Sarah Zama's Blog, page 61

Thursday Quotables – The Wicked City

The dead girl turned her head toward them. A cracking sound like ice braking rent the air. The girl’s eyes were still closed, but she opened her mouth, a dark maw in her ashen face. Kevin averted his gaze to the ceiling. Robbie has somehow managed to widen his eyes even further.

“Don’t panic.” Sam fought to hold June in place. “Kevin, cover her up!”

Kevin grabbed the sheet and threw it back over the girl’s face. She still moved underneath, turning her head from side to side. Thens he spoke.

“Assssssssk.” The sounds resembled air escaping a balloon. Not a human voice. Hollow and emotionless. Dead.

“What is this?” June demanded. “What the hell?”

“It’s an oracle,” Sam said. “The Oracle of the Dead. They know things the living don’t.”

“An oracle. She’s gonna tell the future?”

“Oracles don’t tell the future. They give counsel. But you can only ask one question, and then the spell is broken. You have to act quickly.”

I should say first of all that I don’t normally read steamy romances, and since a big part of the story falls into this environments, I’m afraid a have to confess it didn’t’ really do anything for me.

But fortunately, other elements of the story are more SF, more adventure and even more mysteries, and I enjoyed these quite a lot.

I really enjoyed the society depicted in this novel, where paranormal people exist, live in among normal people and are discriminated against and feared. This is ground for a political plot which is the best part of the story, in my opinion: the establishment on one side, the rebels who want integration on the other, and all kinds of people in between.

June, the protagonist, is a siren, someone who can control people with the power of her voice, which is an idea I really like. I’m afraid she’s not the character I liked the most, but hey!

An enjoyable read, even for people (like me) who don’t really enjoy all the aspects of this story.

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Stay with Me in 1940 (Postmodern Jukebox)

This is the first ‘era’ video I’ve seen from the Postmodern Jukebox and let me tell you, as soon as I saw it, I fell in love with the band.

This is of course a cover of Sam Smith Stay with Me hit, and I have to confess I’m hard press to decide which version I like the most.

Cristina Gatti is one of my favourite singes of the Postmodern Jukebox. I like her style.

 

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Liebster Award – July 2016

Barb of the Gallimaufry nominated me for the Liebster Award soon after the AtoZ Challenge. As always, I’m a very slow replier, but see Barb? I’m here at last. Receiving an award from a fellow blogger is always a special occasion and it will never be lost on me.

And isn’t it lovely to display such nice badge?

See Barb’s LIebster Award here.

So these are the 11 questions Barb asked of me:

1. If you could go back in time and change ONE thing, what would it be?

My mum would have never gotten cancer, and she would still be alive.

2.  What country would you most like to visit and why?

My favourite country to visit is Ireland. I go as often as I can, because I feel at home. I like being there.

But I’ve been wanting to visit Iceland for a long time. It’s such a beautiful, wild country and so different from the Mediterranean environment surrounding me. I’ve always had a fascination for the northern countries, I don’t know why.

3. Name your three favorite songs/music videos.

Well, if I have to choose a favourite song, that’ll be Billie Jean by Michael Jackson. I remember watching him on tv when I was 10, I was already fascinated with him, though I wouldn’t be able to say whether I liked his music, his dancing or him more. Billie Jean is still one of my favourite songs.

Smooth Criminal – again by Michael Jackson – is at the top of my favourite music videos. It may ossibly be my very best favourite. I like songs that tell a story. I like videos that tell a story. I like the interwar years. I like dancing. Smooth Criminal has everything at a very high quality.

Cogli la prima mela by Angelo Branduardi is also one of my favoruite songs. The concert version is very different from the one that made him famouse in the 1980s, but I adore it.

4.  If you were part of a circus, what would you be and why?

The wild cats trainer. I love the big felines, and I think they aren’t so dangerous if you know how to treat them. It would be wonderful working with them.

5. Your friend has used two of three wishes and offers you the last one. What would it be?

That a cure for cancer would be found.

6. Given the opportunity, what would you change about your appearance?

I really don’t like my big calves…

7. Could you live in a cabin on a lake for 30 days without any electronic technology or the internet?

Absolutely yes. That’d be paradise.

8. You’re spending the weekend on a yacht and can only bring 4 things. What would they be?

Now this will seem to clash with what I’ve answered above, but I’d bring my laptop, the latest book I’m reading, pen and paper… it’s already four, isn’t it?

9. Do you prefer living in a house, condo or apartment? Why?

In a house. I actually lived in a condo in Dublin and I hardly knew there were people on the same landing, but living in my own house (which is what I do) gives me a sense of independence.

