Tag Archives: advice for writers

Guest Blog Post at Candysraves.com

I’m trilled to have a guest blog up at Candysraves.com today! It is an interview with me about being a writer and “Why Kimba Saved The World.” You can see the interview at Candysraves.com, or it is copied below as well. Thank you, Candy, for helping to get the word out about “Kimba!”

Guest Post by Meg Welch Dendler, Author of Why Kimba Saved the World

Tell us about yourself…

I spent 15 years working with young children, 10 of those as a classroom teacher. I have been writing since I was a little girl and have always wanted to be a full-time author. For many years I did freelance work while I was teaching and raising my daughters. Now writing has my full attention.

What genera do you write and why?

My current series is for middle grade readers, roughly ages 8-12. That is an age group that I really loved working with as a teacher, and this story was perfect for sharing with them. But I will freely admit that I have lots of adults who love the book and read it right along with their kids.

Tell us about your book…

“Why Kimba Saved The World” is about a pampered house cat who wishes she could be wilder and have more freedom, until she suddenly learns that she is really part of an alien race and has a whole huge destiny and big adventures expected of her. It’s exciting at first, but she has some life-changing choices to make about what is important and where her loyalties lie.

What was your inspiration for this book?

The main character is based on one of the cats in our house, Kimba. I had grown up with the idea that cats might just be aliens — my mom read lots of science fiction — so it wasn’t much of a stretch to wonder if that was true of Kimba too. Later books in the series will focus on different characters and how each deals with their own challenges in coming to terms with their alien heritage.

Do you have a favorite character and why that one?

Kimba is definitely my favorite because she is based on the real cat that is mine out of the clowder of cats we have at home. When we found Kimba and her sister Hiro at only a day or so old, we already had four cats. That’s a lot of cats! Kimba is just wild and crazy and totally nutty and an independent cat. She’s my favorite. As I write this, she is sleeping on a chair next to me in a pile of stuffed toys. She’s a real character. The cat on the cover of the book is an actual photo of her.

Did you find anything particularly difficult in writing this book?

When I first started writing it, I hoped to have something for an even younger age group — very early readers. But that is limiting for the vocabulary you can use, the length of the story, and technical things like that. As it progressed, I just knew I had to kick it up a notch and hope that those younger kids who are still developing their reading skills will have someone who is willing to read it aloud to them.

What project(s) are you currently working on?

Right now, I am very focused on writing the second book in the series, “Vacation Hiro.” I really want to have that published next spring so I can take both books with me to the fairs and festival in 2014. That is one of the great things about self-publishing. Once you have the text ready to go, getting it into print format can be done in a couple of months.

Right after that, I will be publishing an unrelated book called “At The Corner of Magnetic and Main” that is for a bit older reader and follows the spiritual journey of a young woman who is having trouble moving on from her life here on earth to what lies ahead. That manuscript is in the hands of some much trusted friends and colleagues right now for their feedback and critique.

Do you have any interesting writing quirks you want to tell us about?

I will freely admit to being quirky. I think most writers are! Writing a first draft is hard for me. Just getting it out of my head and onto the paper for some reason is very frustrating. So I reward myself with breaks. If I write a chapter or a certain amount of words, then I can take a break for 10 minutes and play Zoo World on Facebook, or something like that. My office is also filled with my collection of Disney mini-plush characters. I have about 75 of them right now. They watch me write, and that makes me very happy. Kimba has pulled 10 of them down onto her special chair today for her nap. I don’t mind sharing them with her.

Do you have any advice for writers out there?

Write, and then write some more. If you have a book in your head, go for it! But also be sure to get input from people around you that you respect. Join a critique group. Go to conferences. Sometimes I get the best idea on how to tweak a story or “bling” it up some just by listening to others talk about their work. And pay an editor if you are self-publishing. Pay someone to help you make the best cover you can. If it doesn’t look professional in the end, it won’t matter how good your story is. Make it great!

Where can we find you?

My website and my blog are at www.megdendler.com. I am on Twitter @kimbababy and on Facebook at Meg Dendler, Author (there’s a link at my website). You can sign up to follow my blog and get my newsletter. I’m also active on Goodreads and have a YouTube channel with fun videos. I’m in production right now on a series of videos where I read “Why Kimba Saved The World” aloud one chapter at a time and will share fun photos and “behind the scenes” stories. That should be up soon.

And of course we have to know, where can we find your book?

“Why Kimba Saved The World” is available in paperback and ebook through Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com. You can also get signed paperback copies directly from me through PayPal right at my web site. I’m happy to personalize it and add a matching bookmark just for fun.

