So, one of my roommates asked to borrow some wrapping paper to wrap a gift. This is what happened.
Note the strategic placement of granola bars to hold down the corners to commit this atrocity.
The worst part? The gift is apparently for me.
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Wednesday, December 14th, 2011
I’ve compiled some of the ‘promotional and marketing efforts’ essential to doing this, and as you can see, it requires countless group memberships and communication efforts. Ginger’s Tips If you want someone to know you have a product to sell, getting your name and work out in public is key to sales. I’ve been published since 2003 and there aren’t too many things I haven’t tried to make or keep myself visible and promote my work in as many ways as possible. Money of course, is a key-factor in doing more, but I continue to look for inexpensive tools and ideas. I also utilize very opportunity to network with my peers. Sharing information is most helpful in finding new avenues to market oneself. There are a number of ways to do this effectively, and I’m listing those to which I already subscribe and have included my plans to make myself even more visible now that I have new releases. Asterisks indicate the steps I’ve already taken: * Tweet! Yes, I know many of you don’t see the value, but I recently joined triberr which increases the “reach” because other tribe members retweet posts. My current reach when everyone posts from the “daily stream,” is over 30,000. Probably not everyone will read what I share, but if only a handful are interested, I’ve made progress. You can also check out sites like “Hootsuite” to help manage your tweets. * Establish and maintain a current website with buy links, excerpts and information about myself. Keep it up to date. Create video trailers and post them. Put them on youtube and other places that allow uploading videos. Don’t know how to make your own…check out places like “Animoto.com” that does all the hard work for you and walks you through the process. Even a caveman can make a trailer there. 🙂 * Establish and maintain a personal blog, offering subscription option to those interested in receiving it daily. This allows you to become real and human rather than just a website and name. Establish an RSS feed for your blog and use it whenever you can. * Besides maintaining your OWN personal blog, join group blogs to double your promotional efforts. Publisher’s blogs are a must. Sign up for blog tours…get out there and be found on search engines. Below are just a few (and I mean few) places where I’ve blogged:
* Maintain memberships and personal pages on promotional sites such as:
* Participate in interviews and guest blogging days. Being a hostess increases your blog traffic by introducing you to friends of friends. * Network with others authors and readers through group and forum memberships. You can’t believe the ideas I’ve gotten from peers and readers who post their likes and dislikes. Here’s some places I’ve been:
Contact local news media with press release information, arrange to participate in local events or arrange local book signings (although information I’m reading now indicates that holding a writing class or workshop is much more effective.) Basically, I try to participate in any event that will provide a ‘buzz’ about me and my work. I’ve done only press releases in a former city because the newspapers around here don’t have the “helpful” attitude I hoped for. I’ve only attended a few book signings and haven’t found it a helpful way to sell my work. Especially with the economy, people are looking for bargains, and trade paperbacks are not the way to go if I want to recoup what I’ve spent per copy. Several peers have found small-publisher friendly stores in their area, but I haven’t been that fortunate. I did check with my local library, and they are open to hosting me. Of course, I’ve also donated copies of each of my books. If someone reads one, they may be more inclined to look for new releases, or so I’m hoping. Not all my work is published in print. The good news: since the sales of ereaders soared, so have my download sales. “Soared” for me means I can buy more than a Happy Meal with my royalties. 🙂 My current project is contracting local schools and teen organizations with the study guide from my new YA with hopes of speaking about bullying and how we treat one another. Of course, I’m hoping to get the press involved. I’ve been very pleased with the following I’ve already garnered through the efforts mentioned above. I think the biggest secret is to be a team player and share promotional opportunities with your peers. What benefits one, usually benefits all. I’m blessed to have had the opportunity to work with publishers who makes their authors a priority. That’s always a good feelings. This is not a comprehensive list of everything in which I’m involved but it gives you a good feeling of the time I spend working on “me.” Just coming up with interesting ideas for my own blog is wear-and-tear on my old brain. For this reason, you may see my posts shared in more than one place. Hey…brain cells fade everyday and I don’t have that many left. 🙂 If you were one of the three who remember this one from 2008, then hopefully you didn’t notice until I mentioned it. I’ve updated it with new info.
