Publetariat

Quick Link: How Novelists Can Work Plot Twists into Their Stories

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Today’s post is all about the plot twist! At Live Write Thrive, C.S. Lakin talks about working good twists into your script.

~ * ~

How Novelists Can Work Plot Twists into Their Stories

by C. S. Lakin

Yummy yummy plot twists
Yummy yummy plot twists

Plot twists are important and powerful elements in a novel. We took a quick look at twists last week, and I explained that you can have these twists in various places in your story, and they can vary in strength.

One novel may have lots of small twists that are basically complications and obstacles the protagonist encounters. But often you’ll have one or two huge twists that wrench the story, and those are terrific when done well.

So what do you need to keep in mind when creating a plot twist?

Twists are all about redirection. Going against expectations.

Think about what readers are expecting and hoping for at a given moment in the story. Then keep twisting the story into new directions that stun and delight them.

If your POV character is seeing indications that her boyfriend is going to propose to her—he’s invited her to a special dinner, says he has something important to tell her, etc., she’s going to get her hopes up. The more you, the author, can imply that’s the boyfriend’s intention, the more impacting the twist will be when he shows up at the restaurant and tells her, sadly, that he has to call it quits. That his long-lost love he thought dead was really alive and well in Chicago, and he just happened to bump into her at the dry cleaners. Or something like that.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: Where to Begin Your Book: How to Choose the Best Opening

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Having a strong opening to your story is key in getting people to go beyond the free preview. Award wining author Mary Carroll Moore shares her tips on how to get it right.

~ * ~

Where to Begin Your Book: How to Choose the Best Opening

by Mary Carroll Moore

Vintage picture frameLots of writers struggle with the opening to their books, no matter what genre. I’m working with one client in my retainer coaching program who is writing a very large story–it spans thirty years or more. It’s a memoir, and a lot has happened to her in her long life, so choosing the starting moment is very challenging for her.

We begin by asking what this book is about. “My life,” she answers, and that’s true. But I ask again, “What’s it really about?”

I’m asking her: What’s the focus? What’s the subject of your story, the part you’re going to include in this particular book? Not your entire life. What will you select and why?

Everything you select for your book, whatever genre, sits within a frame. Imagine a photo frame that holds the photograph of your story. Just like any photo, it shows selected segment, a slice of a life. When you find yourself at a loss to imagine this frame–as my client said, “I can’t not put that in, or that either–that has to go in”–you don’t yet have a frame.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: Where Do Consumers Get Their e-Books From?

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Ever wonder what the breakdown of e-book purchases looked like?  While not a comprehensive sample, at Good EReader ran a poll to find out where people got their eBooks from, and the results are still interesting.

~ * ~

Where Do Consumers Get Their e-Books From?

By

buy nowThere are many places where readers can find and download e-books. There are a number of online retailers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo that sell them directly.  Your local library likely has a robust digital collection or sometimes piracy is just a click away. Good e-Reader has been running a poll for the past three weeks where we asked the question “where do you get your e-books from?” Over 827 people responded and we now have some fairly comprehensive data.

Unsurprisingly Amazon was the most popular digital ecosystem that people get their e-books from. Over 258 people, which represented 29% of the vote regularly purchased all of their e-books from Amazon.

Amazon releases new e-readers and Fire tablets every year, so their hardware has a high rate of adoption. Not everyone upgrades their device to the latest and greatest, some continue to use older devices, while others use the Kindle app on their smartphone or tablet.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Save

Quick Link: Publishing: Kindle Scout Case Study

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Do you Kindle Scout? I do, as a reader I love it. I love being able to help authors generate buzz for their titles and finding new works to read. If your book is selected by Amazon, you get a contract and I get a free book.

Even if your book doesn’t get published by Amazon, you can still self-publish. The readers who voted for you are notified so they can buy the story. I have, especially if the price is right. would know how great Kindle Scout is for authors. Check out her Kindle Scout experienc at Self Publishing Advice Center

~ * ~

Publishing: Kindle Scout Case Study

kindlescoutBy Katherine Hayton on July 14, 2016

New Zealand novelist Katherine Hayton shares her inspiring success story about her fourth novel’s success in a Kindle Scout campaign, leading to a publishing contract with Amazon’s own imprint, Kindle Press.

Back in January, I ran a Kindle Scout campaign for my fourth full-length novel, The Three Deaths of Magdalene Lynton, and was accepted for publication by Kindle Press on the 8th February. After the effort of the campaign, I was excited to be selected, and so far my experience with Kindle Press has shown me they can sell a lot more of my books than I could manage on my own. I’m in my second month (release date 29th March) and I think I’ll have earned out my advance by the end of this month, or early next month, so it seems on track with their expectation of 25k over five years.

