Author: Karen Sandler

Social Media for the Genre-Conflicted, Part 1

In a previous post, I described how my husband and I designed my new website to encompass all three of the genres I’m published in–science fiction (YA), romance, and mystery. I have a great landing page that directs visitors to each of the three genres so they can further explore the books that interest them.

There’s another aspect to writing in multiple genres that has proven to be a challenge–social media. I’ve taken a varied approach to solving the social media puzzle, in some cases with multiple identities (Twitter) in others, designing my presence similarly to what I’ve done on my website (Facebook).

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’d moved from romances to YA thinking that would be a one-way street. I liked YA and was just as happy sticking with that market. So I did a total redesign of my website, turning it into the other-worldly SF site you see here. I created a new Twitter identity, @karensandlerYA, as well as one for the Tankborn trilogy, @tankborn. I created a Tankborn Facebook page, which my editor and the marketing department at Tu Books also administer. My focus was entirely on YA.

But then the opportunities for indie publishing opened up, giving me the courage to bring my romance backlist back to light. And then I sold two Janelle Watkins mystery novels, further complicating my identity. I had a decent number of followers on Twitter as @karensandlerYA, but it didn’t make sense to promote my non-YA books there.

So I had to create and build a new identity on Twitter, @karensandler, to promote my romances and mysteries. I also created two new Facebook pages, Karen Sandler Author and Janelle Watkins Mysteries. The Janelle Watkins page is still a work in progress, but the author page is set up similarly to my webpage, in that it promotes all three of the genres I write. There are tabs that will take you to pages where you can buy or pre-purchase any of my books.

Within this same time frame, I and ten other authors established an author co-op we’ve named OnFireFiction, which I described in this post. So I’m also participating in the social media related to OFF, on Facebook and Twitter. That makes four Twitter accounts to track, @karensandlerYA, @karensandler, @tankborn, and @onfirefiction. Then there are five Facebook accounts to follow, my Karen Sandler profile, my Karen Sandler Author page, my Janelle Watkins page, my Tankborn Series page, and our co-op page, OnFireFiction.

How in the world do I keep track of all this? That’s complex enough that it’s worthy of a second post. Keep an eye on my blog for part 2.

May 13, 2013
New Website! A Solution for the Genre-Conflicted

So what do you do to promote yourself when your published work spans three genres (romance, speculative fiction, mystery) and two markets (adult and young adult)? This wasn’t a huge issue when I initially sold my first YA science fiction book, Tankborn, to Lee and Low/Tu Books after publishing adult romances for a dozen years. At that point, I had changed my focus from romance to young adult, and didn’t feel obligated to heavily promo my ten Harlequin books.

But in addition to those Harlequin books, I had the rights back to seven romances and a middle-grade time travel. I finally decided to dip my toe into indie publishing and put the romances and MG book up on Amazon. At that point, I chose to use a pen name for my romances to keep them separate from my children’s books. It was slow going, but I finally had the middle grade book published under Karen Sandler and six of the seven romances up under the pen name Kayla Russo. The seventh book needed some re-write, so it hasn’t yet been published (although it will be soon).

But then something somewhat unexpected happened. I had an unsold mystery novel, Clean Burn, tucked away in my figurative drawer. I found out about a new mystery imprint (Exhibit A, a part of Angry Robot Books) and alerted my agents. Long story short, Clean Burn sold to Exhibit A and will be released August 27, 2013. A second Janelle Watkins mystery will greet the world in Summer 2014.

My predicament clarified in October 2012 during a Novelists, Inc. conference. I had my Karen Sandler Harlequin author identity,my Kayla Russo indie-pubbed romance author identity, I had my Karen Sandler YA author identity, and I was about to have my Karen Sandler mystery author identity. Keeping all those identities juggled, trying to appropriately promote all of them, was madness.

My first step toward simplification was to drop my Kayla Russo identity. My original rationale for creating the pen name had been to separate my sexy adult romances from my teen-safe YA books. But that was silly because there were still those ten sexy Harlequin books for sale with Karen Sandler squarely on their covers. So I killed Kayla Russo off (so to speak) like the next murder victim in a Janelle Watkins mystery novel.

