03 December 2011

Unpacking my blog

I've been reading about promoting a book and OF COURSE a blog is an essential tool. This one started as a place to account a new side of life living in a foreign country, but over the years there's been all kinds of themes here.

The advice about promoting a books says your blog shouldn't be about writing (unless that's your audience) but should be about life, and you,  or themes in your book and other things you enjoy. It's for people to get to know the author and also themes from the stories.

So my nattering on about writing isn't the ideal. I'm sure I'll continue to put an update in here now and then, but it's also a good writing challenge to make me get off the writing theme and write on other subjects. The thing is I'm not sure what else interests me that would get people jazzed about reading my blog.

I like weird news bits like one piece of a Florida 90 year old who shot her neighbor. She thought they were an item, but he was 50 and had no idea. In my opinion, Florida has some of the weirdest news bits and that's why my Work In Progress (WIP) is set in Florida. Lots of potential for funny bits.

I'm intrigued by crime stories too. That's kinda weird to blog about all the time.
Other things I like:
• food
• decor
• reading (oops doe that just go back to writing, though?
• dogs
• Spain (where I'm living now)

My book that is in editing now and will be the first to appear on Kindle and other ereaders hopefully near you next year is set in Africa. There's some weird news stories out there involving wild animals and parks in Africa too. I suppose if I connected to those we could start "buzzing" about the book - Killed in Kruger.  I say "we" because it will take all of us to start a buzz.

I'm open to input here, if anyone has suggestions. I gotta get jazzy!

1 comment:

  1. Weird news stories sounds great, actually. They are instantly entertaining and provide the opportunity to provide your own perspective on whatever the incident is.

    Going further, please note that the things that I would like to read from and about the authors I like might not be the same as what your target readership would like. As such, my opinions may not be overly valid here and this more illustrates my personal tastes than anything else. I am only posting this because you asked for suggestions.

    I personally would be drawn to an author that proved to have an approachable yet unique point of view. So, for example, I might be interested in an author who wrote about taking the dog for a walk as a stepping off point into observations of the people walking around in the neighborhood, or what the local architecture speaks to me, or the paradox of solitude in a crowd. The event (walking the dog) is an everyday thing everyone can associate with and provides a mental visual for whatever unique perspective you have for the day.

    Again, this is probably a taste thing for me, but I like reading about everyday events that provide opportunities to illustrate your thoughts and thought process.

    Finally, I think a lot of the point of this is for your readership to be able to establish kind of a friendly connection with you. I don't really know much about the mechanics of that, though.

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