Category Archives: Get Published

Social Media and You – Ask Alice Saturday

Get Published, Kindle Bargain, Promo Tip, ,

Question: What’s the most important thing to know about Social Media?Social Media image

Answer: The most important thing about Social Media and You is this. Your Presence there. Your Presence is how you Present yourself. The nature of that Presence should be a conscious – even a calculated choice.

Ask yourself this crucial question. How is it in my best interests to be seen? That means you must first ask yourself another question. Why am I on social media? What do I NEED to get out of being there? That was two questions. I know. So sue me.

Case in point. My last snarky comment – “So sue me” – might be out of sync with the way I want/need to be seen – the Presence I intend to Present. I’m on the internet mostly as a book author. I want to attract people to me. In turn I hope they’ll be attracted to my books.

I want/need to be likable/approachable/pleasant. Somebody you’d enjoy a chat with. Snark may not accomplish those ends. Snark could turn some people off and I must think about that. The point is that I must be what we now call Intentional about such choices.

You should be Intentional too. You might ask “Why bother?” And I would answer “Because of visibility.”

Social media isn’t a peephole only accessible to your chosen friends and followers. Social media is an unbelievably wide picture window. All it takes is Google and your name for anybody and everybody to look through that window at you.

They may be casual browsers or prospective employers or potential consumers of your work. What they see through the world wide web window is the Presence you Present. So you must think very seriously about what you want and need that Presence to be.

If you want/need to be seen as a political firebrand – or any brand of firebrand – rant away. If you want/need to be seen as a sex pot – vamp away. I’ve got no dog in your fight. I’m just advising you to make a savvy and considered choice regarding what breed your dog will be.

Social media as I see it isn’t a come-as-you-are party. It’s a come-as-best-suits-your-agenda party. Is that manipulative? You can bet your pugilistic pooch it is. Oops! Was that me being snarky again? Must be that’s an aspect of the Presence I intend to Present.

RR

 My next story is A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – Mark & Hailey’s Story. Launching with summer on June 22nd at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is my 13th novel and it is full to the brim with the Presence I intend to Present.  Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

In Praise of Fierce Women – Orr What? Wednesday

Get Published, Kindle Bargain, Writers Life, ,

There’s no force as fierce as a woman with a purpose she’s determined to fulfill. This was true as ever last weekend at Liberty State Fiction Writers’ Conference in New Jersey. So much impressed me there but I was most impressed by the fierce women who made the event speak to me in ways I needed to hear.

The first of these women was Rayna Vause the Conference Organizer – fierce with service from my initial sighting of her in the morning until my last after the final workshop was done. Rayna tends to be mild mannered but ferocity is mostly about dedication to a goal rather than personality. Rayna’s goal was to help the rest of us.

She was answering someone’s question when I first spotted her and doing the same when I saw her again at late afternoon. In between – the day Rayna had orchestrated spun around us all. She was fiercely determined that we would have an amazing experience and we did.

After lunch I moderated a workshop titled “Raiders of the Lost Arcs” with Kathryn Craft – a woman who is fierce with knowledge. Her complex subject was story structure and lunch had run long. Kathryn had to capsulize a lot of information into an impossibly short time and she did.

I took so many notes my wrist hurt. I also had an epiphany about my own writing process and how emotional arcs keep a story moving. Or slog to down if not artfully portrayed. Kathryn was determined to enlighten us and we were enlightened.

It was dinnertime when Liz O’Connor – who writes as L.G. O’Connor – joined us at a corner table in the hotel restaurant. Liz and I had been alphabetically slotted next to each other at the book fair earlier. Her energy and enthusiasm were evident from the start and continued through our dinner conversation where I discovered that Liz is fierce with encouragement.

The two other authors with us are at the beginning of their careers. Liz couldn’t have been more generous with her long experience and fund of facts about both traditional and independent publishing. Liz was determined that these new writers would be armed with information for the battle they must wage to become published and they were.

On the train back to New York City I was tired but filled with my own ferocity. Fierce with gratitude for the women with fire in their spirits that sets the rest of us aflame.

RR

My latest story is A WRONG WAY HOME – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #1 – Matt & Kara’s Story. Available at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is my 12th novel and the heroine is definitely a fierce woman.

 Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

 

Tribe and True – It’s True on Orr What? Wednesday

Get Published, Kindle Bargain, Writers Life, ,

Writing is a solitary gig. We sit in a room and manipulate words. Which requires focus. Which requires solitude. Other things in life require solitude too. That’s okay – except when it isn’t.

For example solitude isn’t okay at worry time. We hunker down in the dark closet of our negative brain place. We spin our worries into more and more complicated tapestries. We let those tapestries become us. We eat them like the nutcase in The Red Dragon. Remember him?

The same goes for doubting. We really know how to spin our doubts big and bigger until they suck up all the air in that narrow closet. Our doubts all begin pretty much the same. With a sentence that goes “I’m not good enough to….” You fill in the blank with your own doubts.

I know this doubt and worry closet well because I’ve spent way too much time there. Hunched in the corner with the closet bar over my head and every hanger draped in fear. I’ve spent too much time there and not one nanosecond of that time did any good Group Hug - Pooh styleat all for me or my career or anything.

Solitude also doesn’t work in our favor at question time. Google doesn’t have the answer to everything though it does a damned good job at that. But Google doesn’t have a human voice. Google can’t reach out to us from its heart or give us a reassuring smile. At least not yet.

For that we need our peeps. Unfortunately for those of us who write – a lot of the time our personal life peeps can’t help us. Because your significant other or your sister or even your regular friends most often do not know the correct answer to the following crucial question.

“When you’re staring into space, can you possibly be working?”

Civilians – meaning anybody not engaged on the battlefield of the writing/publishing wars – can’t be expected to understand that blank stares and frozen faces and arrested motion in general on the part of a writer can mean an idea is either on its way or in search of its perfect wording.

We need our tribe. In our tribe we find quirky-obsessive minds like our own. In our tribe we find inspiration and encouragement. In our tribe we find each other. We hold each other up when worry and doubt and questioning press down on us. And we are beautiful together.

I am reminding myself of all of this as I renew my own commitment to several of my tribal families. My home RWA Chapter at www.rwanyc.com. Liberty State Fiction Writers which I joined a couple of months ago at www.libertystatesfictionwriters.com. New Jersey Romance Writers which I just rejoined at http://www.njromancewriters.org/. And my local chapter of MWA where I intend to become active again after many years at http://www.mwany.org.

So I’ve been mostly absent for a while but now I’m back. Maybe I’m back to life in a way in general. How about you?

Find my books HERE.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com