Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Guest Blogging 101: Basic Tips for #MFRWauthors

I won’t try to tell anyone I know all the nuances of blogging. I feel like a toddler teaching a baby to walk. I’ve never done a blog hop and only just started hosting guests on my blog, but I have been a guest numerous times and feel pretty safe to talk about etiquette when visiting someone’s blog.


1.) Always thank your host. The word thank you goes a long way. This chance to be in front of other readers might not happen any other way. Plus the work that goes into loading your blog, images and excerpts can be time-consuming.

2.) Visit the blog at least once the day it goes live. Always go by the blog and see if there are any comments. If there aren’t then make one of your own. I always thank my host on the blog and check it two or three times the day it goes live. I want the people who stop by to know they are important to me. Show them I’m there and grateful they hosted me.

3.) Make sure you have a clear idea for your blog. Most of us have a theme to our blogs and we’ll ask you to write something that fits that theme. Personally I find that when the host tells me what they want I can find that idea faster. It is one of the reasons I came up with a list of questions. There are times when I’m editing two or three things at a time and my brain refuses to work. If you get stuck I recommend visiting the blog to see what else has been posted. It could spark an idea.

4.) Get the material to them on time. If you are asked to get it to the host three days before it goes live make sure you’re do. Sometimes there are glitches that the host has to work out. I don’t give people dates until I get the questionnaire back from people who contact me because I know not everyone follows through but mine is new and I haven’t been booking it beyond two or three weeks so far.

5.) Help promote the blog you’re visiting. I always send out promos on my guests. I post it on my FB page as well as many of the loops I belong to. I also belong to triberr so it gets tweeted by my tribemates. The funny thing is I never do it on my own posts and should.

6.) Make sure you follow the rules of the blog. Most of us will let you promote your work along with your post so if you write erotica and the host says they take all genres make sure you find out if they have that blog behind an over 18 firewall. If they don’t keep that excerpt clean. Find out if the host has a word count limitation. I was a guest on one that wanted 500 words or more in my post.

7.) Finding the right host. In the beginning I would keep posts from people who said they wanted guest authors. But after a while that got a bit cumbersome so I started putting a list together of blogs I have visited – one for erotic authors and one who takes all types. It’s on my blog – barbaradonlonbradley dot blogspot dot com, just go to the page tabs and you’ll see them.

8.) If you have a blog a nice gesture is to offer it to the host as reciprocation. I have gotten a lot of offers from the people who have been a guest and I’m grateful. Blogging is one of the few free ways to promote ourselves.
Submitted by Barb 
Writing for Barbara Donlon Bradley  started innocently enough, like most she kept diaries, journals, and wrote an occasional letter but she also had a vivid imagination and wrote scenes and short stories adding characters to her favorite shows and comic books.

As time went on she found the passion for writing to be a strong drive for her. Humor is also very strong in her life. No matter how hard she tries to write something deep and dark, it will never happen. That humor bleeds into her writing. Since she can’t beat it she has learned to use it to her advantage. 
Now she lives in Tidewater Virginia with two cats, one mother in law – she’s 85 now, her husband and teenage son.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

#MFRWorg Monthly Quote - May 2014

     “Why should we all use our creative power and write or paint or play music, or whatever it tells us to do?                                     
     Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money. Because the best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it.”
-Brenda Ueland



Emerald
Emerald is an erotic fiction author whose short stories have been featured in anthologies published by Cleis Press, Mischief, and Logical-Lust. She serves as an assistant newsletter editor and Facebook group moderator for Marketing for Romance Writers (MFRW), and she selects and posts the monthly inspirational quote on the MFRW Marketing Blog. Find out more about her at her website, The Green Light District.

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Why Blog? #MFRWorg Answers This Question.

Blogging has become very popular. Blogging has become an important part of an author's marketing plan. A blog can be a living, breathing space for creating an online presence and increasing brand awareness. It's a space that can become whatever an author wants it to be. The key is to know its purpose and stay focused.

My blog ROMANCE BECKONS evolved over the years - its evolution mirroring my career as an author. It's taken years to get it exactly how I want it, and even still, I tweak it every so often. Regardless of how I've used it, one thing remained the same: The Mission. My blog's mission is to connect on a more personal level with readers.


So, Why Have A Blog?
77% of internet users read blogs. Over 300 million people view a blog at least once a month. We know readers using e-readers are connoisseurs of the internet. Imagine getting your books in front of this audience. Blogging allows authors to team up with others, share audiences and attract new readers. Blogging is interactive -that's the main difference between a blog and a website- and develops relationships with readers.