10. What is your favorite season? Why?

I love Spring, because I love watching nature going back to life after the sleepy winter months. But Autumn is the season I’m most productive, I don’t feel as sleepy as in Spring. So I’m quite hard pressed to chose between the two.

11. What is your favorite fair or amusement park ride/attraction?

I’m not a big amusement park goers, I don’t like being in crowds. But I’ve always liked the bumper cars.

RULES

Once you are nominated, make a post that thanks the person who nominated you and links back to their article.
Include the Liebster Award sticker in your post.
Nominate 5 to 10 other bloggers who you feel are worthy of this award. Let them know they have been nominated by commenting on one of their posts. You can also nominate the person who nominated you.
Answer the 11 questions asked to you by the person who nominated you.
Make 11 questions of your own for your nominees.
Lastly, copy these rules in the post.
All of the nominees are free to accept or reject the nomination.

So, now I should nominate a few fellow bloggers for this award. I’ve already done two Liebster nominations, so this time I’d like to do something different. Since Barb had a historical theme for the AtoZ (Classic Hollywood, you should definitely check it out. This is the first entry), this time I’d like to nominate bloggers who maintain a historical blog or often address history on their blogs

Ali @ Aliisaacstoryteller

David @ History with aTtwist

Nicholas @ Nicholas C. Rossis

Anabel @ The Galway Gallivanter

Lupachi @ A Smile and a Gun

And here are my 11 questions for you:

Have you always been into history, or is it a recent passion?
What is it that has drawn you to history?
What is your favourite historical era and why?
Is there an historical person that you particularly admire? Why?
Maintaining a historical blog is its own peculiar job. Sharing historical facts requires knowledge and research. What is your payback?
What kind of historical articles do you like to write best? Why?
Blogging is becoming more and more a visual activity. How do you address this on your historical articles?
How do you think our past may help us address our future?
Back in school, I already loved history, but I could never remember a date. To me, it was more of a fascinating storytelling. How was it for you?
Social history is my favorite section of history. What is yours and why?
Try to tell a child into loving history. What would you tell them?

 

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Imagination and the Writer

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Not out of hatred

No matter what they ever do to us, we must always act for the love of our people and the earth. We must not react out of hatred against those who have no sense

– John trudell

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not out of hatred

No matter what they ever do to us, we must always act for the love of our people and the earth. We must not react out of hatred against those who have no sense

– John trudell

The post not out of hatred appeared first on The Old Shelter.

Thursday Quotable – Maisie Dobbs

Maisie, in turn, looked at the headstone she had unwittingly chosen as her cover. It bore the words: “Donald Holden. Born 1900. Died 1919. Beloved only son of Ernest and Hilda Holden. ‘Memory Is A Golden Chain That Bind Us ‘Til We Meet Again’”. Maisie looked at the weeds underfoot. They may have met already, she thought, while keeping a keen but inconspicuous watch on Celia Davenham, who remained at the immaculate neighboring grave, her head bowed, still speaking quietly. Maisie began to clear the weeds on Donald Holden’s grave.

“Might as well look after you while I’m here,” she said quietly, placing daffodils in the vase, which was mercifully full of rainwater. She couldn’t afford to trudge all the way across the cemetery to the water tap: Cilia might depart while she was gone.

As Maisie stepped to the side of the path to deposit a pile of weeds, she saw Celia Davenham move toward the headstone she had held her vigil. She kissed the cold, grey marble, brushed away a tear, then turned quickly and walked away. Maisie was in no hurry to follow. Instead she nodded at Donald Holden’s headstone, then walked over to the grave that the Davenham woman had just left. It said “Vincent”. Just “Vincent”. No other name, no date of birth. Then the words, “Taken from all who love you dearly.”

Maisy Dobbs, the first in a long series of mystery novels by Jacqueline Winspear, is a pleasant read, although I was expecting quite a lot more from it.

It starts out as a mystery, which actually sounded a bit foggy from the start, but it picked my interest nonetheless when references to WWII veterans appeared. Then the middle of the novel – and it’s a good chunk, taking up half of the book – turned out to be Maisie’s backstory. This is what suggested me that this book was really an introduction to the character, more than a standalone mystery. The middle of the book is nearly a story on its own, with a few, but really not very strong connection, to the mystery. The last part of the novel, the conclusion, was in fact quite weak and unrealistic, if I may say.

Yes, as a mystery, it was quite disappointing. What saved the book for me was the cast of very nice characters, most of whom I had no trouble relating with. I really liked the historical setting, especially the recreation of the war experience, if it felt a bit detached at times. I find that Winspear is very good at creating episodes. Many were very involving, even moving. But as far as the plot goes as a whole… that was a loss let involving. At least, this is my feeling for this first novel.

