Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 80

May I recommend ... AN EASY DEATH

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1481494929/
“Immersive, involving, suspenseful, and intriguing, with a main character you’ll love.”
—Lee Child, #1 internationally bestselling author of the Jack Reacher novels

 “When a master of her craft offers to tell you a story, let her. The results are dazzling.” 
—Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author of the Alex, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning Wayward Children series.


 “A gripping, twisty-turny, thrill-ride of a read." 

- Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author of Pieces of Her

***
Set in a fractured United States, in the southwestern country now known as Texoma. 
A world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted,  
especially by a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose. 
Battered by a run across the border to Mexico, 
Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards to be their local guide and "gunnie." 
***
You know how disappointed I was with the  last few Sookie Sackhouse novels.
You know how impressed I was with her Shakespeare mystery series.
You also know how enamored I am of alternate historical fantasies since I write so many of them.

Well, I heartily recommend this first of an impressive trilogy. 
 I promise you:
You will love this novel.

The Trouble With ROLAND's Posts

and conducting its conversations, 

I put it away and dropped it out of my mind.

It was by accident that I discovered that a book is pretty sure to get tired about its middle 

and refuse to go on until its powers and its interest should have been refreshed by a rest

 and its depleted stock of raw materials reinforced by a lapse of time. 

When I reached the middle of TOM SAWYER, I could not understand why I could not go on with it.

The reason was simple: 

My tank had run dry.  It was empty; the stock of material in it exhausted.

The story could not go on without materials.  It could not be wrought out of nothing.

When the manuscript had lain in a pigeonhole for two years, 

I took it out one day and read the last chapter I had written.

It was then that I made the great discovery:

when the tank runs dry, you've only to leave it alone for a spell ... 

even for so small a time as a good night's sleep to awaken to discover your tank has filled while you dreamed.

See, children?  A short post but you still learned something important.  

But be kind to Roland.  He ain't achieved ghosthood yet.

HOW TO TAKE THE MISERY OUT OF BOOK MARKETING

  And you thought WRITING the book was hard!
BOOK MARKETING sucks the joy right out of the air you breathe in the sigh of relief after finally having a book in print.

We study hard to write the best prose we can.  Most of us research how best to market our books.

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! 
 Most of what you will find on the internet is already out of date:

the guaranteed methods have become more over-done worse than a Flying J Road-Stop steak. 

Some of my sales struggles in the past have come from a poorly titled book 

or a marketing plan that didn’t effectively target my core audience, 

but regardless, I’ve always been tempted to take my sales numbers personally.

Sales are just numbers.  
Low numbers tell you more about what you need to do than high.  Face it, you learn more from mistakes --

They shout at you louder.
Poor sales do not tell you about the quality of your prose.  

They merely tell you that you have not yet found the road out of the author blog ghetto.

A preacher who feels his sermons are poor because he has won no souls in the choir has learned the wrong lesson.

An imitation will always pale in comparison to the original.

Do not imitate another author's or blogger's path to writing success. 

It worked for them because they were on fire for it ...

besides you also do not know all the other factors in their situation that led to lightning striking their sales.

Be yourself.  Have fun.   Grow as writer.  
Enjoy the journey.  Look at the world around you: do not be blind to those who need your presence in their lives.

A snubbed child will not care if her mother is a success at writing if she is frozen out of the mother's life.

 Most strikingly in our comments to the blogs of others, 

connecting with readers in a personally authentic way ensures that the reader who is impacted with your book will return for the next.

Remember:  You Are Never Done Promoting your book
Keep an eye on news headlines, current events, or internet movements to leap upon them should they tie in to a past book of yours.

Your two year old book will be new to someone who is just then discovering it because of you tying it with a recent headline.

 You can’t always control the effectiveness of your book marketing plan, 

 but you can control the way that book marketing impacts your relationships, mental health, and spirituality.

 If you hope to make a career out of writing, 

it’s especially important that your publicity practices leave something of yourself for the next book.

Enjoy the journey and slow down to take in the world around you. 

