Plot will carry you through a book as a reader, but the characters are usually what sticks with you after the book is finished. But how do you ensure your characters are memorable enough?

Podcast Sponsor:

Get a free audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at AudiblePodcast.com/thecreativepenn

Podcast Interview:

In today’s interview, I talk to Roz Morris, author of Nail Your Novel: Bring characters to life . Roz is the author of over a dozen novels as a ghostwriter and has also written ‘Memories of a Future Life’ under her own name. She has a series of books for writers, the first one is ‘Nail Your Novel’ and now ‘Bring characters to life’ which we’re talking about today.

You can also listen to the audio above or on iTunes here. You can also find the backlist of podcast shows here. There’s a video version of the interview on YouTube here. 

Why are characters so important anyway?

A plot is only as interesting as who the plot is happening TO. It will only come alive when you’re in someone elses shoes. Character binds us to a story – from the biggest, post-apocalyptic world to a personal, intimate drama. You can’t just have people do stuff without building a connection with the character and fathoming their humanity. In non-fiction, and even in business books, people use stories of real people/characters rather than just elucidating facts. You can’t go wrong in focusing on people and life.

What are the top 3 things people get wrong about protagonists?

• Novice writers often create a saintly paragon for a protagonist. But we connect with humanity in all its variation so you can have more complex characters with some unlikeable characteristics. By putting your character in an extreme situation, you can find ways to bring out the weak spots in your nicest characters.

• Plug the reader into the character’s internal life, as well as showing their behavior and dialogue. Have some scenes that allow this to develop.

• Don’t leave your mysterious characters empty, if you want them to be intriguing. You have to show something. Make the reader wonder if there is more there by creating conundrums.

Creating characters from within yourself and research

• Over time, as a writer, you understand yourself more and you can write more into your characters. Knowing yourself is critical but from that place, you can imagine many situations where you are many different people. We all present different faces to the world.

• Perhaps there is a hierarchy of character over our writing life. We develop into more different characters over time and move away from autobiographical characters.

• We talk about research for characters e.g. reading blogs of mothers whose children have died. Roz also mentions reading a lot of memoirs. Anything to give you an insight into how people live and survive after particular situations.

On antagonists, evil characters and villains

• A memorable antagonist needs to be as well developed as your protagonist. They have to be a good match and have the staying power to make it all the way through the book. An antagonist opposes the hero’s desire, it doesn’t mean they are a villain. But all villains are antagonists. We talk about some categories of villains that interest people because it’s not what they see in real life.

• Give your antagonist the same backup as your protagonist e.g. friends, colleagues, family. They are not in isolation. They are also highly motivated. Make it personal to the villain and humanize them so the reader can understand why they are this way. We discuss how fun it is to write a villain, perhaps because it is more based on your imagination.

On dialogue

• You do not write dialogue in normal life, so it is a specific skill you have to learn when you write fiction. We do have to make characters sound different but that doesn’t mean an accent. It is worldview, education, language, use of synonyms as well as humor and their physical/non-verbal actions around the discussion.

• Remember to keep the physical descriptions at the same time – have visual details, other characters doing things or have other noises that ground the scene in reality, rather than a dialogue in a vacuum.

• The character’s relationships with each other will also change according to roles and status e.g. Prime Minister talking to a King vs Prime Minister talking to a servant, or the King to his daughter. Change in status can be very interesting.

• Always read your dialogue out loud! You will find out so much from doing that.

 Do you have any comments or questions on writing character for Roz? Please leave them below.

You can buy Nail Your Novel: Bring characters to life on Amazon here.

It’s packed full of loads of detail on how you can create memorable characters and increase your reader’s attachment to the character.

You can also find Roz at her fantastic blog NailYourNovel.com

If you’re just starting out in fiction, Roz and I also have a multi-media course How To Write A Novel which includes videos, audio and text information from her expertise after 13 novels and my tips as a newbie author. It’s $99 and you can read more about it here or buy now.

Back in 2000, Dan Brown changed my life.

I have a Masters in Theology from the University of Oxford and religion, art history, architecture and spirituality are just some of my obsessions. Up until 2000, I thought that the only option to be a successful author in that arena was to follow in the footsteps of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose.

But then Dan Brown made the religious thriller mainstream and commercial and it now has a great niche all of its own, with Steve Berry, James Rollins, Scott Mariani and others writing in the genre. There are now so many options for readers like me who devour these types of books and I mainline them (since I don’t have a TV, I read a LOT!).

So when I wanted to write a fast-paced thriller series based on themes that I love, Dan Brown was definitely one of my influences and my ARKANE books were born. I even wrote short stories for Kobo’s Descent, a contest to promote the launch of Inferno, so great was my fan-dom. So I am a Brown lover from way-back, a super-fan, one of those readers that writers want to attract.

But I just finished reading Inferno, Dan Brown’s latest book, and instead of reviewing it, I wanted to share my lessons learned as an author.

No spoilers, I promise.

(1) Write what you love and don’t get trapped into expectations

Inferno might satisfy the expectations of the publisher, and some fans for another Langdon book. But in reading it, I felt like Dan Brown did not have a fun time writing it, and in fact, he would rather be writing techno-thrillers.

The most interesting bits were about transhumanism and genetic modification as well as population control (which I also used as my bad guy’s motivation in Prophecy.) Fascinating topics and I also like his strong female characters (who are far more 3-dimensional than Langdon).

But I think that perhaps Dan needs to stop writing the Langdon series and write something that really turns him on. And as a reader I want to see what he does with a techno-thriller.

Smash through people’s criticisms, why don’t you, Dan? Please.

You don’t need the money so write something that’s fun for you. Anything that takes you that long and isn’t literary fiction can’t have been enjoyable to write.

