WordServe Water Cooler

February 28, 2014February 28, 2014

WordServe News: February 2014

Exciting things have been happening at WordServe Literary!

On the final post of each month you’ll find a list of Water Cooler contributors’ books releasing in the upcoming month along with a recap of WordServe client news from the current month.

New Releases

Barbara Cameron released A Road Unknown (part of the Amish Road Series) with Abingdon.

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Betsy Duffey and Laurie Myers release The Shepherd’s Song, their debut novel with Howard Publishers.

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Michael Hidalgo released Unlost: Being Found by the ONE We Are Looking For, with IVP.

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Caesar Kalinowski released Transformed: A New Way of Being a Christian with Zondervan Publishing House.

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Amy Sorrells released How Sweet the Sound, her debut novel, with David C. Cook.

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Margot Starbuck released Not Who I Imagined: Surprised by a Loving God with Baker Books.

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Shellie Tomlinson released Heart Wide Open: Trading Mundane Faith for an Exuberant Life with Jesus, with WaterBrook Press.

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Jeremy and Jennifer Williams released the DVD and audio of their book Tenacious through Brilliance Audio.

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New WordServe Clients

Bill Myers, longtime CBA novelist and filmmaker.

Kathy Carlton Willis, platform coach, editor, and member/trainer with Advanced Writers and Speakers Association and CLASSeminars, signed with Alice Crider.

Cassandra Soars, narrative non-fiction writer and cofounder of iheartus, a new social media website for couples, signed with Alice Crider.

New Contracts

Robert Wise signed with Barbour to write Bible Lands: An Illustrated Guide to Scriptural Places.

Back to the Bible signed a 13 book agreement with Barbour Publishers to write short, felt-need books that will be distributed directly to churches through a back of the church spinner rack (as well as in all other outlets).

Sarah Varland signed with Love Inspired to write Tundra Threat, a romantic suspense novel.

Bryan Bishop signed with Baker Books to publish Boundless Jesus: Radical Faith from a Hidden Global Trend.

Kelli Gotthardt signed with Kregel to write her memoir, Unlikely Rebel.

Kate Hurley signed with Harvest House to publish a memoir about making sense of the unexpected single life.

Sarah Parshall Perry signed a two-book contract with Revell for her projects tentatively titled Sand in My Sandwich and Mommy Wants a Raise.

What We’re Celebrating!!

Keith Robinson’s book, You Found Me, landed on three bestseller lists this month!

February 26, 2014February 22, 2014

Scary Publicity Stories

Like most authors, I have a second job title: Doer of Whatever It Takes to Get My Books in Front of the Public So They Will Sell. Much of the time, it’s a pretty cool job with a lot of variety.

Sometimes, though, it’s almost scary, like…

The bookstore signing

I spend an hour and a half at a table outside a bookstore. The place is mobbed – not with readers frantic to buy my book, but with adults and kids participating in a fun run to benefit the local children’s hospital. It is also the weekend for children to trick-or-treat in the indoor mall. Sitting at my table, I get lots of attention, though. The two most frequent questions I get asked are: “Where is a bathroom?” and “Is there some place around here where we can get something to drink?” Being the helpful person I am, I point people in the direction of the former and offer the others some of my bottled water. And people think being an author isn’t glamorous…

The best part of the gig is watching the costumed revelers go by. I see a pint-sized Dracula in tears, a little Spiderman whose foam-padded muscles are slipping off his shoulders, several princesses, and a standard-sized poodle dressed as a duck. But my day takes on cinematic proportions when two adult Star Wars storm-troopers, fully armed with plastic laser guns, walk down the hall. Oh my gosh! Man the Deathstar! Call the Jedi! Tell Spielberg to get the cameras rolling again!

A mom with her baby in her arms poses next to the storm-troopers while a friend takes a picture with her cell phone. The baby takes one look at the helmeted man and goes to sleep. I know how she feels.

