Don't Know Marketing

Don't Know Marketing
Do you ever feel like you're only barely qualified to talk about something? Yeah. Me and marketing.  It is a gaping black hole in the speckled galaxy of 'stuff Marcella knows'.

Solution: learn.
My current 'favorite' paid marketing is actually a class on marketing I just started taking. Not that I intend to turn it into a business or anything - this is a base layer so I can understand how marketing works.

Marketing is about relationships.
If you are authentic, you build organic and lasting relationships with people who think like you do. See? My classes are paying off already. Before two weeks ago, marketing was just selling something. Maybe it's no surprise, then, that my favorites are about relationships.

Relationship the First and the Free
Feline-L. These are people I've known for years who are members of a Feline Fancier's Listserv. We may be techno-dinosaurs (those should totally be a thing), but we have members in Turkey, Israel, France, the UK, South America, Canada and the US, all of us bound by our appreciation for felines. Our members encompass people from all walks of life. Scientists. Veterinary professionals. Artists. Techies. You name it. Fellow sci-fi/fantasy author Noel-Anne Brennan is a member. She even coached me through a few things when I was first published.

Several of my friends of Feline-L have come over to Twitter. Several of us have a 10% pact - 10% of what we make goes to charity whether it be animal welfare, environmental causes, or any other charity. We Tweet that we're donating and to whom, but dollar amounts never go on social media. We're interested in being accountable. Not in boasting or being jerks.

These folks buy books, talk about books and they leave the best reviews. To this day, I have a file folder full of pictures of their cats with my books.

Relationship the Second and the Paid

World of Warcraft.

Laugh if you like. While you laugh, I will sing songs of raids conducted in imaginary, animated dungeons by groups of like-minded geeks talking to one another live in real-time via Ventrilo. Or Mumble. These are people from across the world, techies, mostly. Your main tank may be an IT tech for the US military in real life. The lead healer may be a cyber-security expert from Down Under. One of the hunters is a programmer who lives just down the street from you. Sure. A few of the raid members are still nerds living in Mom's basement. Most of them aren't, though, cause the ones who can't afford to move out can't afford the monthly pay to play. Almost all of them will bend over backwards to buy a book from that little gnomish fire mage with tragic fashion sense. One of my fellow raiders ended up joining the guild I belong to so I could talk him through working on his own book and getting it ready for submission. This is my other group of friends from all over the world. These people whisper me in game demanding to know when the next book is coming out. The guild leader posts my releases in the guild message of the day and leaves it up for a week. We host real life guild events that pull people from all over and my guildies bring their copies of my book for me to sign. When we hear a guildie is coming in from out of town (or from out of country) word goes out and we meet up. These people buy and consume books like they weren't addicted to an aging massive multiplayer online roleplaying game. They write awesome reviews and twist their friends' arms to read my stuff.

Getting to be friends with your readers, does it get any better?

Putting Yourself On The Market

More than once, I've had people speak to me of "marketing" like it was something separate from "promoting".  I'm a writer, not a marketer or promoter or advertiser, so I did the most sensible thing.  I went to the dictionary.

marketing |ˈmärkitiNG|noun
the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.

Well, that's no help.  I mean, "promoting" is right there in the definition.  Pressed, I'd argue that "promoting" is about awareness, and "marketing" is about sales.

With the books coming out next year, at least at the moment the main thing I have to market is myself.  To actually sell something, I more or less have to convince people I'm someone worth noting.  So I've got to rely a lot on charm and personality, and being able to use those traits in a public venue with a suitable target audience.

Fortunately, I've got a venue for such a thing this weekend.  I'll be at FenCon!  You can check out my whole schedule right here.  If you have the opportunity, come on over.  I'll be on panels on geography, technobabble and series that go on too long, all topics I should be able to say clever and intelligent things about.  Plus I'll be reading from Thorn of Dentonhill.  Hope to see you there.

In the meantime, I've got to get down in the word mines.  Always more to do down there.

Favorite Free & Paid Marketing

Speaking of free marketing...