So, Why Don't You Have A Blog?
The main roadblock that stops authors from starting a blog is fear of technology. But with two easy-to-use platforms, it isn't as difficult as it seems. Anyone can start a blog for free and, to just do the basics, set-up only takes about an hour. There are two most popular platforms: WordPress and Blogger.

WordPress
WordPress has two different choices; you can choose to use WordPress.com or WordPress.org. Both are web software you can use to create a beautiful blog. The difference between the two (.com and .org) is that one is free and the other is not free. The free site doesn't offer as much functionality as the paid version. Another key difference is your domain name. The free version will limit your domain name selection; your domain name will be www.yourblog.wordpress.com. The paid version gives you complete control over your domain name and your site. In the beginning, the free version might be the easiest to navigate.

Blogger
Blogger is a free, powerful publishing platform that provides you with all the tools you need to start and grow your blog. It's fully-customizable and packed with advanced features like HTML editing, gadget support, mobile publishing, and much more. Blogger seamlessly integrates with other Google products including Google+, Google Analytics, and YouTube. I prefer this platform but I confess to being a big Google fan.


Choose Your Software. Set Up Your Blog.
Both platforms will walk you through the set up. If you don't already have a blog, go ahead and try it. Next time on my monthly column about blogging, I'll spend time talking about different features to be sure to incorporate.



Talk to me.
Do you have a blog? Share your url. Which blog platform would you recommend to others?

Monday, May 5, 2014

Moderating the MFRW Facebook Group: Getting the Most out of Group Membership #MFRWorg #MFRWauthor

So far in this series, I’ve talked a lot about things I do from the moderator side of the MFRW Facebook group. I’m shifting gears a little bit today to offer some recommendations for potential and current group members to get the most out of being a member of the group and using Facebook to help market your work.

Privacy Settings

First, I want to mention a couple things about privacy settings of which some people may not be aware. I want to clarify, however, that I completely understand setting one’s profile to private and am in no way discouraging that or recommending that people change their privacy settings if they’re set the way they want them. It’s completely fine if I go to a profile and don’t see any information about one’s involvement in the literary community due to that person's privacy settings—that’s why I send a message.

This, rather, is for those who mean to have certain things visible to the public and may unknowingly not. For example, a few times over the last month, I’ve received responses from potential members informing me that they do in fact list something like “Author,” etc., in the employment sections of their Facebook profiles. In my response thanking them for replying and indicating that I’ll approve their membership, etc., I’ve just mentioned that for whatever reason, that information wasn’t visible to me.

One author followed up with me to ask if I had any idea why I might not be able to see it, as she intended for the indication that she was an author to be publicly viewable, and her general profile was set to public viewing. I looked into it a little bit and discovered that each “Work and Education” entry in one’s “About” section can be set to its own privacy setting. In the instance in question, the author’s entry indicating she was an author had been set to be viewed by friends only.

To check on this or change these settings, go to your profile, hover over the upper right corner of the “About” section (on the left side of the page), click on the little pencil icon labeled “Manage” when it pops up, and choose “Update Info.” On the screen that then appears, there is a little icon with a downward-pointing arrow to the right of each entry under the “Work and Education” setting. You may click on that icon to choose the privacy setting (public, friends only, etc.) for that particular entry.

 

Posting to the Group

I read every entry that gets posted to the MFRW Facebook group (though if I did more than just skim over them, I’d spend little time doing anything else!). I do this to make sure they’re legitimate posts and ensure I haven’t inadvertently let any spam accounts join. I have thus seen how privacy settings can also affect how things show up when you post in a group.

For example, if you choose to share a book cover from one of your own photo albums on the MFRW group page, your privacy settings for that photo (or your photos general) will affect how it will show up on the group page. Occasionally I see a post on the group that says “Attachment Unavailable.” This can be for a few reasons, but one of them is if your photo privacy settings are set to allow only friends or friends of friends to view them. That will still be the case, then, if you post the photo to a group page, and the attachment will be indicated to be unavailable for everyone else. (It is easy for you yourself not to realize this, incidentally, since it will still show up for you on the group page, so nothing will seem to be amiss.)

One option for posting photos (such as book covers) to the group page, thus, is to simply post a link to the page where a photo appears, such as at the buy link, and let the link preview show the photo. If you do want to share a photo from one of your own Facebook albums or your timeline on the group page, just make sure the photo’s privacy settings are set to public viewing first. You can do this one of two ways:
  1. If you want to set the entire photo album containing the photo to be viewable by the public (say, for example, you have an album for book covers that you’d like anyone to be able to see), do the following: Click on “Photos” from your profile page. Once there, click “Albums,” locate the album you want to make public, and click on the little icon in the lower right corner of the album in question. Adjust the settings accordingly.
  2. You can also adjust the privacy settings of an individual photo. To do this, click on the photo in question. Right below your name and to the right of the date the photo was posted, you should see the small privacy settings icon with the downward-pointing arrow. Click on it and choose the desired privacy setting.

