Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
My first self-published romantic comedy, The Frog Prince, became an Amazon bestseller in December 2010—a distinction it kept through the summer of 2012 when it peaked at #2 on Amazon’s Top 100 List for Humor. On Valentine’s Day 2012, my second novel, Sleeping Beauty, catapulted to Amazon’s Top 100 List for Romantic Suspense. In March of 2012, I published an alternate ending version of my rom-com Sleeping Beauty in response to fan’s dissatisfied with the ending of the original. Both versions of Sleeping Beauty were named to Kindles & Wine “Best Reads of 2012.” My fourth romantic comedy, Alice in Wonderland, was published in November of 2012. I also have a thriller out that I wrote before I was self-published called Virgin. So…five books altogether!
As one of the early self-publishing success stories, I am considered a “reluctant expert” on the topic of self-publishing and I am well-known for taking advantage of my full creative control by pushing the envelope—and advising other self-published authors to do the same.
In August, two big things are happening for me:
1. I will be hosting my own radio show—“Dear Digital Diva”—on the Authors on the Air Global Radio Network.
2. I will be one of 93 romance authors–including over 50 New York Times bestsellers) to blog as part of National Read-a-Romance Month (http://www.readaromancemonth.com). My blog date is August 20.
I have also had the very great honor of being interviewed by Authors on the Air’s Pam Stack, Happy Ever After’s Joyce Lamb (USAToday.com), GoodEReader’s Mercy Pilkington, The Trash Talk Show’s Barb Tobias, and Your Book Is Your Hook’s Jennifer Wilkov.
In April 2012, I was invited to be a regular contributor to Digital Book World’s Expert Publishing Blog, an industry blog with 20,000 subscribers. I almost immediately created a firestorm of controversy by opining that authors should respond to negative reader reviews—a blog that was later named one of the “Top 10 Digital Publishing Stories of 2012” for its “importance.” I have also contributed to articles on self-publishing for both TIME Magazine and Writers Digest.
I live in Denver, Colorado. My miniature dachshund, Bacon Bourgeois, Legendary Wiener, is a hero on Facebook. His main job at home is to sleep and provide comic relief when needed.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Alice in Wonderland came out in November. Alice in Wonderland was a little different from the previous novels I’d written in that it is very heavily based on my own two-week trip to that country in August with my author buddy, Alexandra Sokoloff. After tagging along with her to Romance Writers of Australia in Surfer’s Paradise, Australia (where she was speaking and teaching), we rented a car and drove to Sydney, hiked in the Blue Mountains, had dinner overlooking the harbor—it was so lovely and we had such a fabulous time!
I wrote Alice in Wonderland in 35 days—starting on September 26th, 2012 and finishing the first draft on October 31st, 2012—while caught smack dab in the middle of New York City’s Hurricane Sandy!
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Yes, but they are a product of having narcolepsy (a sleep disorder in which your brain has difficulty regulating the sleep-wake cycle). Instead of one 8-hour stint of rest followed by 16 hours of being awake, I follow what is a called a “bi-phasic” sleep schedule. That is, I sleep from 2am-6am and again from 2pm-6pm. During my “morning 8 [hours],” I usually tackle administrative tasks such as answering emails, maintaining social media accounts, etc. I set aside my “night 8” (my waking hours from 6pm to 2am) for writing. This seems to be when I am most alert and productive!
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Despite the fact that I write romance, I am a product of reading fantasy, raised on Through the Looking Glass and nursed on Lord of the Rings. I like to think I have a Chronicles of Narnia heart, a Dragonriders of Pern mind and a Song of Ice and Fire soul.
I am in in awe of writers like Neal Stephenson, especially his smart, sweeping, and achingly funny Cryptonomicon. I recently fell in love with (and will never part with) The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.
What are you working on now?
Since its release in August 2010, I’ve received many, many requests (some might characterize them as “desperate pleas”) for a sequel to The Frog Prince, request I have unfortunately been unable to fulfill. The reason for that is because I haven’t yet come up with a sequel idea that doesn’t “jump the shark.”
