It's that time of year again . . .

As I write this, Thanksgiving is only a few days away and I have not had time to write a proper blog post!

For those of you who celebrate this American holiday:

What are you thankful for this year? How are you going to spend your holiday weekend? Will you do any writing? Perhaps you will get some ideas while traveling, cooking, eating, shopping, decorating, watching Christmas movies, attending special events, and spending time with family and friends.

And if you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, you might get more writing accomplished this week than the rest of us. J

Have a Happy Thanksgiving and a safe and fun holiday weekend.

Debbie A. Byrne has a B.S. in Mass Communication with a minor in History. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and is currently working on her first children’s book.

A Thanksgiving Tradition--Embracing Gratitude

Each evening in November, when my children were little, we would all share three things we were thankful for that day. It was our way of embracing the spirit of the season. One year, when both my children were in college, I called them in the beginning of November and asked them to revisit this tradition via email. (They have always been tolerant of their mother’s unusual requests.)  Everyone emailed three things each day to each other.  It gave us a window into each other’s lives that we didn't usually get to see.  I went to the computer each morning excited to see what would be revealed. 

 Here’s a small sample of some of our thanks.

1.    Dad putting me in dance

2.    The Rockies

3.    Being with Freckles during her last season.

4.    Putting on the winter scarf

5.    A mother who wants to keep a family scattered across the country together via email

6.    My new roller-blades that I got for five dollars at the thrift store

7.    Playing hockey tonight

8.    Blackhawks on TV

9.    The smell of fall in the air

10.  70 degrees in November

11.  The kids on the block

12.  Billy’s stint selling Cutco – without it I would never have owned Cutco knives!

13.  I actually like my classes

14.  Potato leek soup in about an hour and the new potato peeler

15.  Hot cider

16.  Visits and scrabble with Granny

Unfortunately, family traditions can sometimes have a way of slipping through the cracks of everyday life. Thanksgiving is a day away and somehow I forgot to start the ball rolling on our three things.   

I've come to learn that we don’t need to do everything the way we once did to find value in our traditions.  Traditions are about connections.  They can morph a little, but returning to our traditions brings us closer together.  My youngest son goes to school in Denver and isn't going to make it home to Chicago this Thanksgiving.  So...maybe on Thanksgiving day we’ll all Skype and share three things about Thanksgivings from the past.  I know the Thanksgiving memory at the top of my list—my youngest son was born on Thanksgiving 22 years ago.

Happy thanksgiving! I'm grateful for this writing community.

Character Relationships

Although my publications are all non-fiction, I have written six novels, five of them for NaNoWriMo. I've never got around to publishing them, and with the exception of the first one, I haven't even edited them.

Although I do a lot of background preparation, and have a plan where the story is going, once I write, I let my characters take the story and run with it. I love the way they become real and often change my ideas of what was to happen next.

However, before starting to write, I work through a series of character exercises so that I know them pretty well. I adapted these from one I learned years ago from a writer called Phil. I think his surname was Rockwell but I can't find him on Google.

1. Draw up a graph (I use Excel) with all your character names down the side, one per row.
2. Repeat all the characters in the same order, across the top, as column headings. 
3. Fill in every space with just a very few words, summing up the person on the left's attitude towards the one in the column.

Here is an example using four of my characters from my first novel.

• Marcia Douglas, the protagonist, is a minister's wife.   
• Owen is her husband.
• Mrs C (Cartwright) is the old lady who lives across the road.
• Holly is the Douglas's teenage daughter.

You can learn more about them by reading the chart.

Notice that you also fill in the characters' feelings about themselves. I initially battled with this, but then realised how important it was. It helps you figure out how the person actually sees themselves in light of the story.

So you see that Marcia is unsure of herself, fears her husband's rejection, resents Mrs C across the road for her interfering, and is exasperated and worried by her out-of-control teenage daughter.

After doing this, I draw up a Word page for each character, with three main columns. I put the name of the character all the way down the left side of the page, and the names of all the other characters down the right. I then repeat the list but with the characters on opposite sides of the page. The centre column is an expansion of what I had in the first exercise.

So here is what it looks like, using four of my characters from the same novel. (I've added a new character to the mix and dropped Holly.)

Got the idea?

Once I have done all this, I write a short history for each character, so that I have a better idea of why they are like they are. As I write, I often find they reveal bits of their lives that I didn't know about. (After all, I'm only the author.)

