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In a world crowded with short blog posts and the blink-of-an-eye news headlines, more writers are cutting their teeth on flash fiction.  

Flash fiction--short short stories that hardly break a thousand words apiece--has showed up in writing contests around the Internet. From six word memoirs to quick science fiction in 365 Tomorrows, the genre has inspired plenty of great web writers--but it doesn't mean you are doomed to write short short pieces forever!

 
Earlier this week, Katherine Sharpe (who founded 400 Words, a journal dedicated to 400-word short, short non-fiction) revealed that another one of her writers just landed a (full-length!) book deal. In honor of this happy occasion, read and write some short short fiction--it's the new proving ground for writers in the Internet age.

Check it out:

"Another 400 Words contrib, Stephanie Gayle, is publishing her novel, My Summer of Southern Discomfort, this month. Her author page at the HarperCollins website reads: “Stephanie Gayle’s work has appeared in the literary magazines 400 Words, The Charles River Review, Edgar Literary Journal, Ellipsis, and The Fourth River.” How cool is that?"

 

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As a follow up to Monday’s guest blog, author Stephanie Gayle agreed to answer some questions had by myself and a couple of other readers. If you have any further questions please leave them in the comments below. Also if you have any interest in winning a copy of Stephanie’s book, comment as well. I will draw a winner on Saturday.*

Linsey: Your female protagonist and narrator in My Summer of Southern Discomfort shares a name with Natalie Goldberg, the writer, was that a coincidence? (Or just something you’re tired of people pointing out?)

Stephanie Gayle: This was semi-intentional. I had named her Natalie but she needed a last name. Goldberg met the Jewish requirement and paid homage to the woman who wrote Writing Down the Bones (a fabulous book for writers). Some writers suggested I change the name because of the coincidence, but I refused. I’m obstinate that way.

Linsey: You did a lot of research on the legal system for your novel both on the justice system and on Georgia. Did you have to guard against just dumping in all the info you found or did the infusion of knowledge into the narrative happen naturally?

Stephanie: Sometimes a situation within the narrative would lend itself to this information and sometimes a bit of set up was required, but I tried to work the legalese in organically rather than insert it as exposition to show what I learned about today in law.

Linsey: Natalie prosecutes a death penalty case despite her liberal Yankee background and her father’s civil rights work. What made you decide use the death penalty in her story?

Stephanie: It seemed like the biggest, toughest issue I could put on her plate. I wanted to give her a truly big conflict (because moving thousands of miles away and alienating family and friends and starting her career from scratch was minor conflict, really). Plus the state where she practices, Georgia, has been at the forefront of death penalty decisions.

Linsey: Did your personal research change your own opinions the subject?

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Way back in May, Stephanie Gayle was kind enough to drop me an email regarding her first book, My Summer of Southern Discomfort, and ask about the possibility of guest blogging. As I do with all possible guest bloggers, my first question was about the topic of the book:

Today is Monday. The calls do not come as before. Weeks elapse between them, and when I answer the phone there is no overlap of voices, only my mother's. She spends much of the conversation avoiding mention of the pink elephant trumpeting in the middle of the room.

The pink elephant would be my defection to Georgia. When I telephoned with the news of my imminent relocation my father asked, "Georgia, as in the Republic of Georgia by the Black Sea, or Georgia as in the Peach State?" He hoped I meant the former because that Georgia promised unique opportunities to advance the democratic cause of justice. What could Georgia, former land of the Confederacy, offer?

Convicting arsonists and thieves in Macon, Georgia, was never Harvard Law grad Natalie Goldberg's dream. The pay is abysmal, the work is exhausting, and the humidity is hell for a woman with curly hair. But when a steamy romance with her high-powered New York boss went bad, Natalie jumped at the first job offered, packed her bags, and headed south.

Natalie's leftist Yankee background brands her a conspicuous outsider in this insular community. Her father, a famous civil rights lawyer, refuses to accept her career change—or talk to her. Her best friend begs her to come back home, and Natalie keeps thinking she sees her former lover everywhere.

But Natalie's not completely alone. There are a garden-obsessed neighbor, a former beauty queen–turned–defense attorney, and a handsome colleague who has a nervous tic whenever she gets near. And then there's a capital case that has her eating antacids by the truckload.

Yep, it's going to be one heckuva long, hot summer. . . .

Oh my, I thought, this should be good. A thought obviously echoed by Booklist who called Stephanie's novel a "finely crafted debut novel, Gayle evinces a superb mastery of character development, rendering Natalie's various crises of faith with empathic authenticity, endearing humor, and enviable grace."

Needless to say, I took Stephanie up on her guest blogging offer as well as the opportunity to let y'all (and myself) ask her questions about the novel and her Harvard novel writing class for a chance to win an Advanced Reader Copy of My Summer of Southern Discomfort before it is released next week.

Thank you for joining us today, Stephanie.



Linsey has invited me to tell you a story about how I wrote my first book, My Summer of Southern Discomfort.

