Richard Stephenson's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-tips"
Writing "Collapse" - A Behind the Scenes Look
When I first began writing Collapse, it started with a thought that had been mulling around in my head for years. In my fifteen years of law enforcement, I have worked at a maximum security prison. After I left the military, I worked for a brief period of time for the Louisiana Department of Corrections. The most fascinating thing about the experience was that the two week academy was at Angola State Prison, one of the country's most famous maximum security prisons. The 1995 Academy Award winning film Dead Man Walking , starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, was based on a true story set in the same prison.
I remember very clearly sitting in class one day and the instructor said something that stayed with me till this very day. He said "Don't think for one second that you are any better than the inmates in your charge. Each one of us is one bad decision or being in that one place at the wrong time away from being an inmate. It could happen to any of us. You get behind the wheel drunk and kill someone, you come home to find your spouse in bed with someone else, any number of things can turn any law-abiding citizen into a convicted felon."
I couldn't stop thinking about what he said. What would land me in prison? The thought haunted me for several years and was the first tidbit that turned a simple idea into a book. The character of Richard Dupree began over a decade ago with me sitting in a classroom at Angola State Prison. The crime that ultimately led to the ex-Navy SEAL being in prison is one of the few things that would most certainly land me in jail if the same thing happened to me.
As the chapters began to take shape on my iPad and Mac, I found that the easiest way to write anything is to write about what you know. Drawing on your own experiences and knowledge is probably the most interesting vehicle to story-telling. I'm sure that many a writer would agree with me. Looking into the mirror and finding the darkness in your life and confronting it can be soul-wrenching, but putting that darkness into words can build the foundation to an incredible story.
"Which character is you?" My wife asked me that question after reading the introductory chapters to each of the three main characters in Collapse. The truth is, all three of them are variations of me on some level. No, I was never a Navy SEAL and I'm certainly not the world's richest man. The personalities of all three men are inspired from the journeys the created the man I am today.
The first character I created was Chief Maxwell Harris. I created Maxwell and turned him into a burnt-out drug addict with chronic pain. Before you start judging me, know this, I am not a drug addict and never have been. I have dealt with chronic pain and fully understand how easily it can be to get addicted to pain pills. In early 2011, I woke up one morning in the worst pain I had ever felt in my life. I could not stand up straight and spent most of the day laying on my bedroom floor. I would later find out that I had two bulging discs in my back and a torn muscle at the bottom of my left shoulder blade that didn't heal properly from an injury I sustained in the military. Over the next six months, I visited a chiropractor, a physical therapist, and frequented a pain management clinic. That six month period was one of the worst times of my life. I was in constant pain. I also took generous amounts of Vicodin and Soma prescribed to me by a physician. I was not fond of the drugs making my mind foggy and making me tired all the time. I was however, quite fond of being high as a kite. It was fantastic to have a perpetual sense of euphoria. I was never foolish enough to let the pain meds take control of my life, I love my job and my family far too much to jeopardize them. Once physical therapy worked out the problems with my back and the pain doctor gave me a shot in the damaged muscle, I haven't taken either of the pills since. What I did take away from the experience was the understanding of addiction.
Max also shares another quality with me. He's content to coast through life on auto-pilot. The phrase Max says to Elizabeth "A life without ambition is an easy one" are words actually spoken by me up until I started writing this book. I have a beautiful, loving wife and two wonderful children. My life is a pretty good one, why bother for more? It wasn't until I started writing this book that I realized that my life was absent passion and determination. I was happy to do my best as a loving husband and devoted father. I'm sure my wife would tell you that she hasn't seen me so invigorated and full of life since I was a teenager. As I have awoken to try to attain my full potential, so will Max.
The second character I created for this book was Richard Dupree. Living in Southeast Texas, I am a veteran of many hurricanes. Two of those hurricanes, Rita and Ike, disrupted the comforts of daily life and on many levels, served as a true test to the survival skills of many people. I remember when the sun rose after Ike exited my hometown, we were in a complete and total communication blackout. No cell phones, no internet, no cable, no radio or tv stations, nothing. I remember thinking very clearly that aliens could have landed on the White House lawn and we'd have been none the wiser. We were on our own, if only for a brief period of time. Later that day we found bars on our cell phones and called our loved ones that we evacuated to safety. Hurricane Ike opened my eyes to survival and set the stage for the downfall of America in the year 2027. Richard Dupree represents the survivor that imagine myself to be.
The last and without a doubt my favorite character in the book is Howard Beck. Once I gave Howard Asperger's Syndrome, he became in my mind the adult version of my son, who also has Asperger's. Howard also represents me in many ways. When I was thirteen, I was placed in the gifted class at my middle school. I was given an IQ test and was later told that I have a genius IQ. Telling something like that to a thirteen-year old boy does wonders for his ego. I graduated high school and college both in three years. A few months after my twentieth birthday, I had my Bachelor's degree. For my entire life I have had a mind that races in multiple directions at once. The race car in my head has caused me to suffer insomnia for many years and at one point led me to believe that I was going insane. Howard is definitely much smarter than me, but he is cursed with the same race car in his head. Where I have been able to pump the brakes on my race car, poor Howard has never had the same luck.
I have also enjoyed putting my own likes and interests into the book. My childhood idol was and still is Captain Picard, just like Howard. My favorite science fiction books are the Odyssey series by Arthur C. Clarke, which quite obviously are the inspiration behind Howard's digital assistant. Max loves to play video games, particularly Modern Warfare, just like me. Richard is locked up in a prison, an environment I am quite familiar with. There are many more examples sprinkled onto the pages, far too many to list.
My years of military service have also given me insight to write much of the book. Howard meets two soldiers at one point in the book, both of which are named after my former CO and First Sergeant. In late 1999, I was with the 204th Military Police Company and held the honor of being a member of the last military unit stationed on the Panama Canal. I spent many a day at the front gate of Fort Clayton looking at the Miraflores Locks watching many extremely large vessels pass in front of me. My interest in those ships gave me a fondness of naval battles and was the inspiration for The Battle of the Port of Gibraltar.
It is also a lot of fun to give special winks out to my friends and family. The President of the United States is named after my best friend, his wife is the President's Chief of Staff. When you first visit the Clinton Room, my relatives pretty much fill the room, they know who they are. A revision was made to the sneak peek and the aircraft carrier that takes back the Port of Gibraltar is named after my father. For the past four years, I have been active in the employees union at my job. Later in the book there is a meeting and many of my union brothers will find their last names mentioned in quite a humorous setting. When I wrote about Richard Dupree's daughter, I pictured my daughter when she was a toddler. Once you finish the book, you will understand just how hard it was for me to picture her sweet little face and mousy voice. Even both of my cats are in the book. Elizabeth's little spaz, Callie, is the same cat that sits in my lap while I write my book. Howard's grumpy cat, Nala, is our oldest cat, one that I haven't picked up since she was a kitten. She growls and swats at everyone except our daughter.
