A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Loo in Atlanta by Jina Bacarr
July 11, 2013 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as 2013, Atlanta, bathroom, convention, Cosmo, Georiga, Harlequin, honey, hotel, loo, naked, Nora Roberts, October, Red-Hot Reads, Ritz Carlton, rose, RWA, sushiNo girl forgets her first.
As in her first RWA conference. Mine was Atlanta 2006. Ah, yes, I still remember the Harlequin Party at the Ritz Carlton and the meet-up with the OCC crowd. The boxes and boxes of books stacked in conference rooms, waiting to be opened. The great speech Nora Roberts gave that year.
And my hotel room.
The toilet didn’t work. There I was, just off the Atlanta Link shuttle, exhausted from the long flight, bags in my room, shoes off, when I had to wait for maintenance…
And wait…
And…
Like I said, you remember your first.
Hopefully everyone’s loo is in good working order at this year’s national conference once again being held in Atlanta July 17-20th, but I can’t help but chuckle when I look back at my experience at RWA 2006.
Here’s the video I shot of my bathroom saga:
Do You Have an Email Newsletter? by Kitty Bucholtz
July 9, 2013 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as Author promotion, It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, Tim Grahl, Unexpected Superhero
With my new book, Unexpected Superhero, out last month, I am reading the perfect marketing book. It’s called Your First 1000 Copies by Tim Grahl. I’ve been following Tim via his company, Out:think, for a year or more. The company works with writers to sell more books and become more successful.
The book came out two weeks ago and I’m halfway through it. So far, the most compelling piece of information is the incredibly strong argument for writers to have an email newsletter. And not just to have one (I sent out my first newsletter two weeks ago! Woo-hoo!), but to have a robust list, focusing more on email followers than Facebook or Twitter followers.
One of Tim’s examples is of an author whose analytics show that for every book she sold via Facebook and Twitter posts, she sold fifty due to her email newsletters. Fifty! Tim also reminds us that no matter what is happening with the various social media outlets, we will always have the contact information we collect via our newsletters. If Facebook changes this or that policy, if Twitter makes a change, we can lose contact with all of our fans. Snap! Just like that.
The other thing Tim emphasizes several times is that our newsletters need to be “relentlessly helpful.” Think about that. Relentlessly helpful. What does that mean to you? More importantly, what does that mean to your readers? What kind of information would be in my newsletter that would cause subscribers to not only read every issue, but hit the Buy Now button when I have a new book out? What kind of newsletter would do that with your readers?
If you’re looking for a good book on marketing your new book, I think you should try Your First 1000 Copies. I’m getting a lot out of it, and I think you will, too.
Kitty Bucholtz decided to combine her undergraduate degree in business, her years of experience in accounting and finance, and her graduate degree in creative writing to become a writer-turned-independent-publisher. Her first novel, Little Miss Lovesick, came out in 2011. Her new novel, Unexpected Superhero, book one in The Adventures of Lewis & Clarke humorous urban fantasy series, is now available in print and ebook format. Love at the Fluff and Fold, book one in The Strays of Loon Lake romantic comedy series, will be released later this summer. Her short stories can be found in the anthologies Romancing the Pages and Moonlit Encounters, available in both print and ebook formats.
OCCRWA Proudly Presents: July 15 –
June 28, 2013 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives
Getting Your 15 Minutes (2-week class)
The Make An Effort Diet
June 24, 2013 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as Diet, guiltI only used the word “diet” to lure you in.
MAE is not a diet.
Diets are depressing. The very word makes me feel sad, deprived of things desireable, filled with a rebellious fervor to go out and eat something—anything. Everything.
MAE is an attitude adjustment, challenging and changing one’s perspective both outwardly and inwardly.
Diets demonize and bless things we eat. They work within a familiar—and for many a comfortable—framework of sin and redemption. The promised land is reached (or at least visited) through privation, guilt and self-flaggelation. And these actions offer us a sense of moral superiority. We look at not eating/eating as demonstrating moral fibre (or moral turpitude).
