Vincent Zandri's Blog - Posts Tagged "concrete-pearl"
Dudes Writing as Dames
I'm a dude.
A guy.
A boy.
I have a pee-pee and I like football games, weight lifting, beer, wings, black coffee and toasted hard-rolls, shooting guns, facial hair, scratching my ass in public, spitting, swearing, Clint Eastwood, Hemingway, Levis, cowboy boots, cut-off T-shirts, drums, violence of all sorts and varieties, sexy girls, and no, I don't eat quiche and tough guys don't dance (unless it's with the devil).
So how is it that I've just written my third novel from a female point of view, and somehow gotten away with it? Last summer, when THE REMAINS was first released, I was asked that very question a lot by both interviewers and fans. And now that my newest novel in a series, CONCRETE PEARL has been released by StoneGate Ink, I will almost surely get asked the question again and again.
So, in order to cut to the chase, here's my answer.
Truth is, I don't freakin' know how I'm able to pull off the female POV.
But I can tell you this: I grew up entirely surrounded by women. My mom, and my two sisters. My dad worked a lot, like lots of dads back in the 60's and 70's, and he couldn't be around all the time. Plus I was a bit of a loner so, when I was home, I was home with girls. And man, could they fight!
Then my parents moved me to a new neighborhood when I was 7 years old, and much to their chagrin, but my pleasant surprise, the kids in the hood were almost entirely female. And yah, they were real cute. How I figured this out at 7 years old I'll never know, but I should have known back then I'd be in for a life-time of heartache.
But, I digress...
Later on in my teens, I would become one of those dudes who always had to have a girlfriend. You know, the type who can't be alone with himself for too long. Which might seem strange since you all know me as a bachelor who works alone and often travels alone. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. I'm just getting off a breakup now with a girl I was seeing on and off for almost two years and yah, it hurts. I might be a boy, but I'm also sensitive (wiping a tear from my right eye...)
In my 20s and 30s, I would become the guy who always had to be married. Luckily however, after two failed marriages, I've learned not to jump into the a third one so quickly. What else have I learned? That just because a woman smiles at you doesn't mean she wants to bear your children. But I digress once again...
So, what's my point?
Ah yes, the female POV.
Well, as far as CONCRETE PEARL goes, Ava "Spike" Harrison was easy. She's a construction business owner and a tough but sexy broad who also likes to solve a good mystery now and again. Especially when her size 8 ass and even her life is on the line, as it is in "Pearl." I too grew up in the construction business and had I chosen to, could have been a construction business owner.
Don't confuse Spike for a guy with boobs, she's a real woman who enjoys men, but who can hold her own with the toughest guys. And she doesn't carry a gun. For an "equalizer" she likes to carry around a framing hammer, and she's not afraid to use it should some dude take a swipe at her or try and place his paws someplace where they don't belong.
Think "Tomb Raider" meets "The Woman's Murder Club" and you'll begin to have an idea of what Spike and her new series will be all about.
Ok, that's it for now, I have to go get my nails done, and I'm feeling bloated and I have a headache. I've been crying a lot lately too ... at the littlest things.....
Concrete Pearl
A guy.
A boy.
I have a pee-pee and I like football games, weight lifting, beer, wings, black coffee and toasted hard-rolls, shooting guns, facial hair, scratching my ass in public, spitting, swearing, Clint Eastwood, Hemingway, Levis, cowboy boots, cut-off T-shirts, drums, violence of all sorts and varieties, sexy girls, and no, I don't eat quiche and tough guys don't dance (unless it's with the devil).
So how is it that I've just written my third novel from a female point of view, and somehow gotten away with it? Last summer, when THE REMAINS was first released, I was asked that very question a lot by both interviewers and fans. And now that my newest novel in a series, CONCRETE PEARL has been released by StoneGate Ink, I will almost surely get asked the question again and again.
So, in order to cut to the chase, here's my answer.
Truth is, I don't freakin' know how I'm able to pull off the female POV.
