Writing Archives - Page 3 of 6 - A.J. Cattapan

My Word-of-the-Year and a new “Good News” Jar

January 2, 2016/4 Comments/in Writing/by AJ Cattapan

If you’ve been around the blog for a few years, you may have seen my previous posts about picking a word of the year. Instead of making a list of new year’s resolutions, I choose one word to focus on. Whenever I feel like I’m losing my way or need a little guidance, I think of that word and it brings me back into focus.

My first year, I picked the word optimism. I wanted to shake off the negative feelings I’d had toward my writing career and think positively. I think it helped a little because 2013 was the year my first Chicken Soup for the Soul piece was printed, and then at the very end of the year, I decided to give my young adult novel Angelhood one last try.

For 2014 my word was trust. I had just finished revisions to Angelhood and decided to submit it to one last publisher at the start of the year. I was going to trust that whatever God had planned for it would work out fine. Well, a few months later, I got the acceptance email from Vinspire. I also worked a lot at trusting God about getting me to Italy that year, and in fact, He got me there not once but twice, but that’s a whole other story!

For 2015, I picked the word grace. I knew many things were going to happen in 2015 that would incur a lot of stress and require a lot of grace from me. My book launched, and I had to keep reminding myself to handle all the new-found attention with grace. How do you promote your book but not come across as obnoxious about it? I prayed for lots of grace, and I hope I succeeded. Then my mother passed away, and I started a doctorate program while still teaching full time. Lots more grace needed. My mom had lots of grace. I hope I inherited a little from her.

For 2016, I have chosen the word mercy. Yes, I was inspired by Pope Francis declaring this the year of mercy, but I think it will be good for many reasons. It will remind me to perform works of mercy toward others, but also to have mercy with myself. With trying to juggle teaching, a doctorate program, and writing, I tend to beat myself for not doing more. Can you believe it? I feel like I’m not using my time wisely enough. I should spend less time on social media. More time writing. Less time fretting over my own homework. More time being with people. I need to give myself a break. Yes, mercy toward others, but also mercy toward myself when my perfectionist tendencies start to rear their ugly heads again.

Now as for the “Good News” jar . . . if you haven’t heard of it, it’s simply an empty jar that you use to collect your “good news” throughout the year. It can also be called a Blessings Jar.

All you have to do is write down something good you heard about or that happened to you that day and put it in the jar. Last year, I started off doing a great job with this, but after my mom fell and my book came out, I started to ignore the jar. A few times I thought of something good to write down, but then I realized I hadn’t cut up any more slips of paper to write on and I’d be too tired, so I’d just forget about it.

So this year, I’m pre-cutting lots of slips of paper! Bring on the good news in 2016!

Why Christian Authors are Gaga over Star Wars

December 30, 2015/3 Comments/in Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Writing/by AJ Cattapan

As the days drew closer and closer to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the hype and excitement online grew palpable. As more and more people talked about it on Facebook, I noticed that a great deal of the excitement was coming from my fellow Christian authors. Sure, you’d expect the sci-fi geeks among us to get all excited, but why would Christian authors be talking about it so much? In fact, I think I saw more posts about it from my Christian author friends than my sci-fi geek friends.

So why? What about Star Wars has so many Christian authors fangirling over it?

I’ll start with some of the generic reasons and then move on to the more explicitly Christian reasons.

1. Authors love a good hero story. At its heart, Star Wars is more than a sci-fi adventure flick. It’s a hero story. George Lucas has admitted he used Joseph Campbell’s theory of the monomyth (the idea that all hero stories throughout all time and all cultures are essentially the same) in order to craft his story. If you need more information on this, check out my three-part blog series on the monomyth, complete with comparisons to Star Wars and Harry Potter and The Wizard of Oz.

2. Authors love good characters. This is one of the reasons that the original trilogy is superior to the prequel trilogy. The characters in the original movies complemented each other so well. We had all the great story archetypes:

a beautiful, brave, and feisty princess who may appear to be a damsel in distress at first but can really fend for herself, thank you very much
a young man ready to make the transition from lost soul into hero, all while desperately missing the family he lost
the rogue good guy who doesn’t really want to be a good guy, but he just can’t seem to help himself–and it doesn’t hurt that he’s terribly good looking and the princess is falling for him
humorous sidekicks in the forms of robots and a Wookie
an evil villain who looks scary, sounds scary, and acts scary–and to make it even better, has an interesting backstory!!!
an elderly mentor to help guide our young hero and who demonstrates what it means to sacrifice yourself for a cause worth fighting for

My gingerbread and fondant versions of Princess Leia and R2-D2 for a school gingerbread house decorating contest.

