Technology
This is a really cool project based here in Seattle, Health Month. It’s making a game out of achieving your goals, getting so many points for each one met. It connects with the Fitbit, which I have and love, which also uses geeky addiction to numbers as motivation to get fit.
A tool that I’m still exploring, ifttt. Basically use if/then statements to create actions triggered by web events that come from channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Instragram, e-mail, the weather, etc. Mark Zuckerberg appeared at the Facebook developers conference to discuss Timeline, which supplies a new appearance for Facebook. Samuel L. Ipsum is a lively alternative to the traditional filler text, Lorem Ipsum.
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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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Teaser: Another Excerpt from A New Board is Elected at Villa Encantada
Here’s another chunk from “A New Board is Elected at Villa Encantada,” (working title) a darkly humorous story about a very odd condo complex that I’ve written several stories about already. It’s been fun filling out the complex’s roster a little in this story, and I’m going back to revise one of the unpublished ones with some of these details. Like the talking cacti.
Even the cacti garden was talking about the assessment. I usually don’t visit down there, in the little rock garden near the lake. For one thing all of the cacti like to talk at once. They ramble and they repeat and they are altogether too fond of puns. Not for the first time, I wondered what exactly the magician who had created them had had in mind. Had it really been a dozen cranky plants, whose extreme longevity led them to be highly opinionated about everything?
There are twelve cacti altogether, eleven in pots and one who has chosen to plant itself and grow. The eleven in pots have opted for mobility over size. They were fond of making Rumpelstiltskin wheel them about the complex in order to enjoy the sun and fresh air.
Each was distinctive, both in personality and appearance. They had names, which usually mattered only to each other. I had mentally bestowed nicknames on them: Bombast, Furor, Humblepie, Obscuro, Smarmy, Weasel, Johnny Nonsense, Earnest, Hairyfoot, Splainer, and the unpotted Old Dignity, a massive saguaro towering a good fifteen feet over its much shorter, hideously root bound, compatriots.
Bombast said, “It’s a cabal! They’ve been waiting to seize power for years now, and rob our reserves, turn us over to some real estate agent so the complex can be demolished for a high rise.”
Furor said, “Don’t be ridiculous. They’re not organized enough to be a cabal. And this place isn’t zoned for high-rises.” It added, its tone dark, “No, what they have in store for us is much, much worse.”
“How can they hope to understand the history of the complex?” demanded Hairyfoot. “Most of them haven’t even been here a decade.”
I considered them. The complex was odd at the best of times. It was a refuge, a complex that didn’t mind people who were outside the ordinary. That led to a population that was more mixed than most, including the denizens of this garden.
Earnest said to me, “Did you give your proxy to someone to vote?”
I shook my head and fled.
Rumpelstiltskin was by the dumpster, sorting out recyclables. He looked wretched and smudgy as an old sheet of newsprint. As I passed, he looked up, and said, hopefully, “What’s my name?”
“Not today,” I said. “You won’t escape today.”
I felt guilty at the look on his face, and the situation made me itch, but it’s been so hard to find a maintenance man here that I could understand why they had done it. Sometimes when you find good help, you have to rely on the laws of magic to keep them from leaving. Unscrupulous? Yes, undoubtedly. But the needs of the many outweigh those of the few. Or the one, in his case.
If you want to read the rest of the story, you can get it, along with at least six other stories, at the end of July by signing up to sponsor me in the Clarion West Write-a-thon. Even a small donation entitles you to the stories, so please do sign up!
Many of Facebook’s changes affect fanpages. Think of a fanpage as a tiny website hosted by Facebook. Companies could create one in order to have a presence on Facebook, and their fans could go click “Like” on the page. You have one in the form of your author page. Here’s mine, for example.
The model for interacting with fans has been to post messages, which appear in your fans’ newsfeed. They respond by commenting and liking and hopefully by clicking on links in order to go buy your book or listen to your podcast or read the interview or blog post or whatever.
It’s hard to find a good overview of what’s happened, but it boils down to several things:
So I wanted to test out the changes for myself. Like most writers, I use social media to sell books but also to brand myself, spread news of upcoming events, etc. I also teach online classes, so I try to sell those as well. I had just announced a couple of new ones, so I figured I’d use that post for the test.
After I’d posted something, I clicked on “Promote this Post” to see what was involved, and saw it’d be $7 to promote. Wotthehell, as Mehitabel would say, and look, they even took Paypal.
One reason I’ve been a little dubious about all this is that in August I tried advertising on various social media (Facebook and Twitter) and search engines (Bing and Google) as well as on Hope Clark’s newsletter. I did see a lot more traffic on my site, but I don’t know how much of that translated into sales of books or classes. Overall, the newsletter, which was the cheapest, was also the most effective.
And, not to my surprise, here again it didn’t make much, if any difference, even though when I looked at Facebook’s results for my promoted post, I’m told, “Promoted posts stay higher in news feed to help people notice them. So far, your post has had 113.8x as many views because you promoted it.” That translated into a total of five visits clicking through the Facebook link yesterday. Five.
And that’s my point. Like most writers, my Facebook fan page just isn’t big enough for me to worry about this much. I’ll keep maintaining my Facebook presence, but I won’t spend money on advertising there but find most effective places. I’ll also make sure I don’t confine my social media activity to Facebook but use Delicious, Google+, Stumbleupon, Twitter, and Tumblr as well.
My advice for writers is not to waste money on social media advertising but to work on their blog and attracting readers through good content.
Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.
