Gloria Oliver's Blog, page 135

Catch Up Ramblings

Yo, all!

Had back to back conventions so have not been able to do any blog posts. Work's been busy too! Darn it! So let's see what kind of damage I can do this morning, shall we? Heh heh

February 2-5, 2010 saw me at AggieCon. It was nice to be able to go on down there again. Run by alumn and also current students, it has been a staple at Texas A&M for many years. This was the first year it was held off campus, as most of the space that used to be available for the convention has had to be...

Fans Beware!

A couple of years ago, I did a post on fans and how we should never forget that authors, actors, artists, sports stars, etc are all people too and should be respected rather than treated as property. The blog post was called "The Dark Side of Fandom".

This time out I figured I would cover an offshoot issue from this. One that affects fans rather than the those we are fans of. And that's the issue that there are people out there more than willing to prey on fans by passing themselves off as ...

Marketing Experiment # XXX - 140 Character Quotes

Several months ago I got an idea for an online marketing experiment from something Rachel Caine (marvy urban fantasy and YA author) was doing using Twitter.

For her bit, she was linking a partial quote from the about to be released Morganville Vampires Book 7 called Fade Out and including a link to her LJ so readers could see the rest of the selected quote. (MV7 totally rocked, by the way!)

I decided I would try something similar, but with a Twitter twist. I would actually try to make the quo...

ABC's Marketing Genius

Since marketing is a part of the duties of an author, I like to keep my eyes open for what other people are doing even in other venues.

This particular marketing tactic of using multi outlets is something ABC has done before. In 2004, when Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital came out, they got with Hyperion books and put out a tie-in book called The Journals of Eleanor Druse: My Investigation of the Kingdom Hospital Incident. It was a great way for fans of the mini series to get a little more juic...

Nostalgia Food

Monday I read at post over at www.terribleminds.com (Yeah it was Chuck Wendig again) talking about needing to eat a good breakfast to get those creative juices flowing. For me, it actually threw me back thinking about breakfasts I used to have back in the day. That night, due to an odd set of circumstances that are not important here, I ended up on my own that night, so scrambling in the kitchen I set out to see if I had what I needed and took a trip into nostalgia land.

Come with me on a lit...

Difference of Heart and Mind

Yes, I know! Been neglecting the blogging. Argh! Time just constantly seems to be running away from me. Will be trying to make a more concerted effort to post more regularly, but no promises. :P (Need a blood infusion from Chuck Wendig at http://www.terribleminds.com He blogs every DAY! Dude!)

Anyway, back to the subject at hand - mind over matter, heart over mind, logic over illogic.

I've been having to see a number of specialists in the last few months as I've been trying to narrow down ...

The Writing is the Thing - But Where has it Gone? TV Commentary

I've been wanting to rant, err, write about this for a while but held back due to that old adage "If you can't say something nice..." Yet I realized that sometimes, the only way to fix something or have others become aware of it is to say something, even if it is not nice.

First off though, I'd like to say this - writing for TV is HARD! Not something to be taken on on a whim. I've no experience doing it myself, but have heard from enough from those who do to understand it can be a thankless...

The Life of a Work In Progress

I'd decided to log my progress on my latest WIP called Jewel of the Gods. While this manuscript did not evolve in the most straightforward manner, I still thought it might still be fun to share how it evolved over time.

There will be several spots where the starting number won't match the previous sessions end number - that's normally somewhere where I deleted notes I'd added at the end of the book I no longer needed.

There's also a huge gap in there or two where "Supernatural" took over my li...

FridayFlash - The Tree

Miaka sensed immediately that something in her kingdom had changed.

There was a new scent filtering through the house -- one that spoke of nature and outside. It sent a tingle through her furry frame, awakening primal instincts. She scurried to the corner of the hall, curious, watching her larger housemates struggle with this brown thing with green needles and that marvelous scent. They set it into a red bracket in the corner of the big room then cut away the net around it, which allowed ...

#FridayFlash - Salvation

It started as a low rumble that built and built, reverberating off the walls of downtown.

Smiles peaked out at the increasing sound from dirty, scarred faces, their owners looking out toward the street from boxes and alleys, others through the open soup kitchen window that always burped out the friendly scent of baking bread.

They'd all heard the rumors. And it looked like they were about to find out if they were for real.

Corner dealers looked up like startled foxes and rushed to finish...