Worth Sharing

 Blogging, Fantastic Authors  7 Responses »
May 312011
 
Storytellers Worth Reading

My incredible friend and secret sister Margo Lerwill has released her first self-published story on Amazon this weekend. The cover is to die for. I haven’t finished reading it yet but I love Margo’s voice and her style is accessible and evocative. I was honored when she asked me to design the template for her new blog where she showcases some of her writing – Unsafe Haven. It is also where you can get more information on purchasing her new short story Dis. If you haven’t purchased it yet, go do so now. .99 at Amazon and worth all 99 pennies.

 

 

via Amazon

Colbie Moss has bigger concerns than being one of the dísir, the undead avatars of the Norse spirits of fate known as Norns. She has lost a mythic blade entrusted to her by her uptight yuppie mentor, no less than a Norse god of old. Now the blade is in the middle of a gang war that has left a beloved friend on the brink of death. Colbie will have to decide how far she is willing to go to recover the blade, save her friend’s soul, and keep gods and Norns alike from getting wind of the collateral damage.

“Dis” is an Urban Midgard short story, approximately 8,900 words (or roughly 30 pages) of urban fantasy with a noir sensibility that will appeal to fans of Jim Butcher, Seanan McGuire, and Laurell K. Hamilton.

 

I was impulsive this weekend and started making changes to my blog before I even knew what I wanted. It took almost 20 hours for me to stop messing around with the header, but I love how it turned out. I spent most of those 20 hours paging through examples of art deco and old World’s Fair Expo posters for inspiration. There are stories I’ve written that I’ve done less research on than I did for my new blog look.

You’ll notice most of the colors are the same – I am a girl who likes what she likes.

There is only one sidebar now, a lot of extra stuff is either gone or rearranged. The Archives, Calendar, and current posts has been moved to the footer.

I’ve included a place where I can showoff self-published stories by some of my awesome blog friends. Elemental by the lovely Emily White has not been released yet, but you can follow her blog for when it is released. (Also isn’t that cover gorgeous!)

I have a Twitter widget too now because I am enjoying Twitter a lot more than I used to. I am more active in the late evening though.

My bio page (now Chronography) has been updated and will continue to be until I’m happy with it, and the College of Blogging page has been updated with all of my College of Blogging posts.

I have also added a form to the bottom of College of Blogging page where you can submit questions about blogging and blog programs and other design questions. I’ll do what I can to help any time :-)

Because I now have Wicked & Tricksy to write about writing, I would like to spend more time here talking about my personal life as a writer, social media, and all the different genres I find so fantastic. I would like to share some of my favorite bits of research and inspirations. Irony, since I talk so much about professional blogging, but I am yearning to lean more toward the personal. I’m not sure what form this will take, but I very much look forward to finding out.

Speaking of, if you haven’t signed up yet for a Wicked & Tricksy bookmark, you can still do so for a few more days. They are lovely, I hope you want one :-)

 

School’s Out 4EVER Blogfest: The Books that Made Me

 Blogfest, Books  16 Responses »
May 302011
 

We didn’t have a lot of money growing up. We weren’t homeless and starving or anything, but I wore clothes three seasons out of style, a little frayed, and usually didn’t fit right. Most of them came from the Goodwill, which was fine. It never occurred to me that there was anything wrong with this. My poodle-perm was way more embarrassing than my hand-me-down pink California Raisin sweatshirt. It helped that I went to school with kids in the same socio-economic bracket. We were all shopping at the same places.

Anyway, every Thursday was the night I spent at my dad’s and so every Thursday after he picked me up from my mom’s we would stop at the 30th Street Thrift Store so I could shop for books. I had about $5 to spend, but since the books were around .5, .10, .25, it wasn’t unusual for me to walk out with armloads of paperbacks. Every Thursday was like Christmas Redux.

It was here that I fed my R.L. Stine and Babysitter’s Club obsession (which really shouldn’t be read together, FYI. It’ll just mess you up.) It is also where I picked up my first research books where I learned about bizarre medical procedures and the persecution of Jews in WWII. Once I hit the jackpot when someone dropped off at least a dozen YA romance titles that  taught me that the only interesting things in the world happened to au pairs. THANKS YA WRITERS FOR THAT LITTLE DELUSION.

MRS. SEAGUL MUST DIE

I still have a notebook from high school with this scribbled on the cover.

Up until my sophomore year of high school I worshipped the ground English teachers walked on. As far as I was concerned, they could do no wrong and they knew everything there was to know about everything in the whole world in the history of the universe.

