Blog Book Tour Stop: Morgan Mandel
August 19, 2009 by Lillie
My guest today is Morgan Mandel. She is on a blog book tour for her latest novel Killer Career.
Lillie: Thank you for visiting A Writer’s Words, An Editor’s Eye today, Morgan. Tell us about Killer Career.
Morgan: Changing jobs could be a killer when Julie McGuire latches onto her sexy psychotic mentor, despite the warnings of her best friend and law partner, Dade Donovan. To save herself and Dade, she must face her greatest fear: claustrophobia.
Lillie: I always like to know the story behind the story. Where did you get the idea for Killer Career?
Morgan: Inspiration came innocuously enough. I was sitting at a mystery conference listening to a panel of mystery authors when I thought it would be fun to create an author character who acted on what he wrote. For the setting, I chose a workers’ compensation law firm. Since my day job happened to be an administrative assistant at such a firm, I had information at my fingertips, as well as stored in my brain.
Lillie: Julie and Dade are attorneys with their own practice. Did you call on personal experience for the cases they handle?
Morgan: In one part of the book, my heroine went on trial for a client who got hurt in a designated employee parking lot. I’ve known of such accidents and of the client being covered under workers’ compensation.
Also, I know of instances where employees are off work due to injuries on the job and they’re videotaped by investigators to make sure they’re obeying their doctor’s orders. This practice also plays a role in the book.
Lillie: Julie wants to become a writer, but she is waiting to quit her job first. I know you hold down a full-time job, yet you have successfully published three novels. How do you find the time to write, publish, and promote your books?
Morgan: I never have enough time. I’m always playing catch-up. Giving my heroine the ability to follow her choice is my vicarious way of experiencing a full-time writing career. In the meantime, I make do, writing and marketing on the train, during work breaks, at home after dinner. There’s never enough hours in the day, but I’m thankful I have the opportunity to do what I love, even if it’s not as often as I wish.
Lillie: It seems that you’re everywhere on the Internet. How do you decide what social media to use in promotion and how do you determine what works?
Morgan: Almost every day I hit ping.fm, where a short message travels to my sites at Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Hi5, MySpace. It saves me the trouble of going to each myself. After that, I click to mybloglog.com to make sure whatever blogs I’ve got going that day are showing. Next, I post on favorite egroups that accept promo each day. Some of them are: Pump Up Your Blog, An Alternative Read, and Write Publish Market. Depending on the content I’m promoting, I’ll post to mystery and/or romance egroups as well, being careful to do so on designated days. For special events, I also add the information to the main page at Book Place, where I’m the network creator. After the initial round of promo in the morning, I follow it up with Tweets on Twitter off and on during the day. When I get a chance, I use Google Analytics to see how many visitors have stopped at my blogs.
Lillie: I believe you chose to self-publish Killer Career. Please tell us about your experience: what led you to that decision, how you went about it, and how well it worked for you.
Morgan: I chose to self-publish from a chance encounter with Austin S. Camacho, author of the Hannibal Jones mystery series, at the Love is Murder Conference in February, 2009. Although he’d done marvelously well in the small press field and was much praised by his publisher, he’d also accepted the challenge of self-publishing and told me he was doing even better in that regard.
I’d spent a lot of time promoting Girl Of My Dreams
I decided to take the plunge. I hired Helen Ginger as my editor; I pestered Austin Camacho and his wife Denise with questions; I read and re-read Dan Poynter’s Self-Publishing Manual
As far as sales, it’s too early to tell. The book is just out. With regard to the looks and quality of the product, I’m very well satisfied. I hired the best and did my best.
Lillie: My readers know I’m a big fan of self-publishing. Most of editing clients self-publish, though they typically do short print runs with a printer than print-on-demand. I wrote a series of posts on self-publishing that is now available as a free PDF download. I hope you have as much success with self-publishing as most of my clients do. One thing I always recommend is to make the book available in different formats. Is Killer Career available both in print and e-book? Where can people buy the book?
