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emaginings: Blogging Around

January 16, 2013 by in category Archives tagged as , , , , , ,

Last month I promised a report on the blog hop and mini-tour I’d planned for my latest release How To Woo… A Reluctant Bride. I ended up doing a second blog hop in January, so will include that also. This is by no means scientific, but just the results of my little experiment. Keep in mind that this was an attempt to revive a blog that had been essentially dormant for several years, so there was little or no base of support to draw from.

Note: I’m only going to discuss sales at Amazon.com since those were the only ones of any size.

The Secret Santa Blog Hop was first, from Mon. Dec. 17 through Thursday Dec. 20. My story was uploaded to Amazon on Dec. 11 and was live by Dec. 12, so the blog hop took place the following week. The grand prize for this blog hop was a Kindle Fire preloaded with a bunch of the participating authors books, including mine. The prize for commenting on my post was a $15.00 gift card, and over the course of the hop + tour, I also gave away two free e-books (winners choice). I got 25 entrants for the gift card. Not bad. The page views during the hop ranged from 66 the first day (some of them me until I figured out I could check comments from the Dashboard) to only 14 on the last day.

I checked my sales on Sunday and again on Thursday and saw I had picked up ten sales. Might have been more if I hadn’t offered e-book giveaways for the mini-blog tour. Someone, I’ve forgotten who, said not to do that. Offer something other than a book so they will buy yours. I think it’s good advice.

Starting on Thursday, Dec. 21, I blogged at several other sites including the main TRS (The Romance Studio) blog on Dec. 21. There were very few comments and I have no idea how many page hits were involved. However, by Monday, Dec. 2 4, I had sold another 15 copies. Again, not too bad when everyone is getting ready for the holidays. By Dec. 29 I was up to a total of 79 copies.

This month I participated in the Something New, Something Naughty Blog Hop from Thu. Jan.  10 through Sun. Jan. 13. Page views ranged from 26 to 42 and I had comments from 27 people. The grand prizes for this hop were gift certificates from EdensFantasy and two other gift cards of the winner’s choice. Again I did the $15.00 gift card giveaway.

I also guested at Louisa Bacio’s blog on Jan. 11 and she told me there were 138 page views. That’s awesome!

By the evening of Jan. 11, my sales for that month at Amazon were up to 102, in addition to the 79 in December. I realize that might not sound like a lot to some of you, but it was more than I expected, so I am happy.

My thoughts:

I liked the blog hop better as there was some camaraderie with the other writers involved and I only had to come up with one blog post for each tour. Writing blog posts can be time consuming. The mini-blog tour (3 days, 4 different blogs) was more stressful as each one had to be different. Next time I will try to plan further ahead to lessen the stress, but this was thrown together very last minute. 

Did the blog hop and mini-blog tour help?

I’ll never be certain, but I can’t imagine it hurt. The objective was to raise my visibility online and I do think that happened. Next time I may do a smaller amount on the gift card giveaway, but this is all a learning process. I’m not sure I recommend doing two blog hops so close together, but with a new release, and at this time of year, I think this was a good move. I would definitely blog hop again and I’m grateful to the writers who organized the hops, namely Tabitha Blake (Secret Santa) and Jennifer Wright and Lisabet Sarai (Something New, Something Naughty) as well as our own Louisa Bacio.

UPDATE: I forgot to add thanks to Tara Lain for her fabulous talk on blog tours at the November OCC meeting, and to my three Yahoo support groups where I learned about self-publishing and discovered organized blog tours: Indie Romance Ink, Authors Network and Marketing For Romance Writers. And a big thanks to Vivienne Westlake, author of A Marquess For Christmas, for doing an excerpt exchange.

Now I have to stop blogging for a bit and work on another story!

Has anyone else tried blog tours or hops? Any thoughts on their effectiveness? 

Linda Mac w/a Lyndi Lamont

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Romancing the e-Reader with Jina Bacarr

January 11, 2013 by in category Archives tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

Guess who?

I’m your new e-Reader. All sexy swirls and curly Qs. Just waiting for you to click me on and take you to paradise.

Yes, I know, your rabbit vibrator made the same promises…but I’ve got something special to offer you.

I’ve got romance.

I can sweep you away to that special place in your mind where you can fall in love over and over again…and have great sex.

So, put away your bunny vibe and hop aboard!

I’m trim and gorgeous. Sexy design. Botox-smooth case.

Slimmer than I’ve been in years.

Clear, no-glare screens. And those cute keyboards. Like sassy, high-heeled shoes. Makes you want to let your fingers do the walking.

