A Visit with Bob Sanchez

Bob Sanchez and his wife retired to Las Cruces, New Mexico, from where they take frequent RV trips. The fomer Massachusetts technical writer has written five novels and had three agents. One small publisher, Fjord Press, had was interested in publishing his novel, Little Mountain, but went out of business instead. Bob then self-published three novels,  When Pigs Fly, Getting Lucky, and Little Mountain. The first is a comic road trip, the others conventional murder mysteries.

Bob, why did you decide to publish independently after employing three agents?

Many people told me they were surprised my work didn’t sell to royalty publishers, and I felt confident my novels deserved publication. I became impatient with the long process involved in seeking the approval of agents and publishers who were all complete strangers. Rather than spend the rest of my life hoping to see my work in print, I decided to publish and take my chances. Given the general reputation of self-publishing, that wasn’t an easy decision at first.

Do you place your own books online or hire someone to do it for you?

When Pigs Fly went online using iUniverse as an intermediary. I e-published Getting Lucky and Little Mountain myself.

Now that indie publishing has become popular, would you accept a contract from a royalty publisher if one was offered, or do you prefer having control over your own  books?

A royalty publisher won’t offer me a contract, because I won’t look for one. Should an offer fall out of the blue I’d consider it, but I do enjoy having control over the process.

How did your first novel, When Pigs Fly, come about?

I wanted to write a funny novel. My earlier efforts had been serious stories set in the mill city of Lowell, Massachusetts, but after my wife and I vacationed in Arizona a couple of times, I thought it would be fun to move my hero to the Tucson area. A couple of Arizona friends helped vet the geographical details.

What’s the most difficult aspect of self publishing?

Knowing when your book is ready. Agents and editors perform a critical service by weeding out work that isn’t ready for prime time. On the other hand, some good material gets left behind too. It’s difficult to be objective about your own work, so you have to get trustworthy and competent peer critiques. Also, you are responsible for everything from proofreading to marketing. That’s a tough range of skills to master.

I noticed that you also provide readers with print copies. Who has done your printing and have you been satisfied with your books and getting them online?

iUniverse published my first two novels, and I published Little Mountain using Amazon’s CreateSpace. I will not go back to iUniverse because they are too expensive and maintain too much control. For example, they insisted on my charging $9.99 for an e-book.

Do you promote your books in brick and mortar stores or strictly online?

Other than a few book signings, I don’t promote in bookstores. I tried that, and it took much too much time and energy. Mind you, I live in the Southwest, where everything is spread out making indie book tours unprofitable. So I am experimenting with mainly online marketing.

How much time do you spend networking and promoting your books?

So far just a few hours per week, but I plan to do more.

Tell us about your latest release and how well it has done?

Little Mountain is my most serious work yet and stars a Cambodian-American cop who must solve a vicious murder that brings back haunting memories of the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Advice to aspiring indie authors?

You are completely responsible for the quality of your work right down to the smallest detail. Ask peers to critique your work but remember that you are the final judge. Take all comments as suggestions, then you decide. Spelling, capitalization, and grammar all matter, though. Get those right. Double- and triple-check everything. Hire a reasonably priced artist to design your cover.

Thanks, Bob.


You can visit Bob at  his blogsite:  http://bobsanchez1.blogspot.com,
His books are available at http://tinyurl.com/bobsanchezauthor. 

A Visit with L.J.Sellers

L.J. Sellers is an award-winning journalist and the author of the Detective Wade Jackson mystery/suspense series, The Sex Club, Secrets to Die For, Trilled to Death, Passions of the Dead and Dying For Justice. She also has three standalone thrillers, The Baby Thief, The Arranger and The Suicide Effect. When not plotting murders, she enjoys cycling, social networking, performing stand up comedy, attending mystery conferences, and editing fiction manuscripts. She's even been known to jump out of airplanes.

L.J., why did you decide to leave your royalty publishers to go the independent route?

I wasn’t making any money, my publisher couldn’t get my books into retail stores, and I had several novels ready to publish that weren’t scheduled to be released for years. It just didn’t make sense to stay when I knew I could self-publish everything I had and start to earn a living.

What are the most difficult aspects of self-publishing? Have you made any mistakes?

