This Is How To Be A Success At #Promo by Margo Hoornstra

Wow! Kazow! I’ve done it! At long last, I’ve FINALLY done it! I’ve really, really done it!

I’ve solved the what works and what doesn’t promotional conundrum that has so many romance authors, even authors in general, stumped.

Yay!!

April Fool!!

I know! I know! It’s three weeks past April First. Sorry. Just couldn’t resist.

Okay, so maybe I haven't completely solved the elusive promo puzzle. No silver bullet information to impart here. What I have done, though, is to obtain some insight into the problem. And, maybe, just maybe, gotten a peek at some kind of solution.

The end of last month and beginning of this, I set up a couple of Sponsored Product ad campaigns on Amazon for the two self-published titles I have out there.

Saturday In Serendipity

and

 For Money Or Love

Our own Alison Henderson had used them, I was told, with some success. Another of our own, Jannine Gallant had used them too. Why not me?

First, I needed to understand what, exactly a Sponsored Product ad was. (Bringing traffic to the buy page of MY product as the result of being on the buy page of others.) Not an easy concept for me to grasp, I’m afraid. Once I had that mastered though, I started by listing upwards of 75 keywords, in this case names of other authors with books similar to mine, AND established track records, ie high numbers of good reviews. Next was to set my daily cost limit at a conservative $5.00 and my bid limit (still not exactly sure what that is) at $.25 per and I was off.

Initially, things began to look very, very good. Impressions were coming in at about 4,000 a day for SIS and 2,000 a day for FMOL. Sixteen clicks on each in the first ten days! My exposure on KU (Kindle Unlimited) and KOLL (Kindle Owners Lending Library) was growing. People were actually reading my books! I sold a copy.

My other books, traditionally published through The Wild Rose Press 

On The Surface 

Only If You Dare

and

Night Stars and Mourning Doves 

were selling. Minimally, but selling.

Then, without warning, the newness of it all began to fade. Impressions dwindled to about half of what they had been after only two weeks. Currently, Saturday In Serendipity averages 400 a day, For Money Or Love a mere 100.

Nonetheless, there is movement. There is visibility. There are sales.

My plan is to hang in there for another month or two and see what happens. Though I don’t have exact royalty figures for any of the titles right now, I do know I have made more than I’ve spent.

And isn’t that what advertising is all about anyway? In that sense, this current campaign of mine is a success.

Go figure.

My days to blog here are the 11^th and 23^rd. For more about me and the stories I write, please visit my WEBSITE

Forward and Backward - For My Two Dearly Beloved Books, It Was The Other Way Around by Margo Hoornstra

Have you ever planned a wedding? It can be fun. It can be stressful. It's never dull.

My two most recent books Night Stars and Mourning Doves and Only If You Dare are part of the Dearly Beloved series from the Last Rose Of Summer line of The Wild Rose Press. All of the books had to revolve around a wedding, of course. What made this different, the hero and heroine could be anyone at all connected with the event.

There was one other requirement. Those two words - Dearly Beloved - needed to appear somewhere in the book. Since I wrote two books for the series, just for fun I made Dearly Beloved the last two words in my first book Night Stars and Mourning Doves and the first two words in my last book Only If You Dare.

First the blurbs, then the excerpts:

Two pasts riddled with grief come together to make one happy future.

Elyse Monroe may be her sister's maid of honor, but that doesn't mean she has to follow the bride's example and fall in love. Battle-scarred and weary from previous relationships, she has no desire to take a chance on another--no matter how many hints her little sister drops about the best man. Devastating life events have taken a toll on Eric Matthews. After losing his wife and unborn daughter, he's come home to heal. Serving as best man at his kid brother's wedding is the only relationship he cares to contemplate--no matter how attractive the maid of honor. Thrown together again and again by wedding duties, Elyse and Eric reluctantly agree to explore a possible relationship--only to have their casual date turn into a glorious night of passion. Can two hearts, convinced a happily ever after will never happen, recognize love when it finds them?

Now the excerpt:

As it had from the very first time Elyse saw it, the beauty of Angela’s wedding dress truly took her breath away. A gorgeous collection of white beads, fine lace and elegant satin, its style too was off the shoulder and flowing. The floor length skirt draped in gentle folds to join a train in back of more beads, lace and satin. At Elyse’s suggestion, the gown was fitted where necessary to remind her groom of the woman beneath.

