August 6th

Hi, it's Christina - 

Gave myself a heart attack a bit ago. I was happily chatting away on the phone when the clock chimed the hour. I panicked and thought I had to be at work shortly, but then remembered (after a bit of scurrying around) I didn't have to leave until noon today. I'm such a ditz.

ATTENTION AUTHORS: In a troll prevention attempt, if we were friends on Goodreads, I have maintained "Following" status, but I have deleted "Friend" status, so you (and your entire list of friends) will not get targeted by the trolls. 

THIS DOES NOT MEAN I DO NOT WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND. I'm just trying to protect you. (We can still chat here or at the zillion other places you can contact me.)

If you would be so kind as to delete me as your friend - ONLY ON GOODREADS - it would be much appreciated. Thank you.

It is such a sad situation when this is what we have to do to avoid malicious people out there. 

For all you non-authors who do not know about this, sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, etc have become infested with Trolls. These trolls target authors, and without warrant or merit post scathing reviews to try and sabotage a new author's rankings. (You could get dozens of 1 star reviews in a day for no reason.)

For the life of me, I cannot wrap my brain around why someone would do this, but they do. What really fries my cookies is if the sites are contacted about the abuse, and the person gets their status flagged or their account deleted, they just make a new one and go about spewing their poison. Don't they have better things to do with their time then trying to destroy other's careers, hopes, dreams?

By the grace of God, I have not been one of their victims, however I do know several authors who have been, and it breaks my heart. I know how hard I work on my books, and I know they do as well. To have all that hard work be neutralized my malicious people is sickening.

Okay, now I really do need to get going. Hope you have a wonderful day, and happy writing! 

July 29th

Hi it’s Christina –

Good Morning! A different type of shiny object distracted me today, marketing.

My ranking on Amazon fluctuates wildly, and I am trying to take steps to balance it out a little. One day I can be ranked in the top 1K, the next day it drops to the 400K range, then the following day I’m in the 100K range. There does not appear to be any logical reason for the one day free fall.

I do attribute the high rankings to sale or promotional days, which is to be expected. To be in the 100K – 200K range among the nearly 50M books listed on Amazon, and in the 10K range of the over 1M in the romance category, is respectable, but you know me. I always feel there is something I can do to be better.

I met an author named Nick a few months back, and shortly he will be coming out with a book that tries to unravel the mystery of how Amazon ranks books and how they are placed during searches. A bit has to do with how books are tagged so the search engine recognizes and selects the book. He also shows you ways to become a larger fish in a smaller pond.

There have been other books on the topic, but the methods the authors suggest strike an ethical nerve with me, so I would not engage in their tactics. Nick’s suggestions however, are ones where I would smack my head and say, “Well why didn’t I think of that? It makes perfect sense.”, and I have no issue implementing them.

The book is still in the advanced release stage, so I can’t give you any of the details, but as soon as I get his blessing, I’ll let you know all about it. Now, even though he has monkey steps, you know what a techno/media ditz I am, so I’m sure this is not going to be a walk in the park for me.

For the past few days, I have been concentrating on Author’s Central and another site, Shelfari.com, which feeds Author’s Central with details about the books. The only thing about Shelfari I have reservations about is anyone can add details about the books, not just the author. Perhaps now that Amazon has acquired GoodReads, they will blend it with Shelfari and take the best practices from both sites. GoodReads has an author’s dashboard where you have control over your books and the details – characters, plots, summaries, quotes, tags, etc..

There is a lot of work I need to do to get all three books fully detailed. So far all I have for all three is the book description and the about the author finished. For A Second Chance, I have Characters (list of each of the characters and a brief description of each), Quotes (several quotes from the book to give you a feel for the character’s personalities), Settings and Location (is started, but I have to add detailed descriptions), and First Sentence, Series, Author, Awards, Notes to Parents, Subjects (this is all the genre and sub-genre classifications), and Tags are all done.

Now, if I can get the same done for Taking Chances and Corporate Blues, I’ll be in good shape. Corporate Blues won’t be too terrible, but I am dreading Taking Chances. Since this one is the second in the series, the list of characters is quite extensive. When I get around to finishing Simply By Chance, this is going to be an absolute nightmare! I wish they had a way to pull in characters from the first book so all I’d have to do is click on a prefilled list, but they don’t.

Okay, I got a late start today, so I have to boogie. I hope you have a great day, and happy writing!

June 13th Challenge

Hi it’s Christina –

Good Morning! Good Grief, I had to go back a week to find the last challenge. YIKES! I’m such a slacker.

Honestly, I’m not. I have been working on a new marketing project for the past two weeks or so. I found this Indie Author support group and they give you ideas on how to promote your books in various ways. I decided to pick one and focus on it for a little while.

The one I chose was Goodreads. Goodreads is a site for avid readers, but it also has a section for authors as well. I have been an author on Goodreads for over a year now, but I really did not know how to utilize the site to help me promote my own books. This group has showed me how.

Goodreads has a feature called Listopia, which is a place where you can list books which fit a certain criteria. For example, Taking Chances went on the “Napoleonic War Fiction” list, because a good chunk of it featured the Battle of Trafalgar and Lord Nelson. I then let people who have read Taking Chances know it was on the list, and I asked them to vote for my book (and to join Goodreads if they hadn’t already). Several people did as I asked, and now Taking Chances is rated #1 in that category. Hopefully, now that it is #1, more people will see the book and want to read it.

