Tag Archives: facebook

Writing Business

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I really enjoyed Shari’s blog this week about writing goals. As I look at my own, I realize how much I’m struggling to write this year. I haven’t worked on a new story since just before Christmas. While I’m delighted to have Rapunzel: Stay at Home Mom premiering Jan. 31 and a novel under my pen name premiering in February, I fear March is going to hit and I won’t have made any progress on the stories we’ve planned for release at the end of the year. All of my work time has been devoted to editing and promoting. I felt jealous of Dave and Shari this week at Spark Tally with their word counts and progress on new stories and wondered if Holly was as anxious as myself to get back to writing.

But, despite jonesing to immerse myself in plot and hooks and character building, I’m thrilled with what my little publishing business Hot Java LLC has done this month.

My publicist is rocking the Pinterest world. I think my favorite pins are this paper art of Rapunzel she found for the Rapunzel board:

 And this eye make-up she found for the Sleeping Beauty’s Spa board:

My pen name twitter followers are up 10% this month and my @MelindaJMoore followers are up 150%! Woo Hoo! I also had a small bump up of Facebook followers this month. Thanks to all the new comers! And thanks to Julie for the headshot she took that’s now on my twitter account!

I’m doing a blog tour for Rapunzel. Right now I have three blogs booked. If you run a blog about writing, fairy tales, reading or parenting and would like me to come over and do a guest blog for you, please contact me at melinda@enchantedspark.com. All the blogs will be unique but focused around an aspect my Rapunzel story. For example at Life of Larisa my blog will focus on how judgmental I was as a new parent and how that aspect is magnified in Rapunzel. I’m sure we could come up with an idea for your blog! Please keep in mind that it’s a fairy tale for adults and uses mature language.

That’s it for me today. Please check back in for the buy links for my book. I’ll post them as soon as I have them. Happy writing!

 

 

Photo Flare Pictures for September: $50 Prize!

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To celebrate garnering over 50 likes on Facebook in August, I’d like to celebrate by upping the Photo Flare prize for one month only to $50.

A big thank you to Love Lust and Lipstick Stains for helping to bring in the Likes this past month. I finally found a Facebook Follow widget, so if you have not yet and would like to receive updates from Enchanted Spark on Facebook, please click the button to the left of the blog post to Like us!

I will also be having a giveaway sometime this week as a welcome to all the new followers, so please keep your eyes open for that.

The official rules for Photo Flare are here and the pics are below:

 

 

Spark Tally Friday!

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First of all, I apologize for no Thursday review. My Word Press site was up and down yesterday and then I couldn’t log into my account this morning, though I could finally get to the site. I’m glad they got the log in working in time for Spark Tally. Please Like us on Facebook and you will see my announcements of when the site goes down like that. You can also check the old blog where I was planning to post Spark Tally if there were still technical problems.

Next, this might be a rambling Spark Tally. Think of it as an extra post to make up for the lack of a review :)

My word count this week is 5500. I’m pleased, though I was hoping for more. It took me until yesterday to get good focus. Here is the breakdown:

About 1000 words to the new novel SSw. That brought me to the end of the first quarter. I have to stop there and figure out what’s going on in another country in that same world at that same time before I move on. Of course, I can’t just outline it; I have to start a whole new book for it—SD. About 1200 words for SD that I trashed. I restarted and got 300 words out. In a fit of frustration, I started working on a third novel that’s totally unrelated to the other two—DB. DB is a story I’ve started a dozen times, but this time I finally think I’ve got it. I wrote 3000 words in one afternoon for DB. Hooray!

And here’s the bonus blog:

Beginnings. When I first took up writing, I thought the best way to draw in editors and readers was to show how unique and different my character is in a unique and different situation. Oh how wrong I was. The most common critique I got was “I don’t like your protagonist.” I do think part of it was bad writing, but what a reader really wants at the beginning of a story is to be drawn in by a feeling of sympathy towards the character. Look at all the openings with orphans, parents are divorcing/just divorced, spouse/SO left, dead relative, dead pet, evil boss/monarch/overlord, etc. The beginning of a story seems to be to build a sense of connection to the character by means of “Oh, my life isn’t that bad. That poor person.” After you build that connection, then you can go on to build the unique characteristics for the protagonist and the world to keep the reader reading.

I could still be wrong, but since I’ve made this change I’ve gotten some stories published and people in classes and crit groups no longer say at the beginning of my story, “I don’t like your character.”

How do you work out your beginnings? Please post your word count!