Storm-troopers are so passé.

My first television interview

“You’re not allergic to dogs, are you?” a nice young intern named Kurt asks me before he opens the door to the green room, where I’ll wait for my turn on the show.

“How big are the dogs?” I ask, since I don’t do well with big dogs in open spaces, let alone big dogs in small windowless rooms where they can slobber all over you while you cringe in abject misery on a hard plastic chair.

“They’re little,” he says.

“No, I’m not allergic,” I tell him, and he ushers me into the room.

Kurt’s right, the dogs are little. Really little. They are also dressed up in costumes. One is a shark, one is a pumpkin, and one is a Chihuahua wearing a blonde wig and red dress.

“Who’s the Chihuahua?” I ask.

“Marilyn Monroe,” the handler answers.

I give myself a mental head slap. Of course it’s Marilyn Monroe. What was I thinking?

I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking I’m waiting to be interviewed about my novel with a bunch of dogs dressed up for Halloween. I’m thinking I’m going to fire my publicist, except that I’m my publicist.

Now that’s scary.

February 24, 2014February 22, 2014

5 Ways to Add Humor to Your Writing

Humor is a life-giving stress reliever and ice breaker. I often sprinkle my talks, articles and books with funny word pictures and phrases, because laughter opens a reader/listener’s heart to the serious points I want to make. Thankfully, my home is full of crazy guys (including my husband, who’s the most hilarious person I’ve ever met) and I’m a ditzy, accident-prone bundle of midlife hormones. Thus, I’m never short on material.

It’s true that humor, like writing, is an innate gift, and some people have it in abundance. Others…well, not so much. However, certain aspects of both crafts can be taught. As a follow-up to this popular post, here are a few ways to humorously pump up your prose:

1. Wordplay.

Mae West said, “I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.” Classic!

Cultivate your LOL quotient by reading children’s books, which are full of marvelous wordplay. Humor writers and comedians are childlike spirits–playing constantly with sounds, alliteration, and rhyme. Let loose a little, and see what happens.

2. Exaggeration.

Never stop at one when fourteen will do. In humor, less is not more and more is better. Erma Bombeck, one of my all-time favorites, was a master at exaggeration: “I’ve exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.”

Remember George Burns? He often exaggerated about his age: “When I was a boy the Dead Sea was alive.”

3. Surprise.

When my nine-year-old saw that our local drive-in was up for sale, he said, “Mom, I’m sad about that. It’s such an iconic part of our town.” I laughed because I was surprised that he knew the word at all, let alone used it correctly.

Want your reader to laugh? Take a phrase and change the ending to something unexpected, like Jim Carrey did: “Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.” Stephen Wright makes a living by crafting surprise endings to one-liners: “A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I’m afraid of widths.”

4. Parody.

“Weird” Al Yankovich has been doing parody songs for years. More recently, Christian comedians Tim Hawkins (“Cletus, Take the Reel,” etc.) and Anita Renfroe (“All the Wrinkled Ladies”) have gotten into the act. There’s even a clever parody of the infamous song “Blurred Lines” called “Church Signs.” The writers make fun of Christians’ tendency to preach mini-sermons with little plastic letters.

A word of caution (especially for Christian writers): let’s be careful when poking fun at other people. Sarcasm can be soul-crushing, as can insult humor. Remember the Golden Rule.

5. Learn from the best.

Read funny writers, watch comedy videos on Netflix, take courses in humor writing, or read books about the craft. You can also hire professional humor writers to spice up your work (I did this with the first book proposal I sold, and learned a ton from the experience.)

While you’re learning, though, remember to be yourself and not a copy of someone else. Readers can tell when you’re trying to force a joke, and it will make them uncomfortable. Find a style of humor you like, and try it on for size. Ask for opinions from people you trust–if it doesn’t fit, simply try another.

Most of all, have fun!

How have you used humor in your writing?

