Tips, tricks, and plans

October is bearing down upon us. This has always been my favorite month of the year. I would happily trade January or August for an extra October. It's also always been my best month for sales. This is probably because I have a few paranormal titles in my catalog.

I plan to hit it hard in October. I have a few guest posts that will appear, and you may find some new blogs to follow at the host sites. I still have time to write a couple more if you know of an October event that I should participate in.

There are also a couple of blog tours via my Story Empire crowd. We'll be giving away prizes and hope to make a big splash. Follow Story Empire to keep up with what's going on over there.

I intended to make the tips & tricks part of this into a Story Empire post, but there is a five person rotation and it would be November before it posted. Over here I can weave in some of my individual plans too.

I intend to use some of the Amazon tools during October. I may run an ad campaign. I'm almost certain to have a sale, or even some free days. Keeping the October theme going, I'll probably focus on The Playground, Will O' the Wisp, and Panama. Both Experimental Notebooks fit the bill too, but since they're 99¢ I don't see how a sale would work. I may do some Facebook boosting too.

Last year, I invited people to provide artwork for Macabre Macaroni. My idea was that some budding cover artists might like a place to showcase their work. I was even happy with grandchildren who glued dried macaroni to a paper and made art. I never got a single taker, and there was no artwork last year. This year I'm taking a different approach. I commissioned a piece of art to accompany the micro-fiction. Macabre Macaroni will post every Tuesday in October.

I'm a little slow on the uptake at times, but I learned a Twitter trick. There are people out there who support me heavily. They make custom tweets about my books, or maybe a post they found entertaining. I want to reciprocate that support, and found their pinned tweets to be handy as hell. They made them, they want them shared, and they're right at the top of their timelines. There is one lady who changes her pinned tweet every day, others leave them for a week or so.

The gears move slowly, but what if I created my own pinned tweet to help them out? I've been doing this, and find it respectful of their time, and helpful to my cause. I'll probably create a graphic of some kind, like this:

In the 140 characters I can say something clever and include the Amazon link. I will try to change it up +/- weekly so it doesn't get stale. Twitter is a volume game. A million people see your tweet, and maybe one buys the book. It does produce sales though, so something that catches the eye might work.

The point is that you should be using a pinned tweet too. I've scrolled through dozens of hundreds of tweets to find something to support an author with. They probably appreciate me sharing their book tweet, but not the picture of their lunch. A pinned tweet is right on top where it's easy to find.

Moving to the next one, sharing buttons. Not everyone is using them on their blogs. I'm happy to share, but again, I may not take the time to create my own post from scratch. I'm now encouraging visitors to use mine on the Lisa Burton Radio posts. This way my guests get a bit more exposure. The sharing buttons are easy to set up through WordPress, and you may want to check them out.

While you're deep inside the guts of WordPress, are you auto-feeding your posts on other social media? I have mine set to feed right into the Entertaining Stories Facebook page, Goodreads, and to tweet the link out. Easy-peasy, and I don't have to do this individually.

This next tip might be worth the price of admission. I think there could be something to what the world is calling curated content. There are a number of apps and social media options out there. I'll even provide links, but I want to talk about them a bit first.

I started out with an extinct platform called Zite Magazine. I used it for news I couldn't get anywhere else. It provided many of the Idea Mill articles. If I liked something, I could give it a thumbs up to get more articles like it. If I gave it a thumbs down, it learned not to send me data about the Kardashians.

Unfortunately, they were absorbed by Flipboard. Flipboard promised the same experience, only better-faster-stronger, yada yada. It failed on this front, but there is a silver lining.

Flipboard will let you create your own magazine. I decided, since I was already there, to test it out. I call mine Entertaining Stories. (Branding and all that.) I selectively share my blog posts there, and occasionally share other items of interest, like when one of you has something wonderful, or Sean Harrington shares a Lisa poster on his DeviantArt site.

Most days I can see a few visitors from Flipboard. On occasion it goes absolutely crazy. I posted a bit of micro-fiction about Lisa this week that had over two-hundred visitors from Flipboard. See the image to remind you of the post.

A few months ago, I shared a post about a short story trick. It involved the twist endings I use in some of the short form. I had over 2000 visitors that found me via Flipboard. It still gets action to this day.

Here is the link for Flipboard.

