Stanley McShane – Page 2 – Rosepoint Publishing

These Books Designed Their Own Book Covers

These Books Designed Their Own Book Covers

Describe your process for choosing and designing your book cover. Who created your cover? How did you find him/her? What do you love about your cover? What might you do differently next time?

It’s assumed there is a process for designing book covers and I must admit to being a bit behind the times as at my age, sensibilities were formed a long time ago and things have changed. My process began by studying book covers–LOTS of book covers. What did I like–what didn’t I like?

I like colorful covers and those that hint at what the book is about.

Out of the six covers under the author name Stanley McShane, it may be obvious that none are particularly heavy in romance. That alone may limit interest, but not everyone is a millennial. Urged to seek the help of my cousin’s daughter, three of the covers were designed by Christine Armstrong. Two of the covers feature ships painted by McShane for his manuscripts and the western uses part of another painting.

I particularly enjoyed the story that Cliff Johnson, retired Idaho Chief of Police, told regarding the cover he had in mind and went about utilizing the son of a friend for his cover knowing exactly where and what he wanted the cover shot. The problem is, it took forever, and it was only after the boy became so tired and bored with the whole thing the picture was made perfect–just what he wanted–and doesn’t it speak volumes!

I love the cover Christine made for “Sons of the Sea”. I’d noticed a statue the town of Grimsby installed to honor their fisherman–and sent that to her. She incorporated it beautifully and I was thrilled with it. Most of the other covers have been changed at least once, several at the suggestion of veteran Quartzsite AZ naked bookstore owner, Paul Winer (who bought several), at the Reader’s Oasis Bookstore. The man knows his music AND his books!! Talk about an unusual venue!

Promotion Through Social Media

The Day 28 prompt is: How are you using social media to promote your book? What aspect of social media would you like to learn more about? What are your next steps?

Since I’m currently using nine of the ten pictured in Laura’s example, I guess I’m not doing too badly. Probably won’t be doing Instagram and use several of the others to a more or lesser extent.

Really, I’m not sure whether the reach through these social media outlets is successful, though I do believe the name of Stanley McShane is getting out there.

Familiar with the term, “Jack of all trades, Master of none?” Guess that’d be me or more appropriately put, “Mistress of None.” I’ve taught myself Word (and a very old version at that), and opened accounts in Facebook as well as the other media platforms, but have only a basic knowledge; none of manipulation in any of those programs. I know the associated access of personal info by Facebook and try not to “give away the store”, though it’s obvious now that ANY information whatsoever can lead to further denigration of personal information.

I have a major problem with Google+ and given it’s greater participation on the “Richter” scale of social media standings should be doing more there, though it’s feared the same relinquishment of personal information as Facebook. I’m being blackmailed on a larger, more grander scale than ever before, and it’s all legal!!

Given all that–I’d love to be able to use both Facebook and Google+ to gain better name recognition and sales advantage. For that matter, I’ve barely tapped LinkedIn and Twitter. I’ve enrolled in an SEO class, but where are the classes in reversing the information highway through FB and Google+? I’m not interested in paying for ads (Social Security doesn’t allow for more than a few meds). I need common practices and tips that most under the age of 40 freely peruse.

I’ll continue to read, read, read–but the time to write is being consumed by the time required to read, interpret, and digest and I’m no longer blond. OH! The next step then would be the “how to” CD’s. Yes?

Building the Platform – Lessons from Author Marketing Disappointments

The Day 27 prompt is: What are the three most important things you are doing to grow your platform?

Having started this process with NaNoWriMo in 2011, I’ve been through the gamut of ideas, following rules and advice, and letting the creative juices flow until they became a trickle.

Several initial ideas were dumped in the effort to attract traffic to book signings:

1) Forget salt-water taffy at book signings. The kids grabbed a handful and the adults weren’t into taffy.

2) Started with inventories of flyers, bookmarks, postcards, and business cards. It was a toss-up how many were found floating around the store, left quietly on a display shelf, or at the check-out. I’ll finish out the current inventory, then redesign the business cards.

