Marilyn's Musings

First off, I enjoy blogging and reading other people's thoughts and what they are up to. Today I was thinking about Thonie Hevron's blog on mentors. Of course I added my two cents to that one, but what I didn't write about is my own mentor. When I moved to Springville I searched for a writing group and found one mentioned in the local newspaper. I attended it, but it was large and the chances to read were few and far between. The group dwindled after a while and the one who stayed, Willma Gore, a multi-published author, ended up leading it for a long time. She helped me so much with all kinds of things such as grammar, point-of-view, etc. Shirley Hickman, who started the group in the first place returned, and we had a wonderful and much smaller group to read to and critique our work. Willma, now in her 90's)  moved to another state where she continues to teach and mentor others. I'm still in the group with Shirley who hosts us at her home. I consider the c...

Question? "What is the publisher going to do for my book?" Answer: Publish it and all that entails. Formatting, Cover, ISBN number, Getting it on All the Internet Book Sites, Have it On Their Website, Perhaps some Promotion Question? What do I need to do to promote my book? #1 You need to let people know you have a book. How do you do that? Through everything that is available to you. A personal website. Easy to do today--it can be set up on your blog. I choose to have a separate website. http://fictionforyou.com/   The first chapters of all my books are on my website. It is not enough to just have the website, you have to keep it up-to-date. It should have information about you and your books. A blog. This is my blog, of course. It's important that content change on your blog often. Once a week at the least. The more followers on your blog the better. Make comments on other people's blogs. Follow blogs you like. Be a regular guest ...

having pen pals. Years ago, while I was in grammar school and junior high, I had 80 pen pals. Most of them were from the United States, but I had some from England and Ireland, one from Turkey and one from Africa. I got the names and addresses from kids' magazines like Jack and Jill and Calling All Girls. To keep track of who was who, I had a recipe box with 3 X 5 cards with each girl's name, address and other information like siblings, pets and hobbies. If I had a picture of the person, that went in the box too. I got lots and lots of mail and it was back when the postman came to the house twice a day. I loved writing letters to these girls and finding out about them and where they lives and of course I told them all about me, what I was doing, books I read, and movies I saw. No doubt I made up stuff too, because I did a lot of that back then. Though that is a more modern picture, it does closely represent what I might have been doing. We had no neighborhood parks, ...

Since I blog nearly everyday, I have to say I enjoy blogging. I love having people visit my site and read what I've written. I love it when they leave a comment. There are some who do so regularly and I recognize their names and I feel like I know them. I'm a little surprised when a guest doesn't come and visit at least once when her or she is being featured on my blog. When I go visiting someone, I love to acknowledge those who bother to comment and answer any questions asked. Yes, I use my blog to promote my own books at times, I like to give writing advice because I know there are many out there hoping to have a book published some day, and sometimes I just write about what is going on with me and/or my family. Anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time knows that I have a big family and I like to write about them. I would never use this blog to reveal family secrets or when someone isn't getting along with someone else, and yes, we are a normal f...

I've tried to write a new blog every day--not sure I'm going to be able to do that in the next few weeks. I've already got a hectic schedule and it's going to get more-so since I've just received the go-ahead on a major ghost writing project. Because ghost writing pays much better than my own writing, I'm always happy to do one. The only problem is that they always seem to be offered to me when I'm at my busiest. I'm still promoting both No Sanctuary and Kindred Spirits which means lots of social networking which takes a lot of time, to say nothing of thinking up something to say that just might lead to someone being interested in purchasing one of my books. I still have a couple of conferences to attend and some speaking engagements. Love to do them all, but squeezing on my writing isn't going to be easy. So much for retirement. I don't think I'll ever experience that as long as I'm able to sit in front of my computer. Marilyn a.k.a. F...

I read a lot of blogs and post on several regularly–including this one, which is my own. Sometimes it’s hard to come out with something interesting to say. Since today is election day, I could talk about the election, but I made up my mind and voted absentee ballot a long time ago. No matter who wins, things are not going to be mixed right away after the new president takes office. I wasn’t thrilled with either of the candidates. Unfortunately, the old saying, “politics corrupts” is all too true. In order to even run for office, a candidate has to make concessions, often concession that even he doesn’t believe in. But no matter, that’s not my point here, I’m supposed to be talking about blogs. I try to put something on Twitter.com every day. I have no idea whether that’s helpful or not, but I have a lot of followers though I don’t know if that means they read my posts or not. I glance through the posts of people I’m following and most of what they have to say isn’t very interesting–I h...