After months of hard work, long breaks in between due to a relatively insane work-life-health imbalance, I’ve finally completed the first draft! All I can say is it’s time for a happy dance. See video below of what I’m doing at this exact moment.

More to come on my writing as it progresses soon. I’ve got a lot I want to blog about and once I figure out how to squeeze it in, I’ll be talking about some of the challenges I’ve faced in holding down a full-time job while trying to complete a novel as well as chatting about story development and all that good stuff. Thanks everyone for your patience and support both here and on Facebook and Twitter.

Blurgh! Yes, I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted here. Truthfully, my day job has been bonkers and I’ve been racking up frequent flyer points like nobody’s business. After having a marathon writing weekend about a month ago, I haven’t touched the manuscript since. I’m hoping this post will be the start of getting back to it and wrapping up draft one (finally).

For now, I’ll leave you with these amazing tips that social media guru, Chris Brogan, recently posted for authors who want to leverage social media in self-promotion:

1. Set up a URL for the book, and/or maybe one for your name. Need help finding a URL? I use Ajaxwhois.com for simple effort in searching.
2. Set up a blog. If you want it free and super fast, WordPress or Tumblr. I’d recommend getting hosting like Bloghost.me.
3. On the blog, write about interesting things that pertain to the book, but don’t just promote the book over and over again. In fact, blow people away by promoting their blogs and their books, if they’re related a bit.
4. Start an email newsletter. It’s amazing how much MORE responsive email lists are than any other online medium.
5. Have a blog post that’s a list of all the places one might buy your book. I did this for bothTrust Agents and Social Media 101.
6. Make any really important links trackable with a URL shortener. I know exactly how many people click my links.
7. Start listening for your name, your book’s name. ( Covered in this post about building blocks.)
8. Consider recording a video trailer for your book. Here’s one from Scott Sigler (YouTube), for his horror thriller, Contagious. And here’s one from Dallas Clayton for his Awesome Book. (Thanks Naomi for pointing this out).
9. Build a Facebook fan page for the book or for bonus points, build one around the topic the book covers, and only lightly promote the book via the page.
10. Join Twitter under your name, not your book’s name, and use Twitter Search to find people who talk about the subjects your book covers.
11. When people talk about your book, good or bad, thank them with a reply. Connect to people frequently. It’s amazing how many authors I rave about on Twitter and how few actually respond. Mind you, the BIGGEST authors always respond (paradox?)
12. Use Google Blogsearch and Alltop to find the people who’d likely write about the subject matter your book covers. Get commenting on their blog posts but NOT mentioning your book. Get to know them. Leave USEFUL comments, with no blatant URL back to your book.
13. Work with your publisher for a blogger outreach project. See if you can do a giveaway project with a few bloggers (here’s a book giveaway project I did for Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years book).
14. Offer to write guest posts on blogs that make sense as places where potential buyers might be. Do everything you can to make the post match the content of the person’s site and not your goals. But do link to your book.
15. Ask around for radio or TV contacts via the social web and LinkedIn. You never know.
16. Come up with interesting reasons to get people to buy bulk orders. If you’re a speaker, waive your fee (or part of it) in exchange for sales of hundreds of books. (And spread those purchases around to more than one bookselling company.) In those giveaways, do something to promote links back to your site and/or your post. Giveaways are one time: Google Juice is much longer lasting.
17. Whenever someone writes a review on their blog, thank them with a comment, and maybe 1 tweet, but don’t drown them in tweets pointing people to the review. It just never comes off as useful.
18. Ask gently for Amazon and other distribution site reviews. They certainly do help the buying process. And don’t ask often.
19. Do everything you can to be gracious and thankful to your readers. Your audience is so much more important than you in this equation, as there are more of them than there are of you.
20. Start showing up at face to face events, where it makes sense, including tweetups. If there’s not a local tweetup, start one.
21. And with all things, treat people like you’d want them to treat your parents (provided you had a great relationship with at least one of them).

