The Readers’ Favorite annual book awards contest is one of the biggest ones out there, with close to 100 contest categories. It’d been so long since I entered (I tend to throw my hat in the ring at either the first possible second or the last) that I honestly forgot I was still in the running, until my publisher’s office wrote to tell me I’d won as a finalist in the humorous fiction category!
Thrilled to display yet another Community Klepto merit badge on its beautiful cover!
I had a self-imposed deadline of finishing the first draft of my newest manuscript by my 41st birthday, which is why I’ve been a little MIA as I write and write and edit and polish. My birthday also happened to be just a few days before the deadline for the 2023 Writer’s League of Texas manuscript contest, so I decided to enter it, looking forward to getting some early feedback of things I could work on as I am knee-deep in my editing phase.
Since it was a first draft, I went in with very low expectations, so imagine my shock when I receive an email today congratulating me on being named one of the 5 finalists in the romance category (yes, satire romance is still romance)! It’s kind of a big deal, y’all… my new book’s already getting accolades, and I haven’t even finished it yet.
And since it’s on the internet, it’s as good a time as any to announce the (working) title for my satirical romance novel – DON’T GIVE ME GRIEF. Wish me luck in the final round, and check out all the other finalists in this year’s contest; word on the street is the competition was fierce!
Oh, hi! You came to find me, but I’m over on Author Express talking about all the weird writing gigs I’ve had in my lifetime and dismissing my parents’ well-intentioned life advice. So you should definitely check it out.
At long last, one year after its initial paperback and ebook release, Community Klepto is now available as an audiobook on multiple platforms (and more to come)! I couldn’t be more in love with the voice of Ann Josephson and I hope everyone else will love all six and a half hours of it, too.
Oh, hello! You came to find me, but today I am over on the Drinking With Authors podcast where I have a full interview and a bonus literary briefs episode. Check out my episodes and like/share/subscribe/sacrifice a virgin because the podcast is hilarious.
Listen to the full interview and the literary briefs wherever you get your podcasts
Watch the full interview and the literary briefs on YouTube (my hair looked great that day)
Leave a CommentToday, the Eric Hoffer Book Awards posted their list of finalists for the Montaigne Medal – an “additional distinction awarded to the most thought-provoking books” – and color me surprised, Community Klepto made the list! It feels a little strange seeing my book, with all its jokes about naked old ladies and self-motorboating, in a list among PhD-level nonfiction, but I am honored that the judges found it thought-provoking enough to nominate it for the prize.
There are a lot of book award programs out there, some good, some great, and some little more than a scammy money grab. There’s no manual that tells you which awards to apply for, and some don’t even tell you what criteria they’re judging on, so it’s all a bit of a gamble on the part of the author. The average out of pocket cost for award submissions is about $60, so while it’s not an individually expensive gamble, once you apply for half a dozen of them, they add up pretty quick.
The first award program I applied for, I did so in two categories, both of which you of course have to pay for separately: best cover and best title. Because, you know, both of them are pretty badass. I lost both, and to rub a little salt in the wound, one of the titles I lost best title to was “Bittersweet”. I still can’t roll my eyes hard enough, but congratulations to “Bittersweet” or whatever. After that, I lost another award that said it took reviews into account to a book that had only 10 reviews. Justifiably, I think, I was feeling pretty down on book awards and wondered why I bothered putting my name (and money) in all the book award hats I did.
So I was a little floored when I got an email saying that my book was a finalist for a prize I didn’t even enter. Honestly I wondered if it got sent to me by mistake, but nope – my name and the title of my book (which, let’s be honest, is SO much cooler than “Bittersweet”) were right there, plain as day, and when they posted the list of finalists this morning, my name and book title were there, too, so it’s official!
My hat’s still in the ring (why do all these metaphors involve hats?) for a few more awards, and chances are good I will likely lose a lot of them. But I’ve got a win here, and I’ll take it.
Leave a CommentAll week long, my novel Community Klepto is a featured deal with BookBub and is on sale for 99 cents on all ebook platforms! If you have an e-reading friend, snag a copy as a terrible early Valentine’s Day gift.
