Trying to get back in the swing of things

It's been a long stretch of promotions for me. It officially started with the release of The Experimental Notebook of C. S. Boyack II, but it really started long before that. There was a bunch of prep work to make sure the small tour I took it on went well. I custom wrote every piece, I had to think ahead to have the Lisa Burton posters ready on time, etc.

I followed it up with an extended tour for Will O' the Wisp with my Story Empire friends. Our scavenger hunts are about to end, so if you haven't gotten in on the contest you'd better get with it. At stake are ten Amazon Gift cards, and five ebooks. I believe we're drawing the names on Monday. Here's the link just in case: Link.

I also did a bunch of stuff on my own, including playing with all Amazon's toys. Where I'm going with this is… I don't know what to do with myself now.

I read a bunch of The Yak Guy Project to get back in the groove with it. I still have more to read. Then I'll get writing again.

I finished reading an Advanced Reading Copy of a friend's new novel, and I'm so impressed with it. Hopefully we can get her over here to talk about it in some format once her release date gets closer.

I did manage to edit a few short stories. I wrote another anthem piece about baseball, and started another short story. It's about 1300 words total, nothing to brag about. I also wrote a Lisa Burton post that will show up on Thanksgiving Day.

Speaking of Lisa, I assembled and scheduled two of her radio shows today. I have two more to do, but I'm getting into December now, so there's time. If you have a Christmas themed story you'd like to promote, now would be a good time to think about a character interview with Lisa. She's constantly looking for new guests.

I managed to print out the submissions for critique group, but haven't read them yet. I suppose that will be tomorrow's project since we meet on Monday night. Note: Poses a problem with getting my scavenger hunt drawings finished.

I haven't managed to deal with any of my Autumn chores yet either. It's like two different Craigs are fighting with each other. One who wants to get back to writing, and another who needs to coil up hoses and trim trees and roses. I have a theory that if I addressed the chores, the writing would come easier.

I have a decent idea for my next Story Empire post too, and should probably get started on it. I have roughly a month to get it done, but writing it out will make room in my head.

I don't know why I'm struggling with all this. I can't let go of promotion like I should, but ordering my Lisa Burton mugs helped a bit. I have a novel to write, and some short stories to play with. There is no deadline for any of it, so I don't know what the big deal is.

Time has always been an issue around here. When I'm not working, I need peace and quiet to write. This is harder with Otto around, because he needs (and deserves) attention. Writing time and reading time are the exact-same time, so I can do one or the other. I know I'll have to cut back reading before I can get super productive again. I need to dedicate some of the not-so-quiet time to my chores. Once those are off my plate things might look better. Maybe after my critiques are finished I can tackle part of them tomorrow.

I'm going to have a houseful over Thanksgiving, so I doubt that will be very productive. I also have the next weekend dedicated to company. Maybe they will all go black friday shopping and I can get something done then.

It seems like a long time away, but I took the whole week off between Christmas and New Years. If I can get myself organized I could really make the words fly then. The challenge is to get my other stuff sorted out and get everything lined up in advance.

This is about the time when I make a task list. It's a system that works for me, and I need to do it again.

Things don't always go perfect for everyone else either. Just to prove the point, I'll share this with you. My wife decided to wash the windows inside and out. She just finished the outside, and moved to the inside of our dining room. Apparently, Otto decided window washing was really interesting.

There are tongue and nose smears all over the outside of her window now.

I feel like I'm floundering around right now, and I need to get over it. I'm usually more productive than this. I hope all of you are having a great weekend.

Kind of an Odd Day

How is, or did, everyone survive without Twitter and several other forms of media? Here in Idaho, Twitter has been down all day due to a malicious hacker who decided we all have better things to do. (we probably do, but that’s not his choice to make.)

For me, it prevented some of my promotional efforts. Today was supposed to be a light day anyway, but I have a couple of things going on I’d like to spread the word about. I’ll just regroup and mention them here.

First, the Paranormal Bar & Grille is at the CBY Book Club today. This post has excerpts from all the books being promoted. I’d appreciate it if people would check it out, and Twitter isn’t available. Here is the link (LINK), maybe you’ll find your next great reading adventure.

