Category Archives: Adventure

April 24, 2013 · 10:40 pm

Squirrel!

800px-Klamelisaurus-scene-v1 wikimedia commonsI’m a dinosaur, lost in the woods.

I’m definitely a product of my generation. I have some college behind me, but not much, and what college I do have happened in the Dark Ages.

I am pretty much self taught. Because I am aware of my frailty in regard to REMEMBERING the English Language as it was taught to me in my American elementary school years, I am always trying to reeducate myself.

Fortunately, the internet is big, and full of all sorts of good advice.

Lots and lots of interesting things, all so neatly packaged for my  viewing pleasure.

grey squirrel close up © Neil Phillips 2007

grey squirrel close up
© Neil Phillips 2007

What usually happens is one question gets partially answered and  suddenly I see a squirrel!

Today’s squirrel is a paragraph in an article regarding comma usage I was directed to by one of my dear friends, editor Irene Roth Luvaul.

I got about half way through it before I was sidetracked by another issue I have struggled with in my writing.  Should I use That or Which when a relative pronoun is REQUIRED? I say ‘required’ because most of the time a relative pronoun is not necessary but, occasionally, one is needed to clarify a sentence.

According to  Mark Nichol, writing for the website Daily Writing Tips:

“The house which Jack built is falling apart,” without commas, is correct. It is identical in meaning to “The house that Jack built is falling apart.” However, the convention in American English is to avoid using which in this sense to prevent confusion with the meaning of the sentence with the parenthetical phrase.”

SO this little paragraph explains the bipolar approach to writing I have when it comes THAT and WHICH!  One of my editors is BRITISH and the other is AMERICAN!  Both are educated and correct in their usage of the words, and both keep me on the right path.

I must simply decide which path that path might be…or something.

The key is to choose a usage and stick with it, I think.  This involves making a list and ♪ ♫ checking it twice ♪ ♫, gonna find out who’s ♪ ♫…squirrel!

Where was I?

Oh yes, relative pronouns.

Complicating things even further is the dreaded Zero Relative Pronoun! According to WIKIPEDIA-THE FOUNT OF ALL KNOWLEDGE (and I quote:)

Zero relative pronoun

English, unlike other West Germanic languages, has a zero relative pronoun (denoted below as Ø) — that is, the relative pronoun is only implied and is not explicitly present. It is an alternative to that, which or who(m) in a restrictive relative clause:

Jack built the house that I was born in.
Jack built the house Ø I was born in.
He is the person who(m) I saw.
He is the person Ø I saw.

Relative clauses headed by zeros are frequently called contact clauses in TEFL contexts, and may also be called “zero clauses”.

Note that if that is analyzed as a complementizer rather than as a relative pronoun (see Status of that below), the above sentences would be represented differently: Jack built the house that I was born in Ø; Jack built the house I was born in Ø; He is the person I saw Ø.

MH900407568The zero relative pronoun cannot be the subject of the verb in the relative clause (or on the alternative analysis: that cannot be omitted when the zero relative pronoun is the subject). Thus one must say:

Jack built the house that sits on the hill.
Jack built the house that was damaged by the tornado.

and never

*Jack built the house Ø sits on the hill.
*Jack built the house Ø was damaged by the tornado.

Neither that nor the zero pronoun can be used in non-restrictive relative clauses, or in relative clauses with a fronted preposition (“Jack built the house in which we now live”), although they can be used when the preposition is stranded: “Jack built the house (that) we now live in.”

And what did we learn here? Holy crap, Jack is a busy man, and the houses he builds…. I don’t think I want to live in a house he built, too risky.

So anyway I think I need to decide if I am going to go British or American, and STICK with it either way. It seems like a simple choice on the surface but it isn’t. I am an American, but I grew up reading Agatha Christie, and J.R.R. Tolkien.

What would Bilbo Baggins do?

What’s that in your pocketses or are you just glad to see me…?

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April 22, 2013 · 7:43 pm

Lurid and Unsuitable. Yup.

Pinocchio

As you know I have been dealing with 6-year olds a lot lately, and they are full of fibs and fabulous tales. They crack me up with how obvious they are about it.

But little white lies happen in adult life, too.  They are usually a gut-reaction — a sometimes irrational reflex that we justify with the comforting thought that “it doesn’t really matter, and this way we’ll avoid an argument.”  We’ve all done it at one time or another, and in much the same way as our toilet habits are, it’s not a subject we like to discuss in polite company.

