Wait, what?

by Alexandra Sokoloff

I’ve been a bit sick and rather distracted these last few weeks so this whole “Long Goodbye” has had a dreamlike quality for me. I keep thinking, “Did we really say we were going to do that? Surely not.”

But now it’s my turn, and it’s all starting to feel alarmingly real.

I’ve been with Murderati since, well, let’s look at the archives. Friday, December 8, 2006.  That would have been just after my first book, The Harrowing, was published.

I switched from screenwriting to writing books so quickly I really knew nothing at all about the book business, and even less about book promotion. I’m a pretty quick study, though, in general, and I jumped into the Internet research. And in 2006 it was pretty clear that blogging was the thing for authors to do, and pretty clear to me that Murderati was the mystery blog to beat.

So I became a frequent commenter. I came from theater, I know how to audition.  I figured I’d just be so sparkly and irresistible and indispensible that they’d just have to ask me to join. Which apparently worked, because they did.

It’s been a long time. I blogged here every week for several years.  I was quickly so sick of talking about myself (within a month, I’d say…) I started blogging on story structure instead, and ended up writing almost my whole Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbook here, one blog at a time. That’s a pretty amazing thing, right there.  A lot of what I’ve written has been scribbled (typed) frantically at the end of long days when I’ve simply forgotten what day it was, an occupational hazard of a full-time writer. Other times I felt inspired, or felt like I had to top some tour de force of Steve’s, and I ended up feeling like a real writer of other things besides books.

I don’t have to tell any of you this, but a blog becomes a kind of PLACE, where people know they can stop by and find other people of like mind, a whole batch of regulars. Sometimes fun, sometimes comforting, sometimes confrontational, often emotional.  You actually work with your blogmates, so this is feeling like leaving a long-loved job.  As well as, as others have already said, like a favorite restaurant or bar or club closing down.

Only we did it to ourselves.  Why?

Honestly, it’s not the bi-weekly blogging that’s so hard – it’s the turnover.  Anyone leaving throws the balance into turmoil and the rest of us have to scramble to get back on track. I've done that scramble more times than I want to count over these six years. And the truth is, writers don’t seem to have enough time to blog any more. It feels like diminishing returns, when there’s a fast and easy alternative conversation on Facebook. The technology has changed. The conversation has moved.  We’re having to reinvent.

I used to run a huge cyber bulletin board of 2000+ screenwriters.  In many ways I’ve never been as comfortable with the blog format as I was with the bulletin board format. On WriterAction, ANYONE could start a thread. It was perfectly egalitarian that way. Some of our beloved backbloggers here on Murderati have been confessing that they had hopes of joining the lineup here. My feeling is that you often WERE the lineup – it just didn’t appear that way to a casual visitor because of the hierarchical structure of a blog. But on a bulletin board, you guys would clearly have been the lineup. I can’t help but feel that’s a better way.

Facebook eventually made our bulletin board unnecessary. It’s possible that it was mostly Facebook that made Murderati unnecessary as well. I’m an intensely social person and I need my social contact, but I see so many of you regularly on Facebook that I may have been lulled into feeling it’s not goodbye, just a change of venue that seems better suited to the times. I guess I’ll never know how many people regularly read my blogs here, but it’s easy to see that I’m getting massive traffic from my Facebook mini-blogs and random silly or profound comments there, because I get so many comments back.  More people take that time to comment on Facebook.  It feels more real, and I can be political, or brief, or cryptic, or completely idiotic. I like the informality, and I love the pace of conversation when it gets going.

In previous years I would have taken on the burden of reinventing Murderati as a bulletin board community or something similar. But I’m getting what I need out of Facebook, and I’m providing anyone who cares to drop by my FB page with the same thing I’ve done here, whatever the hell that is! - and with MUCH less time investment, leaving me more time to do what I’m supposed to be doing.  And we all know what that is. We all keep saying it.

We need to write books.

I know I'll still be seeing a lot of you as much as ever, elsewhere.  But because Murderati is a PLACE, I am already missing and mourning it. It’s the end of an era, and we all take change hard. 

Please keep in touch, or it's just too unbearable.

- Here’s where I am far too often on Facebook.

- I will be blogging regularly on my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors blog – I teach a college film class, now, and will be doing a lot of movie breakdowns in the future.  I would love to have people come by and talk.

- My website is regularly updated, and you can join my mailing list there to get book news (no more than four updates a year.)

- And I am going to make a point of checking the Murderati Facebook page every day and posting/responding there.

