Hey, hey, it's Work in Progress Wednesday! Or, Jaredpalooza!

... except, what I'm working on right now is super-duper sekrit.
Flergle.
Murmph.
... and even Snerldt.
So how about instead, I give you some recaps on the over the top awesome that was this year's GRL?

Okay, my lovelies, hold onto your favorite boy-toy *no, no, NOT Jared Rackler, though I can clearly see why he might be chosen--waggles eyebrows*

Oh, hell, wait a second. Perhaps we should just have Jaredpalooza? Yeah, I can get down with that. Because see, while yes, my buddy Jared is a beauty, there is way more to him than meets the eye.

Jared, the silly otter, will tell you he's shallow. I'm sorry dears, but I gotta blow that nonsense right out of the water. The boy is smart, talented, gorgeous and best of all? He has a beautiful soul. *sorry, Jared baby, I had to say it.*

Time for another gratuitous pic of beauty?

Eh, hold it down in front. I've got a good one! Yes, yes, The Dynamic Duo, Jared and Devon, bringing beauty of face, form and spirit to the sumptuous Dreamspinner "wear your nice clothes" shindig.

**happy sigh**

Are you starting to get my off-beat point here? Besides Jared being a cutie of the first water, GRL was--indeed has been from the very first event in New Orleans-- an amazing,exhilarating, nearly week-long endurance event that rivals the Iron-Man thingy for stamina required, a summer full of Deep South tent revivals for feeding your soul, working a soup kitchen in the poorest place you've ever set foot in for making you feel good about yourself, and a family reunion full of family you actually like and want to see for a splash of "Hey, these are my people!"

But it's even better than all that. Because the sum of Jaredpalooza and GRL is greater than it's parts.

 No, really.

Yes, it's an endurance race. Yes, many *sniffle, hack, glurmpf* many of us come home with various forms of Con-Crud. But oh my word, do we ever come home empty? I know that I don't. Especially not this year.

Why?

Because this year the organizers started something new, with the assistance of the Rainbow Romance Writers. They started a Writer's Workshop that happened the day before the GRL Retreat began. I was hoping to come away from the workshop with a few new techniques. Instead I came away with a whole new worldview. I took two classes. The first was with: Funny Man and Physical Comedy Gal, better known as Zam Maxfield and Ethan Day. They totally rocked the house with their class on writing Rom-Com! I learned, I laughed, I conquered. *oh, hell... that's the wrong tag-line again, isn't it?*

Then I gibbered about what to do. Fortunately for me, Damon Suede was on hand to give me a little guidance. In deep, rolling tones he pronounced, "Git yur silly ass over to the agent thing with Saritza. You couldn't pay for this anywhere else. Well, *pause while his totally real and also completely affected Texas Twang reasserts itself* yep, you could. But it would cost a mite."
No, those weren't Damon's actual words. The accent was his. He took it out of his back pocket and put it on very prettily. No, really.

Like any smart girlie would, I scampered right over to the Agent Saritza class... and was promptly impressed.

I signed up to meet with her later. I signed up to pitch books to various publishing houses, starting with Riptide, because Rachel Haimowitz scares the bejayzus out of me (as a person to pitch to) and I figured if I started with her I'd be able to get through everyone else easily afterward. I was right. The afternoon passed in a whirl of pitches made and accepted and by the end I'd promised to produce 5 new series this year.

*pausing to kick self in arse, and then to high-five the mirror*

Even if I'd left after the first day the gain for me in connections, experience, and possibilities would have be well worth the cost of going.

There was another class that afternoon, Amy Lane's course on characterization--taken after the pitches had melted my brains out of my ears--and this one combined in my head and heart with the Rom-Com class Ethan and Zam had given to unstick a story that's been languishing in the back of my brain for nearly three years.

And that? Was just the beginning. Stay tuned. I'll be back tomorrow to let you in on more of my GRL highlights tomorrow.

Muah!
Cherie Noel

Monday's Mayhem and Foolishness--GRL Style

So, I tried to post a link to the video of my author reading... and it appears it is not working quite like I intended. Soooooooooooo, here's me trying again.

*fingers crossed*

... and I do believe we can call that success! Hoorah! Go on. Get you some.

Holy Guacamole, I'm a Rainbow Awards Finalist!