As authors, it’s important that we love what we write and don’t box ourselves into a genre that becomes a burden.

Sure, this is a business and you know I’m commercially minded, but I also want to do this as my passion as well as my income. Trying different things is part of the beauty of being a writer. So have a go at a short story in another genre, or a novella, and see how it feels. If you start feeling dry on a project, maybe it’s time to switch it up a little.

(2) Book title, marketing and theme need to resonate

I’ve just read Dante’s Inferno in order to write the Sin series, so I know the book pretty well. It’s fresh in my mind, and Brown’s Inferno doesn’t even scratch the surface.

Instead of delving into the world of Dante’s Inferno – the book – he has delved into Florence, Dante’s home town, with the death mask a key artefact and a few cantos used as clues. But I was looking forward to the resonance of language and dark themes of Dante’s Inferno and instead, got a travel guide to Florence and some other European cities. The marketing and hype has all been about Dante’s Inferno, but as a hard-core reader of this genre and supporting works, I was disappointed that the book didn’t match that.

As writers, it is our responsibility to ensure that the experience of the reader lives up to the expectations of the packaging. Book cover and title are critical in this aspect and it is why authors like Polly Courtney have split with publishers over issues of covers that don’t match the book.

(3) Don’t confuse the reader

I was confused a lot as Brown’s Inferno jumped out of the action into flashback or detailed physical description or directions through the maze of Florence backstreets. Then one of the twists later in the book REALLY confused me and I needed to read back to various points, and then I found continuity issues that annoyed me.

As a reader, I don’t want to be jolted from the fictive dream, and as writers, we have a responsibility to make sure the story hangs together.

Most of the professional writers I know use 5-8 beta-readers as well as editors and proof-readers. That’s my process too, and my next book Desecration has already had 7 different people critique it and give me feedback as readers and editors. Now it’s off to another round of reading, and another round of improvement.

With all the secrecy around Inferno, I can’t help but wonder how many beta-readers read the book before it went to press. It’s just confusing, even for someone like me who is an uber-geek in matters esoteric.

Am I still a fan of Dan Brown?

There were other issues with the book, and I’m sure you’ve read the usual criticism of Brown’s writing style.

As someone who loved Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, and has defended Dan Brown a lot, I feel disappointed with Inferno. But as a writer, I think it teaches us a lot, and my opinion means little in this world, so I’m embracing my lessons learned on this occasion.

As a reader, I will buy another Dan Brown novel, but Dan, if you’re listening, I hope it’s a techno-thriller next time.

What do you learn from books by other authors? Do you find as a reader that you are more critical because you’re a writer? And does it help your own writing?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below (but please, no spoilers on the plot in case people want to read it).

There are two main ways that people will find your books.

(1) Through your book

This is all about your book retailer sales page, targeted email marketing and promotions and other things that have nothing to do with your “platform”. After all, how many books do you pick up where you know nothing about the authors at all? Quite a few I’d imagine.

(2) Through you

This is all about your platform and how you reach people in the world. This includes content marketing, social, multimedia, PR and anything that relates to you.

One thing to keep in mind when weighing up how to spend your time is that you can never sell as many books as Amazon can. (Or Kobo or Nook or any of the other stores who have rampant readers.)

Now I believe that (2) is important. I have spent a lot of time and effort building my own platform and it has changed my life. I’m a full-time author-entrepreneur because of this site. BUT/ I definitely sell more books to people who haven’t got a clue who I am and nor do they care.

Readers shopping on Amazon buy more books

So, that leads me to a fantastic new book that focuses entirely on (1) and how your book can sell itself, or how you can optimize its chances of selling.

David Gaughran is an author and a blogger with a strong voice in the indie camp. His in-depth, critical and intelligent analysis of the publishing scene is well worth following. His first book on self-publishing was ‘Let’s Get Digital: How to self-publish and why you should‘ and now he has released ‘Let’s Get Visible: How to get noticed and sell more books.’

You need to immediately allocate a couple of hours to reading this and assessing what you need to change. Here’s a couple of things I learned (and I’ve been at this a while!)

(1) Amazon algorithms are different for different charts and different territories

I’m not one of those people who likes to track data, but I have known for a long time how important the Amazon algorithms are for selling books. What I didn’t know was the difference between the Sales Rank, the Recommendation Engine, Bestseller Lists, Popularity lists, Top-Rated in Categories, Hot New Releases, Movers & Shakers and all the other ways you can target the lists and prime the sales pump.

There’s also a fantastic section on choosing the best categories for your book, which is certainly how the ARKANE books have sold. If I had stayed in Action-Adventure, I wouldn’t have sold so many, but I moved to Religious Fiction and have been in and out of the bestseller charts since release.

(2) Staggering your launch is better for long-term sales than a big initial spike

A few years back there was a boom in ‘Amazon Bestseller’ promos where people would try to spike sales on one day, hit the charts and that would make everything a success. However, Amazon’s whole aim is to give people fantastic content and those kinds of programs were boosting books that didn’t necessarily deserve visibility. David talks about how the algorithm now pushes those books back down as fast as they rose, so when you launch, you want to have a slow start, with sales spaced out over time. He has a lot of specific ideas around the launch, definitely worth taking note of.

There’s also a great section on free pulsing and price pulsing which you should read if you’re still confused about ebook pricing! Plus a detailed method of evaluating paid advertising and doing group promotions.

The book also reiterates that most of these strategies are only effective when you have a couple of books out.

I’m as guilty as anyone of focusing on selling the first book, but it’s always important to remember that the one of the best ways to sell more books is to write more books!

Highly recommended. Go get your copy now and get your book sales moving!

You can find Let’s Get Visible: How to get noticed and sell more books’ on Amazon here

There’s also a special price on Let’s Get Digital for the launch, so get that if you haven’t already!