Write what you know. You will be amazed at how easily telling a story can be.Collapse (New America, #1) Sneak Peek
I remember very clearly sitting in class one day and the instructor said something that stayed with me till this very day. He said "Don't think for one second that you are any better than the inmates in your charge. Each one of us is one bad decision or being in that one place at the wrong time away from being an inmate. It could happen to any of us. You get behind the wheel drunk and kill someone, you come home to find your spouse in bed with someone else, any number of things can turn any law-abiding citizen into a convicted felon."
I couldn't stop thinking about what he said. What would land me in prison? The thought haunted me for several years and was the first tidbit that turned a simple idea into a book. The character of Richard Dupree began over a decade ago with me sitting in a classroom at Angola State Prison. The crime that ultimately led to the ex-Navy SEAL being in prison is one of the few things that would most certainly land me in jail if the same thing happened to me.
As the chapters began to take shape on my iPad and Mac, I found that the easiest way to write anything is to write about what you know. Drawing on your own experiences and knowledge is probably the most interesting vehicle to story-telling. I'm sure that many a writer would agree with me. Looking into the mirror and finding the darkness in your life and confronting it can be soul-wrenching, but putting that darkness into words can build the foundation to an incredible story.
"Which character is you?" My wife asked me that question after reading the introductory chapters to each of the three main characters in Collapse. The truth is, all three of them are variations of me on some level. No, I was never a Navy SEAL and I'm certainly not the world's richest man. The personalities of all three men are inspired from the journeys the created the man I am today.
The first character I created was Chief Maxwell Harris. I created Maxwell and turned him into a burnt-out drug addict with chronic pain. Before you start judging me, know this, I am not a drug addict and never have been. I have dealt with chronic pain and fully understand how easily it can be to get addicted to pain pills. In early 2011, I woke up one morning in the worst pain I had ever felt in my life. I could not stand up straight and spent most of the day laying on my bedroom floor. I would later find out that I had two bulging discs in my back and a torn muscle at the bottom of my left shoulder blade that didn't heal properly from an injury I sustained in the military. Over the next six months, I visited a chiropractor, a physical therapist, and frequented a pain management clinic. That six month period was one of the worst times of my life. I was in constant pain. I also took generous amounts of Vicodin and Soma prescribed to me by a physician. I was not fond of the drugs making my mind foggy and making me tired all the time. I was however, quite fond of being high as a kite. It was fantastic to have a perpetual sense of euphoria. I was never foolish enough to let the pain meds take control of my life, I love my job and my family far too much to jeopardize them. Once physical therapy worked out the problems with my back and the pain doctor gave me a shot in the damaged muscle, I haven't taken either of the pills since. What I did take away from the experience was the understanding of addiction.
Max also shares another quality with me. He's content to coast through life on auto-pilot. The phrase Max says to Elizabeth "A life without ambition is an easy one" are words actually spoken by me up until I started writing this book. I have a beautiful, loving wife and two wonderful children. My life is a pretty good one, why bother for more? It wasn't until I started writing this book that I realized that my life was absent passion and determination. I was happy to do my best as a loving husband and devoted father. I'm sure my wife would tell you that she hasn't seen me so invigorated and full of life since I was a teenager. As I have awoken to try to attain my full potential, so will Max.
The second character I created for this book was Richard Dupree. Living in Southeast Texas, I am a veteran of many hurricanes. Two of those hurricanes, Rita and Ike, disrupted the comforts of daily life and on many levels, served as a true test to the survival skills of many people. I remember when the sun rose after Ike exited my hometown, we were in a complete and total communication blackout. No cell phones, no internet, no cable, no radio or tv stations, nothing. I remember thinking very clearly that aliens could have landed on the White House lawn and we'd have been none the wiser. We were on our own, if only for a brief period of time. Later that day we found bars on our cell phones and called our loved ones that we evacuated to safety. Hurricane Ike opened my eyes to survival and set the stage for the downfall of America in the year 2027. Richard Dupree represents the survivor that imagine myself to be.
The last and without a doubt my favorite character in the book is Howard Beck. Once I gave Howard Asperger's Syndrome, he became in my mind the adult version of my son, who also has Asperger's. Howard also represents me in many ways. When I was thirteen, I was placed in the gifted class at my middle school. I was given an IQ test and was later told that I have a genius IQ. Telling something like that to a thirteen-year old boy does wonders for his ego. I graduated high school and college both in three years. A few months after my twentieth birthday, I had my Bachelor's degree. For my entire life I have had a mind that races in multiple directions at once. The race car in my head has caused me to suffer insomnia for many years and at one point led me to believe that I was going insane. Howard is definitely much smarter than me, but he is cursed with the same race car in his head. Where I have been able to pump the brakes on my race car, poor Howard has never had the same luck.
I have also enjoyed putting my own likes and interests into the book. My childhood idol was and still is Captain Picard, just like Howard. My favorite science fiction books are the Odyssey series by Arthur C. Clarke, which quite obviously are the inspiration behind Howard's digital assistant. Max loves to play video games, particularly Modern Warfare, just like me. Richard is locked up in a prison, an environment I am quite familiar with. There are many more examples sprinkled onto the pages, far too many to list.
My years of military service have also given me insight to write much of the book. Howard meets two soldiers at one point in the book, both of which are named after my former CO and First Sergeant. In late 1999, I was with the 204th Military Police Company and held the honor of being a member of the last military unit stationed on the Panama Canal. I spent many a day at the front gate of Fort Clayton looking at the Miraflores Locks watching many extremely large vessels pass in front of me. My interest in those ships gave me a fondness of naval battles and was the inspiration for The Battle of the Port of Gibraltar.
It is also a lot of fun to give special winks out to my friends and family. The President of the United States is named after my best friend, his wife is the President's Chief of Staff. When you first visit the Clinton Room, my relatives pretty much fill the room, they know who they are. A revision was made to the sneak peek and the aircraft carrier that takes back the Port of Gibraltar is named after my father. For the past four years, I have been active in the employees union at my job. Later in the book there is a meeting and many of my union brothers will find their last names mentioned in quite a humorous setting. When I wrote about Richard Dupree's daughter, I pictured my daughter when she was a toddler. Once you finish the book, you will understand just how hard it was for me to picture her sweet little face and mousy voice. Even both of my cats are in the book. Elizabeth's little spaz, Callie, is the same cat that sits in my lap while I write my book. Howard's grumpy cat, Nala, is our oldest cat, one that I haven't picked up since she was a kitten. She growls and swats at everyone except our daughter.
