Twit Tweet Twitter Tweeps - Day Three WABC

Happy Sunday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, I bring you yet another awesome post from the Winter Author Blog Challenge. If you can't tell by the title of this post, today is all about Twitter! Yay! For all you folks who aren't familiar with the Twitterverse, you need to be. I'll tell you why in a moment! First, here's the prompt for today:

Are you on Twitter? Perhaps more than any of the other social media platforms, Twitter has developed its own language. Tweets. Twitterverse. Rewteet. Are you invested in the lingo? So how do you make a statement in 140 characters? Are you following more people or are more people following you? How do you decide whom to follow? Do you reciprocate and automatically follow back everyone who follows you? What kinds of things do you post? How often do you post? What advice do you have for those who are just getting started? IF YOU’RE NOT USING Twitter, go look at it (twitter.com) and either find your favorite author or put “author” in the search field and look around. What’s your take? Which tweets interest you? What would you post if you did decide to create an account? What’s the likelihood you’ll be following @AuthorBlogChal anytime soon? Be sure to give us the link.

I went on a rant two weeks ago about this very topic. Again, I'll address that in a moment. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Twitter, for me, is a lovely and convenient way of browsing what's going on in the world. Because I don't have to read long, drawn-out posts, I tend to absorb more information much more quickly than if I'm meandering through blogs or Facebook status updates. Of course I'm on Twitter. You can find me here: @WriteJoMichaels. And, like every other page associated with me, it follows my branding. A custom background and my logo instead of my face or books. Again, I wrote a post on this topic in my xXx series. It's called lOOk at YoUr tWitTeR. Go check it out. You won't be sorry.

Learning the language of Twitter wasn't difficult. Probably because, like Facebook, I've been a member with a profile since inception. You have to learn how to textspeak on Twitter because of the brevity. Words like: you, at, because, and, later, and see all become symbols or short snaps of themselves. You have to use: U, @, bcz, l8r, &, C to keep within the required allotment of letters.

Example time!
Normal: I went to see a movie yesterday! Here's a link to the trailer and my review (link here).
Tweet: I went 2 c a movie! Link 2 trailr & review: (link here) #moviereview #newrelease #reviewer

To shorten your link, you can use bit.ly. But somehow, your link needs to be less than ten characters or so. This allows space for what is known in the Twitterverse as hashtags. People searching for your content can go to the search function and type in #author and every tweet with that hashtag is magically displayed for them to peruse. Cool stuff, huh?

I often find new people to follow by searching: #author, #indieauthor, or #writer. I do not automatically follow every account that follows me and I use unfollow helper to see which accounts I followed a long time ago that no longer reciprocate. Trying to keep my margin down of following/follows me isn't easy. People drop off every day. Right now, I'm sitting at 1,221 I'm following and 1,082 following me. I try to keep it in the 200 difference range. Then I don't show up when people use unfollow helper to clean up their account in the huge margin section.

I usually post links to my blog there and have enjoyed being included in many e-zines for this reason. Curators like to pick up hastags like: #writetip or #amwriting for their content. I decide who to follow based on their number of tweets and the content therein. I enjoy reading tweets about writing, books, and life in general.

I use buffer to post to my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts. If you aren't using buffer or don't have the awesome buffer button on your blog, you should. It lets you set parameters for anyone that wants to share your content. Click on mine up at the top right-hand side and you'll see what I mean. It's easy to install to Blogger, too.

Time for directions!
Go to layout.
Click Add a Gadget.
Scroll down until you find HTML.
Go to the buffer button page and set your preferences.
Copy the code.
Paste the code into the box on Blogger.
Click save.

Easy peasy.

Now for my rant!
Please don't make it harder for me to follow you than it needs to be. Services like TrueTwit validation are great and all, but why do you care if I read what you tweet? Even if I'm a robot, it doesn't matter if I read your content! If you're concerned about following me back, stop being a lazy bum and go check out my account before you follow me. If you're concerned about spam, then if/when I send you a spammy message, delete it and unfollow me. When I get a TrueTwit request, I delete it and remove the user. I'm a busy gal.

