Monica Valentinelli's Blog: booksofm.com, page 105

Day 7: De-Peopling Post-Con

*cue ominous music* It's been a week since I went dark. In today's post, find out how one semi-neurotic really feels about not being on Twitter and Facebook.

DOM DOM DOM.

Okay, so today I really wanted to log in. After writing my thank you letter to OddCon, I wanted to pop in and add people, write on their Wall, etc.

Yeah, so instead I'm being a little whiny about it here. *pouts* All right, that's enough of the gloomy music.

In all honesty, it sucks on my end to tell people, "Well, I'm not going to be on Facebook or Twitter for a while." Although business cards are important, most people I've talked to at conventions use Facebook or Twitter to look someone up as opposed to just researching someone through Google. That tells me what you post on Twitter or Facebook is more important than just what employers see. For authors, it's especially difficult because there's often three roles we have: personal, "day job," and as an author. Those don't always coincide, which someone mentioned might be another benefit of having the Monica Valentinelli author Facebook page. I didn't think about it that way, but separating readers from people I know on a more personal level could help me keep a degree of separation between those two lives. Hard to say, of course. Especially right now.

Anyway, just thought it was interesting that part of my post-con ritual has been interrupted by my black out. I absolutely want to connect with people and follow up on social media, not just because these are tools that I use, but also because that's what everyone else is doing, too.

And now, I go back to de-peopling.

About 100 Days: From April 4th to July 13th I'm turning the lights off on Facebook, Twitter and IMs for personal use. Read 100 Days: Turning off the Lights on Social Media for more information. You can also read the 100 Days post archive.

Related posts: Day 5 of 100: Social Media is More Than Noise
Day 4 of 100: Crowdsourcing Versus Experts
Day 3 of 100: When Systems Fail

Day 4 of 100: Crowdsourcing Versus Experts

Found myself needing advice today, and mentally ran through my cyber-deck of experts to see who I could e-mail about a few things.

In the time that I spent explaining what I wanted in an e-mail, I could have ran to Twitter and said: "Hey, anyone know of…" or "Anyone have a link for…" Instead, I e-mailed people I knew and asked for their advice.

There's a huge difference between tapping into "the hive mind" where you may get a bevy of responses you can judge quickly, as opposed to getting one response from a trusted source. When you get a variety of responses from multiple people, you can ascertain if the value of the advice is similar and pick the best option. By singling out an individual, you're viewing them as someone who will give you that best option.

The other benefit to asking an individual for advice, is that you are making a personal connection through a one-to-one exchange. You're saying: "Hey, I trust that you're going to give me the right information." With crowd-sourcing, that dynamic changes because now the onus isn't on you for the connection. You're throwing something against the wall publicly, almost like posting a flyer, and the other people who see that will either chime in or not.

What's also interesting about the crowdsourcing on social media to me, is that sometimes it feels like a trivia game. The volume of people using Twitter or similar tools to ask questions is pretty staggering. When people respond, often I feel like it's because they're trying to establish themselves as an expert for that particular category.

One thing I have noticed, is that when I've asked questions in the past not because I didn't know the answer, but because I wanted to strike up conversations, some people treat me as if: "Well, duh! How come you don't know this?" In other words, some people view questions as an indication that the person lacks knowledge or intelligence on that topic. To me, that's fascinating because that may highlight how little we know people we talk to on social media. If we're there for the conversation, then are we fulfilled simply by the interaction? If the other person on the end of the line wasn't a human being, but a robot — could we tell the difference?

About 100 Days: From April 4th to July 13th I'm turning the lights off on Facebook, Twitter and IMs for personal use. Read 100 Days: Turning off the Lights on Social Media for more information. You can also read the 100 Days post archive.