Regular Promotions by Kindle

Because they’re an Amazon imprint, they have access to place their published books on the advertising slots available to Amazon, and their aim is to place each book in some kind of promotion every ninety days or so. These range from month long $1.99 promotions in genre selections to individual book titles featured on the $0.99 Kindle Daily Deals. From talking with other authors in Kindle Press, there are mixed results among the books they’ve selected. Some authors have taken a year or more to earn out their advance of $1,500, while others have earned over $12,000 in their first year.

Degree of Author Control

An author with Kindle Press retains a lot more control than they would with a larger press, so I had final say over all edits, title, cover, and book description. Anything else (eg categories) can be suggested but not necessarily taken on board. The pricing is determined by word count and seems unshakable apart from a book’s inclusion in discounted pricing promotions. If there’s anything about the book that Kindle Press thinks will harm the chances of promotion slots, they’ll discuss it directly with the author so they have the chance to either change it or stick to their own vision.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

 

Save

Save

Quick Link: 3 Things Your Traditional Publisher Is Unlikely to Do

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

You know we love authors of all kinds here at Publetariat. Anyone who writes a story is my kind of hero, but we do lean towards the self-publishing author just a little more. At Jane Friedman, Jane shares three reasons why sometimes being indie is the right choice.

~ * ~

3 Things Your Traditional Publisher Is Unlikely to Do

Posted on by

Portrait of fastidious businesswoman in Santa cap holding giftbox

Years ago, when I still worked for a traditional publisher, I wrote a blog post about the No. 1 disappointment of all published authors: the lack of marketing support from their publisher. This was back when social media was still a fringe pastime, limited mostly to MySpace. So if your publisher wasn’t investing in marketing or publicity, you probably had few available tools to market and publicize your work outside your community—unless you had funds to hire a publicist or a national platform of some kind.

Today, some form of online marketing by both author and publisher is essential for all titles, and while traditional forms of marketing and publicity are still key—everyone wants a mix of online and offline exposure to maximize word of mouth—publishers’ launch efforts may be focused primarily or entirely on online channels. It tends to be more efficient, targeted, and cost effective.

Yet authors still have very traditional ideas of what their publisher ought to do to demonstrate support for their book, even though where and how books get sold has changed dramatically in the last decade. Here are three things that you may want or expect your publisher to do—but are very unlikely to happen.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Save

Save

Quick Link: 5 Musts for Self-Publishing Great Books

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

A timely post now that NaNoWriMo is almost done! Once you have completed writing your story there are some essentials you need to do to make it worth publishing. Laurisa White Reyes from Janice Hardy’s Fiction University lists them out for you. 

~ * ~

5 Musts for Self-Publishing Great Books

By Laurisa White Reyes, @lwreyes

Quality Puzzle Showing Excellent Services And Products
I will give you a hint…

Part of the Indie Authors Series

When I was fourteen years old, I described my life’s dream on a page in my journal. I wanted, more than anything, to be an author. Not just any author. I wanted to be a New York Times Best-selling author. I fantasized about autographing books and winning the Newbery Award. In bookstores, I scanned the shelves, hunting for the very spot where my books would one day be. Once I actually started writing novels about a dozen years ago, I fully believed this dream was within reach, that any writer who worked hard enough could achieve it.

Naïve as I was, this dream kept me motivated through fourteen complete manuscripts and hundreds of rejection letters. Along the way, I did get three books published with small presses. I thought my dream was coming true. But I soon discovered that publication is no guarantee of success, and that too often, getting published with a small press (as well-meaning and author-friendly as many of them are) can be worse for an author’s career than having never published at all.

That’s where I found myself in 2015, with three published titles, a career in the publishing industry, and an impressive list of awards and recognitions under my belt. Yet I felt no closer to my dream than I had been as a teenager. By that time, I had spent two decades working on one particular book that meant a great deal to me.

In 1993, I worked as an office assistant at an AIDS clinic in Pasadena, California. I witnessed a lot of tragedy there, people suffering from a disease for which, at the time, there was no effective treatment. My experiences stuck with me and eventually resulted in a children’s novel about a girl whose father is dying of AIDS. Though I received numerous positive responses from literary agents, the manuscript accumulated close to thirty rejections. One agent told me that though The Storytellers was good, “kids today aren’t interested in reading about AIDS in the 90s.” In other words, it simply wasn’t marketable.

