WHAT IS IMPORTANT IN LIFE?

If you are not into politics or sports, 
what is there for you lately?

Do you have a purpose to your life?

Midnight's Purpose:

"The purpose of my life is to feel good, 
be good, do good

and eat ... and sleep!
Ah, I think I lied about the do good."

No matter who we are, we spend our hours 

DOING SOMETHING.

What are the THREE things you spend the most time on?

Why?

Do you know WHY you are going in the direction you are?  

Do you even know WHERE you are going?

WHAT IS TRULY IMPORTANT?

YOUR HEALTH

“Health is life. Care for it as you would care for your newborn child.” 

- Mark Twain

YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” 

 - Anais Nin

HEALTHY VIEW OF OURSELVES

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

 - Anais Nin

If we view ourselves negatively, we will see the world that way.  Why make ourselves miserable?

YOUR DREAMS

 “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”

- Anais Nin

"Giving up on your dream because of one setback is like slashing the other 3 tires when one goes flat." 

- Will Rogers

THINK ABOUT YOUR LIFE 

OWN WHAT IS HAPPENING IN IT.

WHEW!

Have you ever had one of those days where a story would not let you go?

Luckily, it was today on my last day off for five days.

I was writing the bit of Lagniappe that I intend to put at the end of all my NOT-SO-INNOCENTS Steampunk novels.

It is the short story, DRAGONS OF THE BARBARY COAST.

5,500 words so far.  Whew!!

The tagline for it is:

"The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be."
  - Ralph Waldo Emerson 

The taglines fits one of the major characters, Ah Toy --

The first Asian Madame in the San Francisco of the 1850's.

Samuel McCord, a young Mark Twain, and two dragons dueling in the shadows of the 1851 Barbary Coast.

Have you ever been so caught up in a story that it just poured out of you?  

Tell me your experiences, will you?

HOW TO TAKE THE MISERY OUT OF BOOK MARKETING

 And you thought WRITING the book was hard!

BOOK MARKETING sucks the joy right out of the air you breathe in the sigh of relief after finally having a book in print.

We study hard to write the best prose we can.  Most of us research how best to market our books.

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! 

 Most of what you will find on the internet is already out of date:

the guaranteed methods have become more over-done worse than a Flying J road-stop steak. 

Some of my sales struggles in the past have come from a poorly titled book 

or a marketing plan that didn’t effectively target my core audience, 

but regardless, I’ve always been tempted to take my sales numbers personally.

Sales are just numbers.  

Low numbers tell you more about what you need to do than high.  Face it, you learn more from mistakes --

They shout at you louder.

Poor sales do not tell you about the quality of your prose.  

They merely tell you that you have not yet found the road out of the author blog ghetto.

A preacher who feels his sermons are poor because he has won no souls in the choir has learned the wrong lesson.

An imitation will always pale in comparison to the original.

Do not imitate another author's or blogger's path to writing success. 

It worked for them because they were on fire for it ...

besides you also do not know all the other factors in their situation that led to lightning striking their sales.

Be yourself.  Have fun. 

 Grow as writer.  

Enjoy the journey.  Look at the world around you: do not be blind to those who need your presence in their lives.

A snubbed child will not care if her mother is a success at writing if she is frozen out of the mother's life.

 Most strikingly in our comments to the blogs of others, 

connecting with readers in a personally authentic way ensures that the reader who is impacted with your book will return for the next.

Remember: 

You Are Never Done Promoting your book

Keep an eye on news headlines, current events, or internet movements to leap upon them should they tie in to a past book of yours.

Your two year old book will be new to someone who is just then discovering it because of you tying it with a recent headline.

 You can’t always control the effectiveness of your book marketing plan, 

 but you can control the way that book marketing impacts your relationships, mental health, and spirituality.

 If you hope to make a career out of writing, 

it’s especially important that your publicity practices leave something of yourself for the next book.

Enjoy the journey and slow down to take in the world around you. 

GOOD Versus BAD STORYTELLING

Take Heath Ledger's Joker ...

Look at him ...

The make-up is crudely applied.  

The smile-effect is made from knife scars at the corners of his mouth: the origin only hinted at.  

His actions deadly and insane.

And those eyes, right?

