Good morning!

The birds are chirping, and Athena is happily taking her morning nap on me. My hands are free, and my coffee mug’s in reach. The girls have the day off school, so trying to get a few things done before they wake up.

One of the things I’ve been asked a couple of times by authors who haven’t gotten published yet is if there was anything I wish I’d done before I signed my contract. The list isn’t long.

Start a blog…get an ‘official’ FB page for your work…get set up on Twitter…TELL people you’re a writer!

You don’t have to wait until you’ve got a book deal to start promoting yourself and your work. I’m feeling more confident now, with “Mark of the Successor”, than I did with “Daughter of Hauk”. Why? Because my self promotion machine is already set up and working. I’m in the habit of blogging here each week, being on twitter off and on, and updating my FB page at least once a week. 

These are all things it took time for me to get used to doing on a regular basis. Have they helped me sell books? I’m not sure. But it’s gotten people to know who I am. Perhaps, in time, the sales will follow.

Just letting people know you write, adding a few snippets here and there of your work, creating a buzz about your type of storytelling can make the difference. You can get people talking about you. As long as it’s not negative.

Speaking of negative, I had to do a new ‘first’ as an author last week. I blocked someone from my author page on FB. The individual had left a couple of comments that made me uncomfortable to start with. But, I went to his page to see if perhaps he was a huge fantasy fan. He is…just not my kind of fantasy! His page was full of pornographic pictures of his junk. I’m not into that. I don’t get off looking at someone else’s stuff. If anything, I felt like scrubbing my brain with bleach afterwards just to get the images out of my mind. He made it very obvious that a) he hadn’t read anything about me, just looked at my new headshots and b) he saw me more as an object than a person.

Few women I’ve ever met would want to be viewed that way. We are people. We have brains, emotions, thoughts, desires, and feelings. We’re not blow up dolls. And we aren’t interested in stroking your ego if your entire sense of self revolves around sex.

The headshots came out fine. I put three on my FB page, and came out with a ‘winner’ to go on the back of “Mark of the Successor”. I was in contact with my editor last week! Still waiting on the cover art, but they’re amazing people. I don’t want to rush them!

I’ve got one more surprise for you all! I had a terrific interview last week, and it’s going live today. Once It’s up, I’ll share the link here. In the interview, I agree to one of the craziest things I’ve ever considered!

BB