If you’re so inclined, please stop by and visit my blog at mizging.blogspot.com and saunter on over to my newly-designed website at http://www.gingersimpson.com. Thanks to Kelly for letting me blather on. It’s been fun. Saturday, December 10th, 2011
Tell us a little about Brutal Light. The story centers around a young woman, Kagami Takeda, who has a connection with an enigmatic and godlike sea of light she calls the Radiance. This connection affects others around her, either causing some form of insanity (in the case of her family) or bestowing heightened abilities (in the case of her lover, Nick Havelock). As a result, she has all but withdrawn from human contact, save for those few she’s already affected. But there are many others who covet her for the power they believe she can be made to yield, and when she is provoked to use this power, they come after her. Worse, the Radiance itself appears to have manipulated her into creating her own nemesis, with the power to destroy her. The action takes place in both the ‘real,’ physical world and an unreal world that I’ve named the Noumenal (loosely inspired by Imanuel Kant’s definition of ‘noumenon’ as an unknowable, indescribable reality that in some way underlies observed phenomena). In the book, it mainly takes the shape of a primal, dark forest, with all sorts of beasts hidden within, but this is because Kagami’s connection with the Radiance is so dominant she can force a shape to it that others have to accept. Left to its own, it is a free-flowing mix of dream, nightmare, and memory–save that if you encounter something that is a memory, there’s no guarantee it will end the way you remember it, or that it will even be your own memory. It gave me a way of having present action take place within flashbacks, and a rather unnerving way for characters to learn what other characters would rather stay hidden.
An assortment of things. Very intense-looking guys with axes, for instance. Torture–I probably shouldn’t be entrusted with any state secrets, because I’d spill it before the first scalpel is waved at me. Mental trauma, especially–either something that leaves my mind intact but unable to operate my body or speak intelligibly, or something that affects my ability to think. I’d almost rather face the guy with the axe. Then there’s loss of identity, in all the many forms it can take. We work so hard to define ourselves by our work, our physical characteristics, our locations, our beliefs, and those who we let in, and when any of these are shaken or stripped away, we have to face what we’ve been covering up. There’s the lurking idea that, beneath it all, there’s nothing there–there’s an emptiness beneath that nothing can fill, for which death would be a mercy. I sometimes think my motivation in writing now is to push against this fear, to find something beneath it all that is not simply a bandage over the abyss. Have you ever written something that you’re afraid to let other people read? I had a general trepidation about letting people read my writing. In the case of Brutal Light, it was pretty heightened, because of all the dark places in my mind I felt I was baring. It’s not just a matter of worrying about what people will think about the violence or the sex — it’s about whether people will read the book and start wondering if, like my characters, I have murderous thoughts or a bad case of self-loathing or what have you. And since the book is sprinkled with true thoughts, albeit distorted or amplified and mixed in with made-up ones, being understood is almost as second-thought-provoking as being misunderstood. But one of the most valuable pieces of advice I ever read (from a source I sadly no longer recollect) was “If it doesn’t make you squirm, it won’t make the reader squirm.” That to me means facing your fears and your dark places, writing in a way that is honest, no matter how vulnerable that makes you, and ignoring the internal censor that asks ‘but what are people going to think about you when they read this?’ What is the toughest part about being a writer and how do you get past it? There are two tough parts for me: getting started and everything after. Getting started in particular because I have a tendency to get bogged down in outlines, and trying to make sure I’ve thought every last thing through. Sometimes I just have to set to writing and trust that what’s coming out will lead somewhere. The other tough part comes once I’m past the initial idea and plotting and I’m deep into writing the story. The excitement of the new has faded, and there’s still this long road to go until I reach the end. Inevitably, on that road, there are other ideas that come to me that seem much more exciting than what I’m working on at the moment, and the challenge is to stay focused and see my current story through. I don’t know if it’s true of writers in general, but I have to work hard at avoiding bright, shiny distractions. What are your thoughts on the future of books? Bookstores are slowly fading, and e-reading is on the rise. I count myself as a recent convert to e-reading, thanks to the Kindle app on my smartphone. I think that this trend will continue, though it will be a long time before paper editions