CUTTING THROUGH THE CLUTTER WITH A CLEAR BRAND

You solidify your brand by contributing something new or fresh to the conversation of your genre or theme...

It's my pleasure to have New York Times bestselling novelist, Thomas Greanias, as my guest. As a former journalist he uses his knowledge of politics, national security, and real life conspiracies to write tightly woven thrillers of international intrigue and mystery. 

Tom's topic is one that many are chatting about these days, pro and con, branding as an author.



A lot of writers are worried about their "brands" these days. Even Brand Name authors.


One fellow New York Times bestselling author, who has sold millions more books than I have, confided to me just how hard it is to "break through the clutter" in the paradoxical world of fewer print sales for authors and more titles for readers than ever before. "You don't get it, Tom. You have your Atlantis series, and you're the No. 1 name in eBook adventure. You were the first to break through big-time in the digital space. I can't claim that leadership position. Now the digital space is where publishing is going."

The answer, this author decided, was to launch a new series, which has done well, and on top of that add a young adult series. The workload is so heavy that this Brand Name author is close to the next predictable stage: taking on co-authors like James Patterson did.

I think there's a better way to build your brand, a better brand for you to aspire to, and that brand is you.

The reality is that your name IS your brand. And the most powerful way you define your brand is through the novels you write. Each new title adds an association to your name, associations that hopefully strike a positive chord with readers. Positive emotions usually come from writing a damn good novel that delivers on its promise. If you're writing a suspense novel, for example, you need to deliver suspense to your readers. A romance novel should deliver romance. A thriller should deliver thrills. Your voice in how you tell your story fills out your brand.

So you build your brand by writing your books. You solidify your brand by contributing something new or fresh to the conversation of your genre or theme.

For example, I contributed to the conversation about Atlantis to advance it to the 21st century. Everywhere I looked in fiction and Hollywood, it was the same old underwater fantasy that had little to do with Plato’s 4th century BC account. For starters, I went back to the source and asked, “What if it were literally true?" That led to Raising Atlantis, my novel about rogue archaeologist Conrad Yeats, beautiful Vatican linguist Serena Serghetti, and a secret U.S. military expedition that discovers ancient ruins two miles under the ice of Antarctica. Sequels such as The Atlantis Prophecy and The Atlantis Revelation then established that Atlantis is more than a lost continent. It’s a centuries-old global conspiracy playing out before our eyes even now. The Atlanteans, in short, are among us.

You, too, can rise above your genre or subject matter by adding something new to the conversations that you’re passionate about. You get your brand, and we all benefit.

• Question for readers: Do you prefer the familiarity of the same character in a series of books (Harry Potter, for example), or the same type of character (poor rookie lawyer from South) in different one-offs (John Grisham's legals thrillers).

Tom is offering two chances to win either a copy of his special edition Atlantis Legacy (first two books combined) or a hardcover of The Atlantis Revelation. If you're interested in being considered, please either leave me a way to contact you in your comment or send me an email: siamckye at gmail.com
 

Back Cover Blurb:
 
Deep beneath the ancient city of Jerusalem lies a secret that knows no bounds, devastating enough to reach across time. History’s greatest spy story begins here.

For a millennium, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount has been at the center of war and death. There’s never been a time when blood wasn’t spilled upon this ancient, sacred site. Flash forward to present-day Jerusalem, where 35-year-old Israeli counterterrorism agent Sam Deker has just thwarted the most recent act of violence—an attempt by radical Palestinians to blow up the Dome of the Rock mosque and pin the blame on right-wing Orthodox Jews. The threat, however, is a diversion. Deker himself is the real target. He is captured and taken to neighboring Jordan, where he is tortured because of his deep knowledge of Israel’s most closely guarded state secret.


