Writers in the Storm

by Jennifer Windrow

Whether you are traditionally published or self-published, marketing and social media is important to build your brand and sell your book. Even with one of the Big 5 publishers, you will be required to market your own books. And what is the best way to do that?

Social Media.

Social media is very important in our ever-evolving world as an author.

I am sure most of you, if not all, have some kind of internet and social media presence already. But do you have one for your author brand?

Let’s take a look at the different social media platforms and how they work…

Facebook

There are two kinds of Facebook pages, and you need to know the difference. A personal page (also called a profile page) is what you use for yourself. It connects with friends. A fan page (a business page) is what you use as an author. A personal page will have a limit to how many friends you can have. A fan page will not.

If you use your personal page as your fan page, Facebook may—and HAS—shut your page down with no warning. If you're currently using your personal page as your fan page, you need to get that fixed. It will take about 5 minutes to set up your fan page once you have your personal page. There are tools to help get your friends to like your fan page.

If you have no Facebook presence, you'll need to set up your personal page first. Your fan page will by necessity NOT be private. You don't want to lock people out of your fan page. You DO want to make your personal page private. Facebook is almost always in the news related to privacy issues. Set your privacy settings high and watch what you say.

Facebook is great for starting a conversation and learning what your fans are interested in.

X formally known as Twitter

Twitter uses hashtags (starting with #)—sort of short-cut labels—to sort these posts into conversations. For example, a search for #writing will bring up all of the current tweets about writing. You use the @ symbol in front of a person's username to write to or about them. Then if you search for @jennwindrow you will see what I have been up to!

Pinterest

With Pinterest, people "pin" interesting articles and pictures to "boards" based on their interests. Pinterest is one of my favorite social media sites. I use it for my writing career, but also for my other creative endeavors.

Find a topic that does connect with your ideal readers and then begin pinning and connecting there.

Goodreads

This is a book information sharing site, designed for readers and writers. 

Yes, you should be on Goodreads! But what do you do there?

• Post information about your favorite books. 
• Review other people's books. 
• Have an author page where people can find you and talk about your book.
• Run giveaways through Goodreads and find new readers.

But beware, Goodreads is a place for readers, not authors. The reviewers can and will be brutal and as an author it can crush your spirit to read some of the reviews.

Instagram

Instagram is a photo sharing social media. A lot of authors do very well on Instagram, I am not one of them, but it is also targeted for a younger demographic.

Bookbub

Another book centered social media. You can build your own author page on Bookbub, advertise through them, and review. The great thing about Bookbub, is their auto emails for book releases and sales.

Tik-Tok

Tik-Tok is the newest in social media craze. It’s a place where you make short videos and post them to your profile. There are a lot of authors who are using Tick-tock to advertise their books using the hashtag #booktock and others like that. It is becoming widely popular and, from what I hear, a great platform to get your name out there.

Other Ways to Sell

Build a website.

Every author should have a website that showcases your own books and even allows you to sell your own books.

Lisa Norman teaches a wonderful website class called Easy Author Websites, that I would encourage all of you to take if the idea of building a website seems scary.

Create a newsletter list

There are several providers that you can use to send out newsletters. Here is a list of a few that I know of…

1. Mailchimp
2. Mailerlite
3. Mad Mimi
4. Constant Contact
5. Go Daddy

Those are the ones I know off the top of my head and some of the most popular. Most of them offer some kind of free service until you hit a specific number of subscribers.

Final Thought

This seems like a lot of work if you already don’t have the basics down, but in the end, having all of this prepared before you release your first book will be a huge help and save you a lot of last-minute work.

Have you already laid the groundwork for social media? Do you have a good presence already, or do you need to work on it?

About Jenn

Sass. Snark. Supernatural Sizzle.

Award-winning author of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance. Vampires, Greek gods, and a bit of Demon Destroyer fun for everyone.Jenn Windrow loves characters who have a pinch of spunk, a dash of attitude, and a large dollop of sex appeal. Top it all off with a huge heaping helping of snark, and you’ve got the ingredients for the kind of fast-paced stories she loves to read and write. Home is a suburb of it’s-so-hot-my-shoes-have-melted-to-the-pavement Phoenix. Where she lives with her husband, two teenagers, and a slew of animals that seem to keep following her home, at least that’s what she claims.

Website: https://jennwindrow.com/

Top photo from Depositphotos.

by Jenny Hansen

A while back, my pal Julie Glover asked this question on social media: "Fellow writers, why do you write?"

The answers were astonishing.

There were easy answers like joy, entertainment, discovery. And one writer who said, "The books I most want to read are not yet written, so I must write them. —paraphrasing Toni Morrison.."