With all members of the wedding party assembled at the altar, Elyse couldn’t help but let her gaze fall on Eric. Then a little hand touched hers and she looked down to see Jay had come to stand beside her. Accepting the small fingers into her palm with a welcoming squeeze, an indescribable sense of warmth poured inside to wrap around her heart.

Glancing across the aisle, she met Eric’s loving gaze with her own and silently vowed to never let him go. Another surge of love rose up in her to overflowing and, at that exact moment, the ceremony began.

“Dearly Beloved—”

She had no business stoking a fire she never should have started in the first place.

 

All the pleasures and none of the pain, that's what Cynthia Buckingham wants in a relationship these days. A one-night stand with Jonah Colt seems to fit that bill perfectly. Newly divorced, she's too busy planning her daughter's wedding for any serious involvement. Besides, her true passion is helping victims of PTSD reclaim their lives.
Waking up after spending the night with a woman he barely knows, Jonah is stunned to realize sex for the sake of sex isn't enough for him anymore. A veteran of more military battles than he cares to count, he wants to forget it all and focus on peaceful civilian life. Except flashbacks won't allow it. Falling for Cynthia makes Jonah regret his weakened state, but he'd rather hide the truth than face it. When she sets aside everything she believes in to help him heal, can he accept her help--and her love?

Now the excerpt:

“Dearly Beloved...”

Cynthia Buckingham shifted to a more comfortable position on the well-worn wooden bench and did her best to ignore the wedding ceremony taking place in the next room. Confined to the mausoleum-like walls of a municipal courthouse, what type of nitwit public servant conducted a common civil proceeding as if officiating at St. Paul’s Cathedral?

Easy there. Tone it down a touch, a voice inside her head advised. You’re acting like an out of control bitch. Chin lifted at the internal rebuke, she executed a subtle eye roll then sniffed lightly before volleying a sharp comeback.

It’s not my fault I’m in a nasty mood.

She had darned good reason for being irritated, dammit. After being unfairly deprived of her personal liberty, forced to travel all the way downtown then—and this was the very worst—held against her will in an incredibly ugly, poorly decorated, cold and impersonal building.

For jury duty.


As they say, happy writing...and reading!


www.margohoornstra.com (Under construction)


www.margohoornstra.blogspot.com

What Scares Me The Most! Baking (gulp) From Scratch!

By Margo Hoornstra

This month, October you know, we are exploring what scares us the most. To be honest, I didn't have to dig too deeply for a topic. While peril, or imagined peril to be more accurate, seems to follow me around like a shadow, the other day, I had an especially frightening experience.

It was my husband's birthday. Family and friends were calling from all over the country to wish him well. With one friend in particular, he talked for a very long time and shared some of their conversation when he got off the phone.

"He asked if you had baked me a birthday cake." An innocent enough query, one could say. Then my Dearly Beloved went on, and I use hockey vernacular here, to drop the gloves, ie he issued a challenge. "I didn't want to embarrass either one of us so I told him you had. If he ever asks, just go along with it."

Well, gees, Louise, the kids had a birthday party for him a couple of days before. A birthday party complete with dinner, presents, singing, cupcakes and brownies.  I bought steak and asparagus for him to--um--cook on the grill for his actual birthday, day dinner. Given all of that, I figured I was off the hook.

Apparently I figured wrong.

Aside from being an avowed non-cook--maybe if I'd had more culinary successes in my life I'd feel differently, but I didn't so I don't--I'm currently trying again/still to lose a few pounds. Cake isn't a part of my current diet regimen. Plus my favorite cake flavor is store bought. Not an option given the aforementioned challenge I was issued. Not to fear,  I quickly decided on a compromise.

Digging into the hall closet--I have a very small kitchen--I came up with a cookbook, a lighter fare kind of cookbook and voila, a recipe for Lower Fat Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate Frosting. I was in business.

If I cut the recipe in half, I'd still have a presentable confection, right? I'm sure there's a candle in the junk drawer in the kitchen somewhere. Calculating half measurements in my head with relative ease--okay, I stumbled a tad over the exact amount of one half of three quarters of a cup, so I gave it my best estimate--I soon had the batter mixed. Then came a complication I hadn't counted on. And I quote: "Once the preliminary batter is mixed, beat two egg whites until soft peaks form, add 1/4 cup sugar (1/8 cup for me, I got it) and beat until stiff peaks form."