About the Author:
Meg Welch Dendler is a former teacher with a Master’s Degree in Early Childhood Education. While over a decade as a freelance writer gave her the chance to interview individuals as diverse as the Archbishop of Cape Town and Sylvester Stallone, in 2010 Meg set her focus on publishing several books for young readers that she had been working on for years. Meg is thrilled to be sharing her first book, “Why Kimba Saved The World,” with young readers worldwide. In this first book of the Cats in the Mirror series, feisty house cat Kimba learns that she is really part of an alien race and has to pick sides between her loyal human family and her feline destiny. The second book, “Vacation Hiro,” is already in the works. Meg and her family (including four cats and her dog Max) live at 1,400 feet in the Ozark mountains on what they call Serenity Mountain, just outside of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Visit her at www.megdendler.com for more information about upcoming books and events.

The Book Reviews Game

Now that “Why Kimba Saved The World” is settling into the business of getting noticed and sold, I am forced to enter into a whole new world of self-promotion. Normally, whatever publishing house bought your book would take care of all of this nonsense. It would tell you where to show up for a book signing or event and make all the calls and connections for you. Self-published authors have to pay for this service or do it themselves. Paying for promotional work is very pricey (and rightly so, it’s nasty, time-consuming work). Promoting and selling a self-published book can feel like one big game, and it sort of is. Knowing how to play is the key. Thank goodness I have a degree in Public Relations.

Back in the late 80’s when I completed that degree, the game was very different. It was more about working for big corporations and writing press releases to help promote or cover up something. By the time I was in my last year, I knew I didn’t really want to do that for a living. It was just a core group of classes that I really enjoyed. Lots of English, Journalism, Creative Writing, and Technical Writing. I never worked a day as a publicist (I went back to school to earn a teaching degree), and I never thought I would. Until now.

Most afternoons when I sit down at my computer to face the challenge of how to get my book noticed and appreciated, I hear Queen singing “Play The Game” in my head. It is a very elaborate game, so I’m grateful for the generous spirits along the way who share their advice freely. I have links to them in my blog roll already, but I should give a shout out to Katie Davis and Joanna Penn. Both of them offer lots of products and seminars and blogcasts you can purchase for in-depth information, but they are also free with the freebies. If you are in the same boat as me and need to know how to play this book promotion game on your own for as little cost as possible, start with these two women. They will give you enough fodder to stay busy for many months. I have never met either of them and have no vested interest in whether or not you purchase their products. I just highly recommend them.

My current game is to get book reviews. This is VITAL if you want to play the amazon.com rank and algorithm game. No one knows exactly how it all works, and they seem to be changing the game from month to month so you must stay up to date on what they like and don’t like, but the big #1 whammy to get better rankings is reviews. They don’t even have to be fantastic reviews. It seems to be very much about quantity and who those reviews are from. My first target was the top 1,000 ranked reviewers at amazon.com. Yes, it was a lengthy process, but I made sure that anyone I was in contact with was willing to review children’s books. In the end, out of 1,000 I made contact with 28 of them. Three responded and agreed to be sent a copy and do a review. I’m not sure if that is a great percentage or not. It does not feel like a home run, but it’s something.

Now on the agenda is getting in touch with bloggers who do book reviews. Again, I’ve taken a big list from a web site, narrowed it down to potentials, and now I am going through one site at a time. Sometimes it is immediately clear that the site would be a bad fit. Books on vampires or romance novels (or worse) filling the pages are a good hint. Out of the first 30, I’ve send requests to 7. One has responded enthusiastically and already has the epub file to review. Many times you just submit an author interview format which may or may not be posted. We shall see where that all leads. It’s not an amazon review, but it’s web traffic and may lead to more later.

It’s a game. It is not for the timid or the part-timer. Self-publishing allows for wonderful opportunities for so many people to get their books out into the world. Getting them into people’s hands is a different matter altogether. So I get up every day, write my 1,000 words on “Vacation Hiro,” and then I spend a few hours playing the game of finding an audience for my first soul book baby in a vast sea of children’s books. But this game is just the opposite of “War Games” — if you don’t play, you can’t win. So onward I go.

And here’s a fun Kimba picture because everyone loves cute cat pictures.

Kimba Napping With Mickey Mouse

If you are just getting started with a children’s book promotion, I highly recommend “How To Promote Your Children’s Book,” by Katie Davis. I have not even made it through all of The Creative Penn’s free blogs and audios, but I’m sure her stuff is great too.

