All posts by Jordan

Writing craft book club poll

31 August 2009 Jordan 4 Comments

I’m thinking for our September series, we’ll do something collaborative: a book club. But since we’re all writers, I though we could read a writing craft book together and discuss it—possibly chapter by chapter.

Why? Because although we can get a lot out of reading these kinds of books and pondering them ourselves, I think we can get even more out of discussing the concepts and applying them to our work, and to one another’s. And even if you can’t get ahold of the book, you can still participate in the discussion.

So what book should we choose? (Feel free to check your local library for availability—no need to pay to participate!)

Click through to the post to take the poll and choose our writing craft book club choice!

What do you think? What book should we read—or is this not the sort of thing you’re interested in?

Reading

My Not-So-Fairy-Tale Life by Julie Wright – Review

31 August 2009 Jordan

Once again, I’m catching up with the last of the reviews for my Summer Reading Thing list. Website review tomorrow, and be sure to participate in the craft book club poll!

Suzanna Quincy has had a hard life—and, as the back cover of My Not-So-Fairy-Tale Life says, she hasn’t made it any easier on herself by turning to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of her abusive childhood. But when she finds out she’s pregnant, Suzanna knows something has to change.

She ends up moving across the country to live with her brother—a convert to the LDS church. Although Suzanna slowly acclimates to her new life, she’s still left with a lot of turmoil (and the pregnancy hormones don’t help). Kicking and screaming (sometimes literally), she slowly lets the people around her into her life. But believing in God? That might be asking a bit too much.

Suzanna also has to make a choice about her baby’s future. Can she raise a child when she thinks she’s a nobody? Or can Suzanna choose to give her child the stable family life she always wanted, even if it means adoption?

Julie wrote a guest post for us here on making readers love unlovable characters, so I was especially interested to look at the character of Suzanna in this book. Yes, she was unlovable—even she thought so. But she was still a sympathetic character—she was still someone I was rooting for, someone I wanted to see overcome the obstacles in her life (and stop putting them in her own way, too!). (Take a look at Julie’s great guest post for more on how she did this!)

The changes Suzanna made in her life were also pretty convincing, as was the emotional aftermath of Suzanna’s baby’s birth. Some of the changes, however, didn’t seem to get a full treatment, since the book spans over two years (and most of that is in the last three chapters).

What do you think? What does it take to make a 180 convincing in a character?

Reading

Recovering Charles by Jason F. Wright – Review

31 August 2009 Jordan

Once again, I’m catching up with the last of the reviews for my Summer Reading Thing list. Website review tomorrow, and be sure to participate in the craft book club poll!

I received this book as a freebie with my registration packet at a conference I attended in April. As you might expect, for a free book I didn’t pick myself, my expectations were pretty low.

(Okay, so maybe some evil part of me secretly resented having this foisted upon me and I was hoping I wouldn’t like it. But that’s the evil part. I don’t really listen to that. That often.)

In Recovering Charles, Luke Millward has a difficult relationship with his parents. His mother descended into depression and prescription painkillers after her own mother’s death, and eventually committed suicide. His father, Charles, was also incapable of dealing with his grief and devolved into alcoholism. Luke grew up to become an award-winning freelance photographer—and have little contact with his father.

It was kind of ironic that I ended up reading this book this weekend—four years after Hurricane Katrina. In Recovering Charles, Luke receives a call in the wake of Katrina. His estranged father had settled there—and now he was missing. Luke finally resolves to go to New Orleans to recover his father’s body. But he never expected to find his father’s legacy.

The beginning was a little odd, since not a whole lot was happening in the present, and we were regularly thrown back into fragmented flashbacks. However, once Luke actually got to New Orleans, I really understood where he was coming from, and how he felt about his father (and the flashbacks stopped).

One big coincidence in the book seemed just a little too big. I’ve read before that coincidence in fiction is okay—but you really have to set it up, and usually it’s better if the coincidence doesn’t resolve a problem. But in all, I enjoyed the book. I liked learning about who Luke’s father had become and seeing Luke come to understand how people can change.

What do you think? How big of a coincidence is too big? Is coincidence better as an inciting incident or a resolution?

Reading

Tower of Strength by Annette Lyon – Review

31 August 2009 Jordan

Once again, I’m catching up with the last of the reviews for my Summer Reading Thing list. Website review tomorrow, and be sure to participate in the craft book club poll!

I bought Tower of Strength back in March, when I first met Annette Lyon (the author). It’s the latest of her series on books centered around the old LDS temples built in Utah.

In Tower of Strength, Tabitha married young, became pregnant almost immediately—and is widowed just two months after her wedding. She spends the next six years hundreds of miles away, building a life for herself and her son. When her hometown’s newspaper owner offers Tabitha the Sanpitch Sentinel, she decides to return home.

