Our rafflecopter page is LIVE a day early. You are all welcome to go get a jump start today. Just follow the directions at the bottom of the page for the rafflecopter and enter to win the grand prizes.
I don’t have any cheap Black Friday jokes today.
Can I help it if I’m color-blind?
Heck, black isn’t even a color – is it?
I’m holding out for Avocado Friday.
I’ve got a whole truck-load of avocado jokes.
Or is that just a truck-load of avocados?
Avocadi?
Just click here and sign up over at their Facebook page and follow along all weekend long.
And if you click this cat she will take you on over to the Rafflecopter where our flight attendant will see that you are properly seated and you can start signing up for your prize-winning chances!
Check that Rafflecopter every day this weekend for new chances to win.
And lastly…
Don’t forget to grab a free copy of BIG HAIRY DEAL!!!
And, if you are feeling particularly magnanimous…
Spend a paltry 99 cents on BIGFOOT TRACKS!
All right.
Enough with the salesman act.
I’ve got to get to work at the day job.
Have a happy Black Friday. Shop safe, now, you here?
Being a filmmaker and writer, I’ve discovered some ridiculous but enlightening tips that increase the potential of a writer. I was totally astonished by the fact that they worked for me.
1. Use a notepad for drafting, rather than a notebook
I’ve just noticed this a few days back. I have the habit of writing scripts in notebooks and sometimes in separate pages. One day I went to the bookshop and accidentally purchased the “NOTEPAD”, the one where you flip off pages vertically. I started writing on it; to my bewilderment the writing flow of mine was awesome. It might be due to fewer distractions from the previous page as I obviously flip off to the new page every time. I don’t know why, but trust me, it works.
2. Never worry about editing, just go with the flow first
All right – so some of you folks out there might have heard of something called BLACK FRIDAY.
No, I am not talking about an Italian horror movie.
I am – of course – talking about the Friday before the American Thanksgiving.
We Canadians, of course, have already celebrated Thanksgiving last month. I mean, who wants to wait for turkey dinner anyway?
Well – as everybody and their dog’s litter of pups knows, Black Friday is a celebration of mass consumer consumption. Folks are supposed to run wild, waving their wallets in the air and stampeding enmasse into their closest shopping malls.
Cars, books, television sets – you name it. Everything is suddenly available.
You can hear the hucksters and whiskey drummers beating on their tom-tom drums of greed and chanting hoarsely, “Sale! Sale! Sale!”
It sounds terrible, doesn’t it?
Well, pass me those tom-tom drums, would you?
I am taking part in two – (count them) – Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions this weekend to help promote my grab-this-once-and-run-with-it release of BIG HAIRY DEAL – my full length novel of Bigfoot action.
Just click this picture and it will whisk you directly to the Amazon.com listing where you can grab a full-length novel for FREE!
Now – some of you writer-types out there might want to know just what all I have done to promote this e-book.
For starters I set it to a price of $2.99 and then marked it down to a measly 99 cents for all October.
Now – for the first and possibly ONLY time I am giving this book away, all weekend long.
Yeah, I realize I already said that but that’s the thing about a tom-tom drum, now isn’t it? That beat has got to repeat.
Let me tell you a little about bknights. This Fiverr company is absolutely GREAT for freebie promotions. Five dollars for a one-day freebie usually nets me an average of 500 giveaways. It hasn’t always worked as well on my 99 cent releases – but for freebies bknights cannot be beaten.
I am also taking part in a weekend long group promotion with over thirty-five authors entitled the MKSP Black Friday / Cyber Monday Book Bash.
I know.
That’s a catchy title, isn’t it?
🙂
All kidding aside this is a great event for any Kindle readers to follow along with. There will be games and contests and giveaways and gift certificates all weekend long.
Just click here and sign up over at their Facebook page and follow along all weekend long.
Let me tell you writer-types, if you are trying to build up a little low cost promotion for one of your e-book releases then working with a group of dedicated writer-types is a great way to go. They’re going to be running all over the cyber-country banging on cyber-doors and fingering cyber-door-bells just as hard as they can.
Think of it as pebbles in a wishing pond.
You throw one, and you make it a bit of a ripple.
You throw a handful of pebbles and you make a lot of ripples.
You get yourself a whole posse of pebble-chucking writer-types and we are talking about a perfect storm of e-book promotion.
Finally, I have hooked up at the last minute with a group of seven writers from kboards – (and if you aren’t following the kboards message board, well you really ought to turn in your I-write-for-kindle badge) for a similar smaller scale promotion.
This is always possible.
It doesn’t have to be something that you throw a lot of money at.
Offering free e-readers and new cars and Amazon shopping sprees are all well and good – but sometimes if you have only a short bit of time to work with you can just hook-up with a half-dozen of your writer-type buddies and share your blogs and mutually tweet and get the word out there for each other’s books.
And – for you UK readers Just click this picture and it will whisk you directly to the Amazon.co.uk listing where you can grab a full-length novel for FREE!
I’ve got at least one other freebie this weekend that I will be announcing on this blog – and I want to apologize in advance to all of those Twitter-types and Facebook-followers of mine who are going to get tired of seeing my face pop up on their screen begging folks to buy my books – but I really want to get the word out about this promotion.
Why?
Well – aside from the usual reasons – I want to give EVERYONE a chance to grab this e-book free – because come the New Year I will be releasing BIG HAIRY DEAL and BIGFOOT TRACKS through Kobo – which means that BOTH of these e-books will no longer be available through the Kindle Unlimited program – which means that this will be your first and last chance, Kindle readers, to grab this e-book for free.
