Interviews are one of my personal favourite aspects of this blog. Interviews allow me to really connect with & get to know my connections on a deeper level. It gives me a chance to interact with my connections more often & is a great way to show my support of their work.
Today I have the pleasure of featuring author & illustrator Michelle Cornish with something like 16 books available on Amazon. She also writes children's books with her kids as A.J. Kormon. Michelle drops in today to share her passion for positive thinking & some of her experiences creating numerous books in several different genres. When I asked Michelle what she likes to do on a day off - when she isn't writing or drawing - she said, "you'll find her losing to her kids at Uno in the sunny Okanagan (BC, Canada)".
Pretty cool coincidence is that my husband, Dave Brummet, was born and raised in the Okanagan, & this is where he met & married me some 34 years ago. We moved to the Boundary about 20 years ago & later moved to the Kootenay region of BC where we have resided for about 14 years, but Dave & I have fond memories & several connections in that area.
Find Michelle through her website: MichelleCornishAuthor.com & follow her on Amazon.
Q: Do you use certain tricks that help prevent you from straying from your goal?
A: I’m a freelance writer as well as an author, so my strategy is always to complete any client work before focusing on my own projects. I try to make sure whichever book project I’m wanting to publish next is at the forefront, so I never want to go longer than a week without working on it. Ideally, I would work on it every day, but sometimes that’s just not possible. A good writing friend of mine introduced me to her 10-Minute Method (setting a timer and writing for just ten minutes), and I often use that on days when I’m pressed for time.
Q: How do you deal with literary criticism?
A: It depends on the criticism. Some of the reviews I’ve received seem mean and rude to me. As much as they are hurtful, I try to ignore those ones and move on. Sometimes that involves a good cry and contemplating quitting writing yet again. Other criticism feels more thought out and, even though it’s still hard to take, over time I’m able to consider the reader's thoughts and try to use their feedback to make my writing better.
For example, I had an agent tell me my characters were flat and a reader (of the same book) suggested I’d never heard of a pronoun. After considering these two comments I decided the readers had a point and I edited the book again.
Q: How many unpublished or half-finished writing projects are sitting on your "to-do" shelf?
A: Too many! There are two novels that are finished but not published that I’ve been using to query agents and publishers. Then there are three novels in progress and one picture book that I’m slowly working on the illustrations to go with the words. I think there are at least four other picture books on my hard drive that need to be edited before I can even think about the illustrations.
Q: Did you take any writing classes?
A: Yes! In the past and constantly! It seems like I can’t stop taking writing classes (or classes related to writing). I started by taking English courses through Athabasca University. They also have an amazing storyboarding course which is actually listed in the computer science department (COMP 230). I’m currently taking Haiku for Healing by Kathy Curtis through the DailyOM.
Q: What are some of the tools you use for marketing?
A: I really enjoy using Canva to create marketing images. They have a lot of great templates that are easy to personalize and make my own in less than five minutes. I have the Pro version, so I’m able to post directly to social media from Canva - which is a huge time saver. StoryOrigin is great for sharing lead magnets and building my email list, and I use SendFox for my monthly email marketing.
A: I recommend experimenting to discover what types of marketing activities work best for you.
Keep in mind that this could mean spending money and not recovering it. This is what happened to me when I first started spending money on ads. At first this was hard to swallow, but now that I can plan for that and think of my ad spend as an experiment, I’m able to adjust accordingly.
All this to say, I’m not sure that I’m the right person to make a recommendation as to what someone else should try. It really depends on you and your books.
What I’ve had the most success with is spending money to promote a free book that is the first book in the series as long as I have three or more other books already published in that series. Then I price those books at 99 cents when I’m promoting book one for free. When I’ve tried this in the past, people have downloaded the free book plus the rest of the series at 99 cents per book which is where I recover my ad spend.
Q: Where do you hope to take your writing in the future?
A: I would love it if my book sales eventually overtook my freelance writing income. In order for this to happen, I need to write more books and keep experimenting with different marketing strategies. I would also love to work with an agent or publisher in the future, which means continuing to put myself out there through the querying process.
Q: Any special memories from your writing journey so far that you would like to share?
A: My historical novel, Love Overseas, is based on my maternal grandparents’ experiences during World War II. Researching what they would have gone through as a munitions worker in England and a sniper for Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry was fascinating (and a bit terrifying).
I loved going through the old photo albums and papers my mom kept and listening to her tell the stories of wartime that she’d heard from her parents.
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Thank you for sharing some of your experiences with our audience :)
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