RSS

Tag Archives: Blue Denim Press

Finding time to write in the Christmas season

10 Dec
Sharon A. Crawford's latest in the Beyond series

Sharon A. Crawford’s latest in the Beyond series

No doubt you are all rushing around getting Christmas presents, wrapping them, going to Christmas parties or even holding a Christmas party, planning Christmas dinner including shopping for the Christmas bird. Then there will be all the Christmas Day family get togethers and afterwards the Boxing Day Sale. And don’t forget all those Christmas movies on TV.

Not that we all do all of these things. But Christmas can get us into quite a frenzy.

So, where and how with all of that going on, do you find time to write (or rewrite) that novel or short story (or short stories)?

It can be done, although with all that’s been happening at my end, it might be better to follow what I write here, rather  than what I do – at least until after this Friday.

Besides some of the above nonsense, I’ve had two dentist visits brought on by an emergency. Scratch two weekday afternoons to write my novel. Tomorrow afternoon I have to go the Christmas Market at Toronto’s Distillery. I used to go on weekends when that was the only time it was open. Now they are charging to get in on weekends. The $5 admission doesn’t bother me – it’s the long line-ups to get in weekends with tickets – you can buy them online.

A writer friend who lives in the area has let some of us writers know about those long lineups and the noise (well, she is living in the area – for those of us just visiting, we hopefully can tolerate the noise factor for a bit of time). Last year there were long line-ups to get in, but I snuck in another way around the corner and found it wasn’t as crowded as it seemed from outside the main entrance.

I doubt if I can do that this year – so I have to go on a weekday afternoon. Have to get my hand-crafted Christmas fudge (some of it becomes Christmas presents), and a few other things. It is also interesting to just look and absorb the old-fashioned Christmas market.

And hey, maybe it can be incorporated into a short story. Probably not the current novel I’m writing as my Beyond mystery series occur the end of the 1990s and into the millennium and the Distillery Christmas Market only started five years or so ago. But one can always fictionalize. And I do have this third Beyond book taking place in November and December.

So, besides using the incentive of your Christmas events to write, how can you make time to write?

Don’t set up times when you usually would write. Be creative. For example, I have made it a practice to take weekends off from writing (unless part of a workshop I’m attending). This Sunday afternoon I plan to write for a few hours. it’s going to rain anyway. That will take care of time taken off tomorrow afternoon for the Christmas market. Still haven’t worked in the time off for dental visits.

Also, you can just look at the time you actually have to spend with Christmas and Christmas-related stuff. Can you shorten, combine or delete some? And I don’t mean deleting the family Christmas dinner. But how many trips do you have to make to Christmas shop? Consider combining places to shop that are close together – if you just have to go in person. Or shop online. Or combine. Many places you can view the item online and pre-order it to have it ready for pick-up when you arrive at the store. I don’t recommend this latter one as it means you have to use a credit card and that means paying the piper in January or February depending on your credit card statement date.

There is another way – some stores (Canadian Tire is one) where you can search at their site for particular items. check them out and then go to the store’s branch online and see if the item is there (and how many) as well as what aisle they are in. Note: make sure you do this just before you leave or the item might be gone.

There are other shopping alternatives such as getting a lot of gift cards from one or two stores, using the old-fashioned catalogue shopping by phoning in your order from the print catalogue.

And record those Christmas movies on TV.

Just some suggestions for making time to write. Again, remember you don’t have to write in your usual time or day. We are creative writers and shouldn’t have problems creating time to write.

Just keep toes crossed there are no family and/or health emergencies. For the latter I have a writer friend, who was slightly injured in a car accident. Fortunately his laptop was not damaged, so he sat up in the gurney (even at the hospital) and wrote more of his latest short story.

That’s being creative.

What are your ideas for saving time at Christmas so you can write?

Cheers.

Sharon

The book cover at the top links to Beyond Blood on Amazon.com

 

s

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on December 10, 2015 in Blue Denim Press, Characters and plot in fiction, Plot and Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Time Management for Writers, Writing Time

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Tales – good and bad – from the book promo trenches

26 Nov
Sharon A. Crawford channelling Dana Bowman from Beyond Blood

Sharon A. Crawford channelling Dana Bowman from Beyond Blood. Shane Joseph photo

Still promoting my Beyond books. But when you do this you also need to help other writers promote their books. It is only fair as we are all in this together.

And sometimes that can be fun as the photo at the left shows. Cut line explains it briefly but more on that shortly. First I need to mention the downside as other published authors may run into this, if not with this bookseller, but another one, or two.