of books entirely disappear. That may be a long time coming, if it ever does–I think regular print books will become for certain readers like vinyl records are now for certain music lovers–an aesthetic choice as much as a means of reading stories. But as more and more kids enter the world of reading through electronic gateways, and grow up thinking that it’s ‘the way’ to read, I think paper books will see an eventual end. How long did you write before you had anything published? What was your first story or novel that was published? Where was it published? I started writing in 1989, for a humorous shared-universe fiction group called Superguy, and it was through one of the friends I got to know who also wrote for the group–Greg R. Fishbone, who’s gone on to published writing success of his own–that I got my first publication in 1996: a serialized novelette called ‘Electricity in the Rain.’ Unfortunately, Mythic Heroes, the magazine it was in, folded before the serialization was done. I had a couple short stories published in Outer Darkness magazine in 1999 and 2001, but for the most part was focused on my first novel. That took a long time, both for life reasons (getting married, moving around, etc) and because I was dissatisfied with the novels I’d attempted. Finally in 2004 I started on what was to become Brutal Light, finished my final draft of it in 2007, and spent another four years looking for a publisher. The good side of this is that I feel I learned a lot about writing during this time; my next work should take much less time. How do you feel now about your earlier works? The temptation I always feel is to look at them and see the flaws–the awkward phrasings, the paucity of necessary detail–but after a while, I generally come to see the parts I liked and made me feel as if I’d done good–the storytelling, some bits of incisive dialogue, things like that. Sometimes that backfires; I can take a look back on something I wrote and say ‘wow, that was good… so why can’t I write that good now?’ Where can we find you online? I am far-flung across the net; my user accounts are legion. The hub of it all is my website, GaryWOlson.com, which hosts my main blog and has information on everything I’ve written, what I’m working on, where I’m going to be, and so on. The full list of these journals, RSS feeds, and social media sites–which, since it seems like I’m always adding stuff, I’m usually good about keeping up-to-date–is on my links page. There’s also a slightly abbreviated version on the right-side column of every page of my site.
When Kagami appeared in the front seat, Nick Havelock knew his night was only beginning. Her hair was wild and dirty, her skin brown, green, and red. Intense light snapped across her eyes and in the spaces between her fingertips. She smiled, revealing the red in her teeth. Havelock kept his cool. She was not his first vision of blood. “It would be good,” he said, “if you let me get off the freeway first.” He was on westbound I-696, just passing the Southfield Freeway. The Telegraph Road exit was only a few miles further. The eleven o’clock traffic was light, and he thought that with a little luck, he could be ready for her in his apartment in ten minutes. Kagami leaned close. Freeway lights gave her a pulsing beauty. “Nick,” her voice came in a whisper. “Let the monkey drive.” “No,” he answered, as the memory of doing exactly that two nights before came to him. “You said it was dangerous, and it was.” “There’s no time to be safe,” she replied. “Are you going to do this, or am I gone?” She gave him no time to answer. A blink, a shiver, and she was nothing. He stared at the empty seat. His heart hammered his ribs. His eyes could go no wider. A car horn’s blare snapped his attention back to the freeway. There was a merging SUV to the right, a Camaro nearly in his blind spot to the left and back, and a U-Haul truck in front. He accelerated, and then shifted hard into the lane to his left. SUV and Camaro horns blared. Screw ’em. I have to get home. I have to– I have to go. Nick passed the U-Haul and shifted right. The Camaro sped past, giving him one more horn blast in parting. He paid it no mind, instead focusing on the hypnotic blur of yellow strips. He let his breathing grow regular, and let the road fill his mind. The hum rose all around. The road uncoiled. He opened his mouth and drank in her noise– Only it was not just her noise anymore. There were other sounds, other tastes that lingered on his tongue and in his mind. There was blood in the stream. Bestial roars in the white noise of the world. They spoke of fear and terror. He felt his body quake. It felt so far away. The abyss drew him down again. Buy Brutal Light Amazon.com (Kindle edition) Friday, December 9th, 2011