February 23, 2014February 22, 2014

Loving, Listening, and Writing

“The truth is that careful listening feels so much like love that most of us can hardly tell the difference.” –Dr. James Dobson

This quote was presented at a leadership meeting I attended last week and it has been on my mind ever since. February is known as the month of love. We Americans spend billions of dollars on flowers, candy, and jewelry every February 14th in an effort to communicate our love for our children, our spouses, or other significant people in our lives. Yet, according to Dr. Dobson, careful listening is one of the most loving gifts we can give to our friends and families.

My daughter Brianna communicated her need for my focused attention, even as a toddler. If I attempted to do household chores or work on my computer while she was telling me a story, she would say, “Listen to me with your eyes, Mommy.” She had a speech impediment at the time, so it sounded more like, “Lithen to me wiff your eyes, Mommy.” She was adorable. She was also correct in her assessment that her mother was not actually listening to what she was saying. Whenever possible, I would walk away from my computer or put down my dusting cloth, look her in the eyes, and give my storytelling toddler my full attention as she talked.

When asked what command in God’s Word is most important, Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence. This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: Love others as well as you love yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39 MSG).

We all like to know our thoughts have been heard. Carefully listening to the thoughts, opinions, and feelings of others makes them feel validated and lets them know we value their ideas. It occurs to me that, as writers, careful listening will not only communicate love to the people we care about and enhance those relationships, but it will also improve our writing.

what did you say

Writing requires inspiration and inspiration requires input. Listening—really listening—to the people God places in our lives is a great way to spur fresh ideas. Children often have an amusing, unfiltered way of describing our world. Older adults, if we’ll take the time to listen, offer a wealth of knowledge and wisdom gained through their many life experiences. A husband brings perspective to an emotional topic. A wife enhances historical facts with empathy and compassion. Carefully listening to humanity—even strangers in a busy city park—can provide fresh ideas for a blog post or inspire a new twist in plot for a novel.

This February—the month when we talk a lot about love—let’s love like Jesus said we should. Let’s love our God with our passion and our prayers and with the intellect He has given us. Let’s love people by carefully listening to their thoughts and feelings. Keep a pen handy to jot down a quote or a blog post idea (after the conversation is over!), but be fully present as you interact with the people God has placed in your life. Listen to them with your eyes as well as with your ears.

Our relationships will be richer and we may even discover that our writing takes on new depth.

How has careful listening enhanced your relationships or your writing?

February 21, 2014February 15, 2014

Tell Your Story

Each year thousands of folks descend on the tiny town of Jonesborough, Tennessee, for the National Storytelling Festival. Tucked in these southern Appalachian hills, the International Storytelling Center hosts storytellers and attendees from throughout the country for exciting performances.

What New Orleans is to jazz… Jonesborough is to storytelling.
— Los Angeles Times

Watching this unfold for many years now, I’m seeing how the crowds gather, yes, for the exceptional story-telling, but I believe for more than that. More as in the exponential healing power that story holds.

There’s just something about story that somehow makes our lives better, easier to live.

As writers, we understand this, how the greatest stories of all time evolve from a raging internal conflict. As writers, we can also use this. I don’t mean “use” as in “cheapen,” I mean “use” as in put to good use, aligning with God’s purpose.

We live in a self-aware generation that craves authenticity and real connections with writers who are willing to share raw and real, willing to share the story of overcoming, yes, but also the backstory. Today’s generation wants real hope, seeded in Truth, from folks who have been there.

We can use our stories to make a difference.

I’m passionate about this, believing we’re part of a selfishly divine design. Our stories hold the potential to unlock hardened {or even hopeless} hearts, our personal experiences serving as a point of reference for others in similar places.

Consider the Israelites—an intimidating Jordan River standing between them and God’s future, the imposing waters (seemingly) blocking God’s promise. Remember how God successfully led Joshua and his people through those waters? We know this story because God called them to establish a memorial. He had them return to the trouble-spot {that very place they thought they would never endure} to gather twelve stones to mark the occasion of His divine deliverance. These twelve stones served as an invitation for a future generation {including us}.