From the fabulous writing group, The Merry Sisters of Fate, comes an amazing contest. All you have to do is pick your fave story and post it to your blog, Facebook or Twitter and then leave your link in their comments section. The prize is pretty sweet (lots of signed books and a mystery offering). So, without further ado, here’s my pick. It’s chilling and eerie and written by one of my new fave YA authors:

“Twelve Steps (Cracked)” by Maggie Stiefvater

Step One. Drag his body away from the window. He might not be dead, so try not to hit his head off the coffee table. Don’t worry about the stuff his hands leave behind as they drag on the carpet. The carpet of the history department’s sitting area has suffered far worse insults than that stain.

Step Two. Go to the staff room. That feeling in your throat means that you need water. Yes, it’s important. More important than checking to see if the door to the history department is locked. After all, doors didn’t help Frazier. You really need water.

Step Three. Ignore your thirst because you really, really need to see that the door is locked. Even if it doesn’t help, it will make you feel better. You will not die of thirst in the next two minutes. You could possibly die from what killed Frazier before then. When you find the door is already locked, remember the window behind Frazier and realize that the door is not your problem.

Step Four. Return to the scene. Step on Frazier’s outstretched hand and say the worst swear word you know (it’s four letters and rhymes with ‘grunt’) because swearing has to be better than screaming. Note that he is making more stains on the carpet. Try not to look at his face. He does not look like Sarah’s brother anymore and you don’t need to be reminded. Oh, right, and get off his hand, just in case he is still alive.

Step Five. Look at the cracked window Frazier was sitting in front of. Notice that the hairline cracks that cover it look like a spider web or a snowflake or mosaic. Listen, to make sure the world is still quiet. Notice that outside, the clouds are made of steel and there are no longer any birds chirping. Maybe they all look like Frazier. Not helpful to think about. Get your hands under Frazier’s arm pits again and start to drag him out of the room so you can hide in an office without windows.

Step Six. Your throat hurts. You need water. Drag Frazier’s body a few more feet until you’re out of breath. How can one guy weigh so much? Maybe he is dead and you can leave him. Stop and listen. Still nothing outside. Maybe they’re gone.

Step Seven. Notice there are no car sounds on the street. Maybe everyone’s dead. Maybe you’re the last person left alive. Maybe you will be forced to raid grocery stores full of bodies that look like Frazier’s. Work harder to get Frazier down the hall. I said not to look at his face, it’s only going to make it worse. Because if you look, you’ll see how every bit of his skin is covered with cracks like the window, each oozing a thin line of blood. He is like a smashed porcelain statue full of blood.

Step Eight. Porcelain? You never were any good with art. Keep pulling. Is that a sound? Pass by the staff room door and realize that you need something to drink right then or you just can’t keep pulling. Leave Frazier in the hall under a dozen signs directing you in a thousand directions that he’s not going to be going any time soon.

Step Nine. Open the staff room cabinets, looking for a glass. No good. Every single cup and bowl and plate is a network of fine fractures, and when you touch them, they shatter. In the quiet that follows the splinter of glass, you think you hear the humming starting again, them coming back, but it’s just the small fridge. You dump the plastic pen can out on the counter and fill it with water. When you swallow, it makes you cough, and the water you spit back up into the sink is pink.

Step Ten. Go for Frazier again. He is looking less like a priority, isn’t he? You were just making out with that body forty-five minutes ago. He tasted like gum and uncertainty. Right now, he’d probably taste like the water you just horked up. Stop. Listen. Your heart is pounding. And now you hear them.

Step Eleven. Far away, they sound like an old dial-up modem. They hum and keen from the trees, moving closer and closer. You don’t want to know what they look like, but more than that, you don’t want to shatter. You don’t care whether or not you’re the last person left on earth, left to scavenge cans of Spaghetti-Os from empty grocery store aisles, you decide that you don’t want to die. Leave Frazier — finally, he’s dead, you know that, don’t you? — and run for the windowless staff bathroom. Slam the door and shove the greasy shag bathroom rug you think looks like a skinned buffalo up against the bottom of the door. Cover your ears with the heels of your hands.

Step Twelve. Swallow blood. The water didn’t help. They’re coming closer. You can feel the atoms inside you shaking. A slow crack is beginning to snake across the mirror, but you cannot hear anything with your hands pressing over your ears. Maybe you’ll be okay.

But we’re right outside the door.