About a century later, I asked for, and joyfully received, a pair for my 13th birthday. I don’t know why, but they’ve become the symbol of “home” for me. I moved out of my parent’s house when I went away to college and got my own apartment. Little by little, all that was mine migrated from my parent’s house to my apartment… …except the skates. When my parents decided to sell the house I grew up in, they brought me the skates. And when they moved into their new house, I found a closet there to stash them in. They moved again, and we repeated the process. When Mom found the skates that time, she threatened to throw them out if I didn’t come get them. I explained to her that as long as they were at her house, that it was as though the house were mine, too. It felt a little more like coming home, than visiting in my parent’s new house when I came to see them. I’m not sure she gets it. The fact is: the skates aren’t the issue, it’s what they represent. I could have fixated on anything to be my little slice of home at the new house. I’ve got a lot of fond memories associated with those skates, including the ones which have nothing to do with skating (that is, the little squabble with my folks over where they should live.) Do you have any fond skate memories? What about something else that might symbolize home? Here’s Your Prompt
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 Here’s my highly-opinionated view of gift-giving for writers. In case you’re wondering…and even if you’re not. What Not to Give Unless your writer friend mentions or asks for any of these things, stay away from:
Think About Giving:
Gifts that “Go Away” I’m a big fan of gifts that get consumed (so the house remains uncluttered):
Inexpensive Gifts, or Gifts from the Self Every writer I know can use a little more time in their day to get their writing stuff done. Since the time machine hasn’t been invented yet, you really can’t lengthen their day…but you can give gifts that will save your favorite writer some time. Of everything mentioned on this list, these are my favorites:
A Final Note It’s nice that you think of your writer friends, and want to give a gift to highlight that fact, but, writers are people, too. Writing might suck up their entire life, but they’re not all about writing. They have interests outside the written word. (Would you buy your construction-worker friend a new pair of steel-toed boots for Christmas?) In short: you don’t have to give a writer a gift related to writing. And if you have no clue: ask! If you’re close enough to give a gift to someone, they’ll appreciate that you want to give them something they’ll like. Which also means: if you don’t know them well enough to ask, maybe you shouldn’t be buying a gift. That would be like stalking. Ick. Monday, December 5th, 2011
A very good friend, with whom I work, is retiring and moving away. As a consequence, she’s bequeathed this beauty to me. She gave me a lesson on Saturday, and now I’m a harpist extraordinaire. Well, not quite…but soon, soon! It helped that I already play several instruments. The reading music bit wasn’t hard at all. The getting two hands to coordinate on multiple strings: a bit tricky. By the end of the weekend, however, I was able to pluck out a recognizable version of “Stille Nacht” (chosen both for its simplicity and for the season). I’ve never played a string instrument before. I can’t believe the way this thing resonates. The floor beneath my feet vibrates when I play. It’s delightful. And playing brought on a whole spurt of creativity. I may have to consider a character who plays a harp… Friday, December 2nd, 2011
With the advent of email, it seems that the “art” of letter writing has gone by the wayside, but it doesn’t have to. I like receiving personalized letters via snail mail (so I make sure to write some, so that people write me back). Writing to a friend differs from writing to a business, but both include a salutation, a body, a closing and a signature. A friendly letter doesn’t need to have a date on it, but I’m partial to that method. The facts:
Letter writing is useful, even if you never mail it out. They can be cathartic — allowing you to get all your feelings down on paper. You can say all those things you want to say to someone, and then burn it up before anyone reads it. You can write a letter to your children and tuck it away for them to find after you pass on. You can write letters instead of diary entries. Letters make a great memoir in place of a narrative. Letters can be used in novels and stories to move the plot along. (Also very useful for figuring out what your characters want. If you don’t know where the story is going, have your main characters write letters to each other. Don’t censor your writing: just see what comes out of your brain as you’re writing.) Here’s Your Prompt: Write a letter! Friday, November 25th, 2011 This idea will work if you’re blocked, or if you want to write, but don’t have any idea what you want to say. It can work with a short story, a novel or a poem; anything, in fact. I believe I first heard this method from author Bruce Holland Rogers, though I can’t be 100% certain. (Bruce, if you’re listening, please set me straight.) What to do: Take a book off your shelf and crack it open to the first page, or the first page of a chapter, or a poem at random. Read the sentence, then write one very similar to it, changing the nouns and verbs and setting, etc. Then move on to the second and third, or as many will help you as a jumping off point. Then, continue on your own. So, for example, from Chapter 2 of Anne Ursu’s book, Shadow Thieves, the second chapter begins:
I might write something like this:
