Jenn's release BOOKED is out today!

BUY NOW

JENN McKINLAY: One of the things I love most about the self-publishing gig is the input I get on the cover. An author friend of mine (Lori Wilde) who put out her extensive backlist in e-book form after she got the rights back to her books, connected me  with my cover artist Lyndsey at Llewellen Designs. 

Lyndsey designed the cover of each novella, which you can see sitting on the bookshelf on the cover of BOOKED, which the omnibus of all three of last years novellas. 

The covers of ROYAL VALENTINE, THE ATTRACTION DISTRACTION, and IT HAPPENED ONE CHRISTMAS EVE are all the finished products of our collaboration, which went something like this. I sent Lyndsey my idea for a cover, which was usually a mock up pulled from various bits and bobs on the Internet such as:

And she returned this:

How great is that? She just makes everything so much better. In fact, her covers are so perfect, that the audio publisher who bought the rights to the novellas bought her covers, too!

What I love most about working with Lyndsey is that she can execute whatever I imagine and she is open to all of my input, which I so appreciate. For example, the book our gent is holding on the cover of BOOKED is a color reversed version of the original (look closely). When I asked Lyndsey in the design stage if this was possible, she jumped on it and made it happen. So fun!

Not for nothing, but authors rarely get so much direct contact with the art department. 

Clearly, I am a firm believer in hiring a professional to do what you need to have done, which is why I also employed a professional editor to go through each novella a couple of times to make certain they were as tight as could be. The fabulous Traci Hall, recommended by another author friend (Jennifer Ashely) was amazing. There was not one line that went unscrutinized, which is exactly what you want in an editor.

All of this is to say, the writing community is one of the most generous and gracious spaces out there, and I could not have pulled this off without the help and support of a lot of writer friends.

So, tell me, Reds and Readers, what positive interactions have you had within the writing community? Has any author made a huge difference in your life on a personal level? If so, how?

About the book:

From New York Times bestselling author Jenn McKinlay comes the Museum of Literature RomCom Omnibus.
For the first time all three novellas are in one volume.

Royal Valentine

The Attraction Distraction

It Happened One Christmas Eve

Come join the fun with a secret identity and a trip to England, a second chance romance while in search of an ancient literary artifact in Greece, and a holiday caper starting with a hijacked sleigh! As the intrepid librarians and archivists of the Museum of Literature travel the world for the love of books, curating their own happily ever afters along the way. What more could any romcom adoring book lover want?

Buy Links: 

Audio: https://tinyurl.com/2s3kcuu2 

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/2s3wxr6n 

Books-A-Million: https://tinyurl.com/mvpw2y9p 

Bookshop.Org: https://tinyurl.com/yc5mzdxm 

BN: https://tinyurl.com/45zr5uhb 

Kobo: https://tinyurl.com/w86s88aw 

Apple: https://tinyurl.com/38w45s9c 

Other (Books2Read): https://books2read.com/u/4AjEnp  

Pssst...Nancy Martin Reveals There's More to the Story

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: LOVE these TBR piles! You all are amazing… as you can see below. And we’ll have even more as the week goes on. Every table tells a story, right? 

I read somewhere that novels are getting longer. Greg Iles terrific Natchez Burning, for instance. and an article in  the Guardian said : "Ken Follett's doorstopper Fall of Giants, if anyone's counting, is about 850 pages." And then it said: "probably to appeal to his American readers."  Huh?

But have you heard the expression “T-L-D-R”? Too Long, Didn’t Read, it means. And others say--"American readers" (whatever that means) want to read shorter.

Our fabulous wonderful Nancy Martin has been thinking about length—yes, she’s a glamorous fashionista, and so is her Nora Blackbird. (Her new A LITTLE NIGHT MURDER is out—finally!—right now!)  But Nancy’s not talking about hemlines—she’s talking about lines of type.

A Novella Idea

    By Nancy Martin

What exactly was Rhett Butler doing when he was “blockade running?” What went on in Boo Radley’s home? What kind of crime does Morelli fight when Stephanie Plum is busy catching bail jumpers?

Questions like these are writer heaven. Sure, we know what our secondary characters are doing while the main character is busy telling the story. But readers rarely get to find out.

