Sally Murphy's Blog, page 41

Poetry Friday: Pelicans and More

It’s Poetry Friday, at the end of another busy week for me.

I started the week with a writing retreat at Rottnest Island, a beautiful island off the coast of Western Australia. As well as getting some writing done, and having fun with my fellow retreaters (all members of SCBWI), I did a lot of walking, exploring the island and admiring the views and the amazing wildlife. Although the quokka – a small marsupial – is perhaps the cutest and best known animal resident – I was particularly taken with the pelicans, and walked up the beach following this pair as they paddled and fished in the shallows.

Which reminded me that I haven’t yet shared the poem which I have in the newly released Our Home Is Dirt By Sea, a collection of Australian poems for Australian kids, edited by Dianne Bates and published by Walker Books.

The poem which I contributed is called Paraphernalia.

 

Paraphernalia

 

At dawn or dusk

I trudge

cross sandy shore

with rod and reel

bait and bucket

tackle box

knife

and board,

hoping to catch

a fish or two

for dinner.

Pelican

has none

of this paraphernalia,

just one huge beak,

yet he seems to have more luck than me.

 

(Copyright Sally Murphy)

 

If you’d like to see more of Rottnest Island (or Rotto as West Australians call it), I made a photo-story of my walk around the island with my friend Sage Cookson.

 

Happy Friday. You can see the Poetry Friday roundup at Reflections on the Teche.

 

 

Five Minute Promo: Day 28

Welcome to Day 28 of the five minute promo challenge. I’m still enjoying sharing these quick tips with you, so I hope you are also enjoying them. Over to today’s task.

5 Min Promo #28

Pinterest. Anyway, today’s task is to revisit your Facebook Page and add some new content. A photo of yourself, a link to one of your blog posts, something from your Feedly feed, or even a link to where the book can be purchased.

While you are there, see if there any of your fiends not currently following the age who you think might be genuinely interested and send them an invite.

If you send me an invite I will definitely visit and see what you are up to – and I’d love it if you followed my page, too.

See you tomorrow!

Wandering Words #4

Five Minute Promo: Day 27

Welcome to Day 27. Five days to go, and if you’ve been following along, I bet you’ve noticed some changes both in your daily habits as well as in the engagement of followers on your various platforms.

Today’s task aims to give your folowers on one platform a broader experience, as well as to perhaps attract new followers. You ready?

5 Min Promo # 27

Start a new Pinterest Board on a topic related to, but not directly about, your book. So, for example, for Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape, I could add to the board about Sage Cookson, a board about chocolate (the food featured in the book), or series books, or adventure books, or even (since Sage loves her mobile phone) a board about mobile phones. Of course, in any one of those boards I could also pin something about Sweet Escape, since it is relevant, but the focus should be on broadening the scope of my board, to draw more readers in.

If you comment below with a link to your new board I will visit it – and I might even follow it. I hope you might do the same for some of my boards.

Something worth Pinning.

See you tomorrow.

Five Minute Promo: Day 26

There are just six days left of the 5 Minute Promo challenge, including this one. If you haven’t been following along, that’s fine. You can still join in now, either by going back to the beginning or just by doing the last six tasks. The choice is yours. The idea is to complete a five-minute task each day to promote your latest book. Which leads us to today’s task.

5 Min Promo# 26

Sage Cookson, the title character, is a girl who has lots of adventures.

Blog about promotion. You might, as I’ve done below, decide to blog about all the things you are doing to promote your book. Or you might blog bout why promotion is important to the success of your book. Or you might have a really good idea for book promotion that you want to share. Remember, readers do love quick posts.

As always, I recommend you try to include an image in your post and, once posted, I suggest you share it on one or more of your social media channels.

Enough said for today. See you tomorrow.

How (And Why) I’m Promoting My New Book

This is going to be a quick post, so I’m going to skip straight to the why. I have a new book out, Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape, and I’ve been busy promoting it online and in person. I am doing this because although my publisher is doing their best to promote it too – particularly through setting up a website dedicated to the series – they have lots of books to promote each month, while I have only one new book at a time, and so can give this one my special attention, at the same time promoting my back list.

