One Way NOT to Do Promotion

I’ve seen lots of good tips on doing promotion for your book. Or for anything else you want to do promo for, like a newsletter, a site, ect…

But let me give you one tip on how NOT to do promotion.

Don’t spam!

No, seriously, don’t do it!

It really doesn’t work. It just makes people angry…or either they don’t notice at all and just hit delete. Never subscribe someone to your mailing list or newsletter unless they ask to be subscribed. Better yet, set things up where they can subscribe themselves.

Always make sure there’s a link in what ever you send to those subscribers where they can easily unsubscribe if they wish. Include a link for them to resubscribe if they wish too. People do change e-mail addresses sometimes and want to rejoin, or sometimes they just want to share the link with a friend so they can join.

If you pay others to do promotion for you, it’s your job to check and make sure they are doing so on the up and up. You don’t want to get a backlash of anger because they are running your information and sending it to people who don’t want it, didn’t ask for it, and just want it to stop.

This is a sore spot for me right now because a few days ago I suddenly started getting this announcement list that is filled with info about which author is going where, which book is out, how great this e-publisher is doing, and well…you get the idea. (It really all seems to be about this one e-publisher and their authors.)

There’s one big problem though, I’ve never heard of this listing. I didn’t sign up for it, I don’t want it, and they’ve made it hard for me to leave it. I get too much spam as it is, I don’t need or want more.

I went to their site and tried to unsubscribe, but quickly found out that I had to have a password to do so. That’s a little hard to have since I never signed up for anything. The site said if I didn’t have one, I had to fill out information and get one to unsubscribe. I really don’t think so! Why would I want these people to have more info about me?

I tried blocking the address, but it’s coming from more than one sender’s address. It hasn’t been fun trying to get away from it. I did at last though. I finally got a message a few minutes ago saying I had been unsubscribed. I hope that’s the end of it. Since the messages were coming from more than one sender though, I’m not so sure. Time will tell.

If the authors who were having their books or book signings placed in this listing -- even if it’s their own publisher -- did so without knowing that this place subscribed people without their permission and then made it hard for them to leave, then those authors might get a hostile response they didn’t even see coming. That’s why I said that the person who’s paying for the promotion has to check into things and find out how that promotion is being done. You don’t want people thinking you are spamming them when you had no idea about it. Heck, you don’t want people thinking you are spamming them at any time. (Smile)

What Kind of Reader are You?

Do you savor or do you devour?

I’m sure about every one of you has been on a diet at least once. Do you remember how good it felt when you ate something sinfully bad-for-you the first time after a long spell of lean meats and salads? Did you take your time and savor every single bite, placing the smallest amount in your mouth and letting the flavors swirl around for as long as possible before you swallowed? Or did you just dig in and devour bite after bite until suddenly it was all gone and you were wondering how it disappeared so quickly?

I’ve found that devoted readers can be the same way. One of the above; they savor or they devour.

When I’ve been waiting for a new release from a favorite author, and I finally get my hands on the book, maybe after waiting a year, I savor. (Smile) I don’t sit down and read the whole thing. After all, I probably have months to wait for that next treat. I read slowly, a few pages or a couple of scenes at a time, trying to make it last, conscious that the end is coming and I want it to last. The better the story, the more I savor.

If I finish a book really quickly, like the first day or two or three, that’s usually not a good sign--unless it as a very short book. (Smile)

If I like a book a lot, but don’t love it, I don’t mind just reading it and letting the story flow, but even that takes me a while since I prefer to read a good book when I have time to relax and enjoy it. But….if I don’t like a book, I skim and try to finish it as soon as I can. (After I spend money for a book, it’s hard for me to just toss it. It feels like a waste. Some have been just so awful that’s happened, and it makes me really mad. Thankfully books that bad are very few and very far between. Not only is that a waste of my money when they are that bad, but think of all of the poor trees that died for nothing.) (Smile)

I would much rather have a book to savor. Then again, if the greatest books came around often, I guess I’d forget to savor them. It’s probably best the way it is. Good books most of the time, great books once in a while, and only a really bad one here or there to make me appreciate the good ones, and the great ones, even more.

New E-mail Address

I’ve had the same i-55 e-mail address for almost ten years. That’s a long time. That’s almost as long as I’ve had internet service. (Smile) Now, i-55 has become part of a bigger company that I know nothing about, so I’ve decided it’s time to move on at last.