Write what you know. You will be amazed at how easily telling a story can be.Collapse (New America, #1) Sneak Peek
An Independent Author's Guide to Free Promotion
Collapse (New America, #1) Sneak Peek
Advertising is hard. I don't know how the guys on Mad Men do it. I had to jump right in it with both feet because I had little choice. I'm an indie author. I exemplify "independent" in every possible way. I have no agent, no publicist, no major publshing house behind me doing the heavy lifting so I can focus on nothing but writing. All I have are some close friends and family reading each chapter as I finish them. They call me on mistakes and try to poke holes in the plot so I can fix them.
I had a very naive expectation that all I had to do was plant a seed about my novel and with little intervention from me, the seed would sprout into a mighty redwood, attracting enthusiastic booklovers from all over the land. "What is this exciting novel about?" "Please, tell me more about your book, dear author, please!" "When can I buy your book?!" I would sit back and toss tidbits of information to my growing fanbase while I could focus on writing.
I was in for quite a shock. My vision of letting the advertising fire burn bright and long with the occasional log tossed in by me was a joke. Advertising is hard. Promotion is hard. It requires much more work than I imagined. One thing is for certain, no one outside of your friends and family will buy your book if they don't know that it exists. If you are just a regular Joe Blow like me, you have to get the word out yourself.
The most popular means of self-promotion is without a doubt social media. You can create your own Facebook Page for your novel free of charge. With a little work and inputting some details, you can create the page in no time at all. So, you've got 300 Facebook friends, that means that at least half of them will click the "Share" button and help spread the word, right? Don't count on it. You get tired of the requests to join someone's Mafia or water someone's crops in Farmville? Do you get irritated with the status updates claiming that if you don't click "Like" or "Share" it means that you kick puppies and support poverty? Out of my friends and family, only 19 people clicked the "Like" button. Anytime I post something about my novel, I simply ask "Help me out and click the share button". You'd have thought I was asking someone to click "launch" on a nuclear missle. I'm lucky to get three or four people to click "share". It bothered me at first, but then I thought back to all the times I would growl at my monitor "Don't tell me what to do!" when someone was trying to guilt me into sharing a story. Turnabout is fair play I suppose. A little support would have been nice, but I'm not begging for it anymore. Well, actually, I'll stop begging after this. Please hit the like button and share this. Pretty please? OK, now I'm done with the begging. Moving on.
Facebook http://on.fb.me/HsSci2
The next challenge was Twitter. I could not for the life of me understand the need for it. I have Facebook, if people want to keep tabs on me, they can do it there. Why do I need Twitter? I relly don't care about every random celebrity thought. I created a Twitter page and came back a week later to find thirty followers. And half of those were spam, dirty spam if you really want to know. I decided to spend an afternoon with Twitter and I finally got it. Twitter is a great way to connect with people from all over the world that share the same interests. What is your novel about? Who is your audience? Reach out to them and find them, they have no reason to find you if they don't know anything about you. Once I figured that out, I made it past 400 followers in a week. I actually got a little overzealous on Twitter and they temporarily suspended my account. Guess they thought I was a spambot or something. I had to reply to an email and promise to dial it down a few notches. Hopefully they will let me back on the playground soon.
Twitter http://bit.ly/I6gQVu
Along with Facebook and Twitter, I did similar things on Google+, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Digg, and a few things that I can't recall this second.
The next phase in my free advertising plan was to create a YouTube video, simply a two minute trailer for my novel. I sat down in front of my Mac and fired up Microsoft Powerpoint. (Yes, I got Microsoft Office with my Mac purchase, figure that one out.) I figured I would keep things simple. Its nothing like a trailer for a summer action movie. I used a solid black background and white lettering. The hardest part was deciding on the music. I fiddled around with Garage Band for about an hour and gave up on that idea. My musical talents are non-existent and I was getting nowhere fast. Then it came to me. Non-copyrighted material that could be downloaded for free use. After scouring a few sites, I narrowed the finalists down to six pieces. After my own private American Idol contest, I decided on a winner. Here's a bit of behind the scenes trivia, the piece is a group of monks chanting. No instruments, just a beautifully eerie chant that was perfect for the video.
YouTube http://bit.ly/Hn9NF3
The most successful means of self promotion was the free sneak peek that I offer. I made my chapter outline and figured that I could make the character introduction chapters and the following three chapters that set the stage for the book into a sneak peek. Nothing beats positive word of mouth. It is the ultimate goal of any advertiser, get the consumer to tell other consumers about a product. I polished off the first seven chapters and uploaded them to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Much to my disappointment, they couldn't be free, a minimum charge of 99 cents applies. Wanting the sneak peek to make it to the masses for free, I uploaded three versions of it to Rapidshare and to a torrent site for the Bit Torrent community. As far as a I can track, the sneak peek has been downloaded over 600 times. It could be twice that for all I know, once you put something into the bit torrent cloud, it has a life of its own. See for yourself, I uploaded it to one site, just one. Look at it now.
Google Search Results http://bit.ly/HjHgzE
Does this all seem like a little too much for you? Do you have a hard time just keeping the formatting straight when you type? Did you know that ebooks have several different formats? Do you know how to convert the formats? Does making and uploading a YouTube video seem impossible to you? Do you know how to upload a file to the file sharing community to distribute your work? Can you do it?
I can. I'm a computer nerd, a real tech-head. I'm the guy that you bring your broken computer or laptop. I'm the guy you ask about what smartphone is better. I'm the guy that helps you decide between a Kindle Fire or an iPad. When I made the detailed plan to promote this book, I realized that I could offer the same service to other aspiring authors. Once I looked at the competition, I knew I could do it for a better price. I was shocked to discover that other companies only give authors about half of the royalties, some as low as 40%. Armed with the technical know how, I founded the Stephenson & Powers Publishing House. My business partner, Carl Powers, is along for the ride. We plan to offer aspiring authors 75% of the royalties of their book. No money up front, we don't make a dime until the author does.
Homepage http://bit.ly/HGUv0F
Once I finish my first novel, I will be able to focus on getting the company off the ground. I hope that I can help out my fellow authors.