You can find David’s fantastic blog here and he’s on twitter @davidgaughran

You can also listen to a great interview with David on the empowerment of indie publishing.

Until a few months ago, I had never written a short story for publication.

But then I was commissioned to write three for the Kobo Descent competition based on Dante’s Inferno for the launch of Dan Brown’s new book, also called Inferno. I read about 50 stories and lots of information on how to write them and then I jumped in. You can get all three stories here.

It was a LOT of fun, and I experimented with a genre I haven’t written before. I wrote two dark mystery stories and one post-apocalyptic story which was something very new to me.

So I know personally that short stories can expand your craft, earn you money and get you publicity. Here’s Doug Lance, editor of eFiction Publishing to explain more.

Happy National Short Story Month!

May is unofficially the official month to read and write short stories. As well as a fantastic way to develop your craft, short stories are also a great marketing tool.

When selling fiction you can either let Amazon feed you traffic, or generate traffic on your own. Writers who can generate their own traffic have what’s known  in the industry as an author platform.

I don’t like the phrase “author platform.” It makes it seem like the author is standing on a stage with readers surrounding them. My preferred nomenclature when talking about selling fiction is funnel. It is more analogous to the actual process people go through when making a purchase.

The actual purchasing process is more like: reader see mentions of a title, they check it out, but don’t always make a purchase. For most indie writers, that’s where their funnel stops. The reader views your Amazon page, decides that it isn’t for them, and they click away; never to be seen again.

Smart writers promote their website, where potential readers can sign up for a newsletter or add you to a social network, instead. Thus begins their swirling in the sales funnel. They receive updates and spin ever closer until finally they connect with a purchase.

Rather than the author standing up on his/her platform, s/he’s at the base of the funnel catching readers on a gilded pillow as they fall in.

I bring up this analogy and viewpoint on selling fiction to help illustrate one underutilized way to expand and strengthen your sales funnel: writing and publishing short stories.

1. Get into bookstores

Most indie writers exclusively publish their titles digitally. They use KDP or Smashwords or another service to get their titles out there in a digital format for ereading devices. That is fantastic. You can reach a ton of people that way. Another cadre of indie writers publish their stories using a Print on Demand service such as CreateSpace or iUniverse. This means that when someone orders the book online, it is printed and shipped to their residence. This method of printing definitely works for a lot of readers.

But (you knew this was coming) there are many readers who are yet to purchase books on their computers. These people go to bookstores, buy books there, and that’s that. Amazon, while very popular, is not the only place people go to buy books.

I can hear the “It’s impossible to get into bookstores!” counter points already.

I know how tough it is to get into bookstores. But there is a shortcut. Write short stories and publish them with companies who are already producing titles that you can find in bookstores. There are plenty of short story markets that are available at Barnes and Noble. To find them, simply go down to your local shop and ask about them. The assistant will happily direct you toward their magazine rack or anthologies.

These publications can get your foot into the door without giving up your writing independence. Short story markets are still competitive, though the vast majority of people writing short stories are not professional writers. A professional, who is committed to writing great short fiction can find publication in these markets.

2. Expand your presence on retail sites

Now that bookstores are digital, retail space is infinite. So how do you stand out in an infinite bookstore? By taking up the largest percentage of that bookstore as possible. The more room you take up, the more likely someone is to stumble onto your work.

Short stories can help fill out your presence on retailer websites. While a novel can take upwards of a year to publish from start to finish, short stories can be written, edited, and finished in a much shorter time frame; and with a smaller budget.

By publishing short stories alongside your longer work, you expand your presence on a retailer website, and thus come up more often in searches and on featured pages. This extra traffic will increase sales of your other titles

3. Fill in the gaps between novel releases

Novels are hard work. It can take months or sometimes years to get them right. The publishing process might have been majorly simplified by modern tools, but the writing process is still just as arduous as ever.

Short stories, by comparison, are simpler. Not easier, because writing a great short story is still a major challenge. But the process is much simpler. Writing short stories is similar to writing a single scene (or a few scenes) for a novel. Except, you don’t have to pay attention to an over-arching storyline.

Publishing short fiction while working on a novel is a great method to keep your audience reading your stuff and gives you something to promote while you work on your big project.

4. Experiment with new genres.

Short stories are a smaller commitment than is a novel. You can write a short story in a new genre in a weekend and file it away if it doesn’t work. If you put the time in required to write a novel in a new genre, you might feel obligated to then publish it and put your full power behind it. That is a huge risk and most authors simply avoid it.

The risk involved with writing and publishing shorts is much lower. It is a medium that is open to experimentation. I find that a lot of writers are pigeon-holed into the genre they write and feel that if they wrote in other genres, they won’t find success. That is simply not true.

If you’ve never explored other genres and other mediums, you don’t know what will work for you. Especially if you haven’t found the success you’ve been looking for, experimentation with short stories is a great way to figure out what your readers want and to then follow it up with a novel.

5. Expand your universe.

In addition to all of the previously mentioned benefits to writing and publishing short fiction, the most interesting to me is to use short fiction to expand a fictional universe that you’ve already created.

I’m sure there have been tons of scenes that you’ve had to cut because they just didn’t work in your novel. Why not flesh those scenes out as a short stories and put them up as companion pieces? Your readers want to know more about your characters. They already love them (or they should, right?). You can skip a lot of the backstory and reward your true fans with extra scenes that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get.

An astonishingly small number of writers actually do this. Less than 1%. You’re working hard to write your stories. Don’t just trash every scene that doesn’t fit. Re-purpose it as a supplemental short. Or write that scene that you’ve always wanted to write as a short and give your readers an extra taste of something different. Who knows, it might catch on and be the impetus for you to write a new novel with a market-proven hook.