I know many people use my i-55 address and have it saved in their address books, but it ain’t gonna work any more. (Smile) Well, I guess it probably will, but I won’t get anything sent to it. Instead, please use the link here on my blog.

Where? There. Over that way >.

It’s under the title Links, the last listing, Contact Me. If you click on that it will take you to a page on my site where you can send me a message through a form, or through one of the addresses listed there.

If you are a member of one of my RWC groups, you can also reach me with the group owner address. That address can be found on each group’s Yahoo home page.

Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to spring forward….you know, move your clock up an hour Saturday night before you go to bed. Yes, it’s already that time of year again.

Those Short Stories

After my last post about trying short stories, I’m happy to report shorter is better, at least when you are trying to find your way back to writing. Yesterday I was working on a short story and I actually completed fifteen full, brand new pages of writing, all in one day!

I can’t even remember the last time I ever managed that many fresh pages in one day. Even better, I enjoyed every minute of it. (Smile) The short stories I write are for me only. I’m using them as a way to get to know the characters a little better in my novel. Since these stories are for my eyes alone, I don’t have to worry about rules, about length, about style, about anything at all. The only person I have to please with these stories is myself.

That’s a wonderfully freeing thing at this point in my life.

All I have to do when I write a short story is go with the flow, have fun, add what ever plot twist or non-twist I want. It’s all about me and what my muse is telling me. I think I had forgotten how much fun creating a story could be. For years now I’ve worried so much about the writing, that the fun part, the creating, the story telling, took a back seat to the self-doubt and the picky little editor sitting on my shoulder.

I think maybe that’s why when any extra stress came into my life, I couldn’t write. The second guessing every word I wrote was enough stress, so any thing else just toppled it all. Writing became only something that I hoped I would get paid for. It was work. There wasn’t anything fun about it. And since I'm not gettnig paid rigth now... well... how many of us would go to work at something we didn't like every day with only the hope that just maybe, one day, some day, we might get paid something for it, just maybe?

I had fun yesterday. (Smile) I was stressed about other things; I’m sick as a dog right now with the worst cold, I’ve been writing letters trying to raise money for a program at my daughter’s school, I have two children graduating in a little over a month and there are a hundred little things I still need to do, sick or not, and yet yesterday I just pushed it all aside, didn’t even worry about cleaning house or cooking, and just let my writing take me away from all of it. I remember when that was always what my writing did. It was a release, a safe place, somewhere to run to where there were no worries.

I think if I really keep trying, my short stories will help me get back to the novel I need to be working on. I’m going to find my way back on my own terms though. Some how I’m going to figure out a way to bring the joy of writing with me. I think that’s going to take awhile, since someone else will be looking at the novel, but I’m going to get there. I don’t ever want to force another story again, long or short.

I think I feel like writing a whole novel is too much work to be fun now, so I can't just push everything aside and write it how ever I want, like with the short stuff, but who knows how I'll feel in a few weeks, or maybe even sooner. (Smile)

Could Short Stories Be the Way Back to Novel Writing?

My last post was about my fiction writing, well, about my not writing. About how when anything really bad happened it threw me off and I had such a time finding my way back. It felt like I was alone, the only person who was that way. I felt like maybe that meant I wasn’t willing to try hard enough, or I didn’t have enough love for writing to stick it out through the hard times.

Today I was reading some articles in my latest copy of Writer’s Digest Magazine and found an interview in there done with author Alice Hoffman. (I loved her book Practical Magic. The movie was great too.)

Anyway, in this interview she mentions going through some bad times in her life, when it seemed a lot of things were going wrong, and how during that time she found she didn’t have the energy to work on a novel. Instead of trying to tackle a novel, she took what energy and time she did have and worked on short stories. When she wrote, she didn’t allow herself to go back and second-guess the words, she just put down what came and kept going.

When I read this it was like someone opened a door for me. Right now I feel like there’s no way I can even work on my novel. It seems like trying to climb a mountain when someone has tied my legs together and hooked on a hundred pound boulder just for good measure. The thought of writing a short story at this point, still feels a little like standing at the bottom of a mountain, looking up, squinting into the sun, knowing I have a long way to climb. But…at least it doesn’t feel like my legs are tied or that I’m dragging a boulder with me. It just seems much more doable at this point and place in my life.

Alice Hoffman used short stories to find her way back, to build a bridge to her longer novels. I don’t see why I can’t do the same thing.