And… I have to let you all know, since I have shared so much of my e book journey here: Huntress Moon was just nominated for a Thriller Award in the International Thriller Writers’ brand new category of Best E Book Original Novel.

That's partly down to you, you know.

Thanks for everything.  I love you all.

Now tell me. Am I just an idiot for thinking Facebook is the modern alternative to blogging, and that it could ever be the same? If so, what WOULD be an alternative?

- Alex

Be sure to tune in on weekends, too this month for posts by alumni.  J.D. Rhoades is first up, tomorrow! 

PENULTIMATE

by Stephen Jay Schwartz

It's not quite the last but almost the last. It's the second to last. Penultimate.

I've always loved the word and yet never fully utilized it. Well, it gets its due today.

I was thinking about writing something entirely different. Something to keep us from dwelling on the fate of Murderati.

Then I thought, no.

Let's talk about Murderati. It doesn't have to be sad. It can be nostalgic.

I don't know what I'll write about next week, in my ultimate blog entry. I'll save that for next Thursday night. I hope I leave something to be said.

What I can say now, what I want to say now, is that I'll miss this place. It's been very, very good to me. My entire author journey began here and a good part of the reason my opinion means something somewhere is due to the fact that I have a platform here on Murderati.

When I started on Murderati, when JT asked me to split her time, when Alex and Brett and others voted to bring me on, I wasn't even published. I was set to be published and the above-mentioned authors had read and blurbed my ARC. But no one knew who the hell I was. So I had about three full months to do this thing called "blog" before Boulevard was released. And that blogging helped create a fan base for my work that resulted in some pretty hefty pre-sales numbers. I remember one comment I received on Murderati - still a month or so before my release date. The commenter said, "If Schwartz's novel is as good as his blog I'm going to love it!" Murderati gave me a community before I even entered the scene.

And, along the way, Murderati created some amazing opportunities. The PR person for James Ellroy's TV show found me and Allison Brennan through Murderati and invited us both to join Ellroy on his bus tour of historic, L.A. crime scenes. We spent three hours in a bus with fifteen journalists (we were the only authors) while Ellroy led our private tour. I was also invited to speak at the Omega Institute by an administrator who read our blogs. I've been invited to speak all over the country by readers who found my voice through Murderati.

I've met heros and personal saviors through Murderati as well, like Allison Davis, who helped me out of a serious bind when I was caught between jobs, and Toni McGee Causey, who recently arrived to help me through yet another fine mess I found myself in. Murderati brought me together with my old friend and past college RA Brett Battles, who became quite the mentor during my debut year.

Murderati has also allowed me to celebrate the work of some very good artists through Wild Card Tuesday interviews. I've introduced friends like film director Blair Hayes, film director Kevin Lewis, author Sean Black, photographer Eraj Asadi, film and TV manager David Baird and many others to our unique readership. I hope in some way these interviews have benefitted them, as they've certainly benefitted us.

I've also had the opportunity to work alongside such wonderful, wonderful, talented individuals as David, Gar, Zoe, PD, Alex, Pari, Martyn, JT, Brett, Dusty, Rob, Tess, Alafair, Cornelia, Jonathan, Toni, and the lovely Louise. And not just the other authors, but the readers, too. Reine, Lisa Alper, KD, Larry Gasper, Richard Maguire, Shizuka, Sarah W, Allison Davis, Fran, Stacy, Stephen D. Rogers, Philip, Lil, Susan Shea, Susan from SF, and so many others...I apologize if I didn't include everyone's name. You guys have been my sounding-board and first-responders.

Murderati is also where I've done some of my very best work. It has allowed me to stretch my fingers a bit, to write outside of the "dark, sex-addicted homicide detective" box. Here I can be fun, playful, autobiographical, snarky, and sometimes downright silly. I've had the opportunity to explore the growth of my children and to celebrate the daily wisdoms they pass my way. I've explored my attitude towards society and examined the weight it brings on the writer's soul. Murderati has been my soap box and forum. Overall, the exercise of writing two blogs a month has made me a better writer. I really can't thank you enough.

And yet, the blog has blogged me down, too. It comes down to available time. Juggling a day job, a family, various writing projects, and running from the law takes most everything I have. Sometimes I have to choose between writing my book and writing my blog, and that's when it gets tough. I have so little time for creative endeavors, I've got to make each moment count. Of course, now I won't have any excuse not to write another novel. Hayden Glass Part III, coming your way.

And so....it wasn't an April Fool's joke after all.

I love you guys...I'll be here until the end. I'll save the tears for my final blog, Friday, April 19th. See you then.