3. Authors love imaginative world building. This is probably especially true for all the speculative fiction authors among us, whether we right dystopian, fantasy, steampunk, or supernatural. We enjoy the fact that Lucas built a whole world out there, filled with knights, lightsabers, alien creatures, all sorts of droids, various planets with different climates, and a plethora of space ships. And we feel as if we could step right into that world and be a part of it.

4. Authors, Christian authors in particular, love a story about good versus evil. Again, at its heart, Star Wars is a hero story, but even deeper than that, it’s a story of good versus evil, sin versus redemption. Christian authors are always writing stories about people dealing with faith issues and/or finding God, and at its essence that is what Star Wars is about, too. The characters are struggling to find the good in the galaxy. The Jedi knights in particular are fighting for the good side of the Force to win out over the dark side.

There are lots of ways “The Force” can be interpreted within a Christian worldview. Lucas himself admitted that he put the Force into his movie because he wanted people to at least question whether or not there is a God (which he does believe in, but doesn’t have a particular religion he’s promoting in his movies). According to the 2000 documentary The Mythology of Star Wars, Lucas said this when asked if the Force represented God: “I put The Force into the movies in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people. More a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system.”

Yet for those of us who are Christian, it’s easy to see how the Force may represent God, or at least one part of the Holy Trinity, that is the Holy Spirit. In Star Wars: A New Hope, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi described the Force to young Luke Skywalker by saying, “It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” In a way isn’t that what we believe about the Holy Spirit? In John 14:16-17, Jesus says, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.” You can’t see the Force, but those who “know” it are considered “strong” in the Force. It lives inside them, just like the Spirit lives in Jesus’s followers.

When you have the Force, you can do amazing things that you can’t do on your own. Likewise, when we allow the Holy Spirit to work through us, we can do amazing things. In the Acts of the Apostles 2:1-13, the Apostles receive the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and then they are able to go out and make bold proclamations in every language even though they hadn’t spoken these languages before! We saw similar “miracles” happen in the original Star Wars trilogy when Luke starts training in the ways of the Force, and in the new Star Wars movie, Rey finds out she’s an even better pilot than she expected and that she can wield a lightsaber and fight off a trained member of the dark side–okay, he’s been injured at this point, but still . . . these are probably not things she could have done before figuring out she may just be strong in the Force.

Jedi knights have training periods where they go away to prepare for battle. Luke has to travel to the distant Degobah system in order to train with the Jedi Master Yoda who tells him that “a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force.” Before Jesus begins his ministry, he heads out to the desert. We are told in Luke 4:1-2 that “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, then returned from the Jordan and was conducted by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, where he was tempted by the devil.” Fans of Star Wars will remember that when Luke was training with Yoda he was “tempted” by the dark side when he faced a vision of Darth Vader in a cave. In both cases here, we have someone preparing for the ordeals they will face ahead, both are filled with the Spirit/Force, and both are tempted by evil.

Speaking of evil, just as there are fallen angels who have taken God’s gifts and tossed them aside in order to wreck havoc in this world, so are there “fallen” members of the Jedi order. Ones who left the good side in order to join the “dark side.” We see this imagery of light versus dark often in the Star Wars series. In the new Star Wars movie (major SPOILER here, people), Leia tells Han she believes there is still “light” in their son who has turned to the dark side. In Return of the Jedi, Luke tells Leia that he has to go save their father because there is still good/light in him.

Dark and light imagery is prevalent in the Bible many, many times. In 1 John 1:5, the evangelist tells us that “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” And in John 8:12, we hear “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.'”

So important is this theme of the light versus the dark in both scripture and Star Wars that one of my Christian author friends, Pepper Basham, dressed up her kids as Star Wars characters for her Christmas card and then included the quote “The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.–John 1:5.” You can see it on her author Facebook page here.

