Mia Darien's Blog, page 31

Self-Promotion & Social Media for the Socially Anxious

First of all? I don't have the secret to this. Yet. I'm working on it, but it's been on my mind a lot and I wonder how many others face the same thing and struggle with the same battle.

I made the conscious decision to self-publish after a lot of consideration, weighing pros and cons, debate and so forth. I knew that no matter what I did, however, whether it was self-publishing or traditional publishing that I would have to market myself. I also knew that this was going to be my weak spot. Sadly, I was right. (Go figure, huh?)

Really, I'm a nice girl. I'm a writer who writes reasonably enjoyable books, if you like vampires and werewolves and such. But I'm also a girl who is terrified, terrified, of doing the wrong thing, or pissing people off/alienating people. And the lines in promoting yourself are so thin between what works and what annoys people that it puts someone like me in a start of perpetual hyperventilation.

What's a girl to do?

Work hard. Work slow. Work thoughtfully.

I'm not trying to be an overnight sensation. In fact, I don't want to be. I'd love to be a happy mid-list author. My goal is to eventually release some books that actually cost something and make some money at it. That'd be great, but I really just want people to read my stuff and enjoy it. To enjoy the worlds I create.

Okay, but enough of that. Work hard! Work slow!

No one who fights the type of anxiety battles that I do is going to be able to dive in hard and fast without a heavy prescription for an anti-anxiety medication. (Which I'm not on, hence the harder work.) But that doesn't mean it's impossible. You just build yourself little by little.

Open up your social media accounts, watch and learn from what other people do. Jump out, peck at the dirt, jump back in. (Yes, this is a little bird metaphor. Go with me.) Send a few innocuous tweets. Post a little fun thing here and there on FB. Badger friends and family as the only people you're comfortable nagging to get you going.

Do you open up the Goodreads groups page and see all those groups with hundreds of people and quake with fear? (Oh, that's just me?) Or look at any other massive forum site and just turn and run? (This can't just be me.) Find one that's nicely small, suited to what you want, and then join. Be scared for a while. Introduce yourself. Hide under a blanket. Join a thread. Breathe deep.

One thing that has gained me a couple very nice writer friends is to, well, support the community. I got their stories on Smashwords, read them and wrote what I thought were thoughtful reviews and Followed on Twitter, as applicable. (Shout outs to Calista Taylor, Josh Langston, Shalini Boland and Lindsay Buroker for being nice to me.)

One thing I will say is that if you're a writer like I am, you may need to spend a little money on promotion for someone to help you out, like someone to help with a blog tour or an author's network.

I'd advise some, but I'm just researching them myself now. But I think I will not escape this entirely free. I understand totally about being on a poor-writer budget, but if you're not good at diving in, some help may be called for. More on this later if I find some that work for me.

My final thought on the matter is as such: in general, when it comes to promotion, we all actually learned what we need to know in elementary school: play nice, share, take turns, follow directions (like if a site says don't self-promote, or do it a certain way, listen!) and don't be mean.

You can do all this, and promote yourself, when you're terrified of people. It just takes a little more time and perseverance. I'll let you know how it goes as I get there, but I will get there!

I just might need a paper bag to breathe into as I do.

Sneak Peek!

I'm very happy to be able to say that it won't be too much longer before When Forever Died, Book Two in the Adelheid Series, will be released! In the meantime, here is a sneak peek at the cover art and back copy!

Also, Cameron's Law is now available free on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo and Smashwords!

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(Full Size)

Forever is a long time.

The life of a hunter is a lonely one. Perhaps more for Dakota than others in her line of work. Not only is she better than anyone else at chasing down the things that go bump in the night, but her past chases her with the same tenacity.

She's built walls around her solitary existence and that's the way she likes it, but the past never sleeps. When she's hired to hunt an ex-lover for murder, it's just the first in a string of memories that will bring Dakota's past, present and future into a collision course.

And when she agrees to take on a second case and hunt down an Ancient, a vampire over one thousand years old, it unleashes circumstances onto that collision that will shake the foundation of everything she's built and force her, for the first time in a long while, to look to others.

Can she survive it, like she's survived these past four centuries? Or will the weight of it all finally crush her?

Sanctuary – Available Now!

As I promised yesterday, Sanctuary is now available for the Kindle!

Starting tomorrow, it will be free until Monday!

Coming Soon

I know that this blog has been fairly quiet lately, and I'm sorry for that. I promise that I have been hard at work on new projects! One of these projects will be coming out soon.

Sanctuary is a short novella, post-apocalyptic erotic romance. It will be available from Amazon's Kindle Store, exclusively. I'm sorry to anyone who reads my stuff and doesn't have a Kindle! It will be .99, but there will be a free promotional period soon after release, so watch this space for that!

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Life isn't easy in Sanctuary City. For years, the world has been in shades of grey. The same could be said of its people. Everyone does what they must in order to survive.

That's what Lydia does. Survive. But more than that, she brings a little light into the lives of the people around her. Sometimes with sex. Sometimes with a kind word. An ear to listen. A shoulder to cry on. Whatever someone needs.

All she asks in return is the means to live, and to keep her secret safe.

Flynn survives, too. Does whatever he must, whatever he's asked, to get by. It's not until he meets Lydia that he thinks about actually living again, but it won't be so easy to find a life with her when he's not the only one who wants her. When someone wants her dead.

And Flynn's the one who was hired to kill her.

