Have you ever had a ridiculously lofty desire buried so deep in your psyche that you’ve never mentioned it to anyone?  That’s what the Wayward Wormhole is for me.

Immersing myself into a world of writers where everyone is as obsessed, driven, and crazy about language and story for weeks at a time is my ultimate happy place. That passionate kiss of at a three-day conference only stoked my desire for more. I applied to some of the greats: Clarion and Odyssey and vowed to apply to Viable Paradise and Launch Pad as schedule and finances permit, but I’ve yet to receive an acceptance from any of them. Is that a reflection of my writing? Maybe…but they’re all incredibly popular and competitive. The sheer talent from the other applicants is intimidating. I’m not a natural. I’m a writer who makes all the usual mistakes and has to fight my way up the rejection ladder. On the flip side, I love learning about writing, and I’m damn stubborn, so I’ll keep going as long as I’m having fun.

Tired of waiting for an acceptance and finding that I aged with every passing year, I started giving myself an education from the many instructors that graced the workshops I wanted to attend. That’s where Cat Rambo came in. Their Academy for Wayward Writers was the perfect training ground for my struggling career as a writer. They brought in Tobias Buckell, Michael Underwood, Sarah Pinsker, Ann Leckie, Kate Heartfield, and Jamie Lackey, not to mention all the classes put together by Cat themselves. And it was great.

But it still wasn’t the deep end I dreamed about. Then, one day all the time spent on Cat’s Patreon and Discord brought the opportunity of a lifetime—a month of November—an intensive workshop in Spain. Was anyone interested? I was. Did she have a location? No. So I looked for one. I found a castle (A CASTLE!).  The next step was financial viability—was a venture like this something that could at least pay for itself? Spreadsheet time. The numbers said it could. We wouldn’t get rich, but we could offer a new, high-level intensive writing workshop offering access to exceptional instructors, and bring together fellow writers who were as eager to help each other succeed as you are to helping them. That’s what it’s all about!

Cat received a good deal of flack over the location’s lack of accessibility, and that was my fault. To anyone who wanted to attend and couldn’t, I can only apologize and say we are committed to doing better with each upcoming workshop.

Spending last November with Cat Rambo, Ann Leckie, Sarah Pinsker, and Tobias Buckell, along with eleven excellent writers in their twenties, thirties, fifties, and up, from four different countries, gave my confidence a much-needed boost, and with that, my writing leaped forward. We’re kept the Ride or Die Writing Group together in 2024, and students are getting published!

Cat Rambo has an amazing array of friends in the SFF community. They’ve all experienced her kindness, generosity, and balanced sense of right and wrong.

We’re heading to New Mexico this November with Arley Sorg, Minister Faust, Donald Maass, C.C. Finlay, plus a slate of students eager to repeat the magic from last year.

I can’t believe this is my life. Maybe we’ll see you there one day!

Why Talk About Twitter Basics and Best Practices?

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.

1. 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”.
2. Give people a reason to follow you. Tell them who you are, but do it in an interesting way.
3. Give people a way to find out more. Include your website in your profile.
4. 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.
5. Don’t sell stuff via an overt link in your profile picture, background picture, or bio. It comes off as over-eager and clueless.
6. 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).

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.

Want to know more about how to use social media and your Internet presence to sell books and find new opportunities without wasting all your time staring at kitten pictures? Check out my book, Establishing an Online Presence for Writers.