Amy Leigh Strickland's Blog, page 5

Why I Don’t Read Romance

A Valentine’s Day Confession

I don’t read romance novels. That is, I usually don’t. I have, but I don’t do it as a rule. I know a lot of romance authors and I completely respect what they do, but I find the genre to be a minefield of problematic depictions that I just don’t care to navigate. Let me explain.

Now I’ll start by saying that I love a handful of books that could be classified as romance. I’ve read the Sookie Stackhouse novels all from cover-to-cover. I’ve read Shakespeare’s comedies,...

The Olympia Heights Comic

We’ve had a little stumble launching the Olympia Heights comic. My hosting provider has been slipping considerably over the past few years, and last night’s issue was time horribly because an issue with our previous site design wasn’t discovered until launch. While I wait for customer service (it literally could be a week, it was last time I dealt with them) I can’t do anything. I’ve been through all of my steps to troubleshoot and now a server admin is required.

So what about the Olympia Heig...

Pop Primer Digest

I’ve been writing articles for my friend Matt’s website since this fall. I thought I’d take a moment to point you to a few of these articles. It’s a really cool site (and it needs more writers, if you’re looking for a place to analyze popular culture in a more academic way.) I try to put mythology and writing stuff here, so this is a great outlet for off-topic stuff.

What Am I Talking About?: Feminism

Occasionally, on this site, we will discuss social and cultural issues, as this webzine’s purp...

The Year in Review: 2014

It’s that time of year for looking back and looking forward. Today’s blog post will look back at the blog in 2014. Here’s The Best of the Blog (2014 edition).

JANUARY:

Is Kickstarter Right for Me?
The Self-Publishing Panel (Highlights)
I Made a Terrible Fake Book Cover

FEBRUARY

Face-to-Face: What Authors Get From Networking
To Be or Not to Be (Indie)
That Like-Drive You Paid Facebook For is Hurting Your Author Page
Trouble Usually Finds Me: The Unlikely Parallels Between Harry Potter and Heracles
EVENT...

The Matter Deep Christmas Sale

If you’re looking to grab a signed set of Olympia Heights paperbacks, now is the time. You’ll never get a better price than this! The entire Olympia Heights series is available signed and shipped for free* for $45. Plus, when you buy this bundle, you get a free Olympia Heights art print from the comic. And we’ll even gift-wrap it!

We’ve got other great deals, including a Vampire Collection that includesKissing Corpses,a picture book bundle for small children, and a bunch of packages for fans o...

5 Christmas Gifts for Aspiring Writers

We’re coming up on that time of year when we madly Google listicles for gift ideas. You’re probably here because you know a writer and you just can’t figure out what to get themforChristmas or their birthday. There are tons of books on writing that you could buy them, sure, but how do you know before reading them which books are actually helpful?

Here are five ideas for writerly Christmas gifts that are NOT books on writing or fancy notebooks (like they probably have dozens of).

The New Rules o...

YA Hangout Episode 2: Felicia Tatum

YA Hangout is a Google Hangout chat show I do once a month with Amy Evans. Amy Evans was not able to join us for last night’s episode, so I awkwardly hosted it alone. My guest was Felicia Tatum, author of the White Aura series and other contemporary and paranormal romances.

Watch the video below and tune in December 9 at 9/8c for our episode with Heather Lyons.

Your Evil Twin: How to Avoid Cover Look-Alikes

This weekend I attended a convention in Atlanta, Georgia where I met a bunch of really great authors. One book that I saw from across the room caught my attention because I remembered seeing its cover months ago in an independent publishing group on Facebook, and I knew I liked it. Imagine my surprise when I told the author that I had seen it, only to find out that the book was not yet out and the cover had only just been revealed. Awkward.

And I’m not going to share that cover with you becaus...

The Olympia Heights Comic: An Update

The Olympia Heights comic did not fund on Kickstarter, but the fact that the average pledge was almost fifty dollars means that the people I did reach really wanted to see this happen. The failure to fund wasn’t so much a failure of the idea as a problem with reaching the right audience. I love novels and comics, so it was my own hubris in thinking that everyone who loves novels must love comics, too. It’s going to take a lot of work to build that comic audience, and having a comic is kind of...

Build a Better Book Trailer

At UtopYA 2014, Carly Strickland and I attended a panel on book trailers. We got to hear a lot of interesting ideas for promoting with book trailers and how to make a proto-trailer on a budget. We heard about some elaborately produced book trailers with budgets well over a thousand dollars. Most importantly, it started a conversation for us about book trailers at Matter Deep Publishing and what we’d like to see from them.

I love movie trailers. I don’t want to fast-forward the Redbox DVD to ge...