SOPA

I don't pretend to understand every aspect of a law, the process, the system or to be a close follower of politics. But, since the current bills of SOPA and PIPA have directly impacted areas I am present, they can't be ignored. And what I have read and been able to follow is enough to scare the hell out of me, and it should scare others, I think.

So, I'm hardly the most politically minded person in the world, but I'm supporting efforts to stop SOPA and PIPA. My site will not be going through the blackout, because quite frankly I know almost no one reads it and I don't think it will impact, but I have placed the Stop SOPA banner on my blog here and sent an email to Congress (via http://americancensorship.org/).

Hopefully others will too and the insanity will be stopped before it gets too far, because the more we know, the better.

Although I don't agree with the character on the whole, I think the following Ainsley Hayes quote from the West Wing sums up my feelings on this matter: "I believe that every time the Federal Government hands down a new law, it leaves for the rest of us a little less freedom. So I say let's stick to the ones we absolutely need in order to have water come out of the faucet and our cars not stolen."

And here is my inelegantly written statement. Do with it as you will, because you have the right to read it as much as I have the right to say it, and for us both to do with it as we please.

To Prologue, or Not to Prologue?

I don't actually have any book worried about having a prologue or not, but I've noticed among reviews and critiques of things that many people dislike prologues. Some rather intensely. While others are fans of them, or are writers who prefer to use them. I myself have nothing against prologues, so long as it suits the story.

But, I pose the question to you, dear reader, why do you dislike (or like) prologues? I'm curious to know if anyone has an opinion on this they would like to share!

Cameron's Law – Update!

Cameron's Law is now available at the Kindle Store for .99 because Amazon/KDP gets to decide if they price match a book offered free elsewhere. I've told them I want this and hopefully they will lower the price so it's free in digital form everywhere! If you're hard core Kindle, you can now find it available there at the lowest possible price.

It is now available in a Trade Paperback edition from Lulu for the cheapest I could make that, which is $10.00 – because they won't give away the print copies!

The sequel, When Forever Died, is going into editing stage one as soon as I start reading it and I'm writing a stand alone short story in the series at the moment. Will soon be plotting book three. Exciting stuff, stay tuned!

P.S. Anniversary is now out in the ebook/Kindle version of the Wake Up Dead Anthology, which I believe will be out in print soon, and it's gotten a five star rating (the whole anthology) from Ursula K. Raphael – "AstraDaemon, The Zombiephiles"

Cameron's Law

Vampires are people, too.

Cameron's Law has made all supernatural creatures legal citizens, and the boy next door has suddenly become the werewolf next door. With Sadie Stanton, vampire and one of the public faces of the legislation, calling the little town of Adelheid, Connecticut home, it can't help but be a focal point for these once mythical beings.

But when vampires start attacking werewolves without provocation, Adelheid draws the attention of those that would seek to have Cameron's Law repealed and would send the preternaturals back into the shadows they used to hide in, but without the safety of their anonymity and their law.

Can Sadie keep the city's two biggest species from descending into chaos and war before it brings all of them to harm? And can she do it when she herself gets thrust into the spotlight?

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Cameron's Law is available now through Smashwords for free! This is the first book in the Adelheid Series, and it's been a labor of love for me for many years. The first incarnation was written more than a decade ago, but time and maturation has led us to this moment and a far better book which I am ecstatic to release now to you at no cost.

I hope that you enjoy it enough to keep an eye out for the release of Book Two, When Forever Died, this coming Spring.

Right now, Cameron's Law is available through Smashwords. It will soon be available from the Kindle Store, and also soon in a print version at cost.

Read and enjoy!

Never Give Up…

…Never Surrender!

While I still counsel all authors to handle rejections and bad reviews with grace and poise, I will also warn you to not let it hurt you too greatly. Entertainment, such as books and music and movies, is a very subjective creature. Not everyone will like everything. If you receive a bad critique while writing, take what you can to improve you work.

If you receive a bad review, don't take it too greatly to heart because you never know what someone else will think.

My example today is that I have a short story available (Anniversary) that one person liked so much, they wanted to put it in a print anthology. Today I saw that the same story received only two out of five stars on a review at Goodreads. You can never guess nor predict what someone will think, so write what you love, do your best to make the best story, but don't be disheartened if someone dislikes it.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

Rules are Made…

…to be broken, but with care.

I've learned during the course of my life thus far that everyone thinks they are an expert about something. Writers, and those in the writing field, seem particularly prone to it. Perhaps this is because there aren't as clear cut "rules" about writing as there are about, say, science… so people make them up and then are convinced they're the authority.

Who knows? It just seems like everyone who has ever strung a sentence together thinks they know how others should write. And that's not to say that they don't have a piece of the puzzle, but writing is very subjective in many areas. What works for one person isn't guaranteed to work for another.

So, my best advice… and, no, I'm no expert… is to listen to a lot, think a lot, and make the best decisions for you and for your stories, and sometimes that will be not taking someone's advice. Don't ignore what others say out of ego, because that gets no one anywhere, but out of what will work best.

Because the fact of the matter is that if a writer doesn't enjoy what they're writing, nine times out of ten, the reader will know it and they won't enjoy reading it. So, you have to be okay with what and how you're writing your story. So if you're taking everyone's advice and changing things until you're discontent? It likely isn't going to work very well for anyone.

Remember that you can't make all the people happy all the time, and sometimes you'll get conflicting advice. Choose Wisely is the best advice I think can be offered.