Then, of course, we have the common themes of self-sacrifice and redemption. Jesus sacrificed Himself on the cross. In Star Wars, we see many characters sacrificing themselves. Obi-Wan sacrifices himself at the end of the A New Hope. Vader sacrifices himself in order to destroy the Emperor at the end of Return of the Jedi, and (SPOILER AGAIN!), Han’s actions at the end of The Force Awakens are quite sacrificial as well. He knew he was putting his life at risk to go save his son, but he did it anyway.

As for redemption, we have the ultimate redemption story in Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. In Episode 1, we are told that Anakin comes from a Virgin birth. He is believed to be the one who will restore order to the galaxy and balance to the Force which has fallen to the dark side. However, he falls to the dark side himself in Episode 3, but in a move that is very Christian in nature, he is redeemed (by his son, of course!) at the end of Return of the Jedi when he turns back to the good side and throws the Emperor down that chute. (Yeah, I know, I’m really technical with my space station terms. 🙂 ) And of course, we’re all hoping Han and Leia’s son will find redemption by the end of this new trilogy.

And if all that isn’t enough to convince you of the Christian themes within Star Wars, check out this Buzz Feed article on the 5 Reasons Ignatius of Loyola was the First Jedi Master. Apparently, Lucas may have purposely based his Jedi Knights on the Jesuit Order of priests. As you’ll read in the article, they do have a lot in common: service and humility, self-awareness and self-mastery, spiritual direction, detachment, and finding God in all things.

Does this mean all Christians, or even just all Christian authors, will love Star Wars? No. Some may like their Christian messages to be more explicit and less allegorical. Some may simply not like sci-fi. And that’s okay. But as the Jesuits would say, “God meets us where we are.” And for some of us Christian authors, that’s in the movie theater.

The 99 cent sale of Angelhood

December 16, 2015/0 Comments/in Angelhood, Writing, young adult/by AJ Cattapan

We’re halfway through the month of December, and that means you only have 15 more days to get an ebook copy of Angelhood for 99 cents!

That’s ALL ebook versions: Kindle, Nook, and iBook.

Grab a copy or buy one as a great last-minute Christmas gift!

An Open Letter to Pope Francis on the World Meeting of Families and the Synod on the Family

September 20, 2015/6 Comments/in Writing/by AJ Cattapan

Soon, Pope Francis will be in Philadelphia for the World Meeting of Families, and then in October, he and bishops from around the world will meet in Rome for the Synod on the Family. There will probably be talk on birth control, abortion, and divorce as well as caring for children and the elderly. And if there’s any talk on same sex marriage, you can be sure the media will put that front and center. But in all this talk, there’s one aspect of family I think rarely gets mentioned. Perhaps it’s purposely swept under the rug, or maybe it’s just forgotten. Large families seem to be encouraged in the Catholic church, but what about those of us who aren’t called to marriage or religious life? Where do the single people fit into the Church? It is to that end that I write this letter.

Dear Pope Francis,

You have done such a wonderful job reminding us all to reach out to the marginalized people of this world, to care for the sick, the elderly, and the poor. I know that I am only one of many people who have tried in the last few years to follow your example.

There is another group of marginalized people that I’d like to call your attention to. Perhaps their needs aren’t as desperate as those of the sick, the poor, and the elderly, but they are often forgotten, especially when there is much attention being focused on families, such as at the upcoming World Meeting of Families and the Synod on the Family. Please do not mistake what I am saying. Families are certainly important, but I’ve noticed that sometimes when we talk of families, we mention only the mother, the father, the children, and the grandparents. But what about the unmarried member of the family? When talk about family life occurs, the single person tends to be forgotten, but I beg you not to forget about the single people! Especially those of us single Catholics who dreamed for years of getting married and having children but find ourselves unmarried and childless. For years, we prayed for a spouse and children. We got involved in our churches, taught Sunday School and religious education, worked in campus ministry, and served as lectors, cantors, and Eucharistic ministers. Meanwhile, we tried every conceivable method of finding a good Catholic to marry: volunteering, using Catholic dating websites, accepting blind dates, taking classes, praying rosary novenas, etc. For whatever reasons (and perhaps it is simply God’s will), we’ve never been blessed with a spouse and children.