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New Interview and Reviews for Paths of Storytelling

Hi folks,

I'm over at FlamesRising.com today along with the developer of Paths of Storytelling, Eddy Webb, and my fellow authors Jess Hartley and Kelley Barnes. This three-question interview offers all of us the chance to talk about this project from our unique clan perspective. I hope you drop by and read Author Interview for Paths of Storytelling on FlamesRising.com, because Eddy reveals yet another easter egg. Shhh!

Here's a quote from our group interview:

MONICA: I felt that matching the voice and the feel of the setting was crucial to the joke's believability, which was part of the reason why I dropped in signature characters like Karsh, El Diablo Verde and a few other familiar faces. It was really fascinating for me to map out, because the goal was to introduce Vampire: the Masquerade to a fictitious reader, all the while knowing that the person most likely reading it would be someone who knew the setting. So in this path, the reader doesn't just become a Gangrel, they get introduced to Vampire: the Masquerade. — SOURCE: Author Interview for Paths of Storytelling

After you read the interview, a reader recently shared a review of Paths of Storytelling on DriveThruRPG.com. I thought the review was interesting, because the reviewer is correct: this format isn't something White Wolf would publish professionally to represent World of Darkness, which is why it was billed as a rejected manuscript for April Fool's. I was happy to hear he not only enjoyed it, but also recognized the amount of work we put into this.

Over at Gameolosophy, you can also read an in-depth review written by Raymond Frazee entitled

Day 5 of 100: Social Media is More Than Noise

Well, it's the fifth day now since I've started this one-hundred day blackout, and already I can tell that this experiment wasn't as simple as "tuning out the noise." What I found, through the course of dealing with a bunch of snafus, is that I've been relying on these tools to resolve problems. For some of those issues, like communicating when my site goes down, there is no other tool that exists to send out a message.

Going dark has forced me to circumvent what I normally do, in an attempt to resolve a problem I normally solve through social media. I didn't expect that to happen. I mean, it's not even the end of the week and I'm already realizing I use these tools for more than just inane babble and telling you what I eat every day.

Note: I heartily enjoy a decent plate of nachos with real cheese. None of that orange reconstituted dust in a can business.

Sorry, I just had to throw that in there. Anyway, it's interesting that I've experienced first-hand what I often tell people about social media. These are tools that have multiple uses. They don't just facilitate a constant stream of noise; pick apart what Twitter or Facebook or IMs are being used for and they turn into complex information networks.

Believe me, while I miss some of the conversations with friends that live long distances away, I am enjoying the break. Written words are sounds to me; always have been, always will be. So cutting down on that stream has helped me shrink my world considerably, which is what I felt I needed to do.

I'm not going to post during my appearance at OddCon, but I will do a wrap-up post for the week and another one about OddCon. I'm curious to see if anyone is going to bring this experiment up; I've had a few instances where people I've never met before mention things that I've said online. We shall see what the weekend brings, I suppose. Hopefully, a million sales of The Queen of Crows, right? RIGHT?

What? I'm innocent! No, really.

Okay, you can stop laughing now.

About 100 Days: From April 4th to July 13th I'm turning the lights off on Facebook, Twitter and IMs for personal use. Read 100 Days: Turning off the Lights on Social Media for more information. You can also read the 100 Days post archive.

Related posts: 100 Day Experiment: Turning the Lights Off on Social Media
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Day 3 of 100: When Systems Fail

Of course, right after I go dark on social media, my webhost starts having problems. For the past couple of days, service has been spotty, which has no doubt affected your ability to read the posts I've been writing.

It's even more frustrating on my end because I didn't want to get back on Facebook/Twitter just to communicate server issues. My options were either a) not say anything b) have someone else say something or c) leave it alone.

I chose to leave it alone and logged the dates, but it brought up another realization. While it's great to have a website, if you have pretty decent traffic and all of a sudden your website goes down — then what? How do you let people know the status? You can't email everyone but you could send a message out to Twitter and Facebook where it has a better chance of reaching people. No, it may not hit everyone, but shooting out that information would be doing due diligence.