But things aren’t easy for her there. She has to see her bitter former mother-in-law regularly, she faces opposition to a woman owning the paper as well as the stories she’s printing, and she undertakes breaking a wild horse. Meanwhile, she develops feelings for the newly-widowed Samuel Barnett—but she struggles to let herself rely on anyone else after her first husband’s death left her abandoned. Samuel, too, has to work through his own problems as he learns a whole new trade with unpredictable animals—and finds himself falling in love only months after losing his beloved wife.

The characters in Tower of Strength are complex and well-rounded. I think the only thing that detracted for me in the book was the fact that I didn’t really “feel” like Samuel was English. He “sounded” just as Western as the other characters—though maybe if I’d read his passages in an English accent, he might have sounded more accurate 😉 . It could also be a time period thing.

What do you think? How many little speech patterns does it take to convey a character is from another culture? How much is too much?

Marketing

A blog with a niche!

28 August 2009 Jordan 2 Comments

Today we have a great example of a blog with a niche—The Chocolate Chip Cookie.

Kathleen’s comments

Thank you for sharing your blog with us!!! Why am I so excited? Well . . . twice in the past week, I’ve suggested that blog authors find something quirky to center their blog around when a single genre didn’t fit . . . and here you are, with a blog called the Chocolate Chip Cookie!

This is the kind of thing I mean. Doesn’t hearing about a writing blog with that name make you sit up and take notice? When you find links listed under such headings as “Some delicious books,” “Quotes to snack on,” “Some tasty side dishes,” and “Some cookie bites,” don’t you want to click on them, just because they follow her memorable idea? My favorite heading is what she put over her blogger profile picture. She calls herself “The word & cookie chef.” And that says it all.

There are two things I’d recommend for you. (At least right now, while you’re not working to promote a book.)

The first is to have a little more fun with the graphics. Your lovely photo of chocolate chip cookies shouldn’t be hiding on your welcome letter, or shrunk to your sidebar. Crop a wide and short version of it with your title, and put it up at the top in your header! Even doing that much will show how your link colors pull that lovely toasty color from the picture and give the site a bit more style. You can also find (or make) a very simple background image that will add some black and toast colors down the sides of the page. Maybe the template settings in Blogger will allow you do that easily. But spice it up a bit. Have some more fun with your marvelous idea and make it a bit more visual!

Second . . . add the idea of writing into your blog description and/or the graphic that will replace it. “Sanity food for the soul” is good, but neither shows those who don’t already know that you’re a writer that this blog has a lot to do with writing. How about replacing it with “writing with the Word and Cookie Chef” or something else that includes the idea of writing?

One other thing: You obviously have an affinity for art . . . that theme also came across on your blog. I see the novel you’re working on follows that theme, as well. That’s two different themes which, at the moment, almost conflict with each other. I’d say to see if you can join them together a little more, but that would leave you joining art and writing and chocolate chip cookies, and that’s a bit much. Once you finish your YA book and you’re ready to start promoting it, you’ll want to add a YA slant to this, and that would include the art, based on your story idea. So maybe, at that point, the entire site would be YA/art based, and the chocolate chip cookie would be the morning breakfast room in your art gallery, where you chat with your readers. That would work, though it’s a bit much for now.

Just think about it. You’ve got a great idea . . . don’t let it get watered down. ::smiles::

Have fun!

–Kathleen MacIver / KatieDid Design

Jordan’s comments

I’ve visited your blog before, of course, and I’m really impressed.

Like some of the other sites we’ve looked at, your blog looks like more of a “lifestyle” blog than a website for a writer—the content deals more with your life than your writing. And that’s okay—it’s clear from your amazing writing that you are a writer, and an awesome one at that.

But that also means that when you’re looking for publication, you’ll want to add something about your fiction to your blog (or create a separate website).

In some ways, however, a lifestyle blog can be even better than a writing blog. You don’t have to make the switch from writing about writing for writers—you already have a niche. You obviously already have a community around your blog, and your future readers can join in this community.

This is one case where I would say keep your blog at its current address rather than moving it to blog.yourname.com (the only exception: if you have/can get (the)chocolatechipcookie.com). Even if you establish YourName.com, I would keep your blog at the same address.

Your welcome letter is fantastic. As an about page, it does a great job of conveying your blog’s niche and purpose, and most of all you and your writing style.

Search engine presence

Your search engine presence is pretty good. For your name, your blog is #1 and #2 on Google, and #1 on Yahoo. Bing, as usual, doesn’t have your blog. However, your Facebook profile is #1. As with lots of our reviews, most of the rest of the top ten results come from your comments around the Internet (hey—Yahoo has your comment on my mom blog in the top ten. Cool!)

(By the way, Bing is Microsoft’s newest name for its search engine, which is supposedly totally revamped. Microsoft and Yahoo have announced a deal where Microsoft will eventually power Yahoo’s search.)

For [chocolate chip cookie], naturally you have some competition. However, your blog is #3 on Google. Bing obviously needs some more time to understand the whole “blog” thing. But the good news: your blog is #1 on Yahoo. You’re competing with every chocolate chip cookie recipe out there and you win! Woot!

