What the Heck is a Blog Tour?

I’ve always been a little mystified by the concept of blog tours. Through the last few years I’ve dabbled with the and with little success… mainly because I was treating them incorrectly (kind of like using a wrench to hammer a nail—it’ll kinda work, but leaves the user unimpressed).

A blog book tour is much like a traditional book tour, except the stops are all virtual. Instead of going from bookstore to bookstore the author maintains a short presence at each of the blogs. This is an opportunity to talk about your book with that blog’s regulars. Many different people set these up: publicists, publishing agents, or even authors themelves.

WordNerds has a nifty video explaining them in a nutshell:

The best way to utilize a blog tour is to treat it like a real book tour! This has been my failing on the last few that I’ve done: even though this is a digital event it’s not a “set it and forget it” thing. You should check in at each of those blogs, interact in the forum and on the comments threads. Just because its online doesn’t mean you can check out on it and expect positive traffic.  If you want a Virtual Tour to have the maximum impact for what you spend on it you ought to put regular stops onto your schedule so you can interact with readers—that is the real reason anyone does a tour anyway, to connect with the audience. Anything else is just a glorified television commercial.

Penguin/Random House has some great advice for those planning to do one of these (Click here to read it).

If you’re looking for a great place to get started, one of my favorite blog tour companies to work with has been Silver Dagger Book Tours. Check it out and tell Maia I sent you!

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Review: The Secret of the Aurora Hotel

It’s time for another Ultimate Ending book review. Having read others in their series, The Secret of the Aurora Hotel by McAleese and Kristoph is by far my favorite.

As with their others in the series these books have a few more puzzle elements versus traditional Choose Your Own Adventure titles.

The Aurora Hotel is a haunted hotel your uncle Gus purchased; you and your two cousins try solve its mystery and lift the curse that started long ago. It’s got this great Shining feel to it that immerses you, although in a juvenile and age appropriate manner… but what’s as much fun as exploring a crazy, haunted house. (Some of my favorite table top games include those like Mansions of Madness.)

State of Writing

Not much action last week. I’m saving it all up for the days to come. I worked a little on a secret side project and wrote blog posts through May. Hopefully I will start writing fiction again this week. This is it: the beginning of The Hidden Rings of Myrddin the Cambion. Book 1–Hoods of the Red Order.

Sidenote, I have some appearances coming up! I’ll be at MiniCon this coming weekend and will have some books available. I’ve also got a fine arts panel coming up in Marshall, MN to help answer questions and guide newer writers towards a publishing path of their preference (either traditional or Indie.)

Show/Don’t Tell & Body Language Lists

One of the things you will hear a great deal as a writer is to “show don’t tell.” Part of this alludes to passive voice, but eliminating passive voice isn’t enough. As a writer, your narration has to lead the reader to the conclusion you want them to arrive at without telling them outright. This is one of the more difficult aspects of writing for most people (and if you’ve picked up many books—even traditional press, high-quality ones—you will see that this isn’t always a well-followed rule).

Here is an example of what I mean.
Jack was sad because of the bad news. (Passive)
The bad news made Jack sad. (Better… not passive, but it still “tells.”)
Jack heard the news and his shoulders slumped with a sigh. (This version leads us to conclude what kind of news it was and his reaction to it based on his body language.)

Granted, we can’t do the above with every sentence. Sometimes we must set absolutes and dictate what has happened so that there is no confusion for the reader, but we should make an attempt to make our characters act out their feelings as often as possible. I find this is especially true in my own writing during dialogue.

While using different text analysis apps I’ve learned a lot about my writing and my style. I am amazing at killing passive voice in my sentences, according to the Hemingway app; I don’t even come close to the recommended limit it gives based on length and that makes my stories feel like white-knuckle page-turners… but adverbs. I tend to run over in that department, and chiefly because of dialogue. I’ve found that my characters often say things sadly or reply tensely. They should instead say things with a sigh or reply as they bristle visibly. To help improve my own writing I often consult collections of phrases that show specific body language (lest I fall into using the same few descriptive postures over and over.)

Here are a few graphics on the topic taken from Amanda Patterson’s blog. She cautions not to overuse these which can bog down the story. I can concur; authors need to keep storytelling as number one and remember that a story is not a collection of good descriptions and well-spoken details.

There are few other sites I’d recommend with additional lists:
Word Dreams
Writers in the Storm
Bryn Donovan’s Gesture List
Bryn Donovan’s Facial Expression List
TheOtakuNerd on Wattpad
Perhaps my new favorite is DescriptiveWords.org which links to a bunch of smaller lists based on adjectives (like a thesaurus, but collected differently.)

Do you know of body-language lists like these? Let me know in the comments!

Review: Sherlock Holmes and the Cult of Cthulhu

James Boswell’s Sherlock Holmes and the Cult of Cthulhu is an intriguing book. The time periods, and in many respects, the writing styles, of Doyle and Lovecraft seem an obvious intersection for a writer seeking to dovetail them together.

Fair warning, I haven’t read any of Doyle’s Holmes titles in almost two decades. Perhaps it was the theme, but I read the story with an inner monologue in a British accent, kind of like how memes with a photo of Morgan Freeman make you read the text in his voice.

