I need you

Not in that way.

This month, I'm trying to be more visible on the 'net, so I'm blogging each and every day. I'm also going to the Placentia Heritage Day festival to sell my books. Here is what the prep for a festival looks like:

I'm not taking the holiday horse. I'd like to find him a home.

I need some ideas. I've got these marketing items and I want to give them away and I don't know how to give them out. Here's what I've got:

A Hit or Missus grocery/sized tote. I have my own and it's very durable.

Two Hit or Missus coffee mugs.

Four From the Horse's Mouth coffee mugs.

A baseball cap with the retro Freezer Burn cover on the front and "Get Burned. It's Cool" on the back.

A baseball cap with Snoopy's book cover on the front and "From the Horse's Mouth" on the back.

Four (yes, FOUR) Professional's Choice grooming bags (these can also be used for other stuff. You don't have to store hoof picks in them).

Should I have a blog giveaway, along with a book, and/or a gift card? It would involve shipping, but I'm willing.

Or should I give them away this weekend at the Placentia Heritage Day Festival? I do love my P-Town peeps, and I'd be happy to show them how much. But... raffle? Pull emails out of a hat?

Maybe my fans would like something...

I'd love-love-LOVE some suggestions.

Checking in

When we last left Gayle, she was up to her thyroid in edits of the new mystery, Murder On The Hoof. Let's check in and see what she's doing today...

Okay, the good news is, I don't have to add a whole week to the timeline. I'm not going to add a bunch of filler just to stretch the story. (Aside: I once had a girl tell me she was going to write a book. She said, "I've got all the key scenes written down. so all I have to do is write a bunch of filler in between." I don't know whether I want to laugh or cry.)

The bad news is, I do have to re-arrange a few scenes and start the action on Monday instead of Wednesday. Is that important? Wellllll...

Standard AQHA shows are Thursday through Sunday. A longer show, like the Sun Circuit, might last from Saturday through to the following weekend. I need my story to end on Saturday. If I start it on the previous Saturday, I've got at least two days that end up as some kind of "the next two days seemed to crawl by as Willie waited for X to happen."

Lame-O.

But if the show starts on Tuesday, the timeline works. Willie and her trainer load in on Monday, someone dies, and off we go. Perfect.

All I have to do is convince my readers that it's perfect timing. Wish me luck.

Editing - it's not for wimps

I've started the first round of editing of Murder On The Hoof. How many rounds are there, typically? It depends. I always have five editing steps.

1. Sweeping read-through where I get rid of my go-to words and do clean up work.

2. One read-aloud, where I re-work sections that sound really good in my head and really bad in my mouth.

3. One read-aloud into a digital voice recorder, where I play it back and just listen to what needs to be re-worked.

4. One analytical read-through, where I outline what I've written and look at the pacing and structure.

5. One read-through to verify that all my edits were successful.

I can have several rounds of each step, so it can be a long process.

Murder On The Hoof will take a lot of editing. So much of it came so quickly, I'm finding wacky things, like photos that were supposed to have been taken by someone who is already dead. (No, there will be no zombies in this novel.)

Plus, as soon as I typed THE END I knew I would have to go back in and add a week to the timeline (it will be abbreviated). After creating a fictional horse show that is two weeks long so I could use some already-expedited forensics tests, I wrapped the whole thing up in the first weekend.

Yeah, that can't happen.

After my editing, I'll be soliciting my beta readers. Who to chose...

I asked for this.

I was a very quiet child. Seriously. All of my report cards said, "Gayle is very quiet and needs to speak up more in class." The teachers were not impressed enough with high grades, it seems. They wanted me to be more vocal about being so smart.

Now that I'm grown, I've hatched from my shell and become one gregarious gal. I can't stop talking to people, even when a little voice in my head says, "SHUT UP! YOU'RE IN UNCHARTED TERRITORY!"

The first time I noticed a bad side effect of TTM (Talking Too Much) is when I was in line at the grocery store and struck up a conversation with a woman who was behind me. One minute we were laughing about the tabloids at the checkout counter, then I mentioned the articles about flying saucers. Next thing I know, the woman is telling me about being visited by aliens in her parents' orchard when she was nine. Her voice seemed to grow louder the further I moved away. By the time I escaped, I think I was having an out-of-body experience.

