Socked in.

My daughter Kitty took this at 4:00 p.m. today.

 

It's been an unusually foggy day here today.  We don't get fog all that often in the DC area, and when we do, it usually burns off by midday.  But this fog has stuck around for more than 24 hours.  It came in around dusk last night and it's still foggy out there right now.  It's like we've been transplanted to San Francisco, except without the cable cars and the $50 per day parking.

But the fog has brought us temperatures in the mid 50s.  In mid-January.  So really, I'm not going to complain.

As for my writing progress, it's not foggy at all.  (I know -- that segue was a long reach. Work with me.)  Here's what's happening:

• Tara at Love of the Goddess posted a great review of Seized today.  
• This coming Friday, the 18th, my week of stops as part of the Orangeberry Big Bang begins (check the Tour Dates page for the particulars), and a couple of those spots are for reviews of Tapped (here's hoping the reviewers are kind...).  
• Also on Friday, I'll once again be the guest on The Indie Exchange's Blog Talk Radio podcast.  The show will be live starting at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, but if you miss it, you can use the same link to listen to it later.
• I'm in the midst of writing a series of posts for Indies Unlimited on how to do writerly-type stuff in Microsoft Word.  On Friday, I tackled Styles.  This coming Friday, I'll talk about how to design your own blank document template.  Let me know if you have any questions about how to do something in Word.  My employer has given me tons of Word training and I love to use it to help folks. 
• Rursday Reads went live this week -- and amazingly enough, I managed to review a book that I'd already reviewed on Goodreads.  No, really, I'm going to start making a dent in my to-be-reviewed pile this week.  Really, I am.  Honest.

Oh, wait.  I bet you wanted to know about the sweater, right?  I'm somewhat less than halfway done with the front.  The cable is working out okay, but I do have to concentrate.  Which means that knitting this sweater and karaoke, for instance, don't mix.  I had to keep ripping out my mistakes while Kitty was taking her turn.

What? Gravid?  Oh yeah, it's coming.  I started the first editing pass early last week.  That kind of stalled when I realized I was leaving way too many loose ends to tie up in book 5.  So I wrote a new chapter one night, and then yesterday morning I spent several hours shoehorning it in.  I think it makes sense, but I'm going to do at least one more pass before I send it over to my editor.  (How's Imbolc looking for you, Suzu?)

I also need to go through Gravid and make a list of all those loose ends, just to make sure I knit 'em all in in the final book.  And (speaking of foggy), I need to figure out exactly how I'm going to handle the Big Mediation Scene that's coming up in book 5, not that I've built up any anticipation for it or anything.  I'm looking forward to that about as much as Naomi is, I suspect -- but like Naomi, I'm kind of ready to just get it over with.

And here we go!  Have a great week, everyone.

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These moments of -- bloggy fogginess? Foggy blogginess? Anyway, whatever they are, they are brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

An Ode to Book Bloggers.

I'm posting a day late this week because I'm taking part in the "Celebrating Bloggers" blog hop, sponsored by Terri Giuliano Long, the author of In Leah's Wake.  Terri's got the details on her blog here, but basically, the idea is to share some love for book bloggers.  (Hint: click on the link -- there's a giveaway.)

Y'all might not realize it, but there aren't a whole lot of marketing opportunities for indie authors (or at least, not a whole lot of ethical opportunities, which I'll talk more about in next week's post).  On Amazon, I'm one author in a vast sea of others.  You can gain exposure by making your book free, and you can certainly move a lot of books that way (free is everyone's favorite price, after all), but if readers are snapping up 30 or 40 free books at a time, the chances that they'll ever find yours on their Kindle or Nook or Kobo again -- let alone to getting around to reading it -- are kind of small.  And then you have to hope that they like your book well enough to go back to the place where they bought the book and leave a review, or -- best of all -- that they remember your name and spend money for your next book.

Granted, you can take out an ad somewhere like Facebook.  But how many people will see it, let alone click through to buy your book?  If you're like me, you've got something like Adblock Plus installed on your computer, so you don't see any ads.

But book blogs?  Ah, book blogs are marvelous.

Book bloggers themselves are marvelous.  For starters, they're readers.  Nobody in his or her right mind would start a book blog if he or she didn't like to read in the first place.  I know some bloggers who just wanted a place to keep a list of all the books they've read, and the blog grew from there.  So you know that they're looking for books to read and review.  And they're upfront about the types of books they like to read, so if you do a little homework, you will know immediately whether they might like your book.

Book bloggers, as a tribe, have the patience of Job.  They often put up with pushy authors who want to know why they haven't yet seen a review of their darling.  Sometimes, authors turn unprofessional, even abusive.  It takes a thick skin and a sense of the absurd, I think, to survive as a book blogger for long.

But bloggers don't just do reviews.  They also provide a platform for indie authors to gain visibility.  Over the past year, I've done numerous guest posts, a couple of Q&As, at least one character interview, and a post that broke the fourth wall and let me talk directly to Joseph and Naomi.  This not only gives bloggers content for their blogs, but it lets us authors showcase our creativity in different ways than just writing fiction allows us to do.

So hats off to you, my book blogger buddies, and may your tribe ever increase.
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I'm Lynne Cantwell, and I approve this blog post.