HERE  is my just released, first-ever self-publishing venture. Yes, yes, I'm a self-pub virgin no more.

Marlboros & Magic is the short-story prequel to my Persephone Alcmedi series. It first appeared in an anthology, but if you missed it, now's your chance to find out exactly what silly events led to Nana getting booted out of the retirement community (and resulted in her living with Seph).

As for the whole of the topic this week, I dunno. Facebook is my favorite. I poke around twitter sometimes. I've paid for blog tours when I've had a new release. Since I don't track sales, I have no way of know if any of that has an impact, or which is better than another. Other than that, see Jeffe's post from Monday. :)

Free and Paid Marketing: Which is Best?

I'm deep in edits this week, so I'll keep the post short.

Favorite Free Marketing:
There is no marketing more effective than word-of-mouth. Corporations spend millions and millions trying to put those words in consumers' mouths. They really want the "trend-setter" consumers, because those folks offer the best ROI. Who are the "trend-setters"? By and large... teenagers. High disposable income, wide range of personal connections, and taste influencers across multiple age brackets.

Now you know why you can't run away from YA.

Favorite Paid Marketing:
Nobody knows the "right" formula for getting a product in front of the "right" consumers for the "right" amount of money. It's all a crapshoot. Every industry.  Every product. That floundering feeling authors get when trying to sell their books? Billion-dollar ad companies go through the same thing on a per-client scale.

When it comes to shelling out my moola, I'm pretty sure I'll lean toward the opportunities that are "bundled presence" opportunities. Aka, my name/work in an ad, a box-set, a gift-basket, a Con-presence, etc, that goes alongside other writers in my genre.

One voice is hard to hear. Many voices can cut through the din. 

I just have to be careful that my voice doesn't get overpowered by my cohorts.

Dear readers, what's your favorite group advertising means?

Which Marketing Is Worth Paying For?

by @JeffeKennedy

This week's topic we'll be gnoshing at the Bordello is our favorite free and paid marketing venues.




It's always the question, which thing to invest in. The topic comes up repeatedly on my author loops. It's not that we don't want to pay to advertise, but there are a LOT of "opportunities" for authors to shell out money in order to bring their books to readers' attention.


Okay, it's downright predatory out there.

Between the perception created in part by the astonishing success of authors like Veronica Roth, JK Rowling, EL James and Stefanie Meyer that authors are rolling in money and the most understandable eagerness (which can shade toward desperation) of writers who *aren't* rolling in money to get that way, a huge marketplace awaits the unwary writer. All of them claim to deliver book sales. None (in my experience) can definitively prove it.

And, lemme tell you, we're not talking cheap. Book Bub charges up to $1600 to feature your book for one day. Fresh Fiction offers a one-year advertising  package for just shy of $1100. You can pay up to nearly $4000 for a full-page, full-color ad at RT Book Reviews - and barely skate away for less than $1,000 for a 1/6th page ad. Now, I'm not saying these don't return on the investment. Some people swear by them. I can vouch that having Rogue's Pawn featured on Book Bub put the book up at #2 under Fantasy Romance on Amazon. Which was amazing and wonderful - arguably tremendously effective. And my publisher paid for it - even better.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't have that much cash to invest. Not like that, anyway. So I tend toward free marketing venues. Do I get what I pay for in those cases? Maybe. The ones I pay for I choose pretty carefully.

Free
Social media. It costs time, yes, but - if you don't succumb to Facebook's endless prompting to pay to boost posts - it's otherwise free. If you do it right, it's also fun and builds a community of friends and like minds. My personal favorites:

• Twitter
• Tumblr
• Blogging
• Goodreads
• Facebook

Paid
My favorites aren't necessarily the smartest investments, but in examining what I actually shell out money for? Giveaways. I give away my books, my friends' books and various prezzies. I tend to favor baked goods. Some examples:

• Guesting on blogs and hosting a giveaway as part of that
• Contributing to a group gift
• Participating in another author's party and adding my own giveaway
• Offering a gift related to the book on my own website
• Swag at conferences

In the end, I shell out the most to attend conferences. Going to those, interacting with readers and other writers, both feeds me and gives me a real-world sense of who is actually reading my books. Nothing is more wonderful than having someone dash up to me at a cocktail party and introduce themselves as the person who wrote that amazing, glowing review. It's a small sample, but I love having that moment.