But it makes an interesting plot development. In real life, white lies can escalate into big, complicated messes that can end marriages.  Love and white-lies are like the two sides of the family I grew up in – they don’t really mix well. In a good marriage, there are no white lies.  White lies happen when you don’t trust the other person to accept what you have either done or plan to do.

Trust is the key word here.

In Forbidden Road I have one character whose life is one long string of white lies, and that made for the most pivotal plot development in the story. It was difficult to write his tale and yet his penchant for avoiding the truth is the snowflake that causes the landslide and it drives the plot. The repercussions of his white-lies forms the tension for the next book in that series.

Speaking of books I’ve written, you may notice that The Last Good Knight is no longer available. It will be republished when Huw The Bard is published. Right now it is being readied for a complete re-editing, along with new covers to better reflect the fact that both books are a part of the Billy’s Revenge series.

TLGK was my first complete novel. I didn’t know much about writing, other than I liked a good story, so I wrote one. I had been writing for years, but I was working and raising kids, so all my writing was for my own amazement, and the rejection letters didn’t really matter, since they never said WHY my work was rejected.

I have struggled with The Last Good Knight. Carlie Cullen tried to straighten it out, and she worked a miracle, but there is one flaw inherent in this book that MUST be eradicated for it to live up to its potential. TLGK was written for NaNoWriMo, and many of it’s flaws can be traced back to that origin – “did not” instead of “didn’t” (for word count) and two rambling sections where I was establishing backstory. No one but the author really cares about backstory, but I didn’t know this at the time.

I’d never taken the time to analyze what I liked about a book. I didn’t know why some books I read captured my imagination, and some didn’t. I was writing for my own eyes, and I wrote what I wanted to read, and I LOVED a good story.

This is the reason why:

TriplanetaryMy parents were a bit eccentric. (Understatement of the year.)

Dad thought we should read what ever we want to read and of course we wanted to read what Dad read, so my sister and I cut our reading teeth on E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s Lensman Series.

This presented a problem at times in elementary school when we brought the book we were reading and it was deemed  to be ‘lurid and unsuitable’ by our teachers, frequently with negative consequences. My sister’s teacher went so far as to tell my mother, “A third grader should not be reading such trash!”  My mother’s response was that children should read whatever they wanted if they understood the words.

The series begins with Triplanetary, two billion years before the present time. What a great notion THAT is! The plot devices developed in this series of serialized tales forms the core of what we think of as traditional science fiction.  George Lucas liked it so much he used it in Star Wars.

200px-DocsavageThe other great influence on what I instinctively thought of as a ‘Literature’ was written by Lester Dent — yes folks, my sister and I adored ‘Doc Savage’.  Clark Savage (or “Doc” to his friends), had no special powers, but was raised from birth by his father and other scientists to become one of the most perfect human beings in terms of strength, mental and physical abilities.

So, having spent my formative years fighting with my sister over who got to read dad’s Analog first, and having eagerly shared every crumb of any book, from Tolkien to McCaffrey to Heinlein with her, my notion of what constitutes a good tale was formed.

All these tales were TOLD, using phrases like “there was” and “he felt”.  These are HUGE no-no’s in the current culture of show-don’t-tell, as in the eyes of the modern reviewer there is no greater crime than that of “TELLING” a story.

Tolkien would have never gotten off the ground.

Thus, I need to completely rewrite two sections of TLGK, under the eye of an editor with a cruel red pen. It’s a great story, and I LOVE Julian Lackland. I just need to have modern approach to telling his tale and I think that when  he emerges he will be all that he is now, and more. So for the time being Julian Lackland is in literary limbo.

It’s been a hard decision to make, as I love that book, and the characters in that book have spawned two other stand-alone books and a whole world of tales. Once Huw the Bard is published I will re-release The Last Good Knight in some form or other. In the meantime I feel good about this choice.

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April 19, 2013 · 3:45 am

Transporting Dead Dinosaurs

The Joy of Childhood © Leah Reindl 2012

The Joy of Childhood
© Leah Reindl 2012

So I went on an outing with one of my grandsons and his Kindergarten class. You may remember this child–The Boy whose antics keep Grandma hopping.

