Marketing Maven? Um, Not Quite...

It's time to come clean. I can't live with the pressure of having to conceal the truth any longer. You may want to sit down or fix yourself a drink though, 'cause this is a biggee.

I'm not sure all my readers are aware of it, but I've taught workshops to writers for a number of years on how to best/better market their books or themselves. Get out from behind your laptops, I urge. Show your face! Embrace public speaking. Set aside one day a week just for marketing. Or 1 hour a day. Small steps lead to big results. No one is going to do it for you. Being your own PR person is what it takes these days to be a successful author. I could look out at a sea of faces and watch people scribble notes. 

Read More

Do Not Trust False Kitty

Rumor has it there is a 4-year-old kitty in Tokyo named @NyatsbyKitti who is trying to pass himself off as the model for the cat on Lessons In Stalking.

DO NOT ACCEPT AN IMPOSTER. @LUCY_CAT IS THE ONLY TRUE CAT. 

That's a bad kitty, Nyatsby! Bad kitty! (Even though you are very pretty...)

No Time To Blog

My apologies for the slow blog week. The days keep slipping away from me. For about two weeks now I've been walking around thinking, "By tomorrow I'll be caught up." You'd think at some point I'd clue in that I'm lying to myself, but it turns out I'm pretty gullible...

What have I been up to? Survey says:

  •  Art Council Open House. I sit on the board of the Rockingham County Arts Council and we're launching a kickoff gallery party on Sunday, December 13th, from 1-5 at the Dan River Art Gallery in Wentworth. Lots of meetings, planning, phone calls, editing brochures and invitations, etc. 
  • Along with that, I discovered that I am the worst fundraiser on the planet. Yes, on the entire planet. I had to make some fundraising calls...
Read More

A Message From the Universe - Part II

So yesterday’s post was about wanting to be given direction in life. I woke up to the fact that business writing wasn’t where I wanted to be spending my energy, that my self-concept revolves more around writing books, and that I needed to learn to let go of guilt. That was the first half of the day.

"Friendship" - Click to enlargeThen the clincher. That evening I worked out with my friend Kay. She gave me the stunning piece of stained glass you see in this photo. (The symbol means “friendship.” How beautiful is that?) But what just made my jaw drop, in light of all that had happened that day, was what she wrote in her card to me.

Ok here’s the deal – On your News Years blog you said one resolution was to “talk Kay into making a piece of stained glass for me.” Well kiddo – ya better get a writin’ because my resolution was to read your novel.

Read More