Bloggers Who Belong to RMFW

You'll find regular articles at this site from our contributors about the pros and cons of blogging, when a writer should start her blog, and how to build a following. But what do writers blog about? How to write? How to query agents? Living with vampires? Living with elders? You'll find a wide range of topics if you check out the blogs I've listed below.

We'd like to expand the RMFW blogroll for Chiseled in Rock. Here's a sampling of the writer/bloggers who belong to Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers.

Vampire experts Mario Acevedo and Jeanne Stein at The Biting Edge

Kenn Amdahl at The Wordguise Alembic

Author Mike Befeler (geezer mysteries)

Peg Brantley at Suspense Novelist

Beth Groundwater (mysteries)

Lynda Hilburn at Paranormality (vampires)

N. R. Williams, Fantasy Author

Terry Wright's Blog (Zombies and Other Dead Things)

Check the left sidebar for many more. If you're a member of RMFW and your blog is not listed here, let me know by leaving your link in a comment.

Pat Stoltey
Revised version of December 14, 2010 post "Authors Blog and Bloggers Write"

Blogged to the Bone

by Janet Fogg

(Set to the tune “Bad to the Bone” by George Thorogood)

On the day that I should blog
The writers all gathered 'round
And they waited in wide wonder
As no posting was found
The editor spoke up
Said "leave this one alone"
He could tell, yes right away
That I was blogged to the bone

Blogged to the bone
Blogged to the bone
B-B-B-B- Blogged
B-B-B-B- Blogged
B-B-B-B- Blogged

Blogged to the bone

Wrote a hundred blogs
Before I wrote this
Write a number more, baby
Before I am through
I wanna be read pretty baby
By you and everyone
I'm here to tell ya reader
That I’m blogged to the bone

Blogged to the bone
B-B-B- Blogged
B-B-B- Blogged
B-B-B- Blogged
Blogged to the bone

I’ll make a rich reader beg
And I’ll make a good agent cry
I'll make an old poet blush
And I’ll make a new writer sigh
I wanna be read so badly
By you and everyone
I'm here to tell ya reader
That I'm blogged to the bone

B-B-B-B- Blogged
B-B-B-B- Blogged
B-B-B-B- Blogged
Blogged to the bone

And when I face my screen
Chapters must abide
As everyone I meet
I wanna satisfy
I wanna tell all you critics
Well ya see I write my own
I'm here to tell ya reader
That I'm blogged to the bone

Blogged to the bone
B-B-B-B- Blogged
B-B-B- Blogged
B-B-B- Blogged
Blogged to the bone

They’ve Seen The Light! 3 Successful Fiction Bloggers

From the wandering mind of Tamela Buhrke

For the past several weeks I’ve been pretty brutal about the dark side of of author blogging -- where blogs go wrong and how bloggers go wrong. Maybe it’s the spirit of Christmas making me a bit jolly this week, but I’ve decided that today we will look at three fiction bloggers that have gotten it right and found success.

Hometown Pie in the Kitchen Goodness

I have lived in large cities like Chicago, Houston, Phoenix and now Denver. I love city living, but I will admit that a part of me longs for a small town. I dream of a place where Aunt Bea has pie cooling in the kitchen and Floyd the Barber is sitting outside his store swapping stories. It’s a place where life is slower and we can feel safe and sheltered. Americana at it’s finest.

If any author has captured that place, both in her fiction novels and on her blog, it is Gail Fraser. Her novels are set in a fictional small town called Lumby, nestled in the foothills of the Rockies. Visiting her blog is like entering that world. The blog has maps and drawings of the town and surrounding hills. You can find regular updates about Lumby’s weather, local gossip and local animal antics. There is even a cartoon moose that lumbers its way across the page.

Her blog has become so popular, that not only has it helped her to reach her niche market of Americana lovers, but it is creating something of a tourist attraction at her real farm in upstate New York. There she sells t-shirts, mugs and other swag to support her writing.

Thinking Outside the Binding

What do Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Alexandre Dumas have in common? They all wrote their most famous novels as serials. This art form is finding a revival in the age of blogs and smart phones. It provides people who don’t have the time to sit down with a novel the experience of enjoying a story each day on their smart phone while riding the bus or at their office computer while nibbling on their lunch.