It's called MICROBLOGGING, okay?

by Alexandra Sokoloff

I was going to call this post "Is blogging dead?"  but that just sets up a conundrum I can't wrap my head around, not after the week I've just had.

But this question has been on my mind a lot lately, for a lot of reasons.  

Promotion and social media exposure, a strong internet presence, is absolutely mandatory for an author. Blogging used to be THE primary method of getting yourself out there, and if you had a personal blog and participated in a group blog like Murderati, or several, even better.

But so many group blogs have shut down, and authors seem to be burned out on personal blogging.

And then there's Facebook. 

I hear from a lot of people that FB is on the decline but it seems to me that the conversations that used to be had in the blog comments, and the large communities of "backbloggers,"  a lion's share of that action has moved to Facebook, and that that aspect of FB is growing.

Blogs are in-depth entities. The joy of a blog is that you can really explore a topic (as well as sometimes do some virtuoso writing), and the comments that follow deepen the conversation, and there's something compelling about the FEELING of a closed, fixed space that a blog is that makes it a sort of virtual salon. People return to their favorite blogs. I think of Murderati as a PLACE, where I can find people I know and where other people can drop by and join the party.  I love that virtual reality aspect of it.

But blogging takes a lot of time, not just for the blogger. It takes actual effort to read a blog, in that you have to go to a particular place to get to the conversation.  If the conversation there isn't what you were looking for, you have to look elsewhere.

Facebook is a different kind of experience.  It's all right there in front of you. You throw a topic up there and whoever happens to be passing by on the endless river of "feed" may or may not jump in.  You never know who or what you're going to get, although I do notice a base of regular commenters coming back to my Facebook page over and over, so there is an aspect of place to it as well.  

FB has tailored a social media expereince that is either still a novelty, or possibly more suited to the kind of social media experience that we are looking for - quick, fun, convenient interaction that gives you a buzz of relevance without much work.

I've heard it referred to as "microblogging" and I think that's a perfect description.

Now, I'm speaking from a very privileged position of being part of an established and respected group blog and also running a very popular blog of my own - my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors blog is getting more traffiic than ever (though far fewer comments these days), and a great deal of that traffic is for much older posts that are constantly reposted and linked to as people discover the blog and read the accompanying workbooks.  It's a hugely important selling tool for my nonfiction books.

But lately I feel like I'm casting a far wider net with FB than I can with blogging.  Any post I make I get comments from people I don't know at all. It's a quick interaction that introduces me to a huge number of people who may remember me and the fact that I'm an author, which is the groundwork of all promotion - name recognition. And I enjoy the format of Facebook.  It's so visual - which puts it light years ahead of Twitter, in my opinion. There's an aspect of improv to it, in that I can always find something fun to say about something someone else has posted. I am, for better or worse, a social butterfly, and I love to have random conversations with large groups of random people.

I know, I know, it's sounding like I've just discovered Facebook (Where exactly has she BEEN for six years?you're asking). But that's not exactly true. I was on it before it went public. It's only recently that I've felt that I can use it properly and that it's at least for the moment being a form of social media promotion that gives me the most bang for my time.  Time being always of the essence - not just for writers, but for everyone who reads them.

So today, I'd love to hear what you have to say about it. Do you think blogging has moved to Facebook? Have you had luck microblogging over there?  

And while we're on it, where does Twitter figure in? If people ARE leaving FB, where are they going? I'm really interested in what you all have to say about it.

And for comparison of the two media, here's my Facebook page, where you can find the same discussion topic (third topic, full page.)

- Alex

Welcome to our new Murderati!!

by Pari

Welcome to our newly designed Murderati website. We hope you like the look.

Before I go any further, let’s all give a huge shout-out to J.T. Ellison and her husband Randy! The two of them designed this entire new site and migrated all the info from our former host. They did so with aplomb, grace and nary a word of complaint.

It was a monstrous task and I think they did a magnificent job.

Thank you so much!

As for today’s topic, I thought I’d keep it simple since everyone is returning from a brief holiday and I’m still recovering from my Passover Seder . . .

I’M LOOKING FOR TWENTY-SOMETHINGS

As most of you know, I’m working on a new project. It’s not like anything I’ve written so far. One of the biggest challenges is that the protags are all in their mid-late twenties. In my own life, I don’t have access to many people that age – especially ones that are single and childless – so I’m looking for television programs (on mainstream TV), books, internet sites, YouTube references, etc. – where I can get a good current feel for this age group.

Any suggestions?

______

A note: I have a guest post up at Kaye Barley’s blog today http://meanderingsandmuses.blogspot.com/ and hope some of you stop by to say hello.

Cheers,

Pari