One person said, "Writing is an adventure!"

But many writers haven't nailed their motivation down.

• I've always written. I don't know why. I've just been compelled to tell stories my entire life.
• I've written since I was five. It's just a part of me.

Some answers were thought-provoking:

• It is good for the soul and it is a calling of the heart.

• It is the only way to get the damn stories out if my head. For as long as I can remember, my mind has been filled with stories. They play on a constant loop in my head. The only way I’ve found to stop them is to write them down.

• Writing has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and writing a book had been a goal for decades. It's just something that's in me.

"For as long as I can remember" was a very common thread.

And some were funny.

• Good question. I'll have to think on that.
• Because I’m addicted to it now.
• So I can have something I enjoy reading.
• I get grumpy when I don't write.

That last one absolutely made me laugh. I always tell my husband that "I am far wittier, prettier, and happier when I'm writing regularly." (It's one hundred percent true.) So of course he shoos me off to the writing den when I'm dragging my feet.

Most authors gave answers that really resonated with me.

Those resonating answers are why I trotted over here to share the question with all of you.

• Because I don't know what I think until it comes out of my fingers.
• For the joy of discovering the story.
• It makes me happy.
• The 'aha' moments.
• Those times when some throwaway detail in the beginning becomes vital to the plot.
• When a character tick suddenly has an entire backstory and purpose I hadn't thought of at first.
• When several plot threads suddenly tie together perfectly, in ways I hadn't anticipated.

Only one answer made me sad...

I don't know, one author said.

This life has way too many ups and downs for a writer to stay sane and focused with an answer like "I don't know." The WHY is what keeps most of us going. Well, that and that we get to do it in our pajamas.

Final Thoughts

Y'all have heard me talk about it before, but...

I firmly believe that writers are made.

They are made from shyness and bullying and a million awkward moments. They're made from abuse and codependence and loneliness, and from thousands of sharp words that bruised their tender souls.

I believe the majority of writers are forged from fear or pain or loss.

I believe many writers began writing to create worlds that were better than the ones they lived in. They filled those worlds with the people they wished they knew and the relationships they wished they had.

I believe there are people who began writing because they felt compelled to make sense of things that made no sense, to speak the unspeakable, and to create hope and a way forward when there was no clear path in their everyday lives.

I believe that most writers are compelled to try to make the world better for others.

It takes some strong motivation to do what we do.

Let's face it, being a writer is rarely the easiest career choice. The pay is crappy and the hours are weird. Sometimes we have to repeat a task over and over again, until it is "just right." (Even though "just right" is kind of a unicorn.) Many of us never truly know when our work is done. We write and write until "we just feel it," or until someone more experienced tells us we are done.

There are a hundred easier professions, but very few that we'd find more satisfying. We like seeking out those unicorns. We like finding just the perfect word. And we love to create.

So now I'm circling back to you. WHY do you do this writing thing? What is the underlying reason or reinforcement that keeps you going? We'd love to hear about it down in the comments!

About Jenny

By day, Jenny Hansen provides brand storytelling, LinkedIn coaching, and copywriting for accountants and financial services firms. By night, she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20+ years as a corporate trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

Find Jenny here at Writers In the Storm, or online on Facebook or Instagram.

Top photo credit from Yurizap at Depositphotos.

by Piper Bayard of Bayard & Holmes

Genres from thrillers to crime to romance and others often include scenes where characters need to hide or seek out secure places. In my last article, 5 Home Defense Techniques for Any Character, my military and intelligence veteran writing partner Jay Holmes and I discussed the benefits of perimeter lights, security cameras, dogs, and brains. Today, we’ll look at more ways that we and our characters can shore up our home defenses.

Know Our Neighbors

There are only upsides to our characters getting to know their neighbors when it comes to home security.

• They know who belongs in their neighborhood and who has no business being there.
• Neighbors who are their friends will naturally notice suspicious people around their homes and likely call the police.
• They become aware of neighbors who are dealing drugs or committing other home-based crimes.
• They make friends - not the online distant kind, but the kind who bring casseroles when they have surgeries.

The best way our characters can get to know their neighbors is to take walks. Notice what people have in their yard, what cars they drive, whether they are home during the day, etc.

Holmes is a living example. When he moved last year, he started walking in the neighborhood as soon as he had a contract on his house. He spoke with every person he saw outside and was often invited in for tea.

Two months later when I visited, we took a walk, and he knew who was just divorced, who had kids and how many, who had served in the military, who was disabled, who was remodeling, etc. He had been inside two-thirds of the houses for three blocks in every direction before he ever spent a night in his own. In other words, if we and our characters just talk with our neighbors, it can make all the difference for home safety.

