8 Lessons Learned from Taking 2 Years to Finish 1 Novel

What, me, self promote? Perish the thought.
I'd never be so brazen as to tell you that it's
available for pre-order on Amazon or Kobo.
Official release date: January 26, 2015.

So if I don't write a post for five months, will anyone notice? It's been eating at me - the time I've spent away from blogging about reading and writing. My last post was in July, for goodness' sake. I had lots to say, but no time to say it. But now that The Red Road is finished, I feel like a weight has been lifted. It's cliche, and as a writer, I should do better, but that's exactly what it feels like. 

This two-and-a-half-year journey is finally coming to an end. I started writing The Red Road in May of 2012. As of December 2014, it's done. As in file name "TheRedRoadFINALFINALNOREALLYIMNOT
KIDDINGTHISTIMEFINAL.epub." It's formatted, tested, and ready for pre-sale on the interwebs. Now it's time to wrangle some marketing and take stock of what I've learned. And, boy, this is the book that's taught me the most. Here's some of what I've learned.

Lesson #1: Writing about real life is hard. In thrillers, it's easy to come up with a quip and have the bad guy shoot someone to get out of a tough spot. In a book about high school girls? Not so much. These characters don't have the spatial freedom grown-ups have. I had to give up the easy answers that thrillers and paranormal tales had to offer.

Lesson #2: Writing about real people is hard. I don't think I will ever do this again. Characters based on my mom, dad, and sister are in this book. And I did bad things to them. I stripped every character of safety and left the worst versions of themselves exposed. This is much easier to do with people you're not sitting across the table from at Thanksgiving.

Lesson #3: You have to care about something a hell of a lot to work on it for two and a half years. There were times I cried, shut off the computer, and told the hubby I needed to find something else to do with my life. I never actually wanted to give up, but it felt good to say. It gave me the freedom to come back the next day and say, "Well, since I'm giving up, I guess it would be okay to tweak this one thing just to see what would happen." Sometimes that was enough to take the pressure off and shut down my inner editor, who is a world-class psycho hose beast. 

Lesson #4: Don't go into a book with a social or moral agenda. When I started this book, I was fresh out of grad school. I wanted to write a literary novel, a novel with purpose. I picked out all the social ills and evils of my hometown and forced them into the story. Guess what? The first draft was embarrassing. Preachy. Overwrought. Lacking connection with the characters. And, worst of all, boring. I deleted most of it.

Lesson #5: Presentation matters. File size, epub2 versus epub3, fleurons, dropcaps, embeddable fonts, line height, media queries...holy crap, I didn't know what I didn't know until I decided not to rely on Smashwords or Microsoft Word. My brain hurts. But this is the best-looking book I've ever put out. Now I'm kind of ashamed of all prior efforts.

Lesson #6: Never give up. Be as stubborn as you can. The day that ends in failure? It's just today. Tomorrow's different. You might spend weeks trying to figure out the dumbest thing (why the eff images come out huge in Adobe Digital Editions when they look great in the InDesign file). And you might feel really stupid and small because you can't "get" something that most people don't even bother thinking about. But if you keep working at it, you'll unlock it. And then everything you do from here on out will be right and you'll know why. It won't be an accident.

Lesson #7: Take the time you need. This goes hand-in-hand with Lesson #6. Any sane person would have said, screw this ninth draft. Screw this stupid image that won't size right. I can't spend any more time on this. Those Write, Publish, Repeat guys have serialized a twice-as-long sequel to War and Peace in the time it's taken me to figure out what CSS is. They don't write ninth drafts. And they're making money. So why should I do it? 

You should do it because you care about your work and your name and the story you're telling. If you care more about production time and the number of titles you can crank out in a year, you and I are different and that's okay. I want to take my time. I want to savor the process and learn every part of it. Delayed by 10 weeks to learn InDesign and eBook coding? Fine by me. Delayed by 3 months to add new character arc and revise book again? If it makes the story stronger and will leave readers more satisfied, I'll do it every damn time.

Lesson #8: Stay true to you. The writing world is full of posts and books that offer strategies, productivity tips, and shortcuts. Hell, I'm writing a tip-filled post right now. You have to know which are going to help you and which are not. You have to know what you believe in and why. And you have to know your own strengths and weaknesses. All advice must be filtered through your self-awareness. I'm still learning how to do this. But I'm getting better every day.

You are the architect of your own success. Good luck out there.

The Romanov Legacy: Free on Kindle

This is a public service announcement.

All this week, my four-star thriller, The Romanov Legacy, is free for Kindle. Yes, you read that right. Absolutely free.

Included features:

• Espionage
• Betrayal
• Murder
• Treasure
• History
• Romance
• Car chases
• Shootouts
• Secret codes
• Hidden letters
• Death squads
• Breaking & entering
• Hoaxes
• Conspiracy theories

But wait, there's more! Buy now, and you'll also get: 

• A schizophrenic heroine
• A dog
• A spy
• A traitor 
• A mom
• A son
• A boy
• A spymaster
• A prime minister
• Two grand duchesses

To take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime offer, click here. 

