Guest Faye M. Tollison

Today, my guest is Faye Tollison, author of To Tell the Truth, which I reviewed here. I originally met Faye through either the Sisters in Crime group or the SC Writers Workshop group, so we have a personal relationship. We have even done one event together since she published her book. I recently caught up with Faye to ask her a few questions. So without further ado, here is what she had to say. And I would like to thank Faye for taking the time to answer my questions and for being a guest on my blog.


FT: Thank you for having me, Elysabeth.

EE: Faye, tell us a little bit about yourself. Your likes, dislikes, what you like to do for fun (basically anything you would like readers to know about you)

FT: I love movies. I find a good movie very relaxing. And I love to read. Of course, it has to be a good mystery or suspense. But writing is my passion. LOL, the thing I hate the most is going to the dentist. I do it, but I really have to make myself.

EE: How long have you been writing? When did you first know or think you wanted to be a writer and possibly make a career out of writing? What kinds of things do you generally write? What have you read that has inspired the way you write (in other words, which writers have inspired your writing style or the genre you write in)?

FT: I've been writing since I was a teenager, but I didn't get serious about it until my kids were about grown. Then I got serious enough to join a writer's critique group, the South Carolina Writer's Workshop. I worked hard at developing my writing skills. I'm not sure just when I started my first book, but then I put it away and didn't do anything else with it until I had to quit work. A friend of mine brought it to my attention that it was a good time to get serious about my book and finish it. So I did and published it. I've read mysteries every since I can remember. I've always loved them. I think Agatha Christie had a great influence on my interest in the mystery genre, but M.C. Beaton made me realize how important a good character is to a book. She is the writer I admire the most.

EE: How long have you been a member of Sisters in Crime? As a member of Sisters in Crime, what do you feel the benefits have been over the years?

FT: Gosh, I can't remember exactly what year it was I joined Sisters In Crime, but it's been several years. This group has been great for my writing because of the types of speakers they have. The speakers are always informative, and I come away from the meetings with information I wouldn't have gotten on my own. Plus just being around other writers is inspirational. You learn so much from fellow writers and get such great inspiration from them. S.C. has so many good writers, and I feel privileged to be a part of them.

EE: What kinds of things have you been doing to promote your books and trying to gain visibility?

FT: Well, of course, I did a book signing with Fiction Addiction, which was really great. They do a press release for you. Also, I was a guest speaker at the St. James Place Book Club. I have appeared on Your Carolina with Jack Roper and Kimberly Clark. Also, I have created a page for my book on Facebook and have done a lot of promoting through Facebook and through Twitter. I try to stay at it constantly. I also mention my book at every opportunity when out in public. I do my best to help push other writers books on Facebook and Twitter. They will reciprocate and have so that is a good method of promotion. I have given out free books to some people as a promotion tool as well as my business card and bookmarks. Everything like this helps. And I'm constantly on the lookout for opportunities to push my book.

EE: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live and why?

FT: There is no place like home, Elysabeth. If I could, though, I would love to have a mountain home. I love the mountain and would love to live there.

EE: Thanks again, Faye for your time and gracing us with your wonderful insight.

FT: Thank you for having me, Elysabeth. I appreciate the opportunity to be a guest on your blog. I am working hard on my second book, The Bible Murders, so check out my page on Facebook, and join the adventure of John and Anna in this murder mystery. It's the second in my detective series. Also, visit my website.

Faye also has several blogs she keeps up with as well as posting monthly on the Writers on the Move blog.

Author's Bio: Faye Tollison has loved mysteries for as long as she can remember. After 27 years in the medical field, she decided to devote herself to writing her own mystery.

She has written several articles on writing, which were published in The Quill and a short story published in Catfish Stew, an anthology by the South Carolina Writer’s Workshop of which she has been a longstanding member. As a member in her local chapter of the SCWW, she wrote a number of critiques, and they were published in the chapter’s newsletter, Printed Matters.

Faye resides with her three cats in upstate South Carolina and is presently writing her second mystery novel.

Stay tuned next week for a special announcement leading up to a 50-day giveaway celebrating my half century. See you all in the postings - E :)

Another freebie offering

I totally forgot that I had a free offering of one my stories for Wednesday the 29th and Thursday the 1st of March. So you have until midnight PST March 1st to get your free download of "The Tulip Kiss". This is my first place winning story from the Fast and Frigid contest a few years ago - same title, same story, new cover and only available on kindle.

If you don't have a kindle, it's okay - you can download the free app to your computer or phone or tablet and still download the free stories.

"The Tulip Kiss" is another ghostly romance story, like "Bride-and-Seek" except it's a modern setting and shows what happens a young love is turned upside down.

If you like romantic suspense and didn't get your free copy the first go round, my friend, Faye Tollison, is offering her book To Tell The Truth until midnight PST March 1st as well. Stop over on amazon and download both stories.

