Being a Self Published Author means Ya Gots Ta Advertise!

(I figured I'd freak out the proper people straight away with my lame slang.)

I don't have a publishing house behind me. I hire my own editor... I do my own covers... I sell my stories (and myself) all by myself (*cue the music*). Last year my husband and I were looking at new houses. We purchased one in May, started a total renovation in August, and moved in in December. I did absolutely NOTHING to sell my books in 2015... I just left them on their various sites (Amazon, B&N, Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, etc) and whatever sold, sold. My sales ended up being only 1/3 of what they were the year before. Ugh!

So this year, I told myself that I had to get back into the habit of advertising. If I don't get my name out there... no one else will. So I let January pass by (we were still having a lot of people in and out of the house buttoning things up - and to be honest, there is still a little bit of work to be done). But I made sure that I found a place for one of my books to be featured in February. I submitted to the site http://robinreads.com and was accepted for a $20 promo spot. LUSH (a YA Dystopian novel) was featured yesterday and I have to say I was very pleased with the result.

What I didn't realize until yesterday, was that Robin Reads doesn't post on their FaceBook page on Saturday or Sunday... so my results might have been greater had I chosen a weekday. But, as I said, I was still pleased. The ad (feature) looked like this on their webpage:

By the end of the day, LUSH had risen to the top of its category (YA Dystopian) in the Top 100 Free book list on Amazon.

It also got to the low 200s in the overall list of Free books on Amazon. For a first go round, back to advertising myself and my novels, it was a great way to jump out of the gate. And so far, LUSH is still holding onto the #1 spot in YA Dystopian, but I know it'll start falling soon... because somebody else will get their book featured on a book site somewhere and get the bump that I just received. That just goes with the normal ups and down of the self pub biz.  I ended the month of February on a high note, and that makes me purrrty happy!

Now... I think I'll try to get one of my other books featured somewhere next month... and so it goes... let the advertising games begin!

Adele let her son wear an Anna costume and (the generic) Americans are Disturbed!

So I just read an article about Adele taking her son to Disneyland and letting him wear an Anna (from Frozen) costume while they were there. The comment section was HIDEOUS! I was shocked, saddened, and appalled by the things that people had to say. The majority of commenters somehow believed that if you let your male child put on a dress you are promoting homosexuality, encouraging cross dressing, creating future (at the most extreme - serial killers - at the least extreme - spoiled brats that run the household - oh, and one person had the nerve to say Adele's child would kill himself).

http://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/a14253/adele-son-dressed-as-anna-disneyland/

Guess what?!? I have SEVERAL pictures of my (almost) 13yo son wearing dress-up clothes (a mini mouse dress and various princess costumes) when he was a little guy. He has two older sisters who were always playing dress up and he wanted to join in. Sure he had some dress-up clothes that were traditionally male (a ghostbuster, a king, Mike Wazowski)... but sometimes he wanted to wear what his sisters were wearing, which meant DRESSES. And guess what... so far he is a pretty typical boy...

But whatever kind of boy he turns out to be... he's MY CHILD! He's not your child, so keep your nose out of it.

And I've never felt as if I had to hide the fact that he put on dress-up dresses from time to time

If your son says he want to put on a costume, what kind of message are you giving him by telling him only certain costumes are acceptable? When a grown man dresses as a female on Halloween people think it's funny, if a male child wants to do it the pitch forks come out. I don't get it...

How far can you stretch?

Is it just me or are we all overscheduled and overstressed?! We stretch ourselves in so many different directions.

I am a mom.

I am a wife.

I'm on the board of my girls' High School Orchestra Parent Organization.

I'm on the board of the East Valley Youth Symphony.

I have 3 kids that quite often need to be chauffeured.

My 3 kids are in 5 different music groups which means that some months we have multiple concerts to attend (for example this coming week - there are concerts on M, Th, & Sat).

It is birthday season (all 5 of us are in the first 4 months of the year)... and this year I have 3 milestone birthdays to make extra special. By the end of April I will have #1 who's turning 18 (ugh an adult child) - #2 who's turning 16 (ugh another driver to stress about) - #3 who's turning 13 (ugh another teenager - no more babies - insert sad face here).

We just did a renovation on our house and nearly 2 months later I still have workers coming in and out to adjust, fix, & finish the job.

I am a writer and I want to continue on with my next novel... but I find it quite hard to write when I am constantly being distracted.

Waaahhh... Yep... that's a sarcastic whine, because I have no sympathy for myself. This is life. This is what we all do. I'll find the time, I always do. Because when those concerts stop, I'll miss them. When I'm not expected to plan a big birthday celebration, I'll want to. When there's nothing to do, I'm usually bored. Okay, that that last part's not true, when there's nothing to do I'm usually reading and that's a perfect way for me to spend my time.

It's been a year...

New Years has come and gone... I should probably have made a resolution to update my blog regularly, because apparently it has been over a year since I last posted something... but part of me wonders how many people actually look at my blog. I have FB, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, a Website, and this blog!

Is it worth it... is it not...

I guess only an experiment in posting regularly and seeing what kind of response I get will let me know. So... here is the beginning of (we'll see how many months I can keep this up) attempting to post on a regular basis.

I'll try to make it interesting post next time...