We now rejoin the previously scheduled program, already in progress.

Demons, Funnels, and an Empty Checking Account: Why I Decided to Sell Short Fiction

In 2010, I had an idea for a short story about the lost colony of Roanoke. My first love is historical fiction and I've always been tormented by the idea of unsolved mysteries, so it seemed like a natural fit for me. Still, my writer's brain wanted more. It wanted to put a supernatural twist on the story. What better way to explain the strange disappearance of the colonists than by introducing something creepy and otherworldly? Namely, a demon named Croatoa. I know, I know...there are actual scientific theories about what happened to the colonists. But that's not nearly as much fun as a long-fingered black-haired demon.  

But I digress. It was a cold December and I was about to finish my first semester of grad school. It was time to write the final story for my first graduate-level creative writing class. I'd already turned in one historical fiction story, and one story about a talking dog who was really the devil. To reveal my amazing depth and breadth as a writer, logic dictated that I avoid (a) history and (b) the supernatural.

But since when have I done anything the way I'm supposed to?

I wrote the Roanoke story anyway.  Whether it risked my grade or not, it was the story I wanted to write. That's how I roll. 

I wrote it from the point of view of Eleanor Dare, the mother of the first English baby born in the New World. I wrote about the last days of the colony, when hunger and cold and starvation and drought and attacks by Native Americans had taken their toll. I wrote about a demon named Croatoa, who offered Eleanor Dare a terrifying bargain. I wrote about Manteo, the Croatoan man who had already been to England twice by the time the last, doomed Roanoke colonization party arrived. And I turned it in for my final: 20 pages of brutal, bloody, tragic prose.  I don't know what my grade on that particular story ended up being, since the professor said he would read our finals over a fire and burn them before assigning our final grades. But my grade in the class was an A, so I'm guessing it didn't suck too hard.

This is pretty much how I write
 most of my non-literary short stories.

Being in grad school led to a burst of creativity for the next 16 months that resulted in me having quite a few short stories, mostly written for creative writing classes. I submitted almost all of them to journals and anthologies. Quite a few of them actually made it in and have been published. As is the case with most journals and anthologies, they requested only first North American rights, which meant that once the story had been published, all rights reverted to me.

Until recently, I thought of my short stories as a means to an end: a way to get better at writing. A way to rack up a few publishing credits for this here "Awards & Publications" page. A way to earn backlinks for this blog. But I never thought of them as anything else.

Then I read a blog post on Anne R. Allen's blog.  Writers, if you're not reading her blog, you're missing out. I only discovered it recently, but every post is chock-full of helpful and interesting information. The post I read was called, "Why You Should be Writing Short Fiction." In it, Anne writes, "What--short stories? Aren't they just for writing classes?" She had my attention right away, since that's what I'd always thought. She said she knew of a bestselling writer who put a bunch of her older short stories up for sale on Amazon (under non-famous name, of course) and ended up making $500 a month. People found them, bought them, and liked them. 

Hmm, I thought. I have folders of short stories, all just sitting there.

But I still didn't do anything about it. I was working on marketing my books and getting my website up and running, and I didn't want to think about it yet.

Then, Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant released Write, Publish, Repeat. Their advice is to create a marketing funnel, with short stories, novellas, and books in tiered pricing layers that draw browsers in and convert casual readers into repeat buyers and (hopefully) fans.

Hmm, I thought. I don't have shit for a funnel.

That's when I started thinking of ways to use my short stories as part of my marketing funnel. The book I want to write next is historical fiction (both of them, actually). I have several historical fiction short stories, including Croatoa. Why not put out some of the short stories and try to use them to generate interest in my historical fiction? 

So here's what I did:

1. Dug out my old manuscript.
2. Polished it up. Added some stuff. Took a few awkward lines away.
3. Made a cover. (Deepest apologies to my fantastic cover artist, but with a dead laptop and an empty propane tank, money is allergic to me right now.)
4. Popped the completed manuscript into my eBook template.
5. Added two bonus features to the end of the story: a historical note on Manteo, and a detailed timeline of the Roanoke Colony. I wanted to make sure the reader had a bit more than just the story, so I used the idea of a DVD's special features and came up with the timeline/historical note idea.
6. Added a brief excerpt from my vampire book at the very end, with the cover art and a buy link. The idea here is that someone interested in a historical fiction story with a hint of the supernatural might also really like my vampire book, which also hits both of these genre's high notes. 
7. Priced it at .99c. My books are all $2.99, and since this story is much shorter, the price needs to reflect that. Maybe when I have more items up for sale, I can make one of my funnel items permafree, but for now, I chose the entry-level price point of .99c.
8. Published through Amazon KDP and Smashwords. Since I don't plan on doing a ton of promotion for the story, I didn't make it exclusive to KDP. I want the max amount of exposure for the minimum amount of effort, which means more venues = more eyeballs. 