So how can the Catholic church help? By recognizing the value and worth of the single person in the Church. Please recognize our role in the greater family, not just our biological family but our Church family as well. I will give you two examples of how this has not happened for two of my single friends. One friend (I’ll call her Elizabeth) recently moved to a new community. She wanted to find a church where she would feel at home. She tried a few parishes in her neighborhood and found one where she felt comfortable. However, she was having trouble figuring out how to get involved. Finally, Elizabeth saw an opportunity. The parish was holding an upcoming event. She decided she would attend as a way to meet more people in the parish. As she filled out the reservation form for the event, she noticed that at the bottom it read, “Return to your child’s homeroom teacher.” What? Only parents of school children were invited to this event? You can imagine how crushing this was to her.

My second example is a bit less specific, but still noteworthy. An old high school friend of mine admitted recently that she had stopped going to church several years ago. She was tired of sitting in the pew alone, watching all the married women with their husbands and children. Realizing how she didn’t have all that simply made her cry. She couldn’t fathom still going to church if it meant being reminded of how God hadn’t answered her prayers for a husband and children.

So how specifically can the church help?

Please remind priests and deacons to remember single people when they are writing their homilies. Some of the priests I know write homilies as if they were only addressing parents. This greatly saddens not only the single people in the congregation, but also those couples struggling with infertility.

Remind all church members that single people still play vital roles in the family. I may not be a mother myself, but I’m the loving aunt to thirteen nieces and nephews. I also play the role of aunt to my friends’ children. My fellow single friends and I are the ones who watch the kids so the couple can go out and enjoy an anniversary dinner. We are the ones who bring over meals when one of the spouses is sick. Often we care for our aging parents when our married siblings are busy with their own families. (I think especially of my great Aunt Mary who never married but spent many years caring for her father.) We are the ones who will stand at the back of the church with the little one so Mom and Dad can receive Communion in peace. Just because we don’t have families of our own doesn’t mean we don’t play an important role in the family-at-large.

Remind church staff to word things in the bulletin so that single people feel welcome, too. No more “return this to your child’s homeroom teacher.” Again, this is a slam against single people as well as couples who have been unable to have children. Or even those couples who, for financial or other reasons, send their children to the public school.

Remind church staff to actively seek out ways to involve single people in the church. When I think of my high school friend who stopped going to church, I wonder why no one ever invited her to sing in the church choir. She has an amazing singing voice! Perhaps if she had been encouraged to get involved, she wouldn’t have stopped going to church.

Let’s see if we can’t find a way to engage the middle-aged single people in church. Here’s the thing: the Archdiocese of Chicago (where I live) has a relatively vibrant young adult ministry. For the last few decades, it’s done a good job of engaging single twenty- and thirty-somethings in the church. But what happens when you turn forty? If you’re still single, you’re wondering what you’re doing at church. You’re too old for the young adult group, you’re too young for the seniors group, and all the other people your age seem to be in the Mom’s Club.

Basically, I’d love to hear you and the other priests address the importance of the role of single people within the greater family of the church. And I’d love for them to utilize the (mostly) untapped resource that single people are within the church. Remember, single people often have more time on their hands than do married people. Think of all the good we could do in Christ’s name if only our presence was recognized, welcomed, and encouraged.

Grazie, Papa Francesco. Io prego per Lei ogni giorno.

My Love/Hate Relationship with Social Media & Marketing

August 6, 2015/10 Comments/in Marketing, Spin Cycle, Writing/by AJ Cattapan

Since my book came out in April, I’ve been engaged in a lot (and I mean, A LOT) of social media marketing. In the past few weeks (since my return from the Italy/Spain trip), I’ve had some time to really dig back in again before school starts up next week.

On the one hand, I LOVE it. Or at least, I’m totally fascinated by it. I’m wondering what will work and what won’t work. And sometimes the results are very interesting. I’m thinking things like . . .

How can I promote this awesome review I got on Readers’ Favorite? I’ve tweeted it, pinned it, and posted it to both my personal and professional Facebook pages. So far I’m getting the most likes on my personal Facebook page. But is that helping? Most of those people have already bought the book.
How do I make really attractive Pinterest pins that people will repin and that will bring traffic to my website? I wrote a whole blog post on that one.
What hashtags work the best in Twitter?
How do I make press releases that actually show up in online newspapers?
How do I can get more Pinterest followers? (I’ve quadrupled my followers in the last week. Of course, my numbers were small, so it wasn’t too hard. Ha! Follow me here, if you want to help my Pinteresting crusade. Leave me a note in the comments of this post, and I’ll follow you back.)
How do I get more subscribers to my monthly newsletter? You can subscribe here to learn about my writing news, appearances, and giveaways.
Should I have a YouTube channel? Guess what? Yes, I should. And do. It only has two videos so far, but still. Come visit me.

