Blogging and Pinning

Ah, if only all blogging was this effortless! Today, courtesy of Charlie Cochrane, I’m talking about the differences between m/f and m/m romance on the Flirty Author Bitches blog:

http://flirtyauthorbitches.com/2012/06/not-your-mothers-historical-romance/

Thanks Charlie!

I’ve also recently started using Pinterest. I’m always curious to try out the latest new thing in social media – largely in a vain attempt to find one that will suit me. Often I make a great, enthusiastic start and then lapse into silence again. Who knows whether that will be the case here or not? But I will say that I actually see a way to use Pinterest in the cause of writing.

I’m currently doing galley proofs for the Under the Hill books, and then I’m going to move on to editing The Pilgrims’ Tale (and then I’m going to move on to editing Elf Princes’ Quest.) So I’m saving my “but I still need to write, or else I’ll go insane” brain by doing 500 words of a new vampire novella in the morning before I get to work on all that editing. And – coming slowly back around to the point here – Pinterest is being brilliant for keeping all the research pictures that I’ve never known what to do with before.

Now if I Google “18th Century Wallachian Boyar” I don’t have to just look at the picture and try to remember it, or bookmark it, or download it and upload it into an awkward research folder somewhere. I can just pin it, and then I can go and look at all my similar pins together and get a pictorial overview which is wonderful for giving a feel for the atmosphere. And I can organise all of this by book, which makes lots of sense to me, and also ends up looking very pretty.

http://pinterest.com/alexbeecroft/

So yes, I can see myself using Pinterest on a regular basis. I have no idea whether it will be of any use, social media or promo-wise, but I suspect that’s always been very secondary to me anyway. As a research tool, it’s prime