The hardest part of self-publishing is the same as in traditional publishing: reaching readers. No matter how you publish, you have to promote the book and find an audience. That takes a lot of time. Fortunately, with social networking, promotion is a lot more fun than it used to be. But it still takes time, patience, and tenacity. I wouldn’t say I’ve made any major mistakes. I have spent money on things that weren’t cost-effective, such as a book trailer, a publicist, and sending promotional material to bookstores, but none of that is recent. I’ve also been lucky in that I followed in the footsteps of others who blazed the trail. I like to think I widened it a little by exploring and finding new ways to promote on my own as well.

Do you contract editing, formatting, and cover services for your books or have you done the work yourself?

I hire a cover designer, an editor, and an e-book formatter. Someday I may learn to do the formatting myself, but for now, it’s cost-effective to contract the work. And I’ll always hire a cover designer and editor. Everyone needs an editor, and few authors have the skills to create a professional cover. These things are just too important to be half-assed about. Self-publishing is an investment.

Do you also provide print copies through Create Space, Lulu or another company? If so, what’s your ratio of print copies sold to ebook sales? And do you sell print copies to brick and mortar stores?

All of my books are available in print through CreateSpace, which offers extended distribution through Ingram. From there, bookstores can and do purchase my novels, but I sell 99 e-books for every print copy.

What are the best ways to promote your books and have you changed your promotional methods from when you were royalty published?

What I do differently now is to reach out to people who are reading ebooks instead of sending promotional material to bookstores. I spend time on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads, to name a few, and when I launch a book, I buy promotional spots that target e-readers. KindleNation, The Frugal Ereader, and Ereader IQ are some of the most effective. I also give away a lot of books through Goodreads and LibraryThing, and do a lot of guest blogging and Q&;As. J

How long have you been self-publishing and are you now able to earn a living with it?

I went indie a year ago in August when I withdrew from several publishing contracts and put two unpublished standalone thrillers up on Kindle. I quickly realized I needed to gain control (and profit) of all of my books if I wanted to make a living. By December, I was earning enough to quit freelancing.

Have you found that the stigma of indie publishing has been lifted, or is there still some prejudice against it?

Much of the stigma is gone because so many bestselling authors have self-published now, and readers have been exposed to a lot of terrific indie novels. But many of the old barriers are still in place because writing and publishing organizations, such as MWA, haven’t figured out how to separate the professional self-publishers from the amateurs. Some authors have suggested using sales numbers to be the new gatekeeper. For example, if an author sells a thousand copies of a book, then they should be considered professional and can join and/or submit the book for awards. Or maybe those organizations will become obsolete.

Tell us about your writing background.

I’m a career journalist who’s been writing professionally for decades. I didn’t write my first novel until I was thirty, but after writing the first one, I was hooked. I loved it and realized that storytelling would become the focus of my life.

What advice would you give writers who are considering self-publishing?

First, send your novel to other professionals for feedback. Make sure you have a marketable product. Once you’re confident that you do, invest enough money to produce a quality e-book (editing, cover, formatting). When the book is ready, make promotion a daily part of your life. Until you have several books on the market and a wide readership, you have to spend as much time marketing as you do writing. But you have to keep writing too. Expect to work 70 hours a week for years!

Tell us about your intriguing latest release.

I just released a futuristic thriller called The Arranger. It features Lara Evans from my Detective Jackson series. But the new book is set 13 years in the future, and Lara is no longer a detective and is a freelance paramedic in a bleak new world. She witnesses a crime, then goes to Washington D.C. to compete in a national endurance competition called the Gauntlet. There, she spots the shooter lurking in the arena, and soon lands in serious trouble. The early reader reviews are terrific, and I hope my Jackson fans will try the new novel.

Thanks, L.J. for sharing the secrets of your success.You can visit L .J. at her website: http://ljsellers.com/
on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ljsellers
and Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/LJSellers
at Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/967226.L_J_Sellers
and Crime Spacehttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/LJSellers

A Visit with Rebecca Dahlke (aka R.P. Dahlke)

Rebecca Phillips Dahlke operated her father's crop dusting business in California during the early 1980s, and began writing her mystery series following the death of her son, a career aero agricultural pilot. Rebecca calls her books: murder mysteries with some laughter.

Rebecca, how did you happen to take over the family business? And was flying part of your job?.

I sort of fell into the job when my dad decided he’d rather go on a cruise than take another season of lazy pilots, missing flaggers, testy farmers and horrific hours. After two years at the helm, I handed him back the keys and fled to a city without any of the above. And no, I was never a crop-duster.

Tell us about your writing background.

A few short stories got printed in a now defunct magazine and I was hooked. They say you should write what you know and at the time, I was able to use what I’d gleaned from my own experiences along with stories my son, John, who was a career crop-duster shared with me. When he died in a work related accident in 2005, I was unable to go back to it until 2010.