I honestly thought he was going to be the difficult child on the trip, but it turns out that he has an image to maintain (already) and his little mates believe he is the soul of reason. His teachers adore him.

(See Grandma’s look of shocked disbelief.)

However, I did have the pleasure of riding on the school bus in the seat directly in front of the ‘interesting child’ in the class, a little firecracker we’ll call Mercy. Her voice was beyond piercing–my ears are still ringing.

MH900001542First though, you have to picture the school bus packed with 6-year olds, each one in varying stages of that mania only a 6 year old child can bring to such an event. The adult volunteers were given groups of 3 children each to monitor. We lined up outside the school at the curb, and got on the bus, keeping our groups in order. My daughter and I shared our group, which worked out well.

MH900422812The first thing I noticed was the amazing lack of leg-room in Grandma’s seat. That and the fact that nowadays Grandma seems to take up more than half of the bench.

Oops.

Still, two of ‘my’ children were able to sit on the bench with me, and despite the fact that my knees were firmly pressed into the back of the seat in front of me, we rode fairly comfortably.

Directly behind me was the girl who we’ll call Mercy. She was imaginative, boisterous, and full of ‘it’.  She wore her emotions for everyone to clearly see, and every thought that entered her mind was immediately expressed, loudly, twice for emphasis. She was needy, loud, inappropriate and hysterically funny.

Mercy was the poster-child for ADHD.

As the large yellow sardine can I was trapped in hurtled down I-5, Mercy’s commentary dominated the din. “Look at that dude! He’s smoking a cigar. I’ll bet he’s a gangsta. He’s gonna do a deal. I saw it on TV.”

“Mercy, that’s inappropriate. We don’t talk like that, remember?” The lady who was Mercy’s wrangler was awesome. She was an older lady who volunteered at the school and who was also the school crossing guard. I suspect she was a retired teacher, as she had opted to wrangle the three toughest discipline cases in the class.

The other two were boys and they were…interesting…, but Mercy was the real loose-cannon in the bunch. She was the ringleader, the one the other two looked up to.

Just around the time I noticed I had lost the feeling in my legs, the school bus pulled alongside of a long semi, an open-top box trailer that was covered with a canvas tarp.  A corner of the tarp had come loose, and flapped in the wind as the truck rolled down the highway, giving a tantalizing peek at the contents of the load. (It was sawdust.)

Mercy said, “Look that truck is broken. I wonder what’s in it? It’s probably going to crash, cuz its broken.”

Her seatmate, a boy we’ll call Dewayne, said, “It won’t crash. That’s just the tarp. I wonder what’s under it?”

Dinosaur_comic_left by Luuva wikimedia commonsMercy said, “It’s broken, so it’s gonna fly off and kill someone and there’ll be blood everywhere. We’ll probably be on the news when it happens. And it’s a dinosaur, under the tarp.  A dead one.”

Dewayne said, “How do you know its a dead dinosaur? It could be any sort of dead body.”

“Human bodies aren’t that big. It has to be a dinosaur.” Mercy’s tone implied that she held the trump card. “I wonder where they’re going to bury it.”

All I could think of was that the seat behind me was occupied by two future authors of fantasy crime fiction, and the girl could possibly be a future Quentin Tarantino. This little girl was hysterically funny, obsessed with the macabre, totally off the wall and sharper than a tack.

I was SO grateful she was not in our group, as she was fast as lightning, didn’t hear any instructions, and made her own rules as she went.

It was a fun trip.

Grandma needed a nap when we got home.

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April 15, 2013 · 8:36 pm

Gurus, St. George and Uncle Orson

200px-Saint_George_-_Carlo_CrivelliI write stories.  I tell people what may have happened had St George not slain the last dragon and taken the fun out of life.  Obviously I am telling the tale from the position of a storyteller.

This works well in the first draft, where I can “he did” “they went” to my heart’s content, but during the second draft I must take these “telling” places and expand on them, making them more active.

Many people ask me what I think about ‘critique’ groups.

I don’t.

I don’t think about critique groups at all, as critiquing is only a small sliver of what an author needs to hear in order to get his or her work ready for submission. Any wannabe can trash another person’s work.

I have found that for every serious author, there are five posers who think they are Jane Austen and that gives them the right to “just tell the truth.”