A lot of times I’ll hear a doctor speaking and I will wonder to myself just what the heck that fellow is saying. And I have watched a LOT of House episodes.
My wife went back to college and is now working in a hospital and I hear an awful lot of medical jargon getting tossed around.
So I get a lot of what this blogger is talking about.
SO – how many of you writer-types out there have characters in medical professions?
Doctors and scientists may be brilliant in their fields but some may not be great at communicating their knowledge to the rest of us. This is obviously important when doctors are explaining things to their patients, as it is when research scientists are seeking to engage the public with their work. To succeed, the experts need to tailor their language to a lay audience.
I’m going to talk you through a few of the things that I notice again and again as a copyeditor. Biomedical science is my patch, but some of these points…
I have often worked in jobs where I would find myself speaking with folks who had trouble with their English. Retail, phone work, tourism – sooner or later somebody comes up to you and does that shrug thing with that embarrassed grin and says something “English, not so good.”
A grin can be a wonderful bridge.
The fact is none of us really know what we are talking about. We were all born to fake it and we should never put on airs just because somebody happens to speak a little differently than we do. Life is one big long old learning curve and the moment you refuse to adapt and evolve is the moment you begin to die.
Sometimes I worry that I spend more time here than working on my actual projects. Of course, having just written 50000 words this month I really should beat myself up too hard.
Still, blogging is fun.
How about of any of you writer-types out there?
Do you prefer blogging to writing novels?
Let me hear your words.
In the meantime you might want to check this blog entry out.
I recently found out that the hit count on my Relevant article back in June was over 1.6 million. The editor told me it was the second-biggest traffic day in the history of their website. That’s mind-boggling to me.
If you had asked me a year ago what I thought it would mean to have a piece get that much exposure, I would have assumed it would be my big break. That it would boost my blog, lead to freelance opportunities, help connect me to the right people. That it would be my open door into the world of professional writing and publishing. That it would bring me validation and satisfaction. It would reassure me that what I’m doing here isn’t pointless and that my story matters.
Do you want to know the truth?
It hasn’t done any of those things. For a few weeks I received a lot of…
So you’ve sat down and typed up several awesome and truly inspiring blog entries. We are talking about the wisdom of the ages – soul stirring stuff that Plato himself wishes he had thunk up.
By God, you tell yourself – but I am freaking brilliant.
Cue the tumbleweeds.
Harken to them crickets squeaking on their finest fiddling legs?
You dropped a pebble down the well of infinity and it is still falling.
Your brilliance will go unnoticed if no one notices your blog.
Right?
So, let me give you a few hints, pilgrim.
1. Comment on other blogs and TRY to sound as if you actually have something interesting to stay. Do NOT stick your foot in your mouth. Nothing tastes worst than day-old toe jam mingled with your fillings.
2. Make guest blog appearances and reciprocate if possible. Each blog entry is like a stone thrown into a pond. Makes ripples that reach out and touch other folks. You throw a rock in somebody’s blog-pond and then they throw a rock into your blog-pond there is no telling how big those ripples might get. We are talking an entire tsunami of exposure.
3. WATCH YOUR TITLES! Don’t just title your blog entry something dull and uninspiring like “Blog Entry #21”. If you want to catch those random drive-by blog hits you want a title that is going to catch the attention of somebody doing a blog search. You also want a title that SOUNDS sexy and useful – like TWENTY-FIVE TIPS TO GETTING YOUR BLOG NOTICED!
I guarantee that title would get noticed!
Too bad that I could only think of three tips.
🙂
yours in storytelling,
Steve Vernon
If you enjoyed this blog entry why don’t you pick up one of my e-books?
The first thing you need to write a novel is… Time.
The second thing you need to write a novel is… More Time.
And the third thing you need to write a novel is… Even More Time.
This perhaps seems a bit obvious. But let me explain.
Time, More Time and Even More Time are all necessary.
I’ve divided Time up into three because you need Time for different things.
The first lot of Time is, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, Time to write. Time to sit at the desk with words coming out of you.
The second lot of time, More Time, is… Time not to write. Time to do stuff which doesn’t seem to be writing but which, in the end, turns out to have been writing all along. To the uninitiated, this may appear to be window shopping or people-watching, taking a nice long…
I was going to say something nice about that mackerel tabby cat – but my cat has FORBIDDEN me to say ANYTHING about ANY of the other cats on the internet. In fact, she tells me that there are no other cats on the internet. In fact there isn’t even an internet and the only web worth talking about are those cobwebs that she keeps nibbling on in the corners of the under-bed-world.
Here’s a pretty cool giveaway. Check it out and check out this reviewer’s blog! 🙂
To celebrate 200 reviews’ worth of you all putting up with the haphazardly scheduled posting of my office supply opinions, I’m doing a giveaway! I’ve been amassing this horde for several years, of the choicest goods I’ve ever found on clearance. Mostly from Target, but not all.
That Leuchtturm was an especially good find. Mine has served me well all year.
The goods include:
Ruled Leuchtturm 1917 Medium Notebook, Black
2 Moleskine Extra Small Ruled Notebooks, Green and Purple
Some Random Turquoise Pocket Notebook from Staples
One 0.5mm Uni Kuru Toga with extra lead and extra erasers
YOURS IN STORYTELLING... 