How important are organizations such as Sisters in Crime to a mid-list mystery writer?

SinC is like a big fat favorite granny. She’s warm and comforting and tells you you’re wonderful when everyone else tells you your writing is crap!

What’s your writing schedule like? Do you aim for a certain amount of words per day and do you outline?

Well… if I’m very very good, I can smack out 2,000 words a day… but then life gets in the way… like the Monument Fire this last week, and we were evacuated and living in our RV with two dogs and I was eating on nerves about our home burning to the ground instead of writing. I’m happy to say that the house survived and so did we!

What’s the most important ingredient in a good amateur sleuth novel?

I’m glad you asked that question because in A DEAD RED CADILLAC & A DEAD RED HEART, I write about a tall, blond and beautiful ex-model turned crop-duster who, to quote Lalla Bains, says: “I’ve been married so many times they oughta revolk my license.” I wanted to give readers a peek at the not so-perfect -life of a beautiful blond. Lalla Bains is no Danielle Steele character, she’s not afraid of chipping her manicure. Scratch that, the girl doesn’t have time for a manicure what with herding a bunch of recalcitrant pilots and juggling work orders just to keep her father’s flagging business alive.

Between a philandering famous Puerto Rican baseball husband and her long time widowed father’s triple by-pass, Lalla is now content to run her dad’s crop-dusting business in Modesto, California and avoid the paparazzi hounds who feast on the remains of those who aren’t famous anymore.

In A DEAD RED CADILLAC Lalla is once again brought into unwanted limelight and as she sees it, the only way she’s ever going to get her life back is if she can solve the mystery . And, as luck would have it, along the way finds the man who becomes the love of her life.

How do you promote your books? And how much time to you devote to online networking?

I believe that authors MUST use as many avenues as possible to promote their work. Branding is a term that comes from major corporations, like Pepsi and Ford and these companies understand that one ad in one magazine is not necessarily going to equal one sale. Your name over and over again, along with the name of your series; like A DEAD RED CADILLAC and A DEAD RED HEART gives you an edge on that branding.

Seeing a grave disparity between what is available to Indy authors as opposed to traditionally published authors, I created All Mystery e-Newsletter. July, 2011 is our first year anniversary and I’m pleased to say this is one of the fastest growing e-newsletters in the US. It’s clean, simple and easy to navigate: 12 new books from Indy as well as NY published authors. A colorful book cover, a quick synopsis, a few reviews and a buy button to Amazon for the e-book or paper back. Each month is themed: Romantic mysteries/suspense for Valentine’s day, Paranormal mysteries, The Funny Bone issue, Historical Mysteries, Murder at Work and ending the year with Cozies for Christmas—there’s something for everyone and I make sure that the Indy authors get a chance at the same exposure as say, Catherine Coulter and her newest Sherlock book… yes! Catherine and her publicist see the advantage of fan based venues like this and so should you.

It’s been a giggle to have to squeeze my own books into the line-up, but I enjoy doing it. I’ve recently expanded All Mystery to include a yahoo group so that fans can ask questions and authors can promote themselves with news about book signings, events & new offers.

Advice to aspiring mystery writers?

Self-publish because it encourages you to write instead of pinning all your hopes on that NY publisher. Besides, the more you write the better you get. And you’re branding your name, developing a fan base. Who knows, you may get an offer from that NY publisher—which you can then accept or not. Which reminds me; I gotta get busy and finish my latest book, a romantic sailing mystery set in exotic Mexico. I hope to have A DANGEROUS HARBOR ready for publication by the end of this summer.

Thanks, Rebecca.
You can visit Rebecca at her website: http://www.rpdahlke.com/
Her Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/RPDahlke
Amazon page: http://tinyurl.com/6l8y7gm
B&N page: http://tinyurl.com/6bldn9u
and newsletter: http://www.allmysteryenewsletter.com/

A Visit with Marja McGraw

A southern California native, Marja McGraw has worked in both criminal and civil law enforcement. As a divorced, single parent she lived in a number of locations, including Wasilla, Alaska, and northern Nevada, where she worked for the Department of Transportation. She was also employed in Oregon as well as the Jackson County sheriff's department while owning her own antique store/tea room. She's the author of the Sandi Webster and The Bogey Man mystery series.

Marja, since this is the last week of the Mystery We Write Blog Tour, what have you learned from the experience?