Now, take Leto's Joker ...

I mean you can tell he's damaged ... ah, because that is what is tattooed on his forehead, right?

The ultimate in telling and not showing us!  

And what is up with all the tattoos and metal teeth caps?  The insanity is literally all surface.



Take GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY ...

Five individuals we had never seen before.  

Yet their backstory was smoothly integrated into the flow of the story until by movie's end ...

when we hear Groot sacrifice himself for the others and rumble, "WE ARE GROOT," we actually tear up, don't we?



Take SUICIDE SQUAD ...

There are too many thrown in all at the beginning as we get the Cliff Notes version of the backstory.

We cannot feel for any of them very much or mourn when they die.

ACTION ...

Action must strive for some worthwhile goal or it is all sound and fury signifying the fight scenes in SUICIDE SQUAD.


Action scenes don't just happen because it is time for one as in comics or comic movies.  

Your action scenes must propel your narrative forward in meaningful ways.

Good Storytelling, even by males, must have female characters that are WHOLE, STRONG persons in and of themselves

Women characters must exist as entire personalities, not be one-dimensional or the entire story suffers.

In SUICIDE SQUAD, the biggest laugh of the movie is when Batman hits Harley Quinn in the face.  

She has an abusive relationship with her Puddin', the Joker ...

nor is it referenced as anything but some bad taste joke.

WHAT OTHER EXAMPLES 

OF 

GOOD VS BAD STORYTELLING TROPES 

DO YOU SEE ON THE SCREEN OR TV OR NOVELS?

WHY ANTHOLOGIES ARE GOOD FOR YOU

Because I am in one.  

Ah, no.  That's why they are good for ME.  

Why are they good for YOU?

1.) YOU SEE DIFFERENT HORIZONS

Each of us falls into reading ruts eventually.  Say, we look at an anthology and see an author whose work we like ...

L. Diane Wolfe

We buy it and fall in love with the story, "A Glow Worm," by Tonja Drecker.  Fantastic!  

Our reading horizons have just broadened.  How neat is that?

 Tonja Drecker

2.) ANTHOLOGIES PROVE THAT GOOD STORYTELLING TRUMPS GENRE

Often we short-change ourselves because we look at a novel and say, "Oh, I don't read that stuff!"  

Yet a good story is seldom centered upon genre but upon the conflict within the human heart.  

And whether that heart is alien or human, we are touched and enriched by a good story about its bruising.

Which leads me into my next point ...


3.) ALIENS TEACH US ABOUT HUMANITY

By portraying "The Other," authors are really holding up their characters as a comparison to our own ways.

 Sometimes a story about aliens 

(or an age group or sex with which we think we have no connection to) 

can help us see the best and the worst of humanity.

4.) SHORT STORIES TEMPT YOU TO STEP INTO A WORLD YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE BUT FOR THE LENGTH

 When you’re between books, or don’t have the time to immerse yourself in your current book, it’s very satisfying to read a thoughtful, well-written story. 

There are many stories you can read in 10 or 15 minutes . . . stories that you will be thinking about for much, much longer than that.

5.) SHORT STORIES TEACH US HOW TO USE THE LANGUAGE

In short stories, you do not have the luxury of gushing words.  

You have to make each word count.  

Reading a short story well done teaches us how to sketch in a much fuller world in fewer words than we thought possible. 

6.) BECAUSE STEPHEN KING SAYS SO!

7.) AND YOU SEE WHAT KIND OF DRECK THAT YEOMANS GUY WROTE

Look for it tomorrow ... maybe ... hey, life happens.  But it IS coming!

HELP ME! IWSG post

At Meilori's, I was muttering under my breath, writing my latest post for IWSG 

when the ghost of Mark Twain sat down next to me.

 He reached out, snatching my laptop. "'Scuze me, boy, I want to check my Twitter feed."

I gaped at him.  "You have a Twitter Feed?"

"Sure, son. @TheTwain.  Just getting started, don't you know. 

But tarnation, some of those writer friends of yours just don't know when to shut up!" 

"Yes, it does seem all about BUY ME!  But why are you are on Twitter?"

"Why to help you, son!  When I chat with someone on Twitter, and I make them laugh and add value to their life, 

they start to think that the book of the fellow I haunt just might add value to them, too."