But I can tell you this: I grew up entirely surrounded by women. My mom, and my two sisters. My dad worked a lot, like lots of dads back in the 60's and 70's, and he couldn't be around all the time. Plus I was a bit of a loner so, when I was home, I was home with girls. And man, could they fight!
Then my parents moved me to a new neighborhood when I was 7 years old, and much to their chagrin, but my pleasant surprise, the kids in the hood were almost entirely female. And yah, they were real cute. How I figured this out at 7 years old I'll never know, but I should have known back then I'd be in for a life-time of heartache.
But, I digress...
Later on in my teens, I would become one of those dudes who always had to have a girlfriend. You know, the type who can't be alone with himself for too long. Which might seem strange since you all know me as a bachelor who works alone and often travels alone. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. I'm just getting off a breakup now with a girl I was seeing on and off for almost two years and yah, it hurts. I might be a boy, but I'm also sensitive (wiping a tear from my right eye...)
In my 20s and 30s, I would become the guy who always had to be married. Luckily however, after two failed marriages, I've learned not to jump into the a third one so quickly. What else have I learned? That just because a woman smiles at you doesn't mean she wants to bear your children. But I digress once again...
So, what's my point?
Ah yes, the female POV.
Well, as far as CONCRETE PEARL goes, Ava "Spike" Harrison was easy. She's a construction business owner and a tough but sexy broad who also likes to solve a good mystery now and again. Especially when her size 8 ass and even her life is on the line, as it is in "Pearl." I too grew up in the construction business and had I chosen to, could have been a construction business owner.
Don't confuse Spike for a guy with boobs, she's a real woman who enjoys men, but who can hold her own with the toughest guys. And she doesn't carry a gun. For an "equalizer" she likes to carry around a framing hammer, and she's not afraid to use it should some dude take a swipe at her or try and place his paws someplace where they don't belong.
Think "Tomb Raider" meets "The Woman's Murder Club" and you'll begin to have an idea of what Spike and her new series will be all about.
Ok, that's it for now, I have to go get my nails done, and I'm feeling bloated and I have a headache. I've been crying a lot lately too ... at the littlest things.....
Concrete Pearl
Sunday Guest Post: Author David H. Fears Talks Marketing vs. Writing
The following blog is now appearing at The Vincent Zandri Vox: http://vincentzandri.blogspot.com/201...
___________________________________
David H. Fears is a writer. A short story writer, a novelist, an essayist, and all around lover and master of the craft. More than that, he is respectful of the craft and as his guest post will attest, alarmed at how many indie authors, never mind me, are losing track of what's important in the writing game. Namely, the writing. Have we all become so obsessed with checking on our Amazon ranking, hour after hour after hour, that we've begun to compromise what should be of paramount importance to us? Again, the writing.
As David will point out, a whole lot of our efforts nowadays are more about who can make the most racket on Facebook, Kindleboards, Twitter, Myspace, and God knows where else, when it should be the writing that's doing the speaking for us. And when all this self-promotion doesn't result in sales, we drop our prices to $.99 in hopes that we will shoot to the top of the charts.
But does dropping your prices for a time de-value your work?
I believe that it doesn't, so long as it's a temporary measure designed to increase your audience. I also believe that an author should have a variety of books offered up at a variety of prices. In my case, I always have something available at $.99, while my other books are usually priced around $2.99, and some even at $4.99 and $5.99.
In the end, the pricing of E-Books remains an inexact science. But what is apparent for many writers like Fears and myself, is that, if we begin to shift from being full-time writers to full-time ego-obsessed marketers, we will destroy not only our talents, but we will demolish our careers as we know them.
That said, never fear, for David H. Fears is here:
YOU’VE GOT TO (fill in the blanks _________________________) TO BE SUCCESSFUL.