“In the future, when you are asked, ‘what does this mean?’ God said, “tell them the story (Joshua 4).”

He meant the whole story. The storyteller was required to be careful and exact. To share the intricate details and not change one single word. The Israelites story of deliverance began in back-breaking bondage as slaves to the Egyptians. The oppression was as much a part of their story as the victory, the pain as important as the healing, and God wanted their children, and their children’s children, and all future generations to know that.

Will we do this, ground our legacies through the power of authentic story?

Oh, that our epitaph would read what was said of King David. “David served God’s purpose in his own generation, then he died (Acts 13:36 ESV).” Yes, God has a purpose. And I pray that by the time I arrive at my grave I’ve lived out mine, that you will have lived out yours, and the same can be written about us.

Everyone has a story. It’s time to tell yours.

Deeper Still: Do you ever feel stuck in the “in-between”? This stalled out place somewhere between the joy of using your story to make a difference and the daily to-do’s of parenting, a busy career, or even a fear of failure? What is one step you can take today to move you closer to using your story?

(Photo: Shanyn Silinski)

February 19, 2014February 15, 2014

The Slow-Writing Revolt

“Nice piece on that Huge Famous Blog, Allie,” you say to your friend, sincerely.

“Oh yeah, that thing. I just dashed that off, after two other pieces I wrote that day.” She tosses her perfect hair and regards her French nails.

“Really? How long did that piece take you?” you say, curious, but knowing you’re about to feel sick.

“Oh, about 37 minutes. Of course posting it all around the world took a bit longer. And then answering all the fan mail. That took about 3 days.”

“Yeah, I hate it when that happens.“ Weak smile trying to hide your nausea and the fact that it took you all day to write one short piece. You leave smiling, stomach roiling.

I confess: I have been Allie a time or three, but I’m mostly the other. Which is a problem. This week, for instance, I have four articles due in the next two days (Yes, this is one of them.) Not to mention a sermon to write, and three other presentations. It was the same last week. I’m not alone in this kettle of fish. A Facebook friend messaged me saying she couldn’t talk—she had three articles due that day. Others tell me the same.

So here we all are hunched over in emergency mode every day, madly chopping and grinding, tossing posts and articles and reviews out into the void. We’re generating twice as much content as we used to, in half the time.

What’s happening? We all have Facebook pages we’re trying to fill. Many have daily blogs they’re trying to fill. Surrendering that impossible task, now they’re filling them with other writers’ work. So now we’re all writing for our own blogs, plus our friends’ blogs, plus all those other publications we want to be in. And the book we’re writing? Oh yes, we’ll get to that, as soon as we finish this last little post. Behind all this is fear . . . a lot of fear. That we’ll disappear if we’re not on stage all the time. That we’ll be forgotten. That we’ll be invisible. That our platform won’t be big enough. That we won’t land another book contract.

Enough. I’m about to revolt.

Here’s what I’m preaching to you and me today. And I’m sorry I’m not saying it beautifully or lyrically with a grand metaphor that lights it all on fire. That’s what happens when you write too fast. Here’s the message: Slow down. M a r i n a t e. Wait. Sometimes even—-stop. Sometimes even—-say No.

We’re losing our way when nothing matters but the deadline. We’re losing our way when nothing matters but the byline. We’re wasting words. Sometimes we’re writing junk we don’t mean. Sometimes we’re just writing junk. We need to quit saying yes to people just because we want to fling a new piece out into the world for its five minutes of fame, if we’re even that lucky. Write to raze hearts and inflame lives. Mean every word you say. Stake your life upon it. Make your words worth every minute of your reader’s time. Anything less is ashes you have no time for and the world has no need of.

