Link Fiesta

Interesting Goodreads thread on romance subplots in cozy mystery books.

I'm a #1 best-selling author...and a nanny.

Four ways to grow your blog following and Five ways to live your dreams.

10 things I learned from Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic and 14 things to remember as a self-employed person.

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Rosemary Clement-Moore's Pie-in-the-Face Writing Method is fantastic!

Instagram tips from The College Prepster. Instagram is not a big platform for me (as soon as FB came up with IG ads my IG reach dropped by 90% Coincidence? I think not.), but this is very useful. I didn't know about SnapSeed and VSCO. I should try them out. She also has a great post on Blogging Tips.

Carrie at Smart Bitches reviewed one of my favorite SF romances, Sweet Starfire. The Harmonics! The Wolves! The glow-in-the-dark crystal mosses! I have to re-read this book. (BTW, look out for my Jayne Ann Krentz tribute in Fortune Favors the Witch. It's in there!)

I watched Season 2 premiere of The Good Witch and was blown away by some of the costumes (You can follow me on Twitter and read my reactions in real time). Guess what? They have a style guide for the series! Cassie wears Sephora's Rouge Shine lipstick. Unfortunately, they don't have Stephanie's blue coat, but maybe if I tweet enough, they'll add it. :)

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I'm doing research for my new witch series, Main Street Witches. One of my favorite witch shows is Charmed. I was very disappointed to hear that the reties would not be rebooted. Bummer. Still, I've always wondered what made the show so successful. This article has some good ideas. Here's a fan forum thread on the same subject.

Four mindsets that could doom your social media efforts.

How authors can use Pinterest.

There's a YA X-Files series coming out way. It's set in the heyday of UFOlogy, 1979. I'm really looking forward to it.

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Laurie Mclean's predictions for 2015. Very good post. I like her very sensible advice for midlist authors: branch out into self-pub. Apparently, if your book(s) doesn't hit it big in six months your trad pub career is over. It's best to have a backup plan to keep those trad pub fans when you (inevitably, it seems) go indie.

Strategies for Success. Good tips for starting the year right.

How to fake a clean house when guests are coming. Useful advice for writers. ;)

How to build an author site. Good tips. I'm always looking for ways to improve my website. I'm thinking of adding a Banshee Creek recipes section. Yummy!

Camilla Monk demystifies the Amazon book number. I've never really got a handle on the author rank number. I know David Gaughran published a handy spreadsheet (here it is!) but this is also very useful.

Should you write what's hot? Hmm. I don't know where I stand on this. On the one hand, writing off-trend makes your marketing a lot harder, but, on the other hand, you're writing something you (hopefully) love AND collecting true fans along the way. This should (again, hopefully) pay off once the trend fades away. I've seen a lot of New Adult and shifter authors struggle now that their trends are maturing so it's worth thinking about.

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Best practices for author Facebook pages and groups. I'm toying with the idea of starting a Facebook group. I still haven't come up with a group strategy for it. I think I'm going to add "Maximize my FP Page and Brainstorm a FB Group" to my list of New Years' Resolutions. :)

Lindsay Buroker on being a full-time author. I love Lindsay. Her blog is a great resource for newbie writers. I love her advice here.

How to get a Bookbub ad. I'm not going to try for one until I see if my upcoming brand change works, but this was still worth watching. Lots of great marketing advice.

How to write faster. I need to do this.

Harry Potter leggings. These are actually adorable. They're not at all slimming though.

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Russell Blake tells it like it is. So is it really the New Normal? It's always end times in indie publishing I've found. There's a new apocalypse every year. As far as romance is concerned, I think New Adult and Paranormal Shifters are all played out and we're all looking for the next trend. I hope it's romantic comedy. I feel like the world is going nuts and we all need some lighthearted relief at this point.

A great post on how (and what) to post to different platforms. Via Not Dressed As Lamb (my new favorite fashion blog). She has a ton of great blogging advice here. I know a lot of people say that blogging's not worth it for writers nowadays, but I love my writing blog and I'm always looking for ways to make it better. :)

Engaging audiences through Twitter in 15 minutes a day. I should make follower lists. I know I should...

Rachel Aaron's Turtle Method to creative writing. I have kids so I need a hedgehog method, or maybe a porcupine method.

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A post that claims that publishers should stop grading author's social media performance...then goes on to tell them how to grade it more effectively. *facepalm* There's some clunkers here (newsflash, authors can pad their mailing lists with dud subscribers), but there's also some interesting tidbits. For example, I didn't know that email was 40% more effective than social media. Yikes, that's a big difference. BTW, here's a link to my newsletter sign-up page. You know what to do. ;)

Fabulous vblog on book covers. Lots of great advice.

Treasure hunters explore New York's sewer system, get caught by police. Bizarre. My PRoVE guys visit a lot of strange places, including museums, campgrounds, abandoned castles, and tacky mansion, but they'd never go into a sewer. They would, however, visit New York's City Hall subway station, which was abandoned in 1945. That sounds like a great book setting.