So, on to some of the things I am doing to promote Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape:

Blogging (with posts like this one) about the book, about writing and about the writing life.
Tweeting – directly about the book, and on subjects connected to the book, as well as about seemingly unconnected things, which hopefully keeps my followers engaged.
Instagramming – photos with the book in, photos of things related to the book and, again, photos of seemingly unconnected things.
Pinning – to my Sage Cookson Pinterest board and other boards, related and unrelated.
Facebooking – adding content to my Facebook author page, again either related or unrelated to the book.
The 5 Minute Promo Challenge – a challenge I set myself and invited other authors to play along with, whereby I set a five minute promotional task each day for myself to do, then blog, tweet, Instagram and facebook about it, as appropriate.
Engaging with my followers on the above mentioned platforms, replying to tweets and comments, and checking out what they are doing, too.
Providing content for the Sage Cookson website, which New Frontier have set up.
Visiting schools, festivals and bookstores and talking about the book, or signing copies, or even (shhh don’t tell the booksellers) making sure the book is face out wherever possible.
Word of mouth. Telling people about the book – friends and strangers. But only where appropriate and not overdoing it.
Playing with my doll. A doll purchased from Kmart has been used to pose as Sage in social media photos, particularly on Instagram. Other props I’ve bought include a chef’s hat which I can wear for promotional appearances.
Ending every email with a signature line which includes the book’s cover and a link to my website.

If you have a new book to promote, there are lots of things in this list you can try, too – though tailor them to the topic or theme of your own book. Good luck.

Sage Cookson’s Rottnest Ramble

I’m lucky enough to be spending a couple of days on Rottnest Island, on a writing retreat with fellow authors and illustrators. This morning I went for a long walk exploring the island – and Sage Cookson came with me.

Wandering Words #3

Five Minute Promo: Day 25

Welcome to the twenty-fifth day of my five minute promo challenge, something I set up to encourage myself to promote my new book, Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape and, to a lesser extent, my older and future books.

Yesterday I had you set up a Feedly account. Assuming you’ve done that, then today’s task will be simple. Here it is.

5 Min Promo #25

An info-graphic like this can be great for Pinterest.

Go and check your new Feed on Feedly and choose at least 3 items to share on your social media accounts. If you want to be really clever, try to share one on Twitter, one on Facebook and Pin one to your Pinterest Page. It’s always good to remember that people may follow you on more than one platform, and will enjoy seeing different content on each site. Some content also lends itself more readily to one platform above the others – for example, a good info-graphic or quote is wonderful for Pinterest.

Nothing interesting in your Feed? Then add some more search terms, so that next time you check there’s more to choose from.

As always, I’d love if you’d leave me a comment or send me a Tweet.

Five Minute Promotion: Day 24

Welcome back. We are on the home stretch now, with less than a week to go in this month-long promo-fest. Today’s task is something new to the challenge, in case you are starting to feel too comfortable with all the blogging, tweeting, pinning and instagramming I’ve had you doing. Today’s task, like the one on Day 9 where I had you set up a Google Alert, is about sourcing content for your social media posts. You ready?

5 Min Promo #24

Feedly will help you find content even while you sleep.

Open a Feedly account. Feedly is an awesome tool that you can use on your computer or your tablet or phone (as an app), and, as the name suggests, it feeds you content. All you have to do is set up a free account and then choose search terms you want Feedly to find on websites, blogs and news services across the web. You can also use it to follow specific blog or web feeds. Then, every day (or every week, depending on your time and interests), you read the content it has gathered for you. As you find something you think your followers will also enjoy you can tweet about it, add a link to your Facebook page, or pin it. New content at the click of a mouse or a press of your finger.

It should take you less than five minutes to get this set up – but a warning that reading your feed can become so pleasurable and informative that you may find yourself using more than five minutes a day.

Of course, if you are following this challenge and already have a Feedly account, there is still something you can do today: use the five minutes to visit your account, make sure it is up to date, and revisit your search terms. A good spring clean might be just what your Feedly needs.

See you tomorrow.