With the same name on all my books, I decided that the variety of genres/markets I offered were a feature, not a bug. Instead of keeping the genres separate, I would promote them side-by-side. Instead of seeing my multi-genre approach as a problem, I used it to brand myself. I am now proudly Genre-Conflicted on my blog, two Twitter identities, and Facebook.

In fact Facebook is where I started this process, with a Karen Sandler Author page. The banner for the page prominently displays book covers from each of the three genres, romance, science fiction, and mystery. Book tabs take the reader to pages where they can purchase any and all of my books at the click of a button.

My webmaster (i.e., husband) and I took the same approach with my website. The landing page features the same three choices–explore my YA SF books, my romances, or my mysteries. The same buy links are available on the book pages for each genre.

There are still a few tweaks needed on the website, but I really like the solution. It’s still a challenge to promote to three different audiences, but having that one-stop-shop takes some of the load off. So for both the focused genre reader and the more omnivorous book lovers who enjoy a variety of story types, I like to think my work offers something for nearly every taste.

May 6, 2013
Horse of a Different Color and How Writing Matures

I’m lucky enough to own a beautiful mare named Belle. She’s half-Andalusian and half-Morgan, and a gorgeous gray. She just turned 16 a couple weeks ago.

If you don’t know horses, you might not realize that 1) most of the “white” horses you see are actually grays, and 2) gray horses always start out as a different “normal” horse color. They might be black, or bay (brown with black mane, tail, and lower legs), chestnut/sorrel (a coppery color all over), even paint (spotted). Eventually though, they all end up like my mare Belle is now.

Check out the “before” (when she was about 4 years old) and “after” (taken yesterday at age 16). Yes, same horse.

Another interesting fact about gray horses is that in some breeds (Andalusian & Lipizzaner, for instance), nearly all the horses in that breed are gray. In others (Morgans, for instance) few are gray. So a non-gray Andalusian is very desireable, and a gray Morgan would be quite unique. Another fun fact: since a gray horse starts out looking non-gray, breeders will send DNA (hair) to testing labs such as at UC Davis to test for color. If they have a black Andalusian, they want to know for certain it’s going to stay black, especially if they’ll be breeding the stallion or mare.

I didn’t bother testing Belle’s DNA since she was already a dark dapple gray when I bought her. She’s half-Morgan (her dam was chestnut) and half-Andalusian (her sire was gray), and I guess the gray won.

That’s her at age 8 to the left. You’ll notice that although her body is quite dark, her face is nearly white. Horses tend to start graying on their face. That white star on her forehead you can see it in the first picture above has blended in with her white face.

So what does this have to do with writing? Well, on the surface, nothing. But it got me thinking about two ways writing and a writer changes and matures just like a gray horse does. First, writing matures through revision, which I talked about in my last blog post. You could say a book matures from its infant self (the rough draft), to its grade-school self (first read-through), to its teen self (post-developmental edit re-write, to its adult self (polished final draft) throughout the stages of revision.

The second way a writer and her writing matures is through time and experience. That’s mainly experience as a writer, but also experience with the outside world. Years and the kind of life led (different for everyone) change perspective. The things you see happening to others, or participate in yourself, can all become fodder for your writing. What happens in your particular life will change your writing and improve your ability to write your characters and describe their experiences.

That’s not to say that someone in their teens couldn’t write an elderly character, for instance. I don’t have to be a man to write a male character. I don’t have to be an evil villain to write one. I just have to observe, ask questions, and use my imagination.

But my years (do I have to mention how many?), maturity, and the experience that comes from writing 20+ books have led me to write that male character or that evil villain much differently than how I would have written him a couple decades ago. In fact, I am right now revising a 20-year-old book from my backlist so I can indie-publish it. While I’m pleasantly surprised that most of the writing holds up, some of the characterization doesn’t. I’ve learned tons more about character since I wrote this book. I also noticed signs of “first time author syndrome” throughout that early book. Overuse of adverbs, trying too hard with descriptive passages, clunky dialogue. What seemed to work twenty years ago I realize has to be revised. Seeing it through the lens of a couple decades of intense experience writing novels makes all the difference.