Promotional Mojo

I would LOVE to tell you stories about the lovely, amazing serendipitous promotional things that have happened to me - save I'm not entirely sure I promoted much of anything except that I got to flail around doing my 'FANGIRL' dance. See. Just before my first book came out, one of my favorite authors in the world, Nalini Singh, asked me to guest blog for her. After I'd stared at her name in my in-box and tried not to pass out, I jumped at the chance. She and her readers both were so gracious and kind to me. I'd really like to be in a position to return the favor some day. In case the Gods are listening.

I've done blog tours since, but maybe it is the curse of the pathetically geeky and vaguely socially awkward. Being charming in blog posts (some people will say 'ever') is maybe not my strength. I'm also hampered by the fact that I find it dreadfully difficult to track any kind of meaningful result back to a blog tour. In my search for promotional mojo that doesn't annoy an entire Twitterverse full of people, I've had a marketing folks tell me that material THINGS were the only way to go from a promotional standpoint. I've had other people laugh and say, "Oh, honey. Don't waste your time or money on things! It's all about (insert social media shtick du jour)." I've been told to be my geek-tastic self. I've been told to forget that in favor of building a platform based on things I don't do particularly well - interacting with people like the whole of the internet might not be looking on, judging me while I'm talking without the safety-net of a script. (Yes, some of us became actors because we're desperate to be told the right things to say when. We're super invested in always knowing our lines.)

I have had two things happen that I didn't consider promotions at the time, but which both brought Twitter followers out of the woodwork: Anthologies. The first was Tales from the SFR Brigade. The second was Thunder on the Battlefield: Sword. Note that I can't say I saw any boost to book sales from either. The only bumps I noticed were to the number of people willing to hang with me on Twitter, but you know? I'll take it because I've since gotten to talk with a few of those people and discovered they're geeks, too. My tribe. 

So maybe the advice that your best promotional tool is your next book really has some merit. Which means I should get back to that.

Vladesimus Tangential Thingamajigie

There comes a time in every author's life when someone somewhere is going to say, "Hey! My third cousin six times removed just finished a book. Will you talk to her?" When that happens, if the author in question agrees to the chat, genre is likely to be one of the first points of discussion. Why? Marketing, my friend. You have to know which round hole you intend to pound the square peg of your book into. Only partially kidding on that last bit. If those of us writing intend to sell anything to anyone, we'd better be prepared to describe what we've written. Genre is the generally the broadest description - beyond 'book' - that we're likely going to get away with using. You have to know your genre before you agent shop, before you can query a publishing house or an editor.

I'm not sure what quirk of the brain is exposed by the human impulse to label things, but we, as a species, do seem hung up on parsing, sorting and neatly stacking our piles of stuff. Maybe the whole human genome is a tad OCD. Whatever, we're most comfortable being able to point at a thing and saying, "That's a vladesimus tangential thingamajigie!" And if the human race is a little OCD, the publishing world is far and away more so. We all know authors who's books got to marketing before being sent back with a note that says, "We don't know what to do with this." "But it's a vladesimus tangential thingamajigie!" the author whines. Sure, and the marketing department only has a slot for vladesimus tangential thingamajigies with pie. Genre matters.

The moral of that paragraph being: When authors start mashing genres together looking for the secrets of cold fusion and hoping to ignite a tiny gleaming star in the eyes of reader everywhere, it has to happen with the awareness that the whole unstable project could detonate instead of meshing into something brilliant and stable. Let's contemplate the mental image of smoking, irradiated messiness for a moment. I have a few of those. They still glow in the darkness under the bed, hauting me in the night. Sad. Thing is. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it works so well that the mash-up of genres becomes a genre unto itself. Paranormal Romance. Scifi Romance. Medical Mystery. (That last included to prove it's not just the romance market that's willing to spawn genres.)

