Linda Poitevin's Blog, page 15
April 1, 2015
It’s an “All the Things” Kind of Day
by You know how it is when you let a small thing slide here and another there, and you put off x, y, and z because they don’t really need to be done right away, and then one day you look at ALL THE THINGS and you realize your molehill has grown into a monster and you’re … Read More
The post It’s an “All the Things” Kind of Day appeared first on Linda Poitevin.
March 30, 2015
4 Key Ways to Increase Organic Reach on Facebook
by A couple of weeks ago, I posted about why I’m not abandoning my author page on Facebook after the latest round of algorithm changes. I also promised to share with you what I’m doing to keep my page’s organic reach at a healthy 34 to 46 percent, which is well above the industry average … Read More
The post 4 Key Ways to Increase Organic Reach on Facebook appeared first on Linda Poitevin.
March 26, 2015
Clean Reader: The Latest in Censorship?
by A new app has come to my attention. It’s called Clean Reader, and its pitch is “Read books, not profanity.” What does it do? It filters out the “bad” words from a book as you’re reading it, either blocking them with an opaque rectangle or offering an acceptable (non-profane) alternative. Now on the surface, this might … Read More
The post Clean Reader: The Latest in Censorship? appeared first on Linda Poitevin.
March 25, 2015
Plotting Armageddon: A Progress Report
by If you didn’t catch the news yesterday, I’m back to work on Sins of the Warrior, the fourth and final chapter in the Grigori Legacy series. I’d set aside the story at the end of August, feeling the need to take a break from my characters and get refocused. Now, after writing and releasing a contemporary romance … Read More
The post Plotting Armageddon: A Progress Report appeared first on Linda Poitevin.
March 24, 2015
Let Armageddon Begin
All right, Grigori Legacy fans. Vacation’s over! It’s time to get back to the end of the world, don’t you agree? 
Yes, you read that right. After taking a hiatus over the last few months to work on other projects, I’m back to writing the fourth and final chapter in the Legacy — Sins of the Warrior. And I am on a schedule, people. A schedule, I tell you!
Because I think series fans have waited long enough to find out what happens to Alex and Henderson and the Archangel Michael and all the rest of them, don’t you? Heck, I’ve waited long enough. 
Things need to happen, and they need to happen soon.
In time, say, for a fall launch.
No exact date yet, but I’m looking at mid September. You can handle that, right?
Me, too. As nice as my foray into my romantic side has been (reminder: Forever Grace launches April 24th!), it’s time to get dark again, because we have the battle to end all battles waiting for us.
Let Armageddon begin!
P.S. Share the good news using the buttons below!
source: imgkid.com
The post Let Armageddon Begin appeared first on Linda Poitevin.
March 23, 2015
Social Media Glitches
If you’re back on my blog today looking for the Facebook page tips I promised last week, they’re sorta not here yet. 
Those of you who have visited my website on prior occasions may have noticed a new look and feel to the site, but apparently that’s come at more of a cost than I anticipated. I built the website myself and thought things were going swimmingly (apart from missing images in the blog posts I transferred over), but it turns out I may have been premature in patting myself on the back. Not only am I missing images, I’m also missing entire posts. Specifically, the majority of my social media articles.
Not even my techie husband can explain how I managed that one.
Anyway, the long and the short of it is that we’re working on getting the blog back up to snuff, which could take a few days (him having a day job and all, poor guy ). Everything should be back to normal by the end of the week, and with a little luck and determination on my part, I should have the Facebook tips up next Monday. So…stay tuned, and I’ll see you back here in a week, yes?
The post Social Media Glitches appeared first on Linda Poitevin.
March 20, 2015
The Trials & Tribulations of DIY Website Building
So this is my very first post on my new website that I built all by myself.
(Photo credit: cocoate.com)
If you know me at all, you’ll understand what an accomplishment that is.
If you don’t know me, this may clarify things:
I can remember the exact day in 2001 that I sent my very first email.
I can remember my boss at the time having to show me how to send the second one, too. And the third. And probably the fourth, fifth, and sixth. And maybe the seventh…
Until I published the first book in the Grigori Legacy series in 2011 and had to learn social media, I used a computer exclusively for wordprocessing and sending email.
When I did jump into social media, it was through the purchase of the book Twitter for Dummies (which turned out to be completely useless, btw).
Yeah. I was the epitome of a technological dinosaur. But, in the vein of teaching an old dog new tricks, let’s fast-forward to today, when in the last week I have:
figured out how to build a new website offline (using WampServer to create a localhost site) so my old one would remain live during the building process
waded through hundreds of potential WordPress themes before eventually settling on The Thinker
successfully uploaded and formatted the theme and the necessary plugins (still not sure how I managed to activate the font plugin that wouldn’t work…wouldn’t work…wouldn’t work…and then magically did, but oh well, it works and that’s all that counts, right?
)created a new website banner using Canva (Best. Graphics app. Ever.)
created new content for all the pages (and more graphics to go with them)
successfully transferred all my blog posts from the old site to the new one (well, sans images, but hey…I still did it!)
learned how to create an xml file for the new database
wiped the old site’s database and uploaded the new one, along with the WordPress and theme files, to my web host.
Confession: that last step took approximately six and a half hours and the assistance of multiple support people, and they ended up having to fix a glitch I’d caused in order to take the site live, and I uploaded the wrong WordPress files and had to manually input all my images again, but I’m still counting it as a total win. (I could have just uploaded the correct WordPress files, but it was almost midnight, I didn’t know where to even begin looking for the damned things, support and I were barely on speaking terms anymore, and a manual upload was just so, so much easier! 
)
The upside of all this is that:
I did it! (It’s amazing what you can learn when your needs outweigh your resources to pay someone else for the work…
)I now have a much better understanding of how WordPress works, so maintenance going forward will be heaps easier.
I know that I never, ever, ever want to be a website developer. Ever.
So…have a look around and check things out, and leave me a comment below to let me know what you think of my DIY website building efforts! Notice a glitch somewhere? Please tell me!
P.S. Many (most?) blog post images are still missing, unfortunately. I’ll get around to fixing them on an as-I-can basis…please accept my apologies in the meantime!
The post The Trials & Tribulations of DIY Website Building appeared first on Linda Poitevin.
March 18, 2015
Ulnar Neuropathy: A Hidden Hazard of Writing
Did you know it’s possible to injure yourself while sitting quietly at a desk, tapping away at your keyboard? Probably not. Until the other day, this idea would have been news to me, too. Then I learned about ulnar neuropathy (compression of the ulnar nerve)…the hard way. To save you from similar discomfort, I thought I’d share(...)
The post Ulnar Neuropathy: A Hidden Hazard of Writing appeared first on Linda Poitevin, Author.
March 16, 2015
Why I’m Not Giving Up My Facebook Author Page
So…Facebook changed its algorithms again this year. I know…big surprise, right? This time, it was in an attempt to weed out “overly promotional posts,” and as a result, I’ve seen a steady flow of writers abandoning their pages in favour of using their personal profiles instead. As you may have gathered from the title of(...)
The post Why I’m Not Giving Up My Facebook Author Page appeared first on Linda Poitevin, Author.
March 12, 2015
We Now Return You to Our Regular Blogging Schedule…
So I finally, FINALLY finished Forever Grace last night and sent it off to my beta readers and for copyedits. Yay! And yes, I know that I should technically be sending it to the beta readers first and then making changes before copyedits, but sometimes a writer’s just gotta do what she’s gotta do…especially when(...)
The post We Now Return You to Our Regular Blogging Schedule… appeared first on Linda Poitevin, Author.