So, two lessons to be learned from this. 1) you’re going to write some great stuff early in your writing career. Some of it will be beautiful, just like Belle was a real looker as a 4-year-old (yes, I found a way to turn this back around to horses). 2) You’re going to continually learn and grow and improve. When you look back at your earlier prose, you might cringe. But you’ll also have the satisfaction of knowing you got better as you matured as a writer. Your writing developed and became even more gorgeous (just like Belle :-)).

Have you seen that progression already? If so, what’s one thing about writing you’ve learned with experience? Or if you’re not a writer, is there another area of expertise in which you’ve learned and grown? I’d love to have you share in the comments. Tell it to the hoof!

April 29, 2013
10 Must-Do’s for Manuscript Revision
A little over a week ago, I turned in Book 3 of the Tankborn trilogy. A few weeks ago in this blog post, I gave tips on how to finish your novel, suggesting among other things to turn off your internal editor and just soldier through to the end. That there’s plenty of time for revision later.

Well, once I’d finished Book 3, later became now. I had to switch gears from finish the darn thing to polish the darn thing. I finally had to open the door to that infernal, internal editor who’d been cooling her heels in my mental waiting room. It was time to let her inside to start picking things apart.

In fact, revision is a good time to stuff your ego into that waiting room and let the Evil Blue Pencil Lady rip. Even the most beautiful prose may have to fall to her figurative ax if it has no place in the story.

So what should your inner editor be looking for? Here are ten areas of focus, from simple and mechanical, to more complex developmental issues.
1. Fix the typos. That may seem like the most obvious advice ever, but whether you’re planning to indie publish or submit to an editor for traditional publishing, nothing says Amateur more loudly than a typo-riddled manuscript. A reader of indie books might forgive one or two typos (as will an editor at a traditional house), they may never get past the Amazon sample if every other paragraph has a misspelled word or commas where they don’t belong. And if you’re thinking, My word processor will catch my misspellings, Word won’t flag everything, such as an improper use of there, their, or they’re. It takes your own eyeballs to catch that kind of problem.
2. Watch for repeated words. Sometimes in the rush of writing your book, you don’t realize you’ve used the word shimmer three times in four paragraphs. Or monstrous. Or fantasy. These are just examples of very distinctive words that need to be used sparingly in a manuscript. You won’t always realize that you’ve overused words like this until you’re doing your revision read-through. You might not even spot them yourself, but your beta reader will. If you find you’ve used monstrous three times in one page (because there’s an enormous beast that must be described), it’s time to pull out the thesaurus. Or go to Reverse Dictionary to find alternate words (such as grotesque, unnatural, and colossal).
3. Double check word choice. Are you using effect when you meant to use affect? Ravenous when you meant to use rapacious? Sometimes our brains play tricks on us in the heat of writing that first draft and we type a word that’s somewhat similar to another that we meant to type. Or there might be a word you thought meant one thing that actually means another. So make sure you’ve chosen the right word for the right situation.
4. Clear out the redundancies. Since Book 3 is part of a trilogy, I felt the need to occasionally catch up the reader on what happened before. As I read through the book I realized I was overdoing it on the catch-up. I didn’t need to mention four times that GENs could be reset and have their personalities wiped away. Once, maybe twice, was enough. Even if your book isn’t part of a trilogy, you might need to remind a reader of a plot point, but be cautious of being repetitious. Delete those redundancies.
5. Chuck out your pet weaknesses. What do I mean by pet weaknesses? Just about every writer has a favorite word, type of punctuation, idiomatic expression, or writing device. Sometimes it’s part of their voice, but sometimes it’s just plain habit. For me, it’s the em dash (those long dashes that can break a sentence to insert a separate thought) and its kissing cousin, the ellipse. (…) I allow myself to em dash and ellipse with abandon as I write the draft, then I go back and ruthlessly cut them back. You’ll find a few in the final book, but far fewer than I’d written originally. Make sure you’re not overdoing those pet weaknesses.
6. Eliminate the ambiguities. If you get confused at your own prose as you’re reading through (What the heck did I mean by that?), obviously you need to fix and clarify. But sometimes you won’t realize that something in a scene is ambiguous because of all that background you’ve got tucked away in your brain. This is where a beta reader is invaluable, because they won’t have the answers in their head the way you do. They will find the ambiguities. For example, if you wrote, Jenna and LaShonda walked into the room, and she picked up her sword, you’ll know it was LaShonda wielding the sword. But the sentence is ambiguous enough that your beta reader might not figure that out with the sentence written that way. Make sure you’re crystal clear.
7. Delete the extraneous. Sometimes when you’re going with the flow writing that first draft, you’ll write a scene that just seems right. Once you’ve finished the book and you’re reading through, you’ll realize that scene never goes anywhere. It doesn’t move the story forward, doesn’t reveal any new important information to the reader, doesn’t add context to the characters or setting. That scene has to go. If there happens to be one little bit of information in it that is useful, you can place that elsewhere. You’re not allowed to leave it in the book just because you like it.
8. Pay attention to continuity. Have you ever watched a TV show and in one shot the character’s wine glass is full, then in the next it’s half-full, then it’s full again in the next shot? Someone didn’t pay attention to continuity in that scene. In the case of Book 3 of the Tankborn trilogy, I have a scene early on where the characters have to show their ID to the authorities. Later when my characters encounter the authorities again, I’d forgotten about that entirely. During the revision, I had to put that ID-check into the later scene for continuity’s sake. If you set something up early on in your book, you have to be consistent later.
9. Make sure your scenes are in the right order. In general, a book should get more and more exciting from beginning to end. The perils should increase, the revelations should be more and more monumental. You should make sure you have “rising action” from start to finish. If you find that a scene that should be closer to your climax appears too early, switch your scenes around. Don’t be afraid to juggle as needed.
10. Answer all story questions. The worst thing you can do is have a reader finish your book and say, “But, but, but…what about that blue horse?” If you had a blue horse on page 134, you’d better “pay off,” i.e., make clear why that blue horse was there, by the end of the book. Never leave the reader hanging, wondering what the heck a particular scene had to do with the story. In fact if there doesn’t seem to be a way to pay a scene off, see number 7 above.
There you go, 10 guidelines for revision. Are there any you think I missed? What do you watch out for during your revision process?
April 21, 2013
Happy Book Birthday!

