Mary Martinez: I'm a Panster

Welcome to my mountaintop, Mary. It's great to have you visit here today during the Mystery We Write Spring Blog Tour. 

Thank you, Jean, for hosting me on your blog today. You’ve given me a challenge! Jean has asked me to write something on the craft of writing. So here goes:

 Do I plot? Do I outline? Do I do a storyboard? None of the above. So how do I write? I’m a panster, mostly. My characters like to write their own story.

I’d gone to a workshop on plotting, outlines and storyboards and it was very interesting. The presenters (there were two well known authors giving the workshop) actually had pictures of the characters, their homes, their apartment layouts, etc. While I found this interesting—what was running through my mind was; When do they find time to write? Because it would have taken me months just to set up.

 Hey they were successful writers and I was a beginner, what did I know? So I decided to try my hand at plotting—the story board would never work, well that’s another story on craft. Anyway, I was going on vacation and we would be taking many trains, so I decided to plot my next book on the train rides.

 I began to plot each chapter, and after about four chapters—nothing. My characters, the ones that had been talking in my head and telling me to write their stories, shut up. Wouldn’t speak to me. And to this day, that story is still not written.

 I found out that I can’t change the fact that I’m a panster. I like to find out what my characters are going to do, just as if I were reading my story. But still these authors were successful and I hadn’t been published yet. So what I did was took everything that I could use from that workshop and made it my own. Kind of like when Randy on American Idol tells one of the contestants to make the song their own.

 Over the years, I’ve been writing, I’ve developed my own method. When I have that germ of an idea I open a file and name it background_Working title and write the blurb. This could be one paragraph to a page. And then I do a list of the current characters rattling around in my mind.  I do a brief set up of the town, if it’s a major city, I usually have a map, and I figure out where they live. Then I open a new file and start writing.  

 As I write and I get to know my characters, I write things in my background file. How tall they are, their hair color, eye color. Any little quirks they have. When I can see their home or apartment, I hop on a real estate site in the area, and find a picture and put it in my background file.

 The Beckett’s I actually visited NYC while writing the first story. I made my husband and friends walk the murder area. And I made notes for my background file.

 So what I’m saying about this is, you have to come up with your own method of plotting or outlining. Take a lot of workshops, go to conferences, do everything you can to get information on the craft of writing a novel, then MAKE IT YOUR OWN!

Disappear (Book I of The Beckett Series)

After two years undercover as an FBI agent to infiltrate a crime organization and discover the identity of a hit man, Tyler Beckett’s cover is blown. Tyler’s new assignment is to protect the only witness who can identify the mysterious killer. If only he didn’t find her so attractive. Each day it becomes harder to keep his objective, especially since he knows the interest is mutual.

Keira Cavanaugh is the only witness to a hit ordered by a crime boss.  The safe house is compromised and the same hit man shoots Tyler. Fearing Tyler is dead, Keira plans revenge on the crime organization. She must fake her own suicide in order to survive.

 When Tyler discovers what Keira plans, he realizes he must stop her before he loses her for good.

Disappear is available in eBook now at:

Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007GHO1MI

Barnes & Noble http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/disappear-mary-martinez/1109266974?ean=2940013908833&

Smashwords http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/138298

Print available May 2012

 During the blog tour Mary will be throwing all the people’s name who comment about the content of her posts, at each stop, into a hat for a drawing. She will be giving away to two lucky winners, one copy of any of her books (winner’s choice). Winners will be announced at the wrap up at the end of the blog tour, April 28th.  

 Mary’s web site: http://www.marymartinez.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/marylmartinez

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mlmartinez33

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1646623.Mary_Martinez

Blog: http://marysbooksblogger.blogspot.com/

Guest Post by Mary Martinez

Thank you, Jean, for inviting me to be a guest on your blog today. I’m having a wonderful time on the Mystery We Write Blog Tour. I’m meeting a lot of new people.

What do you think a blog tour is? Would it be marketing and promoting? Do you know the difference? Actually, the good old Webster’s dictionary had this to say:

Promotion: 1. The act or an instance of promoting; specif., a) advancement in rank, grade, or position b) furtherance of an enterprise, cause, etc.—

Marketing 1. The act of buying or selling in a market. 2 all business activity involved in the moving of goods from producer to the consumer, including selling, advertising, packaging, etc.

Advancement in position and moving the goods in my opinion are basically the same. Your books is your product. You want it to advance up the charts and to do that you need to move the goods from yourself, web site, publishers web site, etc. to the consumer or reader.

In other words you need to do both to have people buy your book. My plan is this, offer an attractive product that makes the consumer feel like the need to have it.  Need is much stronger than want, if you can put want on the back burner, but if you need something, it’s now.

Cover art is very important. The next is your blurb, it needs to hook and real in the customer. This would be the packaging—so the marketing portion. Something else that could be considered marketing would be a book signing, and your display to draw people to your table would be your packaging.

My next plan would be promotion, which means get my appealing packaged product out for the world to see with information where to buy.  

There isn’t much difference between the two, both are important. Without one, it’s hard to do the other. Give me your thoughts on my original question about what would a blog tour be, marketing or promotion.

Everyone who gives me their opinion and their contact information in a comment today will be placed in a drawing for a signed copy of Romance and Misconceptions.My newest release is Classic Murder: Mr. Romance

Blurb, excerpt and trailer: http://www.marymartinez.com/mrromance.html

ISBN: 978-1610343350

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1610343352/bookstrand-20

Barnes & Noble: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Classic-Murder/Mary-Martinez/e/9781610343350/

Web Site: www.marymartinez.com

Garden Blog: http://marysbooksblogger.blogspot.com/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/marylmartinez

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mlmartinez33