The Girls of Piazza d'Amore

On September 19^th I had the pleasure to attend Connie Guzzo-McParland’s book launch at the Cultural Center of Little Italy in Montreal which is better known as Casa d'Italia. Connie is a versatile and accomplished author, businesswoman, and publisher, to name a few.  Her debut novel, The Girls of Piazza d’Amore, is the love story of three girls, and the forces that lead them to leave their village for a better life across the ocean.

Born in Italy and raised in Montreal, Connie shares a richly texture story of immigration and childhood. However, at the book launch she explained that she wanted to tell much more than that and hoped the reader could read in between the lines of these simple stories and see the bigger stories within them.  She then added, “In putting down on paper some of the images of village life I carried in my head for years, I hoped to illustrate how a group of people were affected by the changes happening in villages all over south Italy in the 50s- soon after the effects of the war and just before the modernization of Italy and its economic boom of the 60s.”

Connie read two excerpts from the novel; they were humorous, light, picturesque, and colorful. Before reading, she explained that “the novel only alludes to these issues in a lighthearted, cheerful tone, since it’s recounted from the perspective of a young girl. For the general Canadian reader, I wanted to show that the men and women who would become their factory workers, their tailors, barbers, gardeners all carried interesting stories behind them.”

I posted the book cover so you can get the feel of the village. Connie told the audience that, “the cover image represents a very important landmark of the village, a communal water fountain in the outskirt of the town, where women used to fetch water every evening and also do their weekly laundry. It was also the meeting place for young people to exchange glances and love notes, and some key scenes in the book are set in this fountain.”

Although Connie is the Co-director and President of Guernica Editions, she published her book with Linda Leith Publishing.

I hope I have piqued your interest so you, too, can enjoy this beautifully written story about love and friendship in Italy.

ISBN 978-1-927535-19-6 (pbk.)

Publisher: www.lindaleith.com
Leith.lindaleith@gmail.com

Seven Tips from Ernest Hemingway on How to Write Fiction

1: To get started, write one true sentence.

2: Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next.

3: Never think about the story when you’re not working.

4: When it’s time to work again, always start by reading what you’ve written so far.

5: Don’t describe an emotion–make it.

6: Use a pencil.

7: Be Brief.

Article Source: Open Culture http://www.openculture.com/

I Have a Ton of Reviews for My Book But it's Not Selling!

I am attending two book launches in May and I will also be interviewing the authors. I thought this article I got from "The Book Marketing Expert Newsletter" was appropriate since one of the authors was looking for book reviewers.

I'm passing on this helpful information to my fellow writers and bloggie friends.

Over the years I've heard this phrase thousands of times. Authors getting great reviews, getting awards, even local media and still, book sales aren't happening. When you have external validation, it's hard to really understand where the disconnect is, isn't it? Sometimes though, it may be just a matter of taking a closer look and analyzing your marketing using a different lens. Let's take a look at some things that you may want to consider:

* Leverage: First and foremost is leverage. How are you leveraging all of these other things? If you're not, you might consider it. It's easy enough to slap an award sticker on your book, but what else have you done to promote this? Consider:

* Announce it locally: Especially if you won the award. Honorable mentions are great, but not as appealing to local media.
* Contact your local bookstores. If they've said no before perhaps adding an award to your resume might entice them. Remember people like what other people like. The same goes for bookstores.
* Add it to your website. That's a given. Same for your email signature line.
* Reviewers: If you have reviewers that are pending, meaning you're targeted them with no response, why not make a second (gentle) sweep and let them know you won this award?
* Endorsements: If you've been after high-profile endorsements for your book but they keep eluding you, you may have a better chance of it with an award in your pocket, so try pitching them again.

* Reviews: If you have a lot of reviews and aren't seeing a lot of sales, I would say take a lesson from the "leverage" piece above and see if any of it applies to your pulling in more reviews. For example, if you have endorsers who haven't responded to your requests, or bookstores that have given you the brush-off, this could be a great way to gain their attention. The same doesn't apply to reviewers, however. Most reviewers aren't swayed by books that have tons of reviews. They either select the book or they don't, so don't push this one too hard.

* Engagement: Sometimes when we get a "hit" somewhere we tend to focus all of our energy there. That's a great thing, but maybe now it's time to step back and see what else you can do that you haven't focused on. Try engaging readers. When was the last time you sent a round of thank-you notes to reviewers who reviewed your book, or posted a thank-you on their blog? If you're getting a lot of comments on your website, or on blogs or interviews you've done elsewhere, I would encourage you to connect with readers there, too. Additionally, have you considering getting onto GoodReads, Library Thing or Wattpad and building readership there? And a final note on engaging. If you're a fiction author perhaps you should consider engaging your readers with your characters. If you can get your readers to fall in love (or in hate) with your characters, you can really build a strong audience that way.

* Media gets media: Some authors also come to me saying, "I've gotten tons of local media but nothing nationally." This is also pretty typical but here's something you can do. Media loves media and the more media you get, the more you'll get - if that makes sense. When you pitch yourself to national media, include a one-sheet of all of the places you've been featured. Even if it's in your own town.

* The plight of book reviews: Do book reviews really sell books? Candidly, it's hard to know. I do know that lots of exposure sells books but it's really about the right kind of exposure and, beyond that, it's about exposure in a myriad of areas. If you've been heavily focused on getting a ton of book reviews, and your Amazon page is populated with more fond words than you know what to do with, maybe it's time to move into a new area of promotion. Content, content: There was a discussion around content during a recent event I attended at both Digital Book World and Tools of Change. Both of these programs had folks talking about the importance of free and also of putting out frequent content. Don't wait eighteen months to release a book which leaves your reader hanging for more from your characters.

