Sandy Appleyard's Blog, page 15
December 7, 2013
Christmas Rings of Hope-A Short Story
Image Courtesy of Inmagine.com
He was invited to join his friends for an after-basketball-practice party. It was the first time the boys acknowledged his presence. The sight of him was off-putting to most; jeans of an unknown label, torn in spots and worn in others, running shoes that had lost their lustre months ago and a sweatshirt sent down from the church bizarre his loving mother attended.
The family was close-knit, raising the children to appreciate that the best things in life were free....
December 5, 2013
Does Kinsey Save the Day in ‘W is for Wasted’?
Is Kinsey up to her usual antics? Oh, yes, she is.
Does Henry still have all the answers concealed in his freshly-baked rolls? I believe he does.
Is the mystery solved just in the knick of time? Well, I’m not going to spoil it for you so read the book to find out.
As a long-time Sue Grafton fan, I can honestly say my excitement was apparent when I picked up my reserved library copy of ‘W is for Wasted’.
In this hard-boiled murder-mystery (what else?) Kinsey’s business card pops up on the person o...
December 3, 2013
I’m Tired of Talking About Myself on Social Media
Image courtesy of Inmagine.com
It’s sometimes impossible to get around.
We have to promote our work, new and old.
Blogs and books.
New ideas, old ideas.
We have Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and others to help us talk mostly about ourselves.
Thank goodness for Buffer, which allows us to talk about other people.
I’m sick of talking about myself. Because the truth is…..nobody is listening.
Instead, I’m going to use the time, otherwise reserved for talking about myself, to talk about other authors.
In the coming...
November 29, 2013
Guest Post-How to Make Your Characters Believable
This guest post is by Gaelen VanDenBergh, author of the novel ‘Running Against Traffic’.
Your characters are crucial to a good story. Yes, there must be a plot. Things have to happen to these people. But in my opinion, if the characters are not believable, the most riveting story will fall flat.
You have to know your characters. What do they like to eat? If they had a day entirely to themselves, alone, what would they choose to do? Do they have secret dreams or desires that no one knows about?...
November 26, 2013
Why it’s Beneficial to use a Paid WordPress Theme
Image courtesy of Inmagine.com
In the past few weeks, I’ve made improvements to my website. Including removing ads, adding videos and more personal information, plus a couple of plugins to help entice readers to subscribe to my website.
While I was making these changes, I realized yet another feature of my WordPress theme that is beneficial to me and could be rather beneficial to other authors/bloggers.
The Socrates theme is predominantly for monetizing, however, you can personalize the ad space...
November 22, 2013
A Book Trailer….with a Twist
Have you created a book trailer for your work yet? How about doing something a little different?
In a previous post, I discussed a particular marketing video(affiliate link) that appealed to me, and I decided to use some ideas from it, producing something to help market one of my earlier works.
Here are some tips that will keep you thinking outside the box, and away from creating a standard book trailer (for help on creating a standard book trailer, see my post ‘How to Create a Book Trailer‘.
Pr...
November 19, 2013
How a Marketing Video Can Help You Sell Books
Image courtesy of Inmagine.com
The other day I was on the cusp of the threshold for getting Facebook analytics on one of my author pages, when I started thinking that there has to be a better way.
While I paid just two dollars for an ad to accumulate only one new like, I realized if I ever wanted to have hundreds of likes, it was going to cost me way more than I was willing to pay.
I’m no Facebook guru, and as such, I had to do some research. My author page is relatively new in comparison to the...
November 15, 2013
Book Review: The Storyteller
Image courtesy of Goodreads
This book is aptly named. It contains so many stories intertwined: Sage and her personal battle with overwhelming shyness from a physical flaw, her widowed friend Josef who asks her to help him die, Sage’s grandmother who admiringly survived the horrors of the Holocaust and Auschwitz, and last, her tragic, yet romantic story of Aleks and Ania, the mythical creatures known as Upior.
As I’ve stated in previous reviews for Jodi Picoult’s work; she is an incredibly talen...
November 11, 2013
10 Query Letter Tips to Get Better Responses
Image courtesy of Inmagine.com
Since I’m in the middle of submitting two manuscripts to publishers, I have picked up on some little things that you can do in your query letter that can get you more attention.
These things may seem insignificant to you, but can make a big difference to editors in the preliminary stages:
Even if the submission is via email, navigate throughout the entire site until you find the name of an editor or somebody to direct your query letter to.
Tip: Make sure you name th...
November 4, 2013
Why is There Such a Gap in Your Resume?
Image courtesy of Inmagine.com
As most authors realize early on, whether you’re self-published or not, is that an author’s income will likely leave you desperate and hungry.
Your rewards are in the form of literary output, analytics and engagement with your audience. In time, however, you can earn yourself a decent pay depending on a number of things, namely luck.
Since 2006 I’ve been a full-time writer, and up until now we’ve survived on one income. But the kids are getting older and expenses a...
