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Category Archives: Writers in COVID-29 Times

Book Promo in Pandemic Times

26 Oct

I’m finding it both interesting and challenging marketing my new book The Enemies Within Us – a Memoir. We live in uncertain and unsettled times with this COVID-19 business. Not only do we worry about getting the virus, but we have had our lifestyles turned topsy-turvy. Not something we asked for, but I guess we have to make the best of it. And that requires being creative.

Which is something I am learning to do for promoting my memoir. In person presentations, readings and book launches are now gone. I now have a very extensive market plan which is open to changes and additions. I check it daily and make a note i when I have done something on my list, and then save it yet again.

Some of you may notice that I have increased my presence on Facebook, both my Facebook timeline and its attached author page. That increase is all about my book, which includes (and will include more) small excerpts from my memoir. I will also be posting more about the actual writing of memoir as I have taught workshops in that for 10 years. I know that has generated some book sales from what my publisher told me about numbers sold through Amazon. Not a huge number, but the book has only been out for two weeks.

I am also selling books via Canada Post – for those who live in Canada.

But perhaps the wackiest way I’m selling books is from my veranda. Let me re-phrase that. Some of that comes from my emails to friends and they come by to pick up the book by appointment (read, when it works for them and me).

My unofficial greeter on my veranda

So there comes the buyer up the veranda steps, past my unofficial greeter, money in an envelope dangling from the hand, and a mask on the face. He or she knocks on my front door and then steps back. Inside, I put on my mask and a jacket if needed, and with signed book copy in hand, step outside. We do a short greeting and the buyer hands me the envelope (still dangling from her fingertips), and I do the same with the book. We make comments about wishing we could do a proper visit/chat, but say “when this pandemic is over.” One buyer, also a friend, and I had decided via email we could do a short social distancing chat, but the rain began falling as soon as she stepped out of her car. On another occasion a month ago, this friend did stop by (pre-arranged) to pick up some flower seeds from my garden. The seeds were in a sealed envelope. We actually had a chat, 6 feet (2 metres) apart in my driveway. It wasn’t raining then.

Those are some examples of the new norm.

The other big change is going virtual – beyond the usual Facebook postings, the blog postings, Goodreads, Amazon, and the website. I’m talking about Zoom. Zoom has opened the door to us authors to promote our books. It is even how my writers group, The East End Writers’ Group, now meets. And yes, I have held up my book there and did a one minute elevator pitch. Ditto for another organization I belong to for its Literature group.

I am also getting bold in approaching newspapers, book buyers, etc. (via email). for book reviews. It has garnished (so far) one wonderful review and five stars on Amazon.ca.

And then there is my publisher, Blue Denim Press. Shane there has been very helpful and promo pro-active. He is helping me with my virtual book launch next month (November 17 – more on that closer to the date). He is doing more as he (well Blue Denim Press) is launching my book. We have had one Zoom meeting to go over what has to be done and how it will work. And he then emailed me the list of what we each do.

Preparing for a virtual book launch is much more work than an in-person book launch. With the latter, the publisher set the date (checking with the author to make sure she is available then and not doing promo elsewhere, for example. If it is a dentist’s appointment, she can cancel that). Then you email your invitations, distribute and post copies of the book launch flyer from your publisher, prepare what you are going to read and anything else like a skit, and show up early for the launch. And once there, meet, greet, and read.

Sharon A. Crawford reads from her Beyond series

But a virtual book launch has the potential for many more guests from all over the world.

And here are some online book links for The Enemies Within Us – a Memoir

Amazon

Chapters/IndigO

I’ll leave you with a saying that all of us writers need to follow – in writing and marketing our writing, be it books, short stories or memoir.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, which dates back to Chaucer in 1374.

How have you ventured with your writing? Did you have to push yourself to do so?

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

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Posted by on October 26, 2020 in Book Promotion, Book Reviews, Book Sales, Memoir, Sharon A. Crawford, Writers in COVID-29 Times

 

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Writing your way out of COVID-19 anxieties

11 Jun

COVID-19 Reaction

The world has turned into a horrible stressful place because of COVID-19. But we writers have a creative outlet to help us cope. I’m not referring to writing about COVID-19 or how we are dealing with all the crap and changes associated with it. Yes, my last two posts have done just that.

But I have found another way that as a writer I  can use to cope much better.

Just write.

 

In a previous post I referred to writing both a memoir and the next novel in my Beyond mystery series in the same timeline, i.e., one day rewrite some of my memoir, the next day, write some of my  Beyond mystery novel. That did help, but it was too scatty, too fragmented.

So, I had to choose to write one at a time.

My publisher had given me a deadline for later this month to get the rewrite of my memoir to him. The mystery novel is not due until at least sometime next year (depending on COVID-19 interference with when book launches and the like can be held). So, I put the novel on hold, even though my interfering main character, PI Dana Bowman, is giving me hell and some choice words about that. I’ve restarted my Crime Beat Confidential TV shows, which Dana appears on (see here to watch a previous show), so that should shut her up, except in the TV shows).

PI Dana Bowman on Crime Beat Confidential

I also put one other thing on hold until the memoir rewrite is finished and the TV show is taped – finish editing that long novel that requires a heavy edit for a client. Client isn’t too happy, but is accepting it, as I have come up with a way to shorten my time getting his editing work done in future.

 

One thing COVID-19 is teaching me is “one thing at a time and if others don’t like it, they can lump it.”