The dieting activity involves self-recrimination as well as self-congratualation, and frequently involves purchasing material—books, magazines, programs, special meals, “diet” foods, etc. Because—cue in Steve Martin’s paradigm altering realization in The Jerk—“It’s a profit deal!“
No purchase is necessary for Make An Effort. The only requirement is to…you guessed it! To make an effort.
And that effort is real. You have to actually PAY ATTENTION. You have to think about:
- Whether you are actually hungry
- What does the food you are eating taste like?
- When you are no longer hungry
You have to make an effort to eat with intention and enjoyment and only what you really need to fill yourself, so eat slowly and allow your stomach to catch up with your mouth.
So for example, you do not need to eat the entire bag of potato chips. The first one or two are delicious, the rest are a repetitive and compulsive waste. Don’t even go there.
The MAE could be seen as portion control–you will be making an effort to eat less, to enjoy what you are eating more, to avoid very fattening foods.
But you should never deprive yourself. If you want a cookie, or ice-cream or whatever, you need to challenge yourself: Are you being frivolous? Is it anxious eating? Boredom? Already full and just want more? If yes, then make an effort and avoid.
But if it is special, if you are really feeling a bit hollow, or just have a craving, of course help yourself. Just enough, but not more. No penalties, no recrimination, just really savor it, think about it and enjoy it to the fullest.
Go ahead. Make an effort….
emaginings: Our New #Nook and Other Musings
June 16, 2013 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as blog hops, emaginings, Iron browser, Linda McLaughlin, Lyndi Lamont, MFRW, nook, privacy, startpageYesterday my husband bought himself a 9″ Nook tablet, sort of a non-Father’s Day gift, since we don’t have kids. He’d been thinking of getting one for some time, but this week Barnes & Noble made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: a $120 discount. His new table cost $149.00, a fabulous deal. Sale ends today.
Yet the acquisition was not without some frustration. He had been told it came with the new operating system and access to the Google play store, but when we plugged it in, the first thing it said was that a “critical software upgrade” was needed. Then it didn’t like our wi-fi connection. For some reason we had to rename our wi-fi router, before the Nook could check in with the Mothership. (Nothing works without approval from the Cloud these days.) I used my B&N account, and he discovered that the Library is the Home Page which meant he had to look at all my romance novel covers! But it turns out you can have more than one user on the Nook, so the romance novels are consigned to my side of the device.
He seems pretty happy with it now, so all’s well that ends well.
Turning to other matters…
Some friends pointed me to a useful blog post called LOGLINES AND TAGLINES ARE DIFFERENT And You Need Both For Your Novel by by R. Ann Siracusa. It’s well worth your time to read if you struggle with elevator pitches, and timely with RWA National coming up next month.
There has been a lot of talk of privacy in the last week, so you might also want to read Rose Anderson’s post on [NETWORKING FOR INTROVERTS] How Much Should You Share Online?
This is something I wonder about sometimes. I tend to not share a lot, not so much because I’m terribly introverted, but because my real life is so dull, I find my fictional characters much more interesting.
If you are concerned about privacy, here are a couple of options to reduce your visibility to online search engines.
Startpage bills itself as “the world’s most private search engine”. Though it uses Google’s search engines, Startpage first removes your identifying information including your IP address. Their website says “Startpage, and its sister search engine Ixquick, are the only third-party certified search engines in the world that do not record your IP address or track your searches.” Ixquick is used in Europe and was awarded the first European Privacy Seal.
The SRWare Iron browser, developed in Germany, is based on Google’s open source Chrome browser, but with more privacy protections. I’ve tried it and it seems to work fairly well.
My alter ego, Lyndi Lamont, is participating in the first MFRW Colors of the Rainbow Blog Hop! There are 22 authors of LGBT romance in the hop, and along with the individual giveaways, you can download a free excerpt book. Leave a comment on my blog to enter to win a free download of my historical erotic romance Deception.
That’s about it for this month. Hope you are all having a good Father’s Day, or non-Father’s Day, as the case may be.
Linda Mac
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