A Time For Everything

The short story is, for all intents and purposes, done. It even has a new title that I'm pretty pleased with. I turned in my second draft, as per the submission requirements, Sunday morning although it wasn't due until today.

I tend to work better when my work is titled so I slapped a title that sorta fit when I started writing. As I plodded along and after a pretty hefty edit, the title fit even less, so after I turned the book in, I turned my creative energies to a new title and came up with one that fit much better now that book is done.

This morning I turned my efforts to an extra for the book. Basically, the epilogue that will feature an event mentioned in the book. I'll link to it at the end of this story if anyone wants to read it.

This group is doing another anthology for Valentine's Day, so I'm hoping to participate in that as well, but in the mean time, I need to work on one of the other million books I'm in the middle of.

Okay, just kidding, one of the two other books that really needs my attention.

But this anthology gave me a boost that I could conceive a plot and write a book start to finish, short as it was. Now to apply my enthusiasm to one of these other tales and get something else done in time for my conference in October.

Speaking of my conference in October...I'm trying to apply several lessons I've learned. One from last year's experience and a couple from a recent program of my writers group.

The first lesson is to get any ordering (books or swag) done early in case there are issues.

The second lesson is author branding is important. I had a notion of that last year and anytime I did something official like the book signing, I wore business casual in the colors of my publishing company. (Yes, I have one, with a name, a dba, a logo, a website, and everything.)

Unfortunately, there were issues with the table runner (graphics) I tried to order last summer (see lesson one) and I was trying to get a lot of ducks in rows, so that fell by the wayside.

The third lesson is that, in general, people at conferences feel more comfortable walking up to a stranger if they know their name. So I solved the graphics issue for the table runner and it has been ordered. I also ordered a small standup cardboard sign, and I'll be ordering some magnetic names tags.

The fourth lesson is that SWAG doesn't sell books, but it offers name recognition. People take your stuff and use it as applicable, so choose swag that people will use. Either get your name printed directly on the item as in the case of pens or slap a sticker on them in the case of many many other items. I still have pens and some paperboard coasters left from last year, but this new story doesn't fall under the series the coaster is specific to, so that means...do more *author* branding than book or series branding.


Anyway, hope you had as lovely a weekend as I did.