So this is now the beginning of a grand experiment in which I see if I can replicate other authors' success selling short fiction. I haven't publicized the release much, since I had an interview that went live at the same time and I can only stand so much of myself. In general, my books make very little money and this story likely will, too. As of now, it's sold one copy through Smashwords and made me .73c. But that's .73c I didn't have yesterday, so that's cool with me.

I don't think I'll be one of the lucky few making $500 a month off of it, but I also know I have a dozen more than can follow. It's the production time that's going to slow me down. I am writing two books right now, and don't have much time left over to market the older books plus edit, format, produce, and publish a buttload of short stories. But I'm going to try because, well, Protestant work ethic bequeathed to me by my Swedish and Scottish ancestors just will not quit. Why watch TV at night when you could work on 800 projects all at once?

That's one thing about being a one-woman indie author show. You have to love it in order to live it. So here I am, loving it and living it, and wanting to help you do the same. I'll post updates here as needed to let you know how my short story experiment goes.

If you want to check out Croatoa, you can get it from Amazon or Smashwords.

To learn more about how I researched and wrote the story itself, check out this post on my website:

Croatoa: How I Turned the Lost Colony of Roanoke into a Short Story

8 Signs You Are Not the Chuck Norris of Writing

As a writer, you're a target. You're putting yourself out into the world and asking both readers and ubiquitous Internet heroes to comment on your work.

Some of these folks are looking to take you down, to give you a bad review, to tell you you don't know what you're doing. They are the Kim Jong-uns of the Internet: puffy, whiny, self-important, and probably in need of a kick in the pants. As a writer, the last thing on earth you want to do is give these people ammunition. You want to be the Chuck Norris of writing, the one-man-army capable of telling a legion of disbelievers to go straight to hell: Vaya con Chee-Tos, mothertruckers.

One of the best ways to do this is to make sure your fundamentals--your phrasing and grammar--are correct. Many writers skip this step, preferring to rely on their storytelling ability to carry them through the process. But this would be like Chuck Norris skipping all the other color belts that lead up to a black belt. Did Chuck Norris skip out on the yellow belt or the purple belt? I think not. He mastered that shit because he's Chuck Norris.  You can do the same.

One more note, before we dive in: Chuck Norris would never use Microsoft's grammar check. He knows it's wrong half the time. He ignores it, and you should, too. Chuck Norris learned how to write by reading.  A lot. And more than just kung-fu how-to manuals. Chuck Norris reads classics, sci-fi, historicals, biographies, and oh yes, even a vampire book or two.  If you want to learn to write like Chuck Norris, you need to read out of your pay grade. 

In any case, Chuck and I offer this starter kit of 8 stupid mistakes never to make with your writing. Some of these are actual mistakes I've seen in books, many self-published. Go forth and conquer.   

1. You use turns of phrase without actually knowing what they mean. 

• "...the change knocked her world on its axis..."  This is not correct. An axis is an imaginary line around which an object (presumably a planet) rotates. When something incredible happens to your character, her world cannot be knocked ON its axis. It was there to begin with. Her world may, however, be knocked OFF its axis.  
• "...step foot in..."  This is everywhere. People say it, but it IS NOT RIGHT. The phrase is "set foot in." It might make sense at first because "step" is a logical word to combine with "foot." But the sense in which it is used is totally wrong. To "step" automatically implies you are using your foot, which makes the use of the word "foot" stupid and redundant. To "set" does not automatically imply you are performing this action with a foot; therefore, it is reasonable that you then specify "foot" after the verb.  
• "...she thought to herself..."  Unless your character is telepathic, there is no way she could "think" to anyone else.

2. You use adverbs when the verb you use already implies that adjective. 

• "...tripped clumsily."  Can you trip in a way that's not clumsy? Even if you can, is that what your character is doing?
• "...shouted loudly."  Is it even possible to shout quietly? If it is, "shouted" is the wrong damn verb.
• "...jumped quickly."  Let's see you jump slowly. I dare you to try. I dare Chuck Norris to try.

3.  You use adverbs too much in general. We all know adverbs are to be used sparingly. But occasionally, they creep in and that can be okay. But it's not okay when you're using an adverb because it's easier and faster than describing how a character does something. You're a writer. You're supposed to be describing how characters do things. That's your job. So do better at it. Here are some examples of lazy adverb use:

• "You murdered my nephew," he said angrily. Really? Because I always thought proclamations of murder were issued joyfully. Gosh, wouldn't it be nice if the punctuation could somehow reveal the character's emotion? If only someone had invented a single punctuation mark that conveys strong feeling.
• "Constantly stepping from foot to foot, Joe looked nervous." In this case, the adverb is unnecessary. Stepping from foot to foot already implies the motion is constant. 
• "Moving slowly through the graveyard..." If your verb requires an adverb for the reader to get the picture, you picked a shitty verb. 

