Welcome to meryl’s notes blog (this here place you’re lookin’ at) in Plano, Texas. We’re honored to be a stop in Therese Walsh’s WOW! Women On Writing Blog tour. I first met Therese in Christina Katz‘s first ever #platformchat on Twitter. Since then, I’ve enjoyed getting to know her and learning from her and her Writer Unboxed site. Here’s a bit about Therese Walsh. (Stay tuned in this post if ya wanna win this book!)

About Therese Walsh

Therese Walsh’s debut novel was recently released by Random House (Shaye Areheart imprint). The Last Will of Moira Leahy is about a woman who lost her identical twin about a decade ago, but reconnects with her former life after purchasing an artifact from her past. Through interwoven narratives, we see Maeve Leahy as she was and what led to the tragedy with her sister, Moira. We travel with her in the present day as she unravels the truth about the artifact–who’s following her and leaving her notes — as layers of her past are peeled away and the course of her future is forever altered. Therese is also the co-founder of one of the Writer’s Digest best sites for writers, Writer Unboxed. You can learn more about her and her novel at her website: ThereseWalsh.com.

Developing Your Fiction Platform by Therese Walsh

In today’s world, platform is an important consideration for a debut novelist. Our technology-centered world is a noisy one, with so many things to do, to hear, to see, to read. What will set us apart? How will we gain notice? We’d all like to believe that our work will be enough to garner its due attention and propel us into a contract and then onto the NYT’s bestseller list. And it happens. To some. The rest of us have to work at it.

So how does a fiction writer go about developing a platform, anyway? Is it even possible? Yes, it is, and in several ways. Platform can be built broadly, as in the more widely you’re known, the greater the number of people you can potentially reach. It can be built specifically, through efforts you might make to tap into your core audience. And it can be strengthened subtly — almost unconsciously — as how you present yourself online says something about you and, through you, your writings.

Becoming Widely Known

This, from a recent Washington Post article:

(Many authors) “are actually selling their book long before they sell the book,” says Richard Pine, a literary agent for three decades and co-founder of InkWell Management. These people, he says, are establishing who they are and what they have to say and are building an audience years before they actually have a book on the shelves.

Kathleen Bolton and I started Writer Unboxed — a blog meant to empower other writers with craft posts and through interviews — in January of 2006, which marks the beginning of our online-platform effort. We became better known individually as the blog became more successful, and as we reached out to other writers, and as they mentioned us on their own sites, and as others linked to us, and so on.

You don’t have to use a blog, or rely on one exclusively, to get your name out there. Other avenues to a potential readership involve social networking efforts on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads and the like. The bottom line is that you should do something — and ideally you should do many somethings — to get your name out there. The more avenues you have to becoming known, the better for you in the long haul.

Finding Your People

Though becoming known on a large scale is important to your platform, it’s also a little like taking an ad out on PerezHilton.com: Yes, you’re reaching many, but only a fraction will care enough about what you have to offer to click through and buy your book. Honing in on the people who very likely will care becomes important.

Case in point: The Last Will of Moira Leahy is a book about twins — the story of one woman’s recovery following the loss of her twin, but also the story of this woman and her sister when they were young girls, and how they grew and changed and became separate. I knew that I needed to put forth an effort to become known by the twin community in particular, so I reached out. I sent galleys. I sent emails. I connected with people on Twitter. I waited to see if these people would choose to support my work. Luckily for me, most of them did.

I made a great ally in Shelby at Double Up Books, a bookstore dedicated to all-things twin. Shelby is not only carrying Last Will in her store, she truly believes in it and even tweets about it on occasion. I’ve gladly added her store to the buying options available on my website, and I buzz her as often as I can too. (Buy from Shelby!)

Presenting the Right Face: Yours

What kind of face do you present to the world, and does that face correspond with what you write? One of the best examples I’ve seen of matching a public face with published work is via thriller novelist JA Konrath. JA’s novels (e.g. Cherry Bomb) have been called “brisk and breezy” and laden with “offbeat humor.” JA’s personality is clear when you read his blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing — which, by the way, is packed with helpful information. His Facebook posts and tweets are also frequently hilarious. Brisk, breezy, offbeat humor – that’s JA, all right. He is the perfect poster child for his work.

Through online conversations at Writer Unboxed and elsewhere, I hope you’ve sensed my passion for empowering others. You’ve seen my posts on unboxed writing and the importance of polishing your prose. You know I love words and the occasional punny joke. You know I’m detail oriented and that I love a strong visual image. What you know about me sets up an expectation as to what you might find in Last Will — and, though I’m admittedly biased, I’d like to think it won’t disappoint you.

What are you doing to develop your fiction platform?

Write on, all!

Win: To win a copy of the book, please leave a comment at least 50 words long that answers the above question. Or you can write about twins, triplets, multiples. You don’t have to be a multiple. Maybe you had a good friend who was a twin. Or share how you feel about Kate Plus 8. You have until 11:59pm on November 18, 2009 to qualify for the drawing. The unbiased and robotic Random.org has the honor of picking the winner.

Therese Walsh’s debut novel, The Last Will of Moira Leahy, opens with Maeve Leahy remembering losing her twin “on a harsh November nine years ago.” So it’s obvious why she has struggled with every November. That is, until now. On a whim, she attends an auction to bid on a keris, a Javanese-style dagger that launches her extraordinary journey where her past and present collide.

Though Maeve becomes a successful professor of languages at a university in Bethany, New York; it’s no surprise that she feels incomplete without her twin. So the keris reminds her of happier days in her youth when she played with her keris pretending to be Alvilda, the pirate queen. She lost the original keris in the bay near her childhood home in Castine, Maine.

Soon after the auction, she finds a pocket-sized book on weaponry in an envelope nailed to her office door. The book provides details about the keris. This anonymous message is the first of handful she receives regarding her keris, which leads her traveling to Rome bringing her near to someone she loved, Noel Ryan. He had left New York for France to track down his mother and Maeve’s childhood friend makes sure the two reconnect during her stay in Rome, Italy.

The two have an uneasy reunion in Rome, but they take the time to explore the city while searching for an empu who can unlock the secrets of her dagger. The author provides intricate details of the scenes in Castine, Bethany and Rome while blending them into the story in a masterful way.

Even good novels sometimes lag in getting the reader up to speed on specifics, but this suspenseful story never dawdles. Walsh grabs and holds the reader’s curiosity from the first page to the last as she explores girls’ past, Maeve’s relationships and the intriguing history of kerises. The author also effortlessly transitions the story back and forth between Maeve’s present time and “out of time” during the twin sisters’ childhood and adolescent years. The main characters make unpopular decisions adding more authenticity and less predictability to the story.

The secrets, travels, fantasy and humor will trigger your craving for answers to all of your questions from what happened to Moira to what makes the keris so important. The Last Will of Moira Leahy may be Walsh’s first novel, but she took risks by using multiple narrative modes, flipping between past and present and avoiding the easy route. The result is a gripping and rich story that will linger in readers’ minds for a little while.

You can feed the need for more of the story by checking out the extras on Walsh’s web site.

Watch this blog for a chance to win a copy of The Last Will of Moira Leahy when Therese Walsh stops by on her book’s WOW! Women On Writing Blog tour.

A disclaimer today to keep the FTC away: I received a copy of the book from the publisher.