 

We're still on curated content, but I'm drifting again. (Bear with me.) I've written before about what I call “white noise.” Feeds on all social media have become so much white noise. Twitter is the worst, and my regular feed is like a firehose of data. I scroll through until I see something that catches my eye. Catching my eye has become the new trick. Facebook is similar, and so is WordPress.

I follow a ton of blogs. I can't read them all, so something has to catch my eye in the regular stream. I have my “must read” blogs and they got on the list by engaging and by posting great content.

Re-blogging is a double edged sword. I love it when someone shares my post. I like to share the awesome stuff here too on occasion. It's hard to get much engagement on a re-blog. The original poster is the one where the interaction occurs.

There are some bloggers who share a dozen posts per day, and never seem to offer original content. One of these curated content options might be a great way for them to spread the word. Flipboard is only one, here are a few others.

I have not used these, but I might someday soon. It could be a way to extend my tentacles online without too much effort.

The first one is called paper.li It is like having your own magazine, or newspaper if you prefer. You get to share whatever you want with your subscribers. One of my author friends is testing this out right now, and I hope to learn how it works for him.

The other one is called RebelMouse. This is a similar product. I really don't know the advantages of one over the other.

It seems to me like this could be the way for me to replace the original use I had for Zite Magazine. If I could find a couple of curators who deal with macabre stuff, and some cutting edge science, it could be useful.

It also seems like a place that's ripe for mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers. Flipboard, paper.li, and RebelMouse are all doing nearly the same thing. (One sells to Microsoft, one to Apple, and one to Google.) That wasn't the point of my post though.

These sites are helpful. My content has been shared on all of them by others. I need to check out paper.li and RebelMouse, but before I dive in they have to be easy and fast. Any of us would like more exposure, but my time is limited.

In the case of Flipboard, there is an app for that. I find that to be an advantage. I did not find apps for the other sites.

In my case, all roads lead to this blog. If you find me on Twitter, Facebook, or Flipboard, even Goodreads, there is likely something that leads you back here. That's my system, but there may be others that work better. If you have a better way, share it in the comments. I'd like to know, and I'll bet my regulars would too.

Do you have any experience with RebelMouse or paper.li? I'd like to get some input on these platforms. If I take one of them on, it will probably be part of my 2017 business plan. I'm just gathering data right now.

Are you going to create a pinned tweet? I think it's a great way to let your supporters help spread the word.

Are you going to set up sharing buttons on your own blog? Feel free to test mine out.

Do you know of any October events I should be taking advantage of? Are you hosting one, and need some players?

What the heck?

Yesterday I posted a short story tip I thought people might enjoy. I kind of expected the usual suspects would give me about 60 views, maybe a reblog from someone who likes writing tips.

When I woke up this morning, that kind of looked like the case. A good post by my usual standards, some nice comments. Then I checked my stats. This post had over 450 views.

I thought one of the heavy hitters might have reblogged my post, but that wasn't the case. There are no reblogs.

I dug deeper, and my new visitors all came from Flipboard. This is the outfit that absorbed Zite magazine who I really loved. I have it set up to gather topics of interest for me. One of the things I can do is set up my own magazine, so I did that a few months ago and called it Entertaining Stories. Unless I'm just whining, I throw a link to my posts in there and don't pay a ton of attention to it. I've also thrown out posts by friends when they have a new release, or something particularly interesting.

I've shared all of the Lisa Burton Radio posts there in an attempt to drive my guests some traffic. Same thing for blog tour guests.

To be real honest with you, I thought it might be Facebook, or even StumbleUpon. I never expected this kind of traffic from Flipboard.

When I went to check it out, I was the top article in two different writing categories. I snapped a photo to share it with you.

Geez, if I'd have thought everyone was coming over I'd have gone with a book cover or something instead of my bronze bust.

The rest of the stats are kind of baffling. Take a look at these:

I'm over 2000 views at the time of this writing, and it's still climbing. Most of those people probably aren't in the WordPress system, because I only have 27 likes. This is my most popular post of all time, but without the likes it won't get into my top 10 in the sidebar.

Don't take this as a complaint. I'm happy to get action anyplace I can. That also means a few people read one of my micro-fiction pieces. There are even a few sales of Notebook to sweeten the deal.

Now if I could only figure out something intelligent to say about my other books, I'd be golden. I have no idea how to duplicate this process, but maybe something will come to me.

You can bet one thing, I'm going to be sharing more posts on Flipboard. This is another reason to have your characters appear on Lisa Burton Radio too, because I'm sharing the posts there.

