The authors at Paranormal Romantics are having a Halloween Party on Saturday, all day! In addition to their regular contributors, there will be guest bloggers (including yours truly, Ari Thatcher) and tons of prizes given away. A new post will go up each hour. Right now it’s scheduled to start at noon eastern time, but there are so many joining the fun it might start earlier!
Come on by and join the fun! Read through each post to find out how to enter for prizes. Some winners will be chosen from comments, others will have to respond to the author’s request. Either way, enter and win!
I read an interesting article the other day about the death of the book review. (Read it here.)
Author Adam Pennenberg compared the number of reviews for his first book with those for his current release. He also looked at the life cycle of Amazon reviews and the potential for abuse of the review system.
It made me think about how I find new books and new authors. I don’t read many book reviews. I listen to my friend’s recommendations a lot more than I listen to reviewers. I buy books by authors I have read before. And I learn about books from Twitter and blogs. I enter contests to find new authors, and I check books out of the library. It’s a low risk means of finding new authors.
What about you. What were the last five books you read? And, how did you find them? Reviews? Friends? Twitter or Facebook? Bookstore displays? Ads on TV, radio, or blogs?
First things first: the lucky winner of the Shadowfae giveaway is:
PAULA!!
Congratulations, Paula. Your book is on its way. Thanks so much to all who entered.
Now on with it. Book trailers. Some love ‘em, some… don’t. Some say they never watch them. Some say they never buy a book because of them. Others swear they trawl the internet searching for them and watch every single one they can lay their hands on.
Me, I don’t know whether it’s a good marketing/publicity strategy or not. I merely made a book trailer because it was fun to make.
Many people shake their heads at this, and mutter uncalled-for comments involving the words ‘pinhead’ and ‘computer geek’. But no longer.
Behold, Erica’s Seven Steps to Making Your Own Classy Book Trailer.
The very first thing you need to do is watch this video.
It’s not a book trailer. And it’s shinier by far than anything a lowly author could hope to achieve. But it says everything I want to say about mood, pacing and image selection much more eloquently than I could ever hope to. Watch this, and you’ll get everything you need to know about this wonderful TV show, without getting the tiniest inkling of the plot.
Clever, yes? Of course, it helps that Henry Cavill is possibly the most beautiful man alive. Pause while you all rush off to drool over your Tudors DVDs. Done? Right. Now we can carry on.
One. Think about the mood of your book.
Remember The Tudors credits, and repeat after me: a trailer is not back cover copy.
A trailer is not back cover copy. Look at any trailer that merely reiterates the cover blurb and I guarantee you’ll be bored in ten seconds flat. A trailer showcases the mood of your book. And ‘mood’ is just another way of saying ‘author brand’.
How do you want readers to see your books? Are they dark, sassy, sexy, brooding, light-hearted, dramatic, laugh-out-loud funny? Then every single element of your trailer — music, images, voiceover, text, transitions — needs to reflect that.
Imagine those Tudors credits if they’d gone for plot over style. ‘Well, it’s the sixteenth century, right, and there’s this king…’ Uh huh. Pass the Supernatural DVDs.
Two. Decide how much money you’ve got to spend.
Photos, footage and music cost money. There is some free stuff out there, but it’s a) not very good; and b) been used to death by every author with no budget, ie. all of them. Stock photos — and you’re looking for the royalty-free ones, which means not that the image itself is free (it probably isn’t) but that once you’ve purchased it, you can use it as many times as you like without further charge — range from a few cents to the tens of dollars.
Check out sites like istockphoto.com and shutterstock.com to see what you’ll be up for. For a 60-second trailer, you’ll need anything from 10 to 20 images. Your budget will determine how much you can do.
Three. Get out your software.
On the Mac, I use iMovie. PCs generally come with Windows MovieMaker. It won’t hurt you. Go on, get it out and have a play. It’s designed to be easy to use. You can add text and music, drag images around, set their duration and how you want to transition between images — with a fade, a snap, a whirl, all kinds of fun effects.
Warning: this ascension to geekdom can be addictive.
Four. Storyboard.
This is a fancy term for ‘get out your images and play around with them’. Drop your images into Movie Maker and play around with them. Add some text. See what happens.
Tip: before you purchase any images, copy the watermarked thumbnails from stock image sites. It is illegal to use them for your trailer — that would be a copyright violation — but you can borrow them to play with on your own computer, to help you choose which ones you want to buy, and then delete them afterwards.
Typically, a romance trailer would include the following in some order: the heroine, the situation, the hero, the rising conflict. Think about how you can use images to illustrate these. It doesn’t matter if the photos don’t look exactly like your characters or locations. Remember: mood, mood, mood. And don’t forget your cover image, if you’ve got one.