A word of warning:
DO NOT CLICK ON LINKS SENT TO YOU VIA PM UNLESS YOU KNOW THE PERSON PERSONALLY. Even then, click with caution! Your pal's account may have been hacked. When in doubt, delete without!

That's the best advice I can give someone new to the Twitterverse. If I had to add anything, it would be to be sure and thank the folks who retweet your stuff or give it a favorite. It matters. Respond to welcoming Direct Messages (DMs) with something nice about the person you've followed. Every now and then, I get a lovely thank you for following message with a nice word about my blog or page. I respond to every one. It's relationship building 101. Why else would you have a Twitter account if not to connect with people?

Have you branded your Twitter to match your other platforms? Why/Why not?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Facebook Fanatics for Fun and Fancy - WABC Day Two

Happy Saturday, good people of the blogosphere!! Today's post is all about Facebook. How I use it, how others use it, and how you might want to think about using it! Still rolling with the Winter Author Blog Challenge, here's today's prompt:

Do you have a Facebook fan page for yourself/your book? How long ago did you start it? Did you do it yourself or have someone help you? Are you seeing lots of new people liking it? What kinds of things do you post? What have you found to be the most effective way to get fans/have people interact? IF YOU DON’T HAVE a Facebook fan page, tell us about the fan page for an author you know or like. Why do you like them and why did you “like” their page? What do you think they are doing well that you would like to model with your own page? Do you have a goal date for creating your own fan page? Be sure to give us the link.

I have a Facebook fan page. Sure, who doesn't, right? As everything associated with me, the author, it's writejomichaels. I started it over a year ago and I'm up to 452 'likes' as of today. In keeping with my personal branding, I created a custom cover image I update when I release a new book, and have my logo as my avatar. There's no doubt whose page you're on when you land there. I created it myself but used tips from a participant of last year's Author Blog Challenge, Liberty Montano, to tweak it. I still have to take time to customize my buttons, but I'll get there!

I post things related to my books and my blog on my Jo Michaels Facebook page. I occasionally post a funny photo or saying I come across, but I make sure it's always writerly. I have another page as well, but we'll get to that one in a moment.

Something I cannot stress enough: DON'T make a fan page for your books! Unless you have ONE book that sells 50M copies, how the hell are you gonna keep up with all of them when you have twenty (or fifty) books out there? Make an author fan page. One. That way, all your fans are in one place. Think about it. If you have even three pages, with two hundred fans each, that's potentially three hundred you could've had for just one. And fans are busy people. They have a billion posts scrolling over their page to sift through. If you post the same thing more than once, they'll unlike something. I know I do.

My favorite author pages are those that are attractive, well written, and the author is well spoken when they post there. I can't tell you what a turnoff it is when I go to a page and the cover image is grainy, blurry, or badly put together. I click away quickly and vow never to return!

My other page is related to my editing services and site. It's indiebooksgonewild. We're a team of editors on a mission to make indie books what they were meant to be. Click on over to our site and see what people are saying! Our Facebook page is branded the same as our site, to provide continuity and recognition.

My xXx series of posts goes into how to clean up your Facebook page and keep the content relevant to your readers. If you didn't snatch that PDF yet, what are you waiting for? Go get it! It's free to download and keep forever! Feel free to redistribute it.

Getting folks to interact with these pages is pretty easy. I ask questions, do little giveaways, and comment on other peoples' stuff as my page. That's really important to gain a following. If all the interaction is one-sided, people tend to be turned off.

I've found having a Facebook page to be a delightful experience, and I enjoy getting to meet new people via this branch of social media.

What do you think? Are you branded across all your social media?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Blogging for Education - WABC Day One

Happy Friday, good people of the blogosphere! Today begins my journey through the Winter Author Blog Challenge. For the next fifteen days, we'll be discussing social media. The topic for today is: Your Blog. So sit back, relax, and let me take you on a little journey!

First off, here's the prompt for today:
Tell us about your blog. How long have you been blogging? Do you write on a regular schedule? Do you plan your topics in advance or write as the spirit moves you? What was your favorite post? At which post do you look back and wonder what you were thinking when you wrote it? What has been the best feedback you’ve ever received? Have you ever written anything that was perceived as controversial, though you didn’t intend it that way? What tips would you offer other author bloggers?