My mother taught me not to brag. That it was low class, boorish, etc. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Back when the world was young and the Internet was still the Defense Department’s ARPANET, I used to buy and devour books on the writing craft. I tried to get just one good tip out of every book, and usually I found at least one. You see, I had several decades of stories in me that were clamoring to get out, but mastering the craft (okay, near-mastering) was like trying to have an erotic date with a reluctant bulldog. So I immersed, parsed, filtered, microscoped, and fumbled my way to many short stories written and submitted, because YOU’VE GOT TO BE PUBLISHED, as they would say over and over.
My first winner got published on the outside of a coffee can, with the balance of the story inside. It was a real grind, that story! I once was sent $100 for a story by some obscure Southern magazine no one outside of Tulsa has ever heard of. I hung around writing sites online where every ego bigger than a June bug was pissing in the wind to get published in obscure journals in such popular places as Lichtenstein. All in all I penned more than 100 short stories, and “critted” many times more. I became a college writing instructor for a couple of years just to learn all 29 rules for commas. All through this period what stuck with me was, “YOU’VE GOT TO WRITE A MILLION WORDS BEFORE YOU CAN WRITE ANYTHING WORTHWHILE.”
Turn the clock forward a decade, after four mystery novels, ebooks, two short story collections, one in print, and four historical print reference books of about 1,200 pages each snapped up by every true Mark Twain fanatic from Portland, Oregon to Piscataway, Joizey—not to mention some humble educational institutions like Harvard, Yale (boolah!), Cornell, Princeton, and some bigtime libraries like the Newberry in Chicago, SF Public, Detroit Public, Nevada Historical, yada yada—I figure I’m at about two million words. Still when I read a few of my stories I wrote a decade ago, before a million words, they seem cleaner, fresher, more appealing. I don’t want to change a thing with many of them. I don’t want my writing to get old—hell, I don’t want to get old, which I tell the wife is why I still drive like I’m 18.
All of this is prologue (readers hate prologues, but don’t worry, no novel will follow this), to the current day—today’s always in-flux, chaotic publication and marketing of ebooks, trade books, blogs, twitters, Facebook pages, and on and on. Today it’s YOU’VE GOT TO MARKET TO BE SUCCESSFUL. Of course this dictum overlooks that success, like sexual attraction, is highly subjective, if intoxicating. There’s no one thing that usually brings success, which answers for their next dictum YOU’VE GOT TO DO THEM ALL TO BE SUCCESSFUL.
When I look at the man in the mirror, I ask him if he is successful, and I always trust his answer. I don’t look for validation in any other voice or set of voices. Whether my Mike Angel hardboiled detective novels, sprinkled with romance, seduction, sarcastic humor and complex inside-out plots ever sell a million copies or not, that mirror guy won’t keep checking his sales numbers in order to tell me if I’m successful. He knows that if a man’s blessed, he’s successful. No one will likely ever have on his tombstone, “He sold 100,000 ebooks after lowering his price to 99 cents,” or “When she died she was # 12 in the Amazon Romance category.”
So, What about this MARKETING MANIA and the RACE TO THE BOTTOM OF PRICE? No, one doesn’t have to market, if you mean “shameless self-promotion,” endless posting of links to Amazon Kindle for your books, twitter and flitter and glitter to gain “followers” like lemmings after a Cinnabon, or pontificating on some blog to show you’re not an idiot (but ironically proving same). Momma taught me a better way. Bragging makes you self-conscious and weak. Confidence—true confidence never needs to brag. A great cover only means a great cover and a few fools fooled if you have a poor novel.
Writing time doesn’t have to swallow your day, although when in heat it’s best to go with the flow. Neither should “marketing” (which really is just bragging on your own sweet self) be the focus of your life.
Here’s my simple, short & sweet advice: Write a novel (they want novels; unfortunately because a great short story is harder to write); make it the best you can make it, which should include other pairs of “test” eyes, reading it aloud, and every other trick you can grab that works. Revise, revise, revise. That means, in Latin, “re-seeing, or seeing again.” Editing is just picking all the nits off. TIME is important in revision—your story won’t look the same a week, month, year later, so include some gestation time. Your mileage may vary but a novel takes at least a year to do—a good one. Great ones maybe much longer (Huckleberry Finn took Sam 9 years to write).
