I hope you were a beautiful baby, cause baby you sure ain't now...

Yesterday, I decided to take a few snapshots to see what kind of "author photo" I wanted. I'd always thought I'd use the one on my profile, but I couldn't find the original jpg, and, well, I wanted to see if I could do something different. Um, well....it didn't turn out so well. I am not photogenic, and worse, I can't be still, and I keep either laughing, or jiggling around, or moving at the last minute, or, as you can see from this photo below--I don't know what the heck was happening here - bed-head and it looks as if I've gotten into the vodka or something...geez (Good Man Roger said, "You aren't going to put up that photo!" I said, "Um...I dunno."

My photographer friend is supposed to come up here and snap a few shots. I'm thinking I should just recreate my profile picture. Seems to work. Seems simple enough. And that's how most people see me.

I never thought about how author photos should "show" the readers what type of books you write. So, like if I wanted to use the one below, I would be saying "Humor Writer" and not Southern Women's Fiction" or whatever.

Or, if I was to use a "stand in" like this one below, I'd be saying...well...not sure what I'd be saying:



I always thought I'd just snap some goofy photo and be done with it. I never thought about how readers would look at the photo and associate it with the contents of my book. But, that makes sense. Huhn.





There's so much to learn from a first book out. It's an interesting process. And sometimes you feel as if you are tumbling around. I mean, my title is different from what it was (but I knew that would happen! My titles, well, sucked...), the cover is different from what I thought - but I adore my cover and as soon as I saw it I didn't need to see another one-perfect!, so they sure know what they are doing there! My author photos where I thought I'd act goofy-like I wanted a "sixties movie star look" where I had a scarf and sun glasses and red red lipstick - um, it didn't work either - it says "stop taking photos now...NOW NOW!"

Ah well, this is the thing: writers don't know how to market themselves. Writers don't know what's best for them in the realm of Titles and Book Covers and Photos, oh my! If we were in charge of all of these things, many of our books would be sitting on shelves gathering dust, with crappy titles, uninspiring or inappropriate covers, and weird photographs. Huhn.

I hope if you haven't guessed the number of jelly beans in the jar to win Water Witch, you will do so - just put the guess in the comments! Tomorrow I announce the winner.

Two other book give-a-ways will be unsigned, but brand new books: Paulo Coelho's "Brida," and Joseph O'Neil's "Netherland" - unless those authors just happen to stumble across this blog and offer to sign them!

And if you are an author and want to donate a book for a give-a-way, please email me and let me know!

And now I leave you with what I think should be my author photo...no wrinkles, no forehead butt(more on forehead butt later), just that crooked smile:

(google stock images from forum.electricpicnic.ie, http://www.cjreport.com/)