Brazen Marketing: Caught and Kept

I am an indie author.  That sounds so renegade and free spirited but in reality it means one.  Not one thing.  Just one.  Me.  All me.  Just me.  I don’t have staff.  On second thought, I do beg Syd Parker to clean up my book covers with her mad graphic skills and I plead with friends who have more grammar skills than me to cull through my manuscripts.  So I might have, at least, volunteers.  However, the task of marketing a book is down to me.  I should be fired. 

It’s funny because in my day job I can discuss with clients how to get themselves out into the world all day long.  When it comes to me, I post an announcement on Facebook and then quietly step away hoping I haven’t disturbed anyone.  When I wrote my first book, Infinity’s Song, in 2012 it took me almost seven months to publish it.  A friend finally sent me a song with the lyric, “you’ve got a voice as loud as lions so why let your voice be tamed?” and then said she was waiting to hold my book in her hands.  With tactics like that, what was a girl to do but publish her book?  But the marketing is still where I fall down.  It’s the place where being an indie is a disadvantage. 

In an effort to rectify that, at least a little, I’m going to blog about my latest book, Caught and Kept available now on Amazon and through your independent bookstores.  (I secretly hope you order through a bookstore.  What would the world be without them? But, alas, our e-readers are so convenient.)

Caught and Kept is the second in the Siren’s Song Series. The book was written at a time when I was experiencing much turmoil and loss.  My twenty two year marriage had ended, but I also had a couple of friendships that were in flux and one in particular for which I was grieving.  I didn’t really know where solid ground was in my life.  As I pondered the reality that friendships have the ability to break your heart just as much as lovers, Caught and Kept was born.

My setting is personally important in this book.  The majority of the book takes place on Whidbey Island, Washington.  I recently left the island after fifteen years.  As I wrote I felt my time there was coming to an end.  I wanted this book to reflect my love of Whidbey and the magic it holds.  I’ve often called it my own Avalon…an island set apart by the mists of Puget Sound.  However, the book is part of The Siren Song Series and the Siren is both a place and a character for me.  The Siren’s Song is an imaginary private club located in Seattle just for lesbians.  I physically based the Siren on the downtown YMCA building (the irony wasn’t lost on me, trust me).  A quiet, unassuming and yet, pretty brick building you could walk by and never realize was there, but for the sign.  The concept was simple.  I designed a space I wish existed for us.  A beautiful, safe, supportive and nurturing place for women to find community and be themselves.  After the book came out that was the number one Facebook message, “Please tell me it’s real!”  My reply remains the same: I’ll build it if I sell enough books.    

I got asked recently, “Are Kai and Dani real?”  Yes.  All my characters are real.  I draw from my life and those around me.  It’s important that when I write, the characters are people with their own lives and stories.  My closest friends will recognize pieces of themselves in all of my characters.  Recently, I was given a little plaque that said, “Be careful or you’ll end up in my novel.”  My friends all know that’s true.

Reviews and feedback tell me readers find this book a quiet, sweet romance with humor.  I was pleased to hear that.  Sometimes love comes quietly, either in romance or in friendships or in the case of Kai and Dani, both.  I hope for those of you who have already read Caught and Kept, you enjoyed it.  If you haven’t yet read it, I’d be honored if you’d put in on your list. Please, do let me know what you think.   

In the true marketing spirit, I’m offering a giveaway.  Find me on Facebook and private message me your funniest or sweetest memory of a best friend.  The first three that make me laugh out loud or tear up will receive a signed copy of Caught and Kept or Infinity’s Song. If you prefer email send them to penelope_grey@yahoo.com.