Kathryn Caraway, the 2024 CIBA Grand Prize Award winner in the Journey Division, discusses what inspired her to write her true crime novel and what she’s planning next.
Kathryn Caraway has lived the life she now writes about. Targeted by a stalker, she’s traveled through the justice system seeking help, protection, and the conviction of the man who turned her world upside down. She details her experience in Unfollow Me and tells of her writing journey in an interview I wrote for work.
Don’t let your book get lost among thousands of titles competing for readers’ attention. Give it the professional marketing support it deserves custom shelf talkers.
Shelf-talkers—those little slips of paper next to a book in a bookstore. They’re meant to draw your attention to a book with quotes, reviews, recommendations, and other bits of information. I’d never really thought much about them until I became an author, although I did refer to them when looking for a book, so I thought I’d dig deeper into their value in an article I wrote for work.
Don’t let your book get lost among thousands of titles competing for readers’ attention. Give it the professional marketing support it deserves with Chanticleer’s Editorial Reviews and custom shelf talkers.
Click here to read the article.
“I am not a slave to genre, and my background as a journalist left me interested in a variety of topics to write about.” -Mike Murphey, author of Old Man Baseball.
“Know your principal characters as well as you know your best friend or your worst enemy.”
-Mike Murphey, author of Quantum Consequences, CIBA Grand Prize Winner in the Mark Twain Division for Humor.
I recently had the honor of interviewing the versatile author, Mike Murphey. He’s writing spans several genres as vast as science fiction, humor, thriller, and nonfiction examining the 1960s music scene.
Find out more about how he found his writing talent, how his hobbies influence his work, and his experience moving from being a Plotter to a Panster when writing his novels.
Click here to read the article.
Bluesky provides more customizable features that give the user more control over what we see, the rules you set for moderation in the different communities you join, and more options to block content, accounts, hashtags, etc.
Bluesky has emerged as a compelling social media alternative, with a focus on transparency, user control, and community-building makes it particularly well-suited for writers. The decentralized platform has surpassed 30 million users as of February 2025, and authors are discovering its unique advantages for building literary communities and marketing their books in a less cluttered digital environment.
Click here to find out more about this up-and-coming social media platform.
I remember my mom’s copy of V.C. Andrews bestseller Flowers in the Attic sitting on her bookshelf. The cover intrigued me, with it’s cut out window with childrens’ face, similar to my own, staring out hopelessly.
“The creative genius begins in the idle moment, dreaming up the impossible, and later making it come true.”
― V.C. Andrews
I remember my mom’s copy of V.C. Andrews bestseller Flowers in the Attic sitting on her bookshelf. The cover intrigued me, with it’s cut out window with childrens’ face, similar to my own, staring out hopelessly. It was unusual to see a commonly popular book in her collection, as she was an avid library patron. I knew this book must be especially good.
As I researched V.C. Andrews for a post, I soon realized why it had made it to the top of the bestsellers lists. Andrews wasn’t just writing a story, she was incorporating her emotional experience of living as a disabled person inside her mother’s home. The family dynamics weren’t as dire as the characters in her book faced, but strained relationships and lies to support a facade of happiness were a part of her life and she fed those emotions into her writing.
The success of Flower in the Attic continued with more books based on characters from that novel, and after her death in 1986 the series continued through a ghostwriter in a testament to connection she made with her readers.
Find out more about this remarkable writer in an article I wrote for Chanticleer Book Reviews.
Online book marketing is all about catching new potential readers to introduce them to your writing. Your website is the fishing pole that has that worm on the hook that’ll bring in new followers, and the worm is search engine optimization, or SEO.
Online book marketing is all about catching new potential readers to introduce them to your writing. Your website is the fishing pole that has that worm on the hook that’ll bring in new followers, and the worm is search engine optimization, or SEO.
SEO are found in the keywords you use, the links you insert, and so much more! There’s plenty of lures to catch those fishy readers. Dig into the “ins and outs” of SEO in my article called, “Casting the SEO Net for Readers: How Search Engine Optimization Attracts Online Followers” I’ve written for Chanticleer Book Reviews.
Authors often jump genres to express their thoughts through a different lens. I am in the middle of doing just that by working on science fiction novella series after having released The Byzantine Cross, an adventure thriller. I also have written travel articles and have two memoirs in mind. So, what is my branding supposed to look like if I want to incorporate all these genres?
If your website represents you as a single genre writer you may be pigeon-holing yourself as a marketer for your writer career. Show all you can do by representing all your genres under your author brand.
In a recent article I’ve written for work called “Is Your Author Platform Ready for the Next Level” I discuss how you can add onto your Author Platform to include all your work.