Hello my beautiful babies! Sorry it's been so long since we chatted. I'm afraid I got caught up with school and the life of being mom to a precocious teen. Hee hee, make of that what you will! Sooooooooooo.... did you note the new addition to the blog? 

Eh?

I know it's likely old news to some of you but I'm still giddy over this... and I didn't make an annoucement here before. Cast your lovely peepers to the right and gaze on the awesome new badge over there. Yeah, yeah... it's the same as the one right at the top of this post! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

*holding breath*

Yes! It's true! I, little ole me, made it to the esteemed Rainbow Awards finals! I am up there with the likes of Z.A.Maxfield, Amy Lane, and a number of other amazing writers. *pauses to shiver* It's nearly surreal for me. 

The book that got me there is my little story set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which is where I grew up. The story was written around the idea of the Mixed Tape, a popular trend in the 80's... you liked a gal or a guy but were too shy to tell them so. Instead you made a cassette tape with songs which expressed your feelings. *today's version is the iPod playlist* So I centered my story around Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time (though that title had already been taken by the talented J.P. Bowie... and it's a damn good story, read it asap if you haven't already)... well, I included other songs, and I'll share them with you over the coming couple of weeks... but today's is the song that started it all. 

And of course, as important as the inspiration is the work of the Editorial Goddess, Kris Jacen, who inspired me to make the story the best it could be. I lurve her more than chocolate. 

Toodles for now, but don't worry. I'll be back tomorrow with video of the Author Reading at GRL. That will kick off a week of memories and shenanigans centered around the insane, sublime silliness that is GayRomLit. Get your hip-waders out and get ready, the bs and good times will be coming at you fast and furious. Heh. 

UPDATE!

Just a quick post to say that after some hiccups (and FINALLY meeting at GRL in Atlanta last weekend), Cherie and I have managed to mostly iron out a few things and we're working on getting the website back up and functional! Cherie has promised me a blog post about GRL (and I'm toying with the idea of doing one from my perspective, too), there *may* (*fingers crossed*) be a video of Cherie's reading, and we're going to do a bit of a site overhaul! So keep your eyes open for all the goodies! (One of the changes will be a page dedicated to me meandering about all the randomness that happens in my life, so keep an eye on that once it happens if you want to have a laugh at me!)

Thursday Think Tank: Tara Lain's Take on Marketing

Hello everyone! Sorry about the late start to your Thursday Think Tank reading... I tripped over my lack of computer savvy again today. No, really. So I offer my abject apologies, and ask that you make sure to take a moment to enjoy the wisdom that Tara Lain brings us in this venture of gleaning wisdom about marketing. Next week I'll have a post from the other side, not an author but a marketing pro... and it's gonna be well worth the wait to hear the good stuff spilling from the lips of Lori Bell, one of the founders of the M/M Romance Group (now over 11,000 strong) on Goodreads. For now, please, pull up a cushion, place your order with the cabana boys for whatever your favorite beverage is, and learn at the dainty ankles of a brilliant marketeer. That's like a Musketeer, but championing great books rather than the Queen of France. :)

It’s Fun, dammit! 

Hi! Thank you, Cherie, for asking me to pop in and offer some marketing suggestions today. Some very terrific authors have preceded me with good advice, so I won’t repeat their tips, but will try to add a few footnotes and thoughts. You may know that my day job is in marketing, so when I was first published as a fiction writer in 2011, I had strong marketing instincts. Marketing books is different than marketing medical devices and industrial instrumentation like my clients, but underlying principles stay the same. Here are a few things to consider: 

·         Yes it is your job, so you might as well enjoy it. Even today, some new authors are in shock when they discover that their publishers aren’t going to promote them much at all. We all have to do it ourselves. In fact, publishers consider your marketing platform when they consider your book. Are you doing enough to get that first book out the gate and maintain momentum as other books come out? There’s a mountain of competition in romance today. More than there has ever has been. About one-third of your “author” time will likely be spent on marketing yourself, learning new techniques, and building a solid marketing platform. Could you write more books if you didn’t have to do this? Yes. Would more people buy them? No.