On the other hand, I HATE it. It’s sucking up my time. I follow one lead to build up my social media marketing and end up down a whole rabbit hole of information that makes the beautiful summer day outside suddenly disappear. What happened to my day? I’ve been tied to my laptop, my phone, and my iPad.

Argh! And I used to think marketing was boring! My college roommate majored in it, and I couldn’t figure out why. Of course, that was all before the social media explosion. I wonder if they teach a whole course in social media marketing in colleges now.

Got any social media marketing tips for me? I’d love to hear them! Of course, I may never again see the light of day if you do share them.

Want to hear about other people’s love/hate relationships? Click the button below to follow this week’s Spin Cycle.

How to create Pinterest pins that bring traffic to your author website

August 2, 2015/8 Comments/in Marketing, Writing/by AJ Cattapan

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of research on how to use Pinterest as an author, and a number of my author friends have asked me to share what I learned. Because Pinterest is a visual medium, it’s a lot easier to show you what to do rather than tell you, so I created a video.

Here are a few more general Pinterest tips that aren’t mentioned in the video:

Make sure you have a profile picture on your Pinterest page. People are less likely to follow you if they can’t see who you are. Besides, you’re building an author brand. You are your brand.
Consider adding a title like “author” or “mystery writer” after your name on your profile. For example, I’m “A.J. Cattapan, author.” That way I’m more likely to be found when people search for authors, and people will know exactly what they’re getting when they follow me.
Make sure the description under your name has key terms that will help people identify you who are. As a writer, you’ll probably want to list what you write as well as what writing groups you belong to.

Again, the video is a step-by-step tutorial for creating the best pins. It does not cover the three things listed above. Instead, you’ll learn . . .

what makes some Pinterest pins stand out from others.
how to create attention-grabbing photos without buying an expensive photoshop program.
how to pin those photos to Pinterest so that they drive attention back to your website–even if those photos aren’t actually on your website at all!

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How to Throw a Book Launch Party That Brings You Sales!

July 30, 2015/23 Comments/in Angelhood, Writing, young adult/by AJ Cattapan

Last May, I threw a book launch party for my young adult novel Angelhood. I’m not going to lie. It was a ton of work. But totally worth it!

I didn’t find great resources on the web, so I thought I’d save all my fellow authors out there some trouble and time. Here’s how to throw a book launch party that brings you massive sales!

Pick the Place

Finding a place to hold your party can be kind of hard. A lot of websites I found claiming to tell you how to throw a book launch party said they just held the party in their home with a few of their closest friends.

Um. No.

They said the point of the party wasn’t to sell their book.

Um. Sorry. No again.

The point of your party is two-fold: to celebrate your awesome accomplishment of getting your book published *and* to market your book. People aren’t going to buy a book they’ve never heard of, and in today’s flooded book market, it’s going to take some effort to get your book noticed.

So don’t hold the party at your home. Hold it someplace public. Here are a few options:

If you know someone who owns a business–say a pizza parlor, a bakery, or a coffeeshop–ask if they might let you use their facility for free. This can be a win-win situation. For example, my third book signing was at my favorite tea shop. They provided the space, some tea, and a little food. I sold books, and they sold tea. We all won. If you know a spot like this, don’t be shy to approach them. They may welcome the opportunity to be part of your success story.
Book a room at a place that lets you book rooms for free. My cousin Joan Aubele had the launch party for her cancer-survivor memoir at a church hall. My author friend Pamela Meyer did her first book launch at a Panera that had a room you could check out for free. Pam just paid for cookies and drinks. The one limitation here might be size. I knew the Panera room was too small for me (hazard of coming from a large family), so I had to go for option #3 . . .
Rent a room through a park district or library. I found a really nice park district banquet facility that was pretty inexpensive. What also helped bring down the costs was that they let me bring in our own food. Beware places that make you use one of their own caterers. This will drive up your costs.