So yeah, in this case my site having troubles lately has nothing to do with Starscream (my computer). Completely random occurrence that just so happened to coincide with going dark. Curses, foiled again!

If you have recommendations for webhosts, please post them in the comments below. Thank you!

About 100 Days: From April 4th to July 13th I'm turning the lights off on Facebook, Twitter and IMs for personal use. Read 100 Days: Turning off the Lights on Social Media for more information. You can also read the 100 Days post archive.

Related posts: Day 2 of 100: On News and Sharing Links
Day 1 of 100: Starscream, a Curse and Why 100?
100 Day Experiment: Turning the Lights Off on Social Media

[My Guest Post] Aspiring Authors Should Think Twice Before Marketing

Hi everyone,

Today on the How To Write Shop I posed a question about whether or not aspiring authors should start promoting themselves before they learn how to write.

This is one of my longer columns where I cover the difference between website visitors and readers, mention why it's important to focus on your craft, and where some of the confusion might be coming in. Many of the topics I brush on might be uncomfortable for people eager to write their first short story and hopefully sell a ton of copies, but I felt it needed to be said. I'm seeing a heavy-handed focus on developing an online presence and how necessary it is to get online traffic, but for new authors I feel this is greatly misleading.

There are benefits and drawbacks to jumping in to online promotion when you don't have the resume to back it up. However, you have more flexibility to experiment because you have nothing to lose. Many people want to be a writer because, on the surface, it appears glamorous. No set schedule, work from home, make a ton of money, etc. But there's a lot that goes on in the industry outside of writing that eventually you'll need to pick up on. To survive, you need to be flexible, disciplined, determined and thick-skinned. Not everyone is, and there's nothing wrong with that. Like books, there are many different types of writers out there. I know some who are perfectly happy writing for a few small presses; others want their books in retail stores like Target, Wal-Mart, etc. As a result, their online promotional efforts reflect their goals and life as a writer. — SOURCE: When Should You Start Promoting Online? at the How To Write Shop

If you're new to writing, I hope you'll drop by and read my article today. After all, if you're going to chase the rainbow, you'll need to put your running shoes on first…

Related posts: Why "Hits" Don't Matter. More on my Guest Post at Howtowriteshop.com
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Adding Depth to Character Backgrounds

Creating characters can be a lot of fun, provided you avoid developing a Mary Sue character you're overly attached to. Heavily-idealized and pet characters are hard to kill when they need to be and can be burdensome on the reader. The side effect to creating a Mary Sue character is your reaction to the situation when someone doesn't like your work. I've seen many writers get more defensive because that character means something to them that goes above and beyond the call of: "Well, I love my work."

Gaming has helped me create well-rounded characters; there are some games, like Spirit of the Century, that focus on themed characters. (In this case, pulp.) Even within gaming, though, the character you design is rarely at the end of their journey. They always–relationships, career, aptitude, skills, etc.–have room to flourish.

Backgrounds can be even more difficult because, on the surface, it may be hard to design one that isn't blah and boring. In the U.S., we base a lot of opinions on what someone does for a living. So career is often a big factor in determining a character background. Not so everywhere else in the world. While the "job" is a bucket that people can relate to, it's not everything. Once the job is determined, I've seen some authors immediately default to childhood background as a way of fleshing out character motivation. Even then, many stereotypes are often derived from a troubled teen, an abused child, a runaway.

To get around the stereotypes, some authors develop characters using tarot cards. Corrine Kenner has an online Tarot for Writers workshop. On the surface, the structure is what I'd expect from such a course. Others, like myself, take a page from astrology in a different way.

The book I've listed in this post is called, The Element Encyclopedia of Birthdays. When I'm stuck developing a character, I turn to this resource and sift through the pages.