I've been blogging here at my Jo Michaels ~ Author blog for a little over a year. Before this one, I had a couple of others. They were much more personal and discussed things like design, collectables, and life. One of them I can't access anymore but you can poke around it here: The Collectible Guru  The others were all removed/shut down by me. So, I've been blogging for a long time but never with any direction or focus.

Now, I blog about writing, editing, and books. I update M-F at around 9a.m. My topics are rarely planned, but I do take requests from readers now and again to fill holes on my convenient link page. How did that come about? Well, I was on another blog, which shall remain anonymous, searching for a post I'd read there before, for another look, and used the search function. I never found the post I was looking for. I starting thinking how great it would be to have a nifty list for my visitors so they can bookmark it and find what they're looking for quickly. I categorized it to make hunting just a little bit simpler.

My favorite post of all time was a series I did on looking at your social media and your marketing materials. I did some funky stuff with the titles of the posts and bound them all into a handy PDF my visitors could download and keep for reference later on. It was called lOOk at YoUr xXx. I enjoyed it because I love helping people discover their brand, using my design know-how to educate, and make marketing run more smoothly. If you're a blogger, and you likely are if you're in the WABC challenge, please take a look at this post: lOOk at YoUr bLog. You won't regret taking the five minutes to read it.

A post I can't believe I wrote, for many reasons I intend to keep to myself, is this one: Loss. It's a good post and an interesting short story, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I read it now.

I got great feedback on my blog back in December when I invited a number of indie authors to pitch their books to me for a review. It was a ton of fun and I may do it again this year.

People probably thought this post was controversial: Fact or Crap I meant it to make people stop and think. To discard what they've been told and open their minds to new possibilities. My books are far more controversial than my blog and are the reason I use a nom de plume.

Tips for other bloggers: Get out there and meet people! Follow their blogs, interact with them, and keep your own blog focused on one thing. Don't talk about how awful your day was or how hard life is. We know; we're alive, too! Everyone struggles sometimes, but not everyone throws it out there for the world to see. If you do, you'll find people don't really care. They're dealing with their own crap. You'll lose your readership if you don't provide some kind of useful content.

I'm happy to be back with some familiar faces, and delighted to have the opportunity to meet new ones! Welcome, all, to the first post of the Winter Author Blog Challenge! If you're an author and haven't signed up with us yet, get to it! Go here: http://authorblogchallenge.wordpress.com/register/ and just fill out the form already!

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Whose Who was Wittier than Who's Whom

Happy Thursday, good people of the blogosphere! As you've probably guessed from the title of this post, today we'll be talking about the words: Whose, Who, Who's, and Whom. They all have different meanings and you need to know which to use in a sentence and when. Lot's of Ws today! So, grab your pens and notebooks and let's get going!

As always, we'll start with the definition of each:
Whose:  /ho͞oz/ Adjective 1.) Belonging to or associated with which person: "whose round is it?"; "a minivan drove by and Juliet wondered whose it was". 2.) Of whom or which (used to indicate that the following noun belongs to or is associated with the person or thing mentioned in the...: "he's a man whose opinion I respect"

Who:  /ho͞o/ Pronoun 1.) What or which person or people: "who is that woman?". 2.) Used to introduce a clause giving further information about a person or people previously mentioned: "the mouse who married the playboy".

Who's:  /ho͞oz/ Contraction 1.) Who is: "who's that?". 2.) Who has: "who's done the reading?".

Whom:  /ho͞om/ Pronoun 1.) Used instead of “who” as the object of a verb or preposition: "whom did he marry?".


You can see they all have different purposes.

Use the word whose when you aren't asking who is but to who something belongs. Look at it this way, if you're constructing a sentence and you insert who's, see if you can change it to who is and it still make sense. If not, change the word to whose.

Make sure you can't use who's before using whose and you'll never go wrong.

Who is related to the subject and whom is related to the object.

I love whom I love. If you're a fan of The Last Unicorn, you'll get this reference.

Grammar Girl (love that website, by the way) has a great quick and dirty tip: If you can use the word him in place of whom, you have the right word. They both end in M.