Actually, to be super specific it's my second book. I wrote my first book in college. It lives in my closet because it's not fit for anyone to read but my mother (who still asks me when I'm going to publish it. "Never, Mom. Never.")

I began writing My Summer of Southern Discomfort for a class I was taking at Harvard called "Writing the Novel." That sounds like a joke, but it isn't. Most people in the class were a lot further along in writing their novel, whereas I hadn't begun mine until just before class began. That led to me begging to go last for chapter submissions.

Writing the first part in a workshop setting proved helpful.

I began the narrative with Natalie Goldberg, an order obsessed overachiever whose life has undergone radical changes lately. When I told my classmates I intended it as a three-person narrative they said, "Don't do it. We like Natalie. Stick with Natalie." I listened. Good thing.

I knew Natalie would be a lawyer. I love law, but never wanted to, you know, go to law school and practice. I got to practice through Natalie, who prosecutes a capital case. In writing the book I read a lot about Georgia criminal law and the death penalty. It was fascinating, depressing stuff. After one tough week of looking at bullet injury photos and reading descriptions of how the electric chair kills you (precisely) I resolved to title my next novel 1000 Fuzzy Kittens. That sounded like happier subject material.

My writing instructor urged us to create plot outlines, maps, guides to our books. I may have created one, but I didn't follow it. My writing is always running after my characters.

I love tension and conflict. Poor Natalie. Just when she's start having a good day I'd rain down more troubles on her. That said, some of the easiest, best writing (I think) comes in the conversations she has with people she's feuding with: her partner, Ben, or her father.

It took my nine months to complete the first draft. I kept a KitchenAid timer on my desk. I get restless in my room. I'll stop typing, stretch, or go into my closet and sort clothes, or dance around. I realized this "time" was not "writing time." So I put an hour on the timer and every time I stopped writing I hit pause. When I began writing again I'd hit start. An honest hour of writing was often two hours real time. I spent another few months working on the second and third drafts. Between drafts the manuscript sat in my closet. All told it was three years between beginning the manuscript and selling it.

The best part of selling the book? Only two people had read my completed first draft. So hearing my agent, and editor, who had read the final version say, "I love Natalie" was wonderful. Not that getting paid wasn't nice. My best friend immediately asked, "Can you quit your job?" I thought for a second and said, "Nope. Health insurance. I need health insurance." Practical-minded Natalie would have been so proud of me.

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I've recently rediscovered something amazing about myself: that I can be productive when I'm trapped upright in front of a computer for eight hours a day. My "enforced" captivity has led me to do a great deal of research in the last couple of weeks as well as interview a number of authors and industry people who work with the internet. Questions, I've found, are much easier to think up and type between phone calls than actual columns and I've gotten a chance to chat with a number of interesting people.

And Dorothy Thompson is one of those interesting people.

Ms. Thompson approached me about hosting interviews with three authors she's been working with: Shel Horowitz, whom you've already read about; and Sandi Kahn Shelton, who you'll read about on May 15th when she stops by to talk about her book, A Piece of Normal. I'd done a virtual tour before as part of the Dirty Sugar Cookies blog extravaganza, but I'd just filed the whole concept away in the back of my mind. It was in between email exchanges it occurred to me that Dorothy was capitalizing on the ever expanding power of the internet for writers, and it would be interesting to find out how she got into the field of virtual tours and how she goes about setting one up.

Bookseller Chick: Thanks for joining me here today. I want to know more about your company. How did you get started in the business of helping others market their books and how long have you been doing it?

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Dorothy Thompson: Thank you for having me! I’ve been learning how to promote books over the Internet for about six or seven years now, partly because I was interested in finding out ways to use the Internet to market my books, but also because I knew that online marketing was going to be the new age of promoting. Being a small press author, I was a little frustrated with how I was supposed to get my books into book stores, using consignment and practically begging to stock me. So, I took to the Internet and, so far, I’ve found out that you can market your book right from the comfort of your home and virtual book tours is only one way of doing it.

In my ebook, A Complete Guide to Promoting & Selling Your Self-Published eBook, I show authors what I’ve found out to be the ultimate experience in online marketing and ways to get your book into top placements in the search engines. Don’t let the title fool you. This works for any kind of published author. For your marketing plan to work, it’s a combination of things you must do and virtual book tours are one of them.

I had heard about virtual book tours and wanted to try it out with my ebook, sort of as a guinea pig, and because I used the methods outlined in the ebook to promote the ebook, my virtual book tour was a success. It’s a lot of work, but it’ll pay off. The main thing you want to do before you even begin a virtual book tour is to zero in on your key search words and use them in every bit of promotional literature you send out. That’s the secret to getting your book into the first page of the search engines for your key search words. For instance, one of my set of key search words (and you should do this with as many groups of key search words as you can) was "promote your self-published ebook". Even today, it’s #1 out of 90,700 without the quotes and #1 out of 985 with the quotes. And anyone can do it.