It’s no secret that there are lots of great writing communities online. The question is finding one that suits your needs and interests. One that I’m particularly fond of is #YAlitchat mostly because of the weekly chats on Twitter and also because of the great community on Ning.

Visit YALITCHAT

If you’ve read my bio, you’ll know that by day I work as a social media manager. I recently volunteered to be group coordinator for the Promotion Junction section of the site. That’s where I’ll be pointing to and discussing marketing, PR and other related tips for writers. So I hope, if you’re an aspiring writer or someone new to the world of author promotion, that you join me there.

Photo credit: hugovk

As I close in on wrapping up draft number one, I’ve been looking back at the journey that brought me here over the past year.

Where did it all begin? The answer: with a song.

In this live recording, lead singer Margo Timmons introduced one song with an anecdote about how she had received a letter from a woman who wrote to say that To Love is to Bury was her wedding song. If you think the song is about living with your soul mate into old age it would be really lovely and romantic but, as it turns out, the song is about a murder-suicide. If you check out the lyrics it is, indeed, a pretty dark song.

But dark is good. So I wrote a scene that would eventually appear (in a very different incarnation) at the end of draft one. I’m sharing this really rough piece merely as an example of the writing process:

“It should never have ended this way. She sits between the rocky crag and the base of the tree, thinking of all the things that led to this point—all the things that went wrong over the course of the day. The idea that it could all add up to something so terrible, after a lifetime and yet just a few short years, is unendurable. In every way it’s everything she didn’t want to happen. If one of them was going to die before the other, she had always secretly hoped it would be her.

The full moon hangs in the air, shrouded by clouds. As a shiver of wind blows through the boughs of the chestnut tree, her silky black hair billows in the breeze like a flag of mourning. Now she stares at the mound of freshly dug up earth and the reality of the day’s events becomes too real. She’ll never feel his warm breath against her skin again, hear his coarse voice whisper her name again, smell the distinct perfume of his skin again.

With another shiver of a winter breeze, clouds pass in the sky to reveal a pallid moon. Then, the whole of the Loire Valley spreads out beneath her, the way their lives should have been: limitless. The thought of that—of losing something so enduring and yet ultimately so fragile—is too much. There’s a flash of silver from the ring that hangs on the chain around neck as she raises her pale face to look into the night sky. Her mouth twitches, fighting against the weakness of emotion. But her sad eyes, the colour of the midnight sky, are free of tears that can’t be shed.

Finally, she lets out a long and lonely howl of anguish that carries across the night.

And the she-wolf paces away from the unmarked grave on her long journey to track his killers down.”

Photo credit: alcomm from Flickr

I’ve long considered myself a writer. It started back as a child when I wrote a one-act play in grade three that I toured around my elementary school. I’ve been an online blogger for at least a decade writing about life, books, travel and food. But author, as in published author?

That’s just crazy talk.

Or is it?

In the past year I’ve been working on draft one of a young adult (YA) novel and have shifted gears into really trying to get this piece published. If you’re reading this blog, maybe you’re a writer in hiding too and can understand the challenge between holding down a full-time job while trying to create your masterpiece.

I’d like to think this is all possible because my one true strength hasn’t been any superpower. It’s been my writing. Let’s face it though, there are some pretty weak but successful writers out there. I can think of at least one shining, or rather sparkling, example. (Woah, before you get your knickers in a knot and send me hate mail, I just mean to say that a bestselling franchise isn’t necessarily going to be the stuff of Pulitzer Prizes, mmkay?) But that’s the thing. It doesn’t take just writing skill to make it big in this industry. You’ve got to have the whole package: an interesting story, marketability, etc. Ultimately, it comes down to connectivity with readers.

In any case, this blog represents my journey toward getting published. As of this post, I’m about 90% through the first draft of my YA supernatural fiction novel.

A little about me: I work in the periphery of the book industry, contributing to a number of online communities (more to come on that as I build this site). But, I’m also learning as I go along and hope to share my knowledge with you: the reader, the writer, the friend or whoever you may be.

I’ll talk about the writing process, the publishing world and anything else that’s related. From time to time I’ll post snippets from my work in progress. It’s a daunting process but I know I’m not alone. And neither are you. Consider this a space to ask questions and have conversations.