Carol VanDenHende is an award-winning author who pens stories of resilience and hope. Her debut novel Goodbye Orchid recently won the American Fiction Award for urban fiction, the Pinnacle Book Award for multicultural fiction, and was listed by Buzzfeed as one of its 12 Most Anticipated books this fall.

Carol is also a speaker (as well as one of my writing conference buddies) and she often speaks on author brand, visual identity, and marketing plans. With an MBA with 20+ years’ experience in marketing and strategy, Carol knows what it takes to market your book (even if you’re a busy author) and she has applied many of these strategies to the launch of Goodbye Orchid.

One secret to Carol’s good fortune? Her humorous husband, fun-loving twins, and rescue cat, who prove that love really does conquer all.

In this episode Carol and I discuss:

• How her book Goodbye Orchid is really about hope and resilience. 
• Carol shares how clarifying on your personal ‘why’ focuses your marketing plans and higher-order purpose.
• What people often miss about the hard work it takes to be a successful author.

Plus, their #1 tip for writers.

About the Author

Carol VanDenHende is an award-winning author who pens stories of resilience and hope. She’s also a speaker and MBA with 20+ years’ experience in marketing and strategy. 

Goodbye Orchid won the American Fiction Award for urban fiction and Pinnacle Book Award for multicultural fiction.

Buzzfeed included Goodbye Orchid in its 12 Most Anticipated books of the fall.

You can learn more about Carol on her website and by following her on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook.

Goodbye, Orchid

RISING FROM ASHES IS HARD.

GIVING UP THE ONE YOU LOVE IS HARDER.

Thirty-two year-old Phoenix Walker is an entrepreneur who has built an agency with a heart almost as big as his own. To add to his good fortune, he’s falling for Orchid Paige, the beautiful half-Asian marketer who’s collaborated with him on a winning military campaign.

Until an accident changes him forever.

Now, he’s faced with the hardest decision of his life. Does he burden the woman whose traumatic childhood makes him feel protective of her? Or does true love mean leaving her without explaining why?

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

In the interview, Gabriela and Carol discussed her marketing strategies for coming up with the cover for Goodbye Orchid.

One of the strategies she used was to ask her audience for feedback on the image they liked best. She did her cover reveal by releasing it in segments as to generate excitement for the ultimate reveal.

She then used social media to thank her audience for their participation. As you can see more than 800 people voted. She used a pixelated image to generate even more excitement around the reveal.

Link to Episode 328

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 328: Book Marketing for Busy Writers – Interview with Carol VanDenHende appeared first on DIY MFA.

Literary

The Veterans Writing Project provides no-cost seminars and workshops—for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and playwriting—led by working writers who hold MA or MFA writing degrees at locations around the country. There is also a mentorship program for students with completed/nearly completed book length projects who would like feedback on finalizing their work. The Veterans Writing Project’s quarterly literary magazine, The Review, is published at their sister website O’Dark Thirty, and is a place where veterans can submit stories.

The University of Iowa publishes The Iowa Review and hosts a creative writing contest for veterans writing in any genre about any subject matter. The contest is made possible by a gift from the family of Jeff Sharlet—a Vietnam veteran and antiwar writer and activist. First place is $1,000 plus publication in an issue of The Iowa Review, second place $750, and three runners-up received $500 each. They also host a veterans’ online writing gallery.

Fordham University sponsors cost-free, professional-level writing workshops in the New York City metro area for U.S. veterans. Their ten-week program meets once-a-week and culminates with the publication of their annual print anthology, Afterwords. They also offer public readings and other events where veterans can share their stories.

George Mason University (GMU) provides poetry workshops for veterans and supports the Heroes’ Voices National Veterans Poetry Contest—a venture with Heroes’ Voices in San Francisco, CA. There are monetary prizes and winning submissions are published and featured in public readings in San Francisco, California and at GMU’s Manassas campus in Virginia.

The University of California offers the UC Student Veterans Writing Workshop, a program for their enrolled students. Veterans from ten UC campuses gather for five days during the summer to study and practice the art of storytelling. The workshop is free of charge and includes lodging and meals. Instant Separation, an online journal of military experience from the University of California is a venue for students to publish stories.

Local libraries around the country host community based programs as well. For example, The White Plains Public Library in New York hosts a weekly writing class for veterans. Student compositions are published in an anthology and a reading is held at the library.

Plays and Screenwriting

A non-profit organization founded by Adam Driver, AITAF’s mission is to provide high-quality performing arts programming to active duty service members, veterans, military support staff and their families around the world free of charge. Besides providing incredible programming (like a talk back session with Steven Soderbergh about the movie Jaws), AITAF also offers The Bridge Award to an emerging playwright who served or is currently serving in the military. It consists of a $10,000 prize and an AITAF produced reading of the winning work with a reception and feedback session. The head judge this past year was Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks.

