Craig here today. I’ve read it before, but years of experience cements the comment: Your blog is your best promotional opportunity. Let’s talk about how it works, because it may not be how you think.
There are a couple of things you have to accept in order to make this work. Blogging is a form of social media, and you are the brand. You may think your book(s) are the brand, but that isn’t true.
I recommend not opening a book-titled blog. While this is curable over time, you might want to avoid this trap. What happens if you write a second, or subsequent book? The book isn’t the brand, you are.
Pick a title that has more longevity. I call my personal blog Entertaining Stories. (Shameless plug there.) You can see that it allows me to expand my content into multiple books, even multiple genres without the need…
It’s true that life is linear, but the living of it is all over the map. In this memoir-in-vignettes, novelist Kevin Brennan (Parts Unknown, Yesterday Road) examines his life the way memories occur in the wild: in no particular order. Whether it’s recalling high school humiliations, ups and downs in love and romance, or unique interactions with the human race at home and abroad, Brennan both entertains and moves the reader with moments of unexpected poignancy and full-tilt humor. In No Particular Order is a deconstructed memoir, like no other because it looks at life as it really is — a kaleidoscope of individual moments.
I think I had a plan for today. Could have sworn something was scheduled. Might have been this post I’ve been putting off since February about how the word ‘like’ has been abused and ruined. Seriously, it has no impact whatsoever these days. Doesn’t matter because I deleted that one and probably forgot to replace it. So . . . whelp . . .
The original plan was to use this past week to fix up all of my series and get them organized. Then I would tinker with the next notebook entry until the weekend. A nice, relaxing week since I only had 4 days to work with. Well . . . that failed a couple hours after my post went live.
I happened to look at the calendar and realized my son finishes school soon. In the back of my mind, I knew this was coming, but I thought taking a week to focus on other projects would be okay. Once I saw that I had 3.5 weeks, I didn’t think so any more. The plan changed from tinkering to editing because I have to work on Path of the Traitors and Warlord of the Forgotten Age back-to-back. These stories run alongside each other, which means I want to make sure I have the timeline the same. If Trinity in Book 14 is moving faster than the champions in Book 15 then things won’t mix well. This meant I had 3.5 weeks to edit 38 chapters and I don’t get much work done on the weekend. My top speed without getting sloppy is 3 chapters a day, but only if nothing else comes up. I did manage to pull that off this week, so 12 of the 18 chapters for Book 14 have been edited. This is good because editing that last book might still be rough since it’s another step toward this adventure ending.
A quick aside: I still need to get the final ducks in a row for The Life & Times of Ichabod Brooks too. That will be a July release if I can pull it off. Busy, busy, busy.
In Bedlam news, Protecting Bedlam will begin getting posted tomorrow. This will be a Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday posting until the story has been told. I wrote it like a full book, so the posts will be bigger than normal. I chopped it down as much as I could, but putting a mid-section cliffhanger for a decent post wasn’t working out that often. Keep in mind that I’m still nervous about this too. I typically try to avoid getting topical and political, but I couldn’t resist due to the original idea. Far too close to reality before it became reality. Anyway, I will do the usual warning that this story will include: Violence, Cursing, and Non-Gratuitous Sex. Not really sure how else to explain that last one since I don’t write sex scenes, the naughty bits aren’t mentioned, and it’s mostly just open discussion that it happened off-screen. Again, Bedlam is my more adult series compared to my fantasy stuff.
With all of that going on tomorrow, I might not be around for the onset. It will be my 12-year anniversary. We’re celebrating by going to see Wonder Woman for a matinee and then a nice lunch. I just have to say that getting the tickets was nuts. I had been checking for it to turn up on Fandango and it wasn’t there Wednesday morning. At least at 5 am when I just happened to wake up. At 7:30 am, I checked again out of curiosity and it was there. Not only there, but 1/4 of the seats were already taken for the showing we wanted to get. Now, we have to get tickets beforehand because if we miss the showing we’re aiming for then our day gets wrecked because of babysitting and other stuff. So, I was racing to get the tickets before my son’s Wild Kratts ended and the bus showed up. Easy? I wish because I kept getting sent back to the beginning. Every time, I found that the seats I tried to get were taken. Not sure what was going on, but I finally got them during the ending credits and it looked like at least half the theater was claimed. To explain, we’ve been looking forward to this movie ever since it was announced and more so when we realized it would be our anniversary movie.
