Peg Herring, Mystery Author

 Yes, I taught English for....many years. Yes, I'm good at commas and quotation marks and all their little friends. I know about story arcs and character development and figurative language. That does NOT mean I don't need a bunch of helpful friends and professionals to check my work. I start with a first reader . This person reads the manuscript in really rough form and gives me feedback on what she sees as its strengths and weaknesses. With her "outside" view (meaning outside my head), I begin to see where I spent too much time with unnecessary explanation or where I didn't "take the reader with me" on a plot point. I kind of feel sorry for my first reader, because she often has to piece things together and wade through a lot of junk that won't make the final cut. When I've reworked the story to my satisfaction, I hire a content editor. This is a professional who will comment on the story's development, strengths and weaknesses. I've h

Book #3, the final book of the Kidnap Capers Series, is now up for pre-order at Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Dad-Kidnap-Capers-Book-ebook/dp/B08D3R4P5D This is when authors start worrying, and here are a few things on my list. Will the copy editor get her part done in time? Amazon is very strict about pre-orders. Authors must have the books out by the release date (in this case, September 1st) or they're in TROUBLE. This is a small worry, since my copy editor has never let me down before. Did I choose the right title/cover/blurb (etc.) Second-guessing is what we authors do, and today it hit me that using "Dad" in the title might make the book seem like YA. I don't think that's a big problem either, because most who buy this book have already read Books 1 and 2 and know differently. What kind of promotion should I be doing? Every author I know hates promo, but we also know we need to do it. The guy who edited my last book said the COVID cr

The Kidnap Capers is a three-book series starring Robin and her "hoods," who take down crooks by unorthodox, often humorous methods.  Book 3 will be out on September 1st, so we're trying to settle on a cover. I'd like input from readers on what's eye-catching and gives the sense of a humorous but suspenseful story. Here are their covers (these are for the audio books because that's what I can find right now): Keeping the red/black theme, we got these two possibilities. They'll be fine-tuned once we choose a basic idea. If we skip the idea of coordinating colors, I like this one too: Please tell me which cover you prefer, or choose elements that work for you that might be incorporated into a new cover (e.g., "I like the lettering in X but the picture in Y.")

I suspect every writer looks back and wishes things done and undone, and I'm no exception. I write what pleases me, not what I think will make tons of money.  Often I don't know as I'm working on a book if it's a stand-alone or if I'll want to revisit the characters at some point in the future and write them a new adventure. The technology for book publishing has a steep learning curve and requires constant updating. I started my career with a traditional publisher, which meant I didn't have to worry about that end of things. Now that I'm independent, I decide at what point a book releases, how it's presented to the world, and how to make the internet assist. A while back I learned how to make a boxed set of some of my series, so binge readers can get all the books for one price. I think that's a nice bargain for them. Recently I learned that Amazon will let readers know about all  the books in a series IF the information is presented to them co