Yes, it’s true. If you’d like to share my 15 minutes of local fame with me, I will be on the Lesley Dolphin show this afternoon at about 2.40, or thereabouts.
For information about the show and to listen on line, follow these links:
To listen live – choose the live link from this page.
To listen afterwards – I think you have about a week from the date I’m on – click on Tuesday 13th Jan.
Yahoo Image Search
I’m sure I mentioned it before, but this is the year I try to boost my own professionalism because I want to be taken more seriously. This has got me thinking about a few things that have kind of steamrolled, so I’m going to try to cover them as best I can. So bear with me.
When I set out on this adventure of publishing, I thought I should reveal my true persona from the outset. This did attract people and helped me gain a lot of support that I wasn’t getting from other corners. Unfortunately, there was the downside to this. I’m not a 100% positive and happy person, so problems arose when the other side reared up. Only a handful of people can be friends with everyone and I’m not one of those mutants of mankind. I have issues and abrasive parts of my personality, so I have to hold those out of the spotlight. At least until I reach a level of success that means I can be as eccentric and kooky as an escaped lunatic.
Professionalism really is hard to maintain because you want to let people know there’s a living human being behind the books. Yet you don’t want to let the readers so far in that they think they have a decision in the story. Some distance does need to be maintained or one plot twist will cause drama. This is probably why so many authors have PR people since these incidents spill into the public arena and can take a chunk out of your professionalism. Those of us inside the indie author world know how these things work, but an outsider (most readers) won’t have any clue beyond the author’s public actions or those taken toward the author. That brings me to:
Yahoo Image Search
This train of thought immediately brought me to the ‘joy’ of social media and how we’re no longer private creatures. Our lives are out for the world to see thanks to these sites and this happens whether we’re on there or not. All you need is a friend who loves posting pictures and you’re on there. Whether it’s a family gathering, a friend’s birthday party, or the background of a kegger that someone posted on Throwback Thursday, you’re probably on Facebook. You can demand it gets taken down or make a rule, but I’m finding that most people who do this are rather unwilling to agree.
I’m singling the big one out here because that’s where most of my grief has come from. I have several things set for privacy and ‘friends only’, but someone can share those things to make them public. People post things to my wall to be funny, but some of them are rather crude and awkward. I’m not always given a choice if this thing goes live or not. I’ve had friends tag me in embarrassing pictures that I’m not even in, but they think someone looks like me. There have been so many public fights on there that I’m starting to believe that the only purpose of Facebook is to tear friendships apart. Disturbing thing is that I’m seeing people claim that fights on social media can’t be held against them off-line. So they get into a vicious political debate with a sibling and believe that conversation cannot be used against them during the next face-to-face.
There are many days that I think social media is a hindrance to professionalism. People get fired for what they do on there even if it doesn’t have to do with their job. Sad thing is that without Facebook, I wouldn’t know about pregnancies, weddings, engagements, divorces, graduations, and most big events for friends and family. I would drop it if I didn’t have that, a few people I chat with on there, and the author page. So I have to make rules for myself to keep it clean:
Do you have any social media rules?
Stand up and support this talented poet and author.
I would like to ask all my friends to support me in my goal to become the next Poet Laureate of Toronto, please stop by the page I have set up on Facebook for this campaign T J Therien for Poet Laureate of Toronto https://www.facebook.com/pages/T-J-Therien-for-Poet-Laureate-of-Toronto/1543045982610196 and like the page. If I can’t garner the support of my friends I will find it difficult to win the support of strangers. While you’re at it feel free to share this post with your friends and pick up a digital copy of one of my books for free at Smashwords.com
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/397819
Savannah Grace, author of the Sihpromatum series, has written two books so far. They are travel memoirs from the perspective of a teenage girl.
First of all, if you haven’t read them, please do. They are great books. And she is a lovely person too.
Second, we need your help. You may have heard that Mark Zuckerberg announced a book club. It is concentrating on learning about other cultures. He has also asked for suggestions. I have suggested Savannah’s books. Please either like my comment here. Or add your own comment in the thread. Let’s call attention to an indie author who has written some great books.
Third, reblog this and spread the word.
THANK YOU!!!
Hello, everyone! It’s me again with another author advice post. Warning: This post isn’t for everyone. If you’re an author who finds etiquette posts tiresome, this post isn’t for you. If you’re already an expert on book marketing, this post will probably seem pretty basic, but I hope you’ll read on and add your advice in the comment section. This post is for people like me – people who came into the writing world with limited social media knowledge. It’s for people who didn’t realize book bloggers existed until they were told to go out and promote their book. If you’re intimidated or overwhelmed by the idea of contacting reviewers and bloggers, or if you’ve sent requests to bloggers and only received a lukewarm response, this post is for you.
View original post 1,456 more words
Well this ends the first week of the new schedule and nothing got set on fire. Not that I would have complained since it’s cold. Not as cold as other places, but there was no build up to this. Just teens, twenties, single digits, and a wind chill that made you think a polar bear was mauling your face. Stayed inside for most of it, but the cold was enough to make me sluggish. I might have to actually sleep in tomorrow since I’m already drowsy by early afternoon.
This was also the first week everyone got back on their regular work and school schedules. I came out of the gate with my writing and then an alarm oopsie on Tuesday seemed to shoot me in the leg. I’m exhausted from the cold, working, and all around stress of certain things. The plan is still to finish ‘The Mercenary Prince’ a day or two after Martin Luther King Jr. Day if not earlier. Depends on this week, but I’m coming close to the final act of the book. I’ve tuned up the outline, so I won’t have anything like the day I realized two chapters could be merged and then had to work slower to make sure I was doing it right. I still have the non-office issue, so my neck and back can only go for so long. Working downstairs when I’m alone in the house helps, but I’m finding I really wish I had a spot that I could sit at and feel that it’s mine. I’ve been on about that before and it’ll be a long time before I can get an office . . . complete with a mini-fridge.
Anyway, the blogging schedule is interesting. Not posting didn’t make as big a difference as I thought. I’m still active with reading posts and trying to comment. The email and responses seem to be the bigger beasts, but nothing I can do about that unless I walk away from here. Maybe stop checking every 15 minutes. I didn’t realize how busy Mondays and Wednesdays were compared to Tuesday and Thursday. Without my own post up, I really got a look at the traffic. It’s like most people use a MWF schedule. Part of me thinks we’re almost trained for such a thing because that was a very common one when I was younger.
So what am I planning for this week?
If you have a question about writing, the right person to ask is another writer. Once a month I’ll be featuring writers who put the author in authoritative.
My first author is writer, avid reader, and blogger Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series, and children’s books, all of which have repeatedly reached #1 on Amazon. : )
My sister and I have asked Nicholas for advice many times, so naturally he was the first person I contacted to share advice with my readers.
Nicholas is an author who is always eager to give free advice, encouragement, and books–that’s right books. I noticed Nicholas has a lot of success with giveaways and special offers, so I asked him to share the benefits of giving away books for free.
From timashton.org.uk
I keep reading contradictory information on this. One of my blogging friends…
View original post 1,276 more words
