If you have a book to promote–or plan to have a book to promote–you need to read this article from Huffington Post on holding book events in non-traditional venues.
Filed under: Publicity & Promotion, publishing, book promotion, book signings
07/16/2010 • 12:27 PM 0
How to Blog on Vacation (and what does evergreen mean?)
blogging on vacation
Don’t blog on vacation. That’s why it’s called vacation. Here are some blogging options.
I just had the longest vacation since I was 12, a five-province tour of eastern Canada in which the blog missed not one beat. I updated my Twitter feed on the blog daily so there was always fresh content and useful links. (Twitter is fun and takes so little time, I don’t count it against vacation time. In fact, finding a place to steal WiFi was especially fun.)
The easiest thing to do is write your blog posts before your vacation begins and schedule them ahead of time. You don’t have to publish all your posts immediately. Stretch them out into the future so while you’re lying on a towel on a beach, the blog is updating itself according to your schedule. Seem like too much? It’s not really. Some days you’ll be struck with inspiration and will want to write more than one post. Bank the evergreen* articles.
Next option, get a ghost. Lots of writers are glad to write an article for you, either as a gust blogger or as a paid writer. Company blogs employ professional writers all the time (though this isn’t technically ghosting. It falls into the category of corporate communications, no matter how breezy a company may want a blog to sound.) If you have a following, a guest blog entry is a nice way for new bloggers to have their voice heard, with links back to their own blog, of course.
There are several options. Don’t blog on vacation. You never want your blog to feel like work. That’s why I can say, “Glad to be back!”
*An evergreen article is a post that is not time-sensitive. The latest drop in a particular stock on the Nasdaq is not evergreen. A timeless post on your feelings about your grandmother’s Holocaust experience is evergreen.
Filed under: blogs & blogging, Twitter, blog scheduling, blogging, vacation
07/16/2010 • 3:30 AM 0
Hemingway’s Shortest Story
For Sale. Baby shoes. Never used.
Filed under: Writers
07/16/2010 • 2:44 AM 0
Disturbing Poetry
The following is not for the easily offended. Or the sane. But you? Yeah, sicko, you might groove on this. Now take your medication.
Behind you
I focus on the space between people,
never seeing eye-to eye.
My position is always peripheral.
People say I’m way too shy.
But I am watching
especially when you think I’m not.
I’m stealing smiles and taking names
and trying not to get caught.
I’m surfing the net and hacking your man.
I stay to the shadows, surveilling things,
watching you undress and making plans.
It’s like dead to alive, the rush that brings.
You should leave him
or you’ll wish you had.
I’ll treat you right, hardly ever bad.
I’ll help you get there and make you see.
That man is doing very bad deeds,
worse even than me.
He disgusts me, knelt behind you,
sweating and gritting and looking grim.
Lucky for you, I’m just behind him.
I know you’ll understand my sweet thoughts
and why he really had to be stopped.
He only wanted you for your body
and doing things real ladies know are naughty.
Please don’t scream and stop the cursing
or my transgressions shall certainly worsen.
What do you mean you don’t know who I am?
I’ve rung up your filthy purchases again and again.
Pepsi and condoms and personal lubricant.
Don’t say you didn’t flirt with the drugstore man!
You looked me in the eyes
and didn’t look away.
You gave me a smile and said thank you.
What else was there to say?
You sent me coded messages in sheer blouse fashion.
Now we’re together forever in crimes of passion.
You have bound me in irredeemable love.
I proved it by the sticky blood on my gloves.
And I have bound you in duct tape and leather
one garroted boyfriend on the floor
and a four-poster awaits our mutual pleasure.
Too much has been done
for any more to be said.
Now lick your lips, darling, red and wet.
I’ve come for your head.