My ears are bloody with the sounds of unpublished and unpublishable authors piously ranting about the rules and quoting self-help writing gurus as they shred a fellow author’s work in the guise of critiquing it. This is why I don’t go to the groups whose main focus is destroying the dreams of others.

I have found a group of writers who share an understanding of all the phases that a manuscript goes through before it reaches the final draft.  Comments, when solicited, are encouraging. Flaws are noted, yes, but more importantly the places where the story shines are also noted. The writer is a fragile creature–it takes very little abuse to make them bleed.

enders game orson scott cardThe award-winning author of science fiction and fantasy, Orson Scott Card is one of the guru’s whose books on writing have shaped my approach to not only my own work, but how I look at the works of others.  Uncle Orson, as he refers to himself, has a fabulous website with many links to writing seminars, Hatrack River. Orson puts himself out there with his political and religious views, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that he KNOWS about writing and how to write a good, readable book.

Orson’s wife is his first-reader. He has a list of questions that he asks his wife to answer in regard to his work, and the way those questions are phrased is interesting. I now use those same questions and so do my two writing groups when we are PRIVILEGED to be first readers of an author’s cherished manuscript.  This is the list as I have it in my own files, tailored to my own work:

Five Questions for The Wise Reader who is evaluating my tale:

1. Were you ever bored? Please tell me where it became slow and hard to stay with it.

2. What did you think of the main character _______________________? Of ____________________? Of _________________________?

3. Was there anything you didn’t understand? Is there any section you had to read twice? Is there any section you became confused?

4. Was there anything you did not believe? Any time you said ‘Oh come on!”

5. What do you think will happen to the characters now I am done telling their tale. What are you still wondering about? 

My goal is to eliminate any areas of boredom, implausibility and cliché and I need your help to do so!

I think that writers grow when another eye is on their work. Of course it is an uncomfortable thing to have a whole section pointed out as being repetitive and possibly irrelevant, but it’s better to hear it from trusted friends before you publish than to never know why you keep getting rejections. Agents and editors rarely have time to tell hopeful authors why their work isn’t acceptable. This is why they use the dreaded form-letter-of-rejection.

outhouse at lake bernardHaving received enough of these to wallpaper an outhouse, I can tell you honestly that we aspiring authors are left to struggle on our own and learn the craft of writing as well as we can. This means we take courses if we can afford them or we avail ourselves of the very good education we can receive via the internet.

It also means we must ask others to look at our work. Local writing groups are the best places to meet people you can trust. Perhaps you’re not a member of a writing group and you want to become involved in one, but you are afraid of having your work torn to shreds. This is a real possibility, but there are MANY groups in every community, and quite a few will have the same rules as my group does. Attend several meetings as an observer before you commit to bringing any of your work. Once you see how they treat each other’s work you will know what you can expect from them.

Treat others the way you want to be treated, regardless. Don’t let the occasional bully stop you from growing and achieving your dream.

And this brings me back to where I started–trying to take an idea as it was laid down in the first draft, tell the story and yet show the action without going off the rails in either direction–showing OR telling.  As a reader I cut my teeth on Louisa May Alcott and J.R.R.Tolkien. They were authors who knew how to TELL a story and I lived it as they told it. Nowadays it takes a special sort of reader to enjoy classics as they were originally written, because they were rife with telling and not showing.

The second draft is much easier when it comes to laying out the action.  In the first draft I know what is supposed to happen at a given point, but I don’t always know how to show it, so I have a conversation that tells what happened. In the second draft I take those conversations out and replace them with the event.

Now I must have my characters go forth with their swords and kill me a dragon. We’re done talking about it boys! Show mama what ya got!

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April 14, 2013 · 8:31 am

Did I say that…?

killedI love words.  I hate auto-correct. I love writing words that make sense and say what I want them to say. Auto-correct is not conducive to that.

I hate spell checker. Now, if I was smart like Shaun Allan, I could take all those crazy nonsensical sentences that auto-correct accidentally gives me and make a dark, joyous joke out of them.

Shaunie can write circles around me. Actually, he can write circles around ANYone.  My prose when I try to write the way he does comes out forced, as if I was acting like a writer. When Shaun writes it, it’s entertaining. When I write it that way, it reads like ‘Ulysses’ would have read if James Joyce had written it via text-messaging on his smart-phone.

Although, now I think of it, that might have been an interesting lit-class….