Second, my Amazon Giveaway is still going on. It has exceeded my expectation, because I set it up to run until the 30th of this month and it’s almost over. I purchased five copies of Will O’ the Wisp to giveaway. The odd thing is that three of them went in about 30 hours, the fourth one went about ten hours later. Now it’s been seven days, and that last copy is still there. I really don’t want to run a second giveaway for one copy. Therefore; I’ll give you a little inside information.

When I set this up, I had several options. One invoved the first five contestants winning the prizes. The second one involved some kind of convoluted algebraic thing that I couldn’t make much use of. The third one is what I did. It works like this, pick a magic number and every multiple of that number wins a book until they’re all gone. I chose the magic number of 70. Someone won at 70, 140, 210, etc.

Right now the entrants are standing at 338. This means the odds of winning this thing are astronomical right now. You just have to be the one to hit 350 on the nose. If anyone is interested, Will O’ the Wisp is a great Halloween story. Here is the contest link (LINK)

Third, I’ve compared notes with some of my Story Empire compatriots, and the entrants into our various scavenger hunts have slowed down. There are ten Amazon Gift Cards you could win. You can spend these on anything you like, and aren’t limited to books. In addition, there are five ebooks being handed out. But wait, there’s more. There is also a Rafflecopter for a larger Amazon Card that doesn’t even require any thought.

The best page to link to is the Paranormal Bar & Grill homepage. Right in the middle is the path to the Rafflecopter. At the bottom are links to the individual scavenger hunts. Just pick an author’s name and have fun. Here is the link to get in on these prizes (Also a LINK)

Like I said, Twitter is a decent place to share this info, but it’s not available right now. Besides, I’d like to see one of you guys win something anyway. When my month of promotion ends, I’m going to post an assessment, but I’ll probably post it over at Story Empire. That site needs some love too.

It sounds like Old What’s Her Face and I are going out for pizza and beer tonight. That means I drink beer while she goes deeper into the Boise Townsquare Mall and spends money. At least today is payday. There is no baseball tonight, and Boise State played last night. I’ll take my phone, maybe some of you will comment here.

Don’t get left out

Lisa Burton, the robot girl here tonight. As Craig's personal assistant, I am the one who put together most of his current promotions. I'm also the spokesmodel for his writing career, but there is no new poster to go along with all the stops he's been making. Although we do have a poster for his Macabre Macaroni stories.

I decided to put my insane sign shaker skills to help with the promotions. Craig thinks I'm silly, but I can toss this thing in the air, spin around and catch it. Robotic precision baby.

First, let's talk about The Playground. This is Craig's latest novel, and it has a decidedly Halloween vibe going for it.

Basically, some nutjob created a social network that targets children. He's brainwashing them to create his own homegrown army. To speed things along, he turns to the occult.

There is this girl who becomes one of the victims, and you get to follow her through the story as her life gets darker, and more desperate.

Then there is the doctor lady. She's a cancer survivor, and is avoiding a return to work by helping end-of-life patients. She takes a job with this goofy old guy, and catches a parasite. It's not just any old parasite though, this one allows her to see into the world of shadows. She has the ability to talk to ghosts, see demons, and that kind of thing.

The next generation software goes missing, so the crazy business guy sends this huge thug after the culprit. This guy is kind of a force-of-nature, and is not to be taken lightly.

The whole thing becomes a chase for the missing software, but in a dark paranormal kind of way. You know, good guy chasing bad guy to fetch the prize before the little girl does something she can't recover from.

Anyway, Craig has The Playground on sale for 99¢ through Friday. Get it now, at the sale price, just in time for Halloween.

Craig also had a story chosen for an anthology called Macabre Sanctuary. There are ten short stories from some incredible authors, and they all have a freaky paranormal thing going on.

Miraculously, there isn't a single werewolf or vampire in the whole book. I told you these are some creative folks, and there are other things out there that are just as spooky, maybe even more so.