Exercise Driveway Vigilance

It’s always best to get in and out of the car while safely inside the garage. However, many people use their garage for either storage or a work space, or they don’t have a garage. That leaves the driveway or parking lot, and those are fertile grounds for many crimes from carjacking to kidnapping.

To keep our characters safe, they need to exercise extra caution when getting in or out of vehicles. Have them look around before they get out of their cars and check the surrounding area and the back seat before they get in. For an expanded discussion of driveway crimes, see Writing Believable Driveway Crime: Carjacking & Kidnapping.

Do Not Use the Garage Door Opener in the Car

Many cars today come equipped with a button that can be programmed to open our garage door. We and our characters should not use them. That’s because most people leave their cars in the driveway at least now and then. All a criminal has to do to get into the home is to break into the car and put up the garage door.

Keep Key Fobs Secured

Criminals can hack vehicles with keyless ignition systems from outside a building. This is called a “relay attack,” and it can be accomplished with cheap equipment found online or at an electronics store. One character holds a key fob relay box close to the outside of a building. The box picks up the signal from an unprotected key fob inside and relays it to a second device that a second character holds near the car. This fools the car, and the vehicle can be unlocked and/or started. Great for car theft, planting surveillance devices, hiding in a back seat or trunk, or, if the car’s garage door opener is programmed for it, to get into the house.

To protect against this, our characters can keep key fobs in plain old candy, cookie, or chocolate cocoa tins. If our characters want to be fancy, they can get Faraday cages to enclose their key fobs. That said, they need to make sure the Faraday cages work. Mine didn’t, which is why I switched to a candy tin.

If our characters need to make do in a pinch, they can also wrap their key fobs in tinfoil. They should be sure to wrap the tin foil around and fold it over at the edges so that it is well-sealed. (See picture.) This is also a way to secure a phone, though I would recommend two or three layers for a phone.

If our characters are traveling and don’t have access to a tin or tin foil, putting the key fob in a microwave also works. If none of those are available, they should put it as far away from the vehicle as possible.

Use Irregular Timers

Have characters hook up timers to lights, curtains, shades, and small appliances in their homes and set them for irregular intervals to make it look and sound like someone is always there. Most burglaries occur around 10 a.m. because that is the most likely time that no one will be home. Burglars wanting to avoid encounters with homeowners will back away from a home that appears to be occupied.

If All Else Fails

If an intruder is a home invader, they are altogether a far more deadly animal than a burglar.

If all precautions fail, and our characters experience a home invasion while they are present in their homes, they should not grab a knife and start hunting down the invader in their home. I’m sure we’ve all noticed how badly that goes in fiction.

Instead, our character should grab a weapon, preferably a firearm, a crossbow, or some other lethally forceful projectile. Then they should make their presence known and dash for their bedroom to get behind the bed and call 9-1-1. If our characters do not have weapons, they need to look around the room they are in and improvise. (See 10 Common Bedroom Objects to Use as Weapons and 10 Common Kitchen Objects to Use as Weapons.)

Wait, what? Why not just attack?

The home invader might see our character first and get the jump on them. Gaining a defensive position is the better option, particularly if the invader wakes up our characters in the middle of the night.

The other reason is that an attack might be a needless risk. Most of the time, intruders enter homes to commit burglary. They don’t want encounters with homeowners, and if they realize someone is at home, they leave as quickly as they can.

If the intruder knows our character is in the house and the intruder stays, they don’t just want our character’s Pokemon collection. If the intruder enters the bedroom where our character is waiting, it is one of the few clear-cut cases in life when all force is necessary force. Our characters need to bring the full fight without hesitation the second that door is opened.

At the end of the day, there is no fool-proof way for our characters to stay safe, whether in their homes, in their driveways, or out on the streets. That’s just the nature of life. However, situational awareness and simple safety precautions do eliminate ninety percent of random crimes against our characters.

Moral of the story: Don’t let our characters be low-hanging fruit.

What questions do you have about home defense? And please share any home defense techniques you already use down in the comments!

About Bayard & Holmes

Piper Bayard and Jay Holmes of Bayard & Holmes are the authors of espionage tomes and international spy thrillers. Please visit Piper and Jay at their site, BayardandHolmes.com. For notices of their upcoming releases, subscribe to the Bayard & Holmes Covert Briefing. You can also contact Bayard & Holmes at their Contact page, on X (formerly Twitter) at @piperbayard, on Facebook at Piper Bayard, or at their email, BayardandHolmes@protonmail.com.

All photos are non-editorial and paid for from Deposit Photos except for the tinfoil pouch for the keys which are property of Piper Bayard.