self promotion

blurbs

Morning! Grab your latte and settle in for some good reads:

How to Write a Book Blurb by Henry Baum Awesome post about the ins and outs of book blurbs – what’s good, what sucks, what to do and what not to do. With lots of samples. Don’t you love samples?

50 Ways To Reach Your Reader. # 2: Indie Authors & Amazon Author Page From selfpublishingadvice.org – Amazon, author pages, key wording, and categories, oh my.

50 Astonishing Mobile Search Stats and Why You Should Care by Brian Conlin. Did you know that Google is going to start penalizing websites that aren’t mobile friendly? Yikes.

The 10 Commandments of Authorial Self Promotion Wild man Chuck Wendig gives us the unabridged lowdown on author self-promotion. I knew I liked this guy for a reason.

What kids have taught me about writing Kathleen McCleary over at Writer Unboxed, reminds us about the joy of creating as a kid and what it can teach us. I give her an A+.

So there you have it, read, enjoy, have a great week.

Writer Chick

woo-hoo

Those of you who know me or have been reading this blog for any length of time, know that I have dreams – some of them, pretty big. Chief among them is publication. Well, guess what? I just got published. Yup. Me. Writer Chick. And they said it couldn’t be done. Believe me, I have the rejection letters to prove it.

As many of you know, I’ve spent the better part of the last couple of years looking for an agent and a publisher and finally decided to shelf it. I hadn’t given up but I thought that if I put it aside for a while that a newer, better idea would come to me about how to approach this wiley animal known as publication. Quite unexpectedly I saw a posting on a writer’s forum I sometimes visit and out of curiosity, clicked the link.

Wow, who knew there was an online publisher with such a cool website and such obvious respect for writers? Not I.

I spent quite a bit of time at the site and decided I wanted to submit my novel, False Witness. I had nothing to lose and really everything to gain. Naturally, I had to do things to prepare it, write bios and reformat – all the fun stuff. Then of course there was also that little voice of mine that kept telling me to forget about it. I decided not to listen and clicked the submission button.

To my delight and surprise False Witness was accepted for publication and is now available. Cue horns, noisemakers, fireworks and Bethoven’s Fifth. I can not express the feeling that overtook me when I read that email, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that exact emotion, whatever it was or is – maybe I’d call writer’s joy. I think I started laughing and then crying and then I just couldn’t stop giggling. I felt like a writer damn it! And it felt good.

So, okay, what are you waiting for, click the link and check it out. If it looks good get yourself one. If not – hey at least you looked at it, right? But if you do get one, just remember this, you will be directly responsible for providing writing supplies to one happy writer.