After watching all these indie writers go nuts on message boards, FB pages, blogs, twitters—you know the angles, dangles of freebies, and marketing finagles I mean—I got the fan-tods trying to keep up. So one day I thought—this is moronic. If I’m a marketing whiz I might steer hundreds or even thousands to my books—but if they don’t catch on it’s only short term gains. On the other hand, If I put the book in say 100 hands though it take a year or two to do so, if my book is popular with the unwashed masses, they’ll market FOR ME. I might even sell a few to those washed masses as well.
Now & then I read of some indie writer who sells hundreds or thousands without ANY marketing. I see writers jumping all over themselves because of the whispering shifting sands of their Amazon “rating numbers.” I enjoy poking these folks, and it’s resulted in a few FB page bannings. Once I posted, “Oh, you mean, LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! I’M HOT STUFF AND THEY REALLY, REALLY LIKE ME!”—apologies to that flying nun dame who has osteo so bad all she can do these days is appear in commercials with her dog. I also see damned good writers with damned good books putting them down at 99c, which is what I call DEVALUING the product. In Vegas, it’s called “playing the come line” in craps, which is just what these writers are shooting. Just because some Joe Blow gets wildly popular and sells a dumpload of ebooks at 99c (where you have to sell SIX to earn the same amount as ONE for $2.99, thanks to Amazon’s perverse royalty break), doesn’t mean YOU should jump off the bridge (remember Momma saying that? She was right).
My kind of marketing is simply just being me on my limited Facebook or message board time. My humor is reactive humor. I can’t do stand up. I can react to the dumb (excuse me, erudite) musings of those who market first last 24/7 in their underwear on major holidays. So thanks Mom—I will never make ANY claim about the quality of my writing, because I’m a firm believer in:
YOU’VE GOT TO BE YOU TO BE SUCCESSFUL.
David H Fears
Psst! You there! Wanna buy a great gumshoe novel and series? hahahahah.
WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM
Concrete Pearl
___________________________________
David H. Fears is a writer. A short story writer, a novelist, an essayist, and all around lover and master of the craft. More than that, he is respectful of the craft and as his guest post will attest, alarmed at how many indie authors, never mind me, are losing track of what's important in the writing game. Namely, the writing. Have we all become so obsessed with checking on our Amazon ranking, hour after hour after hour, that we've begun to compromise what should be of paramount importance to us? Again, the writing.
As David will point out, a whole lot of our efforts nowadays are more about who can make the most racket on Facebook, Kindleboards, Twitter, Myspace, and God knows where else, when it should be the writing that's doing the speaking for us. And when all this self-promotion doesn't result in sales, we drop our prices to $.99 in hopes that we will shoot to the top of the charts.
But does dropping your prices for a time de-value your work?
I believe that it doesn't, so long as it's a temporary measure designed to increase your audience. I also believe that an author should have a variety of books offered up at a variety of prices. In my case, I always have something available at $.99, while my other books are usually priced around $2.99, and some even at $4.99 and $5.99.
In the end, the pricing of E-Books remains an inexact science. But what is apparent for many writers like Fears and myself, is that, if we begin to shift from being full-time writers to full-time ego-obsessed marketers, we will destroy not only our talents, but we will demolish our careers as we know them.
That said, never fear, for David H. Fears is here:
YOU’VE GOT TO (fill in the blanks _________________________) TO BE SUCCESSFUL.
My mother taught me not to brag. That it was low class, boorish, etc. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Back when the world was young and the Internet was still the Defense Department’s ARPANET, I used to buy and devour books on the writing craft. I tried to get just one good tip out of every book, and usually I found at least one. You see, I had several decades of stories in me that were clamoring to get out, but mastering the craft (okay, near-mastering) was like trying to have an erotic date with a reluctant bulldog. So I immersed, parsed, filtered, microscoped, and fumbled my way to many short stories written and submitted, because YOU’VE GOT TO BE PUBLISHED, as they would say over and over.