But I have to say, that if anyone could make auto-correct work FOR them, it would be Shaun Allan.

41AIUjinHwL._SL500_AA300_I find that just reading Facebook posts as posted from my Android smarter-than-me-phone would be entertaining if they weren’t so embarrassing. My comment on a friend’s post regarding vacations last year: “We went to DC but didn’t get to Vagina, as we didn’t rent a car and were on the Metro.”  I’m not sure why my phone felt the need to auto-correct Virginia in such an interesting manner, but hey–what ever works, right?

My comment received five likes from people I didn’t know before I took a look at it and saw what was actually posted.

The really strange thing is my brain didn’t process the fact that we were IN Virginia! We were staying in Arlington, but for some reason I thought we were in Maryland! Washington DC is built in such a way that when you go across town you can literally travel from Virginia to Maryland in ten minutes, something my rural west-coast brain couldn’t seem to get straight. My phone really WAS smarter than me!

I’m not sure how to fit that comment into a medieval alternate reality tale, but I’m working on it.

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April 10, 2013 · 9:56 pm

Rain, rain, rain

51jPbExehrL._SL500_AA300_Once again, spring has decided to funnel water on the Northwest.  Two weekends ago it was lovely- mid seventies weather, with the feeling in the air that winter had indeed ended and better days loomed on the horizon. I had all the cushions out on the back porch and was, briefly, in heaven.

Now, the doom and gloom of the standard Northwest spring has returned, and I find myself suffering from the blahs.  I can’t think straight, much less write a coherent sentence.  On the positive side, my 2nd oldest granddaughter, Courtney, will be staying with us for a few days, so I will have someone to share the misery with.

The locals joke that if you see someone with an umbrella, they’re from out of town. This is not true, as I have a large collection of umbrellas, many of them unbroken and still useful!  Even the cutest umbrellas frequently end up in street-corner trash-bins, ending their days as the tattered and broken relics of impulse purchases.

The winds here in my little valley are known to be death to umbrellas, even expensive ones.

I do confess that I can be seen at large events in the summer with an umbrella keeping the SUN off my lily-white skin! 81UuqzVF-1L._SL1500_

Despite the carnage, I feel compelled to keep buying umbrellas, feeling somehow as if the next umbrella will be the one–the true umbrella for all seasons, able to withstand 40 mph winds and sideways rain-bullets.  I just know that my desire to have some cheery vestige of spring in the form  of a floral print over my head will somehow work out and I will manage to remain both dry and stylish.

(snorfle)

The weather here is kryptonite to even a super-umbrella.

Unless….

Wait… is that…

Oh god.

It’s the one personal rain-shelter superhero that can take the hurricane force winds and merrily give Spring a thumbs-up. ( I’m sure that the one-finger gesture was meant to be a thumb…it’s pointing up anyway….)

31YA3A1XV3L._SX385_It’s  a Golf umbrella, that ubiquitous bastion of Pacific Northwest Fashion. Conversations between middle-aged sisters in Northwest restaurants tend to run like this:

“Is that my umbrella by your chair?”

“No,  its mine. Mine is the blue and white one.”

“MINE is the blue and white one. I’m sure I brought it in with me.”

“Well, this one is mine, see?  Here are my initials. I knew this would happen, so I used a sharpie. You didn’t come in here with an umbrella. Did you leave it in the shoe store?”

“No, I’m sure I had it when we went to Costco. That was after the shoe store. Are you sure that umbrella isn’t mine?”

“NO! It’s mine!”

“Next time I’m getting a red and white one, so I can spot it more easily.”  (Eyes restaurant full of red and white golf umbrellas.)

MH900399383

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April 1, 2013 · 9:40 pm

Prompts, Me, and The Garmin Lady

MH900305798This week I will be on the road again. It is spring break for the schools there and so I will head north to Snohomish to stay with The Boy for a few days while my daughter, Leah, is working.

I love Snohomish. It’s full of little secondhand shops and antique stores. And just like in Olympia,  the vegan can eat really well in that town.

Also, it is paradise for those of us who LOVE small, independently owned bookstores.

Apparently there is a lot of road construction between my house and my destination.  But don’t worry!  I have our trusty GPS device, complete with The Garmin Lady to guide me around the back-ups and traffic jams.

arrowYes, The Garmin Lady is better than your mother-in-law at giving orders and (unlike me) she always points the correct direction when she says “Turn Left .”