·         Writing another great book is NOT your best marketing strategy. When I started, a lot of great authors told me that writing a good book is your best marketing approach. I loved them, but I didn’t believe them. Even in 2011, my market situation was different from when they started a few years before. They had less noise in their market and less competition. It was easier for the cream to rise to the top. So I marketed my butt off. Not always effectively -- but consistently. The situation today is three times harder than when i started. Self-publishing and the rise of many small publishers have expanded the readers’ choices to infinity. YES, you must write a great book and then another one and another one. But marketing smart is absolutely essential or you’ll just write a lot of great books that no one reads.

·         Generosity is the best policy. Give stuff away. What better way to show readers how great you are than to give them samples. Share your ideas and your sparkling prose. Give away prizes and free books. I even think it’s smart for authors to consider a publisher’s support for giving things away when they decide to submit to them.

·         Consistency is the absolute bottom line. ZAM said this but I want to repeat it. Authors always come and ask me “What marketing works?” I tell them the marketing they do all the time. There is NO magic bullet. Find what you enjoy or at least what you can stand to do and keep doing it. In a branding exercise, I asked readers on my blog what they think of when they see my name or one of my books. One woman replied, “I think ‘I see her name everywhere and I need to check her out’.” That’s what you want. It takes six or more exposures to get someone to even notice you and many more to get them to take action. It’s water on the rock. Eventually, you have the Grand Canyon!

I want to reinforce that marketing is not about selling stuff. It’s creating an environment in which sales can take place. It’s you forming a relationship with potential readers and sharing your best with them.  As someone in some movie sometime said, “It’s FUN, dammit!”  LOL 

Places to find Tara on the Web:
E-mail

Website:
Blog http
Goodreads
Pinterest
Twitter
FB Page
Amazon
B&N
ARe 

Thursday Think Tank: A Zamtastic Take on Promotion with Z.A. Maxfield

Greetings and Salutations, sweet readers. In today's Think Tank, we've got Z. A. Maxfield wearing the thinking cap. Oh, I know you might think that looks a bit like this...

But really, the zamtastic truth is a bit more multifaceted. Zam the author does seem to have magical powers in both creating phenomenal stories and in creating an online community where not only her own work, but that of others can flourish. If you've never had a chance to visit her Yahoo Group (or rather, Cybercafe) then you really ought to go pay a visit. Some days are quiet, but when everyone shows up and hangs out? It's an amazing place not unlike Oz. No, really. I even met a wizard there. 

So of course I had to invite this dear lady to the Writing Cave for a visit, hoping she could spread a little of her magic here. And low and behold, she agreed. Therefore it gives me tremendous pleasure to introduce the magnificent Z.A. Maxfield. 

Zam?

Zam? Helloooo? Sheesh, are you off playing with baby hedgehogs again? Or is it more of the cute men that live in your head? What? Both? Oooooh, do tell. No, really. Tell. *drat, she's all focused today and staying on topic* Okay, well, then, get to the bit about promotion and then afterwards get straight back to writing some more fabulous stories. 

When Cherie Noel invited me to talk a little about promotion and marketing, I was a little surprised. At the time, I didn’t consider that I did a lot of promo. In the last two weeks, though, much of that seems to have changed. I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking and working on lately, because it represents the first time I’ve given my marketing practices structure.

Being in any community, the key is to be a good neighbor. So first and foremost, I’ve tried to make acquaintances in the writing and publishing community and I treat these people as friends.

I read extensively and I’m not afraid to praise where it’s due. I share the books I’m reading with my friends and readers. I often drop a line to an author after I’ve read something I’ve particularly enjoyed. Sometimes I do this in my author persona, but often I do it in my real-life persona, because I’m a fan like anyone else.

My enthusiasm for the work we do is part of how I market, it’s the very first thing I think about: what am I reading, and who can I thank for the ride? I’m forging relationships that I hope will last my lifetime and I’m cross promoting with people I care about deeply.

Lately, I’ve established a hard and fast blogging schedule. I do two blogs a week on my website under the NEWS heading, and I find that’s working rather well for me.

Offering entertainment is the cornerstone of marketing. We need to think like television programmers. Sure, it’s the commercials that pay the bills, but what would happen if we aired commercials all day?

Offering a weekly “Friday flash fiction” or a “guess the book from my backlist” type blog post every week lets people know they can tune in to my website for entertainment and rewards, and of course, that means they’ll be there when I have marketing news to share as well.