Up to last week, my encounters with booksellers have been amicable and polite. All had said they would at least see about carrying my Beyond Blood in their store. One even opted to carry a copy of each Beyond book. A couple of others I have to follow up on but they are part of a big chain, which has been helpful at other branches, so we will see here.

Now the bad and the ugly. I have also been approaching independent bookstores, but the latest venture there has left a sour taste in my mouth. Last week I entered Ben McNally Books in downtown Toronto. I always like to check to see if they already have a copy of my book. Ben McCally Books has a weird book placement system. No books by category – no signs either at the top of the bookshelves. Mystery,science fiction are all placed in with all fiction – alphabetically by author. So be it if that is the way they want to do it – their prerogative.

I approached the owner, Ben McNally about carrying a copy of Beyond Blood. As always, I stated it is not self-published but is published by a small Canadian trade publisher and handed him my business card and now that I have more – a couple of bookmarks. He barely glanced at them and said, ” Sorry, no.” He looked about as sorry as a person arrested who shows no remorse for his crime.

Being a former journalist and naturally curious, I asked “Why?”

He said he didn’t want books by small trade publishers.

So, I three him my kicker:

“Indigo (big Canadian book chain) has them in their stores.”

Then, I turned and left the store.

And you know, there weren’t many other customers in the store. Which says something.

I went directly to the big downtown Indigo store and what a difference. Manager very interested in carrying my Beyond Blood in that Indigo store. Indigo Chapters online has carried both Beyond books from day 1 for each, including print copy and e-copy (Kobo). Also this downtown Indigo bookstore is very busy – lots of customers. Because of the positive response, I bought a book there to give as a gift to a friend.

What goes around comes around.

And that brings me to what goes with the photo at the top.

I have started doing brief skits featuring Dana Bowman, the main character in the Beyond stories. I give Dana instructions to talk about herself and to read a bit from Beyond Blood.

Dana being Dana doesn’t listen. She does talk about herself some – but connects it to talking about me, her author. Dana claims she is instrumental in writing the Beyond stories. Oh, to a certain extent. I’ve been told I’m channelling Dana. I don’t mind her talking about writing and some of my quirks – if related to writing, but she can leave my plants out of it.

And when I say to read, she needs to read from Beyond Blood. And that hair in the photo above, taken by the editor at my publishers at their fall book launch, November 21? Dana has short “boy style hair.” Now she has decided to grow it somewhat. Really?

But the skit went over well at Blue Denim Press’s book launch. I was happy to bring along a few friends and to pre-promote the book launch and the authors launching their books, Shane Joseph and Chris Canniff, including reviewing their books in the two previous posts on this blog. The launch also had a Flamenco dancer and her husband providing the music on his guitar.

The funny thing here is Michael, the husband, used to come to my East End Writers’ Group when he and Lesley lived in my area. So did Shane when he lived in Toronto. And I knew Chrit from Canadian Authors Association Toronto Branch.

See, we writers are all connected, so we need to help each other.

Certain booksellers need to learn that too. Then they might get more business.

Dana Bowman will be making one more appearance before Christmas on Dec.4 and Sharon A. Crawford will have her Beyond books for sale at the Toronto Heliconian Club Art and Gift sale, Saturday, November 28. See my Gigs and Blogs page for more info.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
2 Comments

Posted by on November 26, 2015 in Author Reading, Beyond Blood, Beyond the Tripping Point, Book Promotion, Book Reviews, Channelling Fiction Characters, Fiction Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Uncategorized

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sharon A. Crawford reviews Christopher Canniff’s Poor Man’s Galapagos

19 Nov

Canniff-back-cover-pic-e1442498323960-225x300Here is my review of novelist Christopher Canniff’s book Poor Man’s Galapagos, also being launched by Blue Denim Press November 21, 2015. But first a bit about Chris.