Because this book is based on a calendar year, there are three hundred and sixty five different characters to choose from as opposed to a book of archetypes, which traditionally has between six to forty-eight. Within each entry, there are additional opportunities to drill down and add depth. A typical entry isn't just a list of attributes, it tells a story about the person born on that particular day. Take August 19th, for example. This is the "Day of the Editor." Let's call this guy "Bob." Bob's greatest challenge is revealing the real you. Positive and negative attributes are listed, along with a prompt for self-improvement. Image is important to those who share his birthday. Although Bob's detail-oriented, in part because he's deeply insecure, if he's able to move past looking at everything as an opportunity for his own self-interest, he can find courage and free himself from his troubles.

As an author I say: "Wow, this is great inspiration!" So, a character who's heavily focused on image might believe that even the smallest secrets can hurt her reputation — even though that might not be the case. There's a certain amount of self-delusion that can come across to the reader in good dialog, romantic relationships, etc. In Bob's character background, I'd develop trends of behavior based on common misunderstandings. No one else feels Bob is this terrible awful guy, but he's pretty sensitive about innocuous comments. Maybe he's switched careers a lot. Maybe he's had trouble in relationships. Maybe he's only had one job and works in the basement. Maybe he's in a crappy relationship and is jealous of anyone who's happy.

The other really nice thing about the entries in The Element Encyclopedia of Birthdays, is that there's a lot of other information that supports the idea of being on a journey or a life path. Regardless of what day Bob was born on, when I write about him on a subconscious level I know that he's come from somewhere and he's also got some place to go. Bob is not a static automaton who is a certain way, all of a sudden. After all, characters are not photographs — they're plants. While you bring them to life in your stories, a good character will always have room to grow.

That, my dear readers, is the trick to adding depth to your character backgrounds. Instead of assigning what you're comfortable with, look at Bob's psychology or mindset to figure out character motivations on a spectrum. From there, you can look at multiple options for what Bob might do and free your character from the tried-and-true.

Hey, I think that rhymed! Hrmm, I wonder if I could write a story about a character who couldn't do anything but rhyme…

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The Zombie Feed e-Book Now Available!

The Zombie Feed, Volume 1 is now available in several e-book formats. My short story entitled, "Tomorrow's Precious Lambs" is included in this tome and I'll be reading it at OddCon in Madison, Wisconsin this weekend.

I hope you'll do me the honor of picking up a copy.

TZF Kindle Edition

TZF Nook Edition
TZF Smashwords Edition

For more information about this anthology, feel free to read:

Beyond Survival: Living in a Zombie-Filled World
The Zombie Feed, Volume 1 Table of Contents

Hope you enjoy it!

Related posts: Design Notes for My Zombie Story at TZF
Like Zombies? Short Stories? Contest for New Anthology!
Got a Brain? Pre-Order The Zombie Feed Vol 1

Day 2 of 100: On News and Sharing Links

I've always known intellectually that it's easier to share links through social media, but I had no idea how quickly that would impact me.

Last night, we had some friends over and they had mentioned this article about how the app pricing model doesn't work RPGs. Because I hadn't been on Twitter or Facebook, I didn't see the article.

Here's where it got interesting for me.

In a typical day, I would have booted up Twitter or Facebook, looked it up on one of their profiles and then clicked over to the article. Since I made a pledge not to use those tools, now if I want the article I have to do one of three things: a) ask for someone to e-mail me the link b) type in the domain name of the article and manually look for it there or c) use natural search to find it.

I used natural search and found it pretty quickly, in part because the article was recently published and the domain had good SEO. For articles that haven't been published in a while that are suddenly popular again? Well, that might get a little more time-consuming because it may not be apparent what the newest or the most popular pages on a website are. Plus, not every website has great SEO. There are some domains I've researched for professional reasons that didn't even rank for their own brand name.

The other interesting thing about getting a link on Twitter or Facebook, is that I don't need to rely on asking someone to share something with me that they think is cool. By following people I like, admire or want to learn from, I can see what they're reading without ever developing a face-to-face connection. Sometimes it's funny; sometimes it's informative. Regardless, it's a potpourri of information that points directly where I'd need to go, rather than house all that information on one website and ask me to take a second or third click.