Give it a try - and have fun!

OVER TO YOU: Having read about some of the characters of this novel, working title, Hidden Agenda, do you think this would be a story worth reading? Which character introduced so far most grabs your attention?

SHIRLEY CORDER lives a short walk from the seaside in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, with her husband Rob. She is author of Strength Renewed: Meditations for your Journey through Breast Cancer. Shirley is also contributing author to ten other books and has published hundreds of devotions and articles internationally. 

Visit Shirley on her website to inspire and encourage writers, or on Rise and Soar, her website for encouraging those on the cancer journey. Follow her on Twitter or "like" her Author's page on Facebook. 

Where is Publishing Headed

With Amazon removing buy buttons from the Big Six publishers, where does the author go to have their manuscript published?

Amazon has also removed numerous reviews because of the hint of purchased reviews, which authors have admitted to so they could rank higher and sell more books.

With thousands of books written per year, and Amazon flexing its muscle, are authors suspected to publish according to whatever terms Amazon dictates, or find company to create the book and let the author sell and market their book themselves?

Traditional publishers currently ask authors about followers and request a marketing plan. Authors have two options:

1. Hire a publicist to market their book
2. Learn how to publicize and market their book on their own

As authors, forced into marketing mode, when are they going to find time to write their next book? Will there be fewer books written? Will there be fewer people wanting to write or even have a desire to be creative?

There are new indie publishers springing up almost daily. What do these indie publishers offer the author? Are they willing to help the author publicize, promote, and market books for authors, doubtful at best?

What this boils down to is the fact that authors are out in the cold even more than they were before. 

More than ever, authors had better learn about contracts, publicity, promotion, social media, scheduling book tours, book signings, media kits, designing a marketing plan, where to sell their books, or save for hiring a professional to do it for them.

Hiring professionals for publicity and promotion can be very expensive. Acquiring an agent is difficult and expensive; an agent is not the end all that authors believe it is.

Robert Medak

Freelance Writer/Blogger/Editor/Proofreader/Reviewer/Marketer

http://www.authorsden.com/robertmedak

http://rjmedak.wordpress.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobmedak

http://twitter.com/freelancewrtr

Writing, Business, Life.... All in the Connections

Like all of you, I have a regular day to day life, my writing life, my paying routine job, and my business life. If I don't stay on track, it easily gets out of hand. And if I do stay on track, I have more ideas than stars in the sky which can easily distract me and cause me to be less than accomplished.

The key for me is to keep the connections between all of the facets of my life working towards my three main goals for the year. So as the year winds down, it is time to really pare down my goals for 2013. My goals besides God and family include getting more written and published, working the writing into my love of fabrics and my fabric store, and of course making money with both. ( These are the general ideas, I need to fine tune the goals before January 1.)

A writer never stops thinking of ideas but we must also be thinking about how those ideas translate into a marketable product for our target audience. I am no expert but here is one example of how I am trying to make the connections between my passions, my writing, and my work and my business.

As a nurse I have a passion for children dealing with illness, hence I will soon have a children's book being released dealing with this subject. In the book the character talks about a comfy quilt and how she wants to make some quilts for others when she is well. I also have a passion for for fabric and quilts and am opening a small quilt shop in the unique town of Nashville Indiana, the heart of Brown County and a huge writer and artist community. Are you seeing a connection yet?

My children's book leads to designing a quilt pattern that others could make for friends which when published  leads to both book, pattern, and fabric all  being sold at the store front in the writer artist community leading to more sales. This is just one aspect I am working on to connect my nursing knowledge, my love of quilts, and my writing to making sales.

Before you sit down to make your three main goals for 2013 consider thinking outside the box when making the connection between your writing, your business, and your life. Make sure that the tasks you do each day outside of activities of daily living will advance your three main goals. If you do this, your writing goals will be met and publication, satisfaction, or monetary reward is sure to follow.

Visit www.terriforehand.webnode.com for more about the author or check her blog at http://terri-forehand.blogspot.com

Writing To Heal Your Ancestors

Joyce carol Oates, in a reading, once talked about her writing process and spoke about writing to heal one's ancestors.

What an interesting concept. When I read this it stuck. I, too, have written to "heal" my ancestors.

I am the product of stoic Norwegian immigrants, men and women who worked hard when they came to America to create a better life. They didn't complain, they didn't explain - they just kept moving forward. Their lives were filled with secrets, some of which were only found in archives when I started exploring my genealogy. My mother was the product of growing up in my grandmother's home. Did this in any way explain our relationship? One also filled with secrets that would only come to light upon her death?

As a writer I think it is natural that we are always looking for explanations for why people behave the way they do. This allows us to create well rounded and flawed characters. We search for the answers, and many times discover why those closest to us may have reacted or behaved the way they did too. Early in my writing career, I wrote several novels, as yet they are all unpublished, each story explored the relationship of sisters, daughters and mothers. I can see how I was working to heal my ancestors in these works - how I was working to heal myself and find the answers to questions never spoken.

Have you written to heal those who came before you? To heal yourself in some way? To explain how it all came to be?

In my more recent works, I seem to have left my ancestors behind, but do they really ever leave us? 

________________________________

D. Jean Quarles is a writer of Women's Fiction and a co-author of a Young Adult Science Fiction Series. Her latest book, Flight from the Water Planet, Book 1 of The Exodus Series was written with coauthor, Austine Etcheverry.

D. Jean loves to tell stories of personal growth – where success has nothing to do with money or fame, but of living life to the fullest. She is also the author of the novels: Rocky's Mountains, Fire in the Hole and, Perception. The Mermaid, an award winning short story was published in the anthology, Tales from a Sweltering City.  

She is a wife, mother, grandmother and business coach. In her free time . . . ha! ha! ha! Anyway, you can find more about D. Jean Quarles, her writing and her books at her website at www.djeanquarles.com

You can also follower her at www.djeanquarles.blogspot.com or on Facebook

What is SEO and SEO Marketing?

What is SEO and SEO Marketing?

If you’re like the majority of people, you may be wondering what SEO is. Well, it’s simply an acronym that stands for ‘search engine optimization.’

According to TechTerm.com, “Just about every Webmaster wants his or her site to appear in the top listings of all the major search engines.” SEO is the means to accomplish this.

SEO marketing is the strategies or techniques used to create visibility and website ranking within the search engines, such as Google and Bing. And, even with Google’s latest update, the Penguin’s SHARING factor, these strategies are still effective, and needed.

Sidetracking just a moment, Google’s latest update takes the ‘social’ element of blog posting to the next level. Along with your SEO tweaks, your content must be SHAREABLE.

Content that others find valuable enough to share, whether informative or entertaining, is what will help get a higher ranking with the search engine.

Okay, back on track now.

Every online marketing strategy includes promotion, and SEO marketing is a promotional tool under the marketing umbrella. The marketing umbrella covers the creation or manufacturing of a product or service, research and development (R&D), distribution, and any other elements needed to get a product from creation to the consumer. Promotion creates visibility, which in turn leads website traffic and customers.

Utilizing online promotion means you will be using the internet and search engines. SEO marketing is the process of getting the search engines to find and rank your website and your content. You obviously want a high ranking so when a searcher (potential customer) types in a search term (keyword), your site may be one of those on that first search engine results page (SERP), or at least within the first few pages.

Another explanation of SEO marketing:
It is basically the steps you take to have Google, Bing, and other search engines find, index, and put your website on one of their first SERPs whenever people use ‘your keyword’ to search for something.

In essence, SEO marketing is kind of a popularity contest.
When you use effective keywords within your website (title and meta tags) and in informative posting content, Google and the other search engines will find, index, and rank you. This allows you to be picked up and shown on the search engines’ results pages for specific search terms. When a ‘searcher’ finds your link on the SERP and clicks on it, you get a link to your site. The more inbound links to your site – relevant to your keywords or not - the more Google and other search engines ‘like you’ and consider you an authority.

Going a bit further, getting links from other sites with the same keywords in their links that you have in yours, is much better. This is considered as a higher ‘ranking vote’ by Google and establishes your site as having more authority. The more ‘link votes’ you get, the more Google will perceive your site as valuable and give you a higher authoritative ranking.

To be found and ranked by Google, you need to add effective and relevant keywords to your site and content, and have SHAREABLE content.

To find effective keywords, you can go to http://googlekeywordtool.com/

Click on the Google Keyword box and it will take you to the Google Adwords search tool.

Karen Cioffi is an award-winning children's author and ghostwriter. She is also an author/writer online platform instructor with WOW! Women on Writing.

Find out more about Karen's online platform classes at:
http://www.articlewritingdoctor.com/content-marketing-tools/ 

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