Advertising is hard. I don't know how the guys on Mad Men do it. I had to jump right in it with both feet because I had little choice. I'm an indie author. I exemplify "independent" in every possible way. I have no agent, no publicist, no major publshing house behind me doing the heavy lifting so I can focus on nothing but writing. All I have are some close friends and family reading each chapter as I finish them. They call me on mistakes and try to poke holes in the plot so I can fix them.
I had a very naive expectation that all I had to do was plant a seed about my novel and with little intervention from me, the seed would sprout into a mighty redwood, attracting enthusiastic booklovers from all over the land. "What is this exciting novel about?" "Please, tell me more about your book, dear author, please!" "When can I buy your book?!" I would sit back and toss tidbits of information to my growing fanbase while I could focus on writing.
I was in for quite a shock. My vision of letting the advertising fire burn bright and long with the occasional log tossed in by me was a joke. Advertising is hard. Promotion is hard. It requires much more work than I imagined. One thing is for certain, no one outside of your friends and family will buy your book if they don't know that it exists. If you are just a regular Joe Blow like me, you have to get the word out yourself.
The most popular means of self-promotion is without a doubt social media. You can create your own Facebook Page for your novel free of charge. With a little work and inputting some details, you can create the page in no time at all. So, you've got 300 Facebook friends, that means that at least half of them will click the "Share" button and help spread the word, right? Don't count on it. You get tired of the requests to join someone's Mafia or water someone's crops in Farmville? Do you get irritated with the status updates claiming that if you don't click "Like" or "Share" it means that you kick puppies and support poverty? Out of my friends and family, only 19 people clicked the "Like" button. Anytime I post something about my novel, I simply ask "Help me out and click the share button". You'd have thought I was asking someone to click "launch" on a nuclear missle. I'm lucky to get three or four people to click "share". It bothered me at first, but then I thought back to all the times I would growl at my monitor "Don't tell me what to do!" when someone was trying to guilt me into sharing a story. Turnabout is fair play I suppose. A little support would have been nice, but I'm not begging for it anymore. Well, actually, I'll stop begging after this. Please hit the like button and share this. Pretty please? OK, now I'm done with the begging. Moving on.
Facebook http://on.fb.me/HsSci2
The next challenge was Twitter. I could not for the life of me understand the need for it. I have Facebook, if people want to keep tabs on me, they can do it there. Why do I need Twitter? I relly don't care about every random celebrity thought. I created a Twitter page and came back a week later to find thirty followers. And half of those were spam, dirty spam if you really want to know. I decided to spend an afternoon with Twitter and I finally got it. Twitter is a great way to connect with people from all over the world that share the same interests. What is your novel about? Who is your audience? Reach out to them and find them, they have no reason to find you if they don't know anything about you. Once I figured that out, I made it past 400 followers in a week. I actually got a little overzealous on Twitter and they temporarily suspended my account. Guess they thought I was a spambot or something. I had to reply to an email and promise to dial it down a few notches. Hopefully they will let me back on the playground soon.
Twitter http://bit.ly/I6gQVu
Along with Facebook and Twitter, I did similar things on Google+, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Digg, and a few things that I can't recall this second.
The next phase in my free advertising plan was to create a YouTube video, simply a two minute trailer for my novel. I sat down in front of my Mac and fired up Microsoft Powerpoint. (Yes, I got Microsoft Office with my Mac purchase, figure that one out.) I figured I would keep things simple. Its nothing like a trailer for a summer action movie. I used a solid black background and white lettering. The hardest part was deciding on the music. I fiddled around with Garage Band for about an hour and gave up on that idea. My musical talents are non-existent and I was getting nowhere fast. Then it came to me. Non-copyrighted material that could be downloaded for free use. After scouring a few sites, I narrowed the finalists down to six pieces. After my own private American Idol contest, I decided on a winner. Here's a bit of behind the scenes trivia, the piece is a group of monks chanting. No instruments, just a beautifully eerie chant that was perfect for the video.
YouTube http://bit.ly/Hn9NF3
The most successful means of self promotion was the free sneak peek that I offer. I made my chapter outline and figured that I could make the character introduction chapters and the following three chapters that set the stage for the book into a sneak peek. Nothing beats positive word of mouth. It is the ultimate goal of any advertiser, get the consumer to tell other consumers about a product. I polished off the first seven chapters and uploaded them to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Much to my disappointment, they couldn't be free, a minimum charge of 99 cents applies. Wanting the sneak peek to make it to the masses for free, I uploaded three versions of it to Rapidshare and to a torrent site for the Bit Torrent community. As far as a I can track, the sneak peek has been downloaded over 600 times. It could be twice that for all I know, once you put something into the bit torrent cloud, it has a life of its own. See for yourself, I uploaded it to one site, just one. Look at it now.
Google Search Results http://bit.ly/HjHgzE
Does this all seem like a little too much for you? Do you have a hard time just keeping the formatting straight when you type? Did you know that ebooks have several different formats? Do you know how to convert the formats? Does making and uploading a YouTube video seem impossible to you? Do you know how to upload a file to the file sharing community to distribute your work? Can you do it?
I can. I'm a computer nerd, a real tech-head. I'm the guy that you bring your broken computer or laptop. I'm the guy you ask about what smartphone is better. I'm the guy that helps you decide between a Kindle Fire or an iPad. When I made the detailed plan to promote this book, I realized that I could offer the same service to other aspiring authors. Once I looked at the competition, I knew I could do it for a better price. I was shocked to discover that other companies only give authors about half of the royalties, some as low as 40%. Armed with the technical know how, I founded the Stephenson & Powers Publishing House. My business partner, Carl Powers, is along for the ride. We plan to offer aspiring authors 75% of the royalties of their book. No money up front, we don't make a dime until the author does.
Homepage http://bit.ly/HGUv0F
Once I finish my first novel, I will be able to focus on getting the company off the ground. I hope that I can help out my fellow authors.
The Journey to the End
Anyone that knows me is very aware that I am a huge fan of the TV show "Lost". I devoured every episode and obsessed on every tiny detail. Every single thing about the show was so impressive to me. The production value, the acting, and most of all, the writing. How they managed to keep so many threads weaving in and out of the characters and the plot always blew me away.
I recall that throughout the show, critics often stated that the showrunners had no idea what was going on with the show, they had nothing planned out and they just made it up as they went along. I just couldn't believe something like that. I still don't believe it to this day.