And as I began focusing on rewriting my memoir, I found a bonus – something I knew before COVID-19, but had forgotten about thanks to skipping from one project to another.

When rewriting my memoir, I am transported to a different period in my life – in the mid to late 1950s, the 1960s and early 1970s – the grey ages as I call them. I think it is because it is the past that it gets me out of these horrid COVID-19 times for a few hours at a time. Even though life was not easy for me back then, it is done; it is the past, and I guess it comes under nostalgia.

Writing fiction – short stories, novels, novellas – can also transport you out of COVID-19 times – unless that is what your fiction is about. I don’t really recommend that, but if that is where your creativity and ideas lie, I’m not going to say “don’t do it”. It would be fiction based on fact, so go for it.

My Beyond mysteries are set in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The setting is loosely based on where I was living in the late 1990s until I moved back to Toronto. But I have been back to Aurora, Ontario (where I lived from 1975 to late 1998) and also to nearby Newmarket many times since then, but of course today shows the changes in those now small cities, which were large towns when I moved out.

You could say these novels are nostalgic too, although they are fiction, not my story. But again, I’m out of COVID-19 times, temporarily, thanks to writing Beyond Truth, and I am doing something creative. It doesn’t matter what terrible things happen in my novels – they are fiction and each has an ending.

So, escape into creativity for a few hours each day. It will raise your spirits, is good for the mind and body, too. And you have accomplished something and created something as well.

So…

Just write.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford, author of the Beyond mysteries. All available in e-copies at Amazon. Link for Beyond Faith here.

 

 
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Posted by on June 11, 2020 in Beyond mystery series, PI Dana Bowman, Rewriting Fiction, Sharon A. Crawford, Writers in COVID-29 Times

 

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Getting around the COVID-19 writing block for writers meetings

28 May

Logo designed by Lee Parpart

COVID-19 days and nights continue and so do a lot of changes. For those of you (writers and others) who think that we writers just write in isolation anyway and can continue to do so, think again.

Writing isn’t just about writing. You have to market your little written darlings to get published, and if a book, promote it.

Before all that you might want (and need) some feedback on your writing-in-the-works. And if you have been attending in-person writing groups, you just can’t do that anymore – or at least for nowthanks to COVID-19. And for me, to add insult to injury (pardon the cliché, but a cliché is well, normal in these definitely non-normal times), the writing group I founded and still run, East End Writers’ Group, is supposed to be celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. We had lots scheduled and being prepared for this year.

A Writers Circle reading in person before

Then, thanks COVID-19, things were cancelled. Public venues were closed, including the libraries and we were meeting at the S. Walter Stewart library branch in Toronto since July 2014. Before that we were meeting for a few months in a used book store until it closed; before that in a café which closed too; before that for 17 years in my tiny bungalow. The latter is not an option now, especially with COVID-19 and doing the self-isolation bit until who knows when. Also, even without COVID-19, I don’t want meetings in my house anymore. Too much work.

My favourite meeting place – closed for now

So enter online.

Like many writing groups (and other groups, including my gardening club), we have zoomed into Zoom. I probably don’t need to tell anybody what this is, although how it works, is something else. Both my son, Martin (the IT guy) and a retired IT guy, Nick, who belongs to East End Writers’ Group suggested Zoom and although I haven’t too many clues about how it works (I’m improving with their help), I’m enthused about using Zoom and grateful they came up with the suggestion, and grateful that Nick is doing all the technical stuff to get the meetings going and creating the invitations for members. I am sending out the invitations, so not sitting on my laurels (cliché). So, I like to say, Nick hosts the session and I moderate it. In our two hours or so we have time for four members to each read a poem or two or a short prose excerpt and then after each author reads, it is my turn to lead a discussion and everybody else (and me, too) to give constructive feedback. At the end of our last Zoom meeting (we are meeting every two weeks) the diehards who stayed behind after all the feedback was finished, got into a discussion of how COVID-19 is affecting our writing. The consensus was it is causing us to be distracted and not get as much writing done as we would usually do.

As for the East End Writers’ 20th anniversary celebrations, that too has gone online. Earlier in May, novelist Shane Joseph, who is one of the EEWG’s original members and I were guests on Liquid Lunch on thatchannel the online TV station where I tape my Crime Beat Confidential Show. Liquid Lunch’s host, Hugh Reilly, interviewed Shane and I (remotely – he was in the studio and Shane and I were in our respective homes and coincidentally in our respective offices. Maybe some underlying wish that it will inspire our writing?) to tape the show. The episode is on You Tube now and also you can get to it via thatchannel. Shane and I talk about the early days of East End Writers’ Group. But pay attention to the last part and what we talk about. You can probably guess. Note: as we are isolated, we are not wearing masks, but Hugh is wearing his trademark toque.

 

Link to show is here. Scroll down and across.

And the link to my East End Writers’ Group is here.

So, I guess the message for writers is: don’t let COVID-19 get you down. Find a writers’ critique group online and KEEP WRITING. If you go to my Facebook author page, I post daily writing quotations on weekdays, from other writers, some well-known, some not, to inspire you and get you thinking and writing. Here is that link.

Stay safe, stay healthy and write and read.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
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Posted by on May 28, 2020 in East End Writers' Group, Public Libraries, Shane Joseph, Sharon A. Crawford, thathannel.com, Uncategorized, Writers in COVID-29 Times, Writing

 

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