Zak Bagans...ghost hunter extraordinaire. The best part is...he retweeted it!

I'm Finally on Facebook!

I finally have a Facebook page that works!

I know it doesn't sound like a big deal, but I'm really excited. I've had a really hard time gaining traction on Facebook. I couldn't use my family account because it's all in Spanish and my first attempts at an author page were total failures. All the author guides recommended an author page but it didn't really work for me. No one knew who I was and I couldn't friend anyone. I loved Twitter, but I just couldn't get the hang of Facebook

I finally switched from a page to a profile and started to friend other authors. I joined a couple of writing groups and friended even more people. It's been great. I have a great circle of author friends who keep me informed and motivated. I even found a couple of paranormal phenomena groups which are great for research.*

I still didn't have a page though. It didn't seem necessary because I'm nowhere near the Facebook friend limit and my profile still has room to grow. I was using my profile for personal stuff (chatting with other authors, fingerling with other readers, discussing ghost stories) and not for marketing so I didn't see the need for a promo vehicle. I'm getting closer to my book launch now, though, and I probably should have a page in case readers don't feel comfortable friending me.

I'm not going to duplicate my Facebook feeds though. I'm planning to keep my page (mostly) professional with book news and writing updates and only a few (very few) ghost memes.

So now you can follow me on Facebook in two different ways. You can friend or follow my profile if you're interested in my writing process (including lots of writer's angst and whatnot) and funny gifs and memes about haunted houses and ghost hunting, or you can like my page if you just want book news (or you can do both if you want to waste a lot of time).

Happy Facebooking!

* Here are a couple of my favorite Facebook groups: Haunted Nation, Dorset Ghost Investigators Forum, Night Vale Community Radio, No Nonsense Paranormal World, and Paranormal Romance Lovers. Do you have any favorite Facebook groups (particularly paranormal investigations groups)? If so, leave a comment so I can check them out. Thanks!

Link Fiesta

Great Self Publishing Roundtable podcast with Roxie Rivera.

The Shannara Chronicles trailer is out! I am so geeking out over this show. The Shannara Series was one of my favorite fantasy series (second only to The Belgariad). I think the first book I ever wrote was Ander Elessedil fan fiction.

The difference between a masterpiece and a first draft. Great post on the To Kill a Mockingbird sequel. I'm pretty appalled about the To Set a Watchman fiasco. It very much looks like people are taking advantage of an elderly author here.

Taylor, the Kboards Freebooksy rep gives very interesting social media advice in this thread. I did not know that erotica did well on Pinterest. I guess you learn something new every day. Jane Friedman also has a post on using Pinterest to market children's books. Food for thought. I actually get a lot of traffic for Pinterest but it only hits my television and crafts posts. My writing posts don't get that much love. I wonder if I can change that. *ponders*

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Lessons from the music industry on how to develop a fan base. Interesting thoughts on how people respond to small prompts and not to huge events. It's a bit counterintuitive, but it makes sense when you think about your own behaviors.

Facebook marketing for Fantasy and Sci Fi books.

A hilarious take on picking titles. I agree with Eric, titles suck. My books have gone from cutesy titles (Must Love Ghosts, Seducing the Rational Skeptic, Snowbound with the Hollywood Hellion)... to straightforward branding (Ghost, Ghost of a Chance, Ghost of a Kiss, Ghost in the Snow...) Who knows which ones I'll end up picking.

Zac Bagans, House Flipper. I have to admit, that Las Vegas house is pretty amazing. I love the pool.

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How to write an effective blurb.

A quick guide to Facebook engagement.

How spamming Twitter with book links hurts your book sales.

Maximizing your MailChimp subject line.

I apologize for the quick and dirty links. Daylight Savings Time is killing me today. It's just one lousy hour, but it's murder on my productivity.

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Seven TV secrets to help you build an audience.

Bob Dylan's speech at MusiCares. It's long and rambling but beautiful and fascinating. He talks about the music business and Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, and all the beautiful folk songs that he loves. He rambles on about the magic of folks songs and what makes a good one and how they stick in your head. He credits his writing and composing style to all the folk songs that he's sung. I'm putting this in my research bin because the heroine of Seducing the Rational Skeptic is a folk singer and she knows all about magic and words and music and old tales that echo through time. A beautiful speech.

Michael Sullivan's strategies for growing your e-mail list.

The National Post's infamous "Confessions of a Failed Romance Novelist" article, and, also, KJ Charles' brilliant response.

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Murakami fans gather at a small sheep farm every year. Every. Single. Year. Dude, that's a lot of sheep chasing.

The world's most haunted bodies of water. Cool! I new about the Bermuda Triangle and the Sargasso Sea, but the rest are kind of obscure.

The importance of Amazon also-boughts. Also, a useful list of places where you can sell your e-book.

The Facebook algorithm hid Mark Zuckerberg's book club thread from the people who had signed up for it. *Facepalm*

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How Gotham was designed.

