Moving Along

Remember last week?

1. 1pp for ROSB
2. Outline for SSG4 (title TK) (TODAY)
3. Finish unicorn book
4. Finish judging RITAs
5. Finish judging Golden Heart entries
6. Read and return CP’s work (simply devouring it!)

Still super busy!

Elsewhere:

Justine and Scalzi make the point I’ve argued often: blogging for the purpose of marketing is a zero sum game. Of course, the folks at Harper Children’s and Simon & Schuster disagree, according to this Publisher’s Weekly article. I don’t know what Melissa Marr’s online history is, though, but Cassandra Clare had an enormous online fan base before her books came out, so I would guess she falls into the Scalzi camp.

I blogged for two years before my books came out, but no one (no one) read my blog before I sold my first book, a year after I started blogging. Since then, it has mostly been writers, and when I bother to check my stats and see how people come to my blog it’s almost always from one of the following searches (in order of popularity): 1) my name (spelled right or wrong), 2) “kill your darlings” 3) “four act structure” 4) people writing book reports on Scott Westerfeld books who want to know something about plot, character, character archetypes, and the name of a Scott Westerfeld book, 5) the name of my books, and 6) The Ivy Gate Blog post about my books. So, one can presume that a large number of those people are writers who may or may not be reading my books (I read many a blog by writers whose books I do not read), and the rest are high school students who like Scott (or don’t like Scott, which is why they are googling instead of reading the books themselves). The Ivy Gate thing apparently has legs, though. Hi, Ivy Gate readers!

But the real point to make is: Dude, don’t blog if you aren’t having fun. If you’re blogging for hits, or comments, or little bumps to your Amazon rankings, you’re going to get stressed out. It’s like the people who join social networking groups then spam everyone they know in order to get more “friends.” Obviously, this is different if blogging is your job. But it’s not my job. It’s something I do for fun. the original name of this blog was “Diana’s Diversions” — which meant stuff I did for fun. Sometimes I find it fun to talk about writing, sometimes I find it fun to talk about my books, sometimes I find it fun to post pictures of the party I went to on New Year’s Eve. There’s no theme.

Now, speaking of fun, I just found out that Vicki Lane is doing a giveaway on HER blog of my newest book, Rites of Spring (Break). The book isn’t out until June, and I don’t even have the ARCs yet, so as far as I know, this is the first giveaway of my book known to man. But I’m sure you don’t want to wait until June for her prize (though I’ve been making her wait for like a month for the prize she won off my blog of those Scythian CDs, and there’s a very good reason for that: I went to Europe and when I came home I forgot where I put them. But I shall find them this week, as soon as I’m done with the synopsis). Anyway, what was I saying? Right, Vicki. I’m sure the winner of her contest does not want to wait until June, so I’m going to give Vicki a copy of the ARC when it comes and she can make that the prize instead. (And, Vicki, maybe I’ll send it to you with that CD I’ve been promising, huh?)

So head on over to Vicki’s and enter. The best part of this giveaway is that y’all have no idea what the book is about yet (other than the Spring Break bit). Still can’t post the cover copy (bummer) but I can tell you this:

1. There’s adventure.
2. And romance.
3. And head wounds.
4. And a game of backgammon.