Macabre Sanctuary can be read in small bursts, like coffee breaks or while picking up parts for your own robot. At the price of free, what are you waiting for?

But wait, there's more! Craig and several of his friends formed a new blog called Story Empire. They are on a huge blog tour right now called The Paranormal Bar & Grille.

To drive interest in the tour, each author is running a scavenger hunt. I know, crazy right? All you have to do is go to The Paranormal Bar & Grille and click the author links at the bottom of the page.

These links will take you to the individual scavenger hunt for whatever author you choose. It's about too easy. Just answer a few questions on each site to enter. All the answers are found in the Story Empire Book Library.

There are a bunch of Amazon gift cards to win, and the occasional e-book of the winner's choice. Odds are pretty good right now too, so get your entry in.

But wait, there's more. Oh, I already said that. But wait, there's even more than more.

On The Paranormal Bar & Grille page, you will find a link to that massive blog tour I told you about. If you click on it, you can see all the stops along the route, and there will even be book reviews. At the bottom of that page, there is a Rafflecopter for a big old honkin' $30 Amazon gift card.

You have a pretty good chance of winning, but you've got to enter to win.

The second week of October, now with #prizes

I may have mentioned doing a bunch of promotion during October. Several of my titles have a paranormal theme to them, and it seemed like a natural time to hit it hard.

Last week I used some Amazon free days for my novel, Panama. I gave away hundreds of copies, but that's always a crap shoot. There is no guarantee that anyone will read their copy, and less chance that they'll leave a review. Still, it is a reasonable opportunity to make some fans. Everything worked according to plan, and it remains to be seen how it will shake out in the long run.

There are several things going on this week. The first one is a 99¢ sale for my newest novel, The Playground. I felt like Panama was an older title and the free days made more sense there. The Playground is my newest publication, and I'm not quite ready to give it away yet. I won't drone on about it here, because I made a separate post about it this morning.

To support the 99¢ sale, I did a Facebook push. I immediately kicked myself for one small mistake. I included the link to my blog post and not the Amazon universal purchase link. Then I received a comment from someone who bought the book and promised a review. Maybe it wasn't a mistake after all.

I also updated my pinned tweet on Twitter to reflect The Playground and the 99¢ sale. Every little bit helps, right?

I have more things planned as the month shakes out. Watch this space for updates.

I also appeared on Bad Moon on the Rise, over at Teri Polen's blog. In fact, I kicked the event off. I've been following this event every day and tweeting out the new posts. I've discovered some books I need to read too. I honestly hope some of you are interested in my Halloween themed promotions, but I'm not the only one doing this. There are some great things over at Teri's and you really should check it out.

I also started my annual tradition of posting some micro-fiction every week during October. I call these Macabre Macaroni, and they will include the Lisa Burton art as part of the promo. I don't always include graphics, but know posts with images draw more eyes. In my experience, Lisa draws more eyes than anything I've ever posted, so I included her here. I want this post to get some readers.

I was lucky enough to get included in an anthology called Macabre Sanctuary. This includes ten short stories for the price of free. I'm in the process of reading it now and all the stories have been great so far. You can't beat the price for a little bit of Halloween reading, and I'd appreciate you checking it out.

Another of the big ticket items kicks off this week as well. Regular readers will recall the announcement of Story Empire. This is a group of five authors who came together originally with the idea of some mutual promotion during October. It's evolved into so much more. There is a blog that features some nice writing tips, a Facebook page, and even a Twitter account.

The key piece of Story Empire this week is called The Paranormal Bar & Grille. We're doing a massive blog tour through Reading Addiction Tours. You can follow the tour at Reading Addiction, but you really need to visit the Bar & Grille site too. Each of the authors is holding a scavenger hunt and we're each giving away some pretty darned good prizes. You can find all of the answers by surfing around the Story Empire site. All of the top prizes are gift cards, and not an electronic copy of the book I gave away last week. (You know, unless you want one.)

There is also a Rafflecopter giveaway at Reading Addiction. The prize is a $30 Amazon gift card, so make sure you get in on that too. On both sites, you have to play to win.