(Oops! I meant the OTHER left, dear. Sorry.)

Gosh, I’m helpful.

My dear friends Carlie Cullen and Donna L. Sadd are doing another month of blogging to writing prompts and today’s prompt was the arrow you see to right.  I’m not good at writing to prompts, but that arrow perfectly defines my poor hubby’s sense of direction, although he would deny it if asked! Therefore, in the interest of not publicly mocking my spouse I will not be blogging on it.

But I did get him the Garmin originally so that he would listen to directions from someone, anyone.

Unfortunately, you need to update the maps regularly and while my hubby makes his living as an IT man, he’s not really into it at home, so little things like that tend to languish unless they update automatically.

One of the first things we found out was that if you have the Garmin set on “Pedestrian” mode, it will tell you how far an how fast you have walked. This has been really helpful for my hubby who regularly takes long walks on his lunch break. It’s amazing how far he can walk in an hour.

HOWEVER, there is a down side to this. IF you forget to switch it back to driving mode, and you decide to make a random trip down Interstate 5  from Olympia, Washington to, oh, let’s say McMinnville, Oregon, you may have a random encounter with The Garmin Lady that goes like this:

220px-Garmin_255W_GPS_deviceGarmin Lady: “Exit Freeway at next exit.”

Me and Greg: “What? No way, we aren’t even in Chehalis yet!”

Garmin Lady “Recalculating. Take Next Exit, to the right.”

Me and Greg: “There’s something wrong with this thing. We’re passing Longview. We’re nowhere near McMinnville yet. We’re still in Washington, so what she wants us to do, I can’t imagine.”

Garmin Lady “Recalculating. Make U-Turn at next police turnout and then exit freeway, to the right.”

Us: “What?!? That’s just plain crazy, not to mention illegal! Turn that damned thing off!  It’s broken!”

SO, if I am going to rely on this miracle of modern technology to guide me around any traffic jams, this three-hour road trip could really be an adventure. I could end up in Mukilteo, or Woodinville. Heck, I could end up back in Seattle if I really piss The Garmin Lady off!

300px-Seattleskyline1cropped

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March 28, 2013 · 7:31 pm

The End is Nigh

party onI should be in a party mood, but I’m not.

I’m now writing the final chapter of Mountains of the Moon. The final battle is over, the aftermath is a memory. Now all I have left to write is the ending. Party On!!!

Good grief, this is difficult.

Do I just say “And they lived happily ever after?”

No–this is Neveyah…happily for a few years is about it…but they do get home, at least some of them, right? Soooo….

How freaking boring is that?  Now what?

Lets see…maybe a bit of a fight…no I’m trying to end this and that’s just asking for 10,000 more words…but what if they just happened to…no.

No. No. No.

Just END the bloody book!  They went home! They were happy!  End of book!  How the hell hard is that?

*Author makes rude noise at computer screen and takes a teensy coffee break. Characters languish in limbo for two hours.*

Okay, where was I? Right, the best part of the story is over, and there’s nothing left to talk about, but I have to gracefully end this ordeal. This sucks honking wongas….

Did you know that you can go out to YouTube and there is a channel with more than 80 videos of Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow?  Oohh… Stargazer…my favorite!

So, do they come home in coffins or  what? WHAAAT!!! Help me Obi Wan Kenobi! You’re my only hope!

Obi Wan.

lego-star-wars-the-game desk top wall paperOoohh, that reminds me! I just got an old version of Lego’s Star Wars for the PS3 for the grandkids.

Heh heh.

*Keys rapidly* “And they all lived happily ever after.”

Gotta go now.

Luuuuuke, I am your Grandma….

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March 22, 2013 · 5:46 pm

Branding yourself day 5 – Goodreads and All Points Beyond

MH900432556One thing most authors do first is go out to http://www.goodreads.com and make a profile for themselves there, because all the online writing groups say you have to do that.   And everyone told you to get a blog, so you did these two things and still, nothing happened. So why did I leave these two important detail to the last day of my series?

Tools. You needed the tools to make these two venues as professional as is possible.