Writing (or Procrastinating?) the Sequel

For the month of April, all other writing work is being set aside so I can give my full attention to Book 2 in the Cats in the Mirror series, “Vacation Hiro.” This time Hiro takes the lead and gets mixed up with the alien cats in the mirror. Those rascals have found just the right way to play on her emotions and sway her to their side of things — at least for a while.

I must admit, for me personally as a writer, the first draft is the most painful and wrenching process. I have read over and over that many authors feel this way. Once I get that first draft done and start elaborating and adding on and editing, I am in heaven, but putting it all down for the first time is laborious. It doesn’t matter how detailed my notes are. I can know exactly where I want the next chapter to go, but I still have to set a timer when I sit down at the computer to make sure I stay on task for a set amount of time and get it done. An expert at this type of stalling might even say that taking the time to write this blog post is a perfect example of doing something else very important-seeming instead of writing another chapter. I am generally not a procrastinator, except about the laundry, but I can get very busy doing all kinds of work other than the next chapter with very little problem at all.

But I promise to be diligent. My husband, Scott, will keep me on track. This is his baby’s book, after all. And I have a stack of notes for Book 3 that can only be tackled once I know exactly where Book 2 will end up. So I push onward. My hope is that next spring when I hit the festivals and art fairs in town I will have both Kimba and Hiro’s books to sell. That is the joy of self-publishing. Once you have the text ready to go, the rest of the process can be completed in a couple of months. No one can put that text together but me, so I’ll get back to it. You’ll never guess who is waiting in the mirror for Hiro in the next chapter. So excited!!

But wait. Is that the dryer I hear buzzing…?

Hiro is dreaming of a book about her on the computer.

Book Trailer!

Click on the photo to watch the book trailer on YouTube.

It used to be enough to just write a great book and sell it and hope folks liked it. Times have changed! As a self-published author, not only is it up to me to make sure the book itself looks great and is well edited (and I’m grateful for the great team who helped me do that), but I’m also responsible for what seems like hundreds of social media decisions and constant updates. Twitter, Facebook, an Amazon author page, Goodreads, Google, a YouTube channel…the list could go on and on, but so far I have stopped with those. My latest adventure has been creating a “book trailer,“ which is the new must-do thing. I’m not sure if it actually helps to sell books, but especially when dealing with Kit Lit you never want to overlook a way to connect visually.

I’m very grateful that I already have a basic knowledge of how to use Windows Movie Maker and have been through many sessions of vocal and voice training (not to mention drama classes). As a family, we are quite addicted to taking pictures of our beloved Kimba, so I had many to select from. The photo I used for “Regalus” is one I found on the internet when I was writing the book. “There he is,” I thought, so it seemed right to share what he looks like in my mind’s-eye. If you imagine him even scarier, go for it. He’s not an earth cat, so he would be much more impressive than anything we have here.

Comparing what I came up with to many others out there, I think I pulled it off. Clearly, I did not pay $10,000 for a professionally created video. How many books would I have to sell to cover that cost?! But I do think it gets the message across: here’s a cute book about a cat who finds out she is more than just a house cat and has to decide what to do and how to act on this new life-changing information.

I hope you enjoy the video book trailer and will share it widely with everyone on your various social media lists. You never know who might end up watching. “Why Kimba Saved The World” is just Book 1. There is MUCH more to come.

Lesson 1: Pick Your Events Carefully

Well, for my first time out, things went pretty well. I wanted to support a local business and get “Why Kimba Saved The World” in front of as many people as possible, so I set up a table at a local fundraising event. The problem is: a children’s book of any kind was not a great fit for the event. I suspected as much from the beginning, but it still seemed worth a try. And it was free. In the larger scheme of things, the whole event was fairly disorganized and put together in haste. Those in charge where happy to admit it. Not a lot of advertising was done either. The best of intentions often come up short. It wasn’t a complete waste of time, though, because I spent many hours with some delightful women who also found themselves with not much else to do but chat with fellow vendors. I made a great contact for the local business that my husband and I run. I sold a few copies of “Kimba” to women who were thrilled to get it. But I also learned that it is okay to be selective on where I chose to spend my time. Something billed as a giant yard sale is not going to be as successful for me as I anticipate next Friday night’s circus themed activities in Basin Park will be. I mean, a bunch of kids coming to party should be a captive and interested audience. Right? I’ll let you know next weekend. If nothing else, my daughter should have a great time decorating my booth.