An enjoyable one, anyway. Do give it a try.

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Blog Evolution: 3 things you may want to change after blogging for 1 year

It is a fact of the blogging business: after a while, you need to change. You grow off of your shoes, become more savvy, and your audience also grows and new needs come into play, both on your part and on your audience’s part.

Now that I think about it, it sounds a lot like life.

When I started blogging, I didn’t have many needs. I started blogging because I knew it’s important for an author to have a blog, though at the time I barely knew anything else. In fact, for a long time, I put off blogging because I thought I had nothing interesting to say or share. So I chose my first two themes based only on aesthetics. My very first theme (which you can still see on my old blog) was Bold Life, which was already old when I chose it two years ago. But at the time, I didn’t care. Or better, I didn’t know any better.

Bold Life was in fact so old that when I moved to a self-hosted blog I couldn’t chose it anymore. So I went with Radiate, which is a theme that I still like a lot, even if I see that it too is becoming old at this time. But it had everything I wanted at the time: a sidebar, a clean design and lot of room for costumization.

I liked it a lot, but lately, I started feeling it was time to change. I needed something new, though I didn’t know what.

Then a couple of month ago my fellow blogger Lady Nicci changed her theme and wrote a fantastic article once she was done, An Idiot’s Guide to Freshening Up Your Blog.

In that article she wrote something that really made me think:

“I picked my old theme because it offered space for about ten posts to show on the home page  – at the time I thought this was loads. Now that I have tons of posts on my blog, I realised I wanted many more to show on the homepage, so that when a reader clicks on my blog, they have a range to choose from and can see at a quick glance, what the blog is all about.”

You know, I could have written those words myself. That really pinned it down for me and that same day, I started browsing WordPress magazine themes, something I had always avoided because I thought magazine themes looked too busy and cluttered. As I say, you change as you go.

In the end, I settled for the MH Newsdesk Lite theme, which is a busy theme, granted, but in a good way. It gives you the impression that there is a lot to discover and to be sure, the day I shifted from Radiant to Newsdesk my pageviews shot up.

But contrary to what happened when I shifted from Bold Life to Radiate (that is, nothing), this new theme paused me a problem: it wants feature images on all posts and guess what, I had NONE.

So, since I had to work all through my feed to fix that, I decided it was time to do something I had put off for quite some time: a complete makeover of the blog.

This is what I did.

Blog Evolution: 3 things you may want to change after blogging for 1 year #blogging #blogger
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The power of images

We are a visual species, this is no news, and as I go on this journey as a blogger, this reality is driven home stronger by the day. Images are vital to any blogger. Sure, you content is king (I do believe it) but you need people to look your way if you want them to read your contet. And nothing does that better than an image.

That’s why, in spite of knowing this was going to be a huge job (I had some 300 posts on the blog) I set about the task willingly.

The first thing I wanted to do was finally branding my blog. I’ve read many articles about why branding your blog is a good idea:

A quick and dirty guide to creating a kickass brand experience through your blog strategy @ The Branded Solopreneur

Branding your blog: Miss Modern’s 5 top tips @ Kaleidoscope

How to use visual marketing to live your competition in the dust @ Peg Fitzpatrick

Discover and build your author brand @ Your Writer Platform

I was convinced a long time ago, but I didn’t really want to go through the huge job to make over my blog so to respond to a brand, though I had already started branding through the content I’m sharing. Well, looked like the time had come.

Colour: I’ve always known that when the time would come, my main visual branding tool would be colour. I had already chose a theme that used mainly blue (my favourite colour and the colour of my book cover) plus white, black and grey, which, to me, always create a sense of tidyness.

Colour is a powerful tool for creating atmosphere, that’s why I wanted a theme that would allow me to keep a dark background. Now I have to tell you that, according to many articles, red, orange and white are the colours that most attract people, but for my branding I still wanted more muted colours, because I wanted to go for a vintage, kind of noir effect, considering my subject matter. I actually also used a touch of the other two primary colours (yellow and red) but always in burnt shades, so to add to the vintage feeling

How to brand free stock photo for your brand @ BlogSharLern
Photoshop: I had to create some 300 feature images… you know. Kind of intimidating. I do use PhotoShop, though my meager skills barely scratch the surface of what the program can do. But I discovered that learning bit by bit what you actually need can bring you a long way.