4.  You misuse prepositions.  Oh God, the prepositions. They are under attack. I don't know how this happened. It's like waking up one day to find out that all the streets have been renamed and now you have no idea what people are saying when they're trying to give you directions on how to get to the grocery store. And you're like, "Man, all I wanted is some mac and cheese. Why are you making it so hard?" Don't make it hard on your reader. Prepositions are the street signs that tell your reader where your sentence is going. If you don't use the right street sign, your reader is lost.  And lost people get angry. Sometimes they get murdered by drifters. Do you want your readers to get murdered by drifters? Don't answer that. Like Blair Waldorf, I rely on plausible deniability.

• "...ponder on..."  You ponder something. You don't ponder on it. If you tell me you're pondering on a Corvette, I will imagine you perched upon a car, thinking about a subject you failed to specify.
• "She was ignorant to the fact that he was an ex-con."  She ain't the only one. You can be ignorant of a fact, but not ignorant to it. There's no easy way to learn this stuff. You just have to read good books and absorb these idioms.
• "...disappointed from..."  You can be disappointed by the fact that you died from dysentery, but you cannot be disappointed from the fact that you died by dysentery.
• "She glanced on her watch."  A glance is not a tangible thing, so it cannot actually be on the watch. She may, however, glance at her watch.
• "You can never go wrong on fruits and vegetables."  I BEG TO DIFFER. You can go very, very wrong. In order not to go so wrong, try going with them instead of on them.

5.  You use descriptive dialogue tags. You've probably seen Elmore Leonard's advice for writers, one point of which states that you should never use anything other than "said." 98% of the time, he's right. There is rarely a case when you need to use a dialogue tag. If you use one, you're following the same lazy pattern of writing indicated by adverb use. Your dialogue, in combination with the motion of the character in the scene, should tell the reader how that line is spoken. If you have to specify with a dialogue tag, you haven't effectively conveyed the feeling of the scene, the emotion of the character, or his or her mindset. 

• "Eww! I hate spiders!" she shrieked. The problem with dialogue tags is that they are often unnecessary. The exclamation points tell you this character has strong feelings about spiders. She is probably angry or afraid, and you as the writer should provide the context to tell us which it is. Using both exclamation points and a tag such as cried/shrieked/wailed/exclaimed is overkill.
• "And the best part is...I never pressed play!" he cackled.  I call C+C Music Factory on this one. A cackle is a laugh, right? Can you actually speak all these words while cackling? Or is the laugh coming between the words? Or did the cackle come after, in which case the words themselves were not "cackled"? Or is the laugh really even a cackle to begin with? Do you see what kind of problems a poorly thought out dialogue tag can get you into? 

6.  You get subject-object agreement wrong. This is a tricky one, but once you know what to look for, you'll see it everywhere. Remember, no one's asking you to speak properly. You don't have to obey this rule when you're talking to your mom or your wife, but you do have to obey it on the page. Because if you don't, someone who does know the rule is going to put down your book and think, "Amateur." And by someone, I mean Chuck Norris.

• "Americans who love The Fast and the Furious live their life a quarter mile at a time." What's wrong here? The subject of the sentence is "Americans." You're making a statement about a large group of people. But you used the word "life," which is not plural. Do all Americans live one life?  Apparently not, since "One Life to Live" was canceled. See? Even ABC figured this shit out. Now it's your turn. You want to say that Americans live their lives a quarter mile at a time. Now you're cooking with gas.
• "One cannot have their cake and eat it, too." You would think that a word like "one" is enough to tell you that it means "one."  As in singular. As in not plural. So who are all these other folks you've invited into your sentence by using "their"? Is your "one" a schizophrenic? Are you a schizophrenic? If not, shape this shit up by keeping this a party of one: One cannot have one's cake and eat it, too.  

7. You use semicolons. Badly. You do not know how to use them, yet they appear throughout your book. Why is this? Do you randomly sprinkle mathematical formulas throughout your book just because they look intellectual and important? That's what lots of people do with semicolons. They look fancy, and probably imply that your sentence is multi-layered and complicated....right? No. Just...no.  If you can't tell me the rule for semicolons, right now, don't use them. Ever. Until you learn the rule, which is this:

• One rule to rule all the rules: Semicolons are used to separate TWO COMPLETE THOUGHTS. If either part cannot stand on its own as a grammatically correct entity, DO NOT USE A SEMICOLON. Chuck Norris will hurt you if you do this. If there's one thing Chuck Norris hates, it's bad semicolon usage. Don't believe me? Try it, and then go to sleep. See if you wake up.
• "One time at band camp; I did things my mom wouldn't approve of." A semicolon is not a comma. These two thoughts are clearly connected, but they cannot stand on their own.  "One time at band camp" is not a sentence...it is the beginning of a sentence.  And yes, I know that sentence ended with a preposition. Some rules were meant to be broken. Deal with it.
• "Rochelle had more to do that Saturday night; more than get wasted." Again, the second half of this sentence is placed for emphasis--it is not a sentence in and of itself. Only the cheese stands alone. Sentence fragments are not cheese.