I was discouraged. I was disillusioned. Maybe the publishing industry was somehow rigged against people like me. I had a decision to make: Give up on the book or self-publish.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: This Is The Reason Your Author Platform Impacts Book Sales

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Rachel Thompson, at Bad Redhead Media does not mince words! But if you want to know what you can do in terms of marketing your book, and don’t mind a little bluntness, she has got some great tips for you. If you are an indie writer, you must also be a business person, even if you hire people to help.

~ * ~

This Is The Reason Your Author Platform Impacts Book Sales

Internet Marketing On Monitor Showing Emarketing ConfusionBy Rachel Thompson

How much impact does your author platform have on book sales? People ask me this all the time — they want hard numbers.

Author: If I tweet about this or that for three months, if I post on my Facebook page about my book or share a few reviews, if I share a recipe board on Pinterest…how many books will I sell? 

Me: There’s no way I can give you a hard number. There are too many factors to consider. 

Author: So, 10? 50? 100? 

(One person told me that even though she’s writing a book, she’s “not an author,” so she won’t need to market it; though she fully expects people to “just know to buy it.” Um, okay.)

It doesn’t work like that: there’s no easy button. Let’s deconstruct.

Writing Is A Business — So Be Professional

Pardon me while I’m a bit indelicate here, but please, take your head out of your ass for a second. Why do people believe that a few tweets will equal book sales? It boggles my mind. Writing is great — I love it. I encourage anyone who feels they have the talent to pursue the craft, work with professionals, and create an amazing book which will have the greatest chance of catching the eye of a reader to do so.

But there’s the rub: how to catch the eye of a reader. With 1,000 books released daily in the US (Source, UNESCO via Wikipedia), how will readers, book bloggers, book clubs, and book reviewers find your book at all? By marketing! Marketing is a function of business. And publishing is a business.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: NaNoWriMo: But Did I Win?

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

We are almost to the finish line NaNos!  Hopefully you are at your word count or ahead but do not loose heart if you are behind. You can still catch up. One year I had to write 2/3 of my NaNo in the last weekend! I am trying to never do that again!  At Good Ereader, has tips and hints to help.

~ * ~

NaNoWriMo: But Did I Win?

Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month
Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month

By

With the excitement of NaNoWriMo firmly grasping authors everywhere, it’s easy to forget that there are newcomers each year who are still a little perplexed by the whole process. The concept of writing the actual 50,000-word novel is already daunting enough, but then the notion of what to do with it when finished is somewhat harder.

The first thing to remember about NaNo is that yes, it’s technically a contest, but you’re only competing against yourself. Well, and the calendar, and possibly your boss if you’re trying to sneak in a few thousand words while on the job. As for “winning” the event, everyone who manages to complete the full scope of the project is declared a winner.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Happy Thanksgiving!

by
I am thankful for you. Corny but true.
I am thankful for you. Corny but true.

We will be back to our regular schedule tomorrow. Have a wonderful day.

Quick Links 4 Tips for a Successful Ebook Blog Tour

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Blog tours can be a great way to get buzz for your story, but they can also be a lot of work. Make your blog tour work for you with these great tips from at Digital Book World.

~ * ~

4 Tips for a Successful Ebook Blog Tour

By: |

 pinup retro woman with travel bag isolatedExpert publishing blog opinions are solely those of the blogger and not necessarily endorsed by DBW.

For every genre of ebook, there are hundreds of book bloggers—people who read books and post reviews on their sites. When ebook authors plan their book launches, many of them add blog tours to their marketing plans. A blog tour is series of pre-arranged blog posts, usually scheduled during the months just before and just after a book launch.

The exposure ebook authors receive in blog tours can help jumpstart interest in their book. The book cover will be introduced to all the bloggers’ followers, and an enthusiastic review can generate the buzz a title needs to get off to a strong start.

But blog tours can be a lot of work. And sometimes, especially for first-time self-published authors, blog tours don’t generate as many sales as anticipated.

There are specific steps, though, that you can take to help make your blog tour successful.

1. Start Early and Be a Blogger Yourself

Bloggers are more likely to agree to write a blog post about your book if they already have a relationship with you. That’s why it’s important to start networking as early as possible. If you are a member of your genre’s blogging community, you will have many advantages when your book launches. First and foremost, you will have personal connections with the other bloggers, so they’ll be inclined to read and review your book. People in these networks become friends with other authors and often support each other.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: Why It’s Crucial to “Write Ugly”

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Writing “ugly” means giving up the all the rules that we have learned,  to just write. That is  part of the charm of NaNoWriMo for me, as I am so focused on the numbers even though I sometimes still wince at my writing. Writer Unboxed‘s talks about how trying to write pretty can actually be holding you back from authentically good writing. Check it out.