We could go on… Anne’s opening paragraph (in C2) continues:
So I write:
Didn’t take me long to go off on a tangent, eh? And I took an interesting YA sentence, and waltzed off into something supernatural. It doesn’t matter what you start with, your brain will engage with what you want to write. Here’s Your Prompt: Take a book off the shelf and open it to the beginning, the beginning of a random chapter, or anywhere, if it’s a poetry book. Read the first few lines to see if the content is interesting to you. (If not, choose another spot.) Write the first line exactly as written, skip a few lines on your page, and then start your own writing. See where it leads you! Thursday, November 24th, 2011
Once again I’m headed north for Thanksgiving. Looking forward to turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing, and this fantastic vegetable medley that my aunt makes with Velveeta cheese. (Yeah, I know it’s not real cheese, but it’s fabulous!) I’m also looking forward to a tryptophan (and carb) induced torpor. And seconds on those vegetables. We’ll also probably have venison and sauerkraut and pies…many, many pies. This year, I’ve candied jack-be-little pumpkins and carnival squash and made pudding (lots and lots of pudding…because, who knew cooked pudding wasn’t supposed to be boiled?) I’m looking forward to complaining about work, and hearing everyone else complain, and getting advice about everything, and hauling out the family photo albums, and talking about Thanksgivings past. I’ll groan the loudest when Mom tells me she’s finished her Christmas shopping, and admit that I haven’t started yet. (Except that’s not exactly true. I have: I’ve bought one gift for my sister. I’ll admit that, too.) I’ll ask my Uncle how his fig tree did this year (he swore he was giving up on it, and maybe he has…) And I’ll tell them I’m experimenting with mine: trying to winter them over in my harsh climate just like my great-grandad Spina did, by roping them down to the ground and burying them until Spring. The kids will fight. (Someone might get hurt.) The dog will bark. Loudly. One or two will slip from the table to watch the game while the rest of us talk about ‘all that boring stuff.’ It’s the same recipe every year…and just like those vegetables, I can’t get enough. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! And thank you to everyone who reads my blog, and for all the wonderful comments. Thank you for the emails, and the advice when I’ve asked for help, and for reading my stories. You guys are the best! Sunday, November 20th, 2011
(Since I had to take everything out of my office and do it over, I thought I’d treat myself to some new bookshelves.) It won’t quite fit in my space, so I’ll probably wind up buying three of the single stacks which are five cubes high, and create a 3 x 5 cubed shelf by smooshing them together. I have a short bookcase on another wall that I might replace with a taller bookcase from Ikea in the same line. I like the cubes because I can use some of the space for things other than books, like photos or art. On the box-opening front, I’ve opened about 20 boxes and put the items back in the closets they came out of. I’ve weeded out nearly four boxes of items to get rid of. (That’s 20% of my junk, for you statistics-minded people.) I’m happy with 20% at this stage of the game. I knew it would be difficult to toss out a lot of the items in the closet because the bookcase in there contains mostly genealogical materials: binders full of census data, photos, city directories, cemetery and military information. There’s not much “junk” that could have been tossed. Unfortunately, a few of the boxes for the closet area were my own…full of old family photos and letters which haven’t gotten into binders. I’m putting going through those boxes on my “to do” list for next year. (Next year’s to-do list is starting to look REALLY ambitious.) The big disappointment today is that when I was filing some of those boxed papers back into the file cabinet, I realized that the movers dented up my file cabinet. It’s really bad, too. I can’t open the third drawer…. I hope they’ll replace it. So…what do you think of the shelves? Yea or nay? |
People, at least those who see me most often, don’t realize how much goes into being a e-published author. My family thinks the time I sit in front of the computer is spent playing games and chatting, but little do they know I’m really trying to further my career and keep my name in the limelight. 
NOTE: If you don’t think promotions and blog posting help get your name out, you’ll appreciate that when I was looking for this image to portray dying brain cells…I found my own picture and a link to a previous blog. I must say, seeing my face under dying brains cells didn’t do much to pick up my spirits. 🙂
What scares you?
Excerpt from Brutal Light.
Today (December 9) in 1884, the US Patent Office issued Levant Richardson a patent for his invention of ball-bearing roller skates. (This made skates much, much faster.)
Check out my latest acquisition!
December is “National Write to a Friend Month,” so I thought I’d do a prompt on writing letters.
I’m thinking about buying this ‘Expedit’ bookcase from Ikea.