Take this, for example. I needed to write this in an hour, with a dash and a pinch of salt over my shoulder. Instead, against all intentions, I have taken three times longer. Not for the craft of it (apologies), but for the heart of it, which did not find me until the second hour. When we don’t give ourselves time to wander and to wonder, we’ll lose the truer words that want to be found and must be said.

Someday soon I hope the conversation will go like this:

“That was an amazing piece you wrote, Allie. You really nailed that review. I’m going to buy the book.”

“Really? That’s great! Yeah, it took me a week to write that. I just had to marinate in it for awhile.” She pulls at her frizzy hair and nibbles on her nails.

“Wow, a whole week! Good for you!”

“Oh, I don’t mean to brag or anything.”

‘No, that’s okay. That’s really inspiring,” you say. You think a moment, then blurt out, “You know, I’m going to ask for an extension on my essay. I think I need a little more time on it.”

“Of course! They’ll give it to you. You’re one of the best writers I know. They don’t expect you to be fast!”

Will you join me in this revolt?

February 17, 2014February 15, 2014

Writing is a Team Sport

olympics

As I write this, the Olympics are in full swing, and I don’t know about you, but I am glued to my television every night, cheering on Team USA.

I am blown away by the dedication of these athletes. As I watch them compete, I see similarities in their job and mine, in their passion and in my passion. And of course as a writer, I see an analogy in EVERYTHING. So here are my take-aways from the Olympics:

1. Identify your team.

What strikes me about so many of these Olympic events is that they are solo endeavors, meaning the athlete competes alone and is scored individually, even though they are part of a larger team for his/her particular discipline and country. But regardless of the individual scoring, each athlete also has a support system, usually consisting of coaches, trainers, and family and friends. Writing so often feels like an isolated career. Unless I sit down and place my fingers on the keyboard, it doesn’t happen. A month before my first book, Shaken, released, I panicked. I needed help, but not with the writing. I have a great publisher, editor, and agent, but I needed a local team. In January, I invited a group of my friends to participate with me in the dreaming and execution. I call them my “Creative Brain Trust.” And, man, did they have ideas. They are the reason for all the buzz leading up to release day. They not only encouraged, but jumped in to help.

2. Have the courage to share your passion.

One thing I LOVE about watching these incredible athletes is the pure joy they feel in participating in and sharing their sport with the watching world. Writing is a vulnerable career. We splash our hearts and thoughts across bound pages and put it into the hands of those who can criticize. That is the beauty and the struggle of art. These athletes are no different. There is something beautiful about watching a snowboarder catapult in the air on a jump, stick the landing, and grin from ear-to-ear as they coast to a stop. What a rush! Move past the possibility of criticism and fear of what people think. Find the joy in writing, and be unafraid to share that with others.

3. Dedication and training pay off.

KLshaken

What is your Olympic moment? What are you training for? For a couple of years, I wondered if my training would pay off. I flew to out-of-state conferences, bought training books, took classes, spent money on professional editing, joined associations. It didn’t seem to lead anywhere. But my Olympic moment just came February 4 with the release of Shaken, book one in the Heart of a Warrior series. I look back and see all the training and dedication coming down to this one moment. And I’m not done yet. I’m gearing up for my next Olympic moment next winter with the release of Shadowed. In the meantime, back to training.

4. Be innovative and take risks.

I heard a snowboarder from Canada say that his sport is always changing. In order to succeed and stay on top, he has to be willing to change with it. But change in itself isn’t enough. He has to be willing to blaze the trail for new tricks, new techniques, and new skill. That’s what I love about writing. It’s fluid. Though the rules are specific, they allow for personal style. Don’t be afraid to push the boundaries of this field and make it your own. There is value in following the rules of the market, but there is also value in standing apart. Find the balance. I’m still learning what this looks like, but I relish the challenge.

