The Blogging Class

By A.J. Llewellyn

My friend Ruth, who has an online art gallery is a marketing whizz and she reads my blogs. Recently she suggested I should learn more about how to make money out of my blogs, as in, how to drive traffic to my blogs and earn money without really trying.
Well, all's fair in love and blogging so last night I was eager to join the free marketing class she took me to. About ten people showed up at Jinky's in Sherman Oaks, where a lovely blog expert, Olivia talked to the assembled group about maximizing their blogs' potential.
Now I contribute to six blogs a week and I guest blog on more, but many of those present are still new to blogging and were curious about it.
What I found last night was an entertaining, energetic bunch of people who were all doing one thing by day, another thing by night.
Poor Olivia.
Our shared experiences, swapping information, our excitement at meeting other positive, multi-tasking, high-functioning folk kind of ran over her presentation.
But here is the thing.
The Internet has introduced to me not just a bunch of readers I would not otherwise have found, but my boyfriend and a wonderful new world of friends.
The network pool keeps getting richer and deeper.
Last night, one of the guys talked about how he's on Facebook but not Twitter.
Another woman agreed. "I don't twitter...tweet...twit? Twat? Twaddle? Whatever you do on Twitter..."
It was hysterical. I loved these people!
Olivia gave us a link to a pistachio manufacturer who doubled his income via Twitter, This I must read.
I was sitting next to a woman who is a hypnotherapist. I might need to get her help on my cupcake problem...but I digress.
I personally adored singer Michelle Andria and her boyfriend Jessie. I think we three are already maximizing our potential and our questions were different to some of the others. Michelle, like my amazing friend Lizzie "The Countess" Black gets free stuff sent to her - a different kind of income from her blog.
I must be doing something wrong. I mention cupcakes on a daily basis and I don't see any of the bakeries in my 'hood sending me freebies. I must write a fan letter to Betty Crocker. Immediately.
So, while I didn't actually figure out how to get money from my blog, I learned a lot about some wonderful new people. And I learned it's very easy to stress out a waitress when blogging comes to the real world.

Aloha oe,

A.J.

Paradise Ills

I know what you are all saying…’What the heck is she talking about?’ Well, things have been going very good for me overall recently. Writings great, family the same. But I should have known the shoe would drop, the crock would break or whatever you all say when things suddenly take a strange turn.

I haven’t been sick in 17 years since I was pregnant with the youngest…not really sick…yeah, I’ve had aches and pains. I’ve had some small bouts with a slight case of the flu, migraines and other what I consider minor ailments. Sometimes I’ve stayed in bed or did nothing as a precaution because rest works wonders for a body and soul. And anyone who has had a migraine understands, functioning just isn’t possible when your head hurts so much you can’t see. But the on the whole, nothing too bad, nothing I couldn't handle. And never do I get something which causes me to vomit. Pregnancy was the only thing which cause that problem. I’d rather die than do that!

Now, with my family it’s been a whole different scenario. My husband gets stomach issues all the time and my youngest seems to pick up everything since he was in 6th grade and got pneumonia twice in one year. And since the youngest has been diabetic, he has been ill once every couple of weeks with something.

This last time, he dehydrated himself with soccer practice and then got the stomach cramps which go along with it. Or so we thought. Since he’s diabetic, we take him to the ER only to find that he has a horrible case of gastroenteritis which is apparently going around.

No, biggie, we can handle this. We make sure with his endocrinologist about what the ER prescribed and a host of other things as well as keeping him hydrated after the IVs. Never once did I think I was on the same road. I figured I was just Mom who could handle it yet again.

That was early AM Saturday and as I sit here Wednesday writing my blog, I wonder what ever made me think I was invincible. For the first time ever, I had to ask the DH to stay at home to take care of both of us. And the only thing that prevented me from going to the hospital was the fact I kept drinking even though the first day it came right back up.

Needless to say, I’m finally on the upswing even though my out bed time is only up to about an hour and a half before I am exhausted. MOF, as soon as I get done writing this, I’m off to bed again.

We think of ourselves that way in writing sometimes. We think we can do it all, be it all. No one person can be everything to everyone. Most authors’ rise to the top is a slow hard fought battle with many obstacles in the way. Some of those obstacles can be that we’re just plain sick of writing. It happens sometimes and its then that one needs to pull back and regroup.