Deker escapes with his comrade Uri Elezar, making it all the way to the border, only to be taken down at the banks of the Jordan River. This time, however, Deker wakes up in the middle of the ancient Israelite army on the eve of its historic siege of Jericho. Deker doesn’t know if he is dead, in some torture-induced psychosis, or really back in time. But General Bin-Nun has declared a colossal holy war, and he’s sending Deker and Elezar on a dangerous mission to spy on the Promised Land in advance of the invasion.


For Deker, it’s his only hope to escape this genocidal hell. Then he finds himself in the arms of a beautiful enemy named Rahab, caught in a web of deadly betrayal, as he struggles to unlock the truth, secure Israel’s future and his own, and save the twenty-first century from The Promised War.  EXCERPT

BUY: Amazon, Barnes &Noble, Borders, IndieBound

Hardcover and digital

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New York Times bestselling novelist Thomas Greanias is one of the world's leading authors of adventure, No. 1 in eBooks, Audiobooks and the World Wide Web. His tightly woven thrillers of international intrigue and mystery first exploded online before thrilling readers in print in dozens of languages and countries around the globe.
 

A former journalist, Greanias has reported on issues of national security as an on-air correspondent in Washington, D.C. for NBC affiliates, and he has advised the White House, Congress, and Fortune 500 corporations on the future of digital media. His work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, radio and television, and his top-ranking sources in governments, intelligence agencies and supernational organizations continue to inform and inspire his plots.  Thomas Greania on Twitter  On Facebook

WHAT KIND OF WRITER ARE YOU?

My guest is thriller author, Graham Brown. His debut thriller, BLACK RAIN, has the backdrop of Mayan myth. I can't wait to read it.


Graham cracks me up with his view of things. Take a look at his website and read his latest adventure, Hieroglyphic Canyon. I also like his thoughts on writing. I can so relate to his *style*. :-)


People often ask: “What kind of books do you write?” An important question, but I think a more important question for us writers is “What kind of writer are you?”

It’s important because you have to know yourself to know how to get your best work out. I been fortunate enough, even before I was published, to talk with and occasionally hang out with other writers. To my dismay they all seemed so damn organized. I actually made me sick. Word counts, page counts, designated times for writing. Ummm… yeah, I don’t do any of that stuff.

Which begs the question - Am I doing this thing wrong somehow?

I mean, I could do a word count but most likely it would resemble my senior paper from high school which had to be fifteen hundred words and in which I used every possible trick to lengthen every single sentence as much as humanly possible including repeating and repeating and repeating words and phrases. If Lucas had written Star Wars that way it would have started “A, long, long, long , long ,long , loooooong time ago in a galaxy far, far, extremely, very far away…” Nope – word count’s not going to work for me.

Then, I met a couple of writers that only work when they’re really feeling it. “Really Feeling It”? Are you kidding me? Nine times out of ten I don’t “really feel it” until I’ve been working for an hour or so. That first hour of work is like – “ugh, I think I’ve forgotten how to do this.” Followed by - “why do I suck so much.” Followed by – “wait, look, a sentence with some redeeming value – PROGRESS!”

So what kind of writer am I anyway? Well for me, getting going is tough- I don’t mean sitting in the seat – although that can be a problem too. I mean cranking out pages that I think are worthy of all the effort. It just doesn’t start quickly. But once I get going I don’t want to stop.

I guess that means I’m a sprint writer. No that’s not quite right, 100,000 plus words cannot be considered a sprint. A “binge” writer? No – that sounds like it’s involuntary somehow and that I have to throw it all away afterward – thankfully neither of which is generally the case. Okay so here it is – I’m a Freight Train writer. It takes a long time to get up any momentum but once I start going don’t park on the tracks in front of me.

When I’m really working, I end up staying up later and later every night. Which, of course, makes it harder and harder to get up in the morning, but I don’t care- I write until physically can’t go anymore.

