Remember to include a picture with your blog posts, preferably an entertaining or otherwise memorable one. For one thing, posts can't be pinned on Pinterest unless there is an image.Those of us living a solitary writing life can sometimes get a little too addicted to Google Analytics. It’s a validation to us if people are reading our blog — and comments are like gold. I freely admit I poke at mine from time to time, trying to figure out what drives numbers up. So here’s five things I’ve noticed that do:
Repeat yourself a little. It’s okay to tweet about the same blog post more than once, but space it out so you know you’re reaching a different group. Not only do I repeat announcements of blog posts, I sometimes go back and remind people about old posts that were particularly noteworthy, like my Pink Hair Manifesto or Three Strategies for Snaring the Senses. Similarly on Sundays, lately I’ve been posting a recap of that week’s activity.
Post or tweet outside your time zone. Apps like Buffer or Hootsuite allow you to queue up posts in advance. I have mine set up to tweet several times during the night because I know that’s a different group accessing my Twitter stream than the ones showing up when I first get online in the morning.
Be responsive. Remember that social media’s a conversation, not a soapbox. “But Cat,” you’re saying, “what about the point just above, where you told me to use some canned tweets?” You don’t always have to respond immediately. But do at some point.
Think hard about titles. Some titles are attention grabbers. Intrigue your reader or tell them why they need to read your piece. For example, one of my most popular posts, which still gets a lot of hits, is Popping Pimples on Paragraphs.
Be consistent. I’ve started using the scheduling function on WordPress to make sure something goes up every day, and if I feel the urge to blog, well then, cool beans, it’s a two (maybe even three) post day, and that’s fine too. A consistent post schedule gives people a reason to visit your blog on a consistent basis.
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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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Patreon Post: Talking in the Night
This is a quick little flash piece because I’m still mired in moving, and also one that stays on the literary side of things, not wandering into the speculative. Nonetheless, I like it, and what it has to say about connection and communication in relationships.
Talking in the Night
It started like this: Mona turned over in the bed, trying to find the cool edge of sleep. She let out a little groan of frustration and her husband patted her shoulder, caught half-awake, half-asleep himself. She whimpered as though she’d awoken from nightmare and he pulled her close, buried her in his overflowing warmth.
After that sometimes she tested him with that little noise. Sometimes he was too asleep but sometimes he held her, reassuring as the shore holding a wave, feeling it leave and return, leave and return, regular as his breathing.
“You make noises in your sleep,” he said at breakfast. “Are you having nightmares?”
“Every once in a while,” she said. She studied him. How would he react if he thought she were suffering nightmares, that life was stressing her, eroding her, creeping into sleep to make it as uneasy as a coffee-less morning? “Often.”
He left before she did and when she went out through the frosty parking lot, she found he’d scraped the ice off her car for her.
Sometimes she woke and spoke words into the night, hoping he’d decipher them. “No” and “yes” and “please please please.” He slid his arms around her, stroked her back, but never replied. Sometimes later he slipped from bed and went to watch TV, sitting on the couch in his robe, lost and unknowable while the sports channel buzzed facts and figures while she lay in the other room wondering what he was thinking.
One night, she said, “Yes” and he repeated it, giving it a question’s inflection. She held her breath, didn’t answer and they both lay there, listening to each other pretend to dream.
He spoke first, the next night, and said, “Please.” It was her turn to repeat it, pitch it upward, trying to elicit the next word. This time it was his turn not to answer.
It could have laid quiet after that forever. She could have abandoned the night speech, he could have chosen in turn not to pick it up. Their horizons could have been sleepless and silent.
But the next night he spoke and told her about the time his father had taken him fishing and the hook had ripped into his thumb and his father had said men don’t cry. The story went out into the blackness and coiled near the ceiling, peering down at them as though they were dolls in a bed, plastic and supine.
She answered.
She answered with a story half-remembered of cigar ash and a grandfather and they went on telling memories they’d never spoken before to anyone, the things that they would have dreamed if they were sleeping.
And so they didn’t sleep. And so they talked till dawn and the day that was theirs as it had never been before.
In recent news, Rappacini’s Crow as well as All the Pretty Little Mermaids both made Ellen Datlow’s longlist for the year’s best horror and my collaboration with Mike Resnick, The Mermaid Club, will be appearing in Conspiracy. Other upcoming work includes appearances in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Abyss & Apex, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
I finished Rin Chupeco’s The Bone Witch and The Heart Forger and really liked them both. The third volume in the trilogy, The Shadowglass, is queued up on my e-reader right now. An elegant, enjoyable series.
The screen play of Jordan Peel’s Get Out features an essay by Tananarive Due as well as plenty of deleted material and Peele talking about the script. Really lots of stuff that interested me and I’m really glad I picked it up. I will be going watch to watch the movie again.
Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963) is a terrific anthology with a lot of stories I hadn’t hit before. part of my self-directed reading this year (as with last year) is finding stuff written by women at the times when conventional wisdom says there weren’t a lot of women writing. Part of the fun of conducting the short story discussion group that’s part of the Chez Rambo community calendar is sharing and exploring some favorites. next up on our agenda, for example, is Kit Reed’s “The Food Farm.” Authors represented are Pauline Ashwell, Rosel George Brown, Doris Pitkin Buck, Otis Kidwell Burger, Sonya Hess Dorman, Joy Leache, Katherine MacLean, Judith Merril, Kit Reed, Jane Rice, Maria Russell, Sydney cvan Scyoc, Anne Walker
Alex Burcher’s alternative history As Ants to the Gods is dense but evocative prose that conveys the flavor of its world, where the Arab civilization has taken over Europe and is in the middle of its Industrial Revolution. The paperback comes out on the 10th and if the production values are as high as the e-book would imply, it will be a pretty book.
I hadn’t learned about the joy that is Rat Queens yet; currently on the 3rd book with the 4th on its way.
Since I love reading gaming supplements and systems, I was pleased to get the fulfillment for a Kickstarter I’d supported, the Monsters! Monsters! RPG Rules by Ken St. Andre along with a solitaire adventure, “Toughest Dungeon in the World.” Another system I picked up recently for reading is Tales from the Loop; I wasn’t entranced by the TV episode I watched, but I may be playing in a brief campaign of this so I wanted to check it out.
I’ve been watching season 2 of The Umbrella Academy (lots of fun but season 1 was better, IMO), Stargirl (so cheesy! so snappy and fun!), and Z Nation (halfway through season 3 and really enjoying it despite the fact I dislike zombies).
