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I’m guest blogging today at JoJo’s Book Corner for her blogoversary! See the model who looks like Dak, the demon hero from Enemy Embrace (Oct 2011 in Crave the Night). I also talk about one of my favorite books from the mid 90s and am giving away a copy of Through a Crimson Veil. Please join me!
Earlier this week, my blog was hacked and used as part of a phishing scheme (they imitated the website of some bank I’d never heard of). I thought I’d stopped the problem (while breaking the blog), but the phishers were back today. Unable to locate the files they’d infected to gain access, I was forced to take the nuclear option. That means I deleted the entire blog and reinstalled it cleanly. I then imported my blog posts from Blogger.
What this means for you:
I don’t think there should be any other direct impact. Some of the features I’d used plug-ins to provide in the blog are gone. I can’t remember all the names, but I’ll try to add them back as I think of them.
I hope this radical solution solved the problem, but if the blog disappears again, you’ll know why.
That online class I took last week was on branding, something I really have trouble with despite being an advertising major in college. I tell people that I was trained to handle multi-million dollar accounts, not nickel and dime operations like I am. 
I haven’t had time to read the lessons yet because I was deluged with email from other class members on Day 1, and this weekend (when I meant to catch up on posts), I got sick and had no brain power.
But one of the things I think I caught scattered among the nearly 1000 posts this class generated in one week was that we shouldn’t blog about writing, that it only interests other writers. What we should blog about are other things we’re involved with/interested in.
This makes sense to me, but it raises the question: What the hell do I blog about if I stay away from writing and my stories?
Hobbies:
Watching Major League Baseball. This I could probably do, unfortunately my demographic is women and I’m doubtful I’d attract the right audience to my blog if I picked this topic.
Watching movies. Kind of. I used to watch a movie a week, but that fell by the wayside years ago. I’ve become so picky, that it’s difficult to lose myself in the story because I’m so busy noticing plot holes. Since movies have become work for me (all that analyzing I do), I’ve mostly stopped watching them.
Reading books. I have no plans to review the books I read. Oh, an occasional non-fiction one now and then if I really loved it, but I won’t criticize another author, and a good reviewer should cover the pluses and minuses. I crossed this one off the list pretty quickly.
Playing Hidden Object Games. I suppose I could review these and the demographic is okay since it seems as if a lot of women enjoy these games, too, but there are review sites like Gamezebo who review huge numbers of games of all kinds. I can’t compete with that, and they also preview upcoming games. It’s the site I go to for reviews and previews. Also, I go in streaks when I play these things, and when I’m busy writing, I don’t play much, so that would leave huge gaps.
Flower gardening. I know nothing about gardening. Really. All I did was buy perennial bulbs and plant them. I mulch so I don’t have to weed as much. Then I just look out the window and enjoy the color. This does not make for a successful gardening blog. Then factor in that I live in Minnesota and we’re talking about maybe six months without anything to talk about even if I did have a clue about what I was doing.
Scrapbooking. I haven’t done it in 5 years, even when I did do it, my pages were okay, not great, and I’m not particularly creative with how my pages look. I’d be embarrassed to take pictures of my finished work, especially after seeing what people who are good at crafts can do.
So what does this leave me with? The only other things I do are write (which I’m not supposed to talk about) and go to work. I’m not keen to blog about my day job because then I have to follow all these guidelines my employer has set forth for social media and it’s easier to just avoid this and any potential problems it might bring up. And since I can’t blog about sleeping, I’m not left with much. :-/
I thought about blogging about computers because I am a major geek this way, but I’m far from an expert and a lot of times I just figure things out by playing with them. And there are gazillion tech blogs out there anyway written by people who know much more than I do. Another fail.
I’m hoping things become clearer when I have time to actually go through the lessons and work on the exercises that were part of them. But looking at my list above, I’m not holding my breath for an epiphany.
Come over and visit the Harlequin Paranormal Romance blog today! I’m a guest over there talking about how a Ghostly Vampire Gets a Happy Ending. I talk about Cass and Malachi–Malachi being the vampire who’s not quite undead anymore–from Shadow’s Caress.