(a few stats from today - just checked the reports a little before 1 AM EST and in the USA I've had 251 downloads, in the UK 53 and in Germany (that is DE on our listing and I thought that was Denmark - lol) I've had 2. The UK and DE downloads haven't changed over the course the day (probably since about noon or before), but that's okay. My goal is to get close to our exceed what I did with "Bride-and-Seek" which was 360 downloads over a 2-day period. As you can see from the numbers, I'm pretty close - at 306 right now.

I do ask all of you who have downloaded the story to please post a review somewhere - your blog, amazon, goodreads, anywhere else you can and let me know so I can lead folks to your reviews. Thank you in advance for that - E :)

This and That

It's the end of the week and here we go again - not as dismal as the previous two or three weeks, so let's start with sales:

"Bride-and-Seek" went live Sunday morning and by the end of the day there was 1 borrow (this story is listed exclusively on kindle and prime members can "borrow" books with no return dates) and 1 sale. Monday not much was going on. Tuesday, I was out and about most of the morning and upon returning and checking stats, I found another copy of "Bride-and-Seek" had sold and a copy of "The Proposal" had sold. I'll take 3 sales in a week considering I've had 0 sales for several weeks in a row. I'd really love to see 5 or so sales per title every week but I don't see me reaching that goal this year, but I'm not going to give up hope on achieving that.

Tuesday, February 14th, "Bride-and-Seek" goes up as a free download (this is for everyone who has a kindle or kindle app on any device who can download ebooks from the kindle store) and will run from 12:01 PST the 14th through 11:59 PST the 15th (you have two days to grab up this paranormal romance based on the Covington Manor (UK) legend of a husband who loses his wife to a deadly game of hide-and-seek; he never did find her and died of a broken heart.) I'll do a late night posting each day to show my rankings and bestseller's ranking throughout the week (this will be for all my books so I can see if having one book for free really does drive folks to purchase other titles and I'm hoping to pick up the foreign market for both "Bride-and-Seek" and "The Tulip Kiss" - this being that the Eldering name used to be very big with tulips in Holland and with a title like "The Tulip Kiss" with an Eldering as an author, you'd think I'd have that market already cornered but so far not; I even sent a downloadable version to my father-in-law for him to pass the word to relatives still in Holland and around other places to tell them about it but still nothing there - one of these days hopefully).

I've been keeping track of Faye Tollison's rankings this week (well the latter part of the week) as she had put her book To Tell The Truth as a free download Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week. Surprisingly her rankings did well over the 3 days but her downloads/sales weren't as high as we expected, and it certainly wasn't due to lack of promoting it as free download.

Tuesday night she started 611,000 (some odd numbers there) and when I checked Wednesday morning early - 7:30 AM - she was at the seller's ranking of 3306 with her book being bestseller's ranking of #33 in the romantic suspense category. Her seller's rankings dropped throughout the day from #33 to #26 to #19 to #16 to #15 to #14 (seller's ranking of 250 at close of day). She made it into the top 20. All day Thursday she stayed in the top 20 with a start to her day at #12 bestsellers ranking to a rise to #19 by the end of the day. Friday was even worse with a drop to starting at #17 and going to #29 near the end of the day. Her downloads over the 3 days (and this was reported from her to me) were right at 1750 in all the kindle areas (UK, DE, FR, ES, IT and USA). She is scheduling one of her next free days on March 29th when she appears on Your Carolina with Jack Roper (a local celebrity here in the Carolinas) and hopefully with the appearance of her on TV and promoting her book, among other things - Heather's cover designs, my book (which I'm thankful to her for doing that but really I do a lot of promoting myself so I wish she'd just promote herself) and Sisters in Crime - her downloads will skyrocket. I keep telling her she needs to get some short stories of hers polished and put them up for 99 cents and see how sales will change (like I'm one to talk - lol; I have four stories available as ebooks and haven't really had any sales to speak of since the first of the year) because people really do look for more by an author if they like the one book they try out. No one must really like my books as stated by the sales I've had this year - lol. Maybe when I get Imogene: Innocense Lost people will like that book and start buying books, but that is a ways off.

I also did a price reduction for Finally Home from $12.99 to $11.99 print and from $3.99 to $2.99 ebook. I was thinking of reducing the state stories a bit but don't really see how I can since I still need those in-person sales and usually do discount the price at events.

Stop by Monday for the third part in my series of promoting your books from Bookstand Publishing's booklet I got from free. Am still in need of new questions from students related to writing so teachers, please send any writing questions your students may have to eeldering (at) gmail (dot) com with subject WWYWWQ; in the body, please put the student's initials (like E.E.) from (your name - like Mr Hughes') class asks question? I will respond to you/your class/your student before posting my answer on my blog. Once I have the posting ready to go, I'll send you an emailed copy of the post before it goes up to share with your class so they can see they made it on my blog - thanks everyone for participating in my weekly project of mentoring students to help them become better writers. - see you all in the postings - E :)

Book Review Friday - To Tell The Truth by Faye M. Tollison

My first book review of the new year. All books reviewed the first few months will be what I've read since receiving my Kindle last March. I have a list of books that will probably take me through at least nine months, plus all the books I'm reading this year all in my different collections. I'm reading mysteries, YA and thrillers and a little bit of everything in between. Hope you enjoy the Book Review Fridays, and hope it brings you a new list of things to read.

