Village Voice trashes my book without reading even the back cover blurb.

Ah, Google Alerts. They let me know when people are talking about me, and this time, it’s a doozy.

James Hannaham, author of God Says No and apparently a professional angry person, put together a vitriolic little paragraph entitled “Dumb Dog Books” at the end of the May 25 book page in the Village Voice newspaper. Here’s what he had to say about mine:

Chihuahua of the Baskervilles claims to be the first novel in a moronic series about a ghost pup…

Um, no. That’s like saying Mark Twain wrote river-rafting stories. The Tripping Magazine series is about a cut-rate travel magazine that covers destinations of supposedly supernatural interest (I use that qualifier a lot in my promo text). The canine apparition appears in this one book only. The book’s title references a rather well-known story where the ghost dog turns out not to be a real ghost. So, yeah… I’m thinking he got his idea strictly from the cover. (Isn’t there some kind of saying about that?)

Since he has a website with his contact info on it, I was able to send him an email, in which I noted,

Based on your cover, I’m guessing God Says No is about the wacky things someone finds in a U-Store-It unit, but I wouldn’t write that in a newspaper without making sure.

Here’s a link to the original Village Voice article (the pertinent paragraph is the last one, and the link takes you directly to page two).

Don’t go on any rampages on my behalf, but do make a mental note that you can’t believe everything you read. And hey, I got mentioned in the Village Voice!

Chihuahua of the Baskervilles excerpt

Simultaneous ebook release for Chihuahua of the Baskervilles!

This is exciting! I just got on Amazon.com and saw that Chihuahua of the Baskervilles will be released simultaneously in hardback and ebook versions (Kindle and Nook)! The price for both platforms is $10.99. If you’ve pre-ordered the hardback and would prefer the ebook version, I think you can log onto your online bookstore account and cancel the hardback order. The ebook version has a pre-order option as well. Don’t hesitate to buy the the lower-priced ebook on my account. I get a bigger percentage of those sales. 🙂

Canine Curiosities, and those wacky Nazis…

This new book “uncovers the stories of some of the most extraordinary dogs in history,” including the true tale of how the Nazis tried to create an army of dogs trained to speak, read and write. (The Nazis claimed one of the dogs told them he wanted to serve in the German army because he disliked the French.)

New review of Chihuahua of the Baskervilles

Nikki of Obsessive Chihuahua Disorder wrote a review on the advance review copy I sent her. Gotta love a reviewer who includes photos.

Chihuahua of the Baskervilles kept my attention from the very beginning to the very end. I couldn’t wait to get back to reading each time I had to put down the book because it was time for dinner, time to go to work, time to go to class, etc. I couldn’t wait to find out who was behind all the strange activities going on in the Baskerville’s house.

Read full review here.

Chi of B available through Mystery Guild Book Club

First review from the trade pubs: Kirkus on Chi of B

Review Date: May 15, 2011

Publisher: Minotaur Books

Pages: 288

Price ( Hardcover ): $23.99

Publication Date: July 5, 2011

ISBN ( Hardcover ): 978-0-312-56915-0

Category: Fiction

Classification: Mystery

A magazine staff investigates a ghost dog’s appearance in a quirky Colorado town.

Beleaguered Scotsman Angus MacGregor is sent to resuscitate Tripping magazine (about ghosts, not drugs) with a fanciful story of a ghost dog. Charlotte Baskerville, the owner and operator of the niche shop Petey’s Closet, “Where the Well-Dressed Pooch Shops,” has seen the clothing catalog’s namesake wandering her home’s grounds at night, a year after Petey’s death. Charlotte’s sourpuss husband Thomas insists that her story is further grounds for having the poor old dear declared incompetent, though a skeptic might suspect he’s more concerned for her money than her mind. With bold photographer Suki Oota and cynical writer Michael Abernathy in tow, Angus visits the Baskerville home determined to write the story, whether or not the ghost is real. The Tripping team quickly becomes integrated into the quirky Baskerville household, from fame-hungry Russian dog trainer Ivan Blotski to Charlotte’s own granddaughter and recovering alcoholic Cheri to bizarrely optimistic neighbor Bob Hume, who’s obsessed with acai berries. Charlotte’s living Chihuahuas, Lila and Chum, play non-speaking, emotionally supportive roles for the old girl while Angus and his mates investigate in order to assuage her concerns over Petey’s message from the beyond. The mystery takes a backseat to tensions among the characters, all culminating at the town’s annual coffin race festival.

Allbritten (Bound to Love Her, 2008, etc., as Esri Rose) tells a light and engaging tale with charming characters that will appeal to those outside of both mystery and canine genres.

Obsessive Chihuahua Disorder

Nikki, of the fantastic site, Obsessive Chihuahua Disorder, is in the process of reading an advance copy of Chihuahua of the Baskervilles.

(Bebe is my fave of Nikki’s Chis, btw. She’s the little mite who is second from the left in the photo below. To give you an idea of how wee she is, Monte (second from right) weighs three and a half pounds. Bebe is the dog equivalent of a sparkling fairy pony or a shoulder dragon with tiny flapping wings.

I have to mention some coincidences between Nikki and the book. Suki is Tripping Magazine‘s staff photographer. She’s half-Japanese. Nikki is also half-Japanese and a photographer. And their names both end in ‘i.’ There will be one more coincidence at the end of the second book, Portrait of Doreene Gray. You’ll just have to wait and see.