Everyone needs to have a writing plan, something that they can refer back to when the going gets tough. Sometimes all it takes is to look at your plan, sometimes it takes writing in a different genre, taking a small vacation or even doing more volunteer work for your local writers group. Just something that will skid you along the plateau to where you’re going upward again.

In these tough economic times, I feel people giving up on dreams and whatever makes them happy because they aren’t making money or aren’t doing something they feel they should. It’s here that I’d like to steal a quote from the movie Galaxy Quest, ‘Never give up, never surrender.’ One must always look to their dreams and their inner self to draw strength.

Life is what it is. It’s not going to change or get better unless you want it to. Remember it’s all in your hands.

Again, I can see you wondering what this had to do with me being sick. I had a plan in place no matter what happened to me. I had someone to cover me at work, I had my DH answer my emails and delegate to others what I couldn’t get done, and I did what I’m supposed to be doing. Got better. Not 100% yet, but better.

And the whole time, my little brain is working on how I can get this into a story, or how I can convince folks that a good plan, no matter what the problem, is always great to have.

Happy writing! Until next week…

Lynn

Week For Change

Sigh. You know it’s bad when I start a paragraph with a sigh. This week has been incredibly stressful for me. But along with the stress, there are rays of light and hope.

First let me apologize for being so late today. My diabetic 17 yo has been ill since last week. And those of you who know me, know I don’t ever say much. Life is what it is and we ALL must deal with the cards we are dealt. Life is just that way. Most of the time, he is not ill and is very well managed diabetically. BUT every once in a while, he’ll get something that just hangs on and longer since he was diagnosed last year.

BUT for me the diabetes isn’t the problem. It’s the kid who wants his mommy to be the ‘call and fetch girl’ which his mommy blithely replies, ‘I ain’t no one’s call and fetch girl including Daddy’s!” More prevalent than that is the undying faith that Mom can fix everything. Sigh. Now you know why I’m sighing. Oh, if it were only true!

Now, yesterday was a day of incredible change. And one I think that we need as a country and a people. Sometimes, it takes a total shakeup to get where we need to be. Me and mine are very, very lucky. We all have decent jobs and are okay as far finances. But the change President Barack Obama, our first African-American one, promises has been a long time coming. And this is good as so many of my writing friends are losing jobs and have a very unstable situation right now. We all need to remember this and think only good thoughts for them.

But the best new I’ve gotten was two-fold. First, early last week, I had turned a project into one of my publishers, Loose Id, which was near and dear to my heart. It’s called the Protectors of the Earth series and had been recently rejected by eHarlequin because it had some major sci-fi elements involved and Nocturne Bites doesn’t have any of those elements. I, however, was hopefully. While I did get rejected, I was invited to submit again which made me very, very happy.

Now to the submission. Well, it took a few days BUT my editor was delighted enough to push it on up the line. Which is great. I had had a few ideas which weren’t well received and didn’t go anywhere. This was a very good sign!

The last one is something that made me very happy and I was very surprised. I had decided late last year that I was going to make a very concentrated effort to lose weight. And I started in November with a bang. I decided to go to a Naturopath because I wanted to do everything naturally. I don’t know about you but the holidays are usually a time when I don’t lose. I am lucky if I don’t gain.

And this year, I didn’t gain an ounce. I lost…not a lot…but I lost. Yippee, yippee, YIPPEE! I just couldn’t believe it because I thought the holiday had been more horrible than I imagined. Seems now I have so much more to be thankful for than ever. If you want to track me and my weight lose journey, you can find me at my other blog, http://journeyfromfat2fit.blogspot.com/ where I try to post all the things that are happening to me in that area. Right now, it’s sparse because I’m trying to catch up from November. But I’ve had so many people ask me, including my doctor, that I figured this would be the easiest for all to see.

So for me, this year is starting with a bang I can live with. How’s your year going so far?

Hope it’s a great one! See you next week!

Lynn

Erotic Romance, Writing and the Dixie Chicks

Growing up a kid’s life is usually defined by their parents. Well, mine were very country. I can remember being on my Daddy’s shoulders during some of the greatest singers in the genre at the Grand Ole Opery in Bainbridge, Ohio. Some of those old melodies that I heard then can still waft through my house especially when I write. There’s nothing like those good old country songs to get one in the mood.