Okay, I got through those steps correctly, I assume. What was next?

Baking two nine inch rounds for 25-30 minutes, is the same as baking one eight inch square--relatively speaking--right? That's what I did. Pulling the pan out of the oven when the timer went off, it occurs to me I used both eggs the recipe called for, not one which would have been half. The easiest math calculation in the entire recipe and I blew it.

Oh well. As I recover from that, comes another potential glitch. The just out of the oven cake isn't exactly springing back from my touch as I understand properly baked cakes are supposed to do. Now what? Let's see what happens when the frosting--homemade as well--is prepared and applied.

After all of that, it turned out the cake wasn't half bad, which led someone to suggest I might give up store bought and bake all the cakes in my future from scratch.

I don't think so. It's best to take things slow, when facing, then conquering, our fears.

My days to blog here are the 11th and 23rd of the month. For more about the stories I write, please visit at My Website or My Blog

Lessons Learned: No Hot August Nights or Favorite Summer Vacations Required

By Margo Hoornstra

My turn to blog but what to write about? Those Hot August Nights and Favorite Summer Vacations are the topics this month. Let me see. Hot August Nights – Dog Days of Summer – Teach An Old Dog New Tricks. Ah, there! A topic I can use. I’ll even throw in a reference to vacation in order to remain bloglitically correct.

A little over a year ago, a completed manuscript of mine was going nowhere. An editor who has contracted virtually everything I’ve offered her over the past six years read it, requested rewrites, read it again after those and passed. She even suggested I submit to a different line at the house. Maybe that was the problem. Two editors there did much the same as she had, then ultimately passed.

Enter editor number one with a call for submissions on a new, Dearly Beloved wedding stories series. Taking a vacation (ahem!) from Completed Manuscript Going Nowhere, I penned two novellas she absolutely loved (her words, not mine) then quickly contracted. Now those are put to bed, in the editorial sense, Night Stars and Mourning Doves released in June, Only If You Dare release date to be announced.

In and around completing the Dearly Beloveds, I did a few manuscript exchanges with my critique partner and worked as a content and line editor for an independent publisher. Boy did I get good at ferreting out the defects in the manuscripts I reviewed (with all due respect to CP, of course). I could spot a section of telling that needed to be shown. Pick out weak sentences and make them stronger. Even suggest plot twists and, forget those dangling participles, what about the story arcs left dangling, literally, at the end.

My message to these authors was clear. Fix them or get rid of them! I became heady with the power I wielded. Until I ran out of their work and it was time to bring out Completed Manuscript Going Nowhere and do my best to make it into Completed Manuscript Going Somewhere. First I had to figure out what was wrong with it.

To paraphrase – What a difference a year makes. Turns out the blatant flaws I’d so readily recognized in the work of others were alive, well and thriving in mine. Here’s a sample of what I learned I had learned.

Show don’t tell – man oh man did I have plenty of those spots.

Eliminate all dialogue tags. Use character action instead.
“How are you?” she asked then extended her hand.
“How are you?” She extended her hand.
She extended her hand. “How are you?”

Avoid the use of adjectives and adverbs. Choose stronger nouns and verbs instead.
She closed the door angrily.
She slammed the door.
She walked strongly toward him.
She strode toward him.

One my CP so wisely pointed out, don’t have something begin to happen, have it happen.
It began to dawn on him.
It dawned on him.
She began to make her way down the stairs.
She made her way down the stairs.

As a final, visual aid, this is an excerpt from Completed Manuscript Going Nowhere I hope to change to Completed Manuscript Going Somewhere.

Version One: fatal flaws intact.

"If you hold these in place, I’ll attach them," he said as he situated a board under the nearest window. Then he motioned her to steady one end while he secured the other with an appropriately bent knee.

“Okay,” she replied then hurried over to do as he had asked her.

“Keep it steady,” he told her. Positioning a large nail midway between the top and bottom edges of the board, he hefted the hammer he then swung up and then back as he made ready to land the first strike.

“No! Wait!” A glint from under the sill had caught her eye and at the same time, something told her she’d be exceedingly sorry if she didn’t find out what it was.