8.  You confuse the most basic contractions you learned in first flippin' grade. I'm serious. Now you've got Chuck Norris *and* your first grade teacher really pissed at you. Is that what you want? He'll hold you down and punch you while your first grade teacher spits in your face. Or just drags her nails along the chalkboard. That's no one's good time. So do the world a favor and just learn what six-year-olds in good schools already have.

• For the last time: the apostrophe means it's a contraction. Contraction means two words are smashed together tighter than Kim Kardashian's boobs in a bustier. Some of the letters got kicked out because they couldn't breathe. The apostrophe tells us those letters are missing and someone might want to find them someday. Or not. It's up to you. 
• You're/your.  You're going to get your ass kicked by Chuck Norris for fucking this up. If you cannot replace the word with "you are," you should use "your."
• It's/its. It's a damn shame the snake left its home and decided to sleep in your bed instead. If you cannot replace the word with "it is," you should use "its."
• Their/they're/there. They're late for their own funeral because Chuck Norris got there first. 

If you're seeing some of your own mistakes listed here, now you have the power to fix them. This is progress! If you're not seeing any of these mistakes in your writing, look harder. Look even harder still. And then, if you still don't see these mistakes, congratulations on possibly being the Chuck Norris of writing. I salute you.

Worry Birds: 73 Things that Keep Self-Published Writers (Me) up at Night

In the past few weeks, as I adapt to life without Gram, I've been overdosing on writing blogs, social media, and general marketing tips.  I paste everything interesting into Evernote, in notebooks titled "Social Media" and "Website Creation" and "To Do" and "Book Promotion."  

I have 135 "To Do" notes and it makes me feel like I'm going to explode.

Instead of being energized, I'm paralyzed.

I feel like I'm back in 6th grade. There we were, scared and afraid we'd forget our locker combinations.  The first thing my new school had us do is write down all our worries about being very grown-up middle-schoolers on a construction paper bird.  Then we attached our birds to balloons and released them in a big welcome-to-middle-school ceremony.  They were called "worry birds," and by releasing them, we were supposed to let go of our worries, too.  As environmentally unsound as the process is, I feel like I need to do it again.

I'm worried that I will fuck up. I'm worried that I will never, ever be a better or more successful writer.  I'm

worried I'll miss something, fail to do something, and watch my cohorts pass me by.

These are my worry birds:

1. Do I need an author website?

2. If so, where do I host it?  Everyone has an opinion, and as soon as I read a good one about Bluehost, then I read a horror story about them, too. HostGator? LinkSky?  

3. Once I figure out where to host it and buy a domain name, what platform do I use?  The ubiqutous WordPress? Joomla? Impress CMS? Drupal? Does Drupal rhyme with RuPaul, and if so, isn't that kind of a silly name? 

4. Or should I just use Weebly? Are Weebly sites real sites, or are they for non-web people who can't be bothered?  Can I be bothered?  Should I be bothered?  I mean, I'm bothered, but should I bother?

5. How do I organize and design a site that doesn't look cheap, crappy, and templated? I am not a designer nor a programmer. I do not have the money to hire either one.  It's a one-woman show around here, and I work 8 hours a day and do laundry and cook dinner. The hubby would also appreciate it if I worked out more than once a month.  I am not in a good place with love handles right now. 

6. Where will I find the time to produce original content for a website? I don't have enough time to blog and write new stories, let alone put stuff up on yet another site.

7. Don't get me started on a newsletter. People say this is what you need: direct email marketing, hence the  website, hence MailChimp, hence a beautifully formatted, wonderfully written newsletter that I DO NOT HAVE.

8. Do I need WordPress multi-site? As in, an easy way to produce and control multiple websites? Like, one for each book?  Would these each need different looks, themes, content?  Oh, God, content.  

9. "Here are the 248 essential blogs that teach you how to use WordPress." "Here are the 823 plug-ins you CANNOT be without." Are you serious?  I read less informational material in grad school and now I have a Master's.

10. Do I need G+ and Facebook pages for myself as an author, as well as for each of my books? In addition to a personal website? These, of course, also need content.  

11. Do I need to do paper books as well as eBooks?  Do I need to charge more for my eBook so there's less of a  price difference between the two? .99 for the eBook and $9.99 for the paper book just seems stupid to me.  Yes, my eBook is worth more than .99, but pricing low gets volume and readers and reviews, right? 