PICK A DATE AND TIME

Think about who will be coming to your party. What’s the best time for them to be available? Since my book came out in spring, I knew a lot of people would be busy on Saturdays with graduations, First Communions, and sports. Week nights can be hard for people after work. I chose a Sunday afternoon. It seemed to work well for my group, but consider your potential guests when picking your date and time.

PLAN THE FOOD AND DRINKS

If you’re doing your launch party at a business that sells food (e.g. restaurant, tea shop), ask if they might provide some drinks and simple snacks. If they won’t donate the goods, ask about purchasing something simple from them like my friend who just ordered a giant plate of cookies and a simple beverage through Panera.

If you’re having it at a venue where you have to rent space like I did, ask first if you can bring in your own food. Friends might help chip in, or you can do what I did and go to CostCo with a friend and just load up!

PLAN THE ENTERTAINMENT

You probably want your guests to stick around for a little while, so give them a few reasons to do so. Here are a few options:

Think about who’s going to talk at your book launch.

Hire a band. I hired the lovely two-person band Finding Free. They did an awesome job of setting the tone for my party.
Bring in your phone/iPod and speakers and have a playlist ready to go.
Think about who might speak. I gave a short talk about how I came to write Angelhood at my launch party. My cousin gave a talk at hers, but she also had a priest (who saw her through cancer) say a prayer, her oncologist gave a short talk, and her daughter and son-in-law sang a song befitting her memoir. Other authors sometimes read from their books. It’s up to you who talks, but don’t let any speeches run too long. You need to save time for book signing!

RAFFLE PRIZES!

Everybody loves good raffle prizes, so have some at your party. What can you raffle off?

copies of your book
copies of donated books from your author friends (you do have author friends, right?)
a “reading set” (e.g. coffee mug plus coffee and/or tea samples)
anything related to the theme of your book
something for the kids? (If you expect kids at your party, have one or two prizes appropriate for them, too.)
know anyone famous? Can they donate a prize? I had an autographed football by Mike Ditka at my party.

How to award prizes? Everyone who shows up to your party gets one raffle ticket. If they buy your book(s), they get more raffle tickets. If they already purchased your books online and brought them to get autographed, give them another ticket.

Do the drawings for the raffle about halfway through your party. You want to give people enough time to show up, but you don’t want to wait too long and people start leaving.

I had all the prizes displayed and then let people drop their raffle tickets into the prizes they were most interested in winning.

ENLIST YOUR FRIENDS!

Oh for the love of all that’s good. Don’t do this on your own! I had a whole committee of awesome friends helping me out.

Two friends were the masters of social media before the party.
One became the official photographer during the party. You’ll want photos to share on social media afterwards so that everyone who missed your party will see what an awesome shindig they missed out on.
One friend was in charge of helping me with food.
One friend was in charge of getting as many raffle prizes as she could drum up (pick a friend with lots of people skills and networking abilities for this job).
One friend was in charge of book sales at the party. Several ending up manning the sales table. Don’t be behind the sales table yourself. Put trustworthy friends there.
Three friends were in charge of decorations.
Two friends sat at a table to greet people as they came in.

There’s a lot to do at your party, so divvy up the work as if it were your wedding party and you were giving out tasks to your bridesmaids. 🙂

INVITATIONS

Invite people to your party in as many ways as possible. The more you throw your party out there in front of people, the more likely they will remember to show up. Here are some ways to invite people. Use them all!

Send out postcard-style invitations.

Create a Facebook event page for your party. Invite every single one of your Facebook friends, even if they live far away. You never know who might show up from out of town that day. And even if they don’t come to your party, at least they’ll have heard about your book! Maybe they’ll check it out.
On your author Facebook page (you have one of those, right?), create a post advertising your party. Then do a Facebook ad to “boost” your post.
Send out postcard invitations. These are cheaper than invitations that require an envelope. You can get them for super cheap on vistaprint.
Write press releases for your event.
Hang up flyers at local libraries.
Ask your friends to invite their friends.
Tell people at church about your party.