I hope this post has been a wee bit helpful in reminding you of something we all too often forget - I know I do!

As of tomorrow, we'll be stepping off the usual path for this blog. I've joined the Winter Author Blog Challenge. It'll run for fifteen days and we'll be discussing Social Media! You don't want to miss that! If you're an author (or want to be) you can join us here: http://authorblogchallenge.wordpress.com/register/



I met some fantastic people through this challenge last year and I'm looking forward to meeting more this year. So, come on down and sign your butt up!

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

True Nature

Happy Wednesday, good people of the blogosphere! February is about to step out and March will be upon us soon! I hope it brings you all peace and good fortune. 2013 is shaping up to be a pretty good year on this side of the country, and my blessing is that you all have the same success. Today we're going to delve into true nature. You know how much I like to go on and on about characters, and today is no different. Writing The Bird taught me a couple of lessons I'd like to share with you today. So, grab your pens and notebooks and let's get going!

Humans are such interesting creatures! They play mind games, put themselves on a pedestal, and manipulate others to get what they want. However, they can also be generous, kind, and caring. Whatever they are, it's their true nature. Pretenses can only be held on to for so long before the mask melts away, leaving their soul bared for all to see. This is important to remember when writing.

When I was writing The Bird, I had a loose outline in my head and the first few chapters plotted carefully. After that, I flew by the seat of my pants. I'm glad I did, because if I'd forced my characters into the roles I'd laid out for them, the book would've ended very differently. I love the ending! It was brought about by the true nature of my characters; which wasn't revealed until about halfway through.

This sounds crazy, huh?

But it's not. It's like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole when you attempt to force a character to conform. If you let them have their own way, they'll show you things your imagination could never come up with on its own.

But, Jo, it's in my head already, right? Something just happened to make it manifest on the page!

Not necessarily. As with life, it takes time for a character to show you the truth about themselves. They like to hide under masks and play cloak and dagger games with you; just like humans. Discovering what a character may be hiding is like finding a diamond in a lump of coal. But you have to give them time to reveal themselves.

You don't really know someone until you've been around them for a couple of years. In that time, watch how they interact with others, pay attention to the nuances, and listen carefully when they recount events you were present for to bystanders or other friends. It'll tell you a lot about their true nature. Everyone wants to be liked and revered; but that mask only lasts so long. You'll get glimpses if you pay attention.

I was caught completely off guard by my characters. Looking back, I now see the signs indicating exactly who they were on the inside. Their masks had me fooled, and I'm pretty shrewd!

So, take a look at your WIP's characters and look at what they're doing on the page. Really take the time to examine their actions and words. You may find that diamond.

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Editing Tips

Happy Tuesday, good people of the blogosphere! Today I'm going to be giving you some editing tips and telling you how to catch those niggling little errors that drive readers like me bananas.

If you're a regular visitor to my blog, you'll know I keep a handy link list to relevant content herein. This is for you, not for me. It lets you find what you're looking for at a glance without having to do an irritating search or browse through hundreds of posts to find great information. This post will contain links to a few of those posts for your referencing pleasure. A lot of my visitors take notes while they're here, and you might want to consider doing so as well. So, grab your pens and notebooks and let's get going!

If you're a writer, you should be going through no less than four rounds of edits before sending your content off to your editor. What's that? You don't use an editor? You should. They'll catch things you can't. But, if you insist on doing all your editing yourself, here are the five major edits that need to be done in your work:

1. Storyline - This is the first edit and should consist of you going through the storyline very carefully, line by line, making notes on what your characters are doing at any given point. You don't want an apartment on the first floor in this chapter only to have it on the second floor two chapters later, or your character to be asleep in bed and then having a conversation on the other side of town in the next sentence. Check dates for linear flow. Fact check now as well. Make sure elements and language used match the era and voice of the character. Make all your notes before you change anything. If there's anything to add or any holes to fill, do it now.