Several things come to mind. It’s hard work to come up with twelve blogs so close together, but it was a lot of fun. During this process, I’ve met and enjoyed coming to know some authors and readers. I’ve learned that for the most part people like blogs that are down-to-earth so they can get to know the author a little. And I’ve learned that I have no idea if a blog tour will help book sales or not. I guess it means more to me that I was able to interact with the other authors on the blog tour.

How did your Bogie Man series come about?

I’ve always been a huge Humphrey Bogart fan, and I added a man (Chris Cross) with an uncanny resemblance to him as a character in The Bogey Man, one of the Sandi Webster mysteries. He was so popular with readers that I decided to give him his own series. It’s turned out to be a lot of fun; much more so than I anticipated. He has a wife who partners with him, a stepson who wants nothing more than to be involved in one of the mysteries, and two “interesting” yellow Labrador retrievers.

By the way, the newest Sandi Webster mystery just came out in July. It’s called Old Murders Never Die, and P.I. Sandi Webster and her partner, Pete, become stranded in a ghost town thanks to a mysterious cowboy. They also discover the story of a series of murders that took place in the town in 1880, and work to determine if the crimes were ever solved. To add to the mystery of the town, several families moved away and left all of their belongings behind. Hmm. Wonder what that’s all about.

Why did you decide to set the 1940s as the backdrop for your novels?

Let me begin by saying that the stories take place today, not back in the forties. I don’t want any confusion about that. With that said, how else could I do justice to a character looking like Bogey? He needs to use the old slang, and he demonstrates some of Bogey’s mannerisms as they were in his movies. The forties were a fun time in a lot of ways, so I’m trying to keep that alive through the Bogey Man.

In what capacity did you work in law enforcement? And have you used your experiences in your novels?

I actually worked in a clerical capacity, but in “those days” there weren’t any female deputies in my department. If one was needed, we clerks filled in. Things were so different in the seventies. One time I actually searched a women’s restroom for a bomb, with no training. Thankfully, there was no bomb. Another time my life was threatened by a woman who’d applied for a job and wasn’t hired. All I’d done was administer the typing test, and that wasn’t why she was turned down. I may have been clerical, but I have lots of stories. I was very young and shy, and single at the time, and working with all those cops was a good time.

In the 1990s, I worked for a county sheriff’s office in Oregon, and that was a whole different experience. Things had changed a lot by then.

How important are quirky characters and humor in a mystery novel?

If that’s the type of novel you want to write, or read, they’re very important. A lot of the humor comes from the quirky characters and their antics. How your average person deals with them can be quite funny, too. For me, as a reader, humor and quirky characters give the story more character, and that makes them more memorable.

What’s your writing schedule like?

I work about six hours a day, seven days a week, but that includes writing, marketing and promoting. It’s hectic, but it’s the most fun I’ve ever had while doing a job.

Why is writing important to you?

I’ve always been an avid reader, beginning with Dick and Jane. When I decided to write, it was because I wanted to entertain others as I’d been entertained. There’s no sweeter music to the ears for an author than hearing a reader say they enjoyed the author’s book, and it’s even better when they say they took something away from it. It doesn’t matter if they just got a smile out of it or if the story made them view something differently, as long as it had an effect on them.

Advice to aspiring mystery novelists?

Always begin your career by letting your skin thicken. No matter how good of a writer you are, not everyone is going to like your book.

Secondly, never apologize for your early work. I’ve done that, and I shouldn’t have. Being a writer is like anything else you do in life. It’s a learning process, and the more you do it, the better writer you become. I wouldn’t have thought about that except that recently someone told me about their first book and commented that it wasn’t all that great. Guess what? I loved it! Let the reader decide for themselves. If they see promise, chances are they’ll go back and try your next book.

Last, when all else is said and done, make sure all of your periods and commas are in the right place, and that there are as few misspellings and typos as possible. Don’t submit until the book is clean enough for the public to read. Be proud of what you submit.

Which author(s) influenced your own writing?

Harper Lee more than anyone else. I’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird a number of times, and I get something new out of it with each read. Beyond her, every mystery writer I’ve ever read has had some impact on me. I especially enjoy authors who are telling a story rather than just putting the facts of a mystery on paper. That type of author makes the story come to life (even if there are a few typos).

Thanks by dropping by, Marja.

You can visit Marja at ther website:  http://www.marjamcgraw.com/,
her blog site: http://blog.marjamcgraw.com/ and on Facebook where she welcomes new friends.