My first winner got published on the outside of a coffee can, with the balance of the story inside. It was a real grind, that story! I once was sent $100 for a story by some obscure Southern magazine no one outside of Tulsa has ever heard of. I hung around writing sites online where every ego bigger than a June bug was pissing in the wind to get published in obscure journals in such popular places as Lichtenstein. All in all I penned more than 100 short stories, and “critted” many times more. I became a college writing instructor for a couple of years just to learn all 29 rules for commas. All through this period what stuck with me was, “YOU’VE GOT TO WRITE A MILLION WORDS BEFORE YOU CAN WRITE ANYTHING WORTHWHILE.”
Turn the clock forward a decade, after four mystery novels, ebooks, two short story collections, one in print, and four historical print reference books of about 1,200 pages each snapped up by every true Mark Twain fanatic from Portland, Oregon to Piscataway, Joizey—not to mention some humble educational institutions like Harvard, Yale (boolah!), Cornell, Princeton, and some bigtime libraries like the Newberry in Chicago, SF Public, Detroit Public, Nevada Historical, yada yada—I figure I’m at about two million words. Still when I read a few of my stories I wrote a decade ago, before a million words, they seem cleaner, fresher, more appealing. I don’t want to change a thing with many of them. I don’t want my writing to get old—hell, I don’t want to get old, which I tell the wife is why I still drive like I’m 18.
All of this is prologue (readers hate prologues, but don’t worry, no novel will follow this), to the current day—today’s always in-flux, chaotic publication and marketing of ebooks, trade books, blogs, twitters, Facebook pages, and on and on. Today it’s YOU’VE GOT TO MARKET TO BE SUCCESSFUL. Of course this dictum overlooks that success, like sexual attraction, is highly subjective, if intoxicating. There’s no one thing that usually brings success, which answers for their next dictum YOU’VE GOT TO DO THEM ALL TO BE SUCCESSFUL.
When I look at the man in the mirror, I ask him if he is successful, and I always trust his answer. I don’t look for validation in any other voice or set of voices. Whether my Mike Angel hardboiled detective novels, sprinkled with romance, seduction, sarcastic humor and complex inside-out plots ever sell a million copies or not, that mirror guy won’t keep checking his sales numbers in order to tell me if I’m successful. He knows that if a man’s blessed, he’s successful. No one will likely ever have on his tombstone, “He sold 100,000 ebooks after lowering his price to 99 cents,” or “When she died she was # 12 in the Amazon Romance category.”
So, What about this MARKETING MANIA and the RACE TO THE BOTTOM OF PRICE? No, one doesn’t have to market, if you mean “shameless self-promotion,” endless posting of links to Amazon Kindle for your books, twitter and flitter and glitter to gain “followers” like lemmings after a Cinnabon, or pontificating on some blog to show you’re not an idiot (but ironically proving same). Momma taught me a better way. Bragging makes you self-conscious and weak. Confidence—true confidence never needs to brag. A great cover only means a great cover and a few fools fooled if you have a poor novel.
Writing time doesn’t have to swallow your day, although when in heat it’s best to go with the flow. Neither should “marketing” (which really is just bragging on your own sweet self) be the focus of your life.
Here’s my simple, short & sweet advice: Write a novel (they want novels; unfortunately because a great short story is harder to write); make it the best you can make it, which should include other pairs of “test” eyes, reading it aloud, and every other trick you can grab that works. Revise, revise, revise. That means, in Latin, “re-seeing, or seeing again.” Editing is just picking all the nits off. TIME is important in revision—your story won’t look the same a week, month, year later, so include some gestation time. Your mileage may vary but a novel takes at least a year to do—a good one. Great ones maybe much longer (Huckleberry Finn took Sam 9 years to write).
