What's Up Wednesdays

[jana_denardo]

WHAT I'M READING Just finished Nobody’s Secret by Michaela MacColl. It’s a mystery with Emily Dickinson as the protagonist. It’s YA and the chapter headers are all of her poems. It’s well researched and Emily is a likeable character in this (though I admit it, I do have a love/hate relationship with real historical characters being turned into sleuths). It wasn’t very mysterious to me but I’ve been reading mysteries for years. If I were the right age for this book’s target audience I’d probably have been surprised
I also finished The Misshapes, by Alex Flyn a superhero style fantasy YA that was also fairly enjoyable. I liked the superhero part but I’m not much of a romance reader so the whole OMG Freedom Boy is my boyfriend thing was getting on my nerves.

I’ve started reading Chuck Wendig’s (the author of the Terrible Minds blog) Blackbirds. It’s interesting, reminds me of Garth Ennis’s graphic novels.

WHAT I'M WRITING I’m STILL editing Soldiers of the Sun my 1930s demon hunter story. I swear to you I will get this done some day and you can stop hearing about it!

I wrote about 900 words for my spook_me’s Halloween challenge. It’s set in the world of my novel Kept Tears. It’s wanting to get longer than is reasonable. Shoots characters.

Also speaking of Kept Tears, it’s moved on to the final rounds at the Rainbow awards. See more here. That’s so exciting for me because it’s my first novel. I’m just glad some people are obviously really enjoying it.

What Works for Me This has to be said, it’s more of what’s working for me marketing wise vs writing wise. Blogs and all sorts of social media are very important to marketing in this day and age (self published or not, doesn’t matter. Publishing houses DO expect you to do your share now). It can be a confusing maze and knowing what not to do is just as important as knowing what does.

For example, do something more with twitter than constantly blast your book. That will annoy people probably faster than anything.

But the thing we don’t think about is our author blogs. Some people say put more on there then just your book. Okay yes, but there probably needs to be limits. For example, I don’t put much political stuff on mine. For one, I’m fairly apolitical. However, since I do write a lot of LGBT fiction, I might put things up about those issues. I have stopped buying from authors over political views. Maybe that’s wrong headed but there you have it. I do believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but when a YA author known for female characters starts calling all men Grandfather Penis and/or Talking Penis and castigating women for not being superior to men, I think it’s probably not the right message to send, especially to young readers.

Lately I’ve seen a couple people constantly whining about how no one understands their writing and they’re going to basically take their ball and go home. People respond, ‘there there, we like you,’ and they stay only to do it again a few weeks later. My thoughts are we all fail at this. Not every story I submit is bought (as if. I wish). What I don’t want is for my readers to think I’m a poor sport or emotionally blackmailing them. Honestly I have a separate blog (this is my author’s blog) where I whine if I absolutely must. I’m not saying we need a blog of Pollyanna crap. I’m just saying we need to be mindful that our audience might be reading and if we’re blasting them for liking ‘shit’ and not us, they probably aren’t going to appreciate it much.
Terrible Mind’s had a good point here. dearest writer nobody owes you shit

WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN UP TO
I have author Andrew Q. Gordon on my blog today if you want to stop by and hear about his new book. A Closed Door
I’ve been cleaning so hard. I hate to clean. I have company coming. I was rooting for the natural disaster to strike this place but it didn’t so clean I must.

You can find the rest of the WUW blog hop here