Christopher Canniff is the author of Abundance of the Infinite (Quattro Books, 2012) and the forthcoming Poor Man’s Galapagos
(Blue Denim Press, 2015).
Christopher has been mentored by two of Canada’s top writers, MG Vassanji and David Adams Richards, at the Humber School for Writers.  He is the current President of the Canadian Authors Association Toronto Branch (www.canauthorstoronto.org).
He shortlisted for the 2010 Matrix Litpop Awards for fiction, and he won a short novel contest with LWOT Magazine in Montreal. He has published in Descant Magazine Issue 152 (Spring 2011), and he also shortlisted in the 2012 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest with Quattro Books. He has sold two radio scripts to Falcon Picture Group in Chicago, Illinois, USA for a nationally-syndicated radio program, and he has published with Tightrope Books in Toronto.
Christopher moved to Ecuador to begin writing.  There, he read over fifty books of world literature, learned a new language and culture, and taught English at an Ecuadorian university for WorldTeach, a non-profit and non-governmental organization based at the Harvard Institute for International Development. While in Ecuador, Christopher began work on two novels, one of which became Poor Man’s Galapagos.  He lived briefly in Quito (the country’s capital) and, for six months, lived with an Ecuadorian family in Portoviejo (literally translated, “old port,” a dusty town 30 kilometres from the coast, said to have been relocated from beach dwellings as pirates chased the residents further inland.) Christopher took culture, language and history classes about Ecuador, and worked with Plan International, an organization with the aim of improving Ecuador’s faltering rural education system.  Christopher obtained a Mechanical Engineering degree in 1995 from the University of Toronto, and he is a registered Professional Engineer in the province of Ontario.
He is married to Roxanne, and lives with his son Colin and daughter Abigail in Windsor, Ontario.

Book Review

Christopher Canniff’s latest novel Poor Man’s Galapagos is the coming-of-age story of an 18-year old university student, Tómas Montgomery Harvey. But that’s where similarity to the usual coming-of age novel ends because of the complicated plot Canniff has woven. First there is the setting – a small Ecuador island, Isla de la Plata. The novel is set from August 1987 into 1988. A war between Ecuador and Peru has been ongoing for many decades. Military conscription is mandatory and the bottom line for Tómas is he is afraid to go to war, afraid of being killed. This is first hinted at in the novel’s beginning when Tómas, working with student revolutionaries, does not have the nerve to light and throw a Molotov cocktail at a passing government vehicle.

Friends and so-called friends of Tómas and his father have differing approaches to keep Tómas out of the military. His friend, Juan Carlos, the newspaper editor of the island newspaper and a former lawyer, tries to go the court route with conscientious objection. Edwardo Delgado, a long-time friend of his father, at his father’s wishes, hires Tómas to work as the engineer in charge of the large hotel resort Edwardo is building, which provides a means for Tomas to get a military card and an exemption from military service.

Tómas goes along with both, with disastrous results. As Juan Carlos tells Tómas “What people perhaps should do, and what they actually do, is often very different.” That includes Tómas’ father, the legendary freelance photojournalist, Montgomery Harvey. All his life Tómas has lived in the shadow of his father, always feeling no love from his father, who spent more time travelling for his stories, than with his son and wife, Veronica. As the novel opens, Montgomery has been linked in the press with embezzling funds and after a meeting with Tómas on the beach, he says he is leaving for good. After his father departs, Tómas decides he has to reconnect with him and find his birth mother. Only by choosing his own options, and following through, despite many hurdles, is Tómas able to transition through the murky road of becoming an adult.

The novel is told with the alternating viewpoints of Tómas and Montgomery Harvey, which works well to provide details to the reader, but never revealing too much at a time. To avoid any spoilers, let’s just say that Canniff builds up the plot, piece by piece, keeping the reader’s interest. Although the novel, starts a bit slow (despite that Molotov cocktail), hang in there, it picks up very soon. Your best bet is to keep on reading to the end in one sitting, if possible, like I did while a wind storm occurred outside.

Reviewed by Sharon A. Crawford, author of Beyond Blood and Beyond the Tripping Point

Christopher’s books are available at the usual places such as Amazon and Indigo. He is also on Goodreads.

Christopher’s Website

Christopher’s Blog

For more information about Shane’s books and where they are available go to his publisher’s website.

Christopher Canniff’s book is one of two being launched by Blue Denim Press Saturday, November 21, 2015. For more details, check the flyer below

See you there on Saturday. I’m the guest author.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on November 19, 2015 in Author Reading, Beyond Blood, Blue Denim Press, Book Reviews, Other authors, Sharon A. Crawford, Writing

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sharon A Crawford reviews Shane Joseph’s In the Shadow of the Conquistador

12 Nov

Shane Joseph head shot for book review posting 243887As promised, here is my review of novelist Shane Joseph’s latest book In the Shadow of the Conquistador. But first a little bit about Shane Joseph in his own words.

