June, 2012

Rest In Peace, My Mentor

Before you ask, no, I never met Ray Bradbury.

How I wanted to. I dreamed I did once, years ago. I dreamed I met him and inadvertently caused his death. I woke up in tears, so upset I rewrote my dream as a short story and made sure there was some sort of survival for Ray. Knowing no one gets out alive. Yeah, I have a death obsession. Yeah, I’m also a Bradbury fan girl.

Always will be, Ray, but damn, I wish I could have told you that.

What’s Your Brand? – DFW Question For You

What are you passionate about? What gets you angry, excited or riled?

These are more my questions than what Kristen Lamb, the speaker at DFW asked, but they are pertinent to her talk on Understanding Your Brand. I have to confess, I wouldn’t have attended her talk if I’d understood better what it was about, but I’m glad I did. It will change how I blog from now on.

For this post, I wanted to share some quotes from Kristen: “Within five years, all authors will have to do some self-publishing.” That scares some of us, so get accustomed to the idea now.

On discussing how to reach people via social media: “The people you want to reach are those people who don’t believe they like to read. You convince them that you’re worth following, they’ll spread the word to 75% of the population that don’t read.

“Your name is your brand. Be you while your’e blogging. What is it you want people to feel?” Because of this comment/workshop, I’ll post more side topic posts that I’ve usually avoided. Know why? Because I thought those issues were things peculiar to my interest. Duh. They’re the things I’m passionate about. The things I feel about and can therefore get others passionate about. Or at least find those who are passionate about them. (One friend of mine who does this well is Janet Sumner Johnson and ironically enough, is posting on this topic today, too. She does a lot of posts about private license plates and their meanings.  They’re hysterically funny. Do they have anything to do with her books? Not that I can see, but they’re all her and she’s got tons of people reading.)

So yes, I’ll do writing posts because writing is something I’m passionate about – but I’ll do less of them because I’m preaching to the choir. Many of you all already write.

I’ll be posting more about fantasy and what makes a work of fiction fantasy. I’ll probably talk some about adoption. What about you? What are your passions? I’ll share my issues if you share yours. 😀