Crowd sourced market research

#1 

Social media is a fabulous market research tool. You have many friends, and potentially the entire user base, to ask questions of. So I boldly decided to ask a question before going to print.

After I finished a first draft of the cover copy and design, I posted it on my Facebook page and asked my friends if they would be enticed by the front cover to pick the book up if they saw it on the shelf. Furthermore, I asked if the back cover description would make them want to read it.

Holiday blues

I have been seriously unproductive during the holiday season. We were taking care of a close relative through several surgical procedures which was draining, a young relative was sleeping rough on the streets of Belfast causing worry, the darkness didn't help, and preparations for ten guests at the Christmas table introduced  a moderate level of stress. And the announcements of deaths among the world's influentials just kept escalating with every day, lending a macabre air. That trend is likely to continue as the boomers reach that vulnerable age. Climate change is taking its toll on the Arctic with record-breaking temps. At least the weather was mild here with only a few days of heavy winds.

I am trying to get myself back into writing mode but we have interruptions every day. Today the weather was lovely -- sunny, warm, and exceedingly mild. So I worked in the garden, which always needs attention, but that took away from writing.

Today, I amused myself by creating yet another website. I claimed my personal URL on Strikingly. That's a new service that picks up your LinkedIn profile and creates a website instantly from scratch. I had to make a few modifications, but about a half hour later I had a beautiful contemporary website, live and free. You can't beat that. Happy holidays!

Check it out. Every writer needs one.

Ode to the comma

There has been many an ode to the comma written. I've even heard people say that a comma can save lives! Consider this simple sentence.

Let's eat Grandma!

Let's eat, Grandma!

It's become really interesting for me, because I am an American living in Ireland and writing for the British market. I try to stay away from colloquialisms. But confounding the issues is the fact that styles can be markedly different for English of different countries. The comma being one of the culprits. 

Grammar tips and tricks

Certain words in the English language are very tricky. Having grown up speaking Ukrainian at home, I found English so much more confusing. So I have to go back and remind myself periodically of the rules to apply when writing in English. Today I tackle some confusing choices of terms.

Major edit completed

Yesterday, I completed a major edit of my first novel, The Naked Truth.  I like to call it a murder mystery set on the high seas. Essentially, I created a fictional story based on our sailing adventures. I didn't want to just write our story which has been done by so many. I wanted to create characters who experience something unusual, while making use of the experience of sailing through the Caribbean and across the Atlantic. I really didn't know where the story was going and how I was going to resolve it until about 3/4 of the way in.

This was my third edit. In the first edit, I caught many mistakes, fixed prose, converted prose to dialogue, and just cleaned up overall. So now I had a second version. Then I gave it to my editor (husband) to read.  He edited and annotated as well as giving me a page of comments in general. I think every sentence had suggested changes.This was version 3. That was a little hard to take, but I bit the bullet and made most, not all, of the edits he suggested. He was absolutely right.

On the speaking circuit

We have been invited on several occasions to deliver lectures based on our books. Our anchoring book was actually born from a lecture. When people came up to us after the talk wanting to buy our book, we said, "What book?" That's when we set out to write Happy Hooking.

Now we have Cruising the Wild Atlantic Way of Ireland, and as it turns out, British yacht clubs need speakers to talk about subjects of interest to their members. Ireland happens to be of great interest, especially since the Troubles are still in the collective 'recent' memory of retirees with the time and resources to go off cruising.

The Power of Punctuation

I loved reading Eats, Shoots & Leaves. To think of writing an entire book about the comma is beyond me, but I had to read it with that enticing title. And then I saw this photo with a notice which no doubt was the result of spacing issues.

I have become really attuned to punctuation. Stray commas get wiped off the face of the earth. Semicolons are used with reserve. Periods are definitive, except in poetry. Colons and ellipses are inserted sparingly. I want my prose to be crisp, but not to a fault.

And then I face "The Frustration of Autocorrect" and the confounding nature of writing in American but living in Ireland. Oh, woe is me.