THE DAY OF THE PARTY

Here are just a few things to keep in mind the day of the party:

It’s your big day. Enjoy it!
Dress nicely. There will be lots of photos taken. Maybe even color coordinate yourself with your book.
Remember that you’ve divvied up your tasks among your friends. Trust them now to pull through for you.
When people enter, have your greeter(s) welcome people and ask them to sign your guest list. On your guest list, ask for people’s email address. Be upfront and let them know that these email addresses will give them access to your monthly newsletter so they can get the latest and greatest news from you.
Remember to give your greeters raffle tickets to hand out when people arrive.
Also have raffle tickets at the sales table, so your sellers can hand out tickets there, too.

BOOK SIGNING

After you’ve done any speeches and given people a chance to buy your book, start the book signing! Have a separate table for this. Have a friend nearby with a pad of post-it notes. As people get in line to have your book signed, your friend will ask if they want it autographed to anyone in particular. They’ll write the name on the post-it note (double checking the spelling with your guest) and then place the note on the purchased book.

Why do this? It makes things easier and faster for you! You don’t have to ask each person to whom you should address the autograph and then ask, “And . . . how do you spell Jehosephat?” Plus, it will save you from that embarrassing moment when someone you know but don’t remember their name (because you’re terrible with names like me!) comes up and wants an autograph.

BUT DOES IT WORK?

You tell me. I had nearly 100 people show up at my party, and over 100 books were sold. The day my book came out on Kindle, it hit #1 on Amazon for Christian teen fiction on social issues. My publisher was so happy, she wrote a press release, which can be seen here.

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Book Signing Event at TeaLula Tonight!

July 23, 2015/0 Comments/in Angelhood, Writing, young adult/by AJ Cattapan

Join us at TeaLula tea shop in Park Ridge, Illinois, tonight for a book signing party! TeaLula has graciously offered up some free light refreshments for anyone who stops by. Plus, I’ll have copies of Angelhood and Chicken Soup for the Soul: From Lemons to Lemonade on sale at discounted prices.

Hope to see you there!

Why I’m Such a Star Wars Geek

July 15, 2015/8 Comments/in Spin Cycle, Writing/by AJ Cattapan

I promised on Facebook that one day I’d write a blog post about why I’m such a Star Wars geek.

Well, be careful what you promise on Facebook. 🙂

Ginny Marie of Lemon Drop Pie saw my post and decided to use it for this week’s Spin Cycle prompt. This week we’re talking about what makes us geeky, and for me that’s definitely Star Wars. But why?

These are my action figures. Not my brothers’ actions figures. 🙂

My students already know part of the answer to this. Every spring in my sixth grade reading class, we end the year with a fantasy/mythology unit that asks the big question: “What makes someone a hero?” And in this unit, we talk about how Joseph Campbell, a renowned anthropologist, studied the myths and tales of cultures around the world. After years of comparing what tales had been told century after century, he discovered that all cultures have hero stories, and those hero stories have a lot of similarities.

He came to the conclusion that all hero myths could basically be combined into one “super myth,” a monomyth that incorporates all the major events that have occurred in hero stories around the world for as long as stories have been told. Campbell then wrote about this theory in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In it, he describes the seventeen key elements that are in hero stories (although not all hero stories have all seventeen elements).

George Lucas had studied Campbell’s work and used it to create the plot of Star Wars. If you’d like to read about how Star Wars fits into Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, you can read my blog posts about it here, here, and here.

So part of why I’m such a big Star Wars geek is that I love a great hero story. I love hearing about a character who is brave enough to leave his own safe homeland in order to fight evil in a dangerous world far away. This also explains my love of Harry Potter, by the way.

However, I think there’s more to my Star Wars love than just the fact that it’s a great hero story. It’s also a story with great characters. I mean, who doesn’t love a feisty princess who can shoot a gun and handle a smart-alecky pilot? And who doesn’t love a smart-alecky pilot who also has a soft spot?

And what about the wookie? I mean, what is a wookie? I don’t know, but I love him! And I admit to liking Ewoks, too. I know some people thought the Ewoks were a bit childish, but I like ’em! They’re cute but tough.

And who can resist two droids who bicker all the time but are really best friends and would be lost without one another? (Does anyone else think Carson and Mrs. Hughes from Downton Abbey are a little like C-3PO and R2-D2? There was always something of the British butler about 3PO.)

And then there’s the setting! See, the trick about taking the old hero story and turning it into something new is finding a way to make it really fresh for the audience. Lucas accomplished this by making what is called a “space opera” or “space western.” He grew up in the age of cowboy movies, so to him, Star Wars was basically an old cowboy movie set in outer space.