Short stories are a struggling form of writing when compared to novels. But they don’t have to be. Writers who approach writing short stories from a smarter perspective, one that uses insights from marketing and experience in the industry, can revive the short story. It happens one short at a time.

What do you think about short stories? Do you write them and what are your tips for getting them read? Please leave a comment below and tell us about it.

Doug Lance is the editor-in-chief of eFiction Publishing. His company produces ten monthly fiction magazines in a variety of genres.

During May, National Short Story Month, he is promoting a Kickstarter campaign to #SaveTheShort from obscurity.

Top image: Flickr CC notebook by Frederic Guillory

You can’t write that.

You can’t think that.

You can’t imagine those things.

You don’t have permission to be that person, to think like that, to write like that, to publish that.

You’re a nice girl. What will people think of you?

That’s my inner critic speaking, but I’ve also heard those words echoed from people close to me over the years. I think it’s only been in the last six months that I have given myself permission to let the raw side of me loose on the page. I’m finally finding my voice.

It’s scary as hell because it turns out my stories are dark and twisty, but it’s also empowering and liberating to let my mind have a free rein.

But I have to keep reminding myself that I have permission to write. Or I would stay safe in the shallows. 

A friend told me the other day that I’ve changed since I became a full time writer. But I think it’s just that the inner me is finally making it to the surface after years of suppression and doing what I was supposed to do.

And how has this change in me come about?

I’ve been writing journals for 20 years but blogging here for nearly 5 years has changed me far more. Because clicking the Publish button has made me think more deeply about what I want to say.

Because these words are going into the world, and people may well read them.

Because I have met writers who have challenged me to go deeper.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time have witnessed the change as I’ve shared the journey with all its ups and downs.

Clicking the Publish button on Amazon or the other distributors has the same effect. It makes us braver over time, because we have to keep bringing our best to the page and we get almost instant feedback from readers.

This is the beauty of self publishing, because we don’t need permission anymore.

If I hadn’t self published Pentecost four years ago, or clicked Publish on this blog, I would still be a miserable IT consultant, talking about writing but not doing it.

If I hadn’t persisted through three novels, I would not be finding my voice in the fourth.

If I had asked permission, or if I had waited to be picked, I would still be dreaming of what might have been.

Of course, permission to write and self-publish doesn’t mean you’ll get it right the first time.

It doesn’t guarantee Hugh Howey or Amanda Hocking type success.

But it shifts you inside, it forces you to go further creatively. It enables you to clear the way for the next step, and after all, the writer’s life is a journey of discovery, not a destination.

So you have permission. You are empowered.

To write.

To publish.

To connect with readers and writers all over the globe.

I’m done with taming the crazy. I’m giving myself permission. How about you?

Please do leave a comment below if this resonates with you. This is our community, and I sincerely thank you for sharing it with me.

This post was inspired by an article on agent Rachelle Gardner’s blog entitled ‘Will My Publisher Let Me Self-Publish Too?” which sparked a lot of passionate comment and offended me over the aspect of permission. Rachelle has since published a Mea Culpa article.

Top image: Stamp permission granted from Big Stock Photo

 I am definitely a travel and experience junkie and I still have ‘itchy-foot’ syndrome which means I have to get away to somewhere different regularly. I definitely have a travel memoir in me, perhaps one day it will see the light of day!

But in the meantime, I have a special interview for you with Alastair Humphreys, named as a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year and someone who motivates me personally.

Podcast Sponsor:

Get a free audiobook and 14-day trial today by signing up at AudiblePodcast.com/thecreativepenn

Alastair is an adventurer, author of 5 books and a motivational speaker. His last book was “There Are Other Rivers“, about walking across southern India and the deeper side of travel addiction.

Podcast Show Notes:

You can watch the video interview on YouTube here, or listen/download the audio above.

• Alastair’s potted travel history includes cycling around the world for 4 years, walking across southern India, rowing the Atlantic, and walking across the Empty Quarter desert, amongst many other #microadventures. He makes his living as an adventurer, author and motivational speaker.

• Taking action on dreams and getting past inertia. This is what differentiates people who actually end up achieving stuff, rather than talent of any particular type. Al talks about forcing himself to begin, noting that the first step is the hardest to take. Reading books about travel rather than traveling, or reading books about writing instead of writing.

• Al’s writing technique is to procrastinate a lot and then finally sit down to write. He doesn’t start with the beginning, he starts with whatever comes to mind. Getting the first draft done is the hardest part. In writing travel, you are recounting what has happened so you can follow that flow and re-organize it later in the editing phase.

• On editing, especially when there is much repetition in travel experiences. On taking the writing emotionally further by going beyond just what happened and into the deeper side of the adventure. On radical word cutting and making sure the story is interesting to other people. Alastair does actually still do the traditional – physical – cut and paste of his manuscript. [I recommend Scrivener!]

• On writing the truth in memoir – about real people, about what really happened, about raw emotion. Using the truth to tell a better story. Changing names is always a good idea, but the reality of travel is that there are conflicts and issues, especially when the journey is physically and mentally difficult. That’s an important part, but you can still be friends afterwards.

• “All the right notes, not necessarily in the right order”. There Are Other Rivers is out of synch chronologically and is more about the experience, making it a ‘more truthful truth’.

• On growth as a writer. Now Alastair has written 5 books, he has moved beyond the basic diary style approach to going deeper into the emotional experience. He took risks with the writing his last book as well as choosing to self-publish. It was a personal expression and he did it his way.

• On persistence and discipline. The expeditions are much easier than writing books, which, for Alastair is an excruciating process. He only writes a lot once he has got really annoyed with himself! Once it starts to take shape, it is more interesting. There Are Other Rivers took several years, after giving it up entirely and then rewriting it in a new way. There’s no other solution – you have to sit at your desk and write. He wrote a lot of it in the middle of the night, sleep-deprived and high on caffeine and then was ruthless around editing.