3) Laminated posters–found difficult to display without investing further in an easel (and I found irritating those authors who had as they captured the eye and blocked the traffic).

What were the three suggestions acted upon and still being implemented?

1) Reading about the idea of “branding,” I went back to my book covers and changed the author’s name font so they were all consistent.

2) I’d established a blog and paid for a custom domain. I’d created several very simple websites (including one for my Women On Wheels® chapter and this one would presumably involve a shopping cart).

3) Social Media accounts

A) Decided instead to create an Etsy and Pinterest account.

B) Opened a separate Facebook account for Stanley McShane with a Rosepoint Publishing page and a Stanley McShane page on my personal FB account.

C) Opened a Goodreads account in the name of Stanley McShane.

Would a database or email marketing list be effective? Possibly, but difficult for me to implement. I haven’t wanted to muddle a book sale with further requests assuming my ever-growing Twitter followers and blog subscribers have first shown interest and made the contact.

Other than the above, the current push for promotion and marketing strategy will have to solidify the platform, one which is hoped sufficient to provide a solid base for the current launch: “Sole Survivor-A Fiction Adventure Anthology.”

If I Had The Money, I Could Sell More Books

If I Had The Money, I Could Sell More Books

DAY 26 PROMPT: What would be the ideal NON-bookstore venue for selling your book? Why? What is your plan to reach out to such a venue to ask about having them carry your book?

As with most things in life, if I had the money, I could sell more books!

Three of the manuscripts I’ve published have dealt with sailing–stowing away, being shanghaied on a whaler, accounts of carrying cargo around the Horn. They would certainly appeal to a particular crowd, and it occurred to me years ago that one good venue might be a boat show. Looking into that, however, quickly discerned the cost was prohibitive. And the logistics–aye–don’t get me started! One of the MOST fun festivals attended, if not successful or lucrative, was the Pirate Festival in Rockaway Beach, Oregon (although there are many, including a larger one in Portland). I suspect, depending on the year, and the rain, it would have been an excellent venue given two of his sailing adventures involve pirates.

There is a large tourist market in Seattle called Pike’s Market that given enough time I’d have gladly hunted for appropriate mom and pop shops who would have been interested in the historical fiction books. There was Godfather’s Books and Espresso Bar in Astoria, and I noticed the “bar” had all the accoutrements of a Starbucks–comfortable social seating, wifi availability, affable sea-going crowd, and enough books to surf through 60 cups of Java. I’ve tried libraries, including the one in Cannon Beach, Oregon, where I’ve mentioned before the jewelry shop called Cannon Beach Treasure Company that featured treasures from the deep as well as videos of his dives.

Except that the Maritime History Museum was closed and we couldn’t alter our timing or route, it had sounded promising when I spoke to the manager. Gray’s Harbor in Aberdeen has a wealth of history and maritime related establishments. Aberdeen has also claimed notoriety as the home port of the tall ship Lady Washington, a reproduction of a smaller vessel used by the explorer Captain Robert Gray, featured in the Pirates of the Caribbean film The Curse of the Black Pearl. Obviously, the best venue for his sailing adventures is the coast–either left OR right.

As far as his mining and penny stock certificate tale, in addition to bookstores, there are a number of historical societies, including the one in Tonopah, Nevada, and the library in Pahrump. I suspect the anthology would also be an appropriate addition to those locations as well.

All to say, if I had the money, I’d sweep the Pacific Coast shoreline north and south and every old mining town with a bar and restaurant in Nevada. I don’t. What’s that old saying, “It takes money to make money?”

Grandpa May Have Lied

DAY 23 PROMPT: If you could meet one of your main characters or ideal reader anywhere in the world for coffee, drinks, dinner, or a caramel, who would it be, where would you meet them, and why?

