Linda Parkinson-Hardman's Blog, page 64

Lessons Learned In August – on author interviews

It seems that every month there is a lesson to be learnt somewhere on the authors journey and August has been no exception. As regular visitors will know, every Thursday I hold the Thursday Throng, which is an author interview, with possibly a giveaway of a book or two and a review of the book the author in question has just finished writing or is trying to promote. This month I realised that there is a huge variability in the way in which authors use this opportunity and I wondered if I now...

Contrary is the Weekly Word: What’s your alternative meaning?

My word this week is Contrary, it was a word often used by my ex-husband to describe me because I always disagreed with him! Apparently I wasn’t supposed to have an opinion. As a result, it’s not a word I particularly like, but it sounds wonderful

Anyway, my alternative meaning for the word Contrary is ‘a criminal specialising in more obscure crimes’ (can you guess why I made this my alternative meaning?) and now, what would yours be?

This week’s word is CONTRARY,it is an ADJECTIVE and is prono...

Win a SIGNED COPY of Shaping Destiny in the Thursday Throng Author Interview with Destiny Allison

This week I’d like to welcome Destiny Allison, author of an autobiographical book called Shaping Destiny, to the hot seat of my Thursday Throng interview. Destiny is a self taught sculptor living in Santa Fe who struck a chord with me because of our shared interest in empowering women. As well as doing this interview, Destiny is also giving one lucky commenter a signed copy of Shaping Destiny.

Shaping Destiny is the inspiring story of Allison’s life from the creation of her first sculpture to...

How to Add Extra Information About Your Book to Your Amazon Listings

Let’s face it, the Amazon Listing for a particular book is a bit thin really. It comprises mostly the product description and a few tags too but we all know how important rich data is as well and it’s worth knowing that Shelfari, another of the social networks for readers, allows you to add extra information to your book data. Because it’s owned by Amazon, that data shows up on the Kindle versions of your books.

You can find Shelfari at www.shelfari.com and it works in a very similar way to Go...

Celebrating 400 Posts on Woman on the Edge of Reality

Wow, today I’m celebrating 400 posts written on Woman on the Edge of Reality. It’s quite an achievement given how I started out in 2006, not really knowing what I was going to be writing about and occasionally adding a post or two, because I felt guilty for not doing anything. So today, I thought I’d cheat a little and share some links to a few of my personal favourite posts from the past …. years which you might like too. Tomorrow, I’ll be back with something more normal, but for today it’s...

Lackadaisical is the Weekly Word, what’s your alternative meaning?

Yesterday I was sitting with the lovely Steve and our neighbour drinking tea and eating chocolate covered cake bites (delicious but very bad for the waistline) and the conversation turned, as it often does to words and what they mean. I explained to both that this week I was planning to use the word Lackadaisical as my weekly word but was struggling to come up with a suitable alternative meaning. By the time that tea was finished and the cakes eaten we had come up with ‘A Daisy Based Laxative...

Friday Fictioneers – Misty

This is my latest contribution to Madison Woods, Friday Fictioneer challenge. For those who are unfamiliar with this Friday activity, it is a challenge set by Madison to write a 100 word flash fiction story based on the photo prompt you’ll find below. My enjoyment comes from reading the enormous variety of interpretations that come along in both short story and poetry formats. I hope you enjoy my own effort and if you would like to take part there are more details at the bottom of the post ab...

3 Copies of ‘That Bear Ate My Pants!’ to Giveaway in the Tony Slater Author Interview

Today I am lucky enough to have not one, but three, eCopies (Kindle, Nook, etc ….) of Tony Slater’s book ‘That Bear Ate My Pants‘ to giveaway in my Thursday Throng Interview. Just the title was enough to hook my interest and the email he sent me describing the book had me salivating with anticipation. Hailing from the UK, it turns out that Tony wanted to be an actor, not just any actor but being a Mel Gibson lookalike he wanted to be a supermegastar; then reality kicked in and he realised he...

Creating a Social Media Schedule

By the time this post goes live I’ll be part way through the presentation that inspired it. I promised several weeks ago that I’d share with you the very simple scheduling tools I use to try to make my life easier and here they are. You can view the presentation I’m giving at the BusinessXchange Creative Cooperation event in Dorset today below and I’ll try to distill the main points within the post. If you’d like to download my example sheets then you can find links to them at the end of the...

Thursday Throng Author Interview Guidelines

As I’m having to type these instructions out several times a week as authors request information about how to participate in my Thursday Throng Author Interview, I decided that having a dedicated set of guidelines could be helpful to both you and me. I’ve broken it down as far as I can and I’ve also included the interviews that are coming up in the future. You can find past author interviews by clicking here.

The purpose of the my style of interview is to provide a platform for the author and...