Everything changed with the witch who was my sophomore year English teacher. While alone I will never forgive her for handing back a paper I’d written and whispering in my ear while gripping my arm that I would never become a published author, she also managed to singlehandedly squash my idol-worship by insisting that loving Charles Dickens was a universal absolute and anyone who didn’t was not smart enough to read and understand good books anyway. She threw me out of class when I insisted I thought his books were crap and though I would read them for my grade no one would force me to like them against my will.

(We also argued over Hemingway. She insisted you could only enjoy The Old Man and the Sea by investigating its multi-layered symbolism. I insisted I could enjoy it regardless. That was the second time she threw me out of class.)

(And for the record, I still hate reading Charles Dickens.)

STEPHEN KING AND V.C. ANDREWS WARPED MY YOUNG MIND

Not that I mind now, of course, but if my parents really knew what was in these books they probably would have been less over-the-moon about me reading above my age group.

V.C. Andrews taught me about sex. Not my friends. Not television or movies. V.C. Andrews. And to make matters worse, she taught me about creepy sex. I was in 7th grade when I read Flowers in the Attic, and that book is pretty tame compared to the others which I read like candy as I traded them with my other little 7th grade girlfriends because one of them had an older sister who was into V.C. Andrews and supplied our little book addled brains with what most certainly would be contraband if our parents took half a second to go from “OH THANK GOD OUR KIDS ARE SMART AND READING” to ask “WAIT DON’T THE BROTHER AND SISTER HAVE SEX IN THIS MOVIE????”

Stephen King taught me to be afraid of everything and everyone. I was in third grade when I read Misery. I picked it up in a gas station along with a juice box and cheap red rimmed plastic sunglasses. We stopped to fill up on the way to Okaboji, Iowa where my family had a summer cabin. In high school I read Rose Madder, Eye of the Dragon, Cujo, Carrie, IT, Pet Cemetery, and others.

He warped my mind and while I’d like to say I turned out just fine, I should point out that as an adult I write scary stories to mess with people’s minds and in any other profession my imagination would have me profiled as a potential serial killer.

WHERE I LEARNED THAT EVERY WEEKEND VACATION WITH A GROUP OF CLOSE FRIENDS WILL LEAD TO ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS TRYING TO KILL YOU OVER A PERCEIVED SLIGHT. CUE TEENAGE MURDER MYSTERY.

YA horror defined my entire high school experience. While I was reading Stephen King, I was also devouring every Fear Street book R.L. Stine put out. I stalked my mall’s Waldenbooks and B.Daltons for new releases. By the time I stopped collecting Fear Street books, I had something along the lines of 108 of them. I still have most of them in a box in my basement. I was also reading Christopher Pike, Lois Lowery, Caroline B. Cooney, and Richie Tankersley Cusick. My junior year I was introduced to The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith, who everyone has heard of now thanks to the television show which I have not seen. Of all L.J.’s series, the Vampire Diaries were my least favorite because I didn’t like the main character and I hated how I related more to her sidekick best friend who totally got screwed in pretty much everything and was treated pretty abysmally by all the cool-kid main characters. Still, it was the first time paranormal YA felt extraordinary and sexy. I was obsessed with The Secret Circle and Dark Powers, but my favorite of all of her series is still The Forbidden Game. Julian was one of the first villains I fell totally in love with and would have chosen over the heroes in a heartbeat.

This is also about the time in my history that I started writing YA, though I didn’t know it had an official classification at the time. I knew, somehow, that books for my age were more fun than books for other ages. They just felt like they had more limitless possibilities than my adult books.

*cue twilight zone music*

What were your defining book moments as a teenager? Got any good stories? Tell us about them for the SCHOOL’S OUT 4EVER Blogfest!

