’t re-read this! I mean, you couldn’t have! Look at all these mistakes! Where happened to your brain, girl? Did you leave it in a jar somewhere?

Don’t get me started on the actual content of the book. I can’t even think about what people who don’t like it are going to say. That’s why I will probably be heading to my happy place for a while (starting November 1st, when my book’s supposed to be published). I will also remind myself of the concept of the Persian Flaw. The Persians purposely included a mistake in their carpets to show that only God is perfect, and that they, themselves, aren’t trying to be God. So if you find a mistake, I did that on purpose. To show that I’m not God.

I think, by now, that you’ve guessed where being an overachiever has its disadvantages. I’ve been working on mellowing out, but it’s hard. I want to present a perfect picture to the world so that you have nothing to beat me over the head with. But it’s awfully difficult to be perfect when you are searching through a book you have already searched a thousand times, looking for that needle in the haystack. So I think I’m going to just have to take a deep breath and…Pass out!

Remember…When it comes to life and its little foibles, you’d better laugh hard, otherwise you’re going to be sobbing like a baby.

Doing Too Much

Okay, so I’ve told you I’m trying to publish a book, set to come out in November. While I’m doing that, I’m also attempting to raise 3 boys, so that they’ll reach adulthood before they end up killing themselves. School’s starting soon and I’m trying to put together this website. My husband’s doing all the technical work, thank you, dear! But it’s my job to sound interesting and clever.

Let me tell you, it’s not easy.

I imagined myself sitting down and writing amusing anecdotes about my process. And while I am writing about my process, it’s not as amusing as I thought it would be. But I will keep trying. You know what they say about a thousand monkeys typing away…eventually they’ll come up with something intelligible. Or is that one monkey typing for a thousand years?

See how hard this is?

I recently participated in a Writer’s Festival at a mall (see Press for full coverage and a picture to prove I was really there!). Several writers joined the group and most of us attempted not to look too desperate as we sat there with our precious books (well, mine was just a book cover, so I probably looked more pathetic than the others), hoping people would at least notice we were sitting there.

In preparation for the big event, I made up about 30 color posters of my book cover and created a card with the book’s blurb, along with the release date. Then, after I printed out all those mini-posters, I realized there was a misspelled word on it. Agh! To calm myself, I ate some cookies. Then I changed my perspective. Years from now, when I’m famous, those posters will be worth at least twice what it cost me to make them, simply because there’s a mistake on them. Just like old coins and stamps somebody screwed up on! I felt better, then I ate some more cookies.

At any rate, I think I gave out about 4 book covers and a couple blurbs. Success? I’m not sure. My mother took 2 of the posters. I did get my picture in the paper, along with a quote that made me sound more intelligent than I think I really did. The reporter started asking me questions and I started babbling inane, nonsensical answers. He must be a pro, since he was able to find something logical in what I said.

It was nice to get out, though, and do something productive for my book. I’ve heard so many writers say that writing is the easy part, what comes next is the difficult hurdle. I think they’re both hard. I’ve reached a point where writing has gotten easier, but it’s still a lot of work.

I wrote in my first blog that I was going through a small publishing company (Breakneckbooks.com). I don’ t have an agent–not a one wanted to represent me and my book. Sniff, sniff. And believe me, I sent my book out to a lot of them. I’d like to think that it’s because the children/young adult fantasy genre is a bit saturated right now, not that my book stinks.

So it was encouraging and heartening to have Breakneckbooks like what I’d done and want to publish my work. They’re small, but they get a lot of submissions. However, the company doesn’t have a big marketing budget, nor do they get into bookstores (bookstores won’t buy POD - publish on demand books - because they can’t send them back to the publishing company and get their money back). Maybe someday that will all change, but for now, we’re just going to have to work our behinds off to make a difference for the little guy, or gal!