• Advice on writing memoir, and specifically a travel memoir. Make sure you have something worth writing about. People who want to do travel writing often need to actually do some travel first. Make sure it’s a journey you want to do, don’t just focus on the end goal. The journey has to come first. I mention Wild by Cheryl Strayed as a good example of a travel memoir that goes deeper into the emotional level. Give a lot of yourself on the page, rather than just recount things that happened. The more honest you can be, the better.

• On writing for therapy vs writing for publication. We talk about diaries and then about blogging. Alastair writes a lot of personal thoughts on his blog.
• On how blogging is critical for Alastair’s business as a professional speaker. It’s a platform that he uses to help people find out who he is, and a way to connect with people and share his experiences. [I also get all my speaking work from my blog.]

• On making short films and developing story visually. Alastair takes a lot of (amazing) photos but started using films when it became standard functionality on cameras. He uses films to show the journey and give a personal connection. It is a way to stand out online as making videos is still not mainstream, although millions are now text-blogging. It’s all about getting started and learning as you go. It’s also about the principle of know, like and trust – which leads to book sales over time as people get to know you. Editing video is the key to making it excellent – the latest video of the Empty Quarter is being cut from 26 hours of footage to 30 mins. Ouch.

Adventure = risk + purpose

• On risk – both personal risk as Alastair tackles on his adventures, but we also discuss the risk of embarrassment and fear of failure and judgement. The online trolls, the bad book reviews, the negative blog comments – these things are a risk and they hurt, but we can’t let them stop us from writing and getting out there.

• If there’s something you want to do and it scares you, then it’s probably something you should be doing. You just have to get over the fear, and go do it. Breaking the inertia is difficult but well worth it.

• #microadventures is Alastair’s latest project, which is about encouraging people to get out and do a small adventure – maybe just a night on a hill, instead of a huge adventure that takes a lot more commitment. He’s currently writing this as a book and you can also check out twitter #microadventures to see what people are up to.  Try writing a short story while you’re out there!

You can find Alastair at AlastairHumphreys.com and on twitter @Al_Humphreys and using #microadventure.

If you have any questions about writing travel or memoir, or just adventure in general, please do leave a comment below.

If you’re looking for adventure, you can also check out his brilliant videos on Vimeo here.

You can find There Are Other Rivers on Amazon in print and ebook format and more information about Alastair’s other books here.

Here’s my review of the book – 5 stars on Goodreads:

I’m one of those people who devour adventure books because vicariously I can be out there experiencing it too. In this book Alastair takes us on an internal journey as much as describing parts of his walk across India. It resonated with me deeply in parts, the need to be someone extraordinary, the desire to shed all physical possessions and just exist simply. I identify with the need to keep moving – I move every few years but I’m not as brave as Alastair. I also fell in love with India when I travelled there. It’s one of those places I felt at home in so it was great to revisit some of those impressions through the eyes of such a seasoned traveller.

I find myself strangely jealous of the freedom to sleep under the stars, to walk towards the setting sun, to take each day anew. If you sometimes feel this way, you’ll love this book. Highly recommended.

I’m currently in the rewrites for my fourth novel, Desecration, which is a departure from my ARKANE series and more of a crime thriller with dark themes.

I think I’m starting to find my voice as an author as well as becoming more honest with myself and less self-censoring in what I write.

But some things don’t change – like the self-doubt that gnaws away at confidence and the fear of being judged.

What helps me is hearing from writers who are a few steps ahead on the journey, and recently, I read Behind The Story: Interviews From 20 Self-Published Authors Who Made It Big, edited by Denise Kim Wy.

There are a lot of ‘How To’ books out there on self-publishing and marketing but I liked this book as it is more of a companion book of interviews with some of the top selling indie authors on writing and marketing. Here are some quotes I found interesting and that resonated with me.

On writing and editing

“I wish I’d started writing earlier in life. I put it off because I was scared of it. I should have 30 books written by now, not a dozen. I measure my years and my progress by the works I complete and deliver to readers. I’m working on what should be my fourth novel of 2012. That feels like success to me.”

Hugh Howey, bestselling author of the Wool series which has sold 500,000+ copies. Sold print only rights in Jan 2013.

Doubt is something all writers deal with at one time or another. Actually, I’m pretty sure all writers deal with it on a continual basis. Will my readers like this new book? Will they want to read this new series? Will they think I’ve lost my mind? Is this going to kill my career? (Writers, as you can probably guess, are highly neurotic.)

Elisabeth Naughton, USA TODAY Bestselling Author of sexy romantic adventures and paranormal novels

Regarding my first novel,I wish I’d invested more in editing it before releasing it. I had no idea it would resonate with readers as it did, and I think there’s more I could have done to improve it.

Darcie Chan is the author of The Mill River Recluse, a self-published debut novel that has become a word-of-mouth e-book sensation. With over 650,000 copies sold, The Mill River Recluse appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists for more than 28 weeks

On book marketing and promotion

My best marketing strategy is giving my readers what they want: more good books. So writing the next book is my primary marketing strategy.

CJ Lyons, NY Times and USA Today bestselling author of Thrillers With Heart

If it doesn’t have an awesome, eye-catching, starkly colored cover, you’re screwed because no one will see it and no one will know you exist.

Heather Killough-Walden, New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of the Big Bad Wolf series, The Kings series, and The October Trilogy.

When I started selling really well, I didn’t set up an emailing list, for readers to sign up to get announcements when I had new books coming out. That was something important I didn’t do, and lost potential readers learning about future books.

Victorine E. Lieske, NY Times bestselling author of ‘Not What She Seems’

* If you haven’t set up a mailing list yet, read this article for how to do it.