Today you can find one of the most successful serial bloggers right here in Denver -- our own Claudia Hall Christian. She is the author of the Denver Cereal and the Alex the Fey serials. They have become a world-wide success, with readers as far as Bangladesh. The serials are offered for free on her blogs. At the end of each story line, the serial is put together into a book. Some are given away and some sold. Her blog is supported by some advertising and the sale of the books or ebooks. Christian has formed her own publishing company, giving her complete control over the process. Her stories have become so successful that she has recently had requests for a serial with a national news outlet.

Serial blogging is a great way to build your writing skills and gain exposure. However, it is not for the faint of heart. Christian is proud that she has never missed her weekly deadline in three years of blogging. She warns that, unlike writing a novel, there is no going back to correct earlier mistakes or change facts. You must be able to write consistently and keep the story progressing forward, while keeping the reader engaged each week.

Special Populations

As you probably read in my post last week, I believe that blogging should benefit your reader. With that in mind, this last author came to me as a recommendation from the queen of author platforming (yes, I turned it into a verb) Christina Katz. She featured Laurel Snyder (and other fiction authors) in her article The Successful Fiction Platform, written for the December Writer’s Digest.

It’s easy to see why Katz featured her. Snyder writes children’s books and her blog is a treasure trove of information for parents. It offers reviews of children’s books, provides lists of recommended reading and offers her personal experiences of being a working parent.

It is important to note that though her books are for children, her blog is mostly for the parents. She also has a section on her site for teachers and kids. It offers ideas for book clubs, classroom interaction programs such as “Inside the Creepy Classroom” and even poetry workshops. Her blog helps her to reach out to her complete audience, not just the readers, but the teachers and parents. She shows them how her books and her blog adds value to their lives and their children’s lives.

As you can see, there are a number of ways fiction blogging can be successful. The key is getting the right match up of what you offer, what the reader wants and how you present it to them. These authors have found a successful mix for their market. Next week we’ll talk about how to determine what is right for yours.

Stay tuned for next week's post: The Number One Rule of Blogging!

Create A Blogging Crew

Part 3 of Creating Your Marketing Machine by Tamela Buhrke

In my last post, we looked at how to build a list of candidates for your marketing machine. This list will become your team for promotion and marketing. However, each of the members of the team will have different strengths and weaknesses. The trick is to match your marketing machine members to the marketing strategy that they do best. That makes them more likely to promote you regularly and eagerly.

Today, we will go through the list to find those whose strength is blogging. Begin by sorting them into five blogging areas:

1. Commenting
2. Blog Roll or Badges
3. Guest Blogging
4. Group Blogging
5. Blog post referrals

Any person on your list can be categorized into multiple areas. Just be careful not to stretch them too thin. If you have them doing all five, they will quickly get burned out.

So let’s take a look at each of the these arenas and how you and your marketing machine members can help each other build your readership.

Commenting

Commenting is an important part of building momentum on your blog. It can also help you in search engine rankings if you post a link back to your own blog when making comments on other blogs.

Choose three or four members from your list who are already good at commenting on other people’s blogs. If commenting is a regular part of their routine, then adding your blog will be easy. Send them a message that you’d like to be comment partners. You’ll regularly comment on their blog, if they promise to do the same for you. If they agree, I recommend that you come up with a plan that works for both of you. Ex. Only commenting occasionally or more structured, such as five times per month. The important thing is that you both agree to the terms.

Blog Roll or Badges

Having links to your site from another blog can quickly build your readership. The key is finding people on your list who already have badges, blog rolls or favorite lists on their blog. This indicates that they are willing to exchange blog links. Contact them through their blog to propose a link exchange. Some bloggers only exchange links with those who have reached a certain number of blog followers. Don’t get discouraged. Find out what those numbers are and ask them if you can contact them again when you reach that level. Most will say yes. Then just go on to the next person on your list.

Guest Blogging

Doing guest posts puts your writing in front of new sets of eyeballs. Reading the blogs of the people on your marketing machine list to get a feel for their style and substance. Now do a bit of brainstorming. Are their any contributions you can make to their blogs? Have any ideas for a series or an interview or critique that might interest them? Maybe it is the other way around, and they have something that could benefit your site.