Morgan: Killer Career is available in print and electronic formats at major distributors such as Ingram, at Amazon.com
Lillie: Where can readers learn more about you and your books?
Morgan: You’re invited to visit my Web site, my daily blog, or any of my group blogs at Acme Authors Link, Make Mine Mystery, and The Blood-Red Pencil. You’re also invited to join my Ning site, Book Place. If you go to my blog and click the link in the left column, you can get my entire tour schedule. Also, each day in the main column I mention the stop of the day with its link.
Lillie: Is there anything else you’d like to share that I haven’t asked?
Morgan: Don’t believe everything you’ve heard about self-published books. You need to judge each one on its own merits as you’d do with any other book.
Lillie: I certainly agree with you on that. Thank you for visiting. I’m sure I didn’t ask everything my readers want to know so I hope you’ll check in during the day to answer questions.
Morgan: It would be my pleasure to respond to comments. Thanks so much for hosting me and picking my brain, Lillie. I had a great time.
I do want to mention, for those following my tour each day, tomorrow’s stop is at L. Diane Wolfe’s Spunk on a Stick, where it’s excerpt day.
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Morgan Mandel
Morgan Mandel enjoys variety as an author. She writes romances, mysteries, and even has a dog book in the works. Her latest release is the romantic suspense, Killer Career, published by Choice One Publishing Co.
Morgan’s back list includes Girl Of My Dreams
Morgan is a past President of Chicago-North RWA, presently serves as Library Liaison for MWMWA, and belongs to Sisters in Crime and EPIC. She also freelanced for the Daily Herald newspaper before being published in book form.
Heard a lot about Morgan’s book Killer Career. Also read the interview of Morgan in this blog, which is quite interesting.
.-= Alicia´s last blog ..Dickies Men’s Regular Fit 5-Pocket Rigid Jean, Indigo Blue, 33×34 =-.
Alicia,
Hope you buy the book and read it!
Hi Lillie,
Thanks so much for letting me share my writing life with everyone. You posed some great questions.
Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com
Morgan,
Thank you for visiting. It’s a treat to have you here.
Morgan I wondered are your other books also self published? If not, which do your prefer self published or the traditional route and why?
Great interview!
.-= Lauri´s last blog ..Paper Bag Publishing- Part of the New Wave =-.
Lauri,
Thanks for visiting and commenting. I enjoyed interviewing Morgan and look forward to her response to your question.
Great interview, Morgan and Lillie! Being a part of Morgan’s writing chapter, I’ve had the privilege of hearing about Killer Career as she developed it, but I still learned some new things about Morgan as I read this
. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, especially on promo, Morgan, and congrats again on the new release!
.-= Marilyn Brant´s last blog ..Almost Like Time Travel =-.
Marilyn,
Glad we could introduce to some new things about Morgan. That’s always a challenge.
Very nice interview. Thanks for hosting Morgan, Lillie. Learning something new with each stop on your tour, Morgan, and I’m really looking forward to your series at the Blood Red Pencil next week.
Maryann,
I’m delighted to host Morgan.
I’ve been working on the Morgan Mandel’s Basic Guide to Self-Publishing posts for Blood-Red Pencil which begins August 24. I’m trying to stay a week ahead of myself. So far, so good. Another one to finish tonight.
Morgan Mandel
In answer to the question about my backlist books, they were published by Hard Shell Word Factory. That publisher was not publishing submissions from accepted manuscripts for a long while, so I didn’t want to wait. Hard Shell has recently been sold to Mundania and more should be happening there soon, but there are quite a few manuscripts in the pipeline waiting to come out.
I thought it would be a fun experiment to publish a book myself and see how I did.
Morgan Mandel
Thanks for stopping by, Marilyn. It’s the sign of a skillful interviewer when a friend can learn more about me than she already knows. Lillie had some great questions.
Morgan Mandel
I’m about halfway through “Killer Career”. It’s a fabulous read so far. I wish I had time to sit and simply read, but real life calls.
Debra,
One of the perks of posting interviews or hosting authors on blog tours is that I can justify sitting and reading because I have to finish the book to write the review or prepare the interview questions.