2. Cut Out Superfluous Words - Go through your manuscript with a possessed red pen. Kill as many of these words as you can: that, just, for, to, began, thought, as. Reword where necessary. Take out sentences and adjectives you don't need. Remove adverbs. This post will show you why you don't need them: -ly

3. Pronouns - This is a big one. Check each pronoun and the person or thing it references. Make sure you aren't using them incorrectly. Here's a handy guide: Pesky Pronouns

4. Consistency and Punctuation - This is where you check your flow. Make sure commas aren't sprinkled around like fairy dust. Be sure your sentences flow well. Read and re-read to be sure you've been consistent when spelling a word, using language, or using a reference. Check your chapters for tension. For the love of all that's good, use contractions unless writing formal speech. Chase the S! Search the words backward, forward, toward, etc... and check to be sure the s (if you used it) is consistent. Beware the homophone and make sue you're using the right word. Use semicolons now and then. If you aren't sure how to do that, check out this handy guide: Semicolons

5. Proofread - Give it one last once over. Check it all to make sure there aren't any of the issues listed above hanging around and everything is spelled correctly, all quotes are in place and are the right kind (see image below), and all i's are dotted and t's are crossed. This is your last chance to make it beautiful.

I use a literary editor. Every writer should. She goes line by line and checks everything. But every writer should also go through the first four items on this list before sending their manuscript off to be corrected. Your best bet is to let your story chill in a drawer for a couple of weeks after you're done writing it before you start the process above.

I hope this helps in some small way. I know being an indie author isn't easy, but if you want your work to get great reviews that don't bash your writing, put in the time.

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Book Review Taken Before her very Eyes by Wade Faubert

Happy Monday, good people of the blogosphere! What a lovely day I have for you today! I'm not only announcing the winners of the rafflecopter drawing, but also bringing you a book review. So, if you won, let me say a big CONGRATULATIONS! I hope you do the happy dance.

Without further ado, here's the widget with the winners:
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Congrats to: Angel, Alana, and Jennifer! Angel and Alana have both won digital copies of The Bird and Jennifer has won a printed, signed copy, a bookmark, and a mini-magnet! I'll be in touch to find out how to get you all your prizes sometime today. Thanks for participating!

If you really wanted a copy of this book and didn't win here, there's still time to enter the Goodreads giveaway! Two signed, printed copies are up for grabs over there, as well!

Now for the review! This is for the Indie Fever 2013 reading challenge.

I picked up a sample of Taken - Before her very Eyes because of a Goodreads event announcing the publication hosted by the author, Wade Faubert. After reading it, I found myself wanting more. Over to Amazon I went to purchase the rest. I finally got a chance to delve back in and this is my review.

From a reader's perspective:
I loved the main character, Summer Demure (she was anything but). She seemed real to me and was written in such a way that I felt I knew exactly what she was going through. Pacing in the book was great and I moved through it in just a few days. I got confused at a point in the storyline where the kidnapper tells Summer he was the one that did the horrible things to her that occured in the beginning but she keeps referring to the man in jail as the one she was scared of. That revelation also kinda screwed the ending and left me a tad confused. I would like to have had a more open end with the real bad guy being swallowed up by the water instead of what happened but that didn't take away from my experience at all. World building was good and I felt I had a good sense of the town in Canada where she was.

From an editor's perspective:
Punctuation was all over the place. Pronouns need some major work.
Words were confused on occasion: rogue not rouge. Storyline needed to be kept straight. These things did throw me out of the story now and then but weren't so bad I ever had to stop reading.

Now, my rating:
1 star for a truly believable main character I rooted for.
1 star for a hair-raising story that kept me engaged.
1 star for making me want to read more.
- 1 star for the major oops in the storyline.
- 1 star for the grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors.
3 out of 5 stars. A very good, quick read that has a ton of potential to be amazing.

Not to appear in my review elsewhere:
I love that cover! It goes so well with the story inside the pages. My one tweak would be to make the author's name bigger. There's plenty of room and it gets a wee bit lost in the thumbnail. Other than that, all I can say is, "WOW! Well done!"

If you think you'd like to read this book, you can pick up a copy over on Amazon for $2.99.
Give his Facebook page a like: Author Wade Faubert
Check out his site: Wade Faubert
Or follow him over on Twitter: @WadeFaubert

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo