Building an online presence

Recently I've been guilty of posting short blogs that end without any real conclusion, and I need to stop doing that. I need to treat my blog as if it is an extension of my writing. I've just been so busy working on the Fortune Teller's Gift lately. I've been focusing most of my energy on the book and not getting to know readers and that bothers me. I feel like I don't have the online presence that I want to. I feel almost like I don't know how to build an online presence, because I want to connect with readers and I'm mostly connecting with other writers. I know that most writers are also people who love to read, but I would love to connect with book bloggers or vloggers. I'm going to try reaching out to them myself, but I don't know how that's going to work. Honestly, I don't know much about marketing, other than it's a good idea to carry business cards. Marketing is something I plan to focus on in the coming months. Please let me know if there's anything that worked for you when building a presence.

What's in a name?

During the creation of The Fortune Teller's Gift I changed my main character's name about three times. While I had no trouble coming up with a first name for her, it was harder to come up with a last name. I thought about giving her the last name King. I thought the first name and last name went together well. Her first name is Mackenzie, but everyone in the novel (other than her father) just calls her Kenzie. I was editing the novel and decided to post about it in one of my writing groups, where someone informed me that there was someone who the same name, so I decided to change it. I googled most popular last names in Louisiana and came up with another last name that didn't really go with the first name, and then I just changed it again.

Join me on Goodreads!

I've been accepted as a Goodreads author, you can view that page here. I'm not sure what I'm doing on there yet, but I would be happy if you joined me on that journey.

Relaunching my youtube channel.

Awhile back I would upload gaming videos on my old youtube channel, the content wasn't the best but I was planning to go back and actually work on the channel. I didn't have a mic at the time, but I planned to get one and have content that was actually decent. I was planning to do a colab with another youtuber, however, we had a fight and ended up unfollowing each other and he flagged my channel. My channel got banned, but I somehow got part of it back. I can watch movies and upload through twitch, but I can't make content the way that I want to. I've reached out to youtube, but have been ignored, so I decided to make a new channel where I will upload the new content that I work on. You can find the new channel here.

The rejection that made me look into self publishing

I first tried to get published when I was 19 years old, and nowhere near ready. I had a story that I thought was pretty good, but probably wasn't. I was taking writing classes and my teacher loved the story, but I didn't stop to think about whether or not other people would. I can still remember going to PJ's coffee and sending queries because I didn't have internet in my apartment at the time. I would go at least once a week to see if any of the agents had written back, and I'd end up querying more. I was determined, even though I had heard about the dreaded slush pile. One day I opened one of the rejections, surprised to find that the agent hadn't even bothered to use my name. The agent called me by my character's name. Had she even read the summary attached? I stared at the screen for a few minutes, dumbfounded. I knew a lot of rejections were copy and pasted from a template, but I never thought someone would confuse me with my MC. I was hurt and disgusted, so I deleted all the rejections from my email. I know a lot of authors keep the rejections, but I have always seen them as negative and I felt like a weight was lifted from my shoulders when I deleted them. I knew my work needed work, but I didn't want to put myself through the stress of querying again. I heard about self publishing about a year or so later, but it took me a long time before I attempted to publish anything. It took me a longer time to feel proud of the words I had written (which I do with The Fortune Teller's Gift).

Free Sample

I've decided to release the first chapter of The Fortune Teller's Gift on instafreebie. You can find the giveaway here.

Smashwords account and interview

Interviews are an important way to gain sales, and I've finally gotten myself an interview! I feel so grateful to be featured on the website. If you want to check out the interview be sure to check it out by clicking here.

Also, I realize that I will have to sell my book on more than one platform so that it can appeal to more people. I plan to publish with nook as well as smashwords. Here is my newly created smashwords account.