The Writers Guild Foundation Veterans Writing Project provides education and mentorship to emerging writers from U.S. military backgrounds. Each year, 40 veterans are accepted into this Los Angeles based, tuition-free, twelve-month program. It’s comprised of a weekend retreat, monthly workshops, special events, and one-on-one mentoring by Writers Guild of America members from successful movies and television series. Many applicants are television writers or screenwriters, but novelists may apply. Students complete a screenplay or TV pilot at the completion of the program and make connections with professionals in the movie and television industries.

The United States Veterans’ Artists Alliance (USVAA) is an award-winning, multi-disciplinary non-profit arts organization that highlights work of veterans in the arts, humanities and entertainment industry, and finds funding and support for individual artistic projects in theater, film, television, and the visual/fine arts. USVAA works closely with The Writers Guild Foundation Veterans Writing Project and hosts stage presentations of scenes and selected readings from television and movie scripts, novels and memoirs written by veterans.

These are just some of the highlights from the amazing things I discovered—opportunities I hope that benefit DIY MFA readers. I encourage you to explore universities, colleges, and libraries near your homes and let us know what you find.

If you aren’t a veteran, you can still volunteer to support events and connect with some incredible people. You never know who you may meet. It could be someone who inspires your next story.

Stacy Woodson writes romantic suspense and crime fiction. She is a U.S. Army veteran and memories of her time in the military play a role in her stories. A Daphne du Maurier winner and Publishers Weekly contributor, her recent story, “Duty. Honor. Hammett.,” will appear in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. She loves staying connected. You can find her at www.stacywoodson.com.

The post Writing Resources for Military Veterans appeared first on DIY MFA.

This question goes deeper than “how do you write what you don’t know?” After all, it’s one thing to write historical fiction about a time period long ago and fill in those gaps using library research. But how do you write about characters whose experiences and backgrounds are different from your own without crossing the line and appropriating that experience in some way. We all know we should include diverse characters in our stories, but how does a writer actually do that without appropriating those experiences?

In this episode, Nick opens up about his process, and talks about how he portrayed the experiences of war veterans on the page even he has never been in the military himself. If you’ve ever worried about this question of appropriation, this podcast interview is a must-listen!

In this episode Nicholas and I discuss:

• The winding road to getting published.
• The importance of research in nailing your plot.
• The importance of language in nailing your prose.
• Writing characters who are different from you.

Plus, Nicholas’s  #1 tip for writers.

About The Drifter:

The Drifter draws its considerable strength from Petrie’s uncompromising portrayal of shattered war veterans, returned home and trying to reintegrate into the civilian world they left behind. The unforgettable protagonist, Peter Ash, came home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with only one souvenir: what he calls his “white static,” buzzing claustrophobia due to post-traumatic stress. Ash is drawn back to the past when an old friend from the Marines commits suicide. When he goes to Milwaukee to help the man’s widow, Ash makes a discovery—a suitcase filled with money and explosives—that leads him into an investigation of his friend’s death, which may take him back to the world he thought he’d left behind. Suspenseful and thrilling, and featuring a compelling new hero, The Drifter is an exciting debut from a fresh voice in crime fiction.

This is a gorgeous book, and if you’re into crime fiction with a strong literary bent, this one will be right up your alley. If you choose to buy this book, we hope you’ll consider doing so via this affiliate link (which gives DIY MFA a small commission at no cost to you). Thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

About Nicholas Petrie:

“I was never in the armed forces, but I swung a hammer for a living for many years,” Petrie writes in talking about the genesis of Peter Ash and The Drifter. As part of his extensive research, Petrie says he “talked with a number of veterans about their experiences. In the course of these conversations, I felt like I came to understand these men and women in a way that I hadn’t before, and to truly admire them. Over and over, I encountered that extraordinary quality of character I tried to capture in Peter Ash—a happy warrior who sees every difficulty as a challenge to be overcome, and every challenge as an adventure. The more research I did, the more interested I became in the idea of what to do after your war is over. After the largest set of sustained military operations in decades, this is one of the singular challenges of our time. Many veterans come home and overcome these challenges, but some veterans have more difficulty, some due to physical injuries, some with the less tangible but no less real injuries of PTSD. I’ve tried to find both sides in this book.”

A debut author, Nicholas received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington and won Hopwood Award for short fiction while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. His short story “At the Laundromat” won the 2006 Short Story Contest in the Seattle Review. A husband and father, he runs a home appraisal business in Milwaukee.

To learn more about Nicholas read his blog here, follow him on Facebook, or visit his website.

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If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, leave a review, and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available. Also, if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please share!

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome.

The post Episode 83: Writing Outside Our Experience – with Nicholas Petrie appeared first on DIY MFA.