Guest Post by Michele Drier ~ What's A Brand?

Today, I'm happy to bring you Michele Drier's guest post on branding...

Thanks, L.A. for hosting me on your blog.

A brand?

Being from California (the part of ranches and cows), isn’t a brand that thing they put on cattle? Sear it on with a red-hot metal shape?

Well, yes and no.

For a writer, your brand is what brings readers to you. It can be a genre, think Stephen King for horror or Carl Hiaasen for humor. Or it can be a series, think Charlaine Harris or Diana Gabaldon. Or it can be a character, think Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe.

To be a successful brand, though, I think it has to be our name.

I know a few people who write under pen names. And I know some people who write under a few different pen names for their different series or genres.

I don’t want to second guess any of my colleagues, but with about 4 million new books out annually, discoverability is the key to marking as an indie author. Discoverability is THE key of marketing, regardless of who and how your books are published.

I write in different genres; traditional mystery, paranormal romance, psychological thriller, and I may take a stab at cozy mysteries…maybe. What ties all those books and genres together is that I write them under my name.

My website, facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Amazon, email accounts, are all Michele Drier (or micheledrier). If someone’s bought and read all nine (soon to the ten) books in the Kandesky Vampires Chronicles and are chomping at the bit for the next one, they can pick up one of my other books and still hear my voice, my syntax, my style. After all, most people read faster than I can write, even at two books a year.

Developing and sticking to your brand is a necessity in today’s world of serious overproduction. Everybody has swag. Everybody has banners and bookmarks and glittering displays. The only thing you have that’s uniquely you is your name. And only you can sell your books. Whether you go traditional publishing or indie publishing, a reader is buying you, the stories you tell, the sense of excitement you bring, the characters you develop.

There are as many reasons that writers decide to indie publish as there are writers, but in my case is came down to simple control and money.

My first book, a mystery, was bought by a small press. The press did the final edit, got a cover design and IBSN, and arranged for POD paperback publication. It was a less-than-stellar relationship, probably on both sides, and I made royalties of around $.47 cents a book. My second book, which I wrote, researched, published five months before my first book actually hit the market, was an indie published. It took a lot of research to learn the ins and outs, and I published it in ebook first, but I was making better than $2 per book. The die was cast.

I’m now finishing my 15^th book and will indie publish it as well. I also have a complete 71,000-word manuscript that an agent requested on spec. He didn’t bite, but I think I’m going to do a final edit and indie publish it as well. It’s the first book in a new mystery series with two further ones plotted out.

And even if I end up writing a new mystery series, or a cozy series, or thrillers, or fantasies or a couple of literary history—another idea that’s percolating—they will be under my name, my brand. Yes, there are times when it feels as though it’s been impressed with a red-hot piece of metal, but now it’s a familiar part of me.

  

Blurb: 

Getting what you wish for can bring unintended circumstances. Jennifer in New York and Matt in San Francisco worry that they're losing their memories. Jennifer from an earlier trauma and Matt while watching his father succumb to Alzheimer's. After finding a new medical technology designed to help people with cognitive disorders, they independently track down a grey-market supply, but when they meet they find unknown terrors.

Buy:

Amazon

Bio:

Michele Drier was born in Santa Cruz and is a fifth generation Californian. During her career in journalism—as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers—she won awards for producing investigative series.

She is the president of Capitol Crimes, the Sacramento chapter of Sisters in Crime, and the co-chair of Bouchercon 2020.

Her Amy Hobbes Newspaper Mysteries are Edited for Death, (called “Riveting and much recommended” by the Midwest Book Review), Labeled for Death and Delta for Death, and a stand-alone thriller, Ashes of Memories, published in 2017.

Her paranormal romance series, The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, has consistently won awards and was the best paranormal vampire series of 2014 from the Paranormal Romance Guild. The series is SNAP: The World Unfolds, SNAP: New Talent, Plague: A Love Story, Danube: A Tale of Murder, SNAP: Love for Blood, SNAP: Happily Ever After?, SNAP: White Nights,  SNAP: All That Jazz, and SNAP: I, Vampire.

Find Michele: 

Facebook| Amazon Page | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

Take Five With Author Michele Drier

It is my pleasure to bring you Michele Drier and her book SNAP: All That Jazz and read on to find out who she'd most want to be as a film character!!  