Until now.  I think we’re entering the Golden Age of the Novella.

Me, I write a mystery series and publish one hardcover a year. When I’m at the top of my game, it takes me about nine months to write a Blackbird Sisters Mystery. By contrast, when I made a good living at romance novels years ago, I could write two or three books in the same amount of time. But those romances were only 200 pages in manuscript and featured a streamlined A story. The B story was very short, and the C story nonexistent.  

My Blackbird books are driven by a convoluted mystery plot and embellished with B, C, D and E stories—and sometimes more.  I may have several plot threads going--each addressing some current event or subject that takes research.  Plus after the draft is finished, I like to tweak the language to make the book more fun to read. Bottom line? I can’t dash off a full-length mystery in a few weeks.

Can I get tacky here and talk about money?  Because I can only write one book a year, I only get paychecks twice every twelve months. And royalties come in dribs and drabs. That makes for tricky cash-flow.

So I looked around and noticed other writers were supplementing their A writing with some B projects.  The short story has been around a long time in all genres, but not very lucrative. The novella e-book can be priced in the sweet spot of 99 cents to $2.99  and make real money.  Which makes it good business for writers--especially when our readers are clamoring for more, more, more, faster, faster, faster. 

Creatively, the novella can be a blast. As my series matured---published this week, A LITTLE NIGHT MURDER is the 10^th Blackbird Sisters mystery—my protagonist developed relationships with more characters than I can squeeze into a 400 page manuscript. Not without spending the first 100 pages just on backstory. But my email and FB contact with readers told me they really want to know more about the other people in Nora Blackbird’s life. Writing about those secondary characters has been fun.

The novella has become a way to keep readers hooked, and it’s a pretty good source of pin money for me.  Plus I get to fully explore the characters I only knew in a secondary sense. Win, win, win!

So far, I’ve published two novellas about Nora Blackbird’s lover, Mick Abruzzo, the son of a Jersey mob boss and a sometime criminal himself. His efforts to stay out of the life of crime—efforts that aren’t always successful—have made good amateur PI novellas. His stories are more gritty than my Blackbird books, which makes them a creative change of pace for me. Readers who buy the e-books will have better insight into what he’s doing when he keeps secrets from Nora.  His story arc is much different from the one she perceives.

In September, I’ll be publishing a slightly longer novella about Nora’s former sister-in-law, who will be looking into the murder of Emma Blackbird’s husband . . . perhaps at the hands of a certain mob family.  I took one of my previously published romances (pub date 1987!) and rewrote it for this purpose. Good use of my backlist? I hope so. If readers enjoy this one, I’ve got thirty more romances to tinker with—which I can do much faster than writing a whole new mystery.

Maybe the novella is rising in popularity because readers don’t have (or make) the time to read long books anymore. We’re all scrolling through Facebook or trying to communicate with 111 characters instead of reading full-length novels. Are we dumbing down? Losing our attention spans?  Or are we just too busy to read as much as we used to?

So what do you think? What minor character’s story would you read in novella form? What kind of trouble did Rhett Butler get into when he wasn’t charming the ladies of Atlanta?

HANK: Oh, what a brilliant idea!  Rebecca from Mrs. Danvers’ POV? The poor misunderstood Queen of Hearts in Alice? (Hmmm…) What happened to Dill? (I guess we know…) Or how about Bess and George tell all about the real Nancy Drew?  (And do you say “TL,DR?”) 

What do you think, Reds?  A copy of A LITTLE NIGHT MURDERS to one lucky commenter!

And now: today's nightstands!

Lourdes Venard (I see Writes of Passage! xo More to come on that!)

Red Kaye Barley (and monkey!)

Sharon Hopkins (very sleek)

Caroline Richardson Mahaffey (but she knows where everything is!)

Jay Shepherd (has his work cut out for him...)

Brandee C. (oops, more than Jay, even!)


More tomorrow! 

******************************
Nancy Martin is the author of nearly fifty popular fiction novels in the mystery, romance, historical and suspense genres.  She has served on the board of Sisters in Crime and is a founding member of Pennwriters. An award-winning, bestselling novelist, she announces the release of her tenth Blackbird Sisters Mystery---A LITTLE NIGHT MURDER in August, 2014. Find her on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/authornancymartin