What to do when it's finished?

So what now? Like many of you who have finished a very long drawn out project, I'm finding myself a bit exhausted and somewhat bored. Of course marketing is taking up a lot of my time, what with tweeting every day--I overpaid for my books being listed on the askDavid site and so I had a choice--refund or 90 tweets? I took the latter and I'm glad I did--I would never have tweeted this much! and I'm beginning to understand the fascination! For those who don't know about askDavid it's worth a click.

I've been having problems with my Wordpress website and the person I thought was helping went MIA. And so my niece Megan, who does website design, put me on to a great guy--Dan Fennell, who has nearly gotten things straightened out. His prices are reasonable and he's fast! It seems that my admin access was severely limited so that I couldn't upgrade the site when it needed to be. We're moving it to another hosting site and changing that little problem. As Dan said, even if I don't want to be a web designer I should have complete access to my own website. If any of you need help with Wordpress check him out! ( I can't imagine anybody NOT needing help with Worldpress!)

The sequel is progressing slowly--it keeps heading off in odd directions and I keep trying to tame it. Guess it's better to just give it the reins and let it run and then edit later. Right now I have a ghost, a sorceress, time travel, a magical boat, norse mythology, dwarves, an evil that has yet to be determined but only comes out at night, and an ancient city that was abandoned due to pollution--oh, and a druid who is over 400 years old. So far only one POV, though--a first for me!

So how do you deal with finishing a project? do you jump right into the next one or do you rest and recuperate?

formatting, marketing and other suicidal endeavors

Things are coming together, more or less. My new cover is in process...my interior e-proof should be sent to me any day now.  I have now decided, from speaking with several other indie authors, that formatting is not so difficult. Now that I have a cover designer I think I may give it a try on the next book. According to one source it will take a day. Hmm...I'm recalling my frustration just two days ago when I tried to work on my Wordpress website and the button to add a photo refused to do what it was supposed to do..I tend to go ballistic rather quickly when out of my comfort zone--especially when it includes electronic devices. But if I manage this, working with Createspace will be a breeze, without all the delays that I've had to deal with. We'll see...

This past week has been devoted to marketing. I've contacted several sites for reviews with some success. I joined a paranormal writing group on Goodreads, which has a lot of interesting discussions, including one on reviews. My book is by no means a bodice ripper but since it does have a strong love story woven into it I am calling it a fantasy romance--or should it be romantic fantasy? In any case it opens up a much wider audience and gives me more options to explore. Romance seems to be a very popular genre but there also seem to be many sub-genres, from the Harlequin type to just a plain old love story and everything in between...and what exactly are the parameters? I guess I  should read a bit more before jumping in with both feet. Some of the sites I've visited have covers that depict half naked women and men that seem to point to a storyline very different from mine. And heading off in the other direction, I've come upon reviewers who will not review a book with sex scenes!

In the spirit of my new bravado, I've signed myself up to do a reading in Portland when I'm there in June! It's easy to do such things when they are in the future and in a galaxy far, far away--how will I feel in early June? I plan to drink several glasses of wine beforehand...will my slurred words make any sense? Maybe I can enlist others and put on a little skit--a dialogue scene. That actually sounds fun and a lot more entertaining for the audience of my three friends.

Do you do your own formatting? And if so, how frustrating is it, really?

mostly marketing

I have several things on my mind today so bear with me if I meander...since mercury is now out of retrograde I feel an edginess that I need to explore even if I've talked about these subjects in previous blogs...

1. Hashtags on twitter: Just yesterday I realized that I've been posting links to twitter without sending it to the places where my readers might be hanging out...I'm sure most of you know this already but for me it was an epiphany...

2. The goddess principle: This is connected to the hashtags--my book is filled with goddesses and at the risk of sounding weird, a goddess wrote my book using my computer and my fingers to type it out...so how do I employ the goddess (feminine) principle to my marketing plan?
   
3. Twitter: I need to have a theme for each week and places to go--for instance, #mythology or #druid/pagan  etc...tweet once a day on the theme of the week--fifteen minutes max. (good luck)

3. How to organize the social media marketing in general: Advice to myself: get on Facebook and Goodreads at certain times of day--spend a half hour or less at those times--and then, step away! Hard to do since now I'm on 'indie authors', 'fantasy authors', 'bookjunkies', 'authors pitch for readers' and a few others--getting caught up in the threads is not only time-consuming, it takes energy from my writing, draining me before I've begun.

