Supporting an Author You Love

by Jaden Terrell

I've been reading Chester Campbell's new thriller, POKSU, and wondering why this guy is not selling hundreds of thousands of his books. I have the same thought when I read something by Timothy Hallinan or some other lesser-known author whose work blows me away. (That includes you, my fellow Murderous Musings contributors.)

We all know there's a handful of authors who need no help in the promotion department because everyone already knows who they are. James Patterson. J.K. Rowling. For most, though, the key to growing a readership is word-of-mouth. No one buys a book they don’t know exists. But with more than two hundred thousand new books launched this year, getting the word out is a challenge.

So how can you help create buzz for an author whose work you love? Let's call her Sally Wimpleton, and let's say she's written a novel called The Garden Gnome Murders. (Sheesh, now I want to write that!) 

1. Ask your local librarian to order The Garden Gnome Murders by Sally Wimpleton.

2. Post a review on Amazon, B&N, Goodreads, Shelfari, or other sites that allow reader reviews.

3. Click the “Like” button the B&N and Amazon pages for The Garden Gnome Murders and for Sally's author page, if she has one. On Amazon, the hardback, Kindle, and audio versions must all be “liked” separately.

4. Make one or more appropriate Amazon lists and add The Garden Gnome Murders to the list(s). Goodreads also has a list function now.

5. “Like” Sally Wimpleton's Facebook page and help keep the discussion there rolling. Invite others to “like” the page and participate as well.

6. Spread the word on your social networking sites, like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. Retweet Sally's tweets, share her relevant Facebook posts, etc.

7. Recommend the books to all your friends and family members who enjoy the kind of books Sally writes.

8. If you’re in a book club that reads mysteries and is open to author visits, ask if they would like Sally to come and speak to the group (or Skype with them).

9. If Sally has a website with links, articles, or other content readers might like, visit it often and encourage others to do the same. (If she has a newsletter, sign up for that and encourage your friends to sign up too.)

10. If you know people who acquire books for airports, Walmart, Sam’s, Costco, Target, K-Mart, etc., tell them about The Garden Gnome Murders.

11. If you know people in other countries where Sally's book has been translated, let them know about the translation. 

12. If you know a major motion picture director or producer, or any big-name actor who might like to play one of the roles, steer him or her toward the book. Who wouldn't want to see a movie about Garden Gnomes? And Murder?

13. When you order your copy of The Garden Gnome Murders, order another mystery by a well-known author in a similar genre. That gets Sally on the “people who bought x also bought y” list.

Can you think of other ways to help draw attention to a favorite author?

*Note: Sally Wimpleton and The Garden Gnome Murders are fictional creations. Any resemblance to real people or novels, living or dead,is purely coincidental.

The Villain! Who, Me?

By Beth Terrell

I've been thinking about villains today, and one thing that really stands out to me is this: hardly anyone thinks he is one. Take Darth Vader. He's not out there thinking, "This is me, being the villain." He's thinking, "This is me, helping build an empire while getting even with all those jerks who didn't appreciate me back when I was a Jedi."

Or take Voldemort, the over-arching villain in J.K. Rowling's best-selling series about Harry Potter. Voldemort doesn't believe he's evil. Heck, he doesn't even believe in evil. He believes he's entitled, superior, and above all, wronged. He's just taking what's rightfully his. The Harry Potter books are chock full of villains who don't believe they're villains. Lucius Malfoy thinks he's preserving the purity of the pure-blood mages from the coarse Mud-Bloods. Toad-faced Dolores Umbridge (in my opinion, one of the most horrifying villains ever written) doesn't see herself in the black-hat role. She's standing up for order and tradition, defending the Ministry of Magic against the forces of anarchy. And you can bet that Harry Potter is not the hero of their stories. In Voldemort's mind, he's the hero. In Dolores Umbridge's mind, she is.

Of course, technically, the main character is the protagonist, who may or may not really be a hero. And the antagonist is anyone who stands between the protagonist and his or her goal, regardless of his morality. He may be a perfectly nice guy who wants to drain the marshland for perfectly good reasons. But in a mystery, the villain is usually a true villain, meaning his or her motive is generally a selfish one. I don't mean he or she has no redeeming qualities, only that the murderer in a mystery very rarely acts for altruistic or noble purposes - except maybe in his or her own mind.

So how do you make an effective villain? It's no good to make a Snidely Whiplash-style villain who twirls his curly moustache and thinks of wicked ways to kidnap the girl and foil the hero. This type of two-dimensional (or even one-dimensional) evil is rarely effective. Nor does it help much to show Snidely patting a stray dog on the head on his way to foreclose on a house he doesn't even need. Such tacked-on "good qualities" are rarely convincing, because they don't seem like part of the character.

On the other hand, Thomas Harris did a magnificent job of making the serial killer, Francis Dolarhyde, both terrifying and sympathetic. We feel for the child he was and are horrified by the monster he became, and Harris made us believe that one could easily have become the other. How? By showing us how the boy was tormented by his schoolmates because of his cleft palate, and later, how he was physically and emotionally abused by his grandmother. Harris made these scenes real, and later, when we see Francis's tenderness toward a blind woman, we understand why he takes comfort in her company, why he needs what she has to offer, and why he inevitably misunderstands her motives. None of this excuses Francis's actions. He's a villain, but he doesn't see himself that way. There are perfectly logical reasons (to him) for everything he does, even though any sane person could clearly see that his actions are evil. But because his actions grow out of his own perceptions, he is a believable villain.

That, I think, is the key. No matter how evil your villain, no matter how horrific his acts, he believes in what he is doing, and that makes us perceive him as rounded and real.