Thinking Linking

Look at that.  It hasn't even been 7 days and I'm putting another post out there!

I'm just as surprised as you are, Little C.!  I didn't intend to get all wordy.  And for those of you sitting at home, reading this blog in hopes of an update on The Five Tribes... I know what you're thinking.  "OMG, she's doing blog entries now, instead of writing, isn't she???  She read some malarkey online about being a better marketer and now she's going to be writing blog entries, instead of writing books.  DANG NAB IT!"

No, no, dear reader.  I assure you, I'm just as bad at marketing as I ever was.  I have no interest in being better at it.  (You'll know that I've buckled when I join Twitter.)  I promise to bury myself mostly in my word docs and forget about the world around me.  And soon.

Honestly, I was killing time last night, waiting for my son to fall asleep and I was reading the extraordinary Passive Voice.  Guys, there is so much interesting stuff abounding on the internet!  I mean, there is just pages and pages today and I had to comment.  Because I can't help myself.  You must read about this stuff... so interesting.

The first is an article at The Washington Post Style Blog  about a mid-list author that got unceremoniously dumped by her publisher.  This, as she reflects herself, is one of those things that's happening more and more as publishers trim the fat.  Personally, I would have encouraged her to go indie, given the cache of her name, but she did just fine for herself, in the end.

Then there is this post by Smart Bitches, Trashy Books  about social media genius.  As I stated above, I'm not the best marketer in the world.  I'm just like this nerdy reader chick who also loves to write.  *sigh*  Maybe someday that will change, but I doubt it. lol

One of my favorite book blogs, Cuddlebuggery  has this amazing post on not paying attention to stats if you're a blogger.  But people, this applies to more than just book bloggers.  As writers (I see it on kindleboards every day) we sometimes obsess about sales, too.  There are people out there checking their sales or reviews 10 times a day!  We get down on ourselves when we don't sell as much as people who have been indies for a shorter amount of time.  We get down on ourselves when we've been selling great and our sales stop.  We get down on ourselves when we're not meeting some invisible standard of success that someone else has told us is the goal.  And we need to STOP!  So, take five today and read this post, then just substitute author, sales, and reviews where needed.

Happy Reading!

Accentuate the Positive...

Okay, so normally my week is like this:

Seriously, between regular kid stuff (children that need feeding, clothing, bathing and putting to bed at various times), and house stuff and running around all over the place... sometimes I'm just totally overwhelmed by LIFE.  I know I'm not the only one.

It's hard not to let the exterior CRAP get you down.  Everywhere I look, I see blog entries and news reports on how INDIES ARE SO OVER and DON'T BOTHER WRITING ANOTHER WORD BECAUSE NO ONE WILL EVER READ IT OR DISCOVER IT or YOU ARE A TALENTLESS LOSER (Okay, so maybe I told myself that one.)  Seriously, the doom and gloom of the new year are truly horrendous.  Right and left, everyone is predicting that the sky is falling.

Is it falling?  Maybe.  Should we worry?  Well, I don't see how that's going to help.  Is it worth being depressed over... well, that's tempting, I'm sure, but it isn't going to pay the bills.  (Or get another book out there, now is it?)

Personally, I've battened down the hatches.  I don't read the negativity and I avoid anything that's going to be a distraction from my writing.  And thanks to Little C's MUCH BETTER sleeping habits, I have way more energy and time to write.

On that front, I wrote 4 chapters for Terris this week: two chapters for Nikka and two for Zyander.  I also went back and did some necessary story edits for the side project, because the flow was off.  It's fixed nicely now and hopefully back on track.  So in all, I think this week was very successful and that is something I want to focus on. :)

Good luck to the rest of the writers out there and happy reading!

Surprise! I'm overloaded.

I think it shocked my family when I wrote a book. I mean, how many authors do you know? I didn't tell anyone until it was written, not even my parents. And when I got myself a beautiful proof complete with a professionally designed cover, they were even more surprised. I had written a book, and there it was, in physical form. The proof was incontrovertible.

Since then, the main question has been, "How did you write a book?" It's a fair question, since I had a son and an almost full time job during the period in question. Let me tell you how.

Writing this book took: 5 years, 4 rewrites, 7 different .mobi Kindle conversions, 3 uploads to online bookstores, 4 author profiles on various websites, 2 ad campaigns, 1 facebook page, and a partridge in a pear tree.

At this point in time, I know I'm supposed to care about my book and my readers, but I'm so tired. Self-publishing, and self-marketing is quite the task.

"You need a blog" 
"You need to join Author's Den" 
"You need to join Booksie" 
"You need to put your book in Listmania on Amazon" 
"You need to make sure you've got plenty of tags on your book" 
"You need to have an ebook" 
"You need to have a physical book" 

Need, need, need... the advice is endless. Really, all I need is for someone to read my book and like it.