The title of the story has become “The Ghost-Eater” as well.
Before retiring for the night, he unshuttered the window, exposing a view of the restaurant’s rear courtyard, an expanse of wrought iron tables, chained to the fence as though someone were worried that they might go walking about.
He sat upright. The moon hit the window almost as bright as witchlight when first summoned. What had called him out of sleep? Some noise in the dining room, rhythmic as hammer blows but more muted. Footsteps? Perhaps.
He put on his breeches, head tilted as he tried to listen. The noises continued, stopped, restarted.
The door opened of its own accord. Charlotte. Beckoning him to follow.
She preceded him down the hallway. There was little light in its confines, but when she opened the door to the kitchen, everything was moonlight and steel, the rims of the great soup pots shining like rounded scimitars, the rack of cleavers and knives varying from the length of his forearm to the smallest paring blade possible, the tiles of the floor like moonstones underfoot, sending up a muted dazzle that mirrored the steel’s.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Taken while in St. Petersburg, FloridaThe merry but busy month of May is past, huzzah! Rio Hondo was awesome, and had such amazing participants (there are some pics frm it up on Facebook, if you have an account on there).
I’m reworking what I have of THE EASTER BUNNY MUST DIE! based on feedback from the workshop, and currently on track to have it done by the end of the summer. I’m participating in the Clarion West Write-a-thon this summer and will be working on that, as well as finishing up a passel of stories I promised to do, including a novella set in the Fathomless Abyss shared world.
I’m also looking forward to Clarion West and the great reading series that will accompany it, as well as the chance to meet a fine new crop of students. Con-wise, I’ll be at ArmadilloCon, GearCon, and then rounding out the summer with WorldCon.
Cat's first nonfiction book talks about how to set up and maintain an online presence -- without cutting into your writing time.
This year I switched the focus of my social media efforts to Twitter, because it seemed to me Facebook was an increasingly ineffectual way to reach fans. Because of that, I’ve been spending a lot more time looking at the people following me on there as well as thinking about Twitter, its philosophy, and its uses overall.
Why does a writer want to be on Twitter? The reason is more than just “sell books”. It’s often a way to network with existing fans (who will buy more books in the future), cultivate new fans, connect with peers and other industry professionals, to find out industry and writing news and yes, of course, to procrastinate in a thousand different ways.
I used to automatically follow people who followed me but nowadays I spend a few minutes to click through and look at their page and the tweets it contains. I’ve noticed that a lot of people are doing it “wrong,” or at least in a way that ends up detracting from their purpose. Most of these are easy fixes. Here’s some tips for setting up an account on there and as well as for maintaining a presence.
The Basics of Setting up a Twitter Account
If you have never experienced Twitter, it’s basically a way to post short messages. I suggest reading some of these basic tutorials on it. Once you’re ready, create your account, keeping the following things in mind.
A picture’s worth a thousand words. Include both a profile and a background picture. Please don’t just make it the default Twitter “egg”.
Give people a reason to follow you. Tell them who you are, but do it in an interesting way.
Give people a way to find out more. Include your website in your profile.
Remember that profiles include SEO keywords. Think about what sort of searches you want readers to be finding you by and include them (gracefully!) in your bio.
Don’t sell stuff via an overt link in your profile picture, background picture, or bio. It comes off as over-eager and clueless.
Make it look nice. Proofread!
Best Practices on Twitter for Writers
Part of successful social media is consistency. You have to do something on at least a monthly basis, and really probably a bit more often than that unless you’re determined to be as barebones as possible, in which case you might as well just renounce the world electronic and move to the woods to live off the grid. (IMO).
Don’t sell, sell, sell. If your stream is nothing but links to your book on Amazon, I’m not following you back. My rule of thumb is at least four non-selling Tweets to every selling one. Examples of nonselling? Promoting other people’s stuff, cat or child pictures, observations about life, interesting or enlightening quotes, links to articles that interested you, and snippets from your own #wip are all valid.
Don’t be negative. Don’t be jaded or whiney or bitter or angry or mean. Just don’t. Studies show people prefer a positive or cheerful Twitter stream.
Answer and acknowledge. When people RT, my habit is to thank them and also to add them to a special Twitter list. When I’m skimming through Twitter for things to amuse/entertain/idly chatter about/RT, I often look at that list because it’s people who’ve proven they want to build a Twitter relationship.
Be a little selective about your followers. On a daily basis I look to see who’s following me. No profile info? Nothing but book selling? No tweets at all? I don’t follow back. Periodically I run the justunfollow tool and clear my follower list of people I don’t know but am following while they’re not following me back.
It’s okay to repeat yourself (a little). Think that latest blog post was particularly noteworthy? Repeat the announcement the next day, and then again the following week. Build a list of such posts for a “best of” category on your site.
Automate SOME things. Don’t auto-message followers, for example. But do use a tool like Buffer to schedule tweets so you catch a variety of times, such as those repeated posts.
