Madness or genius?

Today, guest author PD Martin is here to tell us about her new project and her innovative approach to engaging readers — and creating fans — before the book is even finished. Sound unboxed? We thought so, too. Enjoy!
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Madness or genius?

I admit, my latest project probably verges on madness – at the very least it’s a little bit crazy…

A couple of weeks ago I launched a website called Coming Home – the start of a new book in my Sophie Anderson series. But there’s one key difference…instead of writing this book in the “normal” way, each week voters will nominate how they want the next chapter to unfold, using different scenarios I put forward. At the end of the short voting period, majority rules and I’ll have six days to write that chapter.

After 12 weeks I’ll have a Sophie novella, which will be available for free on my website after some editing and formatting.

The idea came about after a conversation with a friend of mine in marketing, who was talking about the importance of drawing people into you/your products (in our case books). He asked if there was a way readers, whether they were existing fans or not, could get involved in my writing process. Enter my voting system. It’s too early to say if it will be an effective marketing strategy but feel free to email me in March to ask!

On a creative level, this project is extremely exciting (and scary) for me. It gives me a chance to write a Sophie story I’ve longed to write – the tale of Sophie’s brother’s murder 28 years ago – while also challenging me with this voting system. It’s a leap of faith, but it’s a leap I’m dying to take.

Is it for you? I don’t think an author who meticulously plots their work would want to try this approach, but my writing methods have changed dramatically over the years. My first book, Body Count, was mostly plotted out whereas for book 4, The Killing Hands (view the trailer), I was literally up to 80,000 words into the novel and I still didn’t know whodunit. I kid you not.

So, for me, I feel this chapter-by-chapter approach is a viable way to write a book – even if it is challenging!

The other good thing about this project is it’s all set up in WordPress, so it’s not expensive. I’ve got Pages for my Welcome, Schedule, etc. and then each chapter’s voting will be set up like a blog post. Visit www.pdmartin.com.au/ebook and you’ll see the most current voting. Plus, I’ve used Poll Daddy (it’s also free) to do my voting each week.

I’m only a couple of weeks in but let me tell you I’ve been hitting the Show Results link many times. After all, I’m curious to find out what I’ll have to write next!

PD Martin – Phillipa Deanne Martin – is an Australian author with a background in psychology. She has written five novels featuring Aussie FBI profiler Sophie Anderson — Body Count, The Murderers’ Club, Fan Mail, The Killing Hands and Kiss of Death (not released yet).

Photo courtesy Flickr’s 1Happysnapper

Guest

Many thanks to today’s guest.

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