And no more of those pesky page numbers to get in the way. It’s like weighing yourself after you’ve gone on your mocha latte splurge. Who wants to know?

I do have a pet peeve about those TOCs. Half the time the Table of Contents key doesn’t work, sending ahead in the story and you know who’s sleeping with whom before you’ve guessed. it.

And don’t talk to me about Bookmarks.

They’re like old boyfriends who won’t go away. Once you’ve marked them, you’re stuck with them.

Ah, but I can’t stop drooling over the hunky guys on the Cover. Muscle-bound heroes to die for.

Hmm…if I could add just one thing to my e-Reader software…

It would be to have the Cover Hunk in 3-D.

All of him…and you know what I mean!

Happy Romance e-Reading in 2013!

Best,
Jina

www.JinaBacarr.com 

PS: If you want to try out your new e-Reader with an erotic short story, download:

“Breaking the Rules” — FREE today on Kindle Amazon  

A working girl who learns you have to ask for what you want.

At work…or in bed.

—————–


Or try an erotic short story: “Nice Girls Do It” for 99 cents on Amazon Kindle and e-tailers everywhere!

A stormy day and Chloe gets caught in the rain until a mysterious stranger who calls himself “the Hunter” offers her shelter in his old Victorian mansion.

And tells her about the secret ritual of the geisha when she loses her virginity.

Sensual, mysterious, naughty…

Will Chloe lose her virginity before morning comes?

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Time For a Do-Over by Kitty Bucholtz

January 10, 2013 by in category Archives tagged as , ,

j0178553One of my favorite things about January is getting a whole new year’s worth of do-overs. I loved do-overs as a kid, and I love them even more now. This past year has easily been my worst – three family members died, and over a dozen of my friends’ family members died. And that was just one part of how my year went badly.
Lena, the heroine of “Rescue at Loon Lake”, my story in the anthology Moonlit Encounters, found it difficult to get past her husband’s death while living in the same city. She decides to move to a new town for her do-over. Sometimes that works, but for most people it doesn’t.
A few years ago, I came up with a method that works for me: hitting the restart button. Any of us can hit the restart button at any time of the day, any day of the year. We just need to remember that the button exists.
Restart Your Attitude
The most important tool in your toolbox is your attitude because your attitude affects everything else. It is also one of your most vulnerable tools. When you catch your attitude taking a dive, stop for a mental moment and hit the restart button.
When you’re careful to keep your attitude positive, the parts of your life that are going well will go even smoother. And when life gets rough, a healthy attitude will keep you from getting totally beat up. It’s not always easy, but you can hit that restart button as many times as you need to. A few weeks after my mom’s death, I was hitting it a couple times an hour. It’s part of what kept me from getting caught in a riptide of grief.
Restart Your Actions
Everything you spend your time doing builds who you are. Your actions build your intellect, your career, your character. What you don’t do also shapes who you become. Getting caught up in the thousands of possibilities of 21st century life can derail even our best intentions. Derailment happens to me regularly – unless I remember to hit the restart button.
Goal!
Goal!
Over time, I’ve accumulated and shared all the time management and goal-setting information I’ve tried. Every January, I teach an online class to help other writers find the methods of “getting things done” that work for them. When you try something new and it doesn’t work, hit restart. When you keep doing what you know doesn’t work, hit restart. The button never wears out, no matter how often you find yourself using it.
Restart Your Commitment
Your attitude and your actions are important, but you also need to keep yourself committed to your goals and plans. It’s fine to change your mind, but if you change it over and over again, you won’t make any real progress in a given direction.
Feel like giving up? Hit the restart button. What is one tiny thing you can do today that keeps you committed to your purpose? What are the top three things? Don’t let yourself be intimidated by your multi-page To Do list (I know I’m not the only one), just take a deep breath and remind yourself why you decided this is the path you want to be on (whatever that path is).
It’s going to be January for three more weeks. Lots of time to work on a few do-overs in your life. But remember this for the rest of the year – every morning is also a new start. It’s never too late to work on becoming the person you were always meant to be.

Kitty Bucholtz decided to combine her undergraduate degree in business, her years of experience in accounting and finance, and her graduate degree in creative writing to become a writer-turned-independent-publisher. Her first novel, Little Miss Lovesick, is now available in print and ebook format. Her next novels, Love at the Fluff and Fold and Unexpected Superhero, will be released in 2013. Her short stories can be found in the anthologies Romancing the Pages and Moonlit Encounters, available in both print and ebook format.

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2013 Is Our Year!