It was actually my son who took the genealogy study so much farther than I had. Hitting those walls almost immediately, I had no clue how or where to proceed, and pretty much shut down. Mark, on the other hand, joined Ancestry.com and used the resources to their fullest extent including the offer of a DNA test for $99.

My paternal grandmother was born on the Chippewa reservation leased from Cherokee land in the midwest. Told all my life that part was handed down along with French/German (which made sense) and Swedish and Irish on my maternal side, I was shocked when the test revealed no such results.

Would you rather know where you came from or stay in blissful ignorance?

(Ever seen the show “Who Do You Think You Are?”)

Those of us old enough to remember Kirk Douglas as the fearsome Einar in the 1958 movie “The Vikings” (also known as Norsemen) perhaps received a romantic message about these fierce, seafaring warriors. They surfaced approximately AD 800 and for more than three centuries went about conquering most of the then known (and unknown) world, including the British Isles, and much of the European continent as well as Greenland and Newfoundland.

Vineland (Old Norse Vínland) is the name of coastal North America explored by Norse Vikings, where Leif Erikson first landed in ca. 1000, approximately five centuries prior to the voyages of Christopher Columbus! An “Irish Viking”–yes, I could go for that! Not a specific “race”, most were more collectively known as coming from the areas now known as Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. AH!

And ergo the problem.

My son had no problem tracing the paternal side back on U.S. soil practically to the first ship arriving after the Mayflower. We know they fought in the Revolutionary as well as the Civil War. Grandma Rose–100% Swedish–we know exactly from where she hailed and have contacts there! But Grandpa Rose, Patrick John Rose, J. Wesley Rose, Stanley McShane? No clue.

If I could, I’d pin him down right there in Long Beach near the ocean he loved; perhaps in the park where we took bread crumbs to feed the pigeons that last time I saw him and I’d start asking questions–explain the contradictions in your manuscripts! His real name might answer a few questions and from there, where he was actually born–really. He had an Irish brogue that never waivered, wasn’t faked. But my DNA doesn’t lie.

“James Michener Protagonist”–Stanley McShane

DAY 22 PROMPT: If you could ask anyone in the world to write a blurb for your book, who would it be? Why that person/people?

From Michael Reisig, author of the acclaimed “Caribbean Gold” series including “The Treasure of Tortuga” and “The Treasure of Time”, and numerous additional adventure thrillers in his “Road To Key West” series, comes this description of the …works of Stanley McShane.

“Stanley McShane… the epitome of a James Michener protagonist.“

I’ve written before of Michael Reisig after reading his Caribbean Gold series. Reisig descriptively penned the exploits of swashbuckling heroes in the year of 1668 as it follows Englishman Trevor Holte and the audacious freebooter Clevin Greymore in their Caribbean adventures. His “Caribbean Gold – The Treasure of Tortuga“ has been a No. 1 best seller in Amazon’s sea adventures, romance adventure, men’s adventure, and historical Caribbean since it’s release January, 2015 by Clear Creek Press. His works have been optioned for motion pictures, sold to overseas publishers, and produced for ebooks as well as audio.

Humbled and thrilled by his generous praise for the anthology “Sole Survivor” by Stanley McShane due to be released tomorrow, Reisig wrote a stunning Foreword after reading a pre-release copy. Michael Reisig has been writing professionally for fifteen years, as a former newspaper editor and publisher, an award-winning columnist, and a best-selling novelist. A true adventurer, Michener protagonist himself, he relocated to the Florida Keys after graduating college to establish a commercial diving business, got his pilot’s license, and traveled extensively throughout the southern hemisphere, diving, treasure hunting, adventuring, and writing about his travels. He knows of which he writes!

It is that adventurous spirit, keen eye to detail, and the humorous twist of life that he captures in the heart and soul of his characters deftly brought to life with an intense but compassionate empathy. You can’t help but love his heroes; their strong moral character, as they triumph through the odds.

Yes, it’s truly an honor to have Michael create a blurb for this book–one to which I’m deeply indebted.

