Blogging Fun

Life in the days before blogs!

I enjoy blogging. As someone else said this week, it's like a conversation and I get to talk about things that I find interesting or amusing. I don't do it to directly sell books, except of course for the straight promo posts that one does around a new release. As a reader before I was ever a published author, I enjoy getting glimpses of my favorite authors, or writing tips from their blog posts...I'm omnivorous as a reader and I like to think one of my own skills is curating content, so I'm never at a loss for topics. Well, rarely at a loss. Sometimes my fellow SFF7 here come up with a craft-related topic here that doesn't exactly ring MY bell. And I'm equally sure some of my suggested subjects don't excite them either so we're good.

I started blogging years ago, with a behind-the-fire-wall blog at the old day job. For three years I wrote a pretty much weekly post about process improvement, which of course I stretched to cover all kinds of interesting topics in business, science and technology. (The old day job was at NASA/JPL.) During that experience I learned about always keeping my eyes open for interesting content possibilities. I write really fast - novels, tweets and blog posts - so it's not a hard thing for me to do.

When Carina Press acquired my first novel Priestess of the Nile, and sent me their author guide on doing promo, having a blog was one of the (strong) suggestions. I duly created my author site and commenced the conversation.  My first post was comparing my jewelry box to King Tut's. Since then I've tried to post at least once a week, and usually two or even three times, depending on if I have fun things to talk about. I review old movies like "Attack of the Killer Shrews", take magazine quizzes, do a weekly excerpt hop, talk about favorite books, show family holiday ornaments, explain why certain things are in my books, recap TV shows on occasion....Andre Norton and the Titanic come up fairly often.

I do get quite serious every once in a while, as with my post after a near stroke, where I talked about what happened to me and what the symptoms of a stroke are. I also have guests on occasion, including a former Navy SEAL and an Army Ranger who are authors. I don't limit my topics, other than concentrating on what interests ME. And then I hope my readers will find the post interesting too, or amusing or informative. Or all three!

I also branched out over time and joined this group blog. I'm a member of Here Be Magic and I do guest posts for other groups like Kickass Chicks, Romance University, the Science Fiction Romance Brigade and more.

Every other Thursday I write about science fiction and fantasy romance for the USA Today Happily Ever After blog and that is the MOST fun. I get to interview some of my favorite authors about their books and ask fangirly questions. I just finished recapping Season 3 of "The 100" for them and I'm going to be recapping "Killjoys" and "Dark Matter" starting in July.

And on the opposite Thursdays, I write a post for Amazing Stories Magazine blog, again about science fiction romance.

Yes, I do write books in there somewhere. Just released book #12 this month, in fact. Book #13 will be out in mid-June.

One of the fun aspects of the blogging side of my life is the cool things I've gotten into as a result, like interviewing the "Killjoys" showrunner, Michelle Lovretta last year. Hoping for a repeat interview with her this year.

So yes, I love blogging (and tweeting) here, there and everywhere...

I have to stay very organized (which isn't necessarily my usual state of being, but I can be if required) and keep everything on my calendar, so I don't miss a deadline. There have been opportunities I've passed up, because I reach a limit and what would suffer is writing the books. I can't allow that to happen because as a fulltime author nowadays, the books are the most important thing.

But my Muse only has so many outright  creative hours in a day, so I prioritize using my best energy then for the books, and write the blog posts at other times.