Heather's Blog

I guess I can officially say that I’ve hit the big times! (Or at least a version of the big times anyway, lol). I’ve made it to the USA Today Bestsellers List.
At #91 with The Spell and #121 with The Heat!

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/usatodaybooks.pdf
www.usatoday.com

I got my first chance at an interview yesterday (for writing, anyway) and I’m so proud! For a gander at the actual interview, on site, visit: http://www.darrellpitt.com/
I’ve also copied the interview and pasted it below. 🙂

Heather Killough-Walden April 1, 2011
Interview with Darrell Pitt, “1001 Secrets of Successful Writers”

What made you want to become a writer in the first place?

I suppose the writing, itself, is what made me become a writer. I learned to read at what is considered a very young age, and the ability to write came clinging to its coat tails. I’ve never been good at spoken communication; I get nervous, fumble over my speech, and suffer from horrible foot-in-mouth disease. As a result, I realized early on that if I wanted to communicate effectively, I would need time to think before I spoke. What gives you more time to think about what you’re going to say than writing it down? By the time you’ve put your thoughts into words, they’re more or less edited. It’s the safer bet.

So, I guess that at first, writing was a survival trait for me in that it allowed me to express myself. Later, it became a survival trait for a different reason. I didn’t have the easiest upbringing. My family had its fair share of problems (and still does). When things get bad enough, you need to leave. As a child, your only options are to run away from home – or to find another way to escape. Existentially, so to speak.

I used my writing as a bridge between this world and one that wasn’t quite so painful. This other world was of my design. I drew its landscape, colored its people, gave it depth and dimension. It was filled with beings who were larger than life and indomitable because that was what I wanted to be. They could defend themselves, stick up for others, and even defy gravity to literally leave their troubles on the ground.

I almost flunked out of high school because of this other world. LOL Instead of paying attention in pre-calculus, I sat scrunched in my desk and furiously scribbled stories about vampire and werewolf gangs clashing on a deserted, bon-fire lit beach. I suppose that in the end, those stories did have more to do with my career choice than did exponential functions and logarithms.

What’s a typical day of writing like for you?

I wake up to writing and I fall asleep to writing. There is a quote by Eugene Ionesco that I keep on the front page of my website: A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing. That couldn’t be more true. The moment I wake up, I use mouthwash. Then, while my daughter is still asleep and before hitting breakfast or even a cup of coffee, I am at my computer, responding to personal feedback from readers. I love that feedback. It keeps me going. For me, it’s a better start to the morning than Belgian waffles with strawberries and loads of whipped cream.

My daughter normally wakes up somewhere in the middle of this and I rush to fix her breakfast, give her a bath, get her dressed, and prepare her for a tutor (she’s home schooled). When the tutor arrives, I get back to work on any one of the seven novels I am currently writing and on the administrative work that comes with keeping up some kind of presence in the literary world. I hit the Facebook messages, blogs, sales copy, cover copy, synopses, edits, more edits, and so forth with all I’ve got.

Somewhere in there, I manage to do the laundry, vacuum, take out the trash, clean the bathrooms, and make phone calls for doctor’s appointments, hair appointments, and dental appointments. All the while, however, I’m noticing people and places and music and movement and cataloguing everything around me for use in my books. Sometimes I’m doing the cataloguing in a literal sense – writing notes in a small leather-bound notebook I carry with me everywhere I go. Several hours later, tutors leave and it’s my turn with my daughter again until my husband comes home.

Once he does, it’s a quick kiss, a very fast catch-up conversation, and I’m back to work. I normally write long into the night hours. Family is important (obviously), so I try my best to make time for them every night. We sit together for an hour and read from the Kindle; Terry Pratchett, Wendy Mass, Frances Hardinge and the Monk series by Lee Goldberg are some of our favorites. But I’ll be honest with you…a lot of the time, as we’re reading, my thoughts are drifting to my own stories. I have always (and most likely always will) existed half in this world and half in that other. It is both an escape and an inescapable prison, perhaps gold gilded, but a prison nonetheless, And, as soon as both my husband and my child are back in bed, I’m once more seated before the computer, my fingers flying across the keyboard. If not there, then I’m tucked into the couch with throws all around me like a nest, a leather journal in my lap, the quiet night air filled with the sound of my pen scratching and the next door neighbor’s dog barking at god only knows what.

