Coming Out of the Cave!

Over the last several weeks I've been in my cave heads down writing, attended the RT Convention in Chicago, and back to heads down writing.
It was my first experience at RT and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's wonderful to immerse yourself with other authors that speak the same language. Who else understands what you mean when you say you talk to imaginary people and they answer you. Jimmy Stewart and his Harvey would fit right in. I reconnected with old friends, met many new ones, and had fan girl moments with some of my favorite authors.

With Scott and Brooks at RT

The RT Convention has a reader component that I found exciting. It was a wow moment when a group of readers at the Carina Press cocktail party rushed to meet me. Yes, my signature was the last one they needed for the drawing for the iPad but the excitement was still the same.

I've also walked out of the cave to join fellow authors on a live chat at Night Owl Reviews. I finally had the courage to request a review of Knight of Runes. My Dear Husband is my 'taster.' In historic times, tasters sampled the food before it was served to the king. My 'taster' samples the review and deems it OK for me to read. He was as excited as I was with this review. It scored 4.5/5.0. It's a Top Pick!

I've read two articles this week that I think you might find interesting. Both are from Writer's Digest.

One article is on How to Use Pinterest to Market Your Book. The article by Rob Eagar is very interesting. The statistics in the article are eye openers. I love pictures but when I read a book what I love more is envisioning things my way. But Mr. Eagar clearly states that Pinterest is the 3 largest social network behind Facebook and Twitter.

The other article is Amazon Let's Authors Spy on Reader. The author, Phil Sexton, sees some innovative promotional opportunities for authors.  One of which is looking at what someone highlighted in their Kindle when they read your book.

Enjoy the articles. I hope you read the review. Have a great week. Now... back to the cave!

Narrators and Fiction Writing

I’ve been heads down the last few weeks working on my new story. It’s 90% complete and as I read it, out loud, I’m proud to say I’ve incorporated many of the lessoned learned. I can actually hear the head hopping and find those split commas.

This read through, one of many, I concentrated on smoothing out the narration. As I went from scene to scene, I started to think about the importance of the narrator.  

Narration is needed to set the scene, explain the environment, the character’s appearance and action.  I read a blog this week about narrators by Denise Shekerjian. Denise’s blog, Soul of a Word, has a lot of great hints and helpful information for writers. This week’s offering: How to Write a Compelling Narrator

Denise offers five key items about creating compelling narrators:

1. The narrator is as complicated as the characters.
2. The narrator has his own attitude.
3. The narrator must have a consistent voice.
4. The narrator must elicit reader compassion.
5. The reader must trust the narrator.

When I looked at these key items I began to see the narrator as a key character.

I did a bit more research and found another great site, Study Guides and Strategies.  The information on narrators here talked about the different POVs. They are the same as POV characters, first person, second person, third person and omniscient.

The Fiction Writer’s Mentor had an article about the unreliable narrator. Here the narrator, first person POV only please, is ‘allowed’ to misinform. Third person narrators are supposed to be absolutely factual. The unreliable narrator strategy has to be used judiciously. There are three types of unreliable narrators:

1. Deliberately lying.
2. She thinks she is telling the truth.
3. The narrator genuinely thinks she is telling the truth but the reader knows she is wrong.

What type of narrator strategy do you use?