You can find Behind the Story Interviews From 20 Self-Published Authors Who Made it BIG on Amazon here

What do you think of the advice above and what specific advice has helped you the most on your journey as a writer – on writing or book marketing? Please share in the comments below.

Top image: Flickr Creative Commons Vidalia_11

 I’ve been on Goodreads for years now and have used it to track my reading habits as well as rate and review books from a reader’s perspective. I have also used it as an author for giveaways and for linking reviews to Kobo as well as ensuring readers can rate my own books.

Last month, Amazon bought Goodreads and reactions have been varied even though Amazon have indicated they will let the social network run independently. Personally, as a reader, I think it is a great thing for discoverability since Goodreads is a tremendous recommendation engine for books. As an author, I’m thrilled because more data on more good books and easier purchase should mean it’s easier for people to buy.

But whatever you think, if you want your books to be found, I think you need to make sure your books are on Goodreads and discoverable. After all, readers will add them for you if you don’t take control yourself. But there are also lots more opportunities on Goodreads and today, Mayor A. Lan, the Savvy Indie explains what else you can find on the site.

Goodreads is a social media network site for book readers, as well as authors, to connect and network.

It’s the Facebook for authors and book readers!

It might seem confusing to Goodreads newbies but if carefully explored, Goodreads is a wonderful and useful book marketing tool for self-publishing and indie authors because it’s custom built to cater for the need of authors and book readers, unlike Twitter and Facebook which are all generic Social Media Networks.

So, what are the best features offered by Goodreads that you can take advantage of?

(1) Author Profile With Blog And Video Posting

Once you register as a Goodreads user, you can join the Goodreads Author program and add all your contact details. You can add a photo of you, add your bio, your books and upload your eBooks and add more friends.

Note that there is little you can do with a basic Goodreads account, the one everyone who first register on Goodreads get by default, you need to apply for a Goodreads Author upgrade after having some basic experience on the site. You might have to wait for few days for your account upgrade to take effect.

If you have a blog,  you can also link your blog posts to your Goodreads page via RSS feeds. With this, your blog post can be read by everyone from your Goodreads page without even visiting your blog and this can earn your blog posts some comments and some fans.

If you have a video about your books, something in the way of a video trailer or any other video for book readers, you can add it to your Goodreads page.

(2) Book Listing

As a Goodreads Author, you can add your books to your Goodreads Bookshelf, either by manually adding it by supplying all the information about your books or by using the add feature that searches for your book from several book stores online like Amazon, Kindle Store and anywhere you have your books for sale.

After you have got your books listed on your bookshelf, readers can rate your books and leave a review for your books right there on your Goodreads page.

Another variant of this feature is the Add Ebook feature which you can use to add and upload your books in PDF and ePub format. You can also sell your eBook with this feature on Goodreads.

With this, you can instruct Goodreads to only show part or all of your eBook as you might like to. Note here that if you decide to sell your eBook, you can only upload the ePub version of your eBook which can be viewed online using the Goodreads eBook previewer.

(3) Giveaways

Example of one of my own giveaways on Goodreads

Goodreads Giveaways is a great program where you can give free copies of your print books to readers and hope to receive reviews on both Goodreads and Amazon if the reader likes the book (although a review is certainly not guaranteed).

This giveaway is open for a number of days that you specify and at the end, Goodreads will randomly choose winners for your book and will send you the names and mailing address of the winners of your books. It’s your responsibility to actually send the books.

The only drawback for this program is that you can only give away a print book, not an eBook.

But what if you have your book on Kindle Store and not as a print book? Well, there is a way to give away ebooks and that takes us to Events.

(4) Events

Goodreads Events can be used to promote events like book launches, book tours and author appearances and the best part is that it can be used to give away free copies of eBooks.

It works simply as having a book launch, blog tour or eBook giveaway page on your blog and you organize a Goodreads Event with all the details of your events with a link to your promotion page on your blog to direct your event invitees to your blog for your book launch, blog tour, author appearance or eBook giveaway.

(5) Featured Groups

Featured Groups are a way that authors can interact with readers and create buzz for their books. Author form a special Question and Answer group and agree to answer questions about their books for a period and Goodreads will help in promoting such groups using its word of mouth tools.

All authors need is a few people to join such groups and Goodreads takes it from there to make the group go viral and spread across the Goodreads community. Goodreads will also help feature these groups in the author and group section of the site.

(6) Groups

Goodreads Groups shouldn’t be confused with the Featured Groups, as they are two different Goodreads programs.

Goodreads groups are communities of readers who share similar interests and they are purely meant for interacting, networking and connecting with readers. They are NOT about active marketing – only being part of a community who love a particular genre.

There are Q&As and discussions and people get to know each other as the groups grow and expand with new members.

The wise use of this program by indie authors is to find some groups which are of interest to you as a reader and join a few of them. Get to know how it works and first be a listening reader who ask questions and as time goes on some readers may notice you as a member of a group, then people will naturally be interested in what you write.

The key here, as with every social network, is to give more than you expect to receive and be both helpful and useful to others.

Now that you are a Goodreads Author, you can play with all these features and programs mentioned in this post. You can add an event, organize a book giveaway for your print book, create a Q&A Featured Group to discuss about your books, or join a Goodreads Group of your interest. The possibilities are just enormous as to what you can do and achieve within this social network.

As with all social media networks, you need Friends to build your audience base and there are lot of way to add friends on Goodreads. You can link your account with Twitter and Facebook to search for your friends who are also on Goodreads and you can add all of them at once. This is my favorite way of adding friends on Goodreads as it’s easy and also for the fact that I can also connect with my Twitter followers also on Goodreads as well.

You can connect with me, Mayor Lan on Goodreads here.