Five. Pay attention to pacing.
Find some trailers you don’t like and watch them a few times. Try to figure out why they don’t make you want to rush out and buy the book. Is it because the images are tired? The text uninteresting? Do the images move too slowly? For me the number one reason is pace. Give your viewers some credit — they can follow you. Don’t make them wait too long for the next line of text or image transition.
Six. Put it on the Internet.
The software will let you export the trailer in the correct format for online viewing. Pick your time — not too long before your book’s release, so people don’t have the chance to forget about it — and post away. YouTube and MySpace are two of the most popular sites. And don’t forget to tag your trailer with useful buzzwords, so when people search, they find it.
Seven. Tell people.
Spread the word. Tweet, blog, spam all those Yahoo groups you’re on. Maybe create a contest around your trailer. Do anything you can to make people watch it. It’s your masterpiece, after all.
That’s it. Be creative. Be bold. Have fun!
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, here’s my first ever go at a book trailer. It’s not perfect. But I think it’s a decent effort at not being boring, at least
So you tell me: what do you like in a book trailer? Do you even watch them? What are some of your favourites? Post the links if you care to. Got any hints on making a good trailer? Come and share!
I get so tired of people who dismiss romances as “porn for moms.”
Yes, the hotter romances do provide some level of sexual gratification. And romance readers have more active sex lives.
But there are plenty of romances that have no “on-screen” sex or even the implication of “off-screen” sex. (At least, this is what I’ve heard. I prefer the hotter romances, so those are what I gravitate toward.)
But sex is not the entire reason romances exist. Porn movies exist solely to titillate through visual depictions of sex. Romances, even the ones with the most sex per page, focus on the love, the emotions as a means of engaging the reader in a story outside his or her own experience.
How many of us are pursued romantically by overbearing alphas? How about billionaire sheiks? Vampires, werewolves, or other fantastic folk? And how many of us actually want to be? I mean, I love vampires as much as the next girl, but I think in real life, they would be more scary than hot.
I want to be swept away in that initial first blush of infatuation. I want to be wooed by a dominant and wealthy man who will not rest until he makes me his. I want to know what it is like to be a creature of the night. I want to travel space with my trusty male companion. I want to fight evil alongside the most amazing sexy male demon I’ve ever encountered. But only on the page.
I am perfectly happy with my life, my husband, my dogs. But sometimes I like to live in a world that is more than I can experience in my lifetime. At least until I close the book or turn off the iPod.
What about you? Why do you read romances? If you’re a writer, too, why did you start writing them?
I’m on a bit of a Jean Lafitte kick lately. I recently came across him in Danielle, a YA romance novel I remember reading when I was about ten (the Sunfire Series, for those of you who remember; it’s been a hilarious pastime of mine lately to revisit the novels of my youth). He plays a minor character, but one who sets the backdrop for early nineteenth century Louisiana very effectively. A gentleman pirate who helped shaped a nation – what’s there not to love?
As soon as I was done reading, I remembered Mr. Lafitte also made a similar minor appearance in Zorro, by Isabelle Allende. She’s one of my favorite authors, so I picked up the book again and re-read it.
But then I wanted more. Both books only brushed the surface of the pirate’s life and escapades, and I find myself intrigued by the life he led. I could have always picked up a nonfiction book about him, but those have never really been my style. I prefer a good, lyrical retelling any day.
So, I looked everywhere for a historical fiction novel about Jean Lafitte and came up empty. I eventually put a query out on Twitter and was directed toward Siren, by Cheryl Sawyer. The book is out of print, so I ordered a used copy and am eagerly awaiting for it to be delivered.
Still, I find myself wondering why it was so difficult to find a novel wherein he plays the primary hero. There are hundreds of romance novels out there about gentleman pirates, especially in that time period. Privateers, as they were called, were sanctioned by their own governments to pillage the ships of enemy nations. They had the ultimate stamp of romance novel hero approval: they were outcasts but not villains. It’s a nice, tidy way to depict what were probably a motley, smelly crew as daring noblemen bent on swashbuckling adventures and daily baths.
So Jean Lafitte, the ultimate gentleman pirate, should be incredible fodder for storytelling. He built a successful business based on his privateering role. He employed hundreds, lived a life of rich luxury, captivated women with his charming, mysterious ways, and helped Andrew Jackson defeat the British. (This is where readers are expected to swoon. He is, after all, the ideal rake.)
Unfortunately, he did some not-so-nice things, too. Like killing people and taking part in the slave trade. Oh, and making his fortune by stealing from others; no Robin Hood was this guy. He kept his booty for himself.