HOWEVER, I recently had a fan on my Facebook page suggest that I do a Midnight Sun-like project for The Frog Prince. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with Midnight Sun, it’s the Twilight story…told from Edward’s point of view. Stephanie Meyers abandoned it about half-way through after one of her friends leaked it on the internet but she put it on her website so you can still read as much as she wrote before she quit.) I actually enjoyed Midnight Sun far more than I did Twilight. Reading about the man’s motivations in courting the woman was far more interesting to read about than the other way around.
In any case, I began writing Gilding the Lily-pad on June 29, 2013 and plan to publish it at the end of July in honor of the three-year anniversary of the publication of The Frog Prince. You can read Chapter one of Gilding the Lily-pad HERE (http://ellelothlorien.com/gilding-the-lily-pad-chapter-one-sample).
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
In March, I chronicled one of my Amazon book promotions for an entire month for Digital Book World, sharing in-depth, day-by-day promo strategies, sales, and analysis of what works and what doesn’t. That blog, “Readin’ o’ the Green: the Anatomy of a Free Book Promotion,” has been read by thousands of authors interested in promoting their work. It can be found here: http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/readin-o-the-green-the-anatomy-of-a-free-book-promotion
A second blog, explaining what an author must do to successfully promote their books (“Prostitute Your Book: The Art and Science of a Becoming a Successful Free Book Pimp on Amazon”) can be read here: http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/prostitute-your-book-the-art-and-science-of-becoming-a-successful-free-book-pimp-on-amazon
Do you have any advice for new authors?
My advice is more skewed towards self-published authors, for obvious reasons. That said, my advice for new authors is this: To do whatever you can to be the Wizard of Oz.
What do I mean by that? When Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow go to see the Wizard of Oz, they want to believe that he is real. In the same way, readers want to find your work and love it. The majority of them don’t care about the turmoil in the industry—self-published versus traditionally published, pricing wars, sock puppetry, etc. By and large, they’re just looking for a few hours of escape in a good book.
So your job as a writer, and as a business owner, is to make sure that you never have to say “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” In other words, your self-published novel should be indistinguishable from a novel published and packaged by a Big Six publisher.
In practical terms, this means four things:
1. Create an eye-catching, unique, instantly descriptive cover. You have approximately three seconds to capture the interest of the reader, and get them to “click-through” before they move on, so make sure your book “pops,” and is professional-looking at-a-glance. Ideally, you should get compliments from people within the industry on the “professional-looking” cover you’ve created.
2. Edit your novel. And then edit it some more. And then edit it again. This is most likely going to require that you hire somebody. Yes. Does this cost money? Yes, but again—your aim is to never allow the reader to wonder, “Is this is self-published novel?” Self-published novels are notorious for being riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, continuity errors, and the like. And that’s just the copyediting problems! Ideally, you’ll be able to find someone to do hard editing on your novel, which means someone who can tell you where the story drags, or where the plot falls apart, or who will point out characters that were not fully developed, or who serve no purpose.
3. Write a good novel. Notice that I did not say that you need to write a great novel. That’s because for better or for worse, even a mediocre book will sell if readers perceive that your book is professionally edited and packaged. Such is the nature of consumer purchasing psychology.
4. Price your work competitively using “Goldilocks Pricing.” Ideally, you’ll find the “sweet spot” of pricing for your genre—one that’s neither too high nor too low. And notice my use of the word “work” here. You worked hard on your novel, and you must believe that it has value, because if you believe it does, then readers are more likely to believe it. In my opinion, a 99 cent novel (except during short promotional periods) is a flashing sign that tells the reader that they may end up getting what they pay for.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Once upon a time, I spent a long, hot summer locating underground utilities. The grandfatherly man who trained me said something that has stuck with me until this day: “Plan your work and work your plan.” Although my business plan changes (sometimes daily!) as the world of publishing undergoes a revolution, I’d like to think that the underlying foundation for what I do has not.
What are you reading now?
I am currently working on Gilding the Lily-pad and very rarely read other books while I write! The last book I read before I started this project was The Night Circus that I mentioned above.
What’s next for you as a writer?
After Gilding the Lily-pad is out, I will finish a work that was already in-progress when I broke away from it to write Gilding: Rapunzel. After that, I will likely start working on the sequel to Alice in Wonderland called (what else?) Through the Looking Glass.
What is your favorite book of all time?
Hmm…this is going to be a “strange bedfellows” of a tie!
The Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I read it once a year. Persusion by Jane Austen. I read it once a month.
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