How do you use Goodreads? What other ways have you use Goodreads for connection with readers? Please leave your comments and questions below. 

You might want to get a free copy of My book – Book Marketing: The Complete Goodreads Guide For Self Publishing Authors.

Mayor A Lan is a Motivational Writer, Self Publishing Authors of Motivational and Self Publishing Books. He blogs for Self Publishing Authors and Writers at TheSavvyIndie.com where he gives away a free book – The Smart Self Publishing Blueprint and also shares free resources and information about book marketing, publishing, writing and blogging for Self Publishing Authors.

Lover of motivational and self help books can check his motivational blog at http://www.MayorALan.com where he blogs about life success and motivations for life’s success.

One of the things I love about the author community these days is the authenticity around sharing, and the generosity in helping others.

Blogging and social networks enable writers to finally find a community online, and I am so grateful that this site continues to be a place we can share honestly and with support for each other. Today I’m excited to welcome Rachel Abbott, Amazon #1 bestselling author of Only The Innocent and now The Back Road, to talk about some of her writing challenges when going deeper into characters.

You can also check out an audio interview with Rachel here, on marketing your way to a #1 bestseller.

I’ve always been a writer of one sort or another, but until four years ago my experience had been in writing creative treatments, plots for interactive programs or even board reports – none of which generally require significant emotional input. It’s hard to shed a tear over a flowchart – although sometimes it might want to make you scream with frustration.

When I wrote my first novel – Only the Innocent – I wrote for my own pleasure.

I never expected anybody to read it – not even family. But I was pressurized into sharing it, and I realized that if I was going to allow people to actually read it, I wanted to make sure that it was at least half decent. I was happy with the story, but I wasn’t convinced about the quality of the writing, and nobody was going to be allowed near it until I was. Of course, this was before I realized that you can’t just learn to write, like you might learn to recite the alphabet – it is forever a work in progress and an endless learning curve. Nonetheless, I took my fragile ego in both hands and paid to have my book torn apart by an expert.

In the end, the feedback wasn’t too bad considering it was my first attempt. However, it was full of phrases that I didn’t understand.

Apparently my biggest sin was ‘head-hopping’.

What?

On Point of View

I hadn’t the faintest idea what this was about, so I turned to Google and read every possible article I could find until it was ingrained in me. I was told that I was writing as if I were watching a film, sitting in an armchair. Where I should have been was inside the head of one of the characters – the person whose point of view the scene was written from. That person’s eyes needed to become my camera.

It took a while, but I got there in the end. I now make sure that every scene of every chapter is clearly marked in the draft with exactly whose POV the scene is viewed from in capital letters so I can’t forget.

If you are as ignorant as I was about this, a classic example of head-hopping would be:

“Nick dragged his gaze away from the road ahead and looked at Laura. Her eyes were heavy with unshed tears as she stared out of the window. But Laura didn’t see his glance. She was watching the dark brooding clouds, and thinking how well they matched her mood.”

First we’re seeing the scene from Nick’s perspective, and then suddenly we know what Laura is thinking. If your camera is inside the character’s head, you’ve just switched seats!

Now I know that this is quite basic stuff and you probably all got this long ago, but when you really do get inside a character’s head it can make you go slightly loopy. You have to start thinking what your character would think, feel what they would feel. You might want to see, hear and even smell their surroundings – just as they would do. So how do you describe what somebody is feeling?

There are two perspectives here. Let’s imagine there are two people in a room. Ellie and Leo (short for Leonora). These are two characters from my latest novel, The Back Road. Ellie is furious, and Leo is watching her. If you are in Leo’s head, you have to describe how that fury looks to you. If you are in Ellie’s head, you have to describe how the fury actually feels.

On Adverbs

I thought the first one was easy, but I was wrong – as I discovered when I read a book on self-editing and was told that under no circumstances should adverbs be used. “Words ending in LY should be eradicated from your writing,” it said.

Why? I thought, angrily. (There you go!! An adverb.)

I’d heard of the ‘show don’t tell’ advice, but didn’t really get it until the whole adverb issue was pointed out. I searched my novel. Uh oh – there were lots of adverbs. So now not only did I have to start thinking about whose head I was in, I had to think about how they would ‘see’ people’s actions. I started to look into body language and descriptions of facial expressions. If I can’t say ‘angrily’ – what would this person be looking like, or how would they be holding their body?

Whereas once I might have said “Ellie turned angrily to Leo,” I now had to think what an angry turn looks like. How would Ellie be feeling, and how would that portray itself in her actions?

“Ellie slammed the glass down on the worktop and spun round to face Leo.” Now I don’t need to be told she’s angry. I can see it for myself.

But to get to that point, I had to get inside Ellie’s head (even though at this point I was viewing the scene from Leo’s POV – just to confuse you) so that I could work out exactly how she would demonstrate her fury. Then I had to stand on the other side of the room and see it enacted through Leo’s eyes.

So I’ve experienced the rage, but now I am in calm place – all in a matter of seconds – witnessing this anger portrayed by another person. Now do you understand the ‘loopy’ comment?

All of this helps me enormously with describing a person’s demeanor without resorting to adverbs, but what about when I am describing the emotion from within that person. If that scene had been from Ellie’s point of view, I would have had to describe how she was feeling. It somehow didn’t feel good enough to say something like “Ellie felt a ball of anger bubble up inside her,” because that didn’t really explain the raw emotion.

I needed to dig deeper.

There were a couple of points in my latest novel where I came unstuck. In both cases I was writing a scene from the point of view of the person who was experiencing the trauma, and so I had to find words to express how she felt. I couldn’t say ‘She sat disconsolately on the bed’ – I had to really think how to describe what ‘disconsolately’ would feel like (and anyway, it was an adverb!).