One of the first things I learned about images, back when I had a Etsy shop, is that you can’t use them as they are. You need to optimize them in terms of light and contrast, in order to make them look good on the screen. At the beginning, I used just that command on PhotoShop, light/contrast. Easy. But more recently I discovered a better way to go and not difficult:

How to get brighter, better photo in PhotoShop (in 60 seconds) @ Melyssa Griffith

It takes a bit to get the gist of it, but once you get accustomed, it allows you a better refined job than the light/contrast does. And photos do look a lot better on the screen
Canva: Branding relies on templates. Your images must all have a certain feeling, look, design and colour palette to create that particular atmosphere that belongs to your blog. Now, I know you can create a template with Photoshop (A quick and dirty guide to using PhotoShop to Creating images… that kickass @ The branded solopreneur), but I had used Canva for creating the images for the AtoZ Challenge and I was very happy with it. Sure, it isn’t as flexible as Photoshop, but it’s a lot faster to use.

How to make a Blog Post image template with Canva @ Bridgid Gallagher

How to create beautiful Blog headear image template @ Emily La Grande

You don’t really realise how intimidating it is to find a way to brand hundreds of posts. But I’m a firm believer that you can accomplish the biggest goal by getting at it a piece at a time, so I grouped my posts by category and work on each category at a time. After a while, I started noticing that I use some elements more than others and some colours more than others, and so my colour branding kind of started coming together all by itself.

SEO, I hate you, I love you

There are two very different theories out there about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). One is that SEO are obsolete. That modern searchs engine work on so many different levels that SEO don’t really influence the result of the search. The other says that SEO are as important as ever and bloggers would be mad not to look into it.

Me, I’ve seen that if I care about SEO, my blog gets more hits, so I go with it.

I don’t obsess over SEO, many of my blogs are just OK with Yoast, but I do keep it under observation when I optimize my blogs.

I won’t get into SEO because I really don’t have the knowledge for it, but you can find lots of very good article out there. Here are some:

SEO basics for bloggers. 10 tips for better Searching Engine Optimization @ The Wonder Forest

A Rookie’s guide to SEO. 8 simple SEO tweaks you can make in a day @ The Branded Solopreneur

Grow your traffic with keywords research @ The Daily Post

WordPress SEO PlugIn by Yoast. If you’re a WP blogger, you’re probably already using it. I started using the WP SEO plugin by Yoast only recently, so most of my posts weren’t optimized. I’ve read time and again that you should delete underperforming content, because this makes the rest stronger on search engines. As I had to go through all my posts, I decided to clean up my feed too. I eliminated some 50 posts that didn’t have a reason to be here anymore (well, I marked them as private, so they are still here, but you guys don’t see them. I’m never one for throwing things away), then I optimized with Yoast every remaining article.

What I like the most of Yoast is that it allows you to rewrite the preview string that Google allows people to read on the result page. You can write a string that make sense, optimize it with keywords, even if that’s not the beginning of your actual blog. I love that feature.
2. Alt description on images. The optimization for images is something that took me some time to understand. A part of it is very easy: give all your images a name that makes sense (don’t leave a number for them) and add a description, because that improves your discoverability. I went through this a first time a year ago, but actually I didn’t really understand the difference between ‘alt description’ and ‘description’ and above all I didn’t really understand the importance of using keywords.

Now I had a whole bunch of new images to deal with (they turned out to be more than 250) and in the meantime I had started looking into Pinterest more closely (that’s one of my favourite platforms). So, I took my determination with both hands and went through the job of optimizing my images. And let me tell you, it does show on the search results!

Optimize images for SEO @ Free Borboleta
Ewww Image Optimiser: I actually already had the Ewww Image Optimiser Plugin on my blog, but I want to mention it because I think this is one of those things you don’t think about when you start your blog, but you need to address sooner or later. Last fall, my blog nearly collapsed at a certain point. Traffic came to a trickle because my loading time was too high, and most of it was due to the images. I use lots of images on my blog now, but I didn’t realise this was becoming a problem. But it was.

I tried a few plugins (there are many out there for WP), but in this end, this is the one I like the most.

Images are the propellers of your blog. Create beautiful ones that people will want to share #blog
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Blogs and Pages

Was I done? I wished I was!

Many of the older blogs went private, but the ones that stayed needed work. I am not going to rewrite them (even if many would need that. I learned so much about how you actually write a blog in just one year), but I could at least optimize some of them, the most interesting.