(SNEAK PREVIEW: In February, I will be reviewing Leslie Dubois' books and she will be a guest blogger the last Monday in February. She and one other author will be sharing a vendor booth with me at the SCASL conference in March and so I want to feature many of her books leading up to the event. She is a phenomenal writer and amazes me how diversified she is. Stay tuned for more on her.)

TO TELL THE TRUTH by Faye M. Tollison
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Rating: 4-1/2 stars

SYNOPSIS: Anna Kacey had faced many difficulties in her life and had carried some heavy responsibilities. When she met Senator Kenneth Levall, her world soared. At least until it collapsed. Until that fateful day when the gun she held fired, and the senator fell on the floor at her feet and died. Undercover cop, Detective John Mentz, came into her life and fell deeply in love with Anna. He gave her reason to question her relationship with the senator, whom he was investigating for drug trafficking. But as strong a woman as Anna was, she had to dig deep to find the strength to endure what followed: the murder of her sister, the destruction of her life, and lastly facing a courtroom full of people, a judge, and a jury in an effort to save the man she really loved. He had confessed to the murder of the senator in order to protect Anna from being charged with murder. It was now time for her to stand up and To Tell the Truth.

My Review: I saw this story from beginning to end. I even had a hand in editing it. This story had at one time been submitted to Harlequin Mystery or Suspense line (I've forgotten the exact name of the line) and Faye was told the story needed to be longer or that it wasn't a good fit. I really was hoping someone would pick the story up because it is a good story. The suspense is going through the trials and tribulation with Anna and John and really coming to root for them. Anna is a strong character and I believe this is because Faye really did know her well, like a real person whom she had known all her life.

The romance that starts between John and Anna is distant and is still in the budding stages, but that is okay, the romantic feelings do get rekindled in the next story in the series. If you like hot and steamy romance, this is not the book for you. If you like finding out what's going to happen next and a book that keeps you turning the pages to do just that, then this is the book for you.

To Tell The Truth is available in print and on the Kindle. It is part of the KDP Select program so is available to Prime members for free as part of the lending program.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Faye M. Tollison is a member of Sisters In Crime and has published a short story in Petigru Review, the anthology published by the South Carolina Writers Workshop, as well as numerous critiques in Printed Matters, the newletter published by the Greenville Chapter of the SCWW. She has been writing for many years and has now become serious enough to publish her first book. She has loved writing this book and is now working on her second book, The Bible Murders.

Book Clubs

Sunday night or Monday morning of this week, I thought about adding some discussion questions to my website for Finally Home. Why, you ask? So hopefully a book club will pick up my book and add to their calendar. My friend and author, Faye Tollison, was recently invited to come speak at a local book club in her neighborhood to discuss her book To Tell The Truth. Coming up with the discussion questions is a bit harder than expected. With my state books, it was easy to come up with the discussion questions and include them at the back of the book because everything is based on clues in the books - the study guide uses this technique to take some of the clues a bit further as deeper discussion questions or research projects. With my generalized fiction and this being my only other print book, discussion questions are really needed if the book is being used for a book club reading.

I'm looking at a new way to make folks aware of my stories and I hope that book clubs will be one of the ways. If you are interested in having Finally Home as a book club read, please let me know and I will offer a discount on books ordered directly from me and they will be signed copies. Drop me an email at eeldering@gmail.com with the subject "Finally Home book club" and how many books you need, when you need them by and if you would like me to visit your book club.

I've started a new story, tentatively titled Imogene - Innocense Lost and this one will have discussion questions because I just feel that there is a place for this story in a book club at some time in the future. I will keep you updated on the progress of that story as it happens. The main goal the first two weeks of January is to get as many of the four state stories to be published this year written. Then I will work on Imogene and keep you updated to her progress. If you would like more information on the state stories, please stop by the JGDS blog or the JGDS website and see what's available and what's coming up.

Finally Home review

My first review for Finally Home - check it out here. Thank you Ms. Faye for the great review. Anyone else who has done a review and would like me to share, please let me know. Thanks - E :)

H. C. Paye featured today

If you are looking for a little more insight into my illustrator, H.C. Paye, please drop by the Writers on the Move blog and find out about her graphic design. One of the covers featured on the article is my friend's, Ms. Faye Tollison, "To Tell the Truth" and I must say it is still gorgeous. I have three copies for sale if anyone is interested in getting a signed copy from the author; just drop me an email or you can go to her website and order from any of the places listed there. You can also order directly from Faye who will be happy to personalize your copy. Happy readings, ya'll - E :)