After watching all these indie writers go nuts on message boards, FB pages, blogs, twitters—you know the angles, dangles of freebies, and marketing finagles I mean—I got the fan-tods trying to keep up. So one day I thought—this is moronic. If I’m a marketing whiz I might steer hundreds or even thousands to my books—but if they don’t catch on it’s only short term gains. On the other hand, If I put the book in say 100 hands though it take a year or two to do so, if my book is popular with the unwashed masses, they’ll market FOR ME. I might even sell a few to those washed masses as well.
Now & then I read of some indie writer who sells hundreds or thousands without ANY marketing. I see writers jumping all over themselves because of the whispering shifting sands of their Amazon “rating numbers.” I enjoy poking these folks, and it’s resulted in a few FB page bannings. Once I posted, “Oh, you mean, LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! I’M HOT STUFF AND THEY REALLY, REALLY LIKE ME!”—apologies to that flying nun dame who has osteo so bad all she can do these days is appear in commercials with her dog. I also see damned good writers with damned good books putting them down at 99c, which is what I call DEVALUING the product. In Vegas, it’s called “playing the come line” in craps, which is just what these writers are shooting. Just because some Joe Blow gets wildly popular and sells a dumpload of ebooks at 99c (where you have to sell SIX to earn the same amount as ONE for $2.99, thanks to Amazon’s perverse royalty break), doesn’t mean YOU should jump off the bridge (remember Momma saying that? She was right).
My kind of marketing is simply just being me on my limited Facebook or message board time. My humor is reactive humor. I can’t do stand up. I can react to the dumb (excuse me, erudite) musings of those who market first last 24/7 in their underwear on major holidays. So thanks Mom—I will never make ANY claim about the quality of my writing, because I’m a firm believer in:
YOU’VE GOT TO BE YOU TO BE SUCCESSFUL.
David H Fears
Psst! You there! Wanna buy a great gumshoe novel and series? hahahahah.
WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM
Concrete Pearl
Write What You Know (A Father's Day Blog!)
The following blog is Now Appearing at The Vincent Zandri Vox!:http://vincentzandri.blogspot.com/201...
___________________________________
What's the first thing you learn in Creative Writing 101?
"Write what you know!"
For young authors who haven't yet experienced a whole lot of life, that can be a rather daunting idea. but for those of us who have been around the block a few times, there's always a story or two we can write about, such as the night I spent alone in a Sing Sing prison cell, or the time I was stranded in the jungle in Benin, Africa, after our 4X4 bit got stuck in a swamp.
But then, sometimes you don't have to look too far in order to tap into a life experience. Sometimes you just have to take another look at the way you were raised. In my case, I was raised in a family of construction workers. And by the time I reached puberty, my dad's business had taken off to a level where he went to work in pressed trousers and button-down oxford instead of jeans and workboots. In fact, my dad's business began doing so well, he groomed me for taking over the business one day.
Truth be told, the grooming began very early on. I helped my dad lay out a new church he was contracted to build at age 5. I still recall holding the tape measure for him while he recorded the measurements in his notebook. At around age 12 I was in charge of recording telephone quotations should he be bidding a big job during my summer vacations. At 15 I worked on my first job-site and stepped on a sixpenny nail that impaled itself through my foot. At 20 I was assigned to the office where I read blueprints and helped expedite projects. By 23 I was managing construction jobs worth $6 million or more. That's when I quit to become a full-time writer.
My dad was heartbroken, but not disappointed. After all a dad only wants his kid to be happy, right? And he was happy for me that I'd found something to be as passionate about as he was his business. All he worried about was my being able to make a living, so when books like THE INNOCENT and THE REMAINS became bestsellers, he jumped for sheer joy higher than I did.
But all is not lost on my having essentially experienced an entire career in the commercial construction business. I put it to use in my new thriller, CONCRETE PEARL, starring brassy but bold construction business owner, Ava "Spike" Harrison. How did she get the nickname Spike?
Well she stepped on a sixpenny nail of course, first day out on a real construction job-site. When it comes to writing what you know, the apple should not fall far.