Then there was the matter of pages. Most of my pages look messy, because so far I have gone with whatever looked the best in an empiric way. That means, I tried to make a good looking page by trying and trying until the result was good enough (ehmmm…)

Better Click to Tweet: This is another WP plugin that I already had on my blog, but I had sparingly used so far. I started using the Better Click to Tweet function during this year AtoZ Challenge and yeah, I see that you need a lot of traffic to see it used, because apparently most reader just use the sharing button at the foot of the article, but it’s a nice addition and I often use it as a design devise, to make the page a bit more lively.
Page Builder: The WordPress Page Builder Plugin takes a bit of getting used but it’s worth using, in my opinion. Getting the page to look good when you have many elements on it is sometimes hard on WP and I discovered that this new theme doesn’t seem to accept side by side images. Most of my pages have gotten messed up.

This plug in allows to build a page using different fields, the only thing is that you need to build the entire page by scratch, you can’t just adjust the old one. But the end result is a lot better than even the best old results.
About Page: It needed rewriting, end of story. I wrote my old About page even before starting blogging, having no idea of the potentialities. But lately I read a lot about the About Page because I’ve seen that, indeed, that is one of the most visited pages on my blog, just like so many articles say.

What I now understand is that the About Page is a kind of landing page for you brand. As many article point out, it isn’t about you at all, but it’s about what you can offer to your reader. That is a completely new way to look at it, but one that I really like.

Operation: Rock that Effing About Page @ nosegraze

How to create a successful About Page @ Suzie Speaks

Writing and About Page @ White Oak Creative

4 mistake I was making on my About Page (and how to fix them) @ Katelyn Blook

This is my new About Page. Not the one I want, still, but better than before, I believe.

Welcome to my new blog

And this is my new Homepage. I’m quite happy with it, although there are lots a things I’d like to do and can’t at the moment. I’m considering purchasing the paying version of the theme, because it allows a lot more customisations and has many cool features, but I’ll content myself with this for the time being. Maybe I fall in love with a different theme, who knows?

But I’m really happy of the way my new homepage displays my content, I think that, as Nicci said, it helps making clear at a glance what my blog is about and people visiting the first time still may have fun here, even if I haven’t been posting for a while.

I hope you like the new look. In case you feel like cheking it, this is my Writers Promote Pinterest board, where you can find most of the articles I’ve referenced and many more.

Now, are you considering changing you blog looks?

 

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Give in to the Feeling Free for the next 4 days

Hi everyone!

I’m still working hard for you but I wanted to drop a line to let you know that Give in to the Feeling will be free to download for the next 4 days, ’til the 4th July.

I’m partecipating in a promotional event. Technically, they only asked for Smashword to be free, but since my book is distributed by Shamshword, that’s price goes everywere. So, if you were iffy about getting it, this may be the right chance to just get it!

If you do get it, please consider leaving a review wherever you like, on your favourite store or on Goodreads. And even if you don’t feel like leaving a review, do let me know what you think about it. I love hearing what readers think.

And don’t forget to check out the other authors too. There’s a story for everyone.

 

 

Smashwords | Barnes&Nobles | Kobo | iBookStore
Inktera | Baker & Taylor Blio | OverDrive | Scribd

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION – Don’t Give Up on Me!

I said in my last post that I’ve been considering changing my theme, didn’t I? I said I hadn’t found a theme that I liked more than the one I was using. Well, looks like I have.

My blogging friend LadyNicci did a similar move just recently. She posted a fantastic article when she was done, An Idiot’s Guide to Freshening Up Your Blog.

One thing she said really got me thinking: “I picked my old theme because it offered space for about ten posts to show on the home page  – at the time I thought this was loads. Now that I have tons of posts on my blog, I realised I wanted many more to show on the homepage, so that when a reader clicks on my blog, they have a range to choose from and can see at a quick glance, what the blog is all about.”

I could have written those words myself. I hadn’t realised it consciously before I read her words, but that’s exactly what I want. I do want a more modern theme, but I also wanted a theme that showcases more of my content, because I think I have a lot to offer now. That’s what made me change my mind on a very important aspect: I had never considered using a ‘magazine’ theme because it looked too clattered to me, but I now realise that’s exactly what I want (besides, I love the look of LadyNicci’s new blog).

So, the way this blog looks at the moment IS NOT what it will look like when I’m done, but as soon as I installed it, I understood I have A LOT of work to do. In fact I’m revamping the blog completely, updating everything in the backend, cleaning up the feed, adding tons of new graphic (that’s not an option, the theme wants feature images I don’t have at the moment).

It is a huge undertaking, I’m aware of it, so I had to decide I won’t be posting anything new while I’m working on this. I don’t like having to do it, but it’s necessary.

But don’t worry, I’ll keep networking on all my other media, I’m not going to disappear. And I hope you’ll love the blog once I’m done.

DON’T GIVE UP ON ME!

Talk soon.

Sarah

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