January 2, 2013 by in category Archives

by Barb DeLong and Jann Audiss

 
Barb:  Do you believe it’s 2013, Jann? Wow! Another year over and I didn’t get my WIP completed. 2013 will be my year, though. I joined OCC’s BIAY and I have a goal of entering the Orange Rose Contest. What held me back in 2012, besides “not having enough time?”
Sometimes anxiety sets in when I think about writing a whole book. Richard Russo, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Empire Falls, said, “The task is so enormous that if we really thought about what we were letting ourselves in for, we’d never begin. Early on we learn to worry only about what we do today. If I get my two or three pages written on Monday my day’s work is done. It’s useless to worry about Friday or four years from Friday. Pages need our attention; books take care of themselves.”
I’m going to remember that.

But (isn’t there always a big but somewhere?), those three or four pages are like pulling teeth. I can’t turn off my inner editor and just throw words on a page.  Even so, my once grand idea begins to sound like crap. Here’s another quote by another award-winning author Ann Patchett that sums up my feelings exactly. She said, “The way I write, I have a novel in my head for a long time that I think about, and in those months it is so beautiful, so incredibly profound . . . The novel in my imagination travels with me like a small lavender moth making loopy circles around my head.”  She said, “As soon as I start to put it on the page I kill it. It always breaks my heart. For me, the greatest challenge is to stick with the book I’m writing when what I want to do is hit the delete button.”

I will strive to have her determination.

Jann: I totally understand what Ann said. I’ve been killing off story ideas left and right. I’m going with the concept of one hundred words (or more) a day. Author Janie Emaus who writes a weekly column on In the Powder Room ended her recent column saying, “If you’re going to follow something, follow your own heart.” http://www.inthepowderroom.com/read/home-time/2012-12-that-time-of-year-again.html
I’m going to follow my heart by completing my pledge to BIAY and longtime goal of entering the Orange Rose Contest as well.

Here’s to us and fulfilling our dreams for 2013!!
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New Year, New Writing (Calls for Submission)

December 31, 2012 by in category Archives tagged as , , , , ,

Many authors have a goal of writing in 2013. How about taking it one step further and submitting, too? Kick off the new year with some creative inspiration with these calls for submission, and if you need an extra kick in the pants – a watcher, if you dare, then I’m teaching a “Writing the Short Story for Anthology Call-Out” starting mid-January for Savvy Authors. More information below!
Cosmo Red Hot Reads
If you write romance, you had to have heard of this call. I’m already planning a submission. A super-fun short story I wrote (about 5,000 words), and never submitted anywhere. Want to finish it up, expand it, if necessary, and submit!

Cosmo Red Hot Reads from Harlequin feature contemporary, fun, sexy stories for today’s fun fearless females!
The Heroine:
  • She is the Cosmo woman: fun, fearless, female
  • She is independent
  • She does not need a man to make her life complete, but he is the icing on the cake
  • She’s adventurous and daring both in the bedroom and out!
  • She values her female friendships
  • She is focused on her career
  • Our heroine (and hero) grew up with reality TV, texting, online dating
  • She is most likely in her early to mid-twenties
  • The heroine drives the story

Key Elements:
  • Sexy romantic relationship with a satisfying ending
  • Love scenes are frequent, fun, detailed, fantasy-oriented and push the envelope
  • A strong conflict
  • Fast-paced, snappy dialogue, witty repartee
  • Strong female lead
  • A hero that you want to spend the weekend in bed with
  • Fresh, contemporary voice

Stories Can/Will: Include multiple points of view; be told in first person; be contemporary (but not paranormal please!); urban international settings are good; heroes can be bad boys, successful entrepreneurs, geeky scientists—different flavors of men for different fantasies.
Stories are 25,000–30,000 words, 2 titles a month, digital first, launching late spring/early summer 2013. For more information, visit http://www.harlequin.com/articlepage.html?articleId=1784&chapter=0
ROUGH & TUMBLE
Theme: Fight Clubs, Tattooed Warriors, Muscled Bad Boys
From fight clubs to medieval warriors, dueling cowboys to tattooed mercenaries, what happens when the tough fall hard. Silver Publishing is looking for stories involving those hot men we love to read about. What happens when the mighty fall?
Boxers, ninjas, medieval warriors, gladiators, bouncers –the list goes on and on. Submission close: Feb. 1, 2013. Click on the link for word count, character pairing, cover info, release date and more! http://sp-pub.com/fKOWq
YA Suspense and then Some!

Theme:  Goosebumps Galore!
Do you have a story that will have readers looking over their shoulders and double checking their doors? We want your most spine tingling tales… truly suspenseful stories only involving young adults. Everything from edge of your seat to horror is welcome!