Shane Joseph is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers in Toronto, Canada. He began writing as a teenager living in Sri Lanka and has never stopped. Redemption in Paradise, his first novel, was published in 2004 and his first short story collection, Fringe Dwellers, in 2008. His novel, After the Flood, a dystopian epic set in the aftermath of global warming, was released in November 2009, and won the Canadian Christian Writers award for best Futuristic/Fantasy novel in 2010.His latest release is In the Shadow of the Conquistador, a novel set in Peru and Canada. His short stories and articles have appeared in several Canadian anthologies and in literary journals around the world. His blog at www.shanejoseph.com is widely syndicated.

His career stints include: stage and radio actor, pop musician, encyclopaedia salesman, lathe machine operator, airline executive, travel agency manager, vice president of a global financial services company, software services salesperson, publishing editor, project manager and management consultant.

Self-taught, with four degrees under his belt obtained through distance education, Shane is an avid traveller and has visited one country for every year of his life and lived in four of them. He fondly recalls incidents during his travels as real lessons he could never have learned in school: husky riding in Finland with no training, trekking the Inca Trail in Peru through an unending rainstorm, hitch-hiking in Australia without a map, escaping a wild elephant in Zambia, and being stranded without money in Denmark, are some of his memories.

After immigrating (twice), raising a family, building a career, and experiencing life’s many highs and lows, Shane has carved out a niche in Cobourg, Ontario with his wife Sarah, where he continues to work, write, and play in a rock band.

Shane Joseph, believes in the gift of second chances. He feels that he has lived many lives in just a single lifetime, always starting from scratch with only the lessons from the past to draw upon. His novels and stories reflect the redemptive power of acceptance and forgiveness.

Book Review

Shane Joseph’s latest novel, In the Shadow of the Conquistador. deals with people’s expectations when they are young, what they do to attain them, and coming to grips in middle age with the results. Joseph’s two main characters, long-time friends George Walton and Jeremy “Jimmy” Spence meet as school children living in Toronto’s east end. George is aggressive and Jimmy is withdrawn. However, the two become close friends, with Jimmy, like the novel’s title, living in George’s shadow. A third character, Denise Langevin, whom both men love but only one marries, keep the two men connected, sometimes in mind only, with several separations, sometimes due to job locations, sometimes due to their personal conflict. There is also a fourth “character” – the novel Conquistador, written over the years by George, which is inserted as a parallel to the main story. Conquistador is Spanish for conqueror and lady-killer, both of which apply to George’s modus operandi going through life. George’s novel tells the story of the Spanish conquering the Incas in Peru in the 1500s, particularly the Spanish leader, Francisco, who like George, is compelled to conquer – in his case – the Incas.

The novel begins with the two men, now middle-aged, meeting in Lima. Peru, at George’s request, after a 20-year separation. Ostensibly they are there to climb the Andes Mountain to the Machu Picchu, an historic site from the Incan reign before the Spanish conquest. As they hike the treacherous route with their guide Valdez, Jimmy’s and George’s past parades before them, taunting and terrorizing them. In Lima they meet two women, Ali and Bea, 15 years their junior. Ali is a spitting image of Denise and shy Bea has a large facial scar. The inevitable seems to be building up, but just when you are expecting it, Joseph adds a few twists.

Joseph intertwines this past with the present, each driving the novel forward. The reader learns that George is a womanizer, to extremes, and that trait cost him a possible political career, his career in academia and his wife, Denise. Denise turns to Jimmy, but he is a control freak and as neither man let her “do her own thing” she leaves them both and returns to her native Montreal where her mother is dying.

The difficult climb up the mountain, done in spurts over several days acts as a catalyst for George and Jimmy to sort out the consequences of their lives. As they interact with each other and the two women, both learn that you can’t always get what you want in life, but the alternative can be a better road to take, or if you live too hard and selfish, sometimes it is too late to do anything but accept the consequences.

Joseph continues to write a compelling story with real-life characters that readers can relate to. Only one negative – I wish the actual years for the past would have been headlined at the beginning of each pertinent section as I got confused a few times, especially when Denise and Jimmy meet after seven years of not seeing each other and Denise has aged, but the timeline is not as far along as I thought. The only dates are the ones at the top of Denise’s letters to her mother and the odd reference by Jimmy to starting university in 1968. And I never did figure out exactly where in middle age George and Jimmy are when they meet in Peru.

But dates aside, I suggest reading In the Shadow of the Conquistador in one or two sittings to get the most out of it.

Sharon A. Crawford

Author of Beyond Blood and Beyond the Tripping Point

Shane’s books are available in the usual online places like amazon.com. He is also on Goodreads .

Read Shane’s blog posts  Also included here is a list of Shane’s published books.

