Do You Compare Yourself to This Girl?

A couple of days ago, I read an NPR article about the word girl in book titles. The article discussed how publishers promote books by comparing them to other books. While they were talking about the title, comparing books is a tactic authors should consider using when shopping their books around to agents and publishers.

Jane Friedman, Co-Founder and Editor at The Hot Sheet, Columnist at Publishers Weekly and Instructor, Media Studies at University of Virginia, agrees when it comes to comparing your books to other authors in a query letter, "This can be helpful as long as you do it tastefully, and without self-aggrandizement. It’s usually best to compare the work in terms of style, voice, or theme, rather than in terms of sales, success, or quality."

Back to the topic of titles, however, Goodreads' list of books with the word girl in the title contains several hundred entries. Here are the top twenty entries:

1. The Diary of a Young Girl
2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
3. The Girl Who Played with Fire
4. Girl with a Pearl Earring
5. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
6. Girl, Interrupted
7. The Other Boelyn Girl
8. Stargirl
9. Kiss the Girls
10. The Girl Who Chased the Moon
11. Gone Girl
12. Morality for Beautiful Girls
13. Wintergirls
14. The Goose Girl
15. The Welsh Girl
16. There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom
17. The Little Match Girl
18. Story of a Girl
19. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
20. Living Dead Girl

As you can see, the list covers a wide range of genres including, but certainly not limited to, cozy mystery, horror, historical fiction, and young adult. The use of 'girl' in the title is hardly a new trend (Pioneer Girl, anyone?), so why does it work?

"I have talked to other crime writers that have been urged by various professional people in their life to put the world girl in their title," Crime novelist Megan Abbott said in the NPR interview. She went on to say the use of 'girl' in the title isn't about the content, but instead is a kind of shorthand letting others know what to expect.

Maybe it's because, as Cyndi Lauper said, Girls Just Want to Have Fun?

Over the weekend I revamped one of the stories in my largely unpublished short story collection, Haunted Women of the Appalachians, which is still in an editing loop the size of the High Roller Ferris Wheel in Las Vegas, for the WV Writers annual writing contest. The NPR title has me rethinking the story's title. Maybe I should add "girl" to it and see what happens.

What do you think? I'd love to hear your theories in the comments section, below.

5 Offbeat News Headlines and How Authors Can Use Them

Some of the most curious headlines are listed in MSN Offbeat News. This is my favorite section because these headlines inspire the most unique characters for my books. Here are seven recent selections and how I might choose to use them in a book.

1. Pranksters Block Road with 25-foot Triceratops
The Treasure Pines senior class prank involved blocking main street with the rival high school's mascot, a 25-foot fiberglass triceratops. The problem is the next morning when the principal of Treasure Pines High is found impaled on one of the animal's steel horns.

2. Someone Actually Came Up with a Breakup Cake
When Grandma Opal's boyfriend dumps her for the newcomer at bingo, she fuels her angst into a new home-based bakery business offering cakes for offbeat life situations.

3. Rescue Dog Raises a Paw, Gets Sworn in as Mayor of Reno
Harvey Wallbanger, the town's favorite golden retriever, helps find the mayor's missing toddler granddaughter. To show her thanks, the mayor swears him in as mayor-for-a-day.

4. N.J. Mailman Locks Himself in Truck as Wild Turkeys Attack
A flock of wild turkeys has become a menace in Treasure Pines. When they chase the mailman into his truck, nobody expects to find his corpse there several hours later, with an ace of spades playing card taped to his forehead.

5. Just 2 Protesters Show up for anti-Beyoncé Rally
Two new families move to Treasure Pines and agree the high school students would benefit from a dress code--complete with uniforms! Unfortunately they're the only two who show up at school to picket on Meet the Teacher night.