Links

It also tends to be a good idea to add a link to posts you’re posting on the group page if you're asking people to buy or visit something. Every once in a while I see posts asking people to check something out that don’t contain a link at which to do so. While sometimes a reference to where to find the post or book in question is provided, I think it’s fair to say that viewers are much more likely to follow through if all they have to do is click a link. :)

That being said, I do not recommend posting only a link with no corresponding picture, text, introduction, etc. When I see this, I’ll click on it, but not knowing whether it’s spam or what its origin or purpose is, I won’t really want to—I’ll only do so because of my responsibility as a moderator. Given my feeling that way, I suspect the link won’t get many clicks from others who don’t have that responsibility! This hasn’t happened very often, but I have seen it, and I recommend you just make sure the image or link preview you want to have show up with your post is indeed visible before you post it.

I hope this has seemed helpful to some readers. The MFRW Facebook group is a busy place, and we want all members to receive the maximum possible benefit of being a part of it! Thanks for reading. :)


Emerald
Emerald is an erotic fiction author whose short stories have been featured in anthologies published by Cleis Press, Mischief, and Logical-Lust. She serves as an assistant newsletter editor and Facebook group moderator for Marketing for Romance Writers (MFRW), and she selects and posts the monthly inspirational quote on the MFRW Marketing Blog. Find out more about her at her website, The Green Light District.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

The Logline: Who Needs It? How Can I Write One?



This post is syndicated from Whitley Gray: The Logline--Who Needs It? How Can I Write One?


This is right up there with synopsis and query and cover letter. It’s the secret weapon that says you know what your story is about and can sum it up in one sentence. It’s the jewel you can memorize and blurt out at any time.

Otherwise known as the “elevator pitch,”—something you might pull out when you have a captive audience, such as an editor while attending a conference—the logline is a twenty-five to thirty word summary of your story. It needs to indicate the main characters, the conflict, and the story question. Whole workshops are given on the topic, and I strongly recommend you sign up for one before you start to pitch your logline to anyone, especially to a captive audience. Elevators work, but so does an impromptu pitch session over dinner, waiting for a bus, etc.

Okay. Let’s take a formulaic approach:
(heroine) must (action) with (hero) to (conflict) or (consequence).

A witch on the outs with her coven must work with the demon she put in jail twenty years ago to extinguish a virus before it annihilates all paranormal creatures. (thirty words).

This logline tells us the heroine is a witch, and she’s done something to alienate her own kind.

The hero is a demon, who likely hates the witch for what she did to him in the past. He also has done something that landed him in jail back then.

These two have to work together, which is going to set up all sorts of conflict.

Their mission is to wipe out a virus. Failing has huge consequences for both of them. As they’re both paranormal creatures, they’ll be susceptible to the virus (danger) and their own kind (both witches and demons) will be wiped out. There’s time pressure in there too. If they don’t succeed in time, the virus will have taken its course.

See how that works?

So our editor in the stalled elevator now knows what your book is about—it’s a paranormal romance with elements of suspense. Two different kinds of paranormal creatures are involved. The premise lends itself to conflict, with a lot of potential for escalation—it’s there from the get-go. They have a larger-than-life mission involving a communicable disease, which is a fresh idea (we hope it’s fresh to her). The consequences are huge, and mean all sorts of friends and family will be at risk and could die—always a crowd pleaser.

Now let’s look at the wording.

A witch on the outs with her coven must work with the demon she put in jail twenty years ago to extinguish a virus before it annihilates all paranormal creatures. (thirty words).

On the outs with” This could be worded as “alienated by her coven.” Why not word it that way?

“Okay…” you say. “What’s wrong with that? We’re saving words, and we don’t get many to start with.” Because now the coven is doing something to the witch. “Coven alienates witch” is the active construction. But we don’t care about the coven in the logline—they’re not the heroine.

“Witch alienated by her coven.” This is a passive construction. Do we want passive construction? No! We want nice active construction. Both ways mean the same thing, but “on the outs with” is active.

Must work with” It’s not optional. She has to work with him. Not a friend, not a colleague. A specific guy, and from the sound of it, they don’t like each other. It could be “work with,” and that would save us a word. But it also suggests that the situation may be optional—like they’re choosing to work together. And what’s the fun in that? “Must” is the stuff conflicts are made of.

Put in jail” This goes to plot. When you’re thinking about plot, think about what generates strong conflict. Minor infractions seldom lead to the type of situation strong enough to carry a book. If we said “the demon she turned into a toad for a day” sounds like he could be irritated, but probably not enough to strongly dislike her. Plus it eats up our word count. It could be “the demon who jilted her five years ago.” That would still be conflict—just not as strong, not as much.