12. If I do need paper books, which paper book producer should I go with? Xlibris, Book Baby, CreateSpace, Lulu, Autharium, or some as-yet-undiscovered winner? Who has time to research and document the costs, features, and services of each of these vendors in order to make an educated decision?  These are my books.  This is my LIFE.  I cannot afford (literally or figuratively) to fuck this up.

13. Pressbooks? What the hell is Pressbooks?

14. Sales tracking...um, yeah, I don't have that yet.  It would entail downloading month-specific Excel spreadsheets from Amazon that I probably should have been doing all along.  But now I'm behind.  So catching up is hard.  Damn it. 

15. You *are* eating five servings of fruit and veggies daily, aren't you?  And drinking eight 8-oz. glasses of water?  Without whiskey?  As Count Rugen says, "If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything."

16. Is it worthwhile to pay for a service to advertise the free days you get on KDP?  (Joe Konrath mentions having good luck with eBookBooster, but he's Joe Konrath, making $8,000 a week.)  Also, now that Amazon changed the rules about advertising free days, is this still viable?  Is KDP still viable?

17. Should I take my two KDP-exclusive books off exclusivity and release them through Smashwords, too?

18. Should I be doing more with Kobo?  What *can* I do with Kobo?  Nobody buys my books there, but is it because nobody buys my books there or because I'm not doing anything with it?

19. You mean I need to be in Kobo so I can sell eBooks in real bookstores?  Shit. Shit. Shit.

20. Should I be doing more (read: anything) with Shelfari and Goodreads? Is Boikeno.com the same thing?  And how about BookTalk, KindleBoards, Library Thing, Authonomy, Bibliphil, Booksie,  BookBrowse, Nothing Binding, Filed By, Bookhitch, Scribd, Figment, etc....What are all these places?  Should I use them or ignore them?  How will I remember all the logins and passwords and bears, oh my? 

21. Wait...you mean I have to post fresh content on some of these and then come back and monitor what people say about it? Yeah, sure, I'll do that from 25:00 to 27:00 hours in the parallel universe where I need absolutely zero sleep.

22. You *are* maintaining your LinkedIn page, right?  You *are* posting regular updates, and joining communities, and generally making yourself useful to the twelve writer groups you're in, right?  You're not just deleting those automatic email updates, are you?

23. Why hasn't one of my books sold a single copy since I changed the cover?  This new cover is awesome and the old one sucked. I thought I was doing the right thing.  What gives?  

24. Is there even a point in querying for the novel I just finished?  Querying takes time and rejection takes time and time is what I don't have.  

25. Should my next thriller incorporate characters from my first thriller?  You know, for continuity and increased sales.  They say that helps...but what if I want to create some new characters?  Am I shooting myself in the foot?  What if I'm kind of done with those characters?  Does that mean I created boring, uninteresting characters?  Am I a literary philanderer, incapable of committing to a genre, let alone to a family of characters?  Literary syphilis...is that what awaits me?

26. Is it a waste of time to finish the second romance novel I started, a kind-of-sort-of sequel to the first one I did, since my heart isn't in the genre?  I'm more than halfway through, and one of the best ways to generate readers and sales is to write multiple books in a series, or even in the same genre and I SO DO THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF THAT.

27. When will I have time to research the next thriller, which requires knowledge of French police-type agencies, French cultural institutions, French universities, art theft, and Parisian geography?  I know pretty much nothing about all of these.  Okay, you can delete "pretty much."

28. You *are* using HARO to try and get some free publicity for yourself, aren't you? You're reading the daily emails and querying reporters for any stories you're qualified for, right?  You have a perfectly honed pitch and bio, don't you?

29. What have you done in terms of planning the blog tour for the next book that is soon to be rejected by all agents I plan to approach?  I mean, first I have to design the book, produce the book, make the cover, and plan a to-market date. But really, I need a blog tour.  I need contests.  I need autographed copies to give away.  WHAT?  I HAVE LESS THAN 200 TWITTER FOLLOWERS?  Help me help you...if a tree falls in the forest....insert third cliche here...

30. Should I be buying my own ISBNs?  (I can't afford to buy my own ISBNs.) 

31. "You don't have Google alerts set up for each of your book titles?" 

32. Should I be making Vine videos?  How the fuck does one make a Vine video?  I have a digital camera and a Kindle Fire HD, nothing else.  If push came to shove, I could probably make a tripod with dowels and duct tape.  Would that help?

33. Should I be making book trailers?  My computer came with basic video editing software, but I'm on extremely limited country-ass bandwidth and if I go over 5 gigs per month, the hubby pays for it.  But again, I'm minus the webcam. So that kind of kills that idea, right?

