Documents of Tabat: Fashions of Tabat

I had to go hunt for my proof copy of the book in order to be able to look up the art this time. Tod snagged all my extras in preparation for the reading this Friday, at the University Bookstore in Seattle, at 7 pm. I’ll be reading with three terrific writers: Alma Alexander, Corry L. Lee, and Roz Kaveny.

So! Here’s day three of the giveaway. Comment to win!

(left to right)

Image #1 goes with the story “Therapy Buddha,” which is about how much we project things onto objects and coincidences. It’s near future, another one of the eyed creatures, this one peering down, a little inquisitively, a little confusedly. It looks like part of an organic machine, like so many of Mark’s images.

Image #2 accompanies the story, “Close Your Eyes,” which originally appeared in Apex Digest. This is the one I have as a tattoo, from back before I moved to Seattle, given to me one night in a Durham tattoo parlor. I like it for its ability to be wing and eye and fish, all in one. Vicki used it with the Table of Contents as well.

Image #3 looks like a rocket ship and a Greek amphora at the same time, perhaps bubbling over with some sort of pine and summer scented wine. I selected it to go with “Peaches of Immortality” because it seemed to me it looked a little like the machine at the end of the story.

Image #4 is a detail of the larger image that goes with “The Mermaids Singing, Each to Each.” I’m glad Mark pulled it out like this for the jewelry, since it makes a lovely little piece. His work often has a tribal feel to it, and this looks like an orca to me.

Image #5 goes with “Legends of the Gone”. Sometimes Mark repeats images and this is a variant of one that I always see as a large flightless bird, standing looking at the viewer. (You may not see it. That’s okay.)

Are you a writer on Twitter because you’ve been told you need to be on there? Are you trying to establish “a social media presence” while not quite sure what that involves? Relax and don’t worry. Twitter can be easy and often a lot of fun as well as useful, as long as you take the time to learn some of the basics for Twitter use.

One useful tool for making the most of Twitter is the list feature, where you can sort a subset of your followers into their own group. If you’ve never used it, you may want to start by reading through Twitter’s own basic tutorial on lists.

Twitter lists are a great feature that are worth making the most of. I’ve got a few set up for industry professionals, close friends on Twitter, members of various writing groups and organizations, former students, and people in a variety of fields. But there’s one that is more important than any of the others.

Building Your Followers

A pack of followers made up of people who followed you back because you followed them is not a particularly useful list. You want followers who retweet your content, help spread your message, and who provide interesting and useful content that you may want to share in turn. For this reason, it’s worth putting a few minutes each day into maintaining it. I use two tools to help me do this: Buffer and Justunfollow.

Buffer allows me to schedule tweets (which I also like because I can post stuff when not around and find new followers that way). When I initially post a link to a blogpost, for example, I can go ahead and set up a couple of additional mentions further on down the line. More importantly, I use Buffer when doing my daily follower check, looking to see who’s following me that I want to follow back. I look at each new follower’s tweets and usually favorite a couple or find tweets that I want to retweet, sticking them in my Buffer queue. (I should note that I am not using the free version of Buffer but the next version up, which lets me schedule roughly ten days of tweets in advance.

Who I Don’t Follow Back

I don’t follow everyone back automatically. Here’s the list that’s evolved over time of profiles I don’t bother following back:

• Sell, sell, sell. Is your stream full of nothing but links to your book on Amazon? Then I’m probably not worrying about.
• Nonexistent. No photo, no background info, no tweets? I’m not going to bother.
• Promising me social media success. I’m not buying Twitter followers, nor am I paying for expensive seminars that tell me things that are common sense.
• Hate speech. That should, I think, go without saying.

Disagree with me politically? That’s fine. I enjoy conversation. Post nothing but silly puns or kitten pictures? I’m fine with that. I’m even good with total nonsense. This sorting stage is where I build a lot of my lists, though not that crucial one I want to talk about. That one comes later.

The Interactives List

Lists are a terrifically useful feature of Twitter, allowing you to create subgroupsand view tweetstreams made up of only tweets from people on that list. Many of my lists are devoted to either a specific group like former students or players of a MUD I used to work with or an industry niche, like book reviewers or editors. And then there’s the most important list of all.

This list is top of my heap and it’s titled Interactives, for people that interact, who RT and reply and generally signal boost. I try to periodically thank people for RTing, which means running through who’s done it recently, and I add people to it at that point. The people on that list have demonstrated that they enjoy my content and want to spread my message. That’s a very good reason for working at building a relationship with them.

When I’m just poking at Twitter, looking to see what interesting conversations are happening or what content is noteworthy or a good candidate for retweeting, I go to that list first. If I’m filling up my Buffer stream with some interesting content, I can find it there, and continue to build the relationship while also giving my followers interesting and/or entertaining content.

If you’re worried about it getting too cluttered, run the tool I mentioned, Justunfollow, periodically to weed out people not following you back and inactives. That should do the trick for all but the most popular of Tweeters.