How the Return of NHL Hockey has Helped My Book Sales

Back in 2009 during NaNoWriMo, I furiously typed up the first draft of my very first novel. The main character was a lot like me - in her thirties, from Boston, and a rabid sports fan. Growing up in Boston it’s almost impossible to avoid being a fan of at least one sport. As a kid I fell in love with three major league sports - football, baseball and of course hockey.

When I started writing Ripple the Twine I knew Sara Quinn would be a freelance Sportswriter and I needed to give her a sport she could cheer for in a meaningful way. In the late 90's I'd stepped away from my love of hockey for other sports. The Bruins weren't very good (Note: this is not a deal breaker for a Bostonian as we are not fair-weather fans, can someone say rabid fan love and no World Series win in almost 100 years? Exactly.) Something just drew me to other sports.

I was heavy into NFL football at the time and following the Patriots (perfect example of a team New England loved but one that still constantly let us down in the 90’s). But I wanted a challenge, something I could research, so I decided to pen her as a Bruins fan. While writing her character my love for this fast-paced, heart-pumping sport was revived (with vigor!) and I found myself at countless games with my Aunt, watching almost every other one on television and out buying myself team merch.

The team was working hard and lots of trades happened that really solidified the power of the team. I worked on editing my book in late 2009 through early 2010 and started shopping it to Agents in late spring of that year. Sadly many a form rejection graced my mailbox.

If only all of us had the foresight to know what was to come over the course of the next year!

I kept querying the book and I tried to tie into the major hockey vein running through the main character's life not to mention her love of the Bruins. Especially since the team was starting to get good. Starting to get really good.

In December of 2010 I told my Aunt I knew they were going to win the Cup that season. Don’t ask me how I knew, there was just something about the team, something surrounding them that hadn’t been there before and all the pieces seemed to be falling into place. Unfortunately I must not have been a very good query writer because I continued to face rejection after rejection.

A stark contrast to the Bruins who just kept winning, kept pushing forward and advancing further and further.

After years of being shut down in the first or second round of playoffs the Bruins took the Eastern Conference title in May of 2011. My Aunt and I were at game 4 when they shut out the Flyers, a night I will never forget as long as I live. They won the next series as well and for the first time in my lifetime the team advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals.

On June 15, 2011 the Boston Bruins won their first Stanley Cup in 39 years. I was 38. My novel was only 1-1/2. And though we partied at the rolling rally parade I knew I’d missed my window for a major tie-in that could have propelled book sales for a publishing house and for me.

Then we moved from Massachusetts to Phoenix and I put the book in a drawer because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it anymore.

I was frustrated and had moved on to a new manuscript. I’d moved on to other endeavors. I ordered Center Ice and watched as many Bruins games as I could get my eyes on living in the desert. My Aunt even came to visit and timed her trip so we could see the Bruins take on the Coyotes at Jobing.com Arena. My fingers furiously pounded on the keyboard as I blogged constantly or worked on other fiction pieces.

Then I joined the Scottsdale Society of Women Writers and something inside just clicked. I pulled Ripple the Twine back out of the drawer and ran it through two more rounds of edits. I worked on the book non-stop. I hired my mom to shoot and format my cover art. I opened my own publishing house, Writesy Press, in January of 2012. I formatted the pages, found a print on demand publisher I felt comfortable with and said screw Agents and big houses, I’m doing this on my own!

On April 20, 2012 I self-published Ripple the Twine. My excitement for the book couldn’t be equaled. The day I’d gotten my first proof in the mail – a paperback book that I wrote with my name on the cover – I literally danced around my apartment for at least an hour. I told my husband he was taking the sofa that night – my book deserved his half of the bed.

The book did really well in its first few months selling numerous copies to friends and family and even some people I didn’t know. An old friend had even suggested to her husband to pick up a copy for his library in Newton, MA and he did. I considered querying it again but there was no time. I was on to writing and editing my second book!

In early fall sales for Ripple fell off completely. Surprisingly so did the NHL as the players and mucky-mucks couldn’t come to terms on salary and the sport entered a lockout. So I kept at work on my new novella, Reckless Abandon. I was nuts - editing seven days a week so I could have it released in fall as an eBook and then in print just in time for Christmas.

An unexpected health issue arose in November and though the eBook was released to rave reviews (thank you!), the print version was going to have to wait. I finally got that going at the end of the year and released it in early January, 2013. But then I thought back to how simple it was to publish an eBook on Amazon and decided it was high time to format Ripple for e-Readers everywhere.

