Keeping up with my blog responsibilities

The blog tour is off and running for the Second Experimental Notebook. You probably noticed the reblogs around here. I think it's important to support those who are supporting me. I will say that every stop on this tour is custom written, and not a simple post that is moving from site to site. I did that to keep it interesting, and also to show my hosts a degree of respect.

I've been circling back and participating in the comments on those posts, and will be doing that for the next couple of weeks.

I've noted here before how I think a blog is more than just a place to reblog whatever I find online. I owe it to my followers to produce some original content at the same time. While all of this has been going on, I have been keeping busy behind the scenes.

Like most weekends, I started with a task list. I won't bore you by typing it out again, but here is a selection of what I've worked on this weekend. I made my first post over at Story Empire. This is the collective effort I posted about a few days ago. The post is about my use of living documents, if you want to check it out.

I assembled and scheduled three posts for the next few days. There are so many authors in my circle with new books coming out it's pretty exciting. Some of them will be visiting here to tell us about their projects. I also worked on various passes of three different Lisa Burton Radio posts.

I got a couple of requests for review copies of the new book and got those sent out. Helen Jones, who is hosting me today, was the big winner of the blog party contest from last week. I figured out how to send her the Amazon Gift Card and got it sent out too.

Sean Harrington is sharing the other Lisa Burton poster on his DeviantArt site today. I think the world of this artist, and encourage you to visit him and check out his gallery. He's interested in doing more cover work, and is affordable and versatile.

My wife and I managed a simple date night at a new place we haven't tried before. Very nice experience at Barrel 55 on Eagle Road. They also had a pumpkin beer on tap, so happy happy. Part of date night involved a trip to the Boise Co-Op where I grabbed a few different pumpkin beers to try.

I made a tour through various social media, and shared things as appropriate. When I finished I wound up with a few hours to myself.

I opened up the short story I've been working on, and added a thousand words on Sunday. Today I finished it with about 1500 more words. This one is called Welcome to the Freak-Show, and came in at about 8600 words. This is on the long side of what I consider a short story, and I think there is room to make it bigger. This is part of my Enhanced League project about a baseball league that doesn't care about performance enhancing drugs. (Still debating the hyphen in the title.)

I also wrote another piece for this collection. It came in at 530 words. To tell you the truth, I don't know what it is. It's kind of a monologue where the speaker is talking to you. It isn't exactly second person point of view, but it's close. It's almost an anthem kind of piece, and I shudder to think it might be like spoken word poetry. I avoid poetry like the plague. I have no idea whether it will stay or go, or whether it has any merit at all. I almost need to have someone who doesn't know baseball check it out to see if it motivates or not. I will say that I heard Tommy Lasorda's voice repeating the words as I typed it.

I kind of want to write another one, but think I should do some editing on this one first. Not too bad, approximately 3000 words of new fiction, several blog posts, and a bunch of other work finished.

Aside from that, there was Otto play, and I picked some of my Asian Pears. They were green and bitter about ten days ago. They are so juicy and sweet today. In fact, I think I should go have another one right now.

I'll be supporting my hosts for the rest of this tour, and there will be a Lisa Burton Radio post this week. I also gathered enough info for another Idea Mill post. I may hold back on that until I get to the middle of the month.

There are five reviews on the New Experimental Notebook, and I hope to get some more by the end of this week. I probably don't have to tell you how important reviews are to authors. If you liked the Second Experimental Notebook, or any other author's book, a simple review means the world. Even if it only includes “I liked it” in the comments. This is because Amazon's machine doesn't read them, it only counts them up. When we get enough reviews, Amazon will push it out to more people.

It was a great weekend. It wasn't as busy and manic as the last one when I was trying to get the book out. I got to visit with more bloggers and even found a few hours to write. Back to the paycheck job tomorrow.