~ * ~

Why It’s Crucial to “Write Ugly”

By

Holding a filthy heart.Here’s a scary thought. When it comes to writing, you may have done everything you’ve been taught to do with utter perfection, and precisely because of that, it turns out you’ve written something that is flat, boring and uninvolving. This all too common phenomenon is something I’m going to be deconstructing, myth by myth, for the next several months in my columns here. I’m beginning this month with the overarching granddaddy of them all – the myth that derails otherwise riveting stories before they’re even created.

It’s this: The myth that beautiful writing is what makes you a real writer, and (an even more damaging belief) that the beautiful writing comes first, before everything else. Beautiful writing is often equated with talent, and without talent, why write at all?

It is heartbreaking how many writers suffer from the deep rooted, often crippling fear of not “writing beautifully” from the very first iteration of the very first sentence on the very first page of the novel. We’ve been trained to be so fearful of penning anything that feels like “ugly writing” that we often end up creating something far worse.

To be very clear, by “writing ugly” I don’t mean writing about hard things, painful things, or any kind of “ugliness” – which is utterly crucial to good stories. Otherwise, you’re basically Hallmark, which is to say, irrelevant, cutesy and dull. Story is about the exact opposite. In fact, story is often about how to dig out from under the sugar coated, stifling straightjacket of the status-quo, which almost always means diving into what polite society has deemed to be ugly, unseemly, and uncomfortable.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Save

Save

Quick Links: 5 most common obstacles to writing your book

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Writing a book is hard. I can hear the snorts and feel the eye rolls from here. Yes it is hard. A majority of people want to write a story but very few people actually do. I can’t say anything as I join NaNoWriMo every year for the past year, but alas still no complete book. Is it any wonder that I love the people who actually manage to write great stories? Guest poster Kate Hanley at Build Book Buzz talks about the five most common reasons why people like me don’t write a book and how we can overcome them. How about you? What would you tell writer wannabes?

~ * ~

Guest post: 5 most common obstacles to writing your book

Written on July 13, 2016

sign-detour_f18fkpdoOur guest blogger on common obstacles to writing your book is my friend-in-real-life Kate Hanley, a New York Times-bestselling ghostwriter who helps authors get their message out and make a difference in the world. Her self-paced online class, “Write Your Book Like a Boss,” covers the nitty-gritty details of how to get a book written and published, as well as the squishier subjects, such as how to deal with your inner critic. (If you take the course, please select my name in the drop down menu — I will receive a small commission for the referral.) Kate is also the author of books under her own name. I received A Year of Daily Calm for Mother’s Day (my request!) and love it. Learn more about Kate on her website. 

Guest post: 5 most common obstacles to writing your book

By Kate Hanley

There’s a reason why 80 percent of Americans (that’s 200 million people) say they want to write a book, yet only .04 percent of them actually do it in any given year: Writing a book is no small undertaking.

Doable? Absolutely. Easy? Not so much.

Especially if you’re falling prey to one or some of the most common obstacles to actually getting a book out into the world.

Are you subjecting yourself to any of these common roadblock thoughts? I hope seeing them with more clarity—and learning their workarounds—will help you get going!

Roadblock thought #1: “I don’t have the time.”

Of course getting all those words and thoughts down seems like it will take up mountains of time—and who has those lying around?

Detour: Rather than trying to “find” the time, presume it’s already there, and then go about claiming it.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: How Indie Authors Should Price a Book for Optimal Success

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

How do you decide the right price for your book? Too little and you risk not making any money and also possibly turning some audience away. Too much and you definitely risk turning people away. Over at Digital Book World, shares her tips on book pricing.

~ * ~

How Indie Authors Should Price a Book for Optimal Success

By: |

Best Price GuaranteedSometimes the simplest thing you can do to give your book a boost is play around with the pricing.

It’s one thing to have a book, but it’s quite another to have one that actually sells. You have probably heard this from other indie authors, or even experienced it yourself. Your book gets added to Amazon, full of pomp and circumstance, and then, nothing.

It’s disheartening to see your hard work just sit there. But here’s the good news: this might be an easy fix.

How you price your book is something we don’t often think of as a trigger for book promotion or how to sell more books, but it is. First, let’s look at two important factors. Your book’s perceived value vs. the going market rate.