State of Writing

Yikes. My day got away from me before I could vomit a few words onto my keyboard.
Big week for me… in addition to being crazy productive for my dayjob. I took my daughter to the #MNWW Minnesota writers workshop; she just recently finished her first novel. Not only did she get to see some of the underbelly stuff from the publishing world and get to hear from some industry professionals, but we took an editing track that I think she will find immensely useful in making revisions. (She took like 6 pages worth of notes). My big highlights this year were all professional achievements. I connected with the owner of Subtext books who sponsored the event and have her sold on hosting a book signing for Wolf of the Tesseract. I also book a future author interview for this blog from David Oppegaard, and pitched books to 3 agents (with 4 requests for pages and an agent I pitched last year but did not query this year invited me to requery her at her new agency). Hopefully the other shoe doesn’t drop any time soon.
Scheduled a few more book signings in addition to everything else I did. I also finished my outlines for all 5 installments of The Hidden Rings of Myrrdin the Cambion, my YA genre mash-up series which will begin writing soon. I did get worried when I realized I lost an entire book (including the outline) that I had detailed notes for while updating my scrivener software a few months back now that I wanted to plot them with notecards in the software. It took me a few hours’ worth of searching through old TEMP files, but I eventually found them. Good thing, too, because it was pretty good stuff and I outlined all 5 books over a period of about 10 days so that all the story lines had a cohesive continuity.
…Now to get the final drafts of TKR3 and WotT2 completed so I can begin in clear conscience.

Answering Reader Questions #1 Passive Voice (and other ramblings)

I’m quite serious when I tell people I’m willing to give some feedback, answer questions, or offer writing advice. (I always extend this offer to folks on my mailing list–I love to connect and see what friends are doing.) A friend recently asked for some advice about passive voice and I thought I’d copy and paste the exchange here in the event that it might help some fellow writers.

You said something before about passive voice and active voice. Could you explain that again? for example, I could write (her voice is kind but there is no expression on her face) but I could write (her voice was kind but there was no expression on her face). is present or past tense better? in addition, the first chapter starts the stories but then the rest of the opening chapters go back in time to see what lead up to the first. Is present tense still the best?

in addition, the first chapter starts the stories but then the rest of the opening chapters go back in time to see what lead up to the first. Is present tense still the best?

Passive voice and the tenses of verbs aren’t the same thing (just in case there’s confusion. When I first started kicking over rocks to figure out how to improve my writing I discovered there existed a whole set of terms I knew nothing about—and I’m still learning new ones all the time).

Anyway, here’s passive voice in a nutshell: when something just “is” …passive voice is when your verb is a state of being. The most common abuse is when people use the word was. Here’s an example:

Review: Cursed–the Hunter Inside

Cursed: the Hunter Inside (Part 1), is the next book that you’ve got to get! As the father of teenage author I took special interest when sixteen year old Casey Millette queried my blog for a review. I thought I might have to reach in order to find nice things to say, but dang, this girl can write.

It opens with a phenomenal hook and the action keeps driving forward from there. In checking out her publisher, I also see that Parliament House  (an IBPA member) is no slouch, either. They demand top- notch stories, and this is one of them. Millette writes with a tightness and descriptive ability typically only found in writers with several books under their belt; she does a great job of resisting waxing passive and falling into “tell” vs “show.” This is a story you won’t regret picking up and from a voice that is guaranteed to be a fresh one in the industry.

State of Writing

Last week I edited a revised draft of my new crime-comedy/awkward romance, 50 Shades of Worf… note the title change. I also watched most of Alan Tudyk’s ConMan (which is hilarious) … they are very similar. Once I do another future edit, and after I have completed through season two, I may be reminded of some other tropes and can insert a few other throw away jokes. I really am heavy on the humor side.

Aside from the #amediting I did a little promo for my 2 books in the Indie Contest (please vote) and set some calendar items (I am confirmed at the MCBA comiccon in May,) and got a few things ready for the MN Writers Workshop I’m attending on Saturday.

My 14 year old daughter is coming with me as a paid and registered conference member. She just finished her novel over the weekend, so I’m excited for her to see some of the other real world aspects of the publishing world and get her acquainted early.

Within the next couple of weeks I hope to begin the Hidden Rings Cycle. I have begun migrating my rough outlines into a more Scrivener friendly format so that it’s ready to begin writing and then keep writing. I should have that done this week. My outlook is very positive–50 Shades of Worf was written in just over 30 days and its slightly longer/about the same as what I have planned for each of these 5 stories… the goal is to complete writing on them in a maximum of 12 months. I proved to myself that I am capable of that… new achievement reached! New goal unlocked: write 6 novels in one year. 1 down, 5 to go 🙂

Also! If you have a beta copy of The Kakos Realm: Death Upon the Fields of Splendor, please get me your notes, revisions, chicken scratches, and doodles asap… I’d like to complete my last 2 rounds of revisions before I begin writing the Hidden Rings stories (one I start, I only want to pause to do the same for Wolves of the Tesseract #2).

What do you want to know? Taking Your Requests…

I want to hear from you! I often answer questions from people as they ask them in person, at panels, and online. #writingadvice #writerscommunity  #amwriting

What are your biggest questions about publishing, writing, etc? I’ll do my best to ferret out the answers for you! Maybe I’ve already blogged about it and this will give me a chance to revisit an older topics again.

I do have blog posts written and scheduled up until the end of March already, but I’d love to write some new articles on top of those I’ve already got and see what issues other Indies are dealing with.

Leave your comments in the blog responses (this will be pushed to social media as well, but those responses are harder to track, so reply to this post over at https://authorchristopherdschmitz.wordpress.com so I can find them more easily!)

I’m here to help! Let me help you navigate the Indie world! Leave those comments below and Follow me for more!

#indiethursday #amediting #indieauthor  #indiepub #selfpub #selfpublishing