Promotion - what works?

In June last year, I discovered Six Sentence Sunday. This is a regular, weekly bloghop. You sign up each week (between Wednesday and Saturday), and on Sunday you post six sentences (no more, no less) from either a published work or your WIP.

The trick, of course, as with any excerpt you post anywhere, is to choose carefully. You need to find six sentences that hang together without needing a lengthy explanation of the context. If the sentences also provide a teaser to make people want to read more, so much the better.

My very first six, on 27 June 2011, had this brief intro to my six sentences from His Leading Lady:

To save her twin sister's career, Jess is pretending to be Lora who's gone missing. She's just been out for the evening with Kyle Drummond, the director of Lora's new show in London’s West End.

And this was the six:

Kyle tightened his arm around her and Jess closed her eyes, not to relax but to try to think straight and to work out just how she was going to extricate herself from what seemed to be the inevitable sequel to all this.

She couldn’t say she was tired, not when she’d made such a fuss about wanting to stay at the club, but there were limits to what she was prepared to do ‘for Lora’s sake’ and going to bed with Kyle Drummond was definitely way beyond the limits. If that was what he expected, then she would have to admit to the whole pretence, even if it ruined everything for tomorrow's TV interview and Lora’s contract.

When the cab came to a standstill outside Lora’s apartment, she eased herself away from him but couldn’t stop herself from looking round at him. “God, I want you,” he breathed, his voice husky.

She stared at him, sure he must be able to hear the sudden frantic pounding of her heart.

That first time, I had 18 comments, most saying similar things e.g. “What a sticky situation. Can't wait to find out how she handles it.”

I’ll admit that, at times, I have ‘edited’ my six slightly, either by missing out a sentence or two from the original, or by combining two sentences into one, in order to provide a meaningful six. Most of my ‘sixes’ are usually much shorter, too, than this first excerpt.

You’re not expected to visit all the other contributors (there are now 200 or more each Sunday), but of course you can’t expect other people to visit your blog if you don’t make an effort to visit theirs. It’s time-consuming, of course, visiting many different blogs each Sunday and leaving comments. Of course, I always try to make positive comments even if excerpts about vampires, shape-shifters etc do not appeal to me personally! I also make every effort to respond to the comments on my blog, although i do wonder if anyone actually has the time to return to read them! The net result is that, over the last year, I have built up a ‘network’ of contacts and, in some cases, new friends.

So how does all this affect promotion and marketing? To begin with, I looked on it simply as a case of getting my name known and making more contacts. I had absolutely no idea whether it led to any sales – until a couple of weeks ago.

On July 8, one commenter said she had just bought my latest book ‘Changing the Future’ from Amazon. A week later, she posted a 5* review – which began: “I loved this book. I rarely read straight up romance, but after reading snippets of this book on the author's blog, I thought it really sounded good.”

Last Sunday, four other commenters said they had my book in their TBR pile. Okay, it’s not thousands(!), and it’s taken about 40-50 Sundays (I did miss some!) to reach this point. I leave it to you to decide whether or not this kind of promotion is worth the effort one puts into it week by week but, of course, even one sale is better than none! 

Describing Characters' Physical Appearance

I was the one who asked for this topic to be included in our weekly topics because I have a hard time describing my characters’ physical appearance. It’s similar to my difficulty in describing places/surroundings.

I have to admit that, even as a writer, I am dreadfully unobservant, so I really admire Jennifer’s eye for detail which she showed us yesterday. I don’t have a good visual memory – unlike a friend of mine who, I think, can picture every hotel (and hotel bar!) we’ve ever been to in our travels together. My strength, on the other hand, is an aural memory – I can remember conversations or information (and total trivia too) and I can hear accents and different vocal tones.

So I have to make a very conscious effort to study scenes and people, but even then I can have problems. I tried a mental exercise yesterday evening when we went to a bar for a drink after seeing the latest Martin Sheen film (had to get that snippet of information in, LOL!). But I still ran into difficulties – was that girl’s hair fair, blonde, flaxen or platinum? Was that guy’s face oval or square-jawed, or a mixture of both? See what I mean?

Maybe I CAN picture some things, but most times I have great difficulty actually describing them. I have no problem with dialogue, I struggle with description.

Going back to Francine’s blog on this topic, I do tend to describe the hero through the heroine’s eyes and vice-versa. Occasionally I might bring something in through action, but not often. I’ll have to remember that in future and try to do it.

But here, for your perusal, are a couple of my (fairly inadequate!) efforts at description. Feel free to tear them apart!

He had his back to her, but the outline of his broad shoulders in a pale blue polo-shirt gave an impression of hidden strength. His slim waist and hips in well-fitting dark blue jeans only added to the impact of his tall figure. His thumbs were looped casually into his back pockets and Jess’s eyes rested momentarily on his firm hands and long slender fingers. A pianist’s hands, she thought, then let her glance travel up his tanned arms to the back of his head. His dark hair wasn’t exactly curly, more like a mass of waves that were layered casually into the nape of his neck, which somehow emphasized the ruggedness of the rest of his very masculine body.(From ‘His Leading Lady’, chapter 1)

He quickened his pace, annoyed that he’d allowed the memories to breach the emotional wall he’d built around himself. But he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Not the teenage Abbey, but the Abbey he’d just met again. She was even more stunningly attractive now than she’d been ten years earlier, with her heart-shaped face, sparkling green eyes and seductive mouth. Her long dark hair swung when she turned, her shoulders moved in a tantalising way as she walked, and her trim hips swayed sexily as she went into the shop.
(From ‘Fragrance of Violets’. chapter 2)