An idea popped into my head right away. That’s a good sign. (Smile) I think I’m going to write short stories with main characters that are minor characters in my novels. That way I’ll get twice the bang for the same work. Writing these short stories will help flex my writing muscles, help me find my way back into the comfort those novels once offered. At the same time, using minor, but important, characters from my novels, especially the main one I was working on before the hurricane, will help me stay in contact with that novel, help me flesh out some of the characters even more, and maybe add some extra pull toward that bigger story for me.

Maybe it would work for any of you who find yourself in the same writing blocked mode. It’s at least worth a try.

I Wish I Could Write Through Anything!

Long ago I found I couldn’t. Well, mostly I couldn’t. I did fine with my daily writing schedule for a number of years, but I couldn’t write a word after I found out my mother had cancer. After she died, it took me over a year to even glance at one of my manuscripts again.

A year or so later, I landed my first full-time freelance writing job. It was non-fiction, short biographies of singers and musicians. I did the research, the interviews, and then wrote up the bios, including adding HTML tags in the text as required. My weekly payday depended on my output and my meeting each week’s deadline. The more I produced, the more I got paid. It wasn’t really creative writing like my fiction, and I knew there was an editor waiting for it each week and waving a paycheck. As long as I did the correct research and wrote good bios, I got paid for them. (There’s no such guarantee with fiction, not even after a good bit of success.)

I went from that first job to writing greeting cards, then on to another bigger company doing bios again, and then reviews. During the years I did all of that non-fiction writing, I never seemed to have any energy or time or writing left in me to work on my fiction. It made me sad, but as a wife and mother with more bills than money, I did what I had to do. Through it all, no matter what was going on in my life, I never missed a deadline. I remember losing two dear friends during that time, and one Christmas week deadline pulling all the holiday stuff together for my family, completing all my bios, and doing it all with the flu and a double eye infection. There was no joy to my writing. It was a job. So I did it when I was supposed to do it. Even if that meant being up until two AM before a morning deadline.

A few years later, I was upset when the company I was working for cut back and tightened its belt to the point of getting rid of about 80% of their writers, including me. I tried to find another writing job at first, but when I didn’t find one soon, I was actually relieved. After years of non-fiction I finally decided to put it aside and turn to my fiction full-time. It was something I had been dreaming of.

I did fine at first, finished a couple of long manuscripts in pretty good time, then my father got worse and I spent more and more of my time caring for him, along with of course having to care for my children and be a housewife. I found it hard to be a full-time caregiver for my father, a full-time mother for my children, a full-time wife for my husband, along with handling all of the housework, shopping, bills, ect… Still, I found time almost daily to work on one of my stories—though not as many hours as I would have liked. Sometimes it was only minutes.

In June of 2004 my father became even more seriously ill. When he was put in the hospital, I spent hours with him daily. When he died. I fell back into not being able to write at all. I managed to pull myself out of the grief in less than a year this time. I turned back to my fiction writing and found comfort in it.

Then, this time, I got sick. I was thirsty all of the time, sleepy all of the time. I couldn’t sit still long enough to write because I would almost fall asleep. I just felt awful. I soon found out why, I was a diabetic.

Just about the time I began to feel well enough and awake enough to face the computer for longer than the time it took to do a few e-mail messages, I found out my blood sugar counts were getting worse instead of better. Learning I would need to start doing daily blood tests at home, as well as go on daily meds to try to control the disease, knocked me for a whole new loop. I’m terrified of needles, so just the thought of what I was facing, along with what I knew about being a diabetic because my father had been one, was enough to send me in a brand new downward spiral.

I caught hold of the cave sides on the way down, and climbed right back up this time. At first every word was a fight, but I slowly started to get back into the rhythm. And then…

Yes, you knew something else was coming. This time it was hurricane Katrina. Talk about turning my world upside down. She even turned it inside out. It’s been six months today since she hit my home, and I’ve yet to write more than a few words. I have even shied away from e-mail messages, mainly only doing the ones I have to for my groups, and answering friends after long lags. Many days I have a great idea for something to write here for my blog, and I let those thoughts slip away too.

I’ve tried hard, but I just can’t seem to get anywhere at all. I think I’m actually afraid that if I start writing again, and get back into a normal writing routine, or anything near it…something else will happen. Maybe even something worse than the other times. It feels like fate doesn’t want me to write my romance novels, and slaps me down with glee anytime I start doing too well at it.