I’ve recently partially jumped ship from Goodreads to The Story Graph and I am absolutely loving it! It is a growing platform with a lot of great features that were either missing or bloated in Goodreads, and the staff are very responsive to customer requests. (As much as I’d love to, I am not completely abandoning Goodreads. I have too much book activity to stalk there.)
But enough about how great The Story Graph is! Their giveaway program for authors and publishers is currently in beta, and I am excited to be part of it by hosting a giveaway of Community Klepto now through the middle of February. Enter now for your chance to win an advance review copy in paperback!
Leave a CommentMaybe it’s just a January thing, because January sucks the worst of all months, but I have been in a huge social media funk lately. More than anything, it feels like every social media monolith is living on borrowed time, or its best days are already behind it, or I’m just too old and uncool to know what the hip new thing that’s going to sell me eight bajillion books even is anymore. (I wasn’t always the Costco wardrobe shopper with a minivan that I am today, you know.)
But if you’re an author, you can’t just NOT do social media, can you? That would be career suicide… an even worse move than getting that bachelor’s degree in 18th century British literature. I mean, would it really make that much of a difference if I peaced out of every platform I hate right now?
I’m taking a little break from TikTok because I’ve started falling into the trap of spending 3 hours on a 30 second video and having it cease to be enjoyable for me. I know other 40-something authors have had a lot of luck building a following there, but I’m not one of them. While even a mediocre post will get a fair amount of views, I get very little engagement otherwise. And as rumors of a complete TikTok shutdown in the US get more and more widespread, part of me can’t help but wonder, what’s the point of spending all this time making all these videos and trying to build up a following if the rug’s just going to get yanked out from under me anyway?
In case you haven’t been paying attention to the Twitter spiral, I’ll save you the time and just tell you it is an absolute dumpster fire over there, and this makes me sad. I spent years… YEARS! building relationships with readers and fellow authors on Twitter, and now a lot of those same people are bailing for greener pastures I’ve never even heard of, and they can’t even put animated GIFs in their posts.
Because Facebook has become the place for people who now buy most of their clothing at Costco, it’s also become such a monolith for advertising that the algorithm has all but decided even non-business-y posts must pay the toll if you want people to see them. Every other post is a sponsored post predetermined by the algorithm, and I’m not about to pony up hundreds of dollars just so people can briefly chuckle at my jokes and keep scrolling.
I absolutely love what Bookstagram has done to revive the print book market with pretty spine and cover aesthetics, but I hate how it prioritizes accounts that post all the time. And if you don’t want to make reels, which is sometimes more work than making TikTok videos, the Instagram algorithm will push you down nearly to the level of the text-only plebs over at Twitter. Recently, without explanation, Instagram suspended the accounts of some authors I know and follow, and once your account is suspended, your only real option is to start over from scratch. Never mind the fact that it might have taken you years to build relationships with your followers. Better luck next time… until we suspend your account again.
It’s another platform that people are flocking away from in droves, but I still get a new review of my books on Goodreads at least once a week, so it’s not like I feel I can just shut the door on a site that I’ve been using for TWELVE YEARS. Since the FIRST Obama administration. I have imported my Goodreads data over to The Story Graph because they are the new hotness, don’t plaster ads all over the place, and don’t accept BezosBucks, but new platforms come and go all the time. Even though I dislike so many things about the platform, I don’t want to waddle back over with my bookmark between my legs and have to start all over.
Social media managers (a job that didn’t even exist 20 years ago) love to tell me the rules: which platforms I absolutely have to be on, the number of hours I have to spend on social media per week, the number of times I have to post per day. And I am a notorious rule follower. But these aren’t rules. Just because I’m an author doesn’t mean I cease to be a person with boundaries. There is no rule that says which social media platforms I have to spend my limited time on, or how much of it. Just like there’s no rule that says you have to like and subscribe to hear more of my bitching on a regular basis.
Where you participate in social media and how much is up to you, and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.
Me on Facebook
Me on Instagram
Me on Twitter
Me on TikTok
Me on Goodreads
Me on Story Graph
Me on Hoodthong
