DREAMS AND REALITY . . . . LOOKING FORWARD

Today’s post is a rambling about our historical novels, the research involved, and our future plans for Keyhole Conversations.

Our dream began in October 2011. Looking back it seems amazing that Keyhole Conversations has accomplished so much in so little time. Eight months ago, we had a simple dream: to promote indie writers’ books in a different way, peeking into the lives of our authors in an attempt to learn more about them and how those experiences shaped their writing.

We thought it would be a simple and exciting cause. How could we know there would be so much to learn about technology? (How hard could it be to run a video camera?) We found out! Plagued by one setback after another, we walked on the edge of giving up, but we kept on, working out the problems one by one as we learned to edit film, compose scenes, and construct a movie version to feature our writers.

We started by interviewing characters from the author’s books, tying in an author’s secret to the vlog. Moving into the holidays, we promoted books with coupons, even giving away free e-books, and yes, we poked fun at ourselves with bloopers. From there we slipped into a five-week series to give our readers variety: authors and their art, authors reading their favorite scene, and along the way, we tucked in works going through publication. Poetry month was featured in April, and recently we offered free downloads of our books, Dark Side of the Rainbow, Edge of Nowhere, and Out of Control, and gave an Amazon gift certificate for the reader who could correctly answer four questions over “The Seduction,” one of the stories from Dark Side of the Rainbow.

We offered our service free to those authors who participated in our venture, and those same authors, under a grandfather clause, will always enjoy a free lifetime membership where they can promote their books without charge. Starting August 1, 2012, our service will no longer be free. Until that date, you can still sign up for your free promotion, but after August 1, there will be a fee for promoting your work on Keyhole Conversations, either fiction or non-fiction.

As we look toward the future, new changes are coming for Keyhole Conversations. In addition to charging a fee for promoting indie writers’ works, we will post two vlogs a month instead of posting every Friday. Both of us are busy writing our historical novels and want to concentrate on completing them.

We hope you are enjoying Keyhole Conversations and will come back for our Writers Who Cook series starting in two weeks.

Thanks to vintagefeedsacks for the use of their images.

MARCH RAMBLINGS

We hope you enjoy today’s video, a rambling  about our own historical novels and the research involved.

March Ramblings

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Take the poll below and let us know which series you enjoyed the most.

Special thanks to vintagefeedsacks for the use of their images.

KEYHOLE CONVERSATIONS BLOOPERS

These Keyhole Conversations bloopers were too good not to share. We hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed putting them together.

The learning curve never stops. Our journey into making videos has been an uplifting, fun experience, and we’ve shared great times with our authors who were brave enough to be different and participate in our adventure. These writers cast a long shadow and are great sports.

Don’t miss any Keyhole Conversations adventures. Subscribe!

Take advantage of the coupon offer below for River of Murder. Remember . . . e-books make a great and lasting gift.

River of Murder: Regular price $2.99. Now 99 cents with coupon code TH75Q until Jan. 2, 2012

Don’t miss any Keyhole Conversations adventures. Subscribe!

A special thank you to vintagefeedsacks.blogspot.com for the use of her exquisite images.

THE WOMEN BEHIND KEYHOLE CONVERSATIONS

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ARE WE TECH HOTTIES OR TECH NOTTIES?

By

Hazel Hart

Remember the Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz movie, The Long, Long Trailer, in which Lucy convinces Desi to buy a house trailer to honeymoon and travel in and all the mishaps that befall them on the road? That is exactly the pattern of events that happened to Bonnie Myrick Eaton and me as we embarked on our Keyhole Conversations journey.

When Bonnie, my friend, co-author, and now co-video creator, suggested a video blog (otherwise known as a vlog) in which we would interview characters about their thoughts on their authors, I visualized something fun, easy, and quick. All we would need was five minutes in front of my webcam. Then we’d upload to YouTube and Facebook, and we’d be done and back to writing our novels until the next interview.

We enthusiastically began promoting our idea to fellow writers, and Arlene Rains Graber agreed to be our first guinea pig. She was the one who dubbed us as “Tech Hotties.” Then we set about making our first video. Bonnie, ever the artist with a couple of really great book trailers to her credit, began working on a Keyhole Conversations logo and ferreting out music to add to the video. Then we interviewed each other, and my innocence was quickly shattered when the webcam images blurred. We weren’t “Tech Hotties” after all; we were “Tech Notties.”

Since we couldn’t figure out the problem, I purchased a Kodak Play Sport video camera. The camera took great video, but the included free software for making movies was confusing, at least confusing for a “Tech Nottie” like me. After an afternoon of trials with the movie software, we tried to e-mail our first movie clip to Bonnie’s computer. Even though the instructions for e-mailing proclaimed the process easy, my e-mail did not take kindly to MP4 files. They wouldn’t send. We tried DVDs and flash drives, but Bonnie’s computer didn’t respond well to those.

After several afternoons of technical trial and error, we were finally ready for our first video, an interview with Arlene Rains Graber’s A Plane Tree in Provence character, Penny Wilson. Arlene was fantastic as her character. We shot the video straight through three times. Each time, something happened. An overhead plane drowned out the sound, a word was mispronounced, a line was forgotten, but I reasoned it would be easy enough to cut and splice. Wrong! Remember how Lucy tried to cook in a moving trailer and things kept crashing around her. That was the feeling I had as I settled in front of my computer. I was emotionally at the edge of a cliff when I finally finished cutting, splicing and rearranging.

We finished that first video and learned a lot. We learned to shoot short clips of one question and one answer, which made it easier to edit out mistakes. We learned saving and uploading takes a long time. We still worry when “high CPU usage” appears on my laptop computer’s screen.

We have persevered, and our first interviews are up. While we have not yet reached “Tech Hottie” status, our characters’ authors are brilliant. Here are the links:

Arlen Rains Graber’s A Plane Tree in Provence

Conrad Jestmore’s River of Murder

B.D. Tharp’s Feisty Family Values

Bonnie Myrick’s Out of Control

Hazel Hart’s The Night Before Christmas

For more information on our authors beyond the interviews, visit our Keyhole Conversations vlog. And while you’re there, be sure to subscribe, so you don’t miss our book reviews. Remember, we always welcome your comments and suggestions.