I remember listening to a podcast from the showrunners, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelhof. In the podcast they addressed the claim that they were making it up as they went along. They stated something that I think holds true to any writer. Allow me to paraphrase, "We definitely have the story planned out from start to finish. We know how it all ends, we know what the island is and why these people were brought to the island and what they are supposed to do. The story is like a journey that starts in LA and ends in New York City. We know why they are going to New York and what they will do when they arrive. What we don't know are the finer details of the journey. How will they get there? Will they stop in St. Louis on the way? Will they hop on a train for part of the trip? Who makes it to the end and who doesn't? Those kinds of details are something you can't really plan, the story determines those details. The story shapes and molds the details as you go."
That stuck with me when I started writing "Collapse". Before I began the first chapter, I spent about a week charting a chapter outline, detailed character bios, and how the plot would carry the characters to the end. When the chapters began to add up, I always kept that thought in the back of my mind. Sometimes great ideas from the outline seemed really cool but slowed down the pace of the story. I even had a few chapters planned out that were essential to the plot, but didn't warrant an entire chapter. Those chapters ended being whittled down into a story one character told to another character. Along the journey to the end of the book, many details have ended up changing because the story demanded it.
When the novel is complete and the readers embark on the journey to the end of the novel, I suppose I will dust off my notes and see how different the end product turned out. Might even be fun to tell the readers some of my original ideas and give them a peek behind the scenes.
I recall that throughout the show, critics often stated that the showrunners had no idea what was going on with the show, they had nothing planned out and they just made it up as they went along. I just couldn't believe something like that. I still don't believe it to this day.
I remember listening to a podcast from the showrunners, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelhof. In the podcast they addressed the claim that they were making it up as they went along. They stated something that I think holds true to any writer. Allow me to paraphrase, "We definitely have the story planned out from start to finish. We know how it all ends, we know what the island is and why these people were brought to the island and what they are supposed to do. The story is like a journey that starts in LA and ends in New York City. We know why they are going to New York and what they will do when they arrive. What we don't know are the finer details of the journey. How will they get there? Will they stop in St. Louis on the way? Will they hop on a train for part of the trip? Who makes it to the end and who doesn't? Those kinds of details are something you can't really plan, the story determines those details. The story shapes and molds the details as you go."
That stuck with me when I started writing "Collapse". Before I began the first chapter, I spent about a week charting a chapter outline, detailed character bios, and how the plot would carry the characters to the end. When the chapters began to add up, I always kept that thought in the back of my mind. Sometimes great ideas from the outline seemed really cool but slowed down the pace of the story. I even had a few chapters planned out that were essential to the plot, but didn't warrant an entire chapter. Those chapters ended being whittled down into a story one character told to another character. Along the journey to the end of the book, many details have ended up changing because the story demanded it.
When the novel is complete and the readers embark on the journey to the end of the novel, I suppose I will dust off my notes and see how different the end product turned out. Might even be fun to tell the readers some of my original ideas and give them a peek behind the scenes.
"Independent Author" - An Oxymoron
Independent Author
That phrase for me is the textbook definition of an oxymoron, like "Act Naturally" or "Jumbo Shrimp". I understand that the term was coined to mean independent of the Big Six publishing houses. The meaning of the term should stop right there and should never be used in any other sense.
I started writing "Collapse" back in March. I wasn't even sure I was going to write a novel when I sat down in front of my iMac. I just wanted to see if I could do it. I spit out a few chapters and eventually made an outline. I let my wife and best friend read it and they were impressed. They encouraged me to keep writing and told me I had talent. After the first seven chapters I was excited to get the word out and decided to release a sneak peek. I dumped each chapter into an online grammar check website and made a lot of corrections thinking it was polished and ready for distribution.
Holy cow was I wrong!
I got a lot of feedback from friends and family about how much they enjoyed the story, a few told me that it had some typos and grammar issues. They also added that it didn't take away from the story, but the mistakes were there. About a week later I did a Google search of my novel to see if any interest was growing and found my way into a forum on a book lover's website. They tore me to pieces. After highlighting a few glaring mistakes on the first page, I took the time to slow down and investigate. Sure enough, the first page had two pretty big grammar mistakes. I slowly and carefully read the first chapter to find more and more mistakes. Just hold on a second, I proclaimed, what about the online grammar checks I did? Surely they caught everything, right? Nope. Not even close. It was clear that I needed help, lots and lots of help. It was time to find an editor.
I took down the sneak peek and received a gift from God. It turned out that I knew a retired high school English teacher and didn't even know it. My sister-in-law's mother-in-law had been very excited about the news that I was writing a novel. I simply thought that she was a supportive fan. She always replied to my Facebook posts and shared the news on her's. She kindly offered to edit out the mistakes from my sneak peek and she did a fantastic job. She informed me that in her spare time, she edits for friends and family (books, magazine articles, etc.) Within a few days, the sneak peek was back up I asked Susan if she would be willing to look at the chapters as I finished them and she enthusiastically said yes. She stuck with me to the end and polished my manuscript into what it is today.
With an editor on board, I realized I still needed help. I needed proof readers to give me input on the story. The story made perfect sense to me seeing as how I was the one writing it. I had to make sure that it would make sense to the average reader. My proof readers were there to point out when the story starting getting confusing. They also pointed out contradictions and factual errors that I didn't catch. The most memorable one was during Chief Harris's introductory chapter. I wrote that one of the hurricanes he weathered, Hurricane Ike (one that I weathered myself) was a Category 5 storm. Well, it was pointed out to me that Ike was not a 5, he was a 3. You would think that the memorable event of a raging hurricane passing over me at 4am would ensure I would get that detail right. That mistake was one of many I made during the creation of "Collapse". If I didn't have proof readers to help me out, the book would have a lot of embarrassing errors.
Once I decided on a release date for my novel, I knew that the book needed a cover. While I like to think I have a talent for writing, I know without a doubt that I have absolutely no artistic skills whatsoever. While I am quite the computer nerd, I have no talent with graphic design programs. Play "Draw Something" with me on your iPhone and see for yourself, I'm a horrible artist. I was fortunate enough to have interacted with a wonderful artist on Twitter. Laura Wright LaRoche at www.llpix.com did a fantastic job. After exchanging a few emails detailing exactly what I wanted, she sent me the design in just a couple of days. I only wanted a a few minor changes and got this masterpiece.
http://rastephensonauthor.blogspot.co...
My advice to any aspiring independent author, get help. You're going to need it.
That phrase for me is the textbook definition of an oxymoron, like "Act Naturally" or "Jumbo Shrimp". I understand that the term was coined to mean independent of the Big Six publishing houses. The meaning of the term should stop right there and should never be used in any other sense.