5. Celebrate the victories.

Whether or not they win a medal, at the end of the day these athletes are Olympians, and so many of them celebrate that fact alone. I loved watching a first time cross-country skier celebrate eighth place because it was a personal best for her. She even talked about where she could be four years from now in the next winter Olympics.

At the end of the day, you are a writer. Celebrate the success and release of your work. Take a break and rest. Then get back on the horse and crank out something even better for your next Olympics. You have accomplished something great. Now, set your sights on something greater.

What lessons are you learning during the Olympics? What would you add to this list? Happy writing, and Go USA!

February 16, 2014February 15, 2014

What Stories Teach Us

I just finished reading two novels that I ended up loving but started out hating. Or, not exactly hating. Just struggling to keep on reading.

Both were assigned reading. One was a friend’s favorite novel: David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. After repeatedly recommending it, she finally sent me a copy all the way from Germany. I couldn’t not read it. But it was a challenge. It’s about training dogs, I kept thinking through the first hundred pages. I like dogs, (we have four of our own), but how could this book have been such a bestseller? Right around then, though, the dogs and characters coalesced into a gripping mystery, and I read all night long.

The same happened with Randy Boyagoda’s Beggar’s Feast. A colleague organizing a conference featuring the novel’s author asked if I’d participate in a panel discussion of its “Christian elements.” The assignment made me leery. If there’s anything I can’t tolerate in fiction, it’s a sermon, which I assumed the presence of discernible “Christian elements” would comprise. When I sit down—or, more often, lie down—to read a novel, I want to be entertained. If there’s a message, I like to discover it myself, as with Jesus’ parables. “If you want to preach,” I tell my fiction workshop students, “write devotionals, not novels.”

My colleague’s new to our department, though, and I didn’t want to alienate her. Plus, running a conference is hard work; I wanted to offer support. Accordingly, I said I’d read the novel and, if I liked it, join the panel.

So, I started Beggar’s Feast, the syntactically gnarled tale of a boy mistreated and abandoned by his benighted family who subsequently fights, smarms, and schemes his way through the docks of Ceylon to become wealthy and powerful. A Ceylonese Horatio Alger, minus (thank God!) the moralism: Boyagoda’s protagonist, the self-named Sam Kandy, is no tractable boot-black. He despises everyone, even his own children, and murders two wives in the course of the story. Indeed, he’s such a baddie I’m struggling to discover Christian elements in his exploits.

What made me dislike the book initially was that it was so hard to read. Those gnarled sentences— barrages of images so jumbled and knotted they defied sorting into logical wholes, even by someone who makes her living sorting sense from mangled prose. It was so linguistically maddening to follow this boy’s experiences—worse than Benji’s in The Sound and the Fury—that I decided my difficulty must be Boyagoda’s fault. That, though the novel was roundly acclaimed, he was incapable of writing a sound sentence.

Even as I thought this, though, I knew it wasn’t true. For one thing, despite my struggle to pin down what Boyagoda’s sentences were saying, their images and rhythms and little imbedded amusements carried me forward in a narrative that grew increasingly gripping. And, as the story developed and Sam sorted himself out, the prose did too. Soon I wasn’t laboring but just lying back, enjoying what happened next.

It eventually occurred to me (I’m slow, I know) that the sentences’ incoherence mimicked Sam’s, that a person so broken early on would likely perceive and express life brokenly, especially at first. What’s maturity, after all, beyond the accrual of coherence? As I progressed through the novel, I increasingly sensed and trusted, beneath the verbal chaos, Boyagoda’s guiding hand, shaping Sam alongside my experience of his story.

I hate devotional writing that’s just one long metaphor, but I guess that’s what this is. These two reading experiences reminded me of life—of how often I wade through a slew of confusing and often vexing mundane events unrelated to (or, worse, antithetical to) what’s really important only to realize, much later, that it was all relevant, every bit of it, all its elements, positive and negative, part of some bigger vision.

