So excited to open my inbox yesterday and find an email from my editor/publisher Stephanie Blackman, owner of Riverhaven Books in Whitman, MA! As scheduled in our contract, yesterday was the due date for her to provide me with suggestions to fine-tune ‘Bed, Breakfast, & Blackmail’.
So far, her suggestions have been small adjustments, with no major changes to plot, characters, or basic writing technique. My plan is to continue the review process through the weekend, and zip this file back to her bright and early on Monday morning.
After she finalizes the adjustments, she’ll request the galley copy which I will need to review with the proverbial fine-toothed comb before advising any final changes. Steph will then upload to Amazon and order printed copies from the local print shop on my behalf.
Looking forward to the day when I hold the actual book in my hands… nothing more satisfying for an author!
And then the marketing efforts begin!
As I approached the final edit of ‘Bed, Bath, & Blackmail’, I loaded my manuscript into a website called ‘Wordcounter.com’, a most useful tool.
There is nothing sweeter than setting up an author table at a holiday craft fair, then waiting for the browsers to wander past, stopping to chat about my characters, the setting, the storyline. If the two of us connect over my mystery series, another reader will walk away with one of my books, anxious to meet my amateur sleith Gwen Andrews.
There is nothing more satisfying than to walk into a bookstore and see both of my mysteries displayed on the shelf in the local author section.
As I’ve been penning the third story in my four-book mystery series, it occured to me that the first two stories were told strictly from the viewpoint of my amature sleuth Gwen Andrews. I wondered if transforming certain scenes to the viewpoint of another major character might add texture and depth to the story-telling.
A few months ago, I was contacted by the host of “Be My Guest”, an interview show on the Upton local cable station and scheduled for May.
After two years of sharing my writing journey with audiences in New England, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Florida, I received a return invitation from the friends group of my local senior center to speak to them again about the current status of my writing life.
For the past two years, I’ve been presenting my Author Talk centered around how I learned to write a mystery. I was thrilled recently to receive an invitation from the Friends group for my local senior center to speak to them again this April with an update on my writing career and my work in progress.
for your GPS: 10900 Walsingham Road, Largo, FL.
Because my first two published mysteries are set in a fictitious Massachusetts town, I’ve had no resistance from New England library directors or senior complex program organizers to schedule my Author Talk about the writing process. I’ve even had success in Pennsylvania and Delaware because I have siblings living in both states.
Debi Graham-Leard 