But how great is that?!? Take what we’re really familiar with (a princess, a bad boy who’s really good, a good boy who tries but fails, and a villain clad in black with a mysterious past) and put them into a situation we’ve never seen before (space stations as big as planets) and with characters we’ve never met (alien creatures that can actually tug at our heart strings). This is what makes a winning story! This is why the same basic hero story can be told time and time again. As long as the writer does something new with it, the whole story feels new.

One last reason I’m a Star Wars geek: it’s a story with a lot of heart. I love stories that move me. I want to care about the characters. I want them to feel like friends I’ve known forever. I want to root for them when they’re down and cheer for them when they finally succeed. I think Lucas succeeded with this because he made the core of his story a family story. In the end, Star Wars is about a family–a father and his twin children, all mourning the death of the mother–who follow very different paths but wind up together in the end!

For those reasons, I’m completely geeking out over the new Star Wars movie that comes out in December. I’ve got pretty high hopes because director J.J. Abrams did a really nice job when he tackled the Star Trek franchise. He seems to be a big Star Wars fan, and from the glimpses I’ve seen it looks like he’s going to stick with the kind of storytelling that made us all fall in love with the original trilogy.

Also, he’s brought back a lot of the old cast. One of the reasons I think the Star Wars prequels that came out 15 years ago or so didn’t do so well is that we were missing out on the characters we had grown to love. C-3PO, R2-D2, and Yoda were the only characters tying us back to the originals. But in this new movie, we’re going to get Han, Leia, Luke, and Chewbacca back again. It’s like getting to see old friends that you’ve been parted from for a long time!

How about you? Are you as excited about the new Star Wars movie as I am? Or is there something else you geek out about?

Find out what others are geeking out about on this week’s Spin Cycle. Click the link below to discover more geek stories.

Monday Book Review: Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein

July 13, 2015/0 Comments/in Book Reviews, Middle Grade, Mysteries, Writing/by AJ Cattapan

One of my favorite things to read is a middle grade mystery with puzzles that the reader can play along with, and Chris Grabenstein delivers just such a treat in his Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library. (And seeing how I’ve just returned from a trip to Italy where I partook of a bit of limoncello, this book seemed like the perfect choice for my next Monday book review. 😉 )

Title: Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library

Author: Chris Grabenstein

Genre: mystery

Age group: middle grade

Synopsis: Kyle Keeley loves playing all sorts of games, especially board games designed by his hero Luigi Lemoncello. After Mr. Lemoncello designs the new town library, Kyle wins one of the 12 coveted spots to participate in a special “library lock-in” to celebrate its opening. However, Mr. Lemoncello has created a special game for this lock-in. The kids have to solve a series of riddles and puzzles in order to get out of the library. Whoever gets out first will star in a commercial for Mr. Lemoncello’s next board game!

I really enjoyed how much the reader can play along with the puzzles in this book. To me, a mystery isn’t fun if you can’t play detective along with the main character. Author Chris Grabenstein does a nice job of making many of these games “playable” with Kyle. I also enjoyed how he integrated many popular children’s book titles into the games and into Mr. Lemoncello’s speech. Grabenstein made use of classic titles like Anne of Green Gables (you know I’d like that!) and newer books I love like When You Reach Me.

The one little thing I wish were different about the book is that I wish there were more at stake than starring in a commercial. As an author myself, I’ve read many times that you have to decide what “terrible thing” will happen to your character if he does not succeed in his goal. Otherwise, why do we care? For that reason, the beginning of the book felt a little slow to me. I didn’t know why I should care if Kyle won this game or not. When I found out that the only thing at stake was starring in a commercial, it seemed a little shallow. Perhaps, if there’d been a financial prize, and Kyle’s family needed the money to keep their house or something, then I might’ve felt a bit more invested.

Fortunately, the riddles the kids have to solve were fun enough to keep a book lover like me entertained. Also, the library that Lemoncello (or really Grabenstein) dreams up is very cool, and I’d love to visit a library like that someday.

If you (or a kid you know) loves to read and solve puzzles, I’d definitely recommend this book. There’s even a fun puzzle-within-the-puzzle for the reader to solve at the end of the story.