At some point, I fall asleep. But even in my dreams, I’m writing. Almost the entirety of The Game came to me in a dream, as did the lead characters in The Patrick Sinclaire Story, The Third Kiss, and Sam I Am, along with the plot for Hell Bent.

And then, four or five hours later, I wake up and do it all again.

You have a number of series for sale as well as a number of stand alone novels. Would you recommend a new writer start trying to produce a series?

I recommend that a new writer write what he or she knows and what he or she is comfortable writing. If that’s a stand-alone novel, then fantastic. If it’s the first novel in a series, then also fantastic – but be prepared. If the book sells well, it means you actually have to write the next books in the series. There’s no going back. LOL

Writers have to stick with what they know and what they are passionate about. Whether this turns out to be a paranormal romance series or a single thriller, if it is filled with passion and knowledge, it will be wonderful and people will read it.

What marketing tools do you use to promote yourself e.g. magazine advertising, Facebook, direct email?

At first, I honestly didn’t use anything but the books and their sales blurbs on Amazon to promote sales. Once the books began to sell of their own accord, I developed a fan base and created a monthly newsletter. Readers can sign up for that newsletter and be notified about upcoming releases, whether in epub or print publication format.

I also have a Facebook page, but it isn’t the strict “fan” page that most writers have; it’s just my page. I friend readers and love to communicate with them there. I’m not sure whether much marketing gets done on that page, as a result, but it is a nice place to post updates and notices. I have a website as well. Some small amount of marketing does go on there.

As far as print publications are concerned, I’m sure the publishers/editors I’m contracting with have their own plan for marketing.

Most of your books are selling for the grand total of $1. What’s your reasoning behind this strategy?

This is going to sound a little cheesy, but the truth of the matter is, I just want people to read my work. For a while, I was giving stories away for free by posting them on a site that recently closed down (the owners were just too busy to keep it up).

When Amazon Kindle publishing came along, it felt like a godsend. Before Kindle, there really wasn’t an effective way to get books out to the masses without going to print publication. I had tried for ten years to get an agent, with no success. Publishers almost never want unsolicited work any longer. There is a bottleneck through agents that is absolutely excruciating to someone like me, who just wants to share their words. I have more than three hundred rejection letters in my closet. No joke.

And then (angelic, heavenly music here) – Amazon. I posted a few books and they shot to the top in their genres, at last prompting an agent to call me. I couldn’t believe it.

But I retain the $1 price for several reasons. As I’ve said, I want people to read my work and let’s face it, this is a depressed economy. People can barely afford housing and food. I want my writing to give to them what it has always given me: Escape. If they can’t afford it, it isn’t much of an escape.

I also tend to believe that once you take away the cost of printing and distribution, there’s not a lot left to the cost of creating a book. The author should get paid because it is her imagination and her creative ability through which the book is produced. The publisher should get paid because they provide the platform through which the author can share her work with the world. Other than that? Middle men are eliminated, and so should be most of the price.

What advice would you have for someone trying to succeed as a writer?

I’ll borrow a page from Winston Churchill on this one:
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty. Never give in….”
Of course, if I’m talking to a writer, then I’m preaching to the choir, because a writer has no choice. Words are what we’re made of. We’ll write them until the day we die – and even then, we’ll probably write our own epitaphs before we wink out for good.

Wow! The Heat brought in $5,000 to donate to the American Red Cross for Japan Relief. Thank you to everyone who helped make this possible. We’re making a difference. 🙂

I’m a firm believer in the idea that if you give your word you will do something – you should do it.

Telling someone that you’ll do something is no different than making a promise to the same effect. “I will do this,” leads the other person to make a choice between two decisions: Either they will believe you or they won’t.