My thinking is this: I don’t want people coming to my website only when they want to buy something, although I don’t mind if they do. I want people to see my part of the Internet world as fun. I want them to wonder what I’m going to write in my flash fiction blog this Friday. I might even ask them to send images I can riff on. I want my readers to engage.

I see consistency is the key to this. If I have a Tuesday Teasers blog post, then I don’t let a Tuesday go by without one. I want readers to tune in expecting something fun! I want them to plan to spend a very small amount of time with me on Tuesdays, because it’s amusing, exciting, and rewarding.

The next thing is I want to drive reader traffic -- ALL traffic – towards a subscription of some kind. I use Mail Chimp to create newsletters. I want my readers to sign up for my newsletter, which means giving me both, their email address and permission to send them mail.

Social networking is lovely, but I’m competing with how many people on a reader’s twitter stream? What I want is someone who not only gives me permission to email them, I want a person who looks forward to receiving my mail.

That means I want to (again), amuse, excite, and entertain. I want to give the reader content they aren’t going to get anywhere else. Free stories. Edited scenes. The option to maybe name characters in my books.

I want them to have exclusive content -- something I’ve written just for newsletter subscribers. I want to give them something to look forward to. Some kind of reward for their loyalty.

If they’re giving me something, I need to give something in return, right?

Is this a pipe dream? I don’t think so.

There are authors whose newsletters I enjoy reading. They’re a fun extension of the books I enjoy. I recently signed up for a second weekly newsletter from a single author, and who does that? Who signs up for a second newsletter?

The better question is how can I write one like that!

That newsletter (which I really enjoy) is the perfect example of what I’m talking about. I will be looking to for more books and entertainment from this author for years to come. (If you want to know, it’s Jordan Castillo Price.)

Social media is hit and miss. My forays into social media should be like auditions. I try to put out the best, wittiest stuff. It’s a teaser. The goal is to drive traffic to my newsletter. I offer the opportunity to sign up for newsletters on my website, on Facebook, on Twitter. Then I produce entertaining, exclusive copy on a regular basis.

Currently it seems to be paying off, so I suggest giving a three-fold marketing plan a try:

1.      Create entertaining content on all social networking fronts and use that to drive traffic to newsletter signups.

2.      Make entertainment the lynchpin of a newsletter system – one where you’ve gained permission to email readers with exclusive content and contests. Offer value, and make your little corner of the reader’s inbox a place worth investigating Every single time you send them anything.

3.      Be consistent.

Some things to remember: Even if a writer is limited to fewer marketing hours, it pays to make a plan.

Whether you choose to do your newsletter weekly (I don’t recommend this, if you plan on doing anything else) or quarterly, make a schedule and stick to it. Post your blog posts regularly so your readers get used to looking for them.

Blog in a central place and use something like SNAP – a wordpress social networking auto-poster to update other services like Tumblr, Twitter, Amazon, Goodreads, and Facebook.

And Most IMPORTANT: Have fun. You’re the pied piper. You’re leading your readers into the world of your imagination. It’s time to be the most enthusiastic kid on the block and share your love of books, of reading, and of networking with other authors, and with your fans. 

***********************************************

Thanks for spending a little time with Zam and I here at the Cave. You can find more of the indomitable, real deal Zam a nearly any etailer out there, but I will provide a few linkys!

Social Media for Zam:

Website

Facebook

Twitter

or Best Idea Yet, Sign up for ZAM's News, Free Reads and Exclusive contests HERE!! 

Buy Links for any of her books- Necessary, trust me on this. You are going to want to read everything the woman has ever turned her brilliant hand to.

Allromanceebooks

Amazon

or at any of the publishers she's with... I'll check on those and update this blog later today. Toodles!

Okay, I'm running my feet off, and Zam is published all over the place, so go to the link above that says BEST IDEA YET... click on the word HERE and hop on over to ZAM's site for fun, games, free reads and links to all her book buying locals! 

Get these two books if you've never read them. They rock!

Sunday Sweet Thang

Today for me? The sweetest thing is time with my kidlet and recognizing that in order to stay true to my author voice I need to revise a manuscript. I love knowing what direction I'm heading in, don't you? What's your Sweet Thing today? I'd like a sweet boy to share my sleepy Sunday with, and Bono definitely qualifies for me. :)

Enjoy, babies!