She lunged forward letting her side of the board swing free and the hammer he still held veered up then nearly flew out of his hand as Brad struggled to bring the tool down in a harmless arc. Then the handle shifted out of his grip causing him to land a sharp, sideways blow. Struck at an odd angle, the nail bent in half before it imbedded, crossways, into the wood. With his thumb pinned firmly underneath.

“Damn!” he cried out.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” Jenny informed him as she scrambled around the dangling board to kneel in front of him. Shooting her hand out, she rested it on his arm.

Hammer dropped to the ground, he yanked for what seemed like forever before he was finally able to pry himself loose.

“Damn,” he said on a shaky exhale, then he gingerly laid the wound against his mid-section.

“Are you okay?” she wanted to know.

Staring skyward, he sucked in then blew out a few harsh breaths at last ending with a tersely spoken, “I’m fine.”

Version Two: fatal flaws, hopefully, corrected.

“If you hold these in place, I’ll attach them.” Situating a board under the nearest window, he motioned her to steady one end while he secured the other with an appropriately bent knee.

She hurried over. “Okay.”

“Keep it steady.” He positioned a large nail midway between the top and bottom edges of the board, hefted the hammer, then swung up and back ready to land the first strike.

A glint from under the sill caught her eye. Something told her she’d regret it if she didn’t find out what was there. “No! Wait!”

She lunged forward letting her side of the board swing free. The hammer veered up then nearly flew out of his hand as Brad struggled to bring it down in a harmless arc. The handle shifted from his grip to land a sharp, sideways blow. Struck at an odd angle, the nail bent in half before it imbedded, crossways, into the wood. With his thumb pinned firmly underneath.

“Damn!”

Jenny scrambled around the dangling board to kneel in front of him. “Oh! I’m so sorry!” Her hand shot out to rest on his arm.

Hammer dropped to the ground, he yanked for what seemed forever to pry himself loose. “Damn.” On a shaky exhale, he gingerly held the wound against his mid-section.

“Are you okay?”

Staring skyward, he sucked in then blew out a few harsh breaths. “I’m fine.”

My days to blog here are the 11th and 23rd.

Otherwise, I can be found at:

 

My Blog       My Website       FaceBook       Twitter        Goodreads

More New Beginnings – And What a Relief That Was By Margo Hoornstra

In my last post on January 11^th, I talked about walking in new shoes on New Year’s Eve and, due to the resulting intense knee and hip pain, changing to my old tried and true shoes for a longer walk on New Year’s Day.

But, who knew that January 1 walk would turn out to be my last exercise for quite some time. Even the record high 50-60 degrees we were blessed with mid-month couldn’t lure me out.

A veteran of the stomach variety of flu the week before, I enjoyed a gastric friendly New Year’s Eve and 2013 lay ahead with all of its potential and promise of, well, new beginnings.

Then, on January 5, my luck ran out once again.

A telling sore throat forebode this particular new beginning. Being of the respiratory kind, with the virus strain I contracted this time, too much physical exertion could bring on intense, dry heave like coughing fits.

And so began yet another stint of being home bound and, for all intents and purposes, inactive.

Luckily, my latest contracted novella for the Dearly Beloved series of The Wild Rose Press, Night Stars and Mourning Doves was finished, delivered to my editor and awaiting cover art and a release date. No obligation there.

But now what would I do with the days of immobility that stretched before me?

That question leads me to blatantly copy an idea from an earlier post by my Roses of Prose colleague, Barbara Edwards titled Idle Hands Make Mischief. Like Barbara, I sought a silver lining in yet another bout of illness and, lo and behold, found one.

Sage advice for writers is “keep your bottom in the chair, honey and write.” Forced to comply with remaining relatively immobile, I began to actually get some decent sentences down on paper.

Only If You Dare, my second and not yet contracted effort for the Dearly Beloved series was only half written and had been giving me fits since I’d started it a couple of months before.

Suddenly, the words began to flow for me through chapter after chapter all the way to The End. Who my characters were, what, why and how they did the things they needed to do. It all began to arrive—indulge me to wax poetic here—in waves and waves of unencumbered inspiration.

Of course, I have some extensive rewriting to do. Rewrites are all part of the process.

But, there’s something about being physically ill that lends itself to clarity of thought. Not that being sick has become the preferred method I’d care to always use to finish a book.

But, it was what it was, and I’ll take it.

Stop by for a visit at: www.margohoornstra.com

Or to download some stories for free at: www.margohoornstra.blogspot.com