• 15k+ words
• Romance and Non-Romance
• All Genres
• No sexually explicit content



Submission Deadline: January 5, 2013

Release Date: May 25, 2013. While this deadline is really soon – more for those almost done, they also have an YA Fantasy & Adventure call due March 23.
Note: at its base, every story within the Young Adult section should involve issues important to young adults—these can be directly related to the storyline or sub-plots that they young adult tackles along the way. No topic is considered taboo as it relates to this age group; however, sensitive topics require sensitive treatment, so please keep that in mind as you craft your stories.

For more information, visit https://silverstreampress.com/pages-title-page-42/?zenid=0cdaab6ef5d4e450a949f705b702636c
BDSM Anthology(ies) 
Secret Cravings Publishing is putting together a BDSM Anthology. Depending on how many stories accepted, this anthology may come out in volumes, as many as needed to get the smutty, romantic goodness to the masses. Here’s what I want: BDSM stories of any flavor from uber-kink (keeping the rules of publisher in mind regarding scat, rape, etc) to light vanilla, first-time play. Anywhere from your most Dom males to femdom to menage to an orgy, if you can pull it off and are so inclined. Even bondage out of this world on some foreign planet. Or a world of your own creation where BDSM rules the land ala The Sleeping Beauty series. Any sub-genre, mystery, paranormal, contemp, etc. I want intelligent, hot, tension filled erotic romance or erotica with a HFN or HEA ending. So long as you keep me reading every word from the first page, whether it hurts so good or tickles like a feather is all up to you. Due March 1.

Caveats:
No M/M pairings
Submissions must be 15-20k in length
Steamy to burning the page stories wanted, nothing behind closed doors here
Submissions must be formatted in SCP House Style upon submission
Usual no-no’s apply regarding rape, bestiality, scat, necrophilia, etc. Send all submissions to faithsommerseditor@gmail.com
For more information on submission guidelines, visit http://store.secretcravingspublishing.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=6&zenid=5f20023ff157c552b1e3d26413896c3e
Riverdale Avenue Books (RAB) – New Publisher
Riverdale Pop is our pop culture line. We are actively looking for both authorized and unauthorized biographies of celebrities who have captured the cultural spotlight, mostly current, but a blast from the past might be occasionally appropriate. We will also be publishing books about favorite TV shows, movies, and pop cultural phenomenon.

Riverdale/Magnus is our LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) imprint. We are looking for titles, both fiction and nonfiction, in a wide variety of areas, including popular culture, entertainment, biography/memoir, self-help, spirituality, and current affairs, among others.

Riverdale Desire is our erotica and erotic romance imprint. We are looking for works of fiction from 50,00 to 65,000 words that explore either the erotic journey (erotica) or the quest for satisfaction with a happy ending or at least a happy–for-now ending. We will consider anthologies as well as novellas of between 20,000 and 40,000 words.
We are looking for erotica and erotic romance in the following subgenres: contemporary, historical, male/male (m/m,) female/female (f/f), ménage, paranormal (especially vampires, weres and zombies) and BDSM (especially novels featuring dominant women).

Riverdale Truth is our erotic memoir imprint. We are looking for true stories of erotic exploration and adventures from midlife dating to the life of a swinger. This is nonfiction, but we will consider anonymous memoir. We will consider anthologies as well.

Riverdale HSF is our horror, science fiction and fantasy line. We are looking for game- changing fiction in these categories. If anyone has ever read anything like your book before, we don’t want it; we want you to blow us away.
For submission guidelines, and more information, visit http://www.riverdaleavebooks.com
~*~*~*
The first time I taught Writing the Short Story for Savvy Authors last January, a handful of students went on to have their stories final in contests or get published. A half-dozen “repeat offenders” have already told me they’re signed up. I look forward to keeping that track record going!
Writing the Short Story for Anthology Call-out
http://www.savvyauthors.com/vb/showevent.php?eventid=1713
Jan. 14-Feb. 10, 2013
Beginning writers are often told to: “Write the story you want to read, not what someone else might want to see.” This class, instead, deals with catering a short story specifically to a publisher’s request for submissions. Regularly, editors and publishers list upcoming anthologies and the types of stories they’re looking to include. 
The course will explore current call-outs, and students will be encouraged to write specifically for one anthology and to submit the work at the end of the course. Basic crafting of a short story, such as development, characterization, plot structure & dialogue also will be covered. Since most short stories fall within 2,500 to 5,000 words, we’ll also look at ways to making word choice count and the editing process.
— Louisa Bacio
http://louisabacio.blogspot.com

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