REASONS TO BLOG ... even if no one is reading_IWSG Post

It is May ... right after A TO Z month.

Many are too weary from last month's gauntlet and not visiting your blogs 

in order to recuperate from the daily grind.

Your number of visitors may tumble.  Don't worry.  

It's all good.

Sounds illogical doesn't it?

What possible reasons could there be for blogging if no one is reading?


1.) SEARCH ENGINE BENEFITS
 

This may be the most obvious benefit of blogging. 

Search engines give preference to websites that have fresh, relevant content.

 Hubspot research shows that updated blogs get 55% more traffic than blogs with old posts  —

 even if there are no readers!


2.) INFINITE SEARCH ENGINE

 Your content keeps working for you month after month!  

I research my most often visited posts.  Many of them are years old.  Some are from last week when I was sure no one was visiting.

People Google all manner of subjects.  

Who knows when someone will be looking up something you wrote a post on?


We work hard to gain followers.  Me, I am on my 10th year.  My followers are my friends.

To lose one would hurt.

It is often harder for people to remember to visit if you change addresses ...

Sometimes that one extra step to visit costs you a frequent visitor.  

Why take that chance? 

A thought:

Several of my friends have switched from blogger to Wordpress, thinking their old posts would always be there on Blogger.

Not so.

Now, their addresses have been given to food and fashion blogs.  Two of them in languages I cannot read.

I work hard on each of my posts.  

They are my cyber-diary entries.  

To think all that effort and creativity would evaporate into nothingness feathers the insides of my chest with icy wings.

Just something to keep in mind.




3.) A VERY COST EFFECTIVE AD!


If you write interesting posts, readers will glance at your sidebar 

and perhaps decide to take a chance on one of your books ... 

even if you never mention them in the post.

 
4.) YOUR CONTENT ENGINE
 
Your investment in a consistent stream of quality content 

can be leveraged in many ways to support a content marketing strategy. 

I use links from blog posts in some of my comments on other blogs with posts that relate to them. 

They may garner visits.  They may not.  

But links provide the possibility of more visitors, right?


5.) PR


A constant stream of new posts will encourage old readers to drop in after a time to see what new things you are talking about.

Should an old or a new visitor speak of your post on their blog or web site, 

you have an opportunity to garner a new audience for your work.


6.) NOT EVERYONE Social Media's

You provide new content for those lonely Non-Social Media souls looking for something new to read.  

Your blog may be stumbled upon by someone who hears of you from a link or from an email.


7.) YOU MAINTAIN THE HABIT and KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE.

Get out of the habit of steadily writing new posts, 

and Life will find a way to fill in that vacuum of time.  

You may find yourself without new content for weeks after April -- 

especially with December Madness looming over the horizon.

 WHAT KEEPS YOU WRITING YOUR BLOG?

 

Z is for ZOUNDS!

ZOUNDS!
circa 1600, oath of surprise or anger,  contraction from God's wounds!

  "Under certain circumstances,  profanity provides a relief  denied even to prayer."  - Mark Twain

I have Elu, the Apache shaman,teach both McCordand his son,Victor Standish
that profanity shrivelsyour quiver of words
and what does thathobbles your mind.
What hobbles your mind,limits your thinking.
And your wits are allthat stand between you and the world.
 It seems that "F--k" has become the duct tape of modern dialogue.
Without it, Samuel L. Jackson would be almost mute in most of his non-MCU films!
 That fact is even satirized in the comedy, The Hitman's Bodyguard.

Do you use profanity in your books?  
Does it bother you when you  read it in other books?
Does it add the illusion of reality  to novels, do you think?

Y is for YEOMANS

Hey, if you had a last Name that started with Y, you would have used it today, too!

I am asking you today if you use an author bio at the end of your book.
Do you think readers want to know about the author who wrote the book they've enjoyed?