It was then that I decided to start my own virtual book tours business and I call it Pump Up Your Book Promotion Virtual Tours after my blog, Pump Up Your Online Book Promotion because I wanted to help others do what I did so that they can sell their books, too.

B.S. Chick: I hear you (or in this case, I read you), I’m a huge fan of notes and learning from experience. So tell me, what goes in to putting together a virtual book tour?

Dorothy: The first thing I do when someone is interested in becoming a part of my tours is to send them an application which will have all their vital information so that I can get familiar with their platform and determine where I can place them. For example, there’s the basic stuff like the name of their book, etc., but what I also look for are things like do they have a print book to send to these hosts because in order to get on the high profile blogs, it’s a must. Another thing I do is ask them if there are any particular literary blogs they’d like to appear just in case one of them comes back at me and says, “Well, so-and-so appeared on such-and-such blog; why didn’t I?” There are a lot of factors involved in why some books appear on more high profile blogs and the key factor is whether they have a supply of books to send to these high profile blog hosts. However, I do try to give them the best service I can. Some of my clients have ebooks only, and that’s fine, so we start finding blogs that will take them, but concentrate on ones that are active and ones in which would give my clients some exposure.

The next thing I do is set up a tour page for them here. This is not only for them to see where their tour is taking them, but also as a guide for the blog hosts to refer to in case they want to grab the cover or the author’s picture, or just to find out more of what their books are about.

And, then we get to work.

As each contact is made, I cc the author so that the author, blog host and I stay on the same page. Some of these are interviews, some are guest blogs and some are reviews. It all depends on what the blog host wants. We’re all very flexible.

When a client signs up with me, I go beyond just the tour. I help them set up their blog so that it’s SEO-friendly, teach them about tags and get them to learn about google alerts so that they’ll see how well they are doing as their tour evolves. It’s more of a science to see what happens…we do this, then this happens. It’s fun, though. The authors are real excited and are such a pleasure to work with. I try to answer whatever questions they might have so that it’s a pleasurable experience for everyone.

B.S. Chick: Do you specialize each one to the book involved?

Dorothy: Yes, I do specialize each tour. Someone asked me that the other day. If an author writes inspirational, for example, I aim for bloggers who write the same thing. I like diversity and try not to use the same blogger in a month's time. I have four authors going out next month, and have tried not to double up on any of my bloggers, but sometimes it can't be helped. But, I do try for diversity.

B.S. Chick: You've approached me about working with a self published title and a big house title, does this represent your spread of clients?

Dorothy: Yes, I work with any author who has a published book. That's the difference between me and those other guys. I used to hate it when a high-trafficked blog would turn me down because I wasn't with a big house. I guess it's my pet peeve. It doesn't matter who you are published with. An author is an author.

B.S. Chick: Why do a virtual tour? How can this affect the success of an author's book?

Dorothy: Why do a virtual book tour? Many reasons, actually. When you do a tour in a bricks and mortar house, how many books do you sell? Let's say you've sold maybe ten. Well, that's not bad, but look at what you have to go through? There's gas, there's getting ready, there's tension. Over the Internet, you can do the same thing and the only one going through all the tension is me, lol. There's a lot involved when you have four authors going out in one month, especially since this is really the first real month that's going to test me as to whether I can do it or not. I've had blog hosts turn me down; I've had blog hosts think it's the neatest thing since Cheez Whiz.

The successes, though, are the things that really keep me going. I am so excited when I get to email an author and tell her/him that I've got them on so-and-so blog. And, the strange truth of the matter is, most of these authors wouldn't have been able to do it themselves for one reason or another. It's really strange that if you go through a third party like myself, people respond faster. But, wouldn't you? If an author emailed you, you might do it, but if a publicist emailed you, your subconscious figures that this author must be really serious if they've hired outside help, you know? And I love playing publicist. I've worn the author's shoes and I know what they feel like, so this really helps me to help other authors. I know their frustrations. I know their fears of losing a publisher if the sales aren't there. If I can make a difference, then that's all that matters to me anyway.

I do want to mention another reason for going on a virtual book tour. If you are touring bookstores, you're there maybe a couple of hours. When you do tours online, what happens is that whatever blog you are on, it doesn't matter where or with who, your tour will be archived indefinitely in the search engines as long as the blog host keeps it in their archives. This builds up your online presence which is going to work in your favor. Let's say you appear on 20 blogs for this. Well, that's 20 more links you'll have in the search engines, which raises your presence there. I've done studies on SEO and I tested it out with a couple of free ebooks that my writing group and I wrote and I managed to get the last two we did in the number one spot in the search engines in one day for our particular key search words. It's actually fun watching it happen. It doesn't happen miraculously. It takes a lot of hard work, but the end result is what is going to sell books. ;o)

B.S. Chick: Thanks, Dorothy, for stopping by and explaining why virtual tours can help an author out. So what do y'all think, are virtual tours worth it? Have you ever picked up a book after reading an author's interview or guest column on a blog?

If you have any questions for Dorothy about her business and virtual tours in general, leave it on this thread and I'll pass it along.

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