With two back-to-back my releases - Lady Lovett's Little Dilemma and The Cavalier - over these past couple of weeks I decided to put together a blog tour. I'm a seat-of-the-pants writer and unfortunately this technique carries through into my business approach.
"Must Organise Blog Tour" became my mantra for a few frenzied days where, in ad hoc fashion I'd submit a few requests, here and there. Although I've been writing for years and my first book came out four years ago, it's only been since January with the release of my first e-book - Rake's Honour - that I've turned my attention to any kind of online promotion.
Prior to that it was all library and author chats for my expensive hard cover releases.
There are pros and cons to the new situation in which I find myself. Obviously the downside is that I'm starting from scratch, in a sense. And, boy, it's a steep learning curve. I've been trying to actually understand Twitter and work out how to discover interesting things that are happening using it. Everyone says it's so easy, but the whole protocol and format is alien. So that's another thing I have to really dedicate myself to getting better at. Yesterday I discovered I could actually condense URLs. I'm reasonably computer-savvy so why didn't I even know that was possible?
Why? Because it's hard enough snatching time to just write the damn book, My promotional abilities are only just now grinding into gear.
However, there is an upside and that's the range of really lovely people I've met online. I've loved blogging at Black Velvet Seductions and Manic Readers, in particular, because the hosts, Laurie and Ivy, are such friendly, communicative and enthusiastic people. It's a real pleasure to prepare something and have a chat with them along the way.
As for topics, they occur in the same ad hoc fashion.
I've had an exciting life both in my own right and tagging along as the 'trailing spouse' to a pilot whose work has taken us to 10 countries in 18 years. That's countries we've called home. I've blogged about that quite often, drawing the correlation between events or themes which have made their way into my work. At Black Velvet Seductions I'm in the middle of three blogging events in which I details events such as Being Locked up in French Guyana and The Hero Who Married My Sister as well as my upcoming blog on the 19th - Why Losing My Job was the Best Thing to Happen to My Writing Career.
Today I've just finished a blog for Manic Readers' July 13 slot. As I sat chewing my virtual pencil trying to think of a topic, I thought how much I was missing my husband who'd been away for five days.... and there I had it:
"In Praise of (Supportive) Husbands."
So drop into Manic Readers on Friday and you can read all about how wonderfully supportive of my writing my darling husband of 18 years has been. I'll be posting the exact address on the day.
Because, as usual, I simply cannot find the exact blog address. Supportive though my husband is of my writing, he does sometimes have a few less than complimentary words on the subject of my navigation skills and my response to that has become my mantra in life:
It might take me longer than most people, but I always get there in the end.
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