I completed the formatting on January 4, 2013. Now I’m not saying that my book is responsible for anything in the world of hockey but after the Stanley Cup win and start of the lockout I think it’s only fair to point out that the lockout came to a conclusion on January 6, 2013.

Ripple the Twine went live as an eBook on January 8, 2013.

Coincidence?

Now as NHL hockey comes back and the premiere of a new show all about a South Boston family come barreling into the mainstream (Southie Rules, A&E January 29 – Can. Not. Wait!) I can’t help but send my love to the Tomboys and Townies back in my hometown. The Google searches and revived interest in our somewhat rough and tumbled Boston culture have spawned new interest and new life in my self-published first title.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go check the B’s schedule, we only get 48 games this season and I intend to watch as many as I can.

Yeah, I’m Breaking the Rules

My self-imposed rules that is. What’s that you ask? Am I going out of the house shopping today or something? HELL NO!! Not those kinds of rules. I mean the part where I announced I wouldn’t be online or writing anything all weekend. Hey, it’s not my fault. My family was supposed to be my buffer and everyone is still passed out from family, food & festive fun yesterday.

When left alone in the house at 7:00 in the morning what the heck else am I supposed to do other than whip up a blog post and eat blue cheese mix on Ritz crackers and a slice of apple cranberry pie for breakfast? I mean Thanksgiving only comes once a year and those are my cheat foods.

But I digress (as usual) because this post isn’t about food…

There’s really only one reason I got online when I wasn’t supposed to and that’s to tell everybody that Reckless Abandon**, my Romantic Suspense novella released last month on Amazon, is free to download this whole weekend! Woo hoo!

The best ranking I’d reached up to now was about 48,000 in my top category. Which as far as I’m concerned for a relative nobody Author like me (at this moment) I was pretty stoked about that. When I woke up this morning I checked before I even started promoting the thing and HOLY CRAP!!!

Though ranking numbers change by the hour as of right now (8:00 AM in Phoenix) it’s at #7520 in the Free for Kindle store. But those numbers aren’t the ones I’m tripping out over. The part where I’m dropping my jaw in astonishment is where I’m #72 in the Women Sleuths category and #90 in Romantic Suspense.

Hang on and let me let that sink in a second…of the 5,453 books on Amazon Kindle store that are Romantic Suspense my little novella is at a ranking in the top 100 after only 8 hours on the free list.

Okay, my mind is officially blown! I need to do a little more digging around my Author tools to see just how many downloads it has gotten but I may not let myself do that until Sunday after it comes off the promo weekend.

I’m really, really proud of this book and to see it move up the ranks like that makes me overjoyed! Well that and it also makes me want to keep going. To write more, to continue on with this series, and to release a quality piece of fiction to accompany this effort.

If you’d like to check out the book you can see Reckless Abandon on Amazon Kindle store here. If you download the book and read it please let me know what you think! I’m an Indie Author and we live by reviews. Thanks in advance!

Hope you’re all having as wonderful a weekend as I am over here. SO MUCH to be thanks full for this year!

**Reckless Abandon - FREE download Friday - Sunday & you don't have to step foot inside a store

BORING

Last week started my cavalcade of editing content and structure of my second manuscript.  Yea.  Can you feel the enthusiasm?  No?  Yeah well neither can I.  This is the part of the process where I hate my characters, hate my story, and I’ve considered using the 206 page piece of crap as kindling in my fireplace.  And yeah, it is July in Arizona.  So you know it has to be pretty bad.

Well, maybe not bad per se, just boring.  So very boring I would actually rather work out, vacuum, or format this post to have a different font every other word, than sit down to edit anything having to do with Donna or her pathetic life. 

Basically, fuck this manuscript.  The title is awful and doesn’t fit the content.  My characters are thin and no one is going to give a crap about their stupid little problems.  Geographically I’m being a fraud because I set it in Boston (of course) but I’m not set in Boston anymore.  Plot, scene, structure, character development – all crap.  Crap, crap, CRAP!

Then I remember to breathe.

Because I’ve been through this once before.

The problem isn’t necessarily with the writing; the problem is with my head.