But I appreciate all that my dad did for me when I was growing up and trying to find my way, the least of which is giving me a real insiders look at a world of builders, designers and architects that remains fascinating to me, even if I no longer carry a hammer or work on blueprints. Oh, and as for Spike, she's not only a builder, she's an amateur woman sleuth who carries a framing hammer as an equalizer instead of a gun...you might want to kiss her, but you sure as hell don't want to mess with her.
Happy Father's day Dad! Oh, and thanks!!!
WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM
Concrete Pearl
___________________________________
What's the first thing you learn in Creative Writing 101?
"Write what you know!"
For young authors who haven't yet experienced a whole lot of life, that can be a rather daunting idea. but for those of us who have been around the block a few times, there's always a story or two we can write about, such as the night I spent alone in a Sing Sing prison cell, or the time I was stranded in the jungle in Benin, Africa, after our 4X4 bit got stuck in a swamp.
But then, sometimes you don't have to look too far in order to tap into a life experience. Sometimes you just have to take another look at the way you were raised. In my case, I was raised in a family of construction workers. And by the time I reached puberty, my dad's business had taken off to a level where he went to work in pressed trousers and button-down oxford instead of jeans and workboots. In fact, my dad's business began doing so well, he groomed me for taking over the business one day.
Truth be told, the grooming began very early on. I helped my dad lay out a new church he was contracted to build at age 5. I still recall holding the tape measure for him while he recorded the measurements in his notebook. At around age 12 I was in charge of recording telephone quotations should he be bidding a big job during my summer vacations. At 15 I worked on my first job-site and stepped on a sixpenny nail that impaled itself through my foot. At 20 I was assigned to the office where I read blueprints and helped expedite projects. By 23 I was managing construction jobs worth $6 million or more. That's when I quit to become a full-time writer.
My dad was heartbroken, but not disappointed. After all a dad only wants his kid to be happy, right? And he was happy for me that I'd found something to be as passionate about as he was his business. All he worried about was my being able to make a living, so when books like THE INNOCENT and THE REMAINS became bestsellers, he jumped for sheer joy higher than I did.
But all is not lost on my having essentially experienced an entire career in the commercial construction business. I put it to use in my new thriller, CONCRETE PEARL, starring brassy but bold construction business owner, Ava "Spike" Harrison. How did she get the nickname Spike?
Well she stepped on a sixpenny nail of course, first day out on a real construction job-site. When it comes to writing what you know, the apple should not fall far.
But I appreciate all that my dad did for me when I was growing up and trying to find my way, the least of which is giving me a real insiders look at a world of builders, designers and architects that remains fascinating to me, even if I no longer carry a hammer or work on blueprints. Oh, and as for Spike, she's not only a builder, she's an amateur woman sleuth who carries a framing hammer as an equalizer instead of a gun...you might want to kiss her, but you sure as hell don't want to mess with her.
Happy Father's day Dad! Oh, and thanks!!!
WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM
Concrete Pearl
"On Pricing" Redux and a Challenge to Myself....
The following blog is "now appearing" at The Vincent Zandri Vox: http://vincentzandri.blogspot.com/201...
It's been a few months since just about every indie author blog had something written inside it about the power of pricing. The gist of the chatter centered around $.99 being the optimum price, and authors like John Locke and Amanda Hocking were proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that books priced that low can really move. Move in mass quantities that have the potential to add up in the end to a pretty decent payday (and to book deals from major pubs!).
I had a two books priced at $.99 back in February, March, and April and while both of those hit the Amazon Top 25, one of them THE INNOCENT hit the Top 10, settling at No. 3 for nearly a couple of months. Even with paying a standard agent percentage, I still took in payday that averaged three times your normal NYC legacy publisher advance. In May my guys at StoneHouse/StoneGate Ink decided to up the prices back to more normal levels and the books naturally lost ground in terms of ranking but continued to sell very well while remaining bestsellers.
Now it's August, a traditionally slow month for publishing while everyone takes in vacation and gets ready for the upcoming school year or whatever. Sales are good, but I'm convinced they could be great again.
I'm still convinced the three major attractors to making your E-Books bestsellers are...