Here's the one I use:  Roland Yeomans was born in Detroit, Michigan.  
 But his last memories of that city are hub-caps and kneecaps 
since, at the age of seven, he followed the free food when his parents moved to Lafayette, Louisiana.   
The hitch-hiking after their speeding car from state to state was a real adventure. 
Once in Louisiana, Roland learned strange new ways of pronouncing David and Richard when they were last names. 
 And it was not a pleasant sight when he pronounced Comeaux for the first time.
He has a Bachelor’s degree in English Education and a Master’s degree in Psychology.   
He has been a teacher, counselor, book store owner, 
and even a pirate since he once worked at a tax preparation firm.
 Now, he is a rare blood courier.
So far, he has written 42 Kindle books,19 paperbacks with a 20th in the wings


and has produced 28 audio books, the latest being 

 You can find Roland at his web page:  www.rolandyeomans.blogspot.com    or at his private table in Meilori’s. 
The web page is safer to visit.    But if you insist on visiting Meilori’s, bring a friend who runs slower than you!

Do You Include an Author Bio in your books?

Do You Write to Music?

This is the musical themeI listened to as I wrote ofthe star-crossed loversaboard the flying steamboat, Xanadu,
when I wrote my latest audio book:
THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS ABROAD 
  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G9XZTDC/
Do You Listen to Music As You Write? 

X is for X MARKS THE SPOT

The world is older than Man, 

and sometimes if you listen with your heart, you can hear it hum with mystery.






But the map is not the land.

There is no X THAT MARKS THE SPOT in life.

Perhaps that is why we've never glimpsed that giant compass in the corner of the Atlantic.


Those moments, those people 

that shape the course of our futures come upon us unawares and are only seen in retrospect.

We usually only recognize their preciousness when 

they slip past us and run like fairy dust through our grasping fingers.


So we should walk circumspectly 

knowing there are probably hidden treasures all around us ... 

people, pets, our own healthy bodies even ...

which we will only notice by their absence in our lives.


The "X" which marks the magic in our lives is invisible ... 

but all too real nonetheless.

HAVE YOU MISSED ANY  "X's" IN YOUR PAST?

W is for WORDS

“Words can be like X-rays  if you use them properly. They’ll go through anything.  You read and you’re pierced.”
― Aldous Huxley

The words we use to ourselves 
can drastically alter how we feel 
about ourselves, our lives.



We keep ourselves company 24/7.  Doesn't it make sense to be good company to ourselves?

I have found that replacing just one word for another 

has made a real difference in how I feel about my daily routines.


I replaced HAVE with GET

 Take:
I HAVE to go to work tomorrow.
Now, I say:
I GET to go to work tomorrow

I possess a job to go to when so many are jobless.
I HAVE to go to the dentist tomorrow.
I GET to go to the dentist tomorrow when so many cannot Afford dental care.
 
"Oh, jeez, I can't go with you tomorrow.  I HAVE to clean the bathroom."
I GET to clean the bathroom when so many are homeless 

Try it.  
You will see the climb of the day to be easier.

Are there other words that you could replace?
Take NEED versus WANT
Wants can be delayedand often should be.
Needs have to be attended to right away.

V is for VOCABULARY

“We have too many 
high sounding words  and too few actions 
that correspond with them.”
― Abigail Adams 



 “A man with a scant vocabulary  will almost certainly 
be a weak thinker. 
The richer and more copious 
one's vocabulary  and the greater one's 
awareness of  fine distinctions 
and subtle nuances of meaning,  the more fertile and precise 
is likely to be one's thinking.
 Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words 
for them grow together.
If you do not know the words,  you can hardly know the thing.”

― Henry Hazlitt


One of the really bad things  you can do to your writing  is to dress up  the vocabulary, 
looking for long words  because you're maybe  a little bit ashamed  of your short ones. 
This is like dressing up  a household pet  in evening clothes. 
The pet is embarrassed  and the person who committed   this act  of premeditated cuteness  should be even  more embarrassed.”
― Stephen King,

 “The limits of my language are the limits of my universe.”
― Goethe 
HOW IMPORTANT DO YOU THINK  VOCABULARY IS?