I'm off to Atlanta in the morning. I'll probably manage a short update from the road, but I expect to be pretty busy.

The Idea Mill #19

I've got to be honest with you, these subjects are getting harder to find. Zite Magazine got absorbed by Flipboard, and they promised bigger, better, and faster. Flipboard honestly isn't half as useful as Zite was.

Flipboard doesn't learn as well as Zite did, and it really never finds any content I'm looking for.

Most of these things came from my RSS feed and were pushed to me from folks I follow. Still, I persevered, and the Idea Mill will keep grinding along. It just might not be as frequently as it used to be.

Our first story is about clay. Not just any old clay, this stuff is limited to a five acre basin in Brittish Columbia. Let that sink in, that's less than most city parks in the middle of a huge wilderness. Bonus points because it looks blue.

What's really cool about this stuff is it seems to kill 16 different strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Read the article at this link.

Need to wipe out the zombie plague, the bubonic plague, your girlfriend's warts. Have I got a quest for you. Face down grizzly bears, giant pacific octopi, and Bigfoot to get to this stuff. Best of all it's rare, and you can't dig it up in your back yard. It might even add a little zing to your potions, and it's based in reality. Maybe your hero has to race some big makeup producer to file a claim on the stuff.

Our next inspiration came from an 800 year old Native American pot. The pot had seeds that someone waited seven years to check out. (That's 807 years for you mathematicians in the crowd.) When they finally got around to seeing what they had, the seeds were still viable, and scientists were able to grow an extinct squash plant. I like the idea that the name they give it is a Native American term meaning “big old squash.” I couldn't have named it better myself. Here is the link to the story. (Okay, if the seeds were alive, it wasn't really extinct. You can say lost if you want.)

What if the seeds grew something else. Does your science fiction need some pod people? What if eating the “big old squash” changed people somehow and unleashed a CDC nightmare upon us? What if the seeds were from another planet, what could you do with it?

Lastly we have Lichtenberg Figures, meaning lightning flowers. It appears that being struck by lightning leaves a pretty cool scar. It reminds me of the moss shapes we used to find in opals out in the Great Basin. In fact, it has me wondering about whether those formations might have been caused by lightning striking near the rocks.

These things are some kind of leftover due to the electrical breakdown. I googled a little bit, but there isn't much as far as humans go. The scar in the article is pretty cool though. (I want one.) Read about Lightning Flowers here.

Need some way to show that your fantasy character is marked, chosen, foretold. Maybe she needs a lightning flower. Maybe she needs some electrical based power, and her scar gives her away. Maybe she can use her power, but every time leaves an additional scar until it's so debilitating she cannot function in her world. This could set up a save the innocents – give up living scenario quite nicely.

Part of my usual routine is to suggest a cheesy story based upon all the elements combined. I only do this to spark your own imaginations. Maybe one of these items will make it into a story you're writing. I'd love to hear about it. Here we go:

The old archeologist found a pot full of ancient seeds. When he died, they were uncataloged, and forgotten. When his grandson planted some of them in a creepy blue Canadian clay they grew. They became a crop of man eating “big old squash” that proved unstoppable.

Only the girl with the lightning scars could stop them. She squandered her powers making beautiful light shows, and selling out to rock bands for their performances. If she uses her powers one more time she is going to be in a coma at best, if not dead. What will she do??? Dun, dun dunnnnn.

How about it speculative fiction writers? What would you do with any of these ideas? It's always nice to have a small basis in reality, and maybe something here will spark your imagination. Share with the rest of us. Remember, The Idea Mill is a category in my sidebar now, so if you need more help yourselves.

Workhorse kind of day

I wrote yesterday about how my day was kind of blah. I decided today would not be a repeat of that.

I managed it by taking the reins myself. I didn't count on Hollywood or any actors to entertain me. We made turkey soup instead of counting on a restaurant to please us.

Here's a bit of what I accomplished today.

I finished my first editing pass on The Playground. I have other passes to go, but they each get a specific focus. Still, I get to check something off my list.

I sent out a requested review copy of Will O' the Wisp. This might not seem like much, but dealing with multiple formats and large attachments can be tricky. A confirmation email proved it all worked.

A writer friend encouraged me to enter a micro-fiction contest. It has to be unpublished, including blogs, and it has to be under 500 words. I write what I write, and don't usually worry about the word count. The Muse was with me, and I sent off my submission today. Part of the prize is a case of beer. I can get behind a contest like that. I've no idea how tough the competition will be, but I did it anyway.