For the most part, I get it. It’s hard to write a sympathetic hero with that kind of shady past. But is there something else to the apprehension? Is there too much research involved in writing a story that features a real historical figure as the hero? Do readers prefer a make-believe pirate hero whose solid core of good is unquestionable better than one who is horribly flawed (and ultimately more realistic)? Was he just not very attractive? Or is there another factor at play that I’m missing?
I sat on the outskirts of a conversation between my twenty-something daughter and friends. As usually happens when women get together, the subject turned to, “I can’t believe what he said to me!”
I won’t go into details about whose young man was being dragged through the dirt, but the comment he’d made had to do with how the young woman looked in her outfit. Let’s just say he suffered from “man-speak fail”.
One of the girls piped in about her guy and his answer to that question men dread most, “Does this look okay?”
When asked, he replies, “If it makes you feel beautiful, then you look beautiful.”
Can I say, “man-speak win!”? That needs to be printed on t-shirts and given to boys as they enter dating age, don’t you think? Perhaps written on every other page of the relationship manual, with the alternate page reading, “Seat up. Seat down. Flush.”
Most guys eventually come up with a winning line at some point in their lives. The sentence that keeps them from sleeping on the couch. Those words that allow us to keep smiling when he brings up boys’ night out.
What about your man? What has he said that ventured into the realm of man-speak win?
This time, the prize is a shiny red copy of my brand spankin’ new urban fantasy/romance novel Shadowfae, which came out on Tuesday! Yippee! My debut release!
Imagine a secret world veiled in fairy glamour and brimming with unearthly delights. A city swarming with half-mad fairies, where thieving spriggans rob you blind, beautiful banshees mesmerize you with their song, and big green trolls bust heads at nightclubs. And once you’re in, there’s no escape…
Enslaved by a demon lord, Jade is forced to spend her nights seducing vampire gangsters and shapeshifting thugs. After two hundred years as a succubus, she burns for freedom and longs to escape her brutal life as a trophy girl for hell’s minions. Then she meets Rajah, an incubus who touches her heart and intoxicates her senses. Rajah shares the same bleak fate as she, and yearns just as desperately for freedom. But the only way for Jade to break her bonds is to betray Rajah—and doom the only man she’s ever loved to a lifetime in hell.
Sound smokin’ hot? Awesome. If you want a taste of what it’s like, you can check out an excerpt and a free prequel short story at my website.
Still here? Nice! I’m giving away a free copy, right here and now.
But {evil grin} I’m gonna make you work for it.
Seeing as we’re talking urban fantasy, here’s some cracking first paras from four of my favourite UFs.
Here’s what you’ve gotta do, folks. Email me at shadyezra at gmail dot com and tell me the titles of the books they’re from. If you don’t know ‘em, google ‘em I’ll pick a winner at random, and that lucky person will receive a copy of Shadowfae.
Get it? Awesome. Here we go:
1. Demon was such a nasty word. And so damned old-school. People heard demon and they conjured up all kinds of Hieronymus Bosch helter-skelter–or worse, Dante’s stupid-ass inferno crap. Honestly. Flames and tortured souls and everyone wailing. {Hint: this is the firhst in a new sehries from this NYT author, who has consonhants to spahre }
2. When Elena told people she was a vampire hunter, their first reaction was an inevitable gasp, followed by, “You go around sticking those sharp stakes in their evil putrid hearts?” {Hint: New Zealand author known for her red-hot shapeshifters}
3. My philosophy is pretty simple–any day nobody’s trying to kill me is a good day in my book. I haven’t had many good days lately. Not since the walls between Man and Faery came down. {Hint: first book in a UF series by the author of Spell of the Highlander}
4. Antoinette crept along the alley, unknown shadows pressing in on her from the darkness. {Hint: a ‘dark’ new series from an Aussie author whose last name goes with Scarlett}
There y’are. Don’t they make you wanna hunt those books down and devour them? Like I said, if you don’t know ‘em, google ‘em — you might just find yourself some fab new series to glom! And remember, it’s shadyezra at gmail dot com
Contest closes midnight Sunday Monday New York time. Which equals 3pm Monday Tuesday my time. Or something like that. (EDIT: because I, y’know, forgot I wasn’t going to be here on Monday. Sheesh.)
Oh, and if you also leave a comment with your fave first line from a romance — any kind, doesn’t have to be UF — I’ll give you an extra entry to the contest. Just because that’s the kind of generous soul I am.
P.S. you have to be 18 years or older to enter. Sorry, but them’s the breaks. Can’t be givin’ out red hot sexxin to minors. Ask your mother
I’m on a bit of a Jean Lafitte kick lately. I recently came across him in Danielle, a YA romance novel I remember reading when I was about ten (the 
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