Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Blog Tour in June! (and an excuse for being a slacker)

Hey there, everyone!

Hope you've all been having a wonderful week, mine's been good :)

I have a blog tour coming up!  Yay!  It will run, on weekdays, for the first two weeks in June.  There will be giveaways and I will be doing interviews and guest posts and some kind folks will even be reading The River Runes and telling other people what they thought of it. (hopefully most of it is good)

I'm excited.  The second edition is now out for all the world to see, with more editing and polishing, and now I want to learn all I can about this new world of internet marketing.  It's one of the pieces of the indie publishing world that I am still not all that sure about.  I know that a lot of finding readers comes down to luck, but I'm sure that if I do the proper work, I can at least point my novel in the right direction.

I hope.  :) 

If, by chance, any of you lovely people has a blog and would like to be a part of the blog tour, please send me a message.  I would love to expand the tour and talk to as many people as possible!

Other things and stuff!

Some of you may have noticed that right after I posted my new schedule, I missed my Thursday post (Flipped Book Review).  I'm sorry, but I have excuses.  (Don't we all?!)

I don't have a working microphone!  That's right, it's lame, but true.  It's hard to make a video, where speaking is a large percentage of the work, without the proper equipment.  (fun fact:  I'm low on coffee right now, and I just typo(-ed?) the word equipment about four times.  Is there a correlation?  I think so!

But, Ken!  you said you had excuses... as in more than one?

I do.  The other reason there was no post last week was that I put a lot of time into reading a book... a book, about which, I just could not find nice things to say.  I really wanted it to be good.  I wanted the story to be good enough to make me look past the not-well-edited writing.  It didn't work out.

I feel like crap because of it.  Every story has some redeeming qualities, but I promised not to give any review if I couldn't give a book three stars.  I guess it's bound to happen, but I hate it.  It bothers me so much because I want to support my fellow indies out there.  I want to believe in their work, and promote them as much as I can.  However, I can't, in good conscience, give a positive review for a book that had me cringing every time I turned the page.

I almost didn't even mention it here (or anywhere).  But I want other indie authors to know how important it is for us to put out the best possible work we can.  We are asking folks, loved ones and strangers alike, to believe in what we're doing.  We're asking them to spend their hard-earned money on the work we are putting out there, and they deserve our very best efforts.

Here are some of the steps I take, with links to some of the tools I use (not that my writing is anywhere near perfect): Ken's Editing Tips

I get it.  I can't afford an editor either.  But there are tools out there for us, you just have to look.  No one is asking you to be perfect, (well, some people will) but you have to go as far as you can.  Not just for you and your readers, but for your story.  It deserves every chance in the world, but it won't get a chance if you send it out before it's ready.

Okay, now I feel mean.  Here is 8-million pounds of cute to make up for it:)

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