Another great source of odd bits of information is Mental Floss. Here are five articles I recently enjoyed reading on the site:

• How Sword Swallowing Really Works
• 8 Unusually Large Musical Instruments
• 11 Bizarre and Dangerous Items Sold by Sears in 1902
• 10 Bizarre Medical Conditions
• Every Country's Most Popular Beer

What are some of your favorite offbeat headlines? Do you have any sites like Mental Floss bookmarked that you use as a reference? Let's chat about it in the comments section!

5 Ways to Add Sports to Fiction for Non-Sports Fans

If you met me in real life, you would not accuse me of being an athlete. And you'd be right! Aside from NFL games featuring Peyton Manning as the quarterback, I'm just not a sports fan. Give the choice, I'll almost always select Hallmark Mysteries & Movies over ESPN.

The main characters of my books aren't really into sports, either. If they were, then I'd have to know about the sport, which would mean watching it. No thanks!

Eliminating sports from my books, however means eliminating potential readers. Here are five ways that I have either used or plan to use to introduce sports into my books to add interest.

1. Cheer for the Home Team - Cozy mysteries take place in small towns. Small towns typically have some kind of local sports team or league that requires participation. A local ball field doubles as the perfect venue for looking back at a childhood memory to show more insight into a character. Or finding a dead body.

2. Opportunity to Create New Sports or Teams - My cozy mystery series takes place in the fictional town of Treasure Pines, North Carolina, which was founded by a notorious female pirate. Of course they'd have a pirate for their high school's mascot. I don't have to know much about baseball to include lines like:

The town was abuzz with everyone talking about the Pirates' win over the Martindale Gophers, a victory that put them in the running for a regional title.

This line shows readers that the Treasure Pines Pirates are on a winning streak and the town of Marindale (whose mascot is the gopher) is geographically nearby without blatantly telling them. It's even better to flesh this out with dialogue.

3. Minor Characters as Sports Fans or Athletes - Just because my main character isn't a sports fan doesn't mean she won't have friends and relatives who are. The less they feature in the book, the less I need to know about sports, right? Perhaps, as long as the ski pole Elmer Jones uses as a walking stick doesn't wind up wrapped around the neck of his lifelong enemy, Cam Livingston. Or if Tucker

4. Include Non-Traditional Sports - Maybe my main character dislikes professional sports but she participates on a bowling league. Other sports and activities in this category include:

• fishing
• archery
• martial arts
• auto racing
• horseback riding
• kayaking
• yoga
• dancing

There are really too many to list in this blog article, but the activities referenced above can help you get started.

5. Create a New Sport - Make up something new. Include rules for playing and other details in the back of your book. You could unknowingly invent the next big pastime.

Do you like reading books that mention sports and athletics? Are you a fan of sports? If you're a writer, then do you incorporate them in your works? Let's talk about it in the comments section!

Why I Kissed Blackbeard Goodbye

Here's a plot twist I never saw coming.

During the 2015 MAFWI conference, I attended a workshop led by Jim Rada, an author who hails from Pennsylvania. He stressed the importance of research when writing historical novels. This is also important, however, when writing any works that mentions a real person, trademark, or other type of brand.

I knew this would mean quite a bit of rewriting for HAUNTED WOMEN OF THE APPALACHIANS, my collection of 13 strange and inspired by true stories, but surely I'd be smart enough not to let it happen again. Right? Absolutely!

It was more like absolutely not. It started when I read How to Use Brand Names in Your Fiction (Just Like TFIOS), a guest blog article written by Kathryn Goldman on the Better Novel Project blog.

Imagine my dismay at realizing the way I displayed Blackbeard in my book could bring up some serious issues. The fictional character based on the real person didn't show in the best light. There was only one thing to do.

I kissed Blackbeard goodbye.

Then I went in an exploration into the past to find a new pirate. Hours later, when complaining about the dilemma to my husband, he asked, "Why don't you just make up a pirate?"

Excited, I returned to my research. Because I'm only about 1/3 of the way into my book, I don't need to rip it out and start over. And because my new pirate is a fictional female with a sweet back story, I won't feel obligated to force my plot to follow someone else's facts.

I'm more excited about my book every day, and can't wait to share the final product with you all.