It's a razor's edge to walk, writing something that defies genre - especially if you aspire to sell into a publishing industry that's super invested in slotting stories quickly and easily. If you're self-publishing, the final arbiters of genre are your readers. So classification of your story is between you and them. Just remember, if you write it, you have to tag it so your readers can find it.

If you ask me about crossing genres, I have to tell you to go for it. My first two books were Scifi Romance. Then I had to add a bit of the erotic to that because, you know, mixing two genres wasn't enough. Don't worry about what's selling or not. Read. Write. Have fun. Stay true to your story your way for at least one draft. If you're writing what you'd want to read, genre will likely take care of itself. When your draft is completed, you may find your book already falls handily into a publishing box. But if not, that aspect can be tweaked on rewrite.

Maybe the trick really is writing what you wish you could read. Please do. I know how much I love it when I get to read a book I wish I had written. Also? Vladesimus Tangential Thingamajigie. My new band name. You know. For when I learn to play something that would be acceptable to a band.

A Most Outrageous Marketing Suggestion

First: PIMPAGE!!

Are any of you old enough to remember the Donny and Marie Show? She'd sing, "I'm a little bit country." He'd sing, "I'm a little bit rock-n-roll." Fellow Word-Whore Jeffe and I have some of the same thing going on. Only we're comfortably certain no one wants us to sing. You see, Jeffe and I each have a story in a brand new, two volume sword and sorcery anthology edited by former Word-Whore James Ray Tuck Jr called THUNDER ON THE BATTLE FIELD. Volume one is titled SWORD. Volume two is titled SORCERY. This brings us back to the Donny and Marie shtick. I'm a little bit sword. (My story, Emissary, is in volume one.) Jeffe's a little bit sorcery. (Her story, Negotiation, is in volume two.) The anthology is out in e-format only for the moment. Print copies are due at the end of the month.

 

Links for both volumes:
Thunder on the Battlefield: Sword
Kindle version: http://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Battlefield-Sword-ebook/dp/B00EE0YL8Y

Nook version: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/thunder-on-the-battlefield-james-r-tuck/1116359898?ean=2940148400639

Thunder on the Battlefield: Sorcery
Kindle version: http://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Battlefield-Sorcery-ebook/dp/B00EE15GY6

Nook verison: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/thunder-on-the-battlefield-james-r-tuck/1116359900?ean=2940148400660

ON TO THE MARKETING ADVICE!!!
The most outrageous marketing scheme I have to offer may lie in the fact that I'm attempting to offer any kind of marketing advice whatsoever. Witty or elegant marketing is not notable among my achievements. Also? Unless you can prove your marketing actually resulted in sales? It's not marketing, it's flailing.

So. My Most Outrageous Marketing Suggestion: Relax. It doesn't matter who you are or how closely you orbit the bright, shining center of the publishing galaxy. Take a deep breath and slow down the pace on that 'seeking SEO' treadmill.

I know. I know. This runs counter to all of the panicked WEBSITE! BLOG!TWITTERFACEBOOKPINTERISTINSTATUMBwhatever the hell is next hysteria. Any number of people will espouse their preferred poison and tell you why their particular combo of social media blitzing is the must-have marketing snake oil du jour. Of course you can drink the snake oil if you want! Just approach it the way you'd hope to survive ingesting arsenic - in tiny initial doses.

No need to chug that stuff until you find out whether or not you even like the taste. Therein lies the kernel of madness in the method I suggest.

Dabble in all the things. Make it experimental. Play. Find out what's fun. You're going to find things that aren't. Guaranteed. The point to all of my relax advice boils down to what your mama's been telling you since you were in grade school: Be yourself. 

Wait. Let's tack another one there. Be yourself. AND: If it's not fun, don't do it.

Why?

Because if you aren't having fun, it shows as a lack of spark - passion. Where we lack passion, we lack conviction. Where we lack conviction, we hesitate. Common wisdom has it that he who hesitates is lost, ergo, if you lack passion for your social media/marketing schtick, you're lost. I offer my meager personal blogging attempts as graphic proof.

