Author's Do it....

It’s Tuesday again and you chickies know what that means. It feels good to actually be at home! I will be for about two more weeks at least. Then it’s on the road again. At the end of the month, Samantha, Eliza and I will be hanging out and signing at the Book Expo America in New York City. You'll find us there hocking our stories to the reading public once again.

But today I'm here. And for this week’s Trailer Trash Tuesday, I’m going to spotlight an author that makes her own videos. I think I’ve shown you one of hers before, a long time ago. But the latest are really good and I think if you’re considering doing trailers yourself, this woman is one to pay attention to. If you’re looking for a good read, you’ll find that with Debra as well.

Debra Glass is a fellow Ellora’s Cave author. She and I happen to share the same great editor and last month, we got to meet face to face at the Romantic Times Convention.

I have to say that this lady is beyond impressive. Not only is she beautiful, she’s smart, witty and writes a great book. Along with the steaming erotica, she writes non-fiction books about regional ghost stories in her hometown of Alabama and she conducts tours of those local spooky attractions. How much fun would that be? To top all that off, she makes her own trailers. I know there’s a lot more to Debra that I didn’t have time to discover, but for now we’re talking book trailers.

No, she is not paying for the plug. I just happened to see one of her videos while I was surfing YouTube last night and ended up watching all of them. And - I really like her. See what happens when you’re nice to the red head…

Anyway, Debra writes contemporary, historical and historical paranormal erotic romances. And those paranormals have a unique twist. Her heroes are dead… or deadish. They’re ghosts.
That’s a wide range of story-telling abilities. What I think I like best about the videos is that she’s able to get the tone of each of the book across in the very different genres. You’ll see.

We’ll start with Death By Chocolate. It’s a contemporary. Here, Debra does a great job of mixing music and imagery to wonderfully demonstrate the sultry nature of this interracial story. Don't you just love the title of this book ? And this video is steamy.


Bought and Paid is a historical. I don’t think the hero is a ghost in this one. I love the southern imagery and the music.


Watchkeeper is a ghostly paranormal. How can you not love plundering pirates? And a pirate ghost? Yummy. I really need to get to reading this one. I have it. I just haven’t had time to read it.



I like all three of these videos. Two of them run much longer than my personal taste, but they are sensual enough to still hold my attention. Debra has managed to capture the tone of the very different books well. I think that is one advantage of author created videos. They KNOW their story and they KNOW their characters better than someone whose job it is to make videos—someone who usually only gets to read a short synopsis and have a few conversations with the author.

I think author made videos tend to be longer for that very reason. We want to tell more of our story in the trailer. Marketing people say to keep it to 90 seconds in order to keep the attent ion of the average viewer. Maybe for romance readers you get a little longer before you lose their attention? I think so. But I have to say there are bunches of trailers out there that are much longer than 90 seconds and really cool and super HAWT. So, I’m torn. My inner businesswoman wants them short, sharp and to the point. My inner romance reader wants them hot, steamy and full of eye candy.

I guess there is a happy medium, and IMHO Debra has found it.

See ya tomorrow for my regular weekly post. I’m feeling a little squirrelly, so no telling what’s gonna happen for that. No more drunken sex scenes though - I promise.

Kiss Kiss
~Mari