So, a criminal act of some kind. It has to be something egregious enough to warrant a jail sentence. It has to be something she did that’s bad enough to make him angry. The fun is you get to decide what that was, and how to weave it into the fabric of your story.

Okay, let’s examine the mission. “Extinguish a virus.” Not “kill,” not “eliminate,” not “cure.” Not “give a ten day course of antiviral medication.” Extinguish is a strong verb. Strong words are your friends. Strong verbs do the heavy lifting in writing. Adverbs—words that modify verbs—weaken construction. Stephen King said “The way to hell is paved with adverbs.”

“Why would Mr. King say that?” you ask. “My eighth grade English teacher Miss Fluffermuffin didn’t say that. She liked adverbs.”

Okay. We could say “Totally wipe out” or “completely eliminate” or “cure in a timely fashion.” Note the –ly, the calling card of the adverb. Editors have strong feelings about adverbs, mostly of the negative kind. If you’re tempted to use one, look at your verb.

Example: How about “ran?” It’s a nice verb, gets us from point “A” to point “B” faster than walking. Maybe “ran quickly.” That makes it more exciting. But look what happens…

The editor is frowning, has out her computer-generated red pencil. “I hate adverbs. Stephen King was right!”

How about “bolted?” or “charged?” “Raced?” The difference is real, and it grabs attention. “Bolted” grabs your attention. “Bolted?” you say. “My, that’s fast. That’s quick. That’s…getting my attention.”

Now we’re getting to the end of our logline. The consequences.“Annihilates all paranormal creatures.” As you’ve no doubt discerned by now, “annihilates” is stronger than “kills.” It’s stronger than “destroys.” The word “annihilates” brings up images of atomic-level destruction, of utter disaster, of cataclysmic consequences. If they fail, it doesn’t mean creatures from werewolves to vampires will break out in an unsightly purple-spotted pox. Nope, they’ll be gone. Finito. Never to be seen again. It’s a big deal if you’re a paranormal citizen.

“It could be ‘annihilates the world,’” you say. Okay, I’ll agree with that. But then why did it require a witch and a demon? How about an accountant and the waitress at that dinner where he goes for lunch every day? It could, but then something has to motivate them to save paranormal creatures. Why would these two humans care about the paranormal inhabitants?

Okay. This is the end of my dissection. Now you try it.

(heroine) must (action) with (hero) to (conflict) or (consequence).

Sit down with your story.

Write down the heroine, and one thing about her. A big thing, not her flaming red hair or startling fashion sense—not unless they impact the plot.

Write down your hero, and a defining characteristic. Keep it tied to the plot.

Why might these two not get along? (Conflict) Write it down.

What is the big thing they need to do? (Action) Write it down.

What happens if they can’t accomplish their goal? (Consequence) Write it down.

Likely you have more than thirty words at this point, but that doesn’t matter. Put these parts together in a sentence that explains your plot. Count the number of words. Don’t despair, we’ll pare it down until it’s svelte.

Look at every word, starting with the nouns. People places and things. Look at your verbs. Look at them again. Are adverbs tagging along? Get out your thesaurus and find a strong verb. Annihilate the adverbs. Make the verbs able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Look at your clauses. Now this isn’t grammar, and I’m not getting into that. I’ve put the descriptive phrases into brackets here:

A witch [on the outs with her coven] must work with the demon [she put in jail twenty years ago] to extinguish a virus [before it annihilates all paranormal creatures.] (thirty words).

Without the clauses, the logline still reads as a coherent sentence. Not a very exciting one, but still a sentence. Use your words wisely in these clauses. The clauses tell about your characters and your consequences.

I’m not a big fan of names in loglines. Some people are. Names tend to use up words, as you still need the descriptions in there. Unless the name has to do with the title or the plot, I leave it out.

Keep chugging away on that logline. Tweak it until it shines, tape it above your computer. Memorize it—you never know when you’ll have to pull it out.

WHITLEY GRAY BIO:
Once upon a misspent youth, Whitley read and wrote stories under the covers at night. At some point, real life intervened, bringing with it responsibilities and a career in the medical field. After years of technical writing, Whitley became enamored of romance and took on the challenge of giving it a try. Inventing characters and putting them through paces in interesting ways turned out to be addictive, and along the way, Whitley discovered that two heroes is twice as nice. A pot of coffee, quiet, and a storyline featuring a couple of guys makes for a perfect day. Stop by www.whitleygray.com and feed your fix for heat between the sheets with erotica and M/M romance.

*Photo courtesy of Squidoo.