Thus, my brilliant, outrageous suggestion to relax. I'm not asking you to forego marketing completely. You shouldn't. But maybe reframe 'marketing'. Instead of thinking of elbowing your way out there into the world, consider inviting the rest of the world into your life for a cup of tea and a look around your version of reality. Do it because you're having fun, because you're being true to who and what you are.

One Book, Five Books, and A Metropolis

Regular patrons of the Word-Whores' Bordello know I've done laps in the soulless privacy-is-fantasy I-can-make-you-pay-for-shit-you-can-get-for-free bog of marketing. Once one drinks the triple-espresso with lemon twist, it never really leaves one's system. That disclaimer aside...

If you're writing fiction and have no book to sell, then my suggestion for the Most Outrageous Marketing Plan is:

FINISH THE DAMN BOOK

Then you can have a product to sell. Yes, yes, I know the school of thought that believes You are Selling You. And if you're a non-fiction writer, that's somewhat true. If you're a mid-list or debut novelist, You are secondary to Your Product. (That's not to say You can't destroy Your Product's value in one online rant, but that's another topic for another time.)

If you have less than FIVE books to sell, my advice is:

Publish FIVE Quality Stories

Why FIVE? Assorted sales studies reveal FIVE books are the necessary threshold to growing your audience. No, really, why FIVE? The human brain is weird, complex, and baffling. Aka, don't know, just is. Novels, novellas, whichever; but FIVE of them. Anthologies and magazines are wonderful for raising awareness about You but don't seem count toward the magical FIVE stories. Something about the solitary work hooks a very specific kind of reader ... the reader You The Marketer wants.

The Activist Core Audience (ACA)

Once you have your ACA, you have the very potent seeds of word-of-mouth direct marketing. Setting aside mind-control and stats that accurately link X ad to Y purchase, the Holy Grail of marketing is word-of-mouth direct marketing, aka viral marketing. It is the most effective and least costly means of getting a consumer to buy your product. Consumers are so accustomed to the barrage of Buy This in everything they see and hear that they're inured to traditional ad placements. Ads are progressively annoying because they have to work harder to grab attention.

Your ACA is your means of bypassing all the noise and getting to the audience most likely to buy your book. Audience --> Consumer --> Purchaser is the refinement of  the people you want, the people who are going to pay for your works. The ACA is the audience you need to cut straight to the Purchasers. (Not that You The Author doesn't love readers who get your books from the library or borrow the books from friends; however, You The Mortgage Payer needs the income from Purchasers.)

The Most Outrageous (Yet Effective) Marketing Ploy For The Not-Yet-Famous I've ever heard involves free books, a ball-point pen, a metropolis, and one determined author. Parts of this story may have fallen into the realm of Urban Legend, but the root value remains.

Reading Harper's Magazine on a Train: Vintage Ad

Determined Author took fifty copies of her book and inscribed inside each one something to the effect of: This is a free book. Please read it then and pass it on. If you like it, buy a copy or buy the sequel. Next, she placed the books in random locations throughout NYC -- subway trains, park bench, pub chair, etc. Many of those books sprouted legs, gathering all sorts of ACA from unexpected demographics. Within weeks DA's books -- yes, books plural-- hit the Best Seller lists, courtesy of her ACA.

Part of what makes this story memorable is that it defied conventional marketing rules of targeting audiences by filtered demographics for distribution while removing every barrier to consumption by placing the book in the readers' hands. The reader didn't have to download anything, didn't have to go to a storefront or a signing, didn't have to have a coupon or mail-in rebate. They weren't pre-sorted based on education, previous purchases, age, or ethnicity. The only refinement was location.

Book-In-Hands. Simple. Effective. Distributed by the ACA.

What DA did is different from how most authors and publishers use ARCs. Afterall, ARCs are typically distributed to reviewers with an established audience. There's a known estimated Return on Investment. DA wasn't backed by a publisher, so there were no ARCs. Instead, DA took her marketing budget and used it on a direct-to-consumer plan. Will it work for all of us? Probably not. But it does prove that small innovative efforts can make a huge difference.