Great essay on Why We are Obsessed with Zombies. Spoiler quote from George Romero: "There's nothing scarier that the neighbors."

A blog tribute to the fabulous at the Maryland Rennaissance Faire. The cheesecake-on-a-stick is pure awesomeness people. My three-year old son loved it. True, cleaning him up afterwards was an epic chore, but it was totally worth it.

How to bring traffic to your author blog.

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Emily Henderson's home office tips.

Rachel Aaron on whether writers need to blog. The takeaway is "focus on writing your book."

Jennifer Crusie dissects the first meeting between Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak. Jenny's blog is full of useful writing advice, most of it illustrated with popular culture examples (she's doing Moffat's Sherlock Holmes right now). Worth checking out.

Courtney Milan discusses the historical romance print market. It ain't pretty folks. But all is not lost. Read her post on digital strategy to find out which publishers are being successful. The answer surprised me.

Best Tweets from #RWAus13

The Australian Writer's Centre live-tweeted Smart Bitch Sarah's session on social media. Lots of interesting stuff in there. Apparently, blogging is not a requirement anymore. Oh well, I like my blog. I think I'll keep it.

The Super-Easy Author Website or Pimp Your Blog With Flavors.me

This post is a love letter to my new favorite site: Flavors.me.

Why do I love it? Because it helped me create a web portal. A web portal is a truncated web page. It's a web page with links. Instead of going straight to the blog, a visitor will be able to go to the pretty portal and click on the blog link. A web portal is a virtual foyer for all my platforms.

Basically, it's a cure for website envy.

I've been blogging for a while. I started in Livejournal several years ago and then moved to Blogger. I've also been active in Twitter, Goodreads, Tumblr, and Pinterest for about a year.  Blogger is a good platform for all of this activity because you can use the blog as the landing site and add links to the other platforms to my sidebar. Livejournal didn't let me do that.

I like Blogger very much. It's very, very easy to use. I like that I get to play around with the format and make my own banners and such. Even though I'm technically challenged, I get to control my own site.

I've still longed for a website, though. Having a visitor go straight to the blog is a bit like having the front door of a house go straight to the living room. It's okay, but I still feel the need for a pretty foyer. I'd like to have a proper a web page with a proper domain names and links to my platforms, including my Blogger blog.

I could do this through Wordpress, but I don't want a make a platform change. Wordpress looks complicated and I like things simple. Wordpress lets you customize everything, but, let's face it, I'm not going to use most of the Wordpress features. I just want a website with links and pretty pictures.

I tried to create one through Google Sites but I couldn't figure out how to work with the platform. I think it's supposed to be simpler than Wordpress, but I really couldn't do anything with it. I'm not kidding about the technically-challenged bit.

Luckily, Twitter came to my rescue. Lifehacker tweeted two posts on make-you-own web portals. I didn't even know what a portal was. It's basically a web page with links. It's much simpler than a website, but it gives you a pretty landing page. It's like an elegant foyer for your blog.

Lifehacker recommended two portal sites: About.me and Flavors.me.

They both give you nice-looking portals and they are both easy to use. I chose Flavors.me because it allows you to purchase your own domain. About.me doesn't do that yet, although it sounds like they plan to offer the service. I think the About.me templates are prettier, but the domain name was more important to me so Flavors.me won .

Making the page was very easy. Like Blogger, these platforms are aimed at the technical dummies like me. You don't have to code anything.

This simplicity, however, does have its disadvantages. About.me and Flavors.me have a limited number of formats and features and they don't let you change much. You only get to put up pictures and text. That's good for me because I suck at coding, but I like playing with pictures and fonts. Flavors.me gives me just the right amount of artistic flexibility. I do wish it had more fonts, though.

This is what Flavors.me offers:

Basically, you sign up, choose a template, upload some pictures and links and that's it.

Here's what I ended up with:

My domain name is anigonzalez.com. I'm very happy with the portal. I get to put up a picture on the right side and all my information (including links to all my platforms) are listed on the left. The picture on the right will someday be a picture of my book covers. I could also do an author photo on the left and a logo where my picture is now.

My passionflower picture was too small for the portal's format. So I got put up a photo from Morguefile instead.  Morguefile is a great image resource and the photos are free.  This is close to how I picture the small town in my books. When spring comes, I'll take my camera out to Middleburg, VA and take a better picture, but this one will do for now. I also used the picture for my Twitter, Tumblr, and Blogger banners to try to maintain a cohesive internet "personality." I made my banners with MyBannermaker.com. It makes great banner thought they do put up the website name on them.

I even got to make a Favicon. That's the little square to the left of the domain name. I always wanted one of those. I put my passionflower avatar in it. I love my Favicon.

I still have to fix my Facebook. It's the one site that I've had problems with. I do most of my interaction through Twitter and haven't really gotten excited about Facebook. I have to make a Facebook banner and put some pictures on my Facebook page. That's my next project.

But now it's time to get back to writing.

Do you have any social media tips you'd like to share?