In the course of this week you have gathered together an arsenal of tools with which to make the best Goodreads profile you can. You are tweeting. You have your Author Photo. You have your Author Bio.  You have links to your about.me profile, you are LinkedIn and made a book trailer. You opened a Pinterest account and you posted a poem to Wattpad.  You just googled yourself, and you are still not on page one .  Have patience!  This is where we pull all these disparate threads together in ONE important, cohesive place:

Goodreads.

Open your Goodreads author profile. If you haven’t already made one, do it now!

MH9004093851. Go to your Author Dashboard. If you never took the tutorial on how to effectively use Goodreads, do it now. It’s there for a reason.

2. Now look at your Bio – is it the concise, professional bio that you have used on ALL your other sites? This consistency is very important, although I am not sure why. When it comes to the internet, consistency is magic, and I’ve never really understood magic. It works, so just do it.

3. Does your blog link back to your profile page? I have the RSS feed for my book review blog, Best In Fantasy, link back there because Goodreads is a club for people who are passionate about books. This means my review blog updates there every time I make a new post, and I try to crank out at least one book review a week. The link to the blog you’re reading now, Life in the Realm of Fantasy is in my Bio.

4. Are all the  books you have written, or been a contributor to listed correctly?

5. Have you read and reviewed any books on Amazon or Barnes&Noble?  Re-post those reviews on Goodreads.  Reading and reviewing is what Goodreads is all about, so if you haven’t read anything lately, take the time to write a paragraph about Pride and Prejudice or whatever books you have read in the past that inspired you to write, and post it. Be serious, because these reviews are part of what  builds your profile stats.

When you are a member of Goodreads you will be invited to join many reading groups and you can get involved in a lot of discussions.  This can be very good, OR it can be very bad. Tread these waters carefully! I have seen several authors raked over the coals in a sort of feeding frenzy when they were frank in their opinion of a poorly written book by a Goodreads author with many loyal friends. This is why I stay out of many discussions. The reviews I post on Goodreads are of the books I reviewed on my book review blog.

There will be people who tell you that Goodreads is a waste of time, haunted by professional trolls and wannabes. There is some truth to this assertion, but it is true only BECAUSE so many people use it. My Goodreads profile is the first thing that comes up when my name is Googled, so I can assure you I am very careful about what discussions I get involved with there.

I believe you do yourself a great disservice if you fall into the habit of harshly criticizing others in public forums. Ask yourself what you want agents and editors to see when they Google your author name, and make sure your  behavior in public reflects that.

As a reader, I go to Goodreads to find great books written by indie authors, and I am rarely disappointed.

my goodreads stats

As you can see, my rating is quite average, and not really outstanding, but it is the FIRST link that appears on the Google search.  This is where people will click first to see who I am when I submit a query to agent. This is why you must make sure it is as professional as you can make it.

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NOW–you noticed that number three on the above list mentions BLOGs.  In fact, every venue for you to publicize your author name offers you the opportunity to POST THE LINKS TO YOUR BLOG(S). If no one knows your blog is out there, how can they find it to read it?  Flog your blog all over the internet through the free, easy to use venues we have discussed this week! (This is not Spank the Monkey. That is something entirely different!)

If you have wondered why the blog that you never wanted but were pushed into starting has never done well, it may be that you haven’t promoted it.  Every venue that we have discussed this week gives you an opportunity to show the world that you take your craft  as an author seriously.

You do this by writing.

Update your blog once a week, three times a week, or daily–it’s up to you, but be disciplined and somewhat regular.  Normally I update this blog every other day, although this week I updated every day.  I spend about twenty minutes to half an hour writing it.  It is usually stream of consciousness, unless I have some particular topic that I want to speak on.

Your blog is the place where you  showcase your published work and offer buy links in the sidebars.  You can discuss the weather, the cat (I love indie author J.D.Hughes‘ posts on William the Cat.)

It’s through making use of the most cost-effective venues out there —>Twitter, Facebook, Wattpad, LinkedIn, About.me, Goodreads and your personal blog that you build your brand, your author name. It did involve some effort on my part for the first week or so when I was getting these venues up and running, but now they really maintain themselves.  All I do is write, blog and periodically check twitter. I am not even a fanatic about twitter–I use a free program called Hootsuite to schedule tweets for the week ahead, spending maybe 10 minutes on Sunday morning, and then I simply respond to tweets that interest me or thank people when they mention me.