So, dear readers, if you could do a small-scale marketing blast in your city, what would you do? For those of you who have done it, what did you do?

Most Effective Marketing for the Pre-Published Writer

This is me and the lovely, sadly former, Word Whore at the Kensington Author Cocktail Party at the Romance Writers of America (RWA) National Conference a few weeks ago. Amusingly, James Tuck, another former Word Whore was also in attendance, but I didn't get a pic with him. Too bad, because he's got to be twice my size - it would have been a funny photo. At any rate, it was practically a Word Whores conclave and, as we all know that the Word Whores have exceptionally high standards for wit, insight and sheer ballsyness (yes, that's a word, Blogger), that makes for great conversation.

At any rate, this week’s topic is Word On the Street: Most Outrageous (Yet Effective!) Marketing Plan For The Not-Yet Famous. Since there’s an exclamation point in this, I feel quite certain Carolyn suggested this topic, before she had to move on to less busy pastures. For some reason, when I first read this topic, to mull over my take on it, I understood it as “not yet published.” I see now that it’s “not-yet famous,” which is, um, pretty much every damn one of us who isn’t Stephen King, Stephenie Meyer or J.K. Rowling.

But that’s neither here nor there and I shall let my fellow whores weigh in on their takes.

I’m running with the “not-yet-published” aspect, not just because that’s what I mentally prepared, but because I think I have good advice.

Of course, I always think that.

My advice even counts as outrageous, because I think it’s something that doesn’t occur to most people:
Volunteer to be President of your local or special interest writing chapter.

Seriously.

Now, maybe this advice is tailored more for the romance writers, because RWA has local and special interest (read: online) chapters. Organizations like Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), while they have informal regional gatherings, don’t have chapters in the same way. Even if they did, SFWA doesn’t embrace the pre-published authors in the same way as RWA does, so the point is pretty much moot.
So, here’s my story. Back in the day (2008), when I was shopping the book that became Rogue’s Pawn, I joined RWA for one reason and one reason only – so I could attend the RWA National Conference and personally pitch to an agent and editor. I was naïve enough then that I truly believed that this was all I needed to do to sell my book.

(Yeah, you can take a moment to shake your heads sadly.)

I knew Not One Person there and, after I pitched and got my requests, I celebrated at the bar by myself with a glass of champagne. Sad and pitiful, I know. But I felt okay about it because I knew the agent and editor would read my manuscript, offer me a lucrative, multi-book contract. Then, I figured, I’d return to the conference the next summer – because the enormously high quality of the key-note and awards ceremony speeches, along with the workshops and panels had so impressed me – as a legit romance author and make friends then.

It could have been the champagne.

Of course, we all know how this story turned out. Both the agent and editor, to my astonishment, passed on the book. At loose ends, I took a couple of online workshops (I lived in the wilds of Wyoming at the time) and looked for help. One gal suggested I join the Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal (FFP) special interest chapter (online, naturally), for advice and support. Best advice ever.

Shortly after I joined up, calls went out for a new board. No one stepped up to be President and the pleas for a volunteer grew increasingly strident. I finally said, hey, total newbie here, but I’m willing, and they snapped up my offer with scary speed. I ended up serving two years as Prez of FFP and I still sit in on board meetings as Past President, for continuity.

The astonishing part was when I attended the RT Booklovers Convention the following spring and then the next RWA Conference. Suddenly, everyone knew who I was! The published members of FFP hugged me on sight, took me under their wings and introduced me to their agents and editors. They, and other agents and editors, took me more seriously. When I pitched, we started out talking about FFP and what the chapter did. Serving on that board gave me an entrée that I’d lacked the previous year. I met my first critique partners (CPs) through FFP, several of whom are still my CPs and good friends today.

Even now, some of my best connections are ones I made by serving as President of that chapter. Because I gave to them, all those wonderful people wanted to give back to me.

And it’s made all the difference.