The theater grows dark. On the screen a story begins to unfold, rolling out into a star filled galaxy,“It is a dark time for the Rebellion…”
My husband was eight years old in 1980 when “The Empire Strikes Back” came to his local theater in Portland, Oregon. He was already in love with the characters and the epic adventure that George Lucas was playing out in a galaxy far, far away. For two hours my husband was lost in this surreal world where the bad guys ruled and the good guys were the rebels. It was a world unlike any other. A world formed by imagination and created by special effects.
But, unbeknownst to anyone inside the theater, the world outside was equally surreal and unimaginable–and it was created by nature over forty thousand years ago.
After spending a good part of the afternoon traveling through space with Luke, Han, and Chewie, my husband and his dad shuffled out of the theater to a sky filled with the volcanic ash of an erupting Mt. St. Helens. The world around them had suddenly turned grey; the sun dimmed behind a thick cloud that stretched across the entire sky. Under their feet a cushioning layer of pulverized rock and glass muted the sound of their footsteps as they ran to their car.
Talk about surreal.
It was a world only a handful of people could witness in real life but I remember the news that came out of the Pacific Northwest that summer. In less than fifteen minutes the blast rose 80,000 feet into the air and in only three days the cloud had spread across the United States, circling the Earth twelve days later. Ash was found within a 22,000 square mile area, with a 10 inch depth of ash and pumice at 10 miles, 1 inch at 60 miles, and 0.5 inches at 300 miles downwind. Fifty-seven people perished in the blast and subsequent landslide, along with 7,000 big game animals (deer, elk and bear), and all the birds and small mammals in its path. Millions of dead fish cooked in the rivers and streams where temperatures rose to ninety degrees Fahrenheit from the hot ash that floated on top of the water. In the end hundreds of square miles of forest were destroyed, causing over a billion dollars in damage ($3.79 billion in 2025 dollars) and years of management to rebuild.
Mt. St. Helens experienced several smaller eruptions from 1989 to 1991, then quieted down for over a decade until the mountain became active again in late 2004, staying that way until January 2008. I had moved to Portland by then and secretly I was wishing for another big one to blow because I wanted to live in a surreal world, too. I wanted to walk out of a theater and “sense a great disturbance in the force.” But thinking of the destruction caused by the blast—I’m glad it’s now quiet.
Subtle character hints make a big impact on shaping your characters.
Have you ever met a character in a book or movie who felt real before they even said a word?
Maybe it was the way they adjusted their sleeves when nervous, or how they always paused a beat too long before answering a question. These small, almost invisible cues are what give characters depth—and they’re often more powerful than flashy backstories or dramatic dialogue.
They are the hints that provide readers with the essence of who that character is. Picture a character at the grocery store checkout who writes a check for sixty-seven cents when buying half and half. We know he’s probably broke, doesn’t seem in control of their life, and he doesn’t really care.
I recently wrote about subtle character hints for work about how using subtle character hints can breathe life into your creations and make them feel authentic, layered, and alive on the page. I’ve also highlighted different ways you can add new, unique subtle character hints into your story.
I hope you find it valuable!
The annual Chanticleer Authors Conference (CAC25) and International Book Awards (CIBAs) was another great success, with authors attending from around the world!
We just wrapped up the 2025 Chanticleer Authors Conference (CAC25) and International Book Awards (CIBA), my work’s largest event of the year!
This was my second year as a Chanticleer team member, giving me a new perspective on the conference and a lot of familiar faces to welcome back to this fun event. I also met several new friends that I’m excited to get to know.
Along with fun there were forty great Masterclasses, workshops, sessions, and panels that I popped in and out of as my time allowed. Of special note was an interviewed between John DeDakis, Sr. Editor for the Emmy and Peabody award-winning CNN news program The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Saturday’s keynote speaker and international bestselling author J.D. Barker, a regular collaborator with James Patterson.
The CIBA awards ceremony and banquet was held on Saturday evening and this year’s competitions were full of great books! It was such a great experience seeing these authors recognized for the dedication, hard work, and their imaginative talent they put into their projects. And, we added two new divisions this year for best fiction cover design and best nonfiction cover design.
The “Books By the Bay” book fair on Sunday wrapped up our weekend of events. I was able to participate in the book fair this year, my first time at a book fair, and I sold several copies of The Byzantine Cross! I shared my table with two friends, Kirsten Throneberry, author of Guided: Lost Love, Hidden Realms, and the Open Road, and Rick Stienke, author of the Jake Fortina series and it was great to get to know them better as we spoke with readers. You can read more about Rick here.
Now we have a full year to dig into the lessons we gained, connect with the authors we met, and remember another great weekend spent with peers at CAC25 and the annual CIBA awards!
Interested in finding out even more about Chanticleer Authors Conference and International Book Awards? Click here to read my official recap!