That’s how I justified read Killer Career quickly.
And you’ve got your own edits to finish, too, Debra. I’m anxious to read Wild Wedding Weekend. Wish it were an earlier release than next May.
This Time for Always was really great.
I’m glad you like Killer Career so far.
Morgan Mandel
Morgan, your internet activity has my head swimming and but you make it sound so easy. If I did even a quarter of what you do, I’d never have time to sleep. What’s your secret!?!
.-= Jane Kennedy Sutton´s last blog ..Interviews: Nightmare or Positive Result =-.
Jane,
I can’t keep up with everything Morgan does, much less do it myself! She is amazing.
Jane, you have a great blog. I’m constantly learning stuff there I don’t know.
Morgan Mandel
Talk about writing what you know!
And not to scare you, Morgan, but I don’t have a J-O-B, and I STILL don’t have enough time to do it all!
L. Diane Wolfe “Spunk On A Stick”
http://www.circleoffriendsbooks.blogspot.com
http://www.spunkonastick.net
http://www.thecircleoffriends.net
.-= L. Diane Wolfe´s last blog ..Author David Claassen =-.
Diane,
Not enough time seems to be a universal complaint, no matter what our circumstances.
Diane, I think you’re doing very well. You’re pumping out those books right and left!
Morgan Mandel
My secret is I don’t sleep much.
Seriously, I’m at the computer whenever I can get there – before breakfast for a few minutes, on the train, on my breaks at work, on the way home on the train, sometimes before dinner, after dinner, sometimes up until almost midnight. The time goes by so fast and I don’t get half done what I’d like to.
Morgan Mandel
This could be a nice story. Nothing sophisticated or really deep in race for unique emotions and thoughts. But I like books that are not pretending to be something else. People often can misunderstood what is an adventure book or simply book written to entertain people. Some of my friends find Coelho’s work or even Dan Brown’s (!) books deep and emotionally inspiring. That is their right but I fell a little bit disappointed with people little knowledge about good literature.
Vaillant,
I wouldn’t call Killer Career unsophisticated. However, it is a book designed to entertain rather than to support a theory or convince someone of something. When I read fiction, I want to be entertained, not propagandized.
i am an amateur writer, i love writing, be it blog, article or any small piece of fiction stories. havent thought of pursuing it as a full career, but your blog does give me inspiration
Club (this looks more like a keyword than a name but since you didn’t leave a URL, I’m mystified; maybe you go by Club?),
I’m glad you get inspiration here. Only a small percentage of writers actually pursue it as a full-time career. Most book authors have other sources of income, though many freelancers who do other kinds of writing make a living from it.
Hello again Lillie, and hi there Morgan =)
Loved the interview and all the insights you gave. The book seems very interesting and most of all, seems like it would hit home with me. I had a job that was killing me, and I did want to get rid of it for bigger, better dreams. I feel like I will be able to relate to it once I read it. I will add this to my list of books to get (I’m a slow reader, unfortunately, I need to get reading glasses or something).
Thanks for this treat Lillie and Morgan =D
Sean,
Get those reading glasses.
All authors want you to read more books, especially ours. 
I think you’ll enjoy Killer Career.
I do write more to entertain than anything else. No deep messages, but sometimes small ones. In this one, a message could be that you don’t know what you have until you almost lose it.
Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com
http://www.morganmandel.com
Good interview Morgan.
Lillie – thanks for the self-pub primer. I’ve been searching for something like this for a while.
Char
Glad you liked the interview, Char.
Morgan Mandel
Charlotte,
You’re welcome. I hope you find the self-pub primer helpful.
What a fantastic review, Lillie and Morgan! Keep up the spirit, and I’m sure you’re going to be a very successful writer, Morgan.
.-= wilson´s last blog ..You Shouldn’t Feed Your Baby With The Foods That You’ve Been Chewing! =-.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Wilson.
Morgan Mandel
wilson,
I believe Morgan Mandel is already successful and will become even more so.