Shane’s recent guest blog post on Shannon J. Thompson’s blog

Book Review by Sharon A. Crawford at Indigo Chapters

For more information about Shane’s books and where they are available go to his publisher’s website.

Shane Joseph’s book is one of two being launched by Blue Denim Press Saturday, November 21, 2015. For more details, check the flyer below:

 

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on November 12, 2015 in Author Reading, Beyond Blood, Blue Denim Press, Book Reviews, Other authors, Sharon A. Crawford, Uncategorized, Writing

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dana Bowman entertains at East End Writers’ Group

05 Nov
Sharon A. Crawford's latest in the Beyond series

Sharon A. Crawford’s latest in the Beyond series

Dana Bowman, the main character in my Beyond Blood novel took over my presentation spot at the East End Writers’ Group 15th anniversary last week.This is actually my writing critique group and it’s been happening in Toronto’s east end for 15th years – for 13 years at my house, then at a couple of local businesses nearby and finally from May 2014 at the S. Walter Stewart Public Library.

It was a lot of work with a lot of snafus popping up at the last minute – presenters having to cancel – all for good reasons, but I almost went batalistic when one of the two panelists on self-publishing cancelled a week before the event. Fortunately I was able to get another EEWG member with self-publishing experience to fill in and he (Steven Biggs) was awesome. So, was the other panelist (Ellen Michelson).

The presentations were divided into non-fiction, poetry and fiction. Each presenter could do whatever they wanted in their short time-slot. So we had an author interview set up as a letter and reply to and from a Toronto newspaper advice columnist. Another author, who writes opera, did a Power Point presentation (complete with music) on an opera he wrote for a company that involves the homeless in producing and presenting operas. Lots of readings.

And then there was Dana Bowman, my character. I didn’t introduce any of the fiction presenters as I was one of them. For my presentation, instead of only reading from Beyond Blood I decided to dress up like Dana (complete with short hair black wig and cap). So, when I was introduced, “Dana” ran into the room and onto the stage and made some comment that “Sharon can’t make it because an impatient client insisted on speaking to her now.”

Yes, I was channeling Dana – or that was supposed to be it, but it got to the point where well, who was channeling who. Dana completely took over.

But it got everyone’s attention, interest and some laughs.

Maybe I’m a closet actor. At any rate, I plan to take Dana on a sort of tour – well somewhat limited as I have just two  acting engagements lined up: one for Dec. 4 at a fundraiser in Toronto for Syrian refugees. I’ll be posting that shortly on my Gigs and Blogs page connected with this blog and also on my website http://www.samcraw.com.

Meantime, the next couple of postings here will feature my book reviews of a couple of other Blue Denim Press authors – Shane Joseph and Christopher Canniff – who are launching new books at 3 p.m.,  November 21 at Paintbox Bistro  in Toronto. Dana will be doing her skit here too. See below for the launch info.

If you are in the Toronto area then, you are invited to come to this launch.

Cheers.

Sharon

 

Click on Beyond Blood book cover at the top for where it is available.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on November 5, 2015 in Author Reading, Beyond Blood, Blue Denim Press, Book Promotion, Channelling Fiction Characters, East End Writers' Group, Fiction Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Writing, Writing Critique Groups

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Transitioning the real into the reel (fiction)

29 Oct

 

Sharon A. Crawford's latest in the Beyond series

Sharon A. Crawford’s latest in the Beyond series

Sometimes we go through tremendous ordeals in our lives. Often it is because of a big change – a death in the family, relationship breakup, personal illness, or being the victim of a crime.

Writing about it is often a way to heal and tell our story to others. A journal, personal essay or even a non-fiction article encompassing the ordeal is more fact, more actual with a story (and viewpoint included).

But what if you want to fictionalize it? Do you present details and people as they happened? Do you change people’s names and some details? How can you go about it?

Authors do it several ways. You do have to be concerned with libel – especially if the fiction is more fact than fiction. An author colleague is very particular here because she ran into libel issues a couple of times in the past – no libel involved, but it can scare you and serve as a warning.

Other authors use the “based on…” line.

Some write what they want and use the “Any resemblance to living persons, etc.” disclaimer.

I am a bit liberal about my approach. For the most part I sometimes take something from my life as a basis for a story – but the characters aren’t me or whomever else appeared and the story definitely is different. For example, in my short story collection Beyond the Tripping Point, one story deals with two female friends who have problems with a car brake that won’t work as they drive up to the cottage. This happened to a friend and I about 30 years ago. All my friend had to contend with was the brakes failing. She used the parking brake and we were in and out of gas stations looking for a bay to get the problem fixed. That’s where truth ends. What happens in “No Breaks” is well, crime fiction.

