My Interview, Part 3

Following is the end of my interview at a cool website for newbie and professional writers, The Writer's Block, at Raychelle-Writes.blogspot.com.  Specifically, you can find my interview here.  But it's an interesting site, so look around!


You can find Part One of this series a couple of blog entries ago, or here.  Part Two is a few entries ago, or here.


7)      How do you promote your work? What methods have worked best for you?

Well, I’m still relatively new at this, so I do what I can without letting it overwhelm the actual writing time, plus the career that I love which also pays The Man.  I blog, usually three to four entries per week.  I’m a member of (too many) online writers groups.  I befriend (or is it e-friend?) other bloggers, and I comment on their blogs.  I tell everyone who is related to me, who likes me, or who might be interested—or any combination—about my published work.  I just took a copy of Space and Time with my story in it to the local library and asked if they could subscribe to it, since my story was in it—and they said “Yes!”  (That was completely spur-of-the-moment.)  A few other things are in the works.

Despite all this, I firmly believe that the best method of promoting my work is to finish more of it, to send it out, to get it published, and to advertise that—then repeat.  I very strongly believe that a writer’s best advertising is his own high-quality, published work.

8)      What are your upcoming plans for 2012?
To finish, send out, and publish every single title I mentioned I was working on in #3!!!  Plus everything else festering in this overactive head of mine that I haven’t had time to jot down yet.  And to set up a better schedule for myself so that I can do all that.

9)      What is your definition of success as an author?

This is actually pretty simple, and I’m happy you used the word “author” rather than “writer,” or it wouldn’t be so simple.  A successful author is one who gets paid to his/her own satisfaction for the work he or she has produced.  Success, unlike beauty (though we could argue about that, too), is in the mind of the individual, not the beholder.

10)   What advice would you offer to aspiring authors?

Read a lot.

Write a lot.

Send it out a lot.

Stir.  Repeat.

It's Been Awhile

Whoa, it's been a little while!  The writing and research of The Gravediggers have been going so well that, with the job to pay The Man and the possibility of my moving into a bigger and better house also taking up my time, something had to give, and blogging was it.  I'm at the part in the ms. now where I had to know a little bit about one of my main characters, and as this is historical fiction--my first foray into this genre--I had to research a bit, and get it right.  I needed something about the real guy--but not too much!--that I could grab on to, and I got it.  Several pictures (with my new phone, thank you very much), several internet articles, and a couple of actual book chapters later, I've got my man.  I've got his two main residences, his movin' up in the world, his education background, and a bit of his mindset and reputation.  Not too bad, huh?  Things going well at the job and on the house search as well.

How about you, guys?