I know I can write it to be a more fully developed story.  I also know it isn’t winning a Pulitzer but that the writing is better than Fifty Shades of Grey.  Or so I’ve been told.  I’m not intending on reading it to find out just how good or bad the grammar and spelling really are; I trust the horrified posts from my fellow writers and plan to stay clear.  But some rumors about it are likely to be true.  For example, the content.

Which means that single book is like a time bomb for writers like me.

Writers who celebrate the joys in subtle cuteness.

If you read Ripple the Twine you know I’m not one for sex scenes.  I mean I have Sara and Ben flirting mercilessly with each other, bantering, kissing, making out in public places, but the part where they jump in the sack?  Well let’s just say I appreciate the art of the ‘fade-into-the-flickering-candle-light’ device that most daytime soap operas use to cut away at that point.

I’m not all Victorian about it or anything but the chance you’ll see the following words in my books (when referring to something other than construction of course) is pretty slim:

-      Nail

-      Caulk

-      Hammer

-      Heaving

-      Throbbing

-      Nipple (Yes I’m serious, this is a plumbing term)

Wow, I could seriously write the sexual innuendo book if I felt like it.  Thing is though, I don’t feel like it.  I’ve been relying on my imagination to fill in blanks like that my whole life.  I really don’t get when fiction lost the ‘show not tell’ concept.  I don’t want to hear exactly how they did it.  Book porn (ahem, sorry, I mean the genre of Erotica) has never been my thing.  To write or read.  To me it’s so much hotter to imagine what the two of them might be doing.  So that’s how I write.

If I can show the tension sparking between them then your mind is going to do a better job of knowing what happens next.  Me telling you is kind of a letdown.  At least that’s how it works for me.  Because everyone’s idea of what happens after the kiss is so vastly different that I don’t want to read the version of it that someone else decides, these characters are living in my head (every time I open a book).

But now, with the emergence of the already mentioned Fifty, mark my words, sex is going to take a front seat in television, movies, books and any other media deemed appropriate to share a nipple or a caulk. 

And here I am writing cuteness.

But, and this is a huge but, I refuse to change what I embrace writing.  Because, even though being a sellout is something I can wrap my head around, I still have my limits as to just how far I’m willing to sell out.  Which means in the eyes of the larger public these days I’m bor-ing.  Go ahead, ask me if I care?  You’re right, I don’t.

So when I sit down to do rewrites on my cute little girlie story the only thing I’m reading for is if the writing is boring – did Donna seriously just try to tell us what she ate for breakfast?  Because, no.  Well, at least not in that much detail please.  That kind of stuff is fine for Facebook but not for a real book.  Because on Facebook it really holds no bearing if people ignore it.  In a real book situation being ignored is about as career-ending as it gets.

And I’m just in the infancy of mine, looking for an Agent and working on only my second MS, so ending it isn’t in the plans.  I’ll clean up and clear out all references of bacon and eggs that aren’t truly integral to showing what Donna is about.

I only hope I can connect with an Agent who understands that, when reading and writing, sometimes a girl likes her hammer to be nothing more than a hammer.

Never let ‘em See You Blush

My palms were clammy.  I was in a cold sweat.  My nerves were peaked like I was sitting inside the electricity room at the Museum of Science in Boston.  I had a dry mouth and could barely form a thought in my head due to the tornado of feelings running through it in warp speed.  It was seven o’clock in the morning yesterday when I woke up and I knew that in eleven short hours I was going to be standing in front of a room full of published and accomplished Authors telling them all about my book.  The clock ticked far too quickly yesterday.

Public speaking has always been something I dread doing.  Those who have known me all my life are generally surprised when I make this admission.  But despite my comfort level in a room full of my nearest and dearest, I trip up when I have to talk to a room full of random people.  I knew the SSWW ladies were going to be encouraging, I knew they would smile and congratulate me on the release of Ripple the Twine.  But I was freaking out anyway.

As the day went on yesterday I kept running over and over in my head exactly how I was going to approach my thirty seconds of “fame”.

“Hi everyone!  I’m Jenn Flynn-Shon and I’m an avid blogger.  I’ve been a writer since I was fourteen and as of last Friday I can finally add the title ‘Author’ to my resume as my very first fiction novel, Ripple the Twine, was just released to the public! [pause for clapping] The story is about a Tomboy from Boston, Sara, who loves hockey, writes for a living, and meets a great guy through a close friend.  The book addresses all manner of daily life struggles of Sara and her three closest friends and how their friendship could be the very thing that saves all of their lives from internal destruction.  But I’m a sucker for a happy ending and this Tomboy-meets-Townie love story will leave you feeling upbeat and happy. Thanks!”