With apologies to Gabriel Byrne, it reminds me of the talking Heads song – Life During Wartime. Sleep in the daytime, work in the night time, I might not ever get home…

Now, I’m not recommending this to anyone – in fact I think it’s probably the least healthy style of writing out there. What I am suggesting is find out what works for you – try different things and when you’ve found THE WAY you get your best work done, don’t worry if it’s different from what others are doing, because I guarantee everyone is doing something a little different. And in my opinion, knowing yourself is as important as knowing your characters.


Funny thing is, this was a hard realization to come to. Mostly because my first book, Black Rain, which came out in January of 2010, was a different process. I wrote it over a long period of years, prior to being represented. Prior to having any real deadlines. I wrote that one more like one of those “when I’m feeling it authors.”

My second book, Black Sun, which comes out this August, was a different story (no pun intended). Written on a dead-line, with important people like agents and editors waiting to see it, I tried to do the page count thing, and I did, in a way – at first I fell way behind in my page count, while I thought and considered and backtracked and rearranged, and then, when the train got going, I caught up and passed the page count And it went quickly, and it came out great and it was tighter on the first draft, than my prior book had been on the third or fourth. Guess we’re learning something.


And when it came time to do the revisions – I did them the same way – thinking and jotting down notes for hours and days, while not a keystroke was written. And then, I went into the work mode, pretty much twenty-four/seven for several weeks. I didn’t want to be interrupted by anything, not dinner, not walking the dog, or going out with my wife or our friends.


To quote another line from Life During Wartime – no time for dancing, or lovey dovey, I ain’t got time for that now…


So now I’m working on a third book, I’ve been filling up legal pads with scribbled character notes and dialogue fragments and arrows and abbreviations galore to the point where; if one of these suckers falls into the wrong hands it will probably get me committed as some kind of Uni-bomber like mad man. Doesn’t help that during this phase, shaving and personal hygiene go out the window and that I’m often seen talking to myself in public, working out dialogue, (which is almost always conflict so it seems like I‘m arguing with myself). Truth be told, it’s not a pretty sight, the other day at Starbucks people were scurrying away in all directions to get away from me. The character I was working on was plotting to destroy the world and I think I may have voiced some of his plans to the unsuspecting public. Might have to go to a different Starbucks next time.


But anyway , somehow this works and now the train is starting to move. The nights will soon get longer and the days will get later and the whole thing will pick up speed until hopefully it comes to a roaring finish and I can reflect on another line from Life During Wartime, in which we hear the singer tell us - “I’m burning notebooks, what good are note books, they won’t keep you alive…” No, but then again, they might bring a story to life.

• So tell me about your “weirdest” writing habit? If you dare.

# - # - #

• A Coveted Treasure,
• 
  
  A Perilous Mission,
• 
  
  And a Dark Secret That Kills

Covert government operative Danielle Laidlaw leads an expedition into the deepest reaches of the Amazon in search of a legendary Mayan city. Assisted by a renowned university professor and protected by a mercenary named Hawker, her team journeys into the tangled rain forest—unaware that they are replacements for a group that vanished weeks before, and that the treasure they are seeking is no mere artifact but a breakthrough discovery that could transform the world.

Shadowed by a ruthless billionaire, threatened by a violent indigenous tribe, and stalked by an unseen enemy that leaves battered corpses in its wake, the group desperately seeks the connection between the deadly reality of the Mayan legend, the nomadic tribe that haunts them, and the chilling secret buried beneath the ancient ruins.

Excerpt

~*~*~*~

Graham Brown was born in Chicago in 1969. He grew up in Illinois, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, traveling often with his family. Graham earned a degree in Aeronautical Science from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona and went on to get a law degree from Arizona State College of Law in Tempe.

A former pilot, lawyer and executive at a small health care company, Graham could not escape the allure of the thriller. After writing in his spare time for years he decided to see what he could make of it. Black Rain is the first result, with other novels on the way.


Graham has spent the better part of the last 21 years in the deserts of Arizona and southern California. He currently lives in Tucson, with his wife, Tracey.