But I do up the ante sometimes if someone has really messed up with my life. When I told this story at a recent Crime Writers of Canada reading, I could just feel the other author mentioned above cringe. (I was looking at the audience, not her, so didn’t actually see her face).

There is a way to do this. One of the characters in one of my short stories in Beyond the Tripping Point is loosely based on this real-life person – only the age is in the same decade and I saw her features, her way of dressing in my mind. But from the minimal description I gave of her, she could be any person in that age bracket fitting that description. I kept her in the same work industry but a different job. Yes, she was one of the suspects, but I won’t tell you if she was the guilty one.

A bit of background here – the person (yes a family member) objected to me writing and getting published family stories as memoir but she said I could fictionalize any of it. So, I did a variation of that.

In Beyond Blood, a couple of characters, Detective Sergean tDonald  Fielding and Great Aunt Doris Bowman are loosely on people I have known – but none of them messed up my life. The first one I liked and the second one was an interesting person. Dana Bowman, my main character, is she based on me? Not exactly. For one thing she is 25 years younger than me. True, we are both short in stature, but I made her shorter, something she is a bit peeved about. Let’s just say Dana tends to boldly go where I just might not do so.

So, it is not all cut and dry about going from real to reel. Just consider that even when your fiction has nothing to do with real life, at least any you have experienced, read about or seen, there is always somebody who will insist that a character in your story is based on them.

Usually they are wrong. Perhaps they have a latent wish to be immortalized in some way.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

Click on the Beyond Blood cover at the top to find out where copies are available

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on October 29, 2015 in Beyond Blood, Beyond the Tripping Point, Blue Denim Press, Characters and plot in fiction, Credible Fiction Characters, Fiction Characters, Plot and Characters, Uncategorized

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When readers relate to authors’ characters

15 Oct
Sharon A. Crawford's latest in the Beyond series

Sharon A. Crawford’s latest in the Beyond series

Dana Bowman, the main character in my Beyond mystery series is making herself known.

Another author who read Beyond Blood compared Dana’s situation as the mother of a lost son to a non-fiction book dealing with a mother losing her son. Mind you, David, Dana’s son is lost in the sense that he is kidnapped. But both mothers suffer anguish and go through much emotional turmoil.

Others have picked out Dana’s offbeat sense of humour and being a likeable character.

All indications that readers are identifying with Dana.

Getting readers to identify with your novel’s characters – main character in particular, but also the other characters is one of the challenges for writers. But no matter what the fiction genre readers want more than just a good plot – they want to connect with your characters. Perhaps the daytime soap operas or the old night time TV soaps started this. However, even other TV series, police, etc. have a running thread for each character.

If readers can’t identify with your characters, you will lose them. They won’t enjoy your book as much or at all and may give up on it.

So what makes fiction characters compelling?

Liking the character isn’t absolutely necessary, but remember that most people are not all good or all bad. And even so-called good characters can come across as somewhat off. Maybe they are too good-two shoes. Maybe they are too superficial. The dreaded wooden characters.

So, in a nutshell, you have to make your characters compelling – by making them three dimensional – with dialogue, their inner thoughts, and their actions. You need to compel the reader to get under the character’s skin and if not emphasize with them, at least be with them.

Besides your novel’s characters getting a mention from readers, another good sign of compelling characters ix when readers read they want to find out what happens to the main character because they care. When they sense something terrible is going to happen to a character they keep reading, hoping both that it won’t happen and that it will. And when it does, they feel right with the character and read on to see if the character can come through the situation.

Of course, some of this is plot. But these days you really can’t have one without the other.

Besides my Beyond books, read fiction by Peter Robinson, Rosemary McCracken, Rosemary Aubert and Maureen Jennings to name a few.

And happy reading.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

Click on the Beyond Blood cover at the top to find out where copies are available;

And check my updated Gigs and Blog Tours for a presentation with other Crime Writers of Canada authors on October 22, 2015

 

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on October 15, 2015 in Beyond Blood, Blue Denim Press, Characters and plot in fiction, Credible Fiction Characters, Fiction Characters, Plot and Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Uncategorized, Writing

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Don’t rush your writing

08 Oct
Sharon A. Crawford's latest in the Beyond series

Sharon A. Crawford’s latest in the Beyond series

We writers all seem to have deadlines with writing our novels or short stories. Sometimes it is the publisher’s deadline, sometimes our own. So we fret and hurry through writes and rewrites and maybe don’t write our best.