On one occasion I wrote something like ‘Ellie wondered why was it so difficult to describe emotional pain,’ to which my editor responded in large letters on the side of my manuscript – ‘it’s not Ellie who can’t describe it – it’s you!’.

Oops.

How right she was. But emotional pain is so very difficult to describe, and it’s not something that one wants to experience on a regular basis. So I had to dig deep down inside myself to think of something that had hurt me badly, and imagine it all over again so that I knew how it felt. That was a harrowing and distressing moment, but I’ve found myself doing it more and more often.

The second occasion was when I needed to describe fear. I’m not very often in situations where I’m afraid, I’m happy to say. I live on an island where nobody ever locks their doors when they go out, and crime is zero. But as luck would have it, one day I’d been out – leaving the door unlocked – and I came home just as it was getting dark. I was alone.

Then, from upstairs, I heard a thud.

It wasn’t subtle – and it was definitely in my house. I felt as if I a million tiny pins were pricking every inch of my body. It only lasted a second, but it was the first time I had bothered to even think what fear felt like. I was more interested in my reaction to that moment of fear than I was in what was going on upstairs in my house. I forgot about my burglar for a moment while I imagined the words I would use to describe my physical reaction.

Hopefully the title of this blog now makes perfect sense.

Since starting to write about people and the sometimes terrible situations in which they find themselves, I have had to explore emotions in a way that I have never done before.

I’ve had to interpret those feelings and put them into words – and they have to be words that will affect my readers and show them what each character is feeling. I am constantly examining how I react to events so that I can find the words to express each and every sentiment when the need arises, and the days of controlling my emotions to give an aura of outward calm have long gone.

So if you see somebody sobbing in the corner, scribbling in a black notebook, that’ll be me!

P.S. The loud thump from upstairs was a mirror falling off the wall (it didn’t break).

What are the challenges you have in writing emotion, or point of view? Please share your comments and tips below.

Rachel Abbott’s second novel The Back Road is available now on Amazon for £1.99. It will be released later this year in other formats in the UK, and in paperback and Kindle versions in the US.

You can find Rachel at Rachel-Abbott.com and on twitter @_rachelabbott

Top image: Flickr Creative Commons shipwreck by palestrina55

So I’ve been involved in a secret project for the last month or so and today I can finally announce it!

So What’s Happening? The Descent: Kobo’s Inferno Contest

Dante’s Inferno hopefully needs no introduction, but on May 15 Dan Brown’s new novel, also called Inferno is launched, based on Dante’s work.

For the lead up to the launch of the book, Kobo is running an exciting new kind of interactive online contest that you can enter for free in order to win fantastic prizes, including $5000 and Kobo Glo devices signed by Dan Brown himself.

The first step of the contest is a series of short stories, written by – yes, you guessed it, me – under my fiction name J.F.Penn EXCITING!

You can get the first story right now: Kobo.com/TheDescent

and here’s the official Kobo press release about the contest

(The contest is only open to residents of US, Canada and the UK, but everyone else can still get the stories)

Solve the clues in each of the stories and they will lead you to the next step of the puzzle.

It’s an extremely cool idea and I’ve had a total blast writing the stories, exploring aspects I haven’t yet done in my full-length novels. They’re steeped in the symbolism of the world of Dante’s Inferno as well as religious and supernatural themes that Dan Brown fans will love.

I haven’t been involved in the development of the rest of the contest, so I can’t give anything away, but from what I have heard, it is amazingly detailed and layered in symbolism, myth and literature. It’s worth reading Dante’s Inferno (a modern translation) in order to get the most from the competition. For example, you might not know that the center of Hell is actually ice, rather than fire, and the story will inform the clues.

You can check out the Pinterest board here to see images of the various aspects of the story.

Here’s an intro to the stories – as you can see, the covers feature the wild creatures Dante encounters in the wood at the start of his Descent.

Story 1: Sins of Temptation

When the tortured and mutilated corpse of a wealthy author is discovered, the police officer sent to investigate finds a curious diary amongst the occult objects at the scene. Will he uncover the author’s secret at the ruined chapel, and does he really want to pay the price that it demands?

Get the story right now at Kobo.com/TheDescent

Story 2: Sins of Violence

In a post-apocalyptic world, a young girl is about to be taken to the man known as The Minotaur for a Blessing that will end her innocence. Can her sister gain access to the fortified city of Dis in time to stop the ritual and wreak vengeance for her own lost youth?

Available on 2 May 2013 …

Story 3: Sins of Treachery

On the death of their Grandfather, twin brothers Simon and Gestas are left a map covered in alchemical symbols that could lead them to great wealth and power. But they find more than they expected in the frozen wastes of the Arctic north …

Available on 9 May 2013 …

You don’t have to have a Kobo device to read the stories, you just have to join the site to get the download and then read on your computer, your mobile device or other apps listed here.

Once you sign up, you will also be in the contest to win loads of great prizes, so now’s the time to check out Kobo!

The stories will be on sale after the game is finished but they are exclusive to Kobo for 6 months, so best get them for free right now.

You Can Also Listen To Story 1: Sins Of Temptation

I’ve recorded the first short story in this very podcast episode with an accompanying explanation about the launch. The bridging music before the story is Creative Commons Royalty Free Discovery Hit at Incompetech

If you’d like the unadulterated short story with no intro, you can also find it here as an mp3 file: www.JFPenn.com/sins

As an author, you should definitely be on Kobo Writing Life.

After Amazon, Kobo is the greatest proportion of my income, and many other authors and they have now overtaken B&N Nook as the #2 e-reading platform. Learn more about Kobo Writing Life in this interview with Mark Lefebvre from Kobo about how they help authors.

Find more info at KoboWritingLife.com

Please do leave any comments or questions below. Enjoy the stories and good luck with the competition!