Awesome right?  Well I should’ve brought cue cards.

I arrived and ran into another member as I was pushing the elevator button.  She’s a woman that I’d talked with at length at the Author event the SSWW held a few months back in Scottsdale’s Mustang Library.  A guest for the evening got in with us and the three of us started talking about getting up and speaking.  The long-time member said it is so important to just get up and do it.  I knew she was right but my heart started racing as soon as we walked into the room.

With over forty women expected that night I felt that my stomach-flip showed all over my face.  But I’d dressed up in my super adorable pink and black party dress and matching pink cardigan.  I had my book in my purse.  I wore my comfy and cute patent leather flats.  I got my name tag and chatted with Patricia, the President of the group, for a minute then took my usual seat at the “shy table”.  I extracted my book and placed it on the table, ready to go.

I was, after all, armed with the best pitch ever!  The introductions began and I listened as these wonderful women got up and unapologetically told all of us about their achievements.  I internally repeated to myself (over and over) ‘you can do this, you will not be embarrassed, you will do just fine.’

It was our table’s turn at the mic.  A new friend with a book I’m dying to dive into, Thomasina Burke Author of Magic Bridge, got up and spoke.  She segued into me getting up.  There was no hiding under the table as the entire room turned to look at me and smile.  With a quick swig of water to wash down my last bite of salad (and hopefully rid my teeth of stray bits of romaine) I took a deep breath, gathered up my book and walked toward the front of the room.

I turned around with a smile to survey the space and face the crowd.  Oh my goodness.  Forty women is an endless sea when you’re nervous.  But I was prepared damn it!

I opened my mouth, promptly swallowed the microphone, and in a neurotic blur, likely shrill enough to wake up sleeping dogs all over the neighborhood, I said…

“Hi I’m Jenn! skugykev vksjgoiaegv djaeklgae sdus8etrw fis90urtweg spiwstg Ripple the Twine sdghowhef, sertiuy, gljkropty, mvierg.  Self-published pyw4,ry93 06836m, perty-3t4. Oh my full name is Jenn Flynn-Shon and guess that’s it!”

Clapping ensued.  I have no idea why or how anyone understood the insanity that had just flowed out of my mouth.  I know I said my name, my book’s name, held up the novel in my hand and backed off from the microphone eventually but I felt like I’d just rambled the last names of about 20 hockey players; that’s how decipherable my rambling was in my head.

But a strange thing happened when I got back to my seat.  I realized that for the first time since seventh grade I’d stood in front of a room of people I hardly knew and spoke without the slightest hint of blushing from embarrassment.  In fact, I was glowing inside.

I was still rolling on nerves by the end of my spiel but I wasn’t breaking out into hives like usual.  The entire rest of the night I simply congratulated myself for conquering something that has plagued me most of my life – the inability to just own my shit.

Our presenter was an award winning, NY Times best-selling Author of seven mystery novels and someone I’ve heard speak before, Betty Webb.  She’s funny and pointed and had the best advice I’ve ever heard – ‘Always be true to yourself in what you write. Even if it’s hard (or embarrassing) to admit it.’

Done.

"Ripple the Twine" - A Novel - On sale today

Ripple the Twine
by Jenn Flynn-Shon
Paperback, 322 pages
Not yet rated

Price: $15.99
Ships in 3-5 business days

A Tomboy-meets-Townie love story and tale about how friendship can save your life. Sara Quinn is a Sportswriter from Boston and over the past year she has started to earn major respect in the local market. In the process, however, she abandoned her personal relationships and put her emotions in the box. Regardless of her self-imposed timeout, a friend introduces her to Ben. With blue eyes, black hair and a brogue, he's her ultimate triple threat. But they connect just as Sara learns that her friends are facing heavy emotional crises. She starts offering advice, becoming a rock for everyone else, and in the process Sara unearths her own long dormant insecurities. But a bag of peanut butter cups and a hockey game won't fix her issues. She's got to move past her emotional past without hiding behind her career for once. She needs her friend's support as much as they need hers and the four will quickly discover that, when they stick together, their offense is virtually unstoppable.

Please feel free to leave a review of this book on this post, at my Goodreads Author page, or directly on Lulu.  Thank you for supporting Indie Authors!