Tying Up Loose Ends . . .

I’ve rewritten a first chapter many times before progressing to the second, only to find that it had to be rewritten again to fall in the line with the rest of the novel. I finally learned to write it once and forget it until the first draft is done.

I’ve never been able to outline a novel because I literally give my characters free rein. And they rarely submit to what I’ve planned for them. They have minds of their own and I wouldn’t want them doing something out of character. In my second Logan and Cafferty series, my feisty 60-year-old senior sleuths surprise me by doing things I’d never consider before sitting down to write. Dana Logan and Sarah Cafferty live with me 24/7 while I’m writing about them and they have their own plans for what should happen that day. Sometimes I have to retreat to earlier chapters to include some of their "brilliant" ideas.

In A Village Shattered, Logan and Cafferty gather their friends to discuss the serial killings taking place in their retirement village. Out of that meeting came many new ideas about who the murderer might be and why he or she was on a killing spree. Until the third quarter of the book, even I didn’t know who it was, and I was forced to return to early chapters to flesh out the killer by adding inner monologue.

In the second novel, Diary of Murder, I take my sleuths out of California and place them in a motorhome in the middle of a Rocky Mountain blizzard. Fortunately, that had happened to me, so I could write convincingly about the life and death experience. The blizzard starts the novel off with a bang, but they face a similar situation later in the plot, so I had to swap some snowy details between the first and later chapters so that they didn't appear too similar. Weather plays a large role in any northern state, and gives the plot an element of danger.

In A Village Shattered, the opaque San Joaquin Valley tule (too-ley) fog hides the serial killer, but I didn’t even think about the fog until I was writing chapter three. Having lived there for a dozen years, I know the horror of trying to drive in pea soup fog, so I switched seasons and went back to chapter one to add it to the plot. In doing so, it tied all aspects of the story together. 

Do Trailers Really Sell Books?

The jury’s still out on whether trailers actually sell books. Regardless, they showcase your work if you place them on YouTube and promote them on Blazing Trailers, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.

The videos range in price from less than a hundred dollars to several thousand, or you can produce them youself. My first book trailer for my historical novel, Escape, was created by a student who did a credible job for $60, but I wasn’t impressed with the music or photo quality. So I hired a professional to produce my second trailer, for $475, which carved a nice chunk from my royalties. A Village Shattered video earned four and a half points out of a possible five from a video judging site, First Turning Point. The only nit mentioned was punctuation within the video, but it wasn't produced by a writer.

My self produced video, Diary of Murder, only earned three points from the same site. Among the nits, the judge said the music was too recognizable. The bottom line is that both books have sold equally well, so the expensive trailer was probably a waste of hard earned royalties. But you can judge for yourself. I haven't produced a trailer for my latest releases and have noticed a difference in sales figures, so I conclude, in my own case, that trailers do help sales. And new software has been developed since my own efforts, which produce much better videos, including Windows Movie Maker and  iMovie which comes packaged in a bundle called iLife for iMac users. A good description of how to produce your own free video: http://www.jungleredwriters.com/2011/10/how-to-make-your-own-book-trailer-free.html at the Jungle Red Writers blog site.

Whichever route you decide to take, book trailers are worth the investment if you have the time and energy to promote them.

Note: I've since changed Diary of Murder's cover and the books are no longer available on Fictionwise because my publisher died and orphaned the books. They are, however, now available on Kindle, Nook and print editions.