I spent some time prepping for a fun guest post. Watch this space tomorrow for news about a wonderful new book. I peppered my own comments into the post, and had to create a few links. It seems like there's always one when someone sends over materials. I'm not complaining, it's a fact of life. The links work in the submitted material, but some of them break during copy and paste.

I got an email that Zite Magazine is going dark, and I have to convert to Flipboard. Zite was the source for much of my Idea Mill material. I converted a month ago, and haven't been overly impressed. I learned today that I can have my own magazine under this format. I started one, and pasted a few of my blog posts there. I included some reviews, and the debate with Charles Yallowitz too. I have no idea if this has value to me, but copy and paste doesn't take too much effort.

Speaking of my Idea Mill posts, this next one took a round about path to the internet. Victo Dolore and I joked about her creepy facial cream some time ago. Our conversation came back to life during my last Idea Mill post. Today she posted this delightfully creepy bit of micro-fiction, and credited me with the inspiration. I may have provided a fleck or two, but she built it into a story and executed it beautifully. Go read about facial cream at her site. While you're there consider following her, and sharing her story across social media.

I shared the voting portal at Rosie's Book Review Team across social media today. In case you missed my last post, Will O' the Wisp is nominated. It's up against some tough competitors, and I would appreciate your support. You can vote here.

On the topic of awards, I was hoping to see one of my covers get nominated for a Rave Award. I think Will O' the Wisp and The Experimental Notebook have phenomenal covers. The nominations were revealed, and I didn't make the cut. This does not mean I wasn't nominated in other categories, but there are no nominations in the public categories. Bummer.

I see today that some wonderful person started reading my Experimental Notebook via Kindle Unlimited. It amounts to about a half cent per page, but I need fans, and that's my positive point here.

I posted a couple of book reviews this week, but they didn't work out too well. I always use the mechanism at the end of every book. One only posted to Goodreads, and the other one didn't post to Goodreads or Amazon. I don't know if I need to try a different way to post, or if Amazon has teamed up with NSA and has me on a watchlist of some kind.

I got a notification that said Amazon would tell me when they went live. They must be aware of my attempt. I wrote a new review for the one that never made it to Goodreads. I'll hold off on Amazon for a few more days. If they still don't come through, I'll copy and paste from Goodreads and try again.

All in all, it was a productive day. Back to the paycheck job tomorrow.

The Idea Mill

Okay, it’s the idea mill, and one small gripe.

I look at a lot of stuff on the internet, but it isn’t all on my web browser. I have an RSS feed and I love Zite Magazine. This is where I get those odd ideas that enhance the stories.

My Muse, Lorelei, is great for inspiration on characters and plot. She isn’t a lot of help on the little things that make science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal stories work.

The stuff that’s coming out recently includes an article about prehistoric terror birds. (I wrote about them once, years ago.) The Russians think they will be able to clone a mammoth. A new comet has been spotted. There was also a breakin at a Nevada cave that holds archeological treasures. The other one that stuck with me this week is that ravens are capable of trading up for better treats.

What could a writer do with all that? A comet marks something or other, and an artifact must be recovered from a cave to bring about the next ice age. The thief doesn’t know which item it is, only the raven can tell him. Don’t judge, I made that up in 30 seconds.

I learned that Zite magazine is changing. They have been absorbed by someone called Flipboard. They promise that Zite won’t go away, and it’s going to be better than ever. Yeah, that’s what always happens. I’m the guy who still has an XM radio. I still miss the XM format and channels they had too. I’m not holding my breath for Zite’s future.

There have been some awesome science fiction art pieces on Deviant art lately. I don’t have to use Zite to browse here, but I do. I find a lot of inspiration in art.

Here are a couple of websites that aren’t just cool, they can be sources for story items too. The first one is called Retronaut. It’s full of old advertisements and stories from the past. Most of it is outrageous stuff, but it can enhance a science fiction story or a steampunk story.

The second one is called Dude I Want That . This one is full of more modern stuff, but I could sure pirate some of it into a story.

I get all my archeology and mythology stuff through Zite and my RSS feed. While they also provide modern stuff, I find the two websites more helpful with science fiction projects.

It looks like I’ll probably need a replacement for Zite pretty soon. What do you folks know about that you can share with me?

What sites inspire you in your fiction? Come on, share with the world.

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