1. An Awesome Cover
2. A Great Product Description
3. Price, Price, Price
(4.) Great Writing
(5). Direct Marketing from online publishers like B&N and Amazon...
That said, my cats at StoneHouse/StoneGate Ink have decided to run a special on CONCRETE PEARL, my new thriller (the first in a series) starring brassy and beautiful commercial construction business owner/amateur sleuth, Ava "Spike" Harrison, and THE REMAINS, my stand-alone thriller that's been a bestseller for 15 months. Both books will be published at $.99 for at least the length of the CONCRETE PEARL virtual tour which is scheduled for September.
Having been blessed with a great 3/4s of 2011, I also want to issue this challenge to myself: if one of the books breaks the Top 100, I'm going to donate $500 to the Boston Children's Hospital which does great things for kid with all sorts of injuries, ailments, and dreadful diseases. From cancer to cutting edge operations that can make a once useless limb useful again, as was the case with my son Harrison (Bear) who suffers from brachial plexus palsy, the BCH is a Godsend to kids and their parents. It's a curing place and an emotional place and I encourage all of you to take a look at their website. We've spent a lot of time at BCH where Harrison has undergone two major surgeries to repair his left arm, the most recent being last July. If both books hit the top 100, I will donate $1,000 to the hospital.
So, like Paul Weller of the JAM once sang, "What you give is what you get!" I couldn't agree more, other than to say, better to give than receive.
Ciao, Ciao for now, from sunny Italy!!!
Concrete Pearl
It's been a few months since just about every indie author blog had something written inside it about the power of pricing. The gist of the chatter centered around $.99 being the optimum price, and authors like John Locke and Amanda Hocking were proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that books priced that low can really move. Move in mass quantities that have the potential to add up in the end to a pretty decent payday (and to book deals from major pubs!).
I had a two books priced at $.99 back in February, March, and April and while both of those hit the Amazon Top 25, one of them THE INNOCENT hit the Top 10, settling at No. 3 for nearly a couple of months. Even with paying a standard agent percentage, I still took in payday that averaged three times your normal NYC legacy publisher advance. In May my guys at StoneHouse/StoneGate Ink decided to up the prices back to more normal levels and the books naturally lost ground in terms of ranking but continued to sell very well while remaining bestsellers.
Now it's August, a traditionally slow month for publishing while everyone takes in vacation and gets ready for the upcoming school year or whatever. Sales are good, but I'm convinced they could be great again.
I'm still convinced the three major attractors to making your E-Books bestsellers are...
1. An Awesome Cover
2. A Great Product Description
3. Price, Price, Price
(4.) Great Writing
(5). Direct Marketing from online publishers like B&N and Amazon...
That said, my cats at StoneHouse/StoneGate Ink have decided to run a special on CONCRETE PEARL, my new thriller (the first in a series) starring brassy and beautiful commercial construction business owner/amateur sleuth, Ava "Spike" Harrison, and THE REMAINS, my stand-alone thriller that's been a bestseller for 15 months. Both books will be published at $.99 for at least the length of the CONCRETE PEARL virtual tour which is scheduled for September.
Having been blessed with a great 3/4s of 2011, I also want to issue this challenge to myself: if one of the books breaks the Top 100, I'm going to donate $500 to the Boston Children's Hospital which does great things for kid with all sorts of injuries, ailments, and dreadful diseases. From cancer to cutting edge operations that can make a once useless limb useful again, as was the case with my son Harrison (Bear) who suffers from brachial plexus palsy, the BCH is a Godsend to kids and their parents. It's a curing place and an emotional place and I encourage all of you to take a look at their website. We've spent a lot of time at BCH where Harrison has undergone two major surgeries to repair his left arm, the most recent being last July. If both books hit the top 100, I will donate $1,000 to the hospital.
So, like Paul Weller of the JAM once sang, "What you give is what you get!" I couldn't agree more, other than to say, better to give than receive.
Ciao, Ciao for now, from sunny Italy!!!
Concrete Pearl