I can’t say that I have made huge sales or become a best seller, because that hasn’t happened. I’ve only been officially doing this for 2 years, and I’ve made all sorts of newbie mistakes in the process. But the point is, I keep at it, and I keep my professional profile updated. If you want an agent or publisher to take you seriously in this new world you must take your own career seriously by presenting your name and your work in the best light possible.

In the new world of publishing, the internet (Google and other search engines) is your ‘Store Window.’ Your books are your ‘display’ in that store. Your name is the ‘brand’ that prospective searchers see. Am I branded like ‘Nike’ yet? No, but the late Robert Jordan is, and he mastered the internet thing in the mid 1990’s when his Wheel of Time series first went viral. By using the tools that are available to us we can achieve the best results possible.

One never knows what will convince a prospective reader to try your book, so offer them every opportunity that you can.

Thank you for sticking with me through this whole week of my take on marketing your name. Now go out there and build your brand, one brick at a time.

MH900216042

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March 20, 2013 · 5:28 pm

Are We There Yet Papa Smurf?

Papasmurf1We’re on day three of this epic road-trip to fame and already I’m hearing little voices saying, “Are we there yet Papa Smurf?” The answer is “Not  yet, Writer Smurf.”  We still have a few more places to visit and blanks to fill in.

Today we are signing up for both LinkedIn and About.Me.  These are two resources you may never really use on a daily or even monthly basis, but as we saw yesterday, my LinkedIn profile shows up on the first page when my author name is googled.

Go to http://www.LinkIn.com. Register your author name and begin building your professional profile.Yes, I  know you aren’t looking for a job, but agents and editors that you submit your manuscripts to will be looking at YOU. It is also a great venue for making connections with others who work in your industry–authors, editors, agents, and publishers.

If you want, you can also make a profile for your real name and use it to build your professional resume in whatever field you currently work in, i.e. biochemistry, web-design, etc.

Your Author Profile will include:

1. Your current publisher if you have one. If not with a publisher, simply put Author and Blogger

2. Your background in the industry – any work you have had published and who with, also any other relevant information. Mine looked a bit thin at first, as I had no experience. Actually, it looked naked.

3. Fill out the history with as much or as little information as you wish. This is a PROFESSIONAL site, for connecting prospective employers with prospective employees, so keep it simple and to some degree, corporate. If you haven’t already done it, now is the time to make your 250 word Author Bio.

4. upload your Author Picture so that people have some idea of who you are. (NOT the one of you wearing nothing but balloons and a smile at the office Christmas party.)

This blog, Life in the Realm of Fantasy, is linked to my profile there and updates automatically. You will be surprised at how many people you know are out there on LinkedIn. This is how my LinkedIn Profile looks:

LinkedIn prnt scrn croppedIt always surprises me when I get a message that someone has looked at my profile there, although WHY it surprises me, I don’t know. LinkedIn is something I signed up for randomly when I first started this crazy career path. I didn’t have a clue about what it was good for or why I should do it, but look at how it has paid off in terms of visibility.

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The Next Stop is About.me  about.me printscreen

1. Go to http://www.about.me. If the Google page comes up, click on the link that says “http://www.about.me your personal homepage”

2. You will want to copy and paste your author bio that you made for LinkedIn

3. Upload your author photo

4. Add links to your blogs, fb author page and books

5. Sign up for the free about.me email address where you can receive your professional email.

6. Put the link to your about.me page in your Email Signature so that it automatically goes out on both your personal AND professional email. This is how MY outgoing email signature looks:

Connie Johnson-Jasperson
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My About.Me link in my email signature sends those who may wonder who the heck I think I am a clear message–that I THINK I’m an author! It is a single page with everything prospective agents, editors and fans need to know.
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In just the same way as Twitter and Facebook, you can play around with this page until it looks the way you want it to look. Don’t freak out if you make mistakes.  Right now my About.Me link takes the viewer to the first version of my profile instead of the newer version I have shown here.  I have a request in to support to help me get it figured out, and soon it will be the way I want it to be.

Just like my little about me profile mix-up you might sort of mess things up a bit as you begin this process, but everything can be straightened out and EVERYONE who is involved in these sites is very supportive of those like me who are complete newbies at this whole internet thingy.

As you gain experience with these media platforms your profiles will grow and become more professional and will represent you in the light that you want your work to be seen in.

And – I am always available here to commiserate when the going gets bumpy!

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