34.  Should I buy a webcam?  (And HD makeup so no one sees the sun damage and zit scars from twenty years ago?)

35. Should I be paying for a template to make a better formatted eBook using Word?  Right now I use the Smashwords nuclear method and it seems fine, but I'm a quality-over-quantity kind of girl and the templates appeal to me even though the ones I looked at are $47/book for paper/eBook template combos.  I do not have $47 x 4 books, fifth coming soon. I do not have InDesign.  I cannot afford to get InDesign.  I fear Pirate Bay.

36. Scrivener?  What in holy hell is Scrivener?  Bartleby, you sick fuck, what are you up to? 

37. How do I get (good) reviews for my comic mystery?  I have some bad ones.  I don't think they "got" it.  Or did I not "get" it?  Oh, crap, what if it's me?  WHAT IF IT'S ME?

38. How do I get anyone to review my historical vampire book?  It's the only thing I've ever gotten a fan letter for, and it has no reviews. The agony.  The humanity.  The feeling that I'm doing something really wrong....

39. When do I find the time to query book bloggers in order to solicit guest posts in order to build my brand and my as-yet-nonexistent website?  I suck at writing query letters.  If I didn't, I might have landed an agent in the first place.

40. "Start by figuring out which book bloggers you share common interests with and connect with them."  SURE.  In my copious spare time.  I'll, like, befriend them all.  Because I'm so good at making friends.  (Did we cover the part where I'm a WRITER?  If I were good with people, I would probably be doing something else with my life.)

41. When am I supposed to find time to follow the 500+ people my trial LittleBird subscription found?  When am I supposed to read their tweets?  When am I supposed to bookmark and then read the 800 websites and posts those tweets recommend?

42. Calibre is what, again?  E-book management software?  What fresh hell is this? 

43. Do I need to hire a photographer to take a few shots of me for the as-yet-non-existent website? My digital camera sucks and I have no Adobe software whatsoever and can't afford to buy any.  I can only traffic on snapshots from 2004 for so long.  

44. BookBuzzr.  Writer.ly.  Might as well learn quantum mechanics while I'm at it.  

45. Instead of producing paper books, is it worth querying small/indie presses directly?  Are you allowed to do this if you've already made an eBook?  What if I yanked the eBook?  

46. Wait, I'm supposed to be currying favor with readers on social media?  Searching for people with keyphrases like "book lovers," "book club, "librarian," "didn't barf when I read Twilight"? When do I find these people, interact with them in a meaningful way, read their tweets and posts, etc.?  Is there a second clock that only really special people have that gives them more hours in the day than I have?  That's it, isn't it?  I knew it.

47. Apps for Facebook that advertise my website?  Do I need this?  Should I?  Wait, first I need a website...

48. Should I use StumbleUpon to help make sure my content is found online?  I have to write content first, remember.  And are you allowed to only Stumble your own stuff?  Isn't that lame?  I don't want to be lame.

49. Fuck, Pinterest.  I need to upload my book covers to Pinterest.

50. Fuck, Flickr.  I need to upload my book covers to Flicker.  Someone somewhere said you get up to 75 keyphrases per image.  75.  I can't think of 75 words right now, except for the ones with four letters.

51.  Fuck.  See, I told you.

52.  No, really, fuck.  What keyphrases should I use in my Flickr images?  Or in general? 

53.  Oh, my God.  Should I be doing AdWords campaigns or Facebook sponsored ads?  Or both?  What landing page do I use?  You can't use a third-party as your landing page, can you?  CAN YOU?  

54. Wattpad?  Is this where James Watt lived?  Unless he invented Visine, I don't give a shit.

55. Writing contests, literary journals, all the regular writing-type submission stuff I did in grad school...you mean I'm still supposed to be doing all that?  You mean I still have to use words like "liminal" and "ontological"?

56.  When are you finally going to get around to using AdWords campaigns to A/B test possible titles for your next book?  Because you SUCK AT TITLES.  And you LACK A LANDING PAGE.  And the money to pay for AdWords.  For the love of God, tell me Blogger is still free.

57. Five essential Twitter hashtags for writers?  I can't even fit what I want to say in the fucking message, let alone leave room for 5 goddamn hashtags. 

58. Which social media management tools will I use?  How the hell should I know?  Fuckers spring up like mushrooms...MarketMeSuite, Seesmic, SocialOomph, CoTweet, Buffer, TwitterFeed, SpredFast, Sprout, Social Flow, AgoraPulse, Ping.fm, Engagio, Hootsuite, Pingraphy, and TweetVisor?  Might as well ask me to explain the difference between Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.  

59. Wait, now I have to make sure my social media outlets "talk" to each other and my website(s) so my updates are blasted everywhere? Isn't that overkill?  Isn't that a duplicate content penalty waiting to happen?  If not now, later?  Panda happened, folks.  Penguin happened.  