We are, each of us, part of a better story than we’re sometimes aware of, a story that unfurls only slowly, only slowly displays its meanings. Life may seem pointless or muddled or just plain wrong at times, but beneath and behind and above and within it all is its capable Writer, pulling us toward him.

February 14, 2014February 7, 2014

A Valentine For Our Readers

Roses are red, violets are blue,

I love you, my readers, for all that you do:

To your families and friends, you talk up my books;

You buy the hard copies, Kindles and Nooks;

You come to book signings in out-of-way places.

I’m always so happy to see my fans’ faces!

You sign up for my newsletter and say lots of nice things

On Goodreads, in book clubs – you make my heart sing!

You share kind reviews, both oral and text,

You give me ideas for what to write next.

You twitter my Tweets, like my Facebook page, too.

I’m so very grateful for readers like you who

Help me find new folks that I want to reach

And invite to the fun of being my peeps!

For YOU, my dear fans, are the reason I write

All through the day and into the night,

Wrestle with words and struggle with plots

(which sometimes are great, but sometimes are not!).

When all’s said and done, I have to confess

There’s only one way I measure success:

If I’ve made you laugh, touched your heart in some way,

My work is done, and YOU’VE made my day!

Happy Valentine’s Day to all our readers

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo……..the WordServe Literary Agency authors

February 12, 2014February 7, 2014

How to Market Your Work Without Running Screaming into the Streets

Raise you hand if you just love marketing and you can’t wait to get started promoting that book, blog post, or magazine article you’ve written?

I see.

Well, raise your hand if you would like that book, blog post, or magazine article you’ve worked so hard on to find its way in front of real life readers?

What a conundrum.

Or an opportunity.

It’s that perspective thing again.

Like so many of my author friends, I dislike the “look at me” aspect of marketing my own work. I feel like the youngest of three little girls vying for my parent’s attention at the annual elementary school open house.

“Look at me!”

“This is my desk!”

“That’s my drawing on the bulletin board!”

That may have been TMI–too much information. Y’all probably don’t say that anymore, do you? Forgive my outdated references. I’m never using the cool phrases at the right time. Ask my kids.

But we were talking about our love/hate relationship with marketing and I wanted to let you in on one of my game plans.

I read an article recently that gave some startling statistics on comparative “face time” our messages are given on the various social media platforms. Of course, I can’t find that piece again because I had fallen down an Internet rabbit hole and have no idea how I got there or how I climbed out. You’ll have to trust me: The amount of time a reader’s eyes “paused” on an image (and shared it!) just slayed the time the same reader spent on mere text.

Poor little words. (I love you, words!) Words are my life, too, y’all, but we need to be wise about using other media to get them some face time, which we hope will translate into sales, shares, and retweets, right? Right.

A few simple apps on our smart phones will help. I’ve used InstaQuote to show you a few examples of what I’ll be doing when my next book releases. I would stop here and tell you about Heart Wide Open and how it will be in a store near you March 18th, 2014, but this is not the time or the place.

Along with InstaQuote, I used PhotoMarkr to add a copyright to my images before posting them on Instagram. Now, seeing as my Instagram is connected to my Twitter, which is connected to my Facebook, which is connected to my hip bone…wait, too far, again. The point–one share hits all of my platforms.

And since I composed the text so it just happens to fall into Twitter’s 140-character count (Oh, the thinks we can think!) I can post the full text in Instagram’s status box and Twitter will get the quote. Then, if interested, Twitter friends can hit the link and see the Instagram image.

My intention is to create a file folder of these tweetables and the images in my spare time. (Insert maniacal laughter at the mention of spare time.) Seriously, it only takes a moment to make these images. I made these three in about ten minutes. As the release nears, I’ll share these with the publicity team at my publishing house and with anyone else who has agreed to act as an influencer.

We’re done here! I hope I’ve given you a marketing idea that you can build on without running into the streets crying. I’ve tried that, y’all, and it doesn’t do a thing for sales.

Hugs, Shellie