Announcements and a “Who are you?” Request

 Blogging  6 Responses »
May 182011
 
  1. I am so excited that you guys liked last weeks College of Blogging posts! I hope they were helpful. I don’t have anymore College of Blogging posts for a couple of weeks because…
  2. I’m going to be updating Tell Great Stories over the next two weeks. I think the only time service will be interrupted is over next weekend while I take down my current template and put up the new one. My blog will look different but it won’t be different. I apologize for any confusion these changes may cause, but I am hoping it will look just as awesome as this one does only less crowded :-)
  3. I’m going to be doing a better job of supporting my fellow bloggers who have books coming out, that’s one of the reasons for the change. The other is that I’ve been getting better at building blogsites and I’d like to put some of my new knowledge into practice improving Tell Great Stories.
  4. The first week of Wicked & Tricksy BLEW MY MIND. You guys are AMAZING so thank you for coming to visit us there. I hope you continue to come back. There’s an awesome Secret Box of Mystery giveaway coming up in a couple of weeks. I can’t wait! Also we are still giving away bookmarks. come over and sign up as a follower and sign up to receive a free bookmark. I have lots and they are really cool :-)
  5. Since the A to Z Challenge I have a lot of new readers and commenters and I’ve done a terrible job keeping up with ya’ll. Can you take a second in the comments and tell me what your blog addresses are and your Twitter name? I need to update my feed reader and my Twitter account to include all of you. Please please please? I don’t want to miss any of you. Thank you!
  6. Speaking of Twitter, I’m getting into it finally. For a long time I was all “I CAN’T SAY ANYTHING IN 140 WORDS!!! NO FAIR NO FAIR” but I’m getting better. Which is why I want all of your Twitter accounts.
  7. I’m going to be meeting author Sarah Dessen this week! I AM SO EXCITED YOU GUYS FOR REAL OMG. I’m hoping to get one of her books signed so I can give one away to you guys. I’ve heard she’s just a darling person to talk to.
  8. Last but not least, don’t forget to sign up for the School’s Out 4EVER Blogfest (link in the right sidebar) !

8in8 – An Album for Cool Nerd Kids

 Awesome Nerd Things, Music  3 Responses »
May 172011
 

Ben Folds, Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, and Damian Kulash released a short album called 8in8 at the end of April and I’ve been listening to it not-stop since I discovered it. The songs are awesome and fun and crazy, as you might expect when you stick these people in one room together. I’m particularly partial to the Nikola Tesla song but I think my favorite is I’ll Be My Mirror.

You can buy the album here. Starting price is $1, you set the price though. You can listen to all the songs below first. I’ve posted the “I’ll be my mirror” lyrics below, but if you click on the link above you can get lyrics to all the songs.

“I’ll Be My Mirror”
Vocals & Piano: Amanda Palmer
Omnichord & Guitar: Damian Kulash
Drums: Ben Folds

(There was a)
tiny asian woman screaming in the street today
And she was screaming at a person that she obviously hates
(She was so)
Loud we heard the screaming with our windows all rolled up
And we all looked down the street to see who she was
screaming at

-

(but there was)
no one on the sidewalk so we all looked back at her
(and we saw)
in her homeless hands she held a 1960s mirror
a pretty plastic girly one framed in a purple case
and she was screaming at herself and she was spitting in her
face.

And we were scared and we were shaken waiting at the
intersection
Looking at each other’s faces, and each one a shocked reflection
And we laugh with nervous laughter at the crazies in the
street
But it’s only cos we know its how we kind of want to be
And there’s a fraction of a brain cell chain that makes us
what we are
One false move you’re in the mirror, someone’s laughing from
the car

Casey said she’d seen that woman half a dozen times
And that she has a bunch of mirrors, she has lots of
different kinds
And I wondered what she’d shouted and I wondered what she’d
done
The light turned green, and someone said we ought to put her
in a song

I feel
sorry for that woman as she stormed off in the day
With a bitter frozen enemy who will never go away
And so many of us hate ourselves but never shout in rage
We never get to hold a mirror, we never turn the page

And I’m lucky I’ve got people who will hold me in the night
And I’m lucky that you love me, and I’m glad we never fight
And I’m lucky that I like myself, but late at night I doubt,
So I’m scared to look at mirrors, just in case I start to
shout.

 

School’s Out 4EVER Blogfest! (No Seriousness Allowed!)

 Blogfest  11 Responses »
May 162011
 

The year was 1997. I had a desk top computer and AOL dial-up internet. I was playing PSOne and I’d just read Eye of the Dragon by Stephen King. I was listening to Third Eye Blind, Meredith Brooks, and Oasis, and I, Sommer Leigh, had just graduated from high school.

Whether you lived the stereotype or blazed your own trail, whether you were the cheerleader, the band nerd, the journalism kid, a music fanatic, the rebel, the office aid, the guy girls crushed on, the girl guys crushed on, the girl who crushed on everyone, the raging school spirit, the poetry writer, the anime kid, or the ghostly loner – if you have even one memory worth telling a story about, then this blogfest is for you.