I’ve felt this way, or close to it, before, and thought maybe just not ever writing again would be the best thing for me. I’ve tried that. But even now, when I can’t write, I can’t leave it completely alone either. The story I have started calls to me. The characters walk through my mind at the oddest times and whisper secrets to me. Plot points pop into my thoughts, ideas for a new story, a better way to end a scene, those kinds of things that only other writers know the power of.

Always before, the story and the characters kept on pulling at me until I could no longer resist the comfort of their world, until I willingly slipped back into its brightness with them.

I know that will happen again, I just can’t leave it for good. Part of me wishes that I could though, unless there was some way for me to turn into one of those writers who can write through any thing. I know some of them in person, and nothing, nothing short of their own deaths, would stop the flow of words for them. I wish they knew some little secret that they could share with me. What ever it is they have found that makes them able to write on no matter what. But I guess even if they could, the secret that works for one probably wouldn’t work for another.

I guess there’s nothing I can do but sit here and wait, try to reach out when the pull comes, and hope that sooner instead of later, I’m able to slip back in.

Are You From Bogalusa? Did You Leave After Hurricane Katrina?

If so, and you left, it's time to come home. :-)

I get at least a couple of messages a week from people who have found my blog or site and want to know if it's okay to come home yet, if things are still as bad as they were when they left, ect....

If you are one of those who left here before or after Hurricane Katrina, like I said above, it's time to come home to Bogalusa, Louisiana. It's safe to come home. It's been months since Katrina, and since then, lots of people have been hard at work.

I’ve posted updates here on my blog, but I think many people aren’t used to reading blogs and get here from a search that takes them to an older post and that’s the only one they read, so they miss the updates. I made sure to put both Bogalusa and Katrina in the title of this post, so search engines would pick up on it and maybe direct people here instead of to an older post.

I want people from here who left to be assured that it is okay to come back now. Has been okay to come back for a while. The roads are clear…mostly. They are still trimming trees and taking damaged ones down, but it’s no big deal and they are only working in a section or two at a time. So you might find one or two roads blocked for part of the day, but you just go a street over and go on your way. The newspaper comes three days a week -- I don’t know if or when it will go back to six. The mail runs six days a week…and yes it seems to take two weeks or longer for mail to get through sometimes, just a few things, and some of my magazines don’t show up every month like they should, but most mail, at least 97%, is coming right on time. It seems all bills are, so that’s not a problem. (You knew those bills were going to get through.) (Smile)

The grocery stores, dollar stores, and even Wal-Mart, are all back open and now seem well stocked. The same for gas stations and drug stores, and all of the odds and ends. Some do close a little earlier or open a little later than they used to, but not by much. Some few things aren’t open and probably won’t be. But like I said, it’s few things. Even the fast food places are open. They close a little earlier too, and sometimes they don’t have enough workers to run both the drive through and lobby, so they close one or the other, but even that problem is getting less often. You can go to your doctor, your vet, and the hospital. The phone, lights, cable, and even the cell phones work fine. (Okay, the cell phones still break up or drop calls more than normal, but not much more.)

So, again, it really is fine to come home to Bogalusa. And hurry! We are even going to have our normal Mardi Gras parade -- it’s this Saturday, the 25th in the evening. You don’t want to miss that, do you? (Smile.) We are also having the 5K run a few hours before the parade. My husband’s gonna be runnin' in it. So wish him luck.

Update on My Sister’s Grandbaby

Thanks so much for all of the e-mails y’all sent filled with prayers and good thoughts for this darling little baby boy. His name is Travis. It breaks my heart to report that things haven’t gotten any better for little Travis. In fact, the doctors have taken away all hope. It’s doubtful he will live to see his first birthday. They do know what’s wrong with him now. He was born with something called Autosomal Recessive Cutis Laxa Type One. There are only a couple of hundred people in the whole world with Cutis Laxa, and his is the very worse kind. There is no cure and no treatment for it. It simply keeps on until the last of the fight is gone from the body it’s destroying. All the doctors can do is try to treat the symptoms and the damage and buy Travis, and his mother, more time.

I wrote in my blog a short while ago about how sad I was over losing one of my dogs. I can’t even guess at the amount of pain my niece is dealing with! Comparing the pain of losing a dog, even as much as I loved Red, to the loss of a child, seems like comparing a drop of water to the ocean. I know my brother died when I was ten. My mother died twenty years later, and she hadn’t gotten over his loss even then.