Look at other books. First and foremost, see what others are charging in your market. You may be surprised by what you find. It’s never a good idea to price your book outside of what the market can bear, even if you toiled over the book, worked endlessly, lost sleep, etc.

My book is worth more! Yes, I know. Your book is worth a heck of a lot more. In fact, if you add up all the hours you spent working on it, you probably couldn’t charge enough for it. Here’s the thing, though: you can’t focus on your worth or your book’s worth—you have to focus on what the market will bear.

Consider the ebook. In general, I find that most traditional publishers don’t know how to price an ebook. I’ll see ebooks priced at $9.99 and up, which is a deterrent for most readers. As you build your marketing plan, keep in mind that ebooks should not be priced equal to their print counterparts. Even pricing them within a dollar or two of a $14.95 book is too high.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: Internal Dialogue: The Greatest Tool for Gaining Reader Confidence

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Internal dialogue – the inner thoughts and musings of your entities – is a great way to build trust with your reader and have them connect with your characters.  At the Jane Friedman blog, author Elizabeth Sims helps us to write great internal dialogue. It is a great post, one I am going to bookmark.

~ * ~

Internal Dialogue: The Greatest Tool for Gaining Reader Confidence

Posted on by
Of course, this IS some peoples inner dialogue.
Of course, this IS some peoples inner dialogue.

The following post by author Elizabeth Sims (@ESimsAuthor) is an excerpt from the newly released Crafting Dynamic Dialogue from Writer’s Digest Books.

Not long ago, one of my elderly neighbors lost several thousand dollars to a con artist. A stranger phoned with a convincing sob story that ended in a plea for money. My neighbor actually filled a paper lunch sack with twenty-dollar bills, drove to a nearby grocery store, stashed the bag behind a vegetable bin as directed, and left. Even when a friend explained that it was a trick, my neighbor was serene, believing he had done a service for someone in need.

The best con artists don’t begin by asking for your confidence—they give you theirs first. Here’s my story. I want you, you especially, to hear this. The request for help comes later. There’s the short con—one quick deception and out—and the long con, which takes time and patience to execute. But before either compassion or greed can be exploited, the mark must feel something for the con artist.

When you think about it, what is fiction but one beautiful long con? The reader—the mark—opens a book craving a good story, thirsting to be part of something special. We, as writers, do everything possible to gain the trust of our readers so we can entertain, shock, delight, and amuse them all the way to the end.

And the greatest tool for gaining reader confidence is internal dialogue. Because when a character reveals his thoughts, he’s confiding in the audience. I’m counting on you to understand me—and possibly even help me understand myself. Suddenly readers are in the thick of it; they feel involved and invested. They have some skin in the game.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: Veronica Scott presents: Where Does Your Story Actually Begin?

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

It’s all about the backstory. Do you have too much? This hits home for me because right now my NaNoWriMo effort is all backstory. To be fair I am world & character building and if this story every makes it to publishing I plan on massive rewrites that won’t include all the extra information. is completely right in her article on Romance University, it is important to know when your story really starts.

~ * ~

Veronica Scott presents: Where Does Your Story Actually Begin?

July 13, 2016 by Veronica Scott

db-316-winter-121-4447A story starts on page one, right? This post by author Veronica Scott will make you think about where your story really starts…

Welcome back, Veronica!

Where does your story actually begin? “Once upon a time” is a nice intro but maybe even fairy tales include too much backstory.

I’ve been judging various contests for unpublished authors recently and while of course I won’t mention any specifics, the main problem I see is that the author begins with one, two, sometimes even three chapters of material which they feel is necessary to the book. Unfortunately, all too often these chapters are solid info dump backstory or history. If I weren’t judging a contest entry for them, I’d be closing the manuscript and moving on. I’d never even get to the actual story! I see this same comment often in my social media feed from agents and editors, regarding submissions they receive.

(All examples are made up for this post!)

The author runs several risks here. First, while they certainly need to understand the history and events shaping their own world building, the reader is going to become bored fast with the events of the 200 Year War, told year by year, with no immediate connection to a hero or heroine they care about. This technique is even more likely to turn people off early if the author throws in a lot of terms and made-up language details. I’ve had a number of published authors tell me they do write this sort of material, often in early drafts of the novel, because it helps them think through their world building details, but they then delete the material from the final drafts. (I tend to keep scribbly notes on various purple legal pads scattered around the house, rather than write it all out, but that’s me.)

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.