ROBUST discussion

143,000 words

NASCAR FIRST
by Dakota Franklin

CoolMain Press

• Dakota Franklin WINS Best Action/Adventure at Best Independent EBook Awards

"I sniffed the air but the smell of my brother’s burned flesh was long gone. I’ve made my living driving fast cars since before I reached puberty; dying in mangled metal is a thought that after a while numbs itself on its own banality. It no longer bothers me that I am not like other girls."

Flicka Revere is a maximum hard case in the macho pinnacle of stock car racing, NASCAR’s premier series, the Sprint Cup, in which NASCAR trumpets its triumph of making daring rednecks rich.

Flicka already has too many NASCAR firsts. Too often first in the line before the blue trailer of the NASCAR bosses to be punished for overly competitive driving and outspoken comments on television, first woman to finish a Sprint Cup race, first woman to finish in the top ten.

Now Flicka’s lover has outed her as the first lesbian stock car racer. In a series which reveres "family values" that is one first too many. Flicka’s team manager fires her on the spot, live on television.

No one will give a lesbian a ride—except Armitage. Flicka has no faith whatsoever that aristocratic racers like Armitage will succeed in NASCAR, no matter what their successes in grand prix and endurance racing.

But no one else wants Flicka, not even her incestuous, congenitally murderous hillbilly family.

"I don’t want to be the first lesbian redneck hillbilly stock car racer killed by her relatives over a rusted Stearns Toy Tonneau. Most people who’re not into old cars would think I died over a toy, perhaps a hillbilly teddy bear. My sense of humor doesn’t stretch to being an absurd corpse."

Flicka, already a target for being a woman and a lesbian, is legitimized as a victim in the eyes of the good ol’ psychopaths by Armitage’s open contempt for "NASCAR values".

But Flicka isn't planning on being anyone’s victim...

"If I’m to die young, I want it to be a head-on impact to the wall, in which all my internal organs may be squashed to jelly by the deceleration but my corpse will be externally beautiful. That’s a small enough vanity, considering my profession."

In Dakota Franklin's series RUTHLESS TO WIN, which has already won awards and enthusiastic reviews for fascinating characters, Flicka is a primo character!

“I thought the characters were great. I was swept along...a cracking good read.”
— Joo's Book Reviews

$2.99/£1.88/€2.60

NASCAR FIRST, just sitting there waiting for the official launch date to come around, no promotion, not even an announcement, turned into a bestseller...

US
#73 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Miscellaneous > Motor Sports

UK
#9 in Books > Sports, Hobbies & Games > Motor Sports > NASCAR
#78 in Kindle Store > Books > Nonfiction > Sports > Motor Sports

You don't know what potion I was brewing in the shelter of a flyover on the autobahn where your satellite couldn't spy on me!

Well done, Dakota! On both counts!

She's doing something right, for sure. But, I hate to tell you, it isn't what most indies think it is, brilliant promotion. Dakota's idea of wearisome promotion is so little it won't make even a scratch on the surface of a blasé market. What it is, is simply good writing, keeping her head down to her books, and launching four big books inside a year.

Good writing will out, and more books sell better.

How did I miss this?

Good for you!

I don't care how "little" "wearisome promotion" everyone else thinks it is, it's a pain in the ass. Anyway, I don't think it sells even one book, never mind enough to make a difference. I didn't spend all those years learning to be a good writer to waste my time making smalltalk with people who don't even like me.

In fact, that's what makes Robust a home from home. At least everybody here, including the jerks, are sincere, not forced to be "nice" by the moderators. Actually, there aren't any jerks left. I miss them, like that woman who thought Africans should continue starving in their hundreds of thousands while she finished college and then spent years doing research into the effect of DDT on plankton. What a total, self-centred idiot she was. But she was funny, in a macabre sort of way. Ferry's mouth hung open when I told him, and I don't often get that effect out of him because my days at work are not peopled with real psychopaths.

Dakota wrote: "I don't care how "little" "wearisome promotion" everyone else thinks it is, it's a pain in the ass. Anyway, I don't think it sells even one book, never mind enough to make a difference. I didn't sp..."

I feel exactly as you do, Dakota. Even the least bit of marketing can feel like too much effort. No matter why we do it, what most writers really want to do is just write - and connect with others when the writing seems too insular...

Indeed.

It is difficult to do enough to market a book and still have a life.

That's the key, Kat, isn't it. It's a long and arduous path, and there are few writers for whom it comes naturally...