60. Writing conferences?  Are you freaking kidding me?  Do you know how much that shit costs?  I credit carded the gas to get to my grandma's memorial service.  Plus, I can't get time off work.  I need money because I have to pay for a mortgage and repay the student loan money I used to go to grad school so I could learn to oh, you know, WRITE.

61.  "800 million sites for Indie Authors."  "5 trillion authors you NEED to know."  "World's Best Marketing Tips Scattered Through These 50 Links Because It's Friday and You're That Lucky."  Dude, by the time Friday rolls around, I don't even know my own name anymore.

62. "Build your brand. Get a logo.  Make your website look like your social media, which looks like your newsletter, which looks like your website."  Did we not cover the fact that I have NO design skills, money, or Adobe software?  Good luck with that.

63.  Understand all copyright laws so you know when you can and cannot use an image in your amateur-ass book cover.  Re-do your amateur-ass book covers, like, eight times because although you can do a lot with PowerPoint, it is no Photoshop.  Which I do not have or know how to use.

64.  What?  You don't have a Google Partner Account?  But to get my eBook on Google Play, I have sell it through my own site.  I do not have my own site.  OH MY GOD, I DON'T EVEN HAVE MY OWN SITE. 

65. Have you crafted a better author bio?  Because, you know, when you *are* the brand, you can't afford to suck.  And you probably suck, you know.  Just saying.

66. You *are* keeping up with your Google+ communities, aren't you?  You *are* making helpful and useful connections and reading everything and commenting, not just +1'ing, right? You need these people.  Be nice to them.  Be responsive.  Read their books.  Leave reviews.  Participate, dammit.  Participate like a motherfucker.

67. You DO have an about.me page, right?  Everyone else got theirs in, like, early 2011.  AND IT'S FREAKING 2013.

68.  Google Reader says I have 18,349 unread items.  All of which contain vital, helpful information I need right now.  Sure, I'll get right on that.  Lemme just grab the toothpicks I use to prop up my eyelids late at night.

69.  NO ONE READS LONG BLOG POSTS THAT HAVE NO IMAGES.  No one.  Don't you know the first thing about content marketing?  Or visual marketing?  Or marketing?  

70.  Wait, I'm supposed to be writing about my own books on this blog and trying to sell them?  But that's embarrassing.  I'd prefer to write about writing and life in general.  Plus I don't know which keyphrases to use.  We covered this, didn't we?

71.  When are you going to write the blog post you started ages ago, about why you don't believe in hiring an editor?  (Sorry, professional editors.)  How many flaming comments will I get for it?  How will I explain that I paid 30 THOUSAND DAMNED DOLLARS for the ability to go to grad school and learn to do it myself?  Did Shakespeare or Milton or Donne pay an editor?  Well, then holy hell, I won't either.  I'll take the responsibility of producing the goddamn best book I can because...I can.  Got a problem with it?  Call my editor.

72.  Someday I'd like to read a book for fun again.

73.  Maybe write one, too. 

Oh, holy Jesus, that's a lot of worries.  I don't have this many balloons.  The balloon factory doesn't have this many balloons.  MAKE IT STOP.  

All joking aside, every single one of these points is a question self-pubbers have to answer.  And then do something about, once they find the answer.  It is exhausting. And liberating.  And scary.   And, at the moment, requiring a liberal dose of whiskey.

Writers on Twitter: Something's Not Right Here

So I signed up for Twitter in January, and have been making efforts to follow writers, publishers, self-publishers, and anyone connected with the biz. It's been less than a month, but I'm already seeing two distinct camps in terms of the kind of content writers on Twitter are putting out:

(a) Rampant self-promotion, as in the following: 

• Review for MY BOOK: "Amazing, best book ever, love love love, buy buy buy" #tag #tag #tag
• "Your life will suck unless you read this book" MY BOOK TITLE HERE amzn.link.buy.my.book
• "TITLE IN ALL CAPS HERE" ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!! PLEASE RT!! #TAG

 (b) Helpful or interesting articles about writing, contests, etc.: 

• Twitter writing contest!  Enter here: bit.ly.link.to.something.useful
• Neil Postman Award: The author of the chosen poem will receive $500
• What (TV Show name) Can Teach Us About Creating Character Archetypes

I scan tweets every hour or so, and it seems that at least 60% of them are shoving someone's miraculous one-of-a-kind book down my throat.  Guess what?  I saw that tweet the first time.  And the second.  And the third.  I know your book was reviewed by Kirkus.  Hell, I can probably quote the review verbatim by now.  Does it mean I'm going to buy the book?  No.  It means I'm going to unfollow you because all you can add to my day is the umpteenth all-caps mention of your book title.   

Do these people ever get tired of pasting the same messages into HootSuite or SocialOomph? Does this kind of guerilla marketing actually work?  

If these writers are selling books and making money, more power to them.  It just seems like the point of screaming into the ether is to have something to say.  "GIVE ME YOUR MONEY" isn't really the message I want to be remembered for.