I started writing "Collapse" back in March. I wasn't even sure I was going to write a novel when I sat down in front of my iMac. I just wanted to see if I could do it. I spit out a few chapters and eventually made an outline. I let my wife and best friend read it and they were impressed. They encouraged me to keep writing and told me I had talent. After the first seven chapters I was excited to get the word out and decided to release a sneak peek. I dumped each chapter into an online grammar check website and made a lot of corrections thinking it was polished and ready for distribution.
Holy cow was I wrong!
I got a lot of feedback from friends and family about how much they enjoyed the story, a few told me that it had some typos and grammar issues. They also added that it didn't take away from the story, but the mistakes were there. About a week later I did a Google search of my novel to see if any interest was growing and found my way into a forum on a book lover's website. They tore me to pieces. After highlighting a few glaring mistakes on the first page, I took the time to slow down and investigate. Sure enough, the first page had two pretty big grammar mistakes. I slowly and carefully read the first chapter to find more and more mistakes. Just hold on a second, I proclaimed, what about the online grammar checks I did? Surely they caught everything, right? Nope. Not even close. It was clear that I needed help, lots and lots of help. It was time to find an editor.
I took down the sneak peek and received a gift from God. It turned out that I knew a retired high school English teacher and didn't even know it. My sister-in-law's mother-in-law had been very excited about the news that I was writing a novel. I simply thought that she was a supportive fan. She always replied to my Facebook posts and shared the news on her's. She kindly offered to edit out the mistakes from my sneak peek and she did a fantastic job. She informed me that in her spare time, she edits for friends and family (books, magazine articles, etc.) Within a few days, the sneak peek was back up I asked Susan if she would be willing to look at the chapters as I finished them and she enthusiastically said yes. She stuck with me to the end and polished my manuscript into what it is today.
With an editor on board, I realized I still needed help. I needed proof readers to give me input on the story. The story made perfect sense to me seeing as how I was the one writing it. I had to make sure that it would make sense to the average reader. My proof readers were there to point out when the story starting getting confusing. They also pointed out contradictions and factual errors that I didn't catch. The most memorable one was during Chief Harris's introductory chapter. I wrote that one of the hurricanes he weathered, Hurricane Ike (one that I weathered myself) was a Category 5 storm. Well, it was pointed out to me that Ike was not a 5, he was a 3. You would think that the memorable event of a raging hurricane passing over me at 4am would ensure I would get that detail right. That mistake was one of many I made during the creation of "Collapse". If I didn't have proof readers to help me out, the book would have a lot of embarrassing errors.
Once I decided on a release date for my novel, I knew that the book needed a cover. While I like to think I have a talent for writing, I know without a doubt that I have absolutely no artistic skills whatsoever. While I am quite the computer nerd, I have no talent with graphic design programs. Play "Draw Something" with me on your iPhone and see for yourself, I'm a horrible artist. I was fortunate enough to have interacted with a wonderful artist on Twitter. Laura Wright LaRoche at www.llpix.com did a fantastic job. After exchanging a few emails detailing exactly what I wanted, she sent me the design in just a couple of days. I only wanted a a few minor changes and got this masterpiece.
http://rastephensonauthor.blogspot.co...
My advice to any aspiring independent author, get help. You're going to need it.
Indie Author's Guide To Twitter
When I started writing Collapse at the end of February, I did painstaking research on how to promote the book to the masses. Most of that research pointed back to Twitter and that bothered me a great deal. I couldn't understand Twitter for the life of me. My opinion of Twitter up to that point was "If people want to know what is going on with me, they should just check my Facebook page." I started up a Twitter account and set about writing my novel. I checked back a week later and had gained a minuscule amount of followers (most of them porn or spam, would that be considered porny spam or spammy porn?)
I was determined to figure out this mystery that was Twitter. I had absolutely no clue how it worked. I did so many Google searches it was ridiculous - What is this "RT" that people keep putting in their tweets? Why are people using the pound symbol # and what does it do? And the acronyms, oh the acronyms! FF, DM, FYB, and many more. I still find myself searching to find the meanings for this little twitter codes.
I've decided to share my knowledge as I understand it. Please comment if you care to add some helpful information.
TWITTER BASICS
If you have the basics down, feel free to skip down to the next section. This is for the people that were like me at the beginning and had to search for the meaning of "RT" - it means "Retweet" by the way.
Followers - Your most valuable asset on Twitter. How do you get followers? We will discuss that in the next section.
Following - Are the people that you are following. The easiest and most effective way to get followers is to follow people in the hopes that they follow you back. At the start, you can follow up to 2000 people before Twitter enacts a follow limit. As an indie author, who should you follow? We'll discuss that later.
Tweets - The micro-blogging feature of Twitter. You can send out tweets up to 140 characters.
Hastags (#) - You can put a hashtag symbol in front of keywords or phrases to help categorize your tweets. This function helps people do searches for tweets by category. More on this later.
RT - Retweets. If you find a particular tweet that you like, you can hit the retweet button and share it with your followers. This is also a very valuable tool in supporting other indie authors.
DM - Direct Message. Other followers can send you direct messages that can't be seen by the public. It is important to note that if you send a tweet to someone it is public for all to see.
GAINING FOLLOWERS
This aspect is what puzzled me the most in the beginning. I thought for some reason that I would just automatically gain followers as time progressed. Like I mentioned earlier, I set up the account and came back a week later to discover the only followers I got were porny spam (I like that term better, LOL).
Simply put, you gain followers by following other people and count on them to follow you back. As mentioned above, you can initially follow 2,000 people before Twitter before a follow limit is placed on your account. After that limit is in place, some secret algorithm kicks in that allows you to follow between 200 to 500 more people than are following you. You will want to weed out the people that you are following that are not following you back. Some free websites out there tell you who's not following you back so that you can unfollow them. One site that comes to mind is who.unfollowed.me. There are a few others out there like it. A word of warning, if you follow and unfollow large amounts of people too quickly, Twitter will put your account in Twitter Jail for "follow churn". My advise, don't do both on the same day. If you want to weed out your unfollowers, do it once or twice a week and never on the same day that you follow a bunch of people.
Who should you follow? Well, if you are trying to promote your book, you want to follow people that read books. Search for hashtags that will bring up book readers like #bookworm, #booknerd, #booklover, #bookaholic, #lovetoread, or terms like "avid reader" or "book suggestion".
