Things I Lack

So in order to attract buyers to my book I have to do a bunch of things, none of which I am very good at. I mentioned keywords yesterday, the ones you have to have, which I still haven’t found and seem unlikely to?

In addition to that, you are told to search out books similar to your own so that you can go to school on the keywords which work for them. Which would be a wonderful idea if there were any other books similar to mine.

How ‘bout finding a mentor? Sure, just one little thing, the only guy who has an experience similar to mine is a die-hard gunny, with seriously deep-state leanings and a large following of guy with rebel flags and QAnon ideas, not exactly my target audience, if I had a target audience. Oh yeah that’s another thing I haven’t got, a target audience.

Ya see, I wrote the thing following Lawrence Block's sage advice, write what you like cause the chance of ever getting published is so remote you might as well write what you like. So I did, but now it seems you have to write to niche. It’s so confusing.

But back to not having things, so no keywords, no mentor, no similar books. No target audience, and that's just what I have discovered so far. Whew. It’s a puzzlement.

But the thing I do have is faith in my characters. I originally created many of them for a murder mystery play I wrote, which turned out very well thank you, playing to over twenty-five hundred paid admissions. The thing was, I discovered, just by accident, I wasn’t through talking about them.

One of the writer’s principals I do believe in is the statement, You own your characters until the minute you write them down and then they have a life of their own. Boy, did they ever. They started out slow, just a little Christmas story and then a story about King getting in deep trouble with the mob, (See the excerpt from yesterday’s blog) then a big story about Harry winning a horse for Dakota and then there were the Brownshirts. And that was just the first book. In the second book of the Gonifs series, The Wrong Broad, but you should read Jamoulks first. There’s a third book in the Gonifs series, Mishcaphah, all about what happens when Harry, Dakota, Dore Moll, Moose, and Maize end up in Hawaii-- but we’re getting ahead of the story.

The whole point is I had a lot more to say about these guys and they wouldn’t shut up until I told it.

That’s why I have a book or three about people I really like which doesn’t fit in any neat little

cubbyhole and makes finding the right way to promote it extremely challenging.

So what else, oh yeah, the whole audio book saga.

It seems in addition to the Kindle edition and the paperback, I should do an audio book.

That would be a big problem, except I spent fifteen years running a murder mystery company, playing a new part at least every six weeks sometimes two or more at the same time and going on auditions for TV, film and voice-over work. I wasn’t half bad and so reading an audio book doesn't pose the same problems for me that it would for someone who has never tried to present a character.

Except for the part where it has to be recorded. Ever tried to find a totally quiet place in a house where people actually live? Oh and then there’s the cat...