Oh Go Scrooge Yourself: The Holiday Plot

The holidays. The Holy days. They span the year. They are common to all faiths even though their tenets vary. The more wide-spread the faith, the more abundant the available pockets and the more rampant the exploitation.

Bah! Humbug.

Yes, I am one who sees the Mighty Holiday Marketing Machine behind 80% of holiday-centric stories. Yes, publishers are among the businesses powering the machine. The calls for Christmas submissions, the profusion of Valentine anthologies; heck, even Halloween and Easter releases make my cynical eye twitch.


I'll admit, being a Scrooge on the topic of using holidays as a plot device is partially due to my utter lack of interest in contemporary books. While I love historicals, I'll avoid the ones in which a notable religious holiday is centric to the plot.

The exception to my disdain? Samhain.

Wha? hypocrisy? Moi? I'll read a contemporary if it has a unique and heavy paranormal element. The holiday many authors of paranormals use as plot device? Samhain. Perhaps Samhain's reference is so pervasive in specific contemporary sub-genres, the publishers don't hold their releases for the actual holiday. Perhaps it is because many authors focus more on the magical/mystical and less on the religion supporting the holy day, that Samhain books aren't driven by the Mighty Holiday Marketing Machine. Perhaps now that Paranormal and Urban Fantasies are no longer the darling sub-genres of publishing (casts a wary eye at "New Adult"); anything referencing the holy day is bound to the sub-genre rather than ascending it.

Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.

Whatever the reason, whichever the holiday, I'd rather read about grumpkins and hobbits. You can keep the candy-hearts and the mistletoe. 

What about you, dear reader? Are there holiday-themed books to which you are attracted? Are there holiday-themed books you avoid?

Using the Holidays as a Plot Device - from Perky to Perfect

The new weekly theme asks if holidays make for a useful plot device or if they're just a marketing scheme.

Ironically enough, before last night, I would have answered this question differently.

See, I've never been much for "holiday stories." I read a Christmas romance a while back, that a friend gave me, and just *hated* it. Worse, I was trapped on an airplane with nothing else to read - ah, those dark, deprived days before e-readers let us carry huge numbers of books around! - so I read the whole thing. It was about a woman who loves Christmas - she may even have been and elf and I'm pretty sure her name was Holly - who meets this widower with two kids. He's all depressed and the kids are bummed because he's Scroogey. You can guess what happens - she brings Christmas joy into their lives and the two fall in love, sealing it with a Christmas kiss.

Blergh.

Now, to be fair - my friend gave it to me because she loved it. And I know there are plenty of readers out there who are perfectly happy ending with a chaste kiss. That's my own particular parade, that a single, sweet kiss doesn't seal the deal for me. But the rest? Yeah, I totally see that as marketing cash in. As much as I'm a personal fan of the baking and decorating and gift-giving, I know full well that for people who don't enjoy the holidays, dragging them kicking and screaming into it doesn't help anyone.

I've also never written a holiday story. Much as I enjoy the holidays, and as much as I can usually spin a story on most any topic, I just have never seen my way into that kind of story. Every time I try, I think about Holly in all her sprightly perkitude and throw up a little in my mouth.

Not the image we want.

But then, last night, I read Anne Calhoun's story in the Red Hot Holidays anthology from Carina. I confess I read the anthology mainly as research - since I don't read holiday stuff for fun, ever since the Holly Incident - because I'm contemplating something for next year's anthology. Her story, Breath on Embers, had me in tears by the end.

In that story, she took the enormity of holiday pain and used it. The heroine is a woman who lost her husband just before Christmas and her grief is killing her. She avoids everything that smacks of Christmas and seeks out sex to distract herself from the pain. It's hot and erotic sex, yes, but the hero reaches a point where he won't let her use him anymore. He reaches her emotionally through the intimacy of the sex they share. It's powerful and moving and everything a really good erotic story can be.

And it wouldn't have been the same without accessing that very real suffering so many feel during the holidays.

It may have helped that the hero is a brawny fireman and not a perky elf.

Just saying.

Now I'm off to write my story for next year. Though how I'll match what Anne accomplished, I have no idea.