Last Saturday I had a heart-to-heart talk with the acquisitions editor at Blue Denim Press (publisher of my Beyond mystery books). Shane had a big piece of advice – Don’t rush the writing.

If you rush it, you’ll miss things, make errors and your writing will come across as hurried. This is mostly me speaking, but including some of what Shane and I discussed. Note: Shane is also a published fiction author. Both of us have missed things because of writing in too much of a hurry. His error is his business, but it was caught in time before all print copies of his new novel In the Shadow of the Conquistador were done for the book launch, etc.

I’ll tell you my stupid error – it is in the current Beyond book (third in the series), I am writing – apparently too fast because of time constraints (too much else going on in my life – the writing, editing and instructing business, health, house, social, etc.) Anyway for  those familiar with my Beyond books, they are set in the late 1990s, although this third one gets my fraternal twin PIs, Dana Bowman and Bast Overture into the beginning or 2000.

Which is neither here nor there with my writing error. In one scene Bast goes to the Toronto Reference Library to look up old addresses in the Toronto Might Street Directory. So, I had him go to the library’s former address – now the University of Toronto Bookstore. Why? I had done research there and for some reason the decade  that I did so got lost in my brain, so hence my date mixup.

I had gone there in the early 1970s. Bast went to the Toronto Reference Library in late 1999. This newer (and current) TRL location opened in 1977. My error arrived in my brain weeks after writing it, as often happens when not actually writing. You can bet I made the change next time I turned on the computer.

That is only one of the many things that can suffer if you write too fast. Try to pace yourself and make more time for your writing – either in the time spent each day/week or the whole time (months/years) spent.

If you do that, when your publisher accepts your manuscript and you sign that contract, you won’t have to worry so much when the publisher suggests some changes.

And often publishers have tight deadlines.

I am constantly trying to prioritize my life – including dumping things, saying “no” more often and putting some people and things on hold.  Still an uphill battle, but I try. And I need to try to relax more.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

Click on the Beyond Blood cover at the top to find out where copies are available

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on October 8, 2015 in Beyond Blood, Beyond the Tripping Point, Blue Denim Press, Rewriting Fiction, Sharon A. Crawford, Time Management for Writers, Toronto Public Library, Writing, Writing Time

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Book Promo trick learned at festival and library

01 Oct
Sharon A. Crawford's latest in the Beyond series

Sharon A. Crawford’s latest in the Beyond series

It has been a hectic few days with my Beyond Books at two booths (not during the same hour) at Word on the Street last Sunday and Tuesday evening at the Runnymede Toronto Public Library Branch.

Very interesting – great to meet readers and other writers and chat. And I also learned and applied a new sales technique (new to me) that worked, so much so that I have to order more copies of my first published Beyond book – Beyond the Tripping Point from my publisher and he in turn has to order more from the distributor. This book was published three years ago. And we’re talking print copies, not e-copies. So there is still steam in the “old” book and the “old” book copy option.

So what happened?

I’ve been attending the Word on the Street Festival, Toronto version almost every year since it began, often selling books or passing out info about writers’ organizations or both. This year it changed venue for the third time.This year it was at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre beside Lake Ontario. It was a hot summer day (yes, I know it is fall), sunny and very pleasant. So were most of the people there and the venue setup – closer together and also specific areas to sit and rest your feet and your a.. well you know what.

At WOTS I had an hour each at two booths selling Beyond Blood and Beyond the Tripping Point as well as handing out business cards and flyers for two more of the venues I would be at this fall, and chatting about my books with people who pass by. Very important. You don’t just sit there and smile because not everyone is going to stop unless you approach them. “Do you read mystery novels?” became my ice-breaker and if the answer was “yes” (about two-thirds to three-quarters of the time), I was off talking about my Beyond books and holding up copies as I talked. I was at the Crime Writers of Canada booth first and then Toronto Sisters in Crime. Despite the crowded quarters of the latter (in a booth at extended tables with other writing organizations). Space was so limited the poets reading had to stand on a table at their end. That was also where anyone going to sit behind any of the tables had to enter the area. Sisters in Crime had their booth at the other end. So if I didn’t want to hop the table to get out and chat, I had to maneuver over to the other end, avoid the poet on the table, slither out and walk to the end where I stood and chatted.