I have other things in the works for later this month. Rather than tell you about them all right now, I want to concentrate on the timely things you should be taking advantage of right now.

So yeah, I've been kind of busy. The setup for everything happened while I had visits from my parents, two different groups of in-laws, and a convention I had to attend as part of my paycheck job. I expect a little smoother sailing as the month shakes out.

Sunday, hope I covered everything

I'm having some connectivity issues here today. Everything else seems to be hunky-dory, but my iPad is acting up. I hope this doesn't mean bad things for my precious baby.

I have a post scheduled every day through friday now, with the exception of wednesday. If nothing else, this will give me one day to make some kind of adjustment. I might have an announcement to make, but that involves a team effort, and I need to hang tight. I can always post a picture or two from my field trip for work.

My friends and I, over at Story Empire, have a month long scavenger hunt going on. There are five separate scavenger hunts to check out at our Paranormal Bar & Grille page. We're taking our books on a huge tour, and there is a grand prize to be found there too. You have to play to win, and you could win as many as five of the regular prizes. We weren't exactly ready to pull back the veil, but I already have one entrant so the time is now. Go down to the bottom, and the highlighted names will take you right to the scavenger hunts.

Story Empire is growing, but we can always use more followers. You might want to check out the blog page while you're there and see if it might be for you. Right now, the content is directed more toward authors and contains tips and advice that's pretty helpful. It may evolve over time, most blogs do.

In other news, I bought the new iPhone. My old one was one of the 16GB models and it was full. No more music, inability to get my documents off the cloud, etc. Other than that, it was wonderful. I would have kept it, but I just needed more room.

Well, a new phone needs a new cover. This model is so new, there aren't many to choose from. I usually choose something macabre and creepy. My old phone had a full moon with bats flying across it. This time, I decided to have Zazzle make me a custom one. What do you think?

I really want to get a box of coffee mugs with something similar. They aren't cheap though. That way, I can include a mug when I have another scavenger hunt, or get involved in something with prizes. Would that kind of prize interest any of you? I would include some kind of promotional link on it too.

One of the other things I'd like to do is get some stickers made. I have a lot of Lisa Burton art right now, and could hand out stickers to various people. This wouldn't be guerrilla sticking, but to those who want something like that. Even sticking one on the back of my iPad could get someone to ask a question.

Back to the grind tomorrow, and on the airplane Tuesday well before sunrise.

Errands, guests, then goofing off

I managed to read most of a book I've been wanting to finish. We had company again this weekend, so all my efforts were in tiny chunks.

Today mostly involved some errands I needed to run. Then my father-in-law decided to drop in for a few hours. He always shows up unannounced, and is on his way back to Reno. He never stays more than a couple of hours. We visited with him, and I spent the remaining time building a page for Story Empire. Some of us are really good at this kind of thing, but I have to experiment my way through. We'll probably launch those pages in early October. They involve a scavenger hunt, and there are prizes. Watch this space and I'll keep you updated.

My oldest son is here between job sites. He never knows when he's going to get called out again, but he's been in Wyoming most of the Summer. Tomorrow morning, he and I are going grouse hunting.

Most of you may not understand this, but it isn't about the grouse. They make wonderful table fare, but getting a brace for supper is pretty low on the list. It's all about time together, and getting some fresh air before Winter closes the forest for the year. We'll get to talk and hang out and that's the important part. If I bring home a bag of blackberries or raspberries I'll be just as happy. My favorite wild apple tree is up there too, so maybe I'll eat an apple. (After checking the area for bears.)

Tomorrow afternoon we're getting more company. My sister-in-law is staying for a week.

Writing? What's that? This weekend is a total bust for writing progress. My usual method of operation is to set an alarm for early morning and hit it hard tomorrow. This time, I'm playing hooky and hanging out with my son. I actually need this more than I need words on paper.

The next two weeks are going to be strange. I'll have company here, then I have to go to Coeur d'Alene for a week with my work. Somehow, I'll have to share two guest spots I'm making, a Lisa Burton Radio spot here, and the first Macabre Macaroni story in October. Thank God for the scheduler in WordPress.