4. Reading blogs: This one is unbelievably time consuming and yet it's vitally important. If I expect others to read mine I have to make the effort...and many bloggers have kindly taken time to read my book and review on their blogs...many thanks to all of them!

5. Writing blogs: I have two blogs on blogspot as well as one on my website...I love the exercise of writing and I love the disparate subjects I'm writing about--so time spent doing this is good.

6. Website: My extremely expensive website is languishing. I don't know how to get people there--I've put links on this blog but have no way of knowing if anyone uses them. Wordpress is unfamiliar to me and more complicated..plus I don't like the black with white type--but it's part of the template and can't be changed.

With my second book about to come out I need to think about a blog tour--contest/giveaways, all things I'm unfamiliar with...luckily all the author pages I'm on will be a tremendous source of information...

Sorry if I've repeated myself here...and thanks for reading! Comments are greatly appreciated.

And last but not least: The Moonstone will be free on Kindle from August 10-12th

http://www.amazon.com/The-Moonstone-ebook/dp/B007DXI9SM

The Lure and the reeling in...

Still lolling about not doing any serious writing--that is, working on one of my novels in progress. Yesterday I worked for several hours linking this blog to my website, and vice-versa as well as putting more content onto my website blog--I now have three blogs.

My website, which cost me a lot to set up, seems to be taking a back seat to this blog and my other one about life here in Arizona. The blog page doesn't have an automatic button to post it to Facebook and Twitter but I don't think that's the problem since it doesn't take long to copy and paste. I personally do not like the black with white print nor do I like how it starts with a couple of sentences and then you have to click to continue reading...and...Blogger is easier for me to navigate than Wordpress although I think Wordpress has more sophisticated capabilities--if only I knew them!

As you probably have guessed, I'm rather lazy when it comes to technical things. I like to find out the basics and get on with it, not spend hours figuring it out beforehand--and my writing style is the same--a definite pantser!

So, my question is how do I tempt people to read my website blog? It differs from this one in that I'm writing vignettes related to Wolfmoon--snippets from character's perspectives that are not in the actual books...the latest is from a wolf's perspective...

I would LOVE feedback on the look of the blog as well as suggestions for content. Any enticement you bloggers know of that might help? www.wolfmoontrilogy.com/category/blog

and more ugly...

So...Wordpress is driving me crazy and my daughter says: you have IWeb on your computer, why not use that for your webpages? Okay...I'm stoked...I already have a way to do my pages right on my very own computer without the muss and fuss of Wordpress. And... Godaddy says I can just uninstall Wordpress. I spend the better part of an afternoon messing around with IWeb--easy as pie. Basically just drag and drop. I love it!  Sounds good, right? Not. When I go to publish I get an icon that says: Sign up for Mobile me but when I try, I discover a loop that I can't get out of...I call Godaddy and the tech says he's never heard of a IWeb program that doesn't have another option to choose. I go to Apple but no one is working today, I go to all the help pages but can't find the answer to my question.

What I've learned so far: 1. Mobile me is being discontinued, replaced with something called I Cloud. 2. Apple does not provide an easy way to get help, EVEN when you're frustrated and want to scream. 3. No matter how easy and wonderful IWeb is, it still needs to get from my computer to the web.

Did I mention how frustrated I am? If anyone knows anything about IWeb or has a solution to this problem please, PLEASE let me know! Tomorrow I will tackle this again but right now I'm too tired to think.

the good the bad and the ugly

So, I've achieved the first goal--paid money into Createspace to start designing my first cover. I uploaded three chapters and a synopsis to give them some ideas to go on. The other part of my plan is to get a website up--which is proving to be somewhat more difficult than I anticipated. I now have a domain name and myriad passwords that I can't remember (why does one need so many different passwords?) but Wordpress is completely beyond my comprehension.

 I went through Godaddy, who hosts the website on Wordpress, paid for my domain and set up the acct. It took me three hours to get a picture up and post the first blog. And not without a large amount of frustration. If you asked me now how I did it, I couldn't tell you. Great. The main problem is, no tutorial that I know of to explain how to navigate Wordpress. And even the Wordpress blog is really difficult in comparison to Blogspot. Not sure where to go from here. I think being on the phone with the technical person will not be enough. And after an hour of this a few days ago, my mind was mush. Anyone out there had experience with this?

Maybe it's better to hire a web savvy person and have them take over the entire process. And of course this being a holiday weekend there's no reaching anyone, technical or otherwise.

If anyone out there knows something, anything about setting up a website I would LOVE to hear from you.