It would not be the last time I should have zipped my lip.

Last year, I was at the Duarte Festival of Authors, when a woman approached my table and looked at my books. We chatted about the festival and the weather and I told her what my books were about. It all seemed harmless. Then she said:

"I just finished reading Fifty Shades of Grey, and I loved it. It's so well written and the characters are so real. I'd love to read more books like that."

I don't have books like that. I could have told her exactly that and moved on. Instead, I heard myself say, "If you loved that book, you should try Fifty Shades of Alice in Wonderland." (Don't judge me. Yes, it's total erotica but as opposed to FSoG, Fifty Shades of Alice really is well written and it's funny. I like funny.)

And thus began the Great Bondage Monologue of 2012. I'd say "discussion" but all I did was nod and smile and try not to let my eyes bug out of my head. I'm going to try to describe it here without getting an X-rating on my blog.

First, picture a tall, stately, older woman. Maybe a cross between this:

And this:

According to her, she accompanied her very happy friend and his very happy boyfriend to a very special seminar. You got a different colored badge at this seminar, depending upon why you were there. Red meant you were an observer, yellow meant you might want to try things out, and green meant let's exchange numbers.

When she walked into the room, she saw the teacher, who was a dominating kind of woman (hint, hint) and her male assistant. The assistant was very thin, very pale, and very hairless - all over. Top to bottom. His well, you know, was clearly visible.

With me so far?

The teacher took a long strip of leather and proceeded to demonstrate knot-tying with her assistant, by tying various knots around his Well-You-Know, then anchoring it to his leg.

Please remember that I am listening to her explain all this in the middle of a park next to a senior assisted-living facility. This is where it truly drifts into TMI.

She told me she then went home to her (then) boyfriend and practiced what she had learned on him. They went shopping at the mall for awhile, then walked over to a restaurant for dinner. When she asked him how Well-You-Know was doing, he said, "I don't know. I think it fell off about an hour ago."

Had I but kept my mouth shut when she mentioned Fifty Shades, I would not be telling you this story today. There is apparently no cure for TTM, so if I'm going to suffer with this disease, I'm going to share it with you.

Actually, I blame my teachers for this. Gayle isn't quiet anymore.

So long at the fair

It was hot, but at least it wasn't windy.

For those of you who don't live in southern California, the Santa Ana winds have moved in over the weekend. They are strong and hot and take no prisoners. They were in my thoughts and my hair this morning as I loaded my canopy in the minivan and left for the Duarte Festival of Authors. Although the festival is set in a park with lots of trees for shade, there are large empty spaces that get full sun most of the day.

I needed the canopy to keep out of the sun, but would it be confiscated by the Santa Anas and blown to Arcadia?

Thankfully, we only got the heat and not the gale.

As usual, the festival was a lovely, low-key affair. The staff is always nice, but this year the volunteer teenagers went out of their way to help us in any way possible. At one point, they brought me a cup of hot tea and a cinnamon-spice muffin. So sweet!

As I've said before, I don't sell tons of books at this event. I don't think anyone does. My internal sell-o-meter is to aim for selling 6 books. If I hit that number, I'm happy. If I don't hit that number, I'm at least satisfied that I spent a lovely day with my author friends.

This is my friend Pam. She lives in Valencia and I live in Placentia and they only sound close together. They are really an hour apart on a good day and impossible to get to on a normal day of LA traffic. A day spent with Pam in a booth goes like this:

Pam - (books, marketing)
Me - (family, random crap)
Pam - (family, latest charity event)
Me - (books, marketing)
Both - *looking up to see a customer* "Hi, how are you today?"

Repeat as necessary.

We both handed out a lot of cards and bookmarks, and talked to a lot of people who have ereaders. I think we'll be watching our Kindle sales to see if the people who wanted to buy our ebooks carry out their intentions.

Before we knew it, four o'clock had rolled around and it was time to pack up. All my unsold books, cards, bookmarks, and even the gnomes went back in their storage bin. The canopy was folded and schlepped back to my car. How many books did I sell?

Six.

 

 

 

Color me happy.