Sometimes.

Tonight, I fell asleep in front of the TV as I commonly do when I’m on a writing spree. I’ll work and work then take a break when before I know it, I’m stumbling to bed again because I just couldn’t keep my eyes open. I’ve always been a late night person and while it doesn’t surprise me it is sometimes disconcerting. This time though, instead of dragging myself up, I was riveted to what was on the TV. I had apparently fallen asleep to some documentary that I was watching on historical political events. What I woke up to was something totally different. You’d think I’d have something better to sink my teeth into. LOL!

Still, this one completely captured my attention. While I no longer listen to country music any more unless I’m nostalgic or just really can’t get into the mood, I do listen to singers like Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Shedaisy and the Dixie Chicks. What I was seeing on my big screen was a documentary about three women and something that because known as ‘the incident’ to them and the rest of the world. An incident that everyone by now realize should never have been blown out of proportion because what was said has been found to be relatively true in the years since it has happened.

And while I don’t want this blog to turn into a political forum at all, it made me wonder about my own chosen career and just how it can hinge on the whims of the reading public just like theirs hung on the whims of a listening public. There have been times when I tell people I write erotic romance and something between horror and disbelief cross their face. When that happens I have to grit my teeth sometimes and just smile because when all is said and done, I will write what I write for a variety of reasons.

Now some of you may ask ‘How can you love smut?’ to which I would reply ‘How can I not?’ I mean everyone has a different perception of what porn is, what smut is and what romance is. Mine just happens to be a little bit broader than most. But here’s the key to the whole thing and it something most of you don’t know. I write just as much non-erotic stuff as I do the erotic venture. Yup, you heard me right. Again, I can hear you say ‘Huh? What are you talking about?’

What, indeed. The bottom line is that I write what I love at that moment. Some days it’s just as hard for me to get into a sex scene as it is the writer who has never written one. I truly understand that as I write, I am not the one in control but my characters are. If they don’t want to have sex, they won’t. If they want to shoot someone, they will. And if they need to defend themselves against the next wave of alien bloodsuckers, they will do it superbly.

I write what is in my heart at the very moment I put the words onto the page and not a second before I’m supposed to. I’m one of the few writers who won’t write to a market because it’s popular nor will I be swayed against finishing something that isn’t the latest trend or fashion. I need to be passionate about what I write and if I can’t be, the piece may never get started or even finished for that matter.

At a talk I gave this past week, one of the topics I spoke to was career. I’ve been around a long time in the romance field and I have always written the ‘hot’ stuff long before it was in vogue. I can remember the very first time that Sandra brown put in the words ‘tongue f**k’ and that book hit the best seller list. And the very first BDSM book I ever read was in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s by a science fiction author named Sharon Green and the book was ‘The Mind Guest’ another one who made it to the NY Times bestseller list. The moment I finished the book I told my husband that someday I would write a book just like it. And I did in my own way.

I used to tell people to write what they know until I was corrected by a bestselling author who told me to write what I could imagine. I’ll take it one step even further and say one should write what they know along with what they can imagine. Only then will you get the full effect and range of your writing.

I’ll end this by saying thank you to the Dixie Chicks for giving me this blog idea. I was always on their side about ‘the incident. They’re good at what they do and they won’t comprise who they are to get it done their way.

Just like me. I will always write what I love no matter what genre.

Later…

Lynn

The Art of Promotion

Now that I am a published author, I find myself constantly looking for ways to get my name out there. As a writer, my name is my product and I know it’s imperative to get it out there as much as possible. The question is how?

Do I visit every Yahoo group I can find and post excerpts? Do I blog every single day and hope to get a following that way? Do I pay to have my banner or cover advertised at a review site? Do I garner up the courage to go on a radio blog?

There are so many options out there it is mind-boggling. Some days I feel I spend more time promoting then actually writing. So that brings up the next round of questions. Can you ever do too much promoting? Not only do I worry that people will get sick of seeing me on all the loops, but how much money should I really invest?

So I am putting these questions out to all you writers and readers. Then I would like to know what worked for you? Do you have any unique ideas that boosted your sales?

-Stephani