I totally agree with her.

Welcome to An Indie Adventure, Michele. Tell us, what inspired you to write your book, SNAP: All That Jazz?

I’m writing a paranormal romance series, The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, and suddenly these two secondary characters demanded that I tell their story. Nik and Jazz have been sidekicks in the other SNAP books and fell in love in Book Seven, SNAP: White Nights. Their relationship is rocky and they needed to explain themselves—and understand each other. A relationship between a four-hundred-year-old Hungarian vampire and a 21^st century L.A. young woman isn’t easy.

What were your experiences as a child that contributed to you becoming a writer?

Reading and being read to. My grandmother read to me almost every night. She was an Edwardian and had been educated at boarding schools on both the East and West coasts and as an adult, wrote some poetry and belonged to a literary society in San Francisco. Both she and my mother loved to tell stories and I grew up telling myself stories in my head.

Do day-to-day life experiences influence your stories?

One of the themes in my books—both the paranormal romances and my mysteries—is the relationship between men and women. I’m fascinated at our language differences and how little we really understand each other. I’ve used this in spades in the Kandesky Chronicles. Not only are the male vampires falling in love with contemporary women, but there are huge gaps in their backgrounds and experiences. The vampires are all several-hundred-year-old Europeans who live a mannered, uber-rich lifestyle...the Baron Kandesky lives in a castle. The women they fall in love with are contemporary career women from Southern California.

I also pick up a lot of current news in the books, which are set in Kiev, Ukraine and outside of St. Petersburg, Russia as well as the L.A. area. I ran across a story that Ukraine was putting together a bid to host the Olympics in 2024 and wove it into SNAP: White Nights.

What is the first thing you do when you begin a new book?

Come up with a title! That sounds flip, but I’m a pantser and my titles define the direction the book will be going. SNAP: All That Jazz, was the book where I’d let Jazz and Nik tell their stories and, unlike the other books, is written in third person. I always know where the story will end up, but I’m never sure how we’ll get there. If there’s a freeway from the first to the last page, much of the book takes the off-ramps to lesser-known, more rural roads, exploring the countryside.

If you were a TV, film or book character, apart from one you've created, who would you be?  And why?

Probably Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. She was a glamorous eccentric who designed her own life, papering over her past and the hurts. She was able to create a place where she could live her fantasies, until reality hit her head-on. And of course there was a HEA!

Give us a brief summary of SNAP: All That Jazz :

Nik and Jazz, both employees of Kandesky Enterprises and passionate lovers, are having a tumultuous time. Are their differences too great? She's a contemporary, hip, young career woman working in the fast-changing world of celebrity gossip journalism in Los Angeles. He's a 500-year old vampire living in Kiev, Ukraine and running the Kandesky Munitions factories. She deals with celebs and sun, he deals with terrorists and dark. 
Is their overpowering attraction enough to build a life-long future, or will their relationship fizzle out before Maxie's and Jean-Louis' wedding, dying faster than a Fourth of July sparkler?

When Jazz asks Nik to spend time with her in L.A., a series of disasters challenges both their love and their understanding of who and what they are. When Jazz is kidnapped, Nik questions his ability to take care of her and keep her safe, causing him to pull away.

Buy Links:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble  |  Kobo Books

Bio:

Michele Drier was born in Santa Cruz and is a fifth generation Californian. She’s lived and

worked all over the state, calling both Southern and Northern California home.  During her career in journalism—as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers—she won awards for producing investigative series.

SNAP: All That Jazz, Book Eight of The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, was published June 30, 2014.  The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles paranormal romance series include SNAP: The World Unfolds, SNAP: New Talent, Plague: A Love Story, DANUBE: A Tale of Murder, SNAP: Love for Blood, SNAP: Happily Ever After?, SNAP: White Night and SNAP: All That Jazz.  SNAP: I, Vampire, Book Nine in the Kandesky Vampire Chronicles is scheduled for publication early 2015.

She also writes the Amy Hobbes Newspaper mysteries, Edited for Death and Labeled for Death. A third book, Delta for Death, is coming in 2015.

Find Michele:

Facebook | Twitter  |  Website