SENDING OUT TWEETS
The best way to get word of your book out to the masses is by tweeting about it. However, it is even more important not to spam your followers, which I was very guilty of in the beginning. If enough people report you for spam, Twitter will suspend your account (commonly referred to as "Twitter Jail") I had to learn this by trial and error since I had no clue what constituted spam. During my free time I would sit in front of my computer surfing the internet and watching TV and would send out tweets every five minutes. That is WAY too much. A good rule of thumb is to send out tweets no more than every twenty minutes. If you want to send out more tweets, I wouldn't recommend sending them out any less than every fifteen minutes.
Another important factor in tweeting is to have a long list of tweets. If you send out the same three tweets at twenty minute intervals, your followers will consider that spam. If you send out three tweets an hour, that is seventy-two tweets in a twenty-four hour period. I would shoot for a list of at least forty-eight. If you can bump it up to seventy-two, that would be ideal.
Make a list of tweets and ensure that they are no more than 140 characters. Make a list of shortened links to your book and/or your blog. I highly recommend using the website bitly.com. Just copy and paste your link into the website and in return you will get a shortened link. Some people use tinyurl.com and that's fine, however, bitly will give you a link that is on average five characters shorter than tinyurl More characters mean longer tweets. Twitter does have a feature that will shorten your links automatically, but I advise against it. I used it for a while and many people responded saying the link didn't work. Maybe Twitter has worked out the kinks? Not really sure, I like bitly.com and use that exclusively.
What should you tweet about? Well, you are a writer so I would hope you have the creative juices to come up with some on your own. ;) The key to tweeting about your book is advertising. Draw people's attention and make them wonder about your book. Make the tweet a little vague but not too much. Make people question "What is this about? Let me click on it and find out." I would advise against empty claims about how amazing your book is "Check out my book!" "You can't miss this exciting read!" "This is your next read!" "Don't miss the next big thriller!" The best thing to do is simply present your book and let people draw their own conclusions.
What genre is your book? You can start there. "Looking for a good romance? Check out ..." "Are you a fan of spy novels? Check out ..."
Another good thing to tweet about are the reviews for your novel. " (Title) has 23 Five Star reviews!" "(Title) has been called (insert snippet of review)"
You can also use pieces of your promotional blurb from your novel. "Detective John Doe will find out that his next case will define his career" "John Doe will discover the secret of a lifetime" "How long before John Doe meets the woman of his dreams?"
Do you have a blog? Drawing readers to your blog is another fantastic way to spread the word about your book. Make up tweets about each of your blog posts. You can rest assured that I will have a few tweets about the very blog post you are reading now.
Anyone in the advertising business will tell you that you need to come up with several tag lines that define your book. For my novel I came up with several, the most effective one being "In 2027, America Will Fall" Other taglines were "Second Great Depression. Terrorists On Our Soil. Major Cities Locked Down." and "Are you prepared for the Collapse?"
HOW TO SPREAD YOUR TWEETS
Now that you've come up with your tweets, how do you spread them into the Twitterverse? You can use several hashtags that indie authors use to help promote each other. Just include them in your tweet and other indies out there will retweet them for you. The two best ones that I know of are #BYNR and #authorRT. Just include those hashtags and other indies will help you spread your tweets. Ensure that you return the favor. I have those two hashtags as saved searches. I call them up a few times a day and retweet five to ten at a time. Sometimes my tweets get retweeted up to ten times in a day. Great way for indies to help each other out.
There are several twitter accounts that will retweet your tweets when you mention them in your tweet. I know I'm only scratching the surface here so I hope that people will comment with more. The ones I use are @WritersRT, @WritersReTweets, @BooksForPromoted and @IndieAuthorSuccess.
A word of caution: don't use too many hashtags in your tweets. Twitter advises two to three hashtags per tweet. If you venture beyond that, your users will consider it spam. I learned that from a very irate woman that sent me a tweet asking me to please die in a fire and stop spamming the hashtags. (No joke, she actually tweeted that) Lesson learned, while she was far from tactful in her request, she was in fact correct. Try your best not to spam the hashtags.
The best way to spread your tweets is over at the World Literary Cafe. Every day, you can sign up to be on a tweet team. Each team consists of ten team members. You post your tweet and include #WLCAuthor and the other nine members of your team retweet your tweet. In return, you have to tweet the other nine people's tweets. In addition, you must also tweet the Daily Tweets designated by the website. You can be on as many teams in a day as you want, you just have to be sure to retweet everyone. Fantastic group of people. Really helps spreading the word.
SERIOUSLY? THIS SEEMS LIKE A LOT OF WORK
Well, yeah, it is a lot of work and can consume time that is better spent writing books. There are several great programs out there that will schedule your tweets for you. You simply input your tweets for the day and either a specific time or time interval (remember my tip, every twenty minutes). One of the most popular is Tweet Deck.
If you are looking for a program that does it all, I highly recommend Tweet Adder. It cost a little money but it is worth every penny. It does it all. You can create lists of tweets and save them for later use. It will automatically add followers based on search terms that you input (refer to the above section - Gaining Followers). It will even unfollow people that have not reciprocated your follow for a certain amount of days (I recommend 2-3 days).
Good luck in the Twitterverse! :)
http://bit.ly/NYYXtN
I was determined to figure out this mystery that was Twitter. I had absolutely no clue how it worked. I did so many Google searches it was ridiculous - What is this "RT" that people keep putting in their tweets? Why are people using the pound symbol # and what does it do? And the acronyms, oh the acronyms! FF, DM, FYB, and many more. I still find myself searching to find the meanings for this little twitter codes.
I've decided to share my knowledge as I understand it. Please comment if you care to add some helpful information.
TWITTER BASICS
If you have the basics down, feel free to skip down to the next section. This is for the people that were like me at the beginning and had to search for the meaning of "RT" - it means "Retweet" by the way.
Followers - Your most valuable asset on Twitter. How do you get followers? We will discuss that in the next section.
Following - Are the people that you are following. The easiest and most effective way to get followers is to follow people in the hopes that they follow you back. At the start, you can follow up to 2000 people before Twitter enacts a follow limit. As an indie author, who should you follow? We'll discuss that later.
Tweets - The micro-blogging feature of Twitter. You can send out tweets up to 140 characters.
Hastags (#) - You can put a hashtag symbol in front of keywords or phrases to help categorize your tweets. This function helps people do searches for tweets by category. More on this later.
RT - Retweets. If you find a particular tweet that you like, you can hit the retweet button and share it with your followers. This is also a very valuable tool in supporting other indie authors.