The School’s Out 4Ever Blogfest kicks off with a ride in my time machine (we’re going cruising in 1995 with the windows rolled down and Smashing Pumpkins on the radio.) This is the most non-serious blogfest you’ll ever participate in. Take us all back to a moment in your memory that defines your high school experience. I thought we could all use an excuse to talk about something silly and laugh at ourselves for no good reason and since a lot of you are wrapping up your school year, this seemed most appropriate. So pick one of the prompts below, if you like, or surprise us.

Tell us a story.

(no matter how embarrassing!)

After joining the blogfest below, post your story on May 30th. Remember, hindsight always makes the world funnier. It’s ok to laugh at yourself now.

Prompt #1: Your first kiss and/or date.

Prompt #2: Even now, every time this song comes on the radio, you can’t help but remember…

Prompt #3: The most embarrassing thing you ever wore, said, or did.

Prompt #4: The book(s) or author(s) that was most influencing, most entertaining, your favorite, or that completely opened your eyes to reading.

Prompt #5: The night of graduation – the night all teen graduation movies are made of. Did you get the guy, get wrapped up in a convoluted prank, or reach an epiphany about life, growing up, and everything in between?

Prompt #6: What movie release defined your high school experience and why?

See you May 30th!

College of Blogging: Nine People’s Favorite Thing

 Awesome Nerd Things, College of Blogging Series  13 Responses »
May 132011
 

There has been this idea in the last few months that blogs are dying out. That readers are disappearing into the aether.

That’s not entirely true. Blogs are alive and well and so are the readers, but the boom is over.

The corner of the blogosphere that housed web comics experienced a similar explosion and fall a few years ago, but eventually leveled out even as people were shouting from the rooftops that the age of web comics was dead, long live web comics. I think we’ve entered a period where readers, being inundated with so much to do and see and read, are shrinking their digital neighborhoods to a handful of blogs they love and a few they enjoy. Readers aren’t disappearing, they are just getting more picky.

Sounds like a bad time to get into the blogging business, right? Not necessarily. Take your average blog reader – say – you, for example. How many blogs can you reasonably read a day? A week? Five? Ten? How about a hundred? Probably not, but for a long time readers were stretching themselves out across many blogosphere neighborhoods. But as the volume of new blogs rose, so did Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and Stumbleupon. With only so much time to dedicate readers had to purge. There was no way around it.

Again, you say, “Isn’t this a bad thing for new bloggers? Readers already have their favorites. There’s no room for me.”

Again, no, not necessarily. First, let me draw your attention to Example A. Pay no attention to the bad acting and just listen to the song itself. This is from the musical [title of show], the same geniuses who gave us Die, Vampire, Die!

This song has a purpose here, but I’ll get back to that in a second. First we need to look at the internet in a bigger picture. This is just my opinion and experience, but in the last ten years as the web gave us more places to hang out, our ability to really socialize and be around other people diminished. We got used to being silent lurkers who left comments like “Nice blog post!” or followed someone on Facebook just because we went to elementary school together but haven’t spoken since we gave up Barbie dolls. This incredible distance has worn us down and we’re tired of it. In the last year I’ve seen people searching out those more personal connections and abandoning the blogs with 6,000 followers in favor of equally awesome blogs with only a couple hundred.

Readers, I think, are looking for bloggers who are willing to respond to comments and email, aren’t too busy to check out their reader’s blogs, or don’t have to post apologies almost every week about not posting because they are just too busy.

Like I said earlier this week, we are moving out of the age of the lurker and into the age of personal connections.

What you as a blogger need to decide is, what is your measurement of success?

Ok, here’s a test: go to one of the big name blogs you read, the ones with several thousand followers. Glance over the last two weeks worth of posts. What’s the average number of comments? Compare that average number of comments to the number of followers. I did this to one of my very favorite book blogs with over 4,000 followers. In the last 2 weeks, this blogger had an average of 18 comments a day. Another  blog I read has less than 100 followers and during the same two weeks averaged 15 comments a day.

And comparing the two, on the 4,000 followers blog I only found the blogger responding three times total to comments during that two week period as opposed to at least twice a post on the smaller blog.

I haven’t posted a comment on the bigger blog in months, but I comment almost every day on the smaller one.

So which one is more successful? Well, that depends on how they measure their success.

Do you want lots of personal comments and discussion with readers or do you want lots of followers who may lurk but never comment?

Do you want to be nine people’s favorite thing or 100 people’s ninth favorite thing?