Of course, with some of the advances in the web recently, I'm seeing more and more regular websites integrate with Facebook and Twitter. I'm not a hundred percent sure that's such a good idea because even though those links come through social media, some of the business-related ones (e.g. products and whatnot) look really fake. I'm of the belief that not every website needs to integrate with social media, especially since it's a cocktail party. In my experiences, social media works best when it's "natural" as opposed to "engineered."

Since I encountered a situation that not only affected me, but forced me to go around social media to find what I'm looking for, I can see the value in these tools is the ease-of-use because it facilitates rapid decision-making. Last week, I would have instinctively known it's importance not simply based on the one link alone, but the volume of people that were talking, sharing, commenting and interacting with it. While I feel it's too soon to know if I could recognize that now (e.g. there's lots of conversations happening all the time about lots of links) the conversation I had isolated the news and not only made it more important to me…but I was more curious about it and wanted to listen because I hadn't already talked about it to death. The conversation wasn't a rehash of what happened online; it was new.

Wow, all that from a single link!

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About 100 Days: From April 4th to July 13th I'm turning the lights off on Facebook, Twitter and IMs for personal use. Read 100 Days: Turning off the Lights on Social Media for more information. You can also read the 100 Days post archive.

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On Bad News
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Day 1 of 100: Starscream, a Curse and Why 100?

*tap, tap, tap* Is this thing on?

So it's Monday afternoon and I've managed to get through the entire day without even thinking about Facebook or Twitter. Well, until writing this post.

I've also managed to yell at my computer, which I've dubbed "Starscream" — twice. The computer name came from a poll I took last week where people on Twitter and Facebook suggested names and then voted on them. It feels like it was the last "fun" thing I did before going dark and I laugh every time I think about this. My office is decorated with all things geek — including a spectacular set of 80s Transformers illustrations which people didn't even know I had. To my right I have the original Star Wars fan club poster of the Millenium Falcon, a signed Thor print, Soundwave and Blaster. That doesn't even begin to cover the collection of things on my desk and the other two walls.

Outside of pouring through the tubes to see reader's reactions for Paths of Storytelling, I didn't really use the net for much else this weekend. Reviews… Oh, how I'm wondering what those'll turn out to be.

ANYWAY. I digress.

So… Where was I, again? Oh yeah, the Curse. You know that saying about how people are wrong on the internet? Well, if Damn You, Autocorrect! is any indication, sometimes people aren't always wrong. Maybe they posted a typo or maybe they were trying to be sarcastic. Truth is, not everyone is dumb yet, when the Curse strikes, that's exactly how it feels.

I call it the Curse of Well, Actually. What happens is, is that in our need to get accurate information online, of which there's sometimes very little, we correct someone using these dreaded words. I've done it; others have done it, too. In our desire to find accurate information, though, sometimes this really downplays the person's intelligence on the other end.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, after I announced the 100 Days experiment I got some interesting feedback. My fiancee, Matt, declared that I'll be back on by the end of this week. A few people thought one hundred days was a long time to be off of social media; others wanted to track my progress and see what the results were.

The obvious question, of course, is why I chose one hundred days. Well, here's the interesting thing about that. The reason why I picked that length of time, is because rumor has it it takes that long to learn a new routine. What I want, is to do two things before I even start the rest of my day: work out and work on my novel. Period. I need to do these things regardless of how much time I spend on them and what other commitments I have during the day. Otherwise, Argentum will never get done and I'll continue to feel like a sea slug, even though I've been hitting the vegetables hard.

So that's the reason behind the length of time. After all, if I want to have a series of novels gracing the shelves of your local bookstore, I have to focus on the work. It sucks, because I do enjoy hearing how everyone else is doing, but there it is. To establish two good habits I need to break a bad one.

- Monica

Related posts: 100 Day Experiment: Turning the Lights Off on Social Media