* Realigning your perspective on book sales: Truth is, most of us think we should be selling more than we are. We hear the "average" in book sales and then on the flip side, we hear about folks like Hugh Howey who is selling zillions of copies of his book. Where's the reality? Well, the answer is somewhere in between. If you have all these awards and are selling a book a day, I would say that depending on your market that may not be a bad start. For example, if you're sitting in the contemporary romance market, that's a pretty cluttered category so you may not sell as many as if you were in something more niche. I've seen some authors who can't get beyond selling a book a month. Seriously.

Reviews, awards, and nods from important people in your industry are fantastic, but like a tree falling in the forest if you don't tell folks about it, no one will know. Yes, you do often have to hit readers over the head with things if for no other reason than people are busy. Got an award? Shout it from the rooftops. Got tons of great reviews? Let's see if that can be a stepping stone to something else.

In the end, everything is a pathway to something else. If you get a bunch of awards for your book and figure your work stops there, that's a big mistake. Follow the path to something else, which will take you to something else, and so on. At some point at the end of that road you may very well find a pot of gold, and, you'll likely be selling more books.

Reprinted from "The Book Marketing Expert newsletter," a free ezine offering book promotion and publicity tips and techniques. http://www.amarketingexpert.com

Short Stories: Call for Submissions

Rainbow Caterpillar Bookshop calls for submissions for

2013 Mother Language Kid Lit Award

Competition open to short stories for young children, aims to support the preservation in Canada of mother languages

 Toronto, Ontario, March 27, 2013 – Submissions are currently being accepted for the second annual Rainbow Caterpillar Mother Language Kid Lit Award. The Award aims to reward writing excellence and support authors who want to write in their mother languages other than English.

“By encouraging authors to write in their mother language, we want to help create a vibrant literary production for children in foreign languages, but with a uniquely Canadian perspective,” says Happie Testa, co-owner of Rainbow Caterpillar Bookstore.

 The competition is open to Canadian residents, submissions are due on April 30^th and the guidelines are available online at www.rainbowcaterpillar.ca/kid-lit-award.html. The winning story will receive the Rainbow Caterpillar Kid Lit Award in the amount of $750. Other deserving submissions will be recognized with an Honourable Mention.

“We hope this award also encourages parents to pass their mother language on to their children raised in Canada,” says Hanoosh Abbasi, co-owner of Rainbow Caterpillar. “We feel that it is important for parents to have access to good books from their countries of origin. We also think parents want to put their ancestral culture in the context of our shared Canadian culture where many often have more than one background and speak more than one language hanoon a daily basis.”

The Award will be presented at the Canadian Ethnic Media Association (CEMA) 35th Annual Awards Gala to be held in Toronto on Multiculturalism Day June 21, 2013. CEMA is an organization dedicated to the promotion of ethnic media in creating an understanding of Canada and the retention of cultural links with countries of origin. http://canadianethnicmedia.com

 

Submission guidelines click: http://www.rainbowcaterpillar.ca/kid-lit-award.html#_Toc302978909

Less is More (at least when writing flash fiction)

Google Free Images

I am working on a flash fiction piece that’s turning out to be a challenge. It was going nowhere, so I asked one of my mentors, Steven Manners, to provide some insight on this conundrum. Based on my story, this is what he told me: 

“Because of the compression, the approach needed is more like poetry.

The key, I think, is to think in terms of multiple layers of meaning. The idea is to present a simple enough scenario, then scratch away through language to open up levels of interpretation for the reader. This is the postmodern influence: not to tell a person a story, a beginning middle/end, but to force readers to include themselves by "completing" the story.”

Although I applied Steven's valuable advice, I still needed the technical part of it. English author, David Gaffney posted some tips in The Guardian.

1. Start in the middle.

You don't have time in this very short form to set scenes and build character.

2. Don't use too many characters.

You won't have time to describe your characters when you're writing ultra-short. Even a name may not be useful in a micro-story unless it conveys a lot of additional story information or saves you words elsewhere.

3. Make sure the ending isn't at the end.

In micro-fiction there's a danger that much of the engagement with the story takes place when the reader has stopped reading. To avoid this, place the denouement in the middle of the story, allowing us time, as the rest of the text spins out, to consider the situation along with the narrator, and ruminate on the decisions his characters have taken. If you're not careful, micro-stories can lean towards punchline-based or "pull back to reveal" endings which have a one-note, gag-a-minute feel – the drum roll and cymbal crash. Avoid this by giving us almost all the information we need in the first few lines, using the next few paragraphs to take us on a journey below the surface.

4. Sweat your title.

Make it work for a living.

5. Make your last line ring like a bell.

The last line is not the ending – we had that in the middle, remember – but it should leave the reader with something which will continue to sound after the story has finished. It should not complete the story but rather take us into a new place; a place where we can continue to think about the ideas in the story and wonder what it all meant. A story that gives itself up in the last line is no story at all, and after reading a piece of good micro-fiction we should be struggling to understand it, and, in this way, will grow to love it as a beautiful enigma. And this is also another of the dangers of micro-fiction; micro-stories can be too rich and offer too much emotion in a powerful one-off injection, overwhelming the reader, flooding the mind. A few micro-shorts now and again will amaze and delight – one after another and you feel like you've been run over by a lorry full of fridges.

6. Write long, then go short.

Create a lump of stone from which you chip out your story sculpture. Stories can live much more cheaply than you realise, with little deterioration in lifestyle. But do beware: writing micro-fiction is for some like holidaying in a caravan – the grill may well fold out to become an extra bed, but you wouldn't sleep in a fold-out grill for the rest of your life.

What about you? Have you written flash fiction? Did you find it easy to write?