I was asked to guest blog for the Harlequin Paranormal Romance blog because Shadow’s Caress was released from Bites on Feb 1st. (It’s a fun story with fun characters and suspense! Check it out.) Of course I said yes! I love talking about my characters and their stories, but guest blogging is hard for me.
Theoretically, you wouldn’t think guest blogging would be any harder than blogging here, right? It’s not the case, at least not for me. Here, I just riff about whatever I feel like talking about, but when I guest blog, I need a topic and need to stay on topic. I tend to digress. Often.
Plus, on a guest blog, I’m trying extra hard to be interesting, and yet because I have to stay on topic, I often sound as if I were writing an academic paper rather than blogging. That’s how stilted and formal my language ends up being. I ran into this same problem with this guest blog.
I had a topic–How to make a ghost sexy–and that’s normally really hard to come up with, so I figured I was one ahead. I started making notes because let’s face it, y’all know I was just writing down what the characters were saying, internal monologue as well as external dialogue. It’s not a question I actually asked myself at any point while I was in Pre-Book or writing the story.
As I notebooked, though, I realized that I had put some thought into a few areas and I’d made decisions on how I was going to handle things. I decided to focus on that for the blog. Knowing I have a problem with formality in guest blogs, I decided to try writing it in ink on paper rather than using Word. Maybe that would avoid it.
Nope. I ended up with a boring academic treatise. I had another thought: What if I wrote it in an email? I tend to be really chatty in email unless I’m sending a note to my agent or an editor. Then my mind goes blank on chatty stuff and I’m overly businesslike. Anyway, it was worth a try, right? It worked! I got my chatty tone back and that’s how I like to blog because I am chatting with y’all.
One small problem. I got a little too chatty and I hit 200+ words before reaching my topic. Um, yeah. Editing, cutting, and revising were necessary.
I’ll post the link to the guest blog tomorrow–stop by then to check it out!
Just a quick FYI. Bloglines is shutting down Oct 1st. If you’re like me, and don’t pay attention, this will be a surprise to you. It was to me. If you use Bloglines, you’ll need to transfer your feeds to some other RSS reader.
I forgot to mention this! I guested over at the Paranormal Romance Blog. Come on over and read about how Demon Kissed went from idea to story.
I spent my lunch hour today at work trying to write a guest blog post instead of writing story. What I managed to come up with is an unmitigated mess and I’ll have to redo it–hopefully with a better premise–tonight. Yes, it’s due tomorrow. The problem was I couldn’t come up with a topic and I was counting on an epiphany. I didn’t get one.
It’s so much easier to blog here. I just riff on whatever I feel like talking about. If I had to categorize it, I’d say I’m chatting with y’all. But when I guest, I need to sound clever, intelligent, interesting and get people excited about my stories. That puts the pressure on me. I figure if y’all are reading my blogs, you’re okay with me just talking about whatever’s on my mind that day–usually it’s my characters, but hey, that’s what writing is all about for me. The characters.
If only I had a topic, a theme, something for this guest post.
That’s not my only topic issue. I’m doing a presentation at my chapter on Saturday morning. It’s called Journey Of A Novel and I’m talking about In the Darkest Night. Only I don’t have a clue what to focus on here either. What do the writers in my chapter want to hear me talk about? I’ve done several other Journeys for the group on other books, so the topics that jump readily to mind have already been covered. What can I say that’s new?
Imagine me turning up my face to the sky and yelling, “Epiphany, I need you. Now!” Gak!
I’m over at Donna Grant’s blog talking about where ideas come from and giving away an autographed copy of In the Midnight Hour Stop on by and say hi!
Please stop over and visit me at Sia McKye’s Thoughts Over Coffee blog! I’m talking about the relationships between characters in In the Darkest Night. Not only the hero and heroine, but with others as well.
Patti O'Shea's passions are writing, airplanes and traveling. Fortunately, she's been able to enjoy all three. Find out more about Patti.
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