I was selling both books as two for one price (and made sure I had the individual prices listed on my price sheet to show the difference). That worked for sales, including to a lady who said she had to run into the building behind to the ATM and would I be there? Of course, I would.

During all this I was trying to find and keep track of two old friends (who didn’t know each other at that point). One found me over at the Crime Writers booth but the other didn’t find me until the end of my stint at Sisters in Crime. But both kept busy going to booths, chatting and collecting info. The latter friend got steered to me by another mystery writer the friend had seen and heard at a previous Crime Writers of Canada library reading.

Which brings me to Runnymede library branch and Tuesday night. Despite rain, we got a good number of readers who filled the library program room. And it was one of the better author presentations by some of us from Crime Writers of Canada – Rob Brunet, Karen Blake-Hall, Madeleine Harris Callway and me. We talked about our books, often putting in humour, telling stories of how we got our stories settings, how we got our stories, did a little reading from our books and then opened it to questions.

It was really like chatting with old and new friends.

And yes, I sold more books – the package deal again and was really rewarded more by one author purchasing when she said “I really like your writing.” Mind you she has attended some of my writing workshops at library branches and I probably read something I had written there.

So, what’s the morale here to promote books? Get involved with your audience, entertain, and offer good deals with your books.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

Cover of Sharon A. Crawford's mystery short story collection. Click on it for publisher's website

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on October 1, 2015 in Author Reading, Beyond Blood, Beyond the Tripping Point, Book Promotion, Characters and plot in fiction, Plot and Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Toronto Public Library, Writing

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

On the book promo road again

24 Sep
Sharon A. Crawford's latest in the Beyond series

Sharon A. Crawford’s latest in the Beyond series

The presentation at Woodbridge library last Thursday evening was another one of those magical evenings where readers and authors connect. So much so we could have gone long beyond the end time.

Rosemary McCracken, Nate Hendley and I did our separate mini-presentations, each ending with a short reading from one of our books. Nate sat between us “the thorn between the roses” is the way he put it. Maybe, but not the author, more for what he writes – true crime. Nate talked about how he started writing books and sort of “fell” into writing about criminals and now also those wrongly convicted like Steven Truscott. Nate also read an excerpt from Steven Truscott: Decades of Injustice (Five River Publishing, 2012)

Rosemary talked about her mystery series featuring financial advisor Pat Tierney and the issues writers of book series have to face. She also discussed how writing contests have helped her get her stories (yes, she also writes short stories) published – something writers shouldn’t ignore. Rosemary read the beginning of her first Pat Tierney novel Safe Harbor (Imajin Books, 2012)

I talked about my series characters – but not from the writing a series viewpoint, but where some of them came from and the location and time period for the Beyond stories featuring the fraternal twin PIs Dana Bowman and Bast Overture and how both affect my research. I also covered a bit of the research I do and read the beginning Prologues from Beyond Blood.(Blue Denim Press, 2014)

And then we turned it over to the audience. Lots of questions – from research to journalism – I got the question on the latter to my surprise because I’m the former journalist and Nate and Rosemary continue working as freelance journalists. The questions turned into a real dialogue among authors and readers. Like we were chatting in a living room – well a somewhat large living room. Afterwards, some of the readers came up to the table to chat more with us and to buy a few books.

And some of us Crime Writers of Canada authors are going to do it again next Tuesday, Sept. 29, 6.30 p.m. to 8 p.m., this time at a library in Toronto’s west end – Runnymede branch. This time the authors are Rob Brunet, Karen Blake-Hall, Madeleine Callway and myself. No true crime, but three of us (Rob, Madeleine and I) all had our first novel published in the second half of last year. Karen writes sizzling suspense-romance. The presentation is free so if you are in the Toronto area, please come – exact address is 2178 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON. I’m not going to put the library link because as I found out in my other blog http://www.onlychildwrites.wordpress.com) posting on Tuesday, the link for that memoir writing workshop I was teaching Tuesday evening has now disappeared. Fair enough. The workshop is done and over with. So, for now you can check out my Gigs and Blog Tours page on this site (click on it at the top). Just remember the link to the Runnymede library blurb will probably disappear after Sept. 29.

And that reminds me – I better add October’s events to this  Gigs and Blog Tours page.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

Click on the Beyond Blood cover at the top to find out where copies are available

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on September 24, 2015 in Author Reading, Beyond Blood, Beyond the Tripping Point, Blue Denim Press, Book Promotion, Crime Writing, Other authors, Public Libraries, Series Characters novels and short stories, Sharon A. Crawford, Writing

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older posts
Newer posts →