Day 21--Blog Tour Time...I Need YOUR help!

Hey, folks--I need your help. If you have a blog, perfect. Because I need you to.

I am beginning my blog tour for my book as soon as possible. My goal is to get interviewed on as many blogs as possible to increase exposure for my book, my blog, your book, and your blog. All you have to do is agree to send me a list of interview questions about me as a young writer and feature the interview with an introduction on your blog. Also, said post would have an Amazon Associates link to my book and a link to my blog.

How does this help you? Number one, you get promotion of your blog on my blogroll on the sidebar (and if you have a book, then I'll also pimp that link). Number two, you generate the revenue that comes with the Amazon Associates program. Every time someone clicks on the link for my Amazon book, as long as it's an Amazon Associates link, you make a percentage on that sale.

You'll also get some material to add to your blog if you're starving for something to write about. That's happened to me before.

Post a comment here to volunteer to interview me on your blog about my book, Double Life!

Thanks everyone.

Dawson

Day 20--The Three Stages of Your Book, Stage 1: Writing

Hey everyone. Today I'm going to talk to you about the three stages of your book and go in depth about the first stage, Writing.

The Three Stages (not Stooges, mind you) are as follows: Writing, Editing, and Publishing. That's it. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Why? Because if you have too many phases of your book, it's going to look and feel tiresome to write it and you'll end up never getting it done. But these are the universal stages of writing, and even if you use a different plan than I do, all the parts of that plan are going to fit into one of these three stages.

Okay, so about writing. For writing, or any of the three stages, you need to set yourself some goals. The two main ones in this stage are:
  • A definite amount goal, in words or pages
  • A definite time frame, such as a month or three months
If you're like me, then you'll want to choose a modest goal for your word count, but still have it be a challenge. For me the perfect number was 50,000 words, but you can set yourself a word goal that lends to your story, or if you're doing nonfiction, however long you need to explain your topic.

For your time frame, you want something short. You don't want to go lax a month into your year-long writing period and say "I have eleven months left. What's there to worry about?" Next thing you know, the year's over and all you have is a few pages of manuscript.

I tend to set my goals around 1 to 2 months. Most of my work is completed in 1 month or less, with the exception of Terminal Velocity, in which I was extremely lazy. As a general rule of thumb, don't go more than three months. You'll lose your drive to write.

Also, another good thing to remember is to have your period begin at the start of the month and end at the end of the month, or the next month, or wherever you set your goal. That way you can have a better idea of how long you've been writing it and keep track of how many words you should be at each day.

Besides setting goals, you need to remember to avoid over-planning your book. You don't want to spend so many months coming up with the ideas for your book that you don't want to actually write the book. You want to give yourself a week to plan, two weeks as absolute tops.

Remember that your first draft can be anything you want it to be, so don't self edit as you go along. Just go for getting the words out on paper. This is the easy, seat-of-the-pants part of the writing process, and you should take advantage of that. Have fun with it and go wild.

You can find the best tips on writing a first draft from one of my favorite books on writing, No Plot? No Problem!. That's where I derive most of my writing rules, but I have added a few such as the stages of writing and more arbitrary time goal. However, I do set myself a rigid limit of 1 month and 50k words, but you can make your own idea of how your novel will be written.

I'll write back soon with Stage 2: Editing!

Dawson

Day 19--Promises, Sacramento Book Review, and the POD Journal

Hello to all my readers, old and new. Today I'm going to talk about promises.

I'm not going to lecture about keeping promises. I'm going to lecture about making promises.

Often when friends buy a book, I talk to them a month or two later to ask if they've read at least part of it or if they've finished it, and I've been surprised with the response. Many of the people I ask look like they're about to break down and cry and promise me that they will get around to reading it.

The first time you think that it's just that one person that overreacts to the question that way, but as I've asked more and more buyers, they invariably say the same thing.

Please, PLEASE don't do this. It's tiresome and annoying, and it will definitely make me want to avoid you. It's a yes or no question. I'm not asking you to promise me anything, just to tell me whether or not you've read the thing.

Now that that rambling is out of the way, let's get down to business. I am going to be shipping off two copies of my book today to the Sacramento Book Review in (you guessed it) Sacramento. I hope to receive a good review from them, as it would get me some sales in Sacramento and San Fransisco, as people who are reading this review will probably be in that area. But also it will be a great thing to put up on my book's Amazon page in the Editorial Reviews section. It's a legit and big-sounding review service, and I hope that it works out okay for me.

I have recently set up a POD Journal blog that will document my many adventures in the POD business as well as provide for a site for authors to get reviews. They will be reviewed by my new review service entitled the "Anderson Book Review." My first book that I will be doing is The Nine Lives of Clemenza by Holly Christine. It's a good book so far, and I hope to be able to get the review out by the end of this week or the beginning of next (ironically around the time the Lulu Book Review gets around to reviewing my own book).

That's all for now, folks. Catcha later.

Dawson

Day 18--Terminal Velocity, More Amazon, and an interesting interview

Okay...now that I've had the ceremonial napping done from finishing my fourth novel, I can tell you a little bit more about it (though I won't say a word concerning any of the plot secrets).

Terminal Velocity is the same continuing story from Double Life. In fact, you could put the two together and no one would notice. It picks up right where DL started and goes at a fast pace as the RED gets stronger, and the cover is green as you can see. There's a big plot point behind that, but I'm not telling you what.

Since some of you haven't read the first book, I'm not going to give you the plot summary (yet). It has a few things that are revealed in Chapter 18 of the first book...and they would spoil that chapter for all of those who haven't read the first book. Those of you that have, you know what I mean.

Next up is that I have made a total of 3 amazon sales! 3!

Well, that's not too great, but still!

I also have the product description and a review from www.kopek-publishing.com on there.

I also had an interesting interview Saturday night from a girl in college who had to do an interview with someone. We discussed self publishing and how it is attached with social networking, so basically Twitter, the publisher's forums, Facebook, bla bla bla. That was a really good time.

So...updates are coming soon. I have (so far) sold 115 copies of my book, plus a guaranteed 2 sales tomorrow because the people have promised to buy them.

Catch y'all later.

Dawson