DM - Direct Message. Other followers can send you direct messages that can't be seen by the public. It is important to note that if you send a tweet to someone it is public for all to see.
GAINING FOLLOWERS
This aspect is what puzzled me the most in the beginning. I thought for some reason that I would just automatically gain followers as time progressed. Like I mentioned earlier, I set up the account and came back a week later to discover the only followers I got were porny spam (I like that term better, LOL).
Simply put, you gain followers by following other people and count on them to follow you back. As mentioned above, you can initially follow 2,000 people before Twitter before a follow limit is placed on your account. After that limit is in place, some secret algorithm kicks in that allows you to follow between 200 to 500 more people than are following you. You will want to weed out the people that you are following that are not following you back. Some free websites out there tell you who's not following you back so that you can unfollow them. One site that comes to mind is who.unfollowed.me. There are a few others out there like it. A word of warning, if you follow and unfollow large amounts of people too quickly, Twitter will put your account in Twitter Jail for "follow churn". My advise, don't do both on the same day. If you want to weed out your unfollowers, do it once or twice a week and never on the same day that you follow a bunch of people.
Who should you follow? Well, if you are trying to promote your book, you want to follow people that read books. Search for hashtags that will bring up book readers like #bookworm, #booknerd, #booklover, #bookaholic, #lovetoread, or terms like "avid reader" or "book suggestion".
SENDING OUT TWEETS
The best way to get word of your book out to the masses is by tweeting about it. However, it is even more important not to spam your followers, which I was very guilty of in the beginning. If enough people report you for spam, Twitter will suspend your account (commonly referred to as "Twitter Jail") I had to learn this by trial and error since I had no clue what constituted spam. During my free time I would sit in front of my computer surfing the internet and watching TV and would send out tweets every five minutes. That is WAY too much. A good rule of thumb is to send out tweets no more than every twenty minutes. If you want to send out more tweets, I wouldn't recommend sending them out any less than every fifteen minutes.
Another important factor in tweeting is to have a long list of tweets. If you send out the same three tweets at twenty minute intervals, your followers will consider that spam. If you send out three tweets an hour, that is seventy-two tweets in a twenty-four hour period. I would shoot for a list of at least forty-eight. If you can bump it up to seventy-two, that would be ideal.
Make a list of tweets and ensure that they are no more than 140 characters. Make a list of shortened links to your book and/or your blog. I highly recommend using the website bitly.com. Just copy and paste your link into the website and in return you will get a shortened link. Some people use tinyurl.com and that's fine, however, bitly will give you a link that is on average five characters shorter than tinyurl More characters mean longer tweets. Twitter does have a feature that will shorten your links automatically, but I advise against it. I used it for a while and many people responded saying the link didn't work. Maybe Twitter has worked out the kinks? Not really sure, I like bitly.com and use that exclusively.
What should you tweet about? Well, you are a writer so I would hope you have the creative juices to come up with some on your own. ;) The key to tweeting about your book is advertising. Draw people's attention and make them wonder about your book. Make the tweet a little vague but not too much. Make people question "What is this about? Let me click on it and find out." I would advise against empty claims about how amazing your book is "Check out my book!" "You can't miss this exciting read!" "This is your next read!" "Don't miss the next big thriller!" The best thing to do is simply present your book and let people draw their own conclusions.
What genre is your book? You can start there. "Looking for a good romance? Check out ..." "Are you a fan of spy novels? Check out ..."
Another good thing to tweet about are the reviews for your novel. " (Title) has 23 Five Star reviews!" "(Title) has been called (insert snippet of review)"
You can also use pieces of your promotional blurb from your novel. "Detective John Doe will find out that his next case will define his career" "John Doe will discover the secret of a lifetime" "How long before John Doe meets the woman of his dreams?"
Do you have a blog? Drawing readers to your blog is another fantastic way to spread the word about your book. Make up tweets about each of your blog posts. You can rest assured that I will have a few tweets about the very blog post you are reading now.
Anyone in the advertising business will tell you that you need to come up with several tag lines that define your book. For my novel I came up with several, the most effective one being "In 2027, America Will Fall" Other taglines were "Second Great Depression. Terrorists On Our Soil. Major Cities Locked Down." and "Are you prepared for the Collapse?"
HOW TO SPREAD YOUR TWEETS
Now that you've come up with your tweets, how do you spread them into the Twitterverse? You can use several hashtags that indie authors use to help promote each other. Just include them in your tweet and other indies out there will retweet them for you. The two best ones that I know of are #BYNR and #authorRT. Just include those hashtags and other indies will help you spread your tweets. Ensure that you return the favor. I have those two hashtags as saved searches. I call them up a few times a day and retweet five to ten at a time. Sometimes my tweets get retweeted up to ten times in a day. Great way for indies to help each other out.
There are several twitter accounts that will retweet your tweets when you mention them in your tweet. I know I'm only scratching the surface here so I hope that people will comment with more. The ones I use are @WritersRT, @WritersReTweets, @BooksForPromoted and @IndieAuthorSuccess.
A word of caution: don't use too many hashtags in your tweets. Twitter advises two to three hashtags per tweet. If you venture beyond that, your users will consider it spam. I learned that from a very irate woman that sent me a tweet asking me to please die in a fire and stop spamming the hashtags. (No joke, she actually tweeted that) Lesson learned, while she was far from tactful in her request, she was in fact correct. Try your best not to spam the hashtags.
The best way to spread your tweets is over at the World Literary Cafe. Every day, you can sign up to be on a tweet team. Each team consists of ten team members. You post your tweet and include #WLCAuthor and the other nine members of your team retweet your tweet. In return, you have to tweet the other nine people's tweets. In addition, you must also tweet the Daily Tweets designated by the website. You can be on as many teams in a day as you want, you just have to be sure to retweet everyone. Fantastic group of people. Really helps spreading the word.
SERIOUSLY? THIS SEEMS LIKE A LOT OF WORK
Well, yeah, it is a lot of work and can consume time that is better spent writing books. There are several great programs out there that will schedule your tweets for you. You simply input your tweets for the day and either a specific time or time interval (remember my tip, every twenty minutes). One of the most popular is Tweet Deck.
If you are looking for a program that does it all, I highly recommend Tweet Adder. It cost a little money but it is worth every penny. It does it all. You can create lists of tweets and save them for later use. It will automatically add followers based on search terms that you input (refer to the above section - Gaining Followers). It will even unfollow people that have not reciprocated your follow for a certain amount of days (I recommend 2-3 days).
Good luck in the Twitterverse! :)
http://bit.ly/NYYXtN