Sidebar

I love the way you highlight your favorite posts in the sidebar, especially with the graphics. However, sometimes I wasn’t sure whether a picture a badge, a link to an essay or just something cool to look at until I hovered my mouse over it. Also, there are so many of them I feel a little overwhelmed. Maybe you could assemble them into few posts on your favorite posts in various areas—a collection of your posts on marriage, child birth and child raising, writing, religion, philosophy, etc.—and highlight those posts in your sidebar (with graphics, of course)?

As always, I recommend having the subscribe widgets (with some explanation) a little higher. You could also add subscribe links to your welcome letter. The button you have in the second slot on the sidebar is a good feature—something I keep meaning to do on my mom blog—a portable badge your fans can put on their own blogs. However, it looks like it only works for other Blogger blogs—and before I clicked it, I wasn’t exactly sure what it was going to do. You could do a graphic with an HTML scroll box to do the same thing (I think, anyway).

Also, you could consider adding a few ways for people to contact you—I know you have Twitter and Facebook in your sidebar, but I missed them because they didn’t have the usual icons. I love the artistic theme to your blog and your sidebar, but be careful not to confuse your visitors or make them accidentally overlook something.

At the minimum, we need a way to contact you directly. (And as always, I’m going to say that a contact page is the best place for that—but it would also go well in your welcome letter.)

What do you think? How do you make sure your visitors can contact you?

Photo of book by Marcos Ojeda

Marketing

How to set up an aspiring author website

27 August 2009 Jordan 4 Comments

This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series Aspiring author websites

If you’ve been following our website review series, you’ve learned some great things to do (and not to do) when setting up your website. Maybe you’re ready for a “real” website, but not sure how to get it. It’s okay; I’ve worked with websites and Internet marketing for the better part of my life and I still didn’t know exactly how to set up a website until I did my own. And it’s easy.

There are three basic things you need for a functioning website:

a domain (you get this from a domain registrar, like GoDaddy)
a host to store your website’s pages and files (from a hosting company)
(technically, you don’t need this, but unless you’re going to be doing all your coding by hand, you’ll want it) software to work the back end—and hopefully generate the HTML code (usually provided by the hosting company, too)

Sometimes you can get these things together. Blogger, for example, will give you everything—your domain is whatever.blogspot.com, Blogger stores your pages and files, and Blogger software generates your HTML code and provides the software that lets you maintain your site.

In fact, you can make Blogger into your “real” website, which can be especially useful if you’re going to be the one maintaining it. You can also use Blogger Custom Domain to put your Blogger blog at YourDomain.com, and Camy Tang has a useful guide on how to make a a basic free blog more like a website. UPDATE: Blogger has now added a feature to make official “pages” instead of making posts look and act like static pages of your blog. It’s even more flexible and professional-looking now!

Getting more advanced

If you feel like you’re ready for a more “real” website, but still apprehensive about setting one up, here’s my advice: use WordPress. This is especially great if you’re already comfortable with blogging software, because you get the ease of blogging software and the features of a “real” website.

You can use WordPress.com (and you can get a WordPress.com blog to show up at YourDomain.com, too, but it’s not free like it is on Blogger)—or you can use WordPress.org. It’s the same software, but with WordPress.org you can customize your blog however you want.

However, for WordPress.org, you also have to get hosting—space on a server to store your website’s files for others to access them. I’ve been with BlueHost for over two years, and they’ve done really well for me. I chose them because they were inexpensive ($7/month), and one of WordPress’s recommended hosts.

WordPress has some advantages over Blogger that make it more like a “real” website. Camy Tang’s guide above will help you create static pages like an about page or a contact page on Blogger. That’s great—but they’re still going to look and act like posts on your blog.

With WordPress, however, you can keep blog posts and pages separate. Don’t want a blog? That’s okay—you can do that with WordPress, too, and just use the page features to easily create a static website instead. Check out the menu bar at the top of my site. See how it says “About” and “Projects,” etc.? Those link to WordPress pages—timeless, static webpages that aren’t posts on the blog.

Also neat: WordPress made that menu bar all by itself. I didn’t have to do a thing. It updates the menu bar whenever I update a page. WordPress is highly customizable, in both the site design and software—and for free.

If you want to create a WordPress website on BlueHost, sign up for BlueHost using my affiliate link and I’ll send you a free PDF guide to setting up WordPress with BlueHost*—with info on installation, set up, importing blogs, add-ons and more! (If you’re planning to import another blog, also check out my search-engine friendly guide to migrating from Blogger to WordPress to make your switch safe and easy.)

What do you think? Are you ready for a real website?

* To get the guide, be sure to email me at guide at jordanmccollum.com once you’ve completed the sign up.

Marketing

Your blog’s niche: careann.wordpress.com

26 August 2009 Jordan 3 Comments

Another website review for you today! Carol/Careann of Careann.wordpress.com is another one of those bloggers I feel like I’ve seen just everywhere. We’ll look at how she can find and apply a niche to help grow her blog.

carol1