It’s really a simple process and hopefully it will bump up my sales. If any of you are interested in checking out (and voting for) any of my books that you have read, please sign up for (or in to) Goodreads. Go to my author’s page; scroll down to where my books are listed; click on the book you’ve read; scroll down to where it says “List with this book”; click “more lists with this book”, and that will bring up all the lists that particular book is on and where it is ranked on the list. You can click on each individual list and vote for my book.

While you are there, if you can give my book(s) a star rating, and if you have time a review, that would be WONDERFUL. Now, if you have not read one of my books yet, you can add it to your “want to read” list, and that would help my rankings as well. The publishing world is a harsh and difficult world to survive in, so I am not above begging for ratings and reviews. Every little bit helps, and I would welcome all the help I can get.

Not only have I added my own books to lists, I have gone in and made sure all the indie books I have read have reviews, ratings and votes. I have also found a TON of books which looked really interesting and I have added them to my “want to read” list. I figure I’ll be busy until 2025 provided I don’t add any more books to my list. LOL. (I did not take the time to review or vote on books like The Hunger Games, even though I gave it a 5 star rating, because let’s face it, it doesn’t need my help in the ratings where Indie authors do.)

It’s funny, because I added my books to the list, but then I needed to “check out the competition”, so I took a look at other books on the list. Yeah, you guessed it, several are now on my “want to read” list. It’s all good though. Occasionally I stumbled across a list which fit a book which wasn’t mine, so I added it (ie: Keith’s book Man Hunt was placed on a Horror list, and Linda’s book The Bench was placed on the Cozy Mystery list, or Julien’s Flower of Heaven which went on a Paris Mystery list). I also actively sought out other book lists to add Cherrye’s Teacher, Teacher, and Heidi’s Elements of a Broken Mind (books I edited). I’m all for spreading the love. J

Okay, it’s time to get to the long overdue challenge. I hope you have a fabulous Friday, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

“Curtains Emma. I said please hang the curtains out on the line, not the kittens out on the line! Lord child, sometimes I just don’t know where your head is.”

“I was just playin’ Mamma. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t hurt those poor babies did you?”

“Oh no Mamma, I could never do that. In fact, I think they kinda liked it. They all crawled into little balls and settled down for a nap in the stockings. Look Mamma, they’re all asleep.”

Mamma shook her head. “You are going to be the death of me yet child. Where do you come up with these things?” Emma shrugged her shoulders but did not offer an explanation. “Come on Sweetheart, take the kittens down off the line and I’ll help you get the curtains up. We have to hurry or they’ll never be dry before sundown, and I don’t want to have to wash them again.”

“Okay Mamma, I’ll hurry.”

Your Next Challenge is (from the writing group):

A Game of “Follow the Leader” gone awry.

You have ten minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count, and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.

June 4th Challenge

Hi it’s Christina –

Good Morning! Sorry about the screw-up with yesterday’s blog. I had everything prepped and I was ready to do my final read through, and I got distracted. It wasn’t until I pulled up my computer this morning when I realized I never hit the submit buttons on any of the sites. UGH!!

Yesterday I mentioned a new marketing thingy I’m involved in; this time it has to do with Goodreads Listopia. This is a pretty neat thing. On Goodreads (a site for book lovers – both readers and authors – you should check it out), there are literally thousands of lists of books, in various categories and genres. You can either vote for books already on the list, or you can add books yourself which you think fit the list’s criteria, and then people vote on the books. For example: A Second Chance is on the “Debut Novels of 2013” list (in the romance category); and both A Second Chance and Corporate Blues are on the “Romance Heroes and Heroines over 35” list.

Look, I'm # 3!!!!

By people either voting for your book, marking it as “I want to read”, or rating your book (if they read it), the book moves up in the rankings. On the Debut list, A Second Chance was #325 when it started, but as of this morning, after a few folks marked it as “I want to read”, it’s now ranked #92. The theory is, the book will get noticed if it is in the top 100 on these lists.

So basically, the event is a list of all the Listopia entries. You go through the list, find books you have either already read or that you feel you would enjoy reading, and you go and vote for them. It’s simple, but time consuming. I’ll probably be going through the lists for the rest of the month; voting for books I’ve read or want to read, and adding my own books to the various lists.

Speaking of time consuming, I’m going to be late for work if I don’t end this blog now and get to the writing challenge.

I hope you have a fantastic day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

That sure went to hell in a hand basket in a hurry.

I should have known better. Things were running just a little too smoothly. All the adult guests were milling around, chatting, and enjoying not having to supervise their children. The presents were all stacked beautifully upon the table. The masterpiece of a cake was proudly displayed upon another table. The various games for the children were met with enthusiasm and squeals of joy. It was now time for the piñata.

A large circle of onlookers formed. As is only right, the birthday boy was the first to be blindfolded. We spun him around and around, then pointed him in the general direction of the papier-mâché dinosaur. Words of direction and encouragement were shouted from the crowd. He swayed like a drunk as he stumbled and

bumbled his way, swinging his bat wildly as he went.

One forceful swing knocked him off balance and into a bystander. The person fell backward, clipping the edge of a protruding gift on the table. The gift worked as a seesaw, and catapulted another present high into the air. The partygoers gasped and I closed my eyes. I knew exactly where that present would land.

Your Next Challenge is:

Scenario: At the zoo. A young woman. There is music. Add surprise.

You have ten minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count, and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.