I’m currently in the middle of setting up a series of social media posts. Nothing super complicated, just a daily post on Facebook and Twitter with a hook on a particular story in the fall anthology, and some information on where readers can go find and follow that author. This is the first stage of promoting the anthology, to be followed by another announcement about an upcoming project, and then following straight into the pre-order sales push. Getting this set up right now will pay dividends, as I and the family are heading into a month of movement and upheaval and all kinds of craziness.
What’s kind of hurting my brain is trying to FIND those hooks. Trying to write interesting copy when everything that’s going on is… well, going on. When I put the submissions guidelines out, I asked that if people were going to send a query, for them to include a logline. Some people did, some didn’t, and some included loglines that I didn’t find very hook-y, but still opened and read and accepted the story because it was good. Which, my point is, other than always follow submission guidelines, I’m super happy that some of the authors sent me good loglines, because that makes this part of the job easier.
On the writing front, most of my creative energy this week has been focused on promo and marketing for the next anthology, Stories We Tell After Midnight 2. But I’ve got several folders of notes for my urban fantasy series finish/rewrite/relaunch (The Rick Keller Project), a bunch of notes for my revision of Steel-Toed Blues, and MORE notes for my romance series. After setting up the next CGP projects, I should be back to full-speed ahead on my word count.
I didn’t do an On The Shelf blog this week, although I’m hoping to do one next week. I’ve got a couple of excellent books I’ve been reading on Kindle, and I’m hoping to have some time to sit down and do a quick round-up type review of each next Wednesday. I hope I don’t disappoint any of my fifteen or sixteen regular readers…
In the meantime, I’ve started querying again! I dusted off a couple of old stories, tweaked, revised, polished, and shined, and sent them out. And then remembered how much I hate querying, but whatever. It’s got to be done. Two of the stories are reprints, (and part of the third one), and in searching for markets for horror reprints that actually pay, I’m starting to understand exactly why the Crone Girls Press submissions were flooded.
Anyway, those are the random things going on with me right now. If you’re interested in the play-by-play, come drop me a follow on Twitter, or check out what’s going on over at Facebook.
