Writing Wednesdays

        On Instagram I’ve been participating in #WritingWednesdays, in which I post stuff about my books each Wednesday, according to particular themes.  This was started by a couple of authors as a way to prompt themselves to get out more information about their books, in a fun, entertaining way, and I started joining in because I tend not to mention my books without an “excuse.”

        I don’t participate every week, since sometimes the particular theme doesn’t really apply to my work, or doesn’t seem like as much fun; and of course sometimes I’ve got something else of higher priority to do.  But most weeks it’s fun to think about the prompt and come up with a little graphic about it, which I can post on Instagram.  And having gone through the work of putting these things together, I thought I might as well share them here, too.  I’ve taken some of those graphics and arranged them not in the order they came, but instead grouping together all the posts about each book or series.

        Starting with a couple of posts about my Kate and Sam Adventures, these two are self-explanatory.  The only note to emphasize is that the single most effective thing you can do to support a

book you love is to talk about it.  Whether that’s suggesting to your cousin that they might like it, or leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads or some other on-line site, or filling out a request slip for your local library to buy a copy, small-time and indie authors can’t survive without reviews from our readers.

        My other series is the Otherworld “hexalogy” (yes, that’s a real word technically, but not a real word in the sense that anybody actually uses it!)  I’ve done three Writing Wednesdays posts about these books, obviously focussed on characters.  When you’ve spent six whole novels imagining people, you tend to have a very

strong sense of what they look like, as well as many of their various likes and dislikes.  I’ll admit, though, that until filling out the squares for the “Introduce your Main Character” theme, I’d never actually given any thought to Svarnil’s favorite season or color.  Still, they didn’t take much reflection to know!  (Another reminder that if you want to see all these graphics big enough to read them, just click on them.)

        I had so much fun with the “What Are They Wearing” theme that I did it twice.  I had to do it for Chen and Polly in The Extraordinary Book of Doors because Polly’s crazy bright outfits (and Chen’s reaction to them) are a running motif throughout the book.  When the weekly theme was “What is the Setting of your Book?” it was another one that called out to be about The Extraordinary Book of Doors.  After all, that book is set in some of my favorite places of historical and magical interest, and the book was practically a love letter to the Cleveland Museum of Art.  This was also an opportunity to share the pictures of myself at a couple of the doors that actually feature in the book.

        Today’s theme was “If your character were to win Olympic gold,” and I decided to feature the special talents of magical creatures from On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination.  I made two pages worth for Instagram, and could easily have come up with more.  After all, these are truly exceptional beasts!

The other theme for which I featured On the Virtues of Beasts was “5 Things You’ll Find in This Book.”

        All my other singleton books have gotten less attention on #WritingWednesdays.  Maybe some of them will be featured if one of the future themes seems to call for it.  Or, of course, maybe not.  It’s hard to try to promote 16 books in 9 separate and sometimes very different categories.  In fact, for all I know that’s a bad idea that will just confuse and muddy the marketing waters or something.  None of this sales and marketing stuff has ever been my strong suit, which is exactly why playing along with #WritingWednesdays seemed like it might bring a little fun to the part of being a writer that is usually no fun at all.

        And on that note, I have used these #WritingWednesdays posts to start already promoting Bittersweetness & Light, which will be released in January 2025.  I’m going to try to allow pre-orders starting in December, (as well as the advanced copies in November for all my Kickstarter backers), and I’ll see whether I can’t actually do this whole “book

promotion” thing right for once!  Who knows; it’s not inconceivable.  But whether or not I manage to nail the promotion, and whether or not any of this gains me any readers, at the very least I appreciate getting to play along with

#WritingWednesdays - it makes the painful necessity of promoting my books slightly less of a slog.  So if any of these little graphics were actually appealing, by all means let me know!  (And of course, I wouldn't be playing the promotional game if I didn't remind you that you can always find out more about all these books on my web page.)

        If you're on Instagram and you want to see what other authors have tagged for #WritingWednesdays, head over and check out @shameezwrites and @nuhaamakes, who come up with the themes each month.

[Pictures: all images by AEGNydam, 2024.]