Moving Forward

After my amazing book launch for A Blueprint for Hope, I've made some decisions about how I would like to move forward in my writing.

Firstly, I will minimize my time spent on Twitter. What was at one time a wonderful app for connecting writers and readers has devolved into a numbers game and a pissing contest. I don't believe that readers find novels through Twitter. 

As to the Writing Community, you can imagine how dismayed I felt when I shared the happy news of my book launch, only to find a thread of other writers ripping me apart. Apparently, they decided to take the screenshots that I shared as an invitation to criticize a book they had never read and a marketing strategy I never shared. My goal in posting the screenshots was to thank my audience and to encourage other indie authors on their publishing journeys. I never wanted to make anyone feel badly about their own novels. I decided not to engage with the thread, but reading the nasty comments has soured me to the platform for now. I am not going to delete my account at this time. However, I will be removing the app from my phone. I will use Twitter only to share writing and publishing updates in the future.

My time is limited and I have decided to devote more of it to this blog and to writing my new novels. 

I think good things are coming and I will do my best to keep you all updated. As always, thank you for your years of support! 

Ye Olde Tweet Tweet

I told you a while back that I was going to talk a little more about how I run my Twitter account, so I’m going to do that today.

You will get exactly one automated direct message from me. I’m set up to welcome all new followers with a dm. In this way, I can thank all of my new followers without actually typing 20-50 dm’s per day. I’ll be honest: I’m just not patient enough to do that. I do appreciate each and every person who follows me though, and I do read all of their profiles.

As for auto-tweets, you’ll see shout-outs to new followers. Again, it’s my stream-lined approach to thanking people. You will also see a count of how many people follow and unfollow me each day. That is mostly for myself. I like to see how I’m doing.

That’s it! Nothing else is automated. All of the rest of my tweets and messages are my own. I try not to inundate the site, because I have followed some people who tweet up to a hundred times a day and I find that annoying. So, counting the auto-tweets, there will usually only be six to seven tweets from me per day.

I follow everyone individually. No auto-followe. I read each and every profile and a good half a page of tweets before I follow. Basically, I don’t want anyone who posts overtly sexual, inflammatory, bigoted, hateful, or otherwise offensive tweets. I also won’t follow people who are selling things other than books or hand-crafts. So, no weight loss gurus, crystal therapists, etc. That stuff is fine and good in its way, but I’m not interested.

I have been re-tweeting quite a bit recently. My purpose in that is to help indie authors sell their books. So, I do give some preference to those with fewer followers and to tweets that have not already been re-tweeting. I also re-tweet the occasional quote that catches my fancy.

That’s it. I try to keep it as personal and non-irritating as possible.  

New Layout and New Kindle

*I’ve got a new look! If you’re reading this, you’ve most likely already noticed. I decided that I hated the old look. I often like something, settle on it, then come to hate it. For example, my current purse was a K-Mart $2.49 special that I thought I loved. It is hideously ugly in a special 1970’s way. I’ll keep it until it falls apart because I hate buying purses and it is convenient. The moral of the story is that I am often aesthetically blind. So, tell me what you think. Any suggestions? I would like to continue to tweak things, but I do like this template much better.

*I just got a Kindle Touch for my birthday. Yes, I used to decry the loss of paper books for future generations and the state literature would come to with the advent of ebooks, but… I’m over it. The Kindle is awesome. Who doesn’t want a device that can hold 3,000 books and all of their music? This will at least solve the problem of the paperbacks over-flowing my room. I think my favorite part is that I can get all of the classics for free. I love classic novels. I started in on Austen and Dickens in the fifth grade. I used to read Persuasion whenever I got sick, until my sister accidentally destroyed my copy. I also want to read all of The Scarlet Pimpernel books. I’ve read five I think, but I’m pretty sure they are all free on blio. Points to people who can find the Scarlet Pimpernel references I always put in my novels. They are easy to miss.

Getting used to the Kindle does take time. It’s a little awkward to hold at first, and there is a delay in getting to the next page. I’m still adjusting, but I have so much I want to download to it. I’m excited that this gives me a better way to support indie authors than trying to scrape together fourteen dollar for a paperback and knowing they will get something like 2% out of that.

To those of you who hopped on the Kindle wagon before me: should I get a cover and wall charger? I can’t decide if I need them or not.