Start with a few guest blog posts, either them on your site or you on theirs. If it works out, see whether that is something you can do regularly. Be sure to work out terms on announcing guest posts and providing bio information.

Group Blogging

The benefit of a group blog is that you have multiple people announcing their posts to different crowds of people. You may only post a couple of times a month but the blog is constantly being updated by all its members. That gives the blog a lot more traffic and vitality. It can also lower burnout and offers camaraderie.

It is important to find people who fit together for blogging under a common theme or banner. Be aware that this is a method that requires a lot more commitment. You will need to put together a brand-new blog, then agree on a name, a theme, a blogging commitment and more. It is really important that you take the time to create the ground rules, theme and tone so that your group blog will have a coherent feel.

Blog Post Referrals

With each of the above, you will getting and giving referrals on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks. However, there may be people on your list who are not as good at guest blogging or commenting, but who are great at referring people to a good blog post. See whether they would like to team up to swap referrals for blog posts. Again, the key is to define the type, frequency and timing of the referrals so that everyone is on the same page.

This sharing of referrals is a perfect way to get you started Forming Social Media Allies—which, strangely enough, is the next post in our series.

See you next week!

The 3 Rules of Blogging: Readers, Readers, Readers

As the final post in my series about blogs, we will look at the most essential part of blogging - readers. Your readers are the reason you blog. The three most important rules of blogging revolve around how well you know your readers, how well you cater to them and how you capture them.

Rule #1 Readers - Know Them So You Can Find Them

Who is your reader? I like to tell my coaching clients to pretend that their reader is a character in a novel. This character likes your writing. They have specific reasons for liking it. What are those reasons? Do they like your sassy style? Do they need a laugh for the day? Build a strong image of your reader in your mind the way you would a character. The more you know about them the better you will be at finding them and giving them what they want on your blog.

Once you have a strong idea of who your reader is, then you can put yourself in front of them at the venues they frequent. Think about what other blogs they'd like to read or what social media they are using. This helps you to focus your marketing -- saving you time.

Rule #2 Readers - Cater To Your Reader

I talked about this in a previous post, but I can never say it too much. Cater to your reader! Take the time to know who they are and what they want, then make your blog the most inviting place for them. This is where content is king. Though here’s the tricky part: you can write the most wonderful post with perfect grammar and intelligent prose, but if it’s not what your reader wants from you then you might as well have not written it. Readers are fickle folk. Many are short on time and they come to your blog with a “what have you done for me lately” mentality. So make sure that you are thinking of them when you write.

Provide the content they want, also provide the experience they want. Help them out with useful links or tips. Find out what they want. How? Ask them. There is no harm is writing a post that asks your readers what they’d like to see on your blog.

Rule #3 Readers - Capture Them

Once you have them coming to your site, you’ll want to create ways of capturing them... or at least their contact information. Put together a sign up area and something special that can be sent to them regularly. Hey now, wait a minute, I can hear you groaning out there. Many writers I meet don’t want to send out weekly newsletters or be perceived as a spammer. Frankly, I would never ask you to do that. Still, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for you to gather the information of your readers. Imagine the boost in sales your next book will get if you can send an announcement of its launch to a large list of people who love your writing.

So here are a few ways to capture contact information without feeling like a spammer.

1. Offer to send your blog posts to their inbox. People who love your writing will love to have it sent to them when it is posted. Best of all, some contact management companies offer this automatically. They send your feed to your list. Check out contact management companies such as aWeber and Constant Contact.
2. Do a monthly newsletter with links to specific posts from your blog and add in contests where your readers can win books from similar writers. They’ll appreciate the chance to win and your fellow writers will appreciate the nod (hint: let your fellow writers know you are doing this and maybe they’ll return the favor)
3. Come up with a short but consistent item you can send. For example, a sign up for the quote of the day, word of the week or story of the month. My books deal with the paranormal so I’m starting a weekly horrorscope (spelling intentional) delivered to their inbox.
4. If you don't want to send out anything consistently, then have an occasional contest with a prize. Readers must sign up with name and email to be entered into the drawing.

Always remember that your blog has a purpose, to attract and keep your readers so that you can sell more books.

This is my last post in the series on blogging. Stay tuned each Wednesday in January as I look at social media -- the good, the bad and the ugly.

What Sucks? The Blog or The Blogger?