Protect Your Family Pictures By Sharing Them

We’ve gotten so much fixed on the house now, I’ve kind of moved on from what was lost, accepted it as is--all but for my family pictures and keepsakes. There’s nothing I can do to bring them back, and that hurts most of all. I have the first few years of my children’s life, and then nothing until now. I’m a picture nut….have always taken tons of them of my children, of family, friends, pets, places, ect…. Now years’ worth of them are just gone, completely gone, forever gone.

The “if onlys” are enough to drive a person crazy, so I just fight the thoughts and sadness as best I can. You can’t go back in time, not to take more pictures or to make sure the ones you had are safe.

It wouldn’t be so bad if there were other copies, even of part of them, but there aren’t. I almost always got double prints of my pictures, and for years I gave copies to family and friends, mostly to my mother and my sister. But in ’95 my mother died, my father had already been sick for years, my sister moved far away, and other family members moved off or drifted out of touch without Mom to pull us together. In ’96 I got my first computer and the Internet. I had lots of pen pals back then, and often shared pictures with them and family members when I sent letters. But pretty soon letters became a thing of the past and we were all doing e-mail.

After Mom died, Dad was in really bad health and I had to take care of him, I also had two kids to raise, a husband, and I started working, doing full-time freelance writing. Suddenly those double-prints just stayed in those packs, both sets of them. I didn’t even put them in albums any more. It just seemed there was never enough time.

(Thank goodness my older pictures weren’t with them. Most of the older ones are safe and sound, though there were black & white pictures and family keepsakes in the same big box, but thankfully those didn’t include my wedding pictures some family pictures of my parents, and the first few years from my children.)

I just wish so badly that at least some pictures from all of those missing years could have been saved. I learned a really hard lesson from all of this and I hope it’s one I don’t need a second teaching of, and that it’s one that I can save some other people from having to face.

We all know there are hurricanes, tornados, floods, house fires, and yet some how most of us always think the worst won’t happen to us. Then it does. Losing your home and clothes and everything else might hurt, BADLY, but things are things. Pictures of your loved ones are so much more to you and to those who come after you, than simple things. Those pictures and keepsakes are your family history, the faces of those long dead, of your children when they were learning to skate, or leaving for a first date, the letters your mother wrote your father or a clipping of your grandmother’s hair when it was red instead of white. There is no way to replace those if there isn’t another copy of clipping of it.

There is at least something you can do to protect your precious family pictures, and it’s not that hard and it doesn’t cost that much.

Get double prints. It’s only a little more, and most of us get them anyway. If you can’t get them every time, get them at least every other time or two. Then put them somewhere else, with someone else. Share some with your mom, your dad, your grandmother, your brother, your sister, your aunt, or close friends. If nothing else, find a friend who is willing to trade and share with you. When she gets double prints she can send you the ones that are really important to her and you will safe keep them, in return, you send your important copies to her, and she will safe keep them. If any thing happens to one of your homes, the other person will at least be able to replace those important family pictures that were shared.

You can do the same thing with old family letters or really old family pictures. Copy them, share them, even scan the most important ones in to your computer and e-mail them to yourself and others.

Some things you can’t do that with, like a memory book, baby books, and such. At least, as my mom would say, don’t put all of your eggs in the same basket. Keep them in a safe place, but maybe in different places. If you can afford it, keep the most important keepsakes in a safety box at the bank, or maybe in the top drawer of a fireproof file cabinet. Get creative if you have to.

Think about things you don’t want to think of. I’ve lived in this house for over twenty years and never had an inch of water in it during that whole time until the day two feet came rushing through with Katrina. If your house caught on fire and you couldn’t get anything out, is there some place things would be safe or stand a better chance. Even if you don’t flood, a tree could crash into your home and allow the rain to pour in. You just never know.

No matter what. When it’s said and done, you can go to Wal-Marts and pick out another TV, more clothes, pots and pans. You can go to Sears and replace your stove or washer. Yes, it all takes money, but it’s just things and money. You can have all of the money in the world, but there are things you won’t be able to replace no matter what. Life being first, and your important family pictures and keepsakes being second.

Those things, once lost, are the things you never forget or forgive yourself for.

My Own Room!

It's taken five very long months, but last night I got to sleep in my own bedroom for the first time since hurricane Katrina!

Getting the use of that room back has made such a big difference in the rest of my home. We have so much more room now and things look so much more like they used to. Even better in some cases...like my bedroom is all fresh and new now. I even completely changed the color. I had a Coral Rose paint on the walls…but everyone who saw it said it was pink. (Smile) Now the room is a color called Sugar Blossom. In other words, it’s white. (Smile)