Sometimes the passage of time between when a book is contracted and when it’s finally launched into the brave new world seems like forever. But finally it’s the official release day for Tu Books’ spring 2013 releases. The first one is mine, the second by fellow Tu Books author Shana Mlawski.

Awakening by Karen Sandler, Book 2 of the Tankborn trilogy

Once a Chadi sector GEN girl terrified of her first Assignment, Kayla is now a member of the Kinship, a secret organization of GENs, lowborns, and trueborns. Kayla travels on Kinship business, collecting information to further the cause of GEN freedom.

Despite Kayla’s relative freedom, she is still a slave to the trueborn ruling class. She rarely sees trueborn Devak, and any relationship between them is still strictly forbidden.

Kayla longs to be truly free, but other priorities have gotten in the way. A paradoxically deadly new virus has swept through GEN sectors—a disease only GENs catch. And GEN warrens and warehouses are being bombed, with only a scrawled clue: F.H.E. Freedom, Humanity, Equality.

With the virus and the bombings decimating the GEN community, freedom and love are put on the back burner as Kayla and her friends find a way to stop the killing . . . before it’s too late.

Hammer of Witches by Shana Mlawski

Baltasar Infante, a bookmaker’s apprentice living in 1492 Spain, can weasel out of any problem with a good story. But when he awakes one night to find a monster straight out of the stories peering at him through his window, he’s in trouble that even he can’t talk his way out of.

Soon Baltasar is captured by a mysterious arm of the Spanish Inquisition, the Malleus Maleficarum, that demands he reveal the whereabouts of Amir al-Katib, a legendary Moorish sorcerer who can bring myths and the creatures within them to life. Baltasar doesn’t know where the man is—or that he himself has the power to summon genies and golems.

Baltasar must escape, find al-Katib, and defeat a dreadful power that may destroy the world. As Baltasar’s journey takes him into uncharted lands on Columbus’s voyage westward, he learns that stories are more powerful than he once believed them to be—and much more dangerous.

I hope you’ll check them both out!

April 9, 2013