That’s the adventure of the week. At least the stuff I can share. The books have been selling decently, but Ritual of the Lost Lambhasn’t returned to the Top 100 stuff for a while. Feeling like it might be the last Windemere book to be there considering it barely scratched the surface and fell a few hours later. Yeah, I know it’s a silly thing to focus on, but I think it will be cool to say all 15 books hit a Top 100 list outside of the New Release section.
So, what’s the plan for this week?
Finish editing Path of the Traitors.
Start editing Warlord of the Forgotten Age.
Watch Wonder Woman.
Continue reading One Piece.
Prep chapter 2 of Protecting Bedlam.
Avoid freaking out over the blog only book.
Cooking dinner as usual.
Settle my mind on next new writing project in time for next Saturday’s post.
By the way, feel free to volunteer for the Book is Live announcement for The Life & Times of Ichabod Brooks. I have the long-term volunteer list, but I need to remember to mention it in case someone else wants to help. Enjoy the weekend.
It’s official. My Amazon book sales chart has flatlined.
Oh, it happens every now and then, especially when I haven’t run a promotion in a while (mostly because I haven’t been allowed to run a promotion …), but it’s always psychologically alarming when it does happen. We like to think our babies are out there doing good things in the world, instead of sitting alone in a little dark box, bound and gagged.
In any event, I’ve decided to lower the price of all my novels to $2.99 for a spell, and you can grab any of them right now at my Amazon author page.
To whet your appetite, here are a few review excerpts:
Yesterday Road: “It isn’t often that the sheer beauty of a novel stuns me to such a degree that I’m unable to put into words just how lovely and richly satisfying it…
Dr. Spencer Abbot: there was once a time that he was (mostly) at peace, living with his family. But for the past couple of months, he has had to hide from the law. As if that weren’t enough, he has started to experience nightmares and see ghosts of those he feels he has failed to save. He and his support system know who is behind the sightings, but not where Slade McManus is. Will things ever be okay again for the doctor? Or will Slade successfully drive him beyond the brink?
Book 6, I hope, will be released around Halloween. Of course, the tentative release dates and actual release dates always tend to vary with these things, between the edits, the sketching/inking/coloring/shading/highlighting/resizing, and formatting/assembly for two versions… If there’s a less complicated way to do this, I’d be all…
These aren’t associated with a kingdom or a specific race. They are not tamed, but have more influence over the sky than anything else. Since the early days of Windemere, the variety of flying creatures has kept mortal kind grounded. Even casters have been leery about perfecting flight spells because being among the clouds is just asking for one of the many winged predators to make a snack out of you. So, how exactly do these creatures take one of the top spots of Windemere sky powers?
The reason is fairly simply. No matter what, you have to deal with these creatures when you travel. They may attack or interact with land and sea travel, but they will definitely get involved in something moving through their realm. From the largest dragon to the tiniest fairy, they have ruled the skies long before any of the land beings ever considered paying them a visit. Frankly, you don’t just show up and try to take over. So you will have many sky beasts that take offense to the intrusion. If not offense then knowing their aerial superiority and seeing an easy meal.
It doesn’t take long for one to realize that the existence of all these flying creatures is why the Windemere races spent more time on land and the sea. Even the thought of traveling through the clouds where ravenous dragons or territorial perytons live would make most people turn away from the idea. The only reason gnomes created their machines is because they rose their city first. Flying creatures have become used to cities, towns, and buildings floating in the sky. In fact, they will swiftly accept these changes and only attack if they are attacked first. So, the gnomes did the smart thing of raising Nevra Coil and then waiting a bit before using their machines outside of their own borders. Even then, they typically stay on a few routes that the local animals have allowed them to use.
Every sky creature has its own habits, so it’s difficult to put them into the same category and deem them the same. For example, a Pegasus would be friendly, a griffin may be cautious, and a peryton would be aggressive. Getting into the subspecies of some of the groups make it even more complicated. The best you can do is judge them by how high they go. Some don’t go very far above the trees while others spend most of their lives among the clouds. It’s really up to the individual to choose the best system because conversations about these beasts tend to be more specific.
Personally, I think they will always rule the sky. It doesn’t matter how many griffins are tamed or flying devices are created. The flying animals of Windemere are too numerous and varied to be overthrown.
Legends of Windemere 