If they don’t believe you, it’s either because what you promise is impossible or because you’re a liar and they know it. In the former instance, you shouldn’t be making the promise in the first place. In the latter, well that’s just sad, because obviously you have already broken your word many times and they’re on to you.

However, if they do believe you, then they have placed their trust in you. And that’s an incredibly powerful and responsible position to be in.

When my daughter gets a cut on her finger and I tell her it is going to heal, it’s very important that she believe me. If she believes me, then her fear will ebb and in my experience, fear is the worst part of pain. Once it’s gone, the pain often becomes bearable. Obviously, I don’t want my daughter to be in pain, so I need to foster a trust in her in order to ensure that she believe me when I tell her everything is going to be all right. If I tell her I am going to do something, I do it. Otherwise, the next time I make a promise to her, my highly intelligent daughter will dramatically roll her eyes and mumble, “Right, of course you will,” before she walks away shaking her head.

To have a person’s trust is to have power. Abuse the power and you lose the power. And then you’re nothing but a mistrusted liar in a world full of people who know you for what you are. That’s neither a powerful nor a responsible position to be in. It’s just a lonely one.

So, last night, the moon was closer to the earth than it will be all year and, in fact, something like eighteen years. It was also full. I got the most beautiful pictures of it at around two in the morning.

Then for a few precious hours, my book, The Spell, actually claimed the #1 Best selling romance spot on Amazon. Way awesome. I couldn’t stop jumping up and down for about three hours and didn’t get to bed until five.

Then some wonderful, wonderful people came forward and posted positive reviews for my books. This always makes me smile and never fails to brighten my mood. I love my kind reviewers. 🙂

And then, this morning, after coughing through about seven months with no measurable rain – I woke up to the sound of thunder.

Pretty cool. 🙂 I’m liking this day.

When I was little, my mother used to put green food coloring in the milk every Saint Patrick’s Day. I wonder if that’s why I can’t drink milk now….

😉

Happy St. Patty’s Day! If you’re not wearing green, consider yourself virtually pinched! (but not hard)

Any and all money I personally make off of sales of The Heat between March 16th and March 31st, 2011 will be donated to the American Red Cross for Japan Relief. So, if you’ve been thinking of reading The Heat and haven’t yet purchased it – now would be the time to do so.

I bet you buy things off of Amazon based on the reviews it gets, right? Most of us do. Almost all of us. And yet, only one buyer in about a thousand actually posts a review about their purchase. Half of those are negative. Those aren’t good numbers, people.

Let’s try to turn them around.

It’s so easy. It takes almost no effort or time. And it not only helps other buyers – it helps the person selling more than you can imagine. In the case of self-publishers, I can tell you that it very literally means everything.

Please review. Especially if you’re happy with a purchase.

It’s fine if you want to write to me personally to tell me that you like my work. Believe me, I love that. But…

PLEASE. REVIEW.

I’ve noticed that people in the computer industry tend to believe that everyone who is not in the computer industry is of a slightly less intelligent caliber. Never mind that it’s simply another profession – like any – and that there will be those who excel at it and those who very certainly do NOT. I don’t see dog trainers asking computer programmers to make Fido sit. I highly doubt that Mr. Pilot would hand the cockpit over to Mr. Linux and insist that every bird has to learn to fly at some point. I think it would be highly entertaining to watch some of these guys attempt to teach a yoga class. Or dance a ballet. Or plant a garden.

So, what gives? Why must they insist that we stop doing what we do best in order to create our own websites or try out every bleeding edge app on the market? Why is it that so many computer programmers have such a hard time accepting that it takes different kinds of minds to run our world?

I’ve come to the decision that the next time a computer programmer gives me a hard time for finding it difficult to do something involving html, remote access servers, file transfer protocols, link exchanges, Semaphores, system operators, page rankings or Flash, I am simply going to take a deep breath. Then I am going to turn to said computer programmer and say,

“Tell you what. You write a best selling 400 page paranormal romance with a scorchingly hot sex scene that does not mention the heroine’s ginormous bonkers even once, and I’ll give it a real go with this computer crap.”