He winked at me.  "Want to see my header on Twitter?"

"Could you help C. Lee McKenzie and not me today?"

 https://www.amazon.com/Sign-Green-Dragon-Lee-McKenzie-ebook/dp/B01F9V2KK2/

He laughed, "Why, ain't you the wily one?"

"What do you mean?"


"There are benefits to helping fellow writers, don't you know?"


"Like what?"


"FREE MARKETING, son. Any traffic initiated from her end will arrive to your site."

"I'm not doing it for that!"

"Of course not, and those visitors will see that, and you get the added plus of good feelings from them and her."

Mark lit his ghost cigar.  

"MORE CONTENT for your blog is always a good thing, too.  

Different content shakes up things so they don't get boring."

"A CHANGE OF PACE for my friends, you mean?"

Mark nodded, 

"Publishing a interview with a fellow author introduces some variety, not only for you in producing it, but for your audience in consuming it"


He smiled broadly, "You get to network -- darn word sounds like a new stitch in knitting, don't you know? --

Where was I?  Oh, yes.  You get to network in a way that doesn't FEEL like networking ... to you or to your visitors."

He puffed a cloud of smoke that slowly formed into a riverboat.  He winked at me.

"Learned that from some wizard in the most godawful grey hat you ever saw.  

But last, and most important of all, son ...

It feels good to help someone out by drawing attention to her work.

 And it feels good to realize you can help yourself by putting the spotlight on someone else.

If more of your friends realized that, 

why, the whole lot of your friends would be helping out each other more."

He started typing on my laptop.  "What is this here SIGN OF THE DRAGON about, anyway?"

I said, "Think of STAND BY ME mixed in with that STRANGER THINGS you like so, sir."

He stroked his moustache.  "You don't say?  Why, I will have to check it out."

"You can read my Kindle copy, sir.  It comes out today."

He shoved my laptop back to me.  "Well, just don't sit there!  Get to buying it, too."

He looked out to the shadows as if being able to see each and every one of you reading this.  "That goes for you, too, pilgrims!"

COMING SOON: 

BOOK MARKETING IS NOT WORKING

At least not the traditional tried and true.

1.) GENERIC SHOUTING

Been to Twitter lately?  

Don't you get tired of folks tweeting generic shout-outs for their books as if they were promoting the hottest movie everyone wanted to see?

Impersonal messages do NOT touch us nor prompt us to investigate further.

We have to get personal with our messages.  PERSONALIZE each of our messages 

wherever we send them.  It takes more time, but pays more dividends.

Emailing for help in promoting your book?  

Talk about a post the person did that touched you or how a comment from them on your post touched you, or a FB post from them that made you smile.


2.) BLOG TOUR KISS OF DEATH

You have to personalize your blog tours.  

Make them fun and specific to the subject on which you write or on the subject of the blogs you visit.


3.) ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA

How many Avon saleswomen do you invite over for a chat?  Yeah, not any.

Social Media is for companionship not arm-twisting salesmanship.

You do not have to sell EVERYWHERE just everywhere that matters. 

Make friends wherever you go.  Remember birthdays, lost relatives, ill health, and funny jokes to share.

Then, you will have built up a balance of good feelings upon which you can draw when you need an assist from a friend. 


4.) COTTON CANDY BLOGS

There are a lot of pretty blogs out there that like cotton candy 

are mostly fluff with little helpful content for visitors.

They are easy to write ... and easy to write off by visitors.  

People want a blog that says something of substance or uplifting reflections or just a good belly laugh.

You write a cotton candy blog at your own peril, losing repeat visitors and customers for your books.


5.) PROMOTE THEIR BOOK NOT YOURS!

Only your mother cares that you wrote a book ... and sometimes not even her!

Write in your blog what your book can do for YOUR VISITOR ...

How it will make her feel, how entertained it will make her, how many laughs she will garner from each chapter. 

Another slant to that is to actually promote books of friends in unique, fun ways ...

Just wait until my post for the 3rd.  Just you wait!

Until then ...

C. Lee McKenzie has a great new book coming

https://www.amazon.com/Sign-Green-Dragon-Lee-McKenzie/dp/1532721250/