Octoberguest! Karen Dionne

I could spend an entire blog extolling the virtues and talents of Karen Dionne! As the founder of Backspace--The Writers Place, she's been a motivating, powerful influence on hundreds if not thousands of new and emerging writers. And as a member of International Thriller Writers, she was one of the guiding minds behind the Debut Authors group--long before her own debut thriller Freezing Point was published. (Just last week!) But writing is her first love. On the release of the timely Freezing Point, bestselling author David Morrell called Karen "the new Michael Crichton."

Karen writes here about the debut of Freezing Point, and I can't urge you strongly enough to check out her very cool (yes, I said it!) revolutionary launch site. And on Wednesday, she'll be appearing at Susan Henderson's LitPark with heavy-hitters Barry Eisler, David Morrell and Gayle Lynds.

Also, she's just an incredibly sweet person! (She's so sweet in fact that she's tossing a signed copy of Freezing Point into the Handbasket!)

Welcome, Karen!




On Promotion by Karen Dionne

I discovered an interesting thing about myself on the road to publication: I like marketing and promotion. I enjoy thinking up promotional ideas that are a good fit for me and my novel. And because I’d much rather lead the pack than follow it, some of the things I’ve tried are a little outside the norm. I sent my novel on a “Freezing Point Pre-Publication World Book Tour” without me (a reasonable success), and set up a Freezing Point “Star in My Book Video” contest (not quite as successful).

But the centerpiece of my personal marketing plans was the online book launch party I threw last week, which turned out to be every bit as wonderful as I had hoped. The website saw more than 2,700 visitors, and 400 people left comments in the guest book - many of them friends and coworkers I hadn’t been in touch with for years.

I got the idea for an online launch party over a year ago, when I realized that no matter where I held a real-world book launch, only a fraction of my friends would be able to attend. So with help from a dozen thriller authors including Lee Child, Doug Preston, John Lescroart, Gayle Lynds, and James Rollins, I threw an online book launch where family, friends, and fans could mingle and win prizes – and catch the buzz about my novel in the process.

Entertainment for the event included video welcomes from the best-selling thriller authors who had given me blurbs, a reading by a professional voice actress who’s also a New York Times author, stand-up, a compilation clip with four authors who write series characters answering the question “Would Your Character Read Freezing Point” – even testimony from a thriller author who’s also a medical doctor regarding the science behind my story’s premise. There were door prizes: a boxed set of the BBC’s “Planet Earth” series on DVD, bottles of genuine iceberg water, and Penguin Gear from my publisher. And because a book launch party wouldn’t be complete without, well, books, two independent booksellers made signed copies available.

The video endorsements from best-selling thriller authors turned out to be an unexpected bonus. When I asked the folks who’d given me blurbs to record a video or audio contribution for my party website, I was thinking strictly in terms of entertainment. What I didn’t realize until I saw the first video clip was how powerful these would be. Seeing and hearing Douglas Preston tell readers how much he enjoyed my novel and that he looks forward to seeing it on the New York Times list is the Internet equivalent of a 45-second television commercial. As one guest book commentor wrote: “Swanky party! What a great concept. And with all these top names shilling for you who can resist? I'm picking up my copy today.”

Naturally as authors, we tend to think first in terms of words. But on the Internet, we’re not limited to text. I can easily imagine authors putting similar audio and video endorsements on their regular websites. They’re certainly easier and cheaper to produce than a book trailer, and quite possibly, more effective.

To a Web 2.0 generation accustomed to tag clouds, wikis and widgets, our static text-and-images-only websites run the risk of looking as outdated as Fred Flintstone’s writing tablets. The good news is authors don’t have to be afraid of the Internet. We’re writers. We’re creative people. We can figure out how to use the Internet to spread the word about our books in new and exciting ways.

So now I’ll turn the mike over to you. What cool and interesting things have YOU done to promote your books on the Internet?

Thanks for being here, Karen!

[Remember--Everyone who comments is entered to win $100 Godiva Chocolatier and Harry & David giftbaskets, plus books from several Octoberguest! authors! Drawing held November 2nd.]

Tomorrow: Clair Lamb, aka Answer Girl

Andromeda Pain

I just have to speak out on this--Last week I watched the A & E miniseries of The Andromeda Strain. It was quite possibly the worst thing I've seen on television in years.

If you loved the original 1971 film of the Crichton novel, I beg you to stay far, far away from the miniseries. While it contains some of the more technical and government-intrigue details that were implied in or left out of the original film, it is more than overloaded with tiresome contemporary commentary on the Middle East, social issues, and fear-of-government paranoia. I found it so confusing that, in the end, I wasn't quite sure what the hell had happened, or why. The film gave the impression of being made by committee--everyone had to have their ideas crammed in--with four hours of space to fill, they probably figured, why not?

The Andromeda Strain was one of those films, like Planet of The Apes and Soylent Green, that had a huge impact on me as a child. I was a reader of ghost stories and the supernatural, but sci-fi kept me looking forward and engaged my imagination in a different way. Good sci-fi is unpredictable and holds the mystery of possibilities--the future that we have the power to create (or not!). I think that was the thing that depressed me about the A&E film: It was too bogged down in the concerns of the present and too relativistic to hold onto the kernel of the story.

The other thing I like about good sci-fi books and films is that they are often high-concept. They make huge assumptions: humankind can be easily wiped out by disease, there are monsters in space, a mysterious mist can shrink a man to sub-atomic proportions. It's so fun to suspend one's disbelief completely. I wish more fiction writers would let themselves go that direction--not necessarily into sci-fi, but into the realms of their wildest imaginations. (A plug for my friend Karen Dionne here, whose novel, Freezing Point, comes out in September. Talk about high-concept! Go Karen!)

My feelings about sci-fi films are also, I confess, a little sentimental. I saw most of the Planet of the Apes films from the back seat (or front, if I was lucky) of my parents' car at the drive-in theater. We kids all wore our pjs, which was quite a treat given that we also got to visit the popcorn stand. I loved sitting between my parents, listening to the voices coming out of the metal box hanging on the driver's side window, thinking it was very funny how the voices were never quite synced to the picture on the screen. I loved falling asleep during the second feature with my sisters, and sneaking peeks at the grown-up stuff that was coming on the screen when it was time to go home.

I gathered my kids to watch A&E's Andromeda Strain, but let them wander away when it proved to be dull. This week we'll rent the original video, put on our jammies and pop some popcorn to watch the real one. And if they wander away, it'll still be okay. It's my fantasy trip to the future, not necessarily theirs. (Though, I wonder if they'll feel sentimental about, say, Transformers? Now that would be weird!)