ARCHIVE FOR Katrin Schumann

By Katrin Schumann

Last year, I was thinking a lot about this question as it relates to writing: When is it okay to give in and give up?

Why? Because in the months before publishers began showing interest in my novel, The Forgotten Hours, I had seriously been considering changing careers and giving up writing altogether. This was a huge deal for me since I basically can’t do anything else (at least not well, and with enthusiasm).

What’s launching your book really like? 

Do you take your own advice?

My first novel, The Forgotten Hours, came out almost three months ago. While I’ve published and launched nonfiction books, this was my first experience debuting a novel. Ironically, after developing and teaching the Launch Lab along with Lynne Griffin, I’d become a bit of a book marketing expert, despite being a non-business-focused creative type. Since the Launch Lab is about helping authors promote themselves and their books in an authentic, sustainable, successful, and hopefully even enjoyable way, I was all set, right?

I ...

What's launching your book really like? 

By Katrin Schumann

Your first event is with a panel of authors in front of a crowd of 200 people. You buy new lipstick and pray your voice doesn’t quiver.

The alarm rings at 5am. The Uber doesn’t turn up. On the road late!

Within three days of your book launch, you catch a cold and lose your voice. It's so bad that you have to postpone your big radio interview.

When we think about launching our books, we dream of doing readings (among other things like catching sight of our books in airports, and, of course, getting on bestseller lists), but in this day and age why are readings still so important to us?

By Katrin Schumann

For a new author, are readings really all they're cracked up to be?

When writing the fiction of violence, Katrin Schumann finds that there are no easy answers about how to get it right. This article first appeared in CrimeReads.

Years ago in a writing workshop in San Francisco, a lanky middle-aged student sitting next to me held his pages in trembling fingers. He began to read aloud a story about a body found in the trunk of a car. As he read, we all listened attentively, drawn in at first by the obvious questions: who was this woman and what had happened to her? We were trying to learn to become better writers