College of Blogging: The Lonely Factor

 College of Blogging Series  13 Responses »
May 122011
 

One of the biggest reasons blogs intentionally fail is because they can’t push through The Lonely Factor.

What is The Lonely Factor? It’s the digital silence that surrounds most blogs during their first few months. There are no followers, the blogger doesn’t know how to get followers, their posting focus is all over the place and they start to feel like it’s not worth it. Why post and take the time to write good content if no one is reading?

The Lonely Factor is a silent self-esteem killer. There is nothing worse than feeling like all this work is worth nothing to no one.

I know I put in probably 30-60 minutes to write a blog post, more if I have to do a lot of research or pull together a lot of graphics. If I write 5 posts a week that’s at least 2 and a half hours but closer 5 hours for just writing posts. Then I spend at least an hour a week replying to comments and replying to email (longer if I do these things while watching Doctor Who.) Any topic I have to spend time researching (which happens from time to time, I’m not an expert at everything!) that number can easily jump to 15 hours a week.

That’s a lot of time to spend if no one is reading. So how do you keep going and push through The Lonely Factor when it doesn’t seem worth it?

Well, there are 2 answers to this.

1. Maybe blogging isn’t for you. The truth is, it’s not for everyone. I am all about encouraging and supporting anyone who wants to do it, but if you’re honestly not happy, don’t push it. Do something else that will make you happy. Create a kick ass Twitter or Facebook account where you’ll get much quicker gratification with a lot less time spent up front. Or investigate using Tumblr or ditch the more professional blogs for a more community-based, personal blog over at LiveJournal where it is easier to find Like people. And then be ok with this choice. It doesn’t mean you fail at social networking – you can only fail to show up. Social networking is less of an activity as it is the outcome of activity, so the only wrong answer is to do nothing at all. And these days, there’s an option out there for everyone.

2. But if blogging is for you, the best way to push through The Lonely Factor is to have a plan. Accept that for the first few months no one is going to read your blog. And you know what? That’s probably a good thing. You need time to develop your blog voice and find your focus. You need time to figure out what your ultimate goals are and how you can achieve them. You need to get used to blogging consistently on a schedule. Showing up on time and having good content every Tuesday and Thursday, every Mon-Wed-Friday, or all five days of the week is not as easy as it sounds. Use these first few quiet months to develop habits, create schedules, and discover just how you want your blog experience to run. And because you have no readers, you can make as many mistakes as you like and no one will notice. The freedom is actually kind of liberating when you think about it. These days I live in fear of a misspelled word.

3. These first few quiet months are also the ideal time to start making connections with other bloggers and searching out people who will enjoy your blog. You’ll have a lot less time to do this later on when you have readers and you need to up your game on writing good content. Take advantage of the downtime to develop your own web of blogs you like to follow and work on your presence on different forums or websites that work with your focus. By the time people start recognizing your name and checking out your blog, you’ll have had time to shake out most of the beginning mistakes.

4. This is also a good time to do a little design research by making a list of blog designs/layouts/features you absolutely love and figuring out how you can have them too. When people do start showing up they’ll find five star luxury hotel feel with little mints on the pillows as opposed to creepy 1970s horror movie motel accommodations.

At the end of the day, whether you decide to throw in the towel or push through the quiet, remember that you aren’t alone in this adventure. We’ve all had to do our time in the silence.

Even though we often talk about successful blogs having a “professional” feel, that gives the wrong impression of sterility and standardization. People show up for YOU. Your voice, your humor, your sweetness, or your candor – they aren’t coming for the corporation that is you. Having a professional blog simply means having something that is worth reading so that readers, already pressed for time, don’t feel like they are wasting theirs. Part of the reason it takes 6 months or more to gain followers is because readers need to see that you have staying power. That you have enough to say for the long haul and that your message is consistent and interesting and worth showing up for. You need history to prove that.

These long quiet months, The Lonely Factor, are your proving grounds.

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Announcement!

 
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Nathan Bransford’s Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow released today! I received mine in the mail yesterday and started reading last night and it is just as awesome as we all hoped it would be. The illustrations inside are AWESOME. So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go to your local bookseller, Amazon, or shady book dealer selling out of his coat on a corner and pick up Jacob Wonderbar. Or go to your library and request it PRONTO. And then check out our Forum Launch Party for Jacob Wonderbar over at the forums.

And the super secret project I’m working on that you’ve all helped me with? Not quite done. Will probably post on Monday because I’ve had some late entries and I want to include them all. I promise it will be lovely.

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