The Happy Surprises in Publishing – A Writing Prompt

Day 17 Prompt: What has been the biggest surprise about writing/publishing your book? What has been the most enjoyable or most memorable aspect?

What has been the biggest surprise? Lots of surprises! As most people know by now, I’ve published my grandfather’s manuscripts written under the pen name of Stanley McShane. He also painted and sold various paintings with some dubious success under both his pen name and that of J. Wesley Rose. The paintings I have are on little pasteboard 8 x 10’s and were meant to illustrate his books.

Surprises Include:

Discovering that my mother really knew little about her father’s life, nor had been sufficiently interested enough to ask or get some of the most basic facts.
Reading and writing his manuscripts, discovering the tale we grew up with (that of his being born on board his father’s ship the “Marguerite” off the coast of New York) may not have been wholly true. Indeed, in succeeding manuscripts, he offers two additional accounts of his birth–including the one of his birth in a maternity home in New York while his father’s ship was being loaded as it was mentioned more than once that his mother always sailed on the Marguerite (which was named after her) with her husband, the captain. There are no birth records.
Stumbling over 90-year-old English common of the day and sailing jargon also common during the turn of the 20th Century as he claimed to have sailed into the early 1900s.
Walking in his shoes through streets still dusty from the choking red clay powder surrounding ghost and near-ghost towns where he sought riches.
Among the most enjoyable or memorable aspects would have to be the people; those who’ve bought and shared their stories; authors with whom I’ve created a rapport. Among the latter, I would have to note Michael Reisig, who wrote the “Road to Key West“ series as well as my favorite of his historical swashbuckling, page-turning adventure, the “Caribbean Gold“ series.

But the most amazing and happy surprise?

The discovery of a fella named Gary Long, coincidentally from Idaho where I published the books; claimed he had been in the possession of a McShane painting with one of his poems on the back. The poem stuck with him for the rest of his life, although unfortunately, the painting went missing. He had apparently been researching the name on the internet and wrote me. I was totally astonished and asked if I could use some of his story in the anthology I’ve been working on. I’ll be sending him a copy that includes his story when I complete and release “Sole Survivor.”

This writing thing–sure opens up the world to you–doesn’t it.

Blog Challenge-Day 1

Blog Challenge-Day 1

Uh oh! It’s here already?! I thought I was preparing, but thank heaven we are being supplied with a daily prompt!

Easy blog challenge prompt for Day 1–intuitive–what are the goals for the Author Blog Challenge better known as the “ABC“?

(1) Is it to introduce new readers to the blog? (oh yes!)

(2) Is it to increase traffic to the blog? (oh yes!)

(3) Get in some extra writing practice? (of course!)

All of the above! I joined in an effort to force myself accountable in continuing to hone the craft my grandfather thought he’d passed on when he left me his steamer trunk full of his own manuscripts, poems, short stories, and paintings over 80 years ago. As the old wives tale goes–twins (especially identical) tend to skip a generation. Interesting if so. Does it also follow with artistic talents as neither my mother nor my aunt had any interest in their father’s work or in creating histories, stories, or fiction of their own; neither do my daughter or son–but my granddaughter?? Keeps a journal with her and is constantly writing!! Don’t I love that! So, is there a writing gene?

But inheriting the urge isn’t the same as the gift and though I began writing in childhood, winning a few little contests, it wasn’t until I began publishing magazine articles of my motorcycling adventures and later of Stanley McShane’s scripts that I realized this was going to be a LOT of work! To that end, I’ve joined groups (hence the Publishing and Book Promotion MeetUp group of Phoenix, as well as the Idaho Authors’ Community) and written my little heart out translating McShane’s works, practicing book descriptions, author pages, media promotions, book signings, and creating this blog that has, at times, floundered.

Therefore, in addition to the SEO class I’m signed up for in the Spring, I’ll stubby my fingers on the keyboard trying to meet this challenge. And in so doing, perhaps I’ll tap into that author gene of my own and in the process succeed in items 1 and 2 above!