How successful are you at blogging? Feeling good about it? Sort of? Not so much?

If you feel ambivalent, you are not alone. Blogging has become the necessary evil. It is often viewed as a burden foisted on innocent writers by that dark force of the publishing industry -- the marketing department.

Blogging seems unavoidable. It is the axis upon which all other marketing strategies revolve. Got a radio interview? Make sure you tell those listeners your blog address. That newspaper article needs a link too. Literature for conferences must contain your domain. The list goes on.

That pressure to provide a link causes many writers to scramble haphazardly into building their blog presence. Often they do so without training or guidance. Soon their unfocused blog posts run the gamut of topics, seemingly based on the principle that posting anything is better than nothing. Blog! The readers will come. When no readers arrive, they have no idea why. Even worse, the visitors they do get leave without buying a book or even commenting on a post. What went wrong?

Where is the blog-love we’ve heard so much about? Where are the fans? The comments? The book sales?

Why didn't anyone mention all the work that’s involved? The extra writing takes you away from your manuscript. The blog promotion is overwhelming. Social Media. Keeping up with comments and email. Checking links. Organizing the site. Archiving. Tags. Meta tags. SEO. Lists of internet acronyms that you don’t even want to understand.

Is any of this really selling books?

All of it begs the question -- is the problem the tool, or the skill of the ones who wield it? Is the era of the blog over, the market saturated? Or maybe it’s that people are tired of authors who’s blogs offer nothing more creative than a running commentary on what they had for breakfast (Don’t laugh, I’ve read it).

Frustrated yet?

If so, join us each Wednesday of this month while I explore the pitfalls and successes of the blogging imperative. I’ll give you the unfiltered truth about why the blog platform really does suck and what you can do about it. Then I’ll reverse course, turning the spotlight on the blogger. You’ll see where nearly every writer (myself included) has gone wrong in their blogging. Then we'll both learn from those mistakes and master the number one rule of blogging -- readers, readers, readers.

So get ready for a journey into the foggy world of blogs. Let’s see if we can clear the air.

Dec 8th: Why Blogs Are Bad to the Bone.

Dec 15th: Bloggers Gone Wild

Dec 22nd: Blogs That Have Seen The Light

Dec 29th: The Number One Rule of Blogging

Posted by Tamela Buhrke

Adventures in Online Book Promotion

As I explore the Internet, looking for unique ways to promote books online, I’m seeing more and more new ideas. I’m one who often thinks, “I wish I had thought of that,” followed by, “But wow, that looks like a lot of work.” These events take time, and most have an unproven impact on book sales. Still, ignoring the Internet as a marketing tool is not an option.

The first wave of online marketing for authors came with e-mail lists and groups, blogs, and social media sites devoted to readers and writers. Soon to follow were professional and personal networking sites. Then came blog book tours.

RMFW member Beth Groundwater’s May 2009 virtual tour for To Hell in a Handbasket was one of the first I followed. With one advance teaser followed by twenty-three stops over a month’s time, Beth had to write all those posts and respond to interviews, then follow each of the host blogs for days to reply to comments.

Many authors are using blog book tours these days, but there are more promotional opportunities popping up. As we tackle any new project, we need to remember this: To tap into your creativity, think outside the box. Look what these hardworking authors did:

Carolyn Poling Schriber. Her book launch party for Beyond All Price lasted three days with guest authors’ articles displayed on the party home page according to a set schedule. There were even virtual refreshments, recipes included.

Alex J. Cavanaugh. He created an audience of 400+ followers for his own excellent blog by diligently leaving comments as he traveled the Internet making friends. When it was time for his sci fi novel, CassaStaR to release in October 2010, he had plenty of helpers willing to post his trailer on the official book release date.

London author Talli Roland. The Hating Game, Talli’s debut novel, is scheduled for e-book release (ahead of the hardcover edition) on December 1st. More than 225 bloggers have signed up for the Web Splash! scheduled for that date. The goal is to get that all-important buzz going around the world.

Blogging and building an audience of followers is the base for most of these activities. When you add the contacts on Facebook and Twitter to the mix, it’s easy to see how these events help spread the author’s name and book title.

If you’ve had an interesting and productive experience with online marketing, please tell us more. Come on, leave a comment. You know you want to.

Pat