Sherrie R. Cronin's Blog, page 11

Fast Forward into the Past

[image error]Last week I had the chance to attend my first world con. What a great time! The following is an excerpt from post three of five about the event.

Time itself becomes a little fuzzy at an event like this, you know, as the real world fades away and the surreal world of of nonstop fan activities takes over. One tends to forget if it is day or night, much less what day it is. Most of us had to laugh when we saw signs like this pop up a couple of days in, but honestly it was helpful.

[image error]The past was also present in references to beloved science fiction from long ago. Dublin’s convention center peppered the areas around the escalators with warning messages like the one to the left. It was advice no fan could ignore.

Read more at Forward into the Past.

Read my additional posts at Feeling at home and at An Irish Worldcon: I’m here!

Finally — Twists of Time will be free on Kindle from Friday August 30 through Tuesday September 3.
Click HERE during those dates to take advantage of my Kindle promotion.

Feeling at home

[image error]Last week, I attended my first World Science Fiction Convention (better known as Worldcon) at the amazing convention center in Dublin. No one welcomed me home when I arrived, but after a day or two I realized they may as well have. This wildly varying collection of geeks are my people, too, and I feel every bit as at home with them as I did out on the playa with Burners.

What is surprising is the many things I found in common between these two different events, both of which spoke to me with such force.

Read more about the many similarities between last year’s time at Burning Man and this year’s time at Worldcon at Feeling at home.

An Irish Worldcon: I’m here!

[image error]We discovered we both loved science fiction, and by the end of the conversation (and the bottle of wine) we were talking about attending Worldcon 2019 together in Dublin. I’m still not sure how our conversation got there.

And yet, here we are. You gotta love how things sometimes work out.

Read more about how I ended up at Worldcon 2019 at An Irish Worldcon: I’m here!

It Don’t Come Easy

I’ve been thinking about Ringo Starr a lot, mostly because someone just told me he was turning 91, Really? That seemed so hard to believe. With good reason. It isn’t true. He’s turning 79 on Sunday.. Yes, that is still old but ….. it isn’t 91.

Read more of my ruminations about Ringo, enduring snide remarks, and putting yourself out there at It Don’t Come Easy.

Now for something different …

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By the time I’d driven home, I knew what I had to do. You see, the only time I struggle with writers block is when I (okay, some part of me, let’s call her the adult manager in charge of my head) insists I write whatever Ms. Manager has decided I must.

No matter how hard Ms. Manager insists, it doesn’t happen.

The little kid in my head who makes up the stories simply stops making them up until she is once again allowed to tell her stories, in her way.

Read more about how I discovered my next novel while having a day at a spa.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

[image error]Most of my life I’ve considered time, not money, to be my most valuable resource. Maybe I should have put it second to love, or joy, but if I’m honest with myself, I didn’t. Maybe I always thought I was going to die young. Lucky for me, I’m getting a little too old to do that …

Read the rest of this post about the importance of rest (and fun) at Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

Road to Reality

[image error]I’m back to reviewing books, and last week I tackled my first non-fiction book, an autobiography of one of the originators of “Survivor.” This is how the review starts:

This book is not an angry tirade, or a plea for sympathy, and it could so easily have been either. Rather it is story of a woman struggling to maintain relationships with her own divorced parents, with the two sons she loves deeply, and with a man whose idea of marriage seems to have been to largely roll her into his tumultuous world, until he didn’t want her there any more.

The book has its high and its low points, but all in all I found it interesting. Read the full review at Road to Reality.

What is that Woman with a Taser Thinking?

[image error]You see, I’m not a person who likes to be told what to do. I’ve had a problem with TSA and airport security since the start of this millennium, largely because of what I considered petty enforcement of rules taking priority over common sense. (You’re going to take away my tube of mascara? Why? Oh it’s a 3.6 ounce container and 3.4 is the limit. Right.)

Read more about how my fascination with empathy may have kept me out of serious trouble at

What is that Woman with a Taser Thinking?

Where did all those genres come from??

Amazon’s other options for me is something called a Sponsored Ad.  My mentor/author didn’t think much of using these, but I bravely tried the concept of picking keywords from my books and bidding for clicks. Every time, it failed miserably, but the good news is if hardly anyone clicks on your ad, it doesn’t cost you much.

[image error]A little poking around showed me I had another choice called Individual Products. It involves picking products (books) similar to mine, and advertising to those who buy them. It took forever to seek out these books, although it probably was a good exercise for me to get to know more about what was out there. None-the-less, all this effort yielded even fewer clicks and cost almost nothing.

Then recently a new option emerged. I could bid to advertise based on genre, just like with my Lock-screen ads, but the ads would appear to all Amazon users. So I tried it. And oh my goodness.

Read more at Where did all those genres come from??

Can you sell books on Facebook? Can I?

[image error]In contrast, Facebook offers the promise of being able to select potential ad readers with a LASER like precision. Oh boy.

For my first novel, I sought out mature women who liked science fiction and fantasy, were interested in telepathy and (I’d been told this was very important) liked or owned a kindle. Wahoo. This group was going to LOVE my spec fiction e-novel about Lola, a forty-something telepath. I mean, how many of those are out there?

It took no time at all for me to have 4823 such women view my ad 10,527 times and click on my link 275 times. It took no time at all for me to spend  $48.98 to make this happen and to sell, you guessed it, not a single book.

Read more at Can you sell books on Facebook? Can I?