So true.

If my life were any different, I wouldn't have time to even attempt doing all this.

Right now, I'm having the time of my life. Writing this new story is tons of fun.

Dakota wrote: "...my days at work are not peopled with real psychopaths. "

Nonetheless, by the evidence of her books, Dakota knows a lot about psychopaths!

In a book I was recently editing, one of her characters, Flicka, the heroine in the recent NASCAR FIRST, when questioned about a word in a Scrabble Game, stabs her flick knife into the table to announce that she won't be challenged. If that isn't psychopathic behaviour, I don't know what is.

Flick knife?

Never heard of it.

Are you sure we have those in America?

Kench!

Do you mean switch blade?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switchblade

Yeah, on looking it up, it turns out Flicka is named for a defensive flick of the front wheels of her car on the oval to put the other guy in the wall, not for the switchblade in her pocket. Thanks.

Americans are definitely different.

The language is different.

I'll do my best to keep you straight.

Kench

Kench!

Canadian is a hybrid of American and British English, and I've never been able to get it all straight.

We say switchblade here too, but I assumed that was what was meant by a flick knife. I like flick better, so I'll adopt it if I ever need the use of the word.

Just don't adopt the knife... Over here, and no doubt in Canada too, owning a flick knife is ipso facto a criminal act.

You're right, Andre, switchblade under any name is a prohibited weapon in Canada, illegal to 'sell, buy, trade, carry or otherwise possess'.

Listen up folks. Apropos of what we were discussing above back in January. Yesterday I fell into conversation with a sunchaser who saw me sketching; it turns out he's a distinguished watercolorist. Last week he was arrested in the UK for carrying penknife to sharpen his drawing pencils, and kept in jail for two days until the magistrate sat. He told me, "There was no toilet paper. You have to wash yourself over the toilet." For carrying a penknife to sharpen his pencils... The magistrate dismissed the police case with contempt it deserved and apologized to this man.

Obligatory on-topic remark: Six months after launch, Dakota's NASCAR FIRST (RUTHLESS TO WIN) is still the No 1 bestseller in its category on Amazon.



If Gemma or I haven't given you a copy, ask.

I DO engage in promotion, from time to time, but I think it is almost entirely useless if one compares a promotion to the resulting sales. My sales, such as they are, are probably only because of Amazon's recommendation system, although when I began to tweet more they did go up some. Getting a density of web mentions and backlinks can increase your amazon visibility indirectly, though.

I understand your perspective entirely, Dakota, about finding promotion irritating. However, I don't have the luxury of writing full-time, so when I am too strung out from the teaching job to work on a book, I can do something promotional and thus still feel connected to the lifestyle I so dearly crave. That makes promotion worth it to me on a psychological level.

Matt wrote: "...promotion...is almost entirely useless if one compares a promotion to the resulting sales."

I'm not surprised at all to hear this. When I worked in advertising we spent millions on firming up the math behind the proprietary Agostini-Jute Constants, which are used to eliminate ultra-expensive advertising reach duplication (where the same target customer sees the add in six magazines when four will do the job or one and three TV spots or...). The question was: How many times must the potential customer see the brand name before s/he buys one unit of the brand? An extension was, And how many times must the customer see the brand name before s/he buys it reflexively, without even considering other brands? Nobody with any experience in brand creation even questioned the underlying assumption that multiple views are required.

I am aware of multiple views being necessary which my promotional capacity does not provide. Like I said, it's more a matter of psychological comfort for me.

A single view in any medium, for instance Twitter, in't enough, even when backed up by view in other media, say Facebook. You want multiple views in each of the media, and generally speaking as many different media channels as possible. I make it sound awfully scientific but what it actually is, is random, lucky scattershot activity. I think you're doing okay with your resources. I know writers -- there are some here -- who paid for advertising and wonder what they received in return.

This thread was originally about NASCAR First. Let me say that I just started reading this book and I find it very engrossing. I like the protagonist. It is daring to write a thriller with a protagonist who is a lesbian racecar driver. She has an interesting "loose-cannon" personality and a lot of guts. I give up on a lot of books within a few pages, but I will stick with this book.

You tell 'em, Matt, they should stick to the topic, which is my book.

Flicka is one of my fave characters in the series. I now find that the more defined the character is in my mind, the easier the book is to write. NASCAR FIRST was a breeze precisely because Flicka, from the beginning, was such a strong character.