Oh, and if you’d like to join a super-fun Facebook group for Chihuahua lovers, join Nikki’s. I’m on there all the time, cooing over photos of Bebe.

Ebook authors need some kind of scrapbook system.

Today I was involved in a Facebook discussion with Vincent Zandri, a thriller author who is exploring the frontiers of epublishing and POD. He started by talking about a book signing scheduled for this evening at a local Barnes & Noble.

But here’s a prediction: I will sell more copies of “Innocent” before lunch even, than I will sell of the trade paper edition of “Remains,” during the B&N signing. I’ll also call the store to make sure they’re set for tonight, and I guarantee the response will be, “What’s your name again?…What book???” 🙂

And sadly, he was right. Due to an error in how they had entered his ISBN number, his books arrived and were then shipped back. The book signing is postponed, and the experience didn’t exactly rekindle Vincent’s love of of paper books.

I’m done with traditional book signings.
From now on I will happily sign the reverse side of your NOOK and KINDLE, which seems to be the trend these days.

One thing this discussion made me wonder was if there is a market for some kind of cute scrapbooking system for author autographs, especially as the number of authors appearing only in ebooks grows. If it exists, let me know. If not, someone needs to get on this. Here’s what my ideal system would have.

A binder that allows you to decorate the cover yourself, or has preprinted pages for various genres (romance, mystery, speculative, horror).
Envelopes that hold postcards, so you can send an author a prepaid postcard to sign/dedicate, and then they drop it in the mail to you.
A scrapbook page that includes slots to hold the postcard. Also a promotional bookmark or biz card, if the author provided one.
A page onto which you can print the book’s cover art. It could also have blanks for where/when you bought the book, who recommended it, how much you enjoyed it, where you’ve recommended it (Goodreads, online booksellers).

Authors, you don’t have to wait for this. Why not have a page on your website that allows fans to print postcard designs with your cover art and photo, so they can print it out and send it in for you to sign and send back? Don’t forget to give them your P.O. address.

And now, here’s a poll.

Mystery authors: Why you can’t afford to bypass Twitter.

I don’t know why I’m more of a social-media creature than most of my age peers, but it puts me in a position to see an interesting phenomenon. Traditional and cozy writers are often in the 40+ demographic, and the vast majority are not on Twitter.

One of the most useful things about Twitter is that it allows you to search everyone’s comments for a certain topic of interest…say, cozy mysteries. In June of last year, there were 190 million Twitter users, or tweeps. They generated 65 million tweets a day. Spreading the news of a book release to all their fellow tweeps took one click of the Retweet button.

If you’re promoting your new cozy/traditional mystery releases in bookstores or on blogs, then you may have a problem. People who spend time on Twitter find their book recommendations there. And if you’re thinking, “I target readers who are 40+, so they won’t be on Twitter anyway,” ask yourself this: Do you want to sell your books five, ten, or 15 years from now? Because people who grew up using Twitter and Twitterlike platforms are not going to magically stop using them when they reach a certain age.

How do people find information on Twitter? How do they help others find their stuff? One way is through the use of hashtags.

Let’s say I want to find out what brand-new thrillers are out there. I would get on Twitter and type #thrillers in the search field. Hashtags.org tells me that the high number of tweets about #thrillers so far today is 53, at 8:00 this morning (Bless those unpaid publicity interns). The high point so far today for #cozies is seven. Let’s compare the seven tweets on #cozies to the more general #books. Hashtags.org doesn’t measure that in individual numbers, because it’s too many. Instead, they say that at one point today, .14% of the total Twitter traffic was marked #books. In June of last year’s numbers, that would be over nine million tweets about books. Heck, #cats only made it to .05%. Cozy writers with series about #crafts? #crafts hit .01% at one point today, or 650,000 tweets. Definite sweet spot.

Here are some guidelines for using hashtags, followed by examples.

Standardization. Thus, tweets about this year’s Bouchercon are labeled #Bcon2011. Last year, it was #Bcon2010.
Brevity. Tweets can only be 140 characters long, so #bestmysterybooks, while appealing, takes up too much real estate in your tweet.
You can search on multiple tags. So while #mysterybooks didn’t show up at all today, #mystery #books had three tweets. Someone out there is trying.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Get on Twitter and search your topic without a hashtag in place. Keep changing your search until you find the most pertinent tweets on your subject, and use whatever hashtag they’re using. That’s how I found out about #Bcon2011.

Twitter isn’t rocket science, and it doesn’t have to take a lot of time. You don’t need to follow people or get into conversations. But when you write a blog post about your cozy’s characters, or interview a fellow author, or announce a book release, get on Twitter and say something like,

Interview with Rhys Bowen, author of Molly Murphy #cozies. #mystery #books http://tinyurl.com/4z5cb3r

[The original URL (the http part) for that blog post made the tweet too long, so I went to TinyUrl.com, cut and pasted it into the field, and clicked the button to make it smaller.]

Here’s another example.

Death in Show now available on #Kindle ! #cozies #books #dogs http://tinyurl.com/4mojnkw

Help me colonize Twitter with the #cozies hashtag. Do it for the children.

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Additional articles:

Twitter for Writers, author Elizabeth Spann Craig

Things I Should Probably Say About Twitter, author Elizabeth Spann Craig

Sources:

http://Twitter.com