What's Coooking Wednesday? Almond Torte

What I'm reading: Breaking Silence, by Linda Castillo

Thanks to DeAnna for yesterday's post. Thought provoking and informative.

After Monday's post about marketing, I thought I'd follow up with a bit more discussion.

There are all sorts of opinions on what works where. Do people care if you tweet (or Google+ or Facebook--not sure what the right verbs are for those) about the mundane? Although most say they don't care, for some reason, I get the most feedback to my Facebook posts when I share pictures of food. I posted a picture of the cake I made for our community picnic last weekend, and had a LOT more action over there than when I talk about writing.

So -- why not share it here? And if people are interested, maybe I'll continue this "What's Cooking Wednesday" as a regular feature. And I'd love some reader guests -- my Tuesdays aren't restricted to writers, although that seems to be where they come from. But the topic isn't restricted to writing. Travel and hobbies are also popular topics.

OK -- here's this week's recipe: Almond Torte.

This Social Networking Thing - Facebook

What I'm reading: Catch a Mate, by Gena Showalter

I started this blog in July of 2006, and have put up 1048 posts (this makes 1049, I guess). I did it because my publisher recommended it. Then everyone said I had to have a Facebook page, and recently, I succumbed to Twitter. I figured I might as well share what I like and don't like about these sites, starting today with Facebook.
What's my take? The following is purely personal. Things I like, things I've learned, and some of my pet peeves. And what I consider a negative might be someone else's positive, so take my comments with that salty cliché. Today, I'll look at Facebook.

It's Not About Reciprocity

What I'm reading: Death Watch, by John Sandford

Thanks, Susan for your thought-provoking post yesterday, and good luck with writing the book. I hope you do.

We had our first non-family guests the other day—a colleague of both mine and my husband's from my marine mammal conference days, his wife and his mother. They were interested in my writing and asked if they could buy a book, and if I'd autograph it. (No brainer, eh?). But what one said when I signed their books surprised me. She said she probably wouldn't get around to reading it, but she thought it was special to have a book signed by someone she knew.

(Reality intervenes here—while I'd like her to read the book, and like it enough to recommend it to others and maybe even buy another one, I took her money without hesitating.)

One thing I learned was that although writers are very supportive of each other, you can't expect reciprocity. When I first joined my local RWA chapter, authors would show off their new releases, and I'd gladly buy them, regardless of sub-genre, because these were my immediate writing colleagues. It didn't really matter that I probably wouldn't have picked up their books if I didn't know them personally.

Monday Mailbag

What I'm reading: Guardian Angel, by Lise Fuller

I hope everyone is recovered from a surfeit of sugar, and remembered to switch clocks (or, if you're not where you switch your own clocks, that you remember that those who do are now an hour off.) It's November. We're looking forward to having Thanksgiving dinner with one of our daughters and her husband's family. They've got a time share not far from us, and have invited us to join them. Should be interesting to share someone else's traditions—although I've been ordered to bring my special stuffing.

Normally, early mornings are spent with a cup of coffee reading email and blog crawling. From recent email offerings:

According to the headers, the sender was a review site, and the subject dealt with exchanging links. Curious, because exposure is all part of the marketing game, I opened the message and found the following:

Keep Reading...

Hi,

I came across your blog and was wondering if you would consider a link exchange with me. In return for just one link from you I am willing to place a link to your site on my site here: (URL redacted). I can put your link on my home page. I can manually set your link to make sure it always appears on that page and it will never drop off.

I understand that you probably get 100s of spam emails everyday asking the same thing, but I am a real person and not a spam bot.

If this is of interest to you simply reply to this email and I will put your link live first. (Please send me your link details along with a short description of your site)

Seemed interesting, so I decided to check out the site to see what sorts of reviews they did. Some sites feature paranormal, or erotica, or historical, none of which would suit my writing. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the site reviewed CARPORTS. Yep, structures one puts cars in.


So, here's this real person who thinks he's going to target customers from MY blog? Or that anyone who reads his reviews is looking for some romantic suspense? Still scratching my head over that one.



My anti-social networking friend supplied me with another cartoon from Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller. At least this one was relevant. (If you click on the picture, it should open a bigger, more legible, version.





Tomorrow, my guest is Darlyn Finch, who was a member of the first writing group I belonged to – the Pregnant Pigs. Her insistence that I get my work off my hard drive and out to the real world ("Don't make me come get you.") is responsible for making me look at the business side of writing. You won't want to miss what she has to say.

What is a Friend?

What I'm reading: Sworn to Silence, by Linda Castillo

First, my news. Yesterday, my Five Star release, WHEN DANGER CALLS was a featured read at Barbara Vey's Publisher's Weekly blog.

I'm still working on my short story, with a goal of a complete first draft by Monday. I'm not as far along as I'd hoped, but endings scare the heck out of me. I have too much fun with the writing, and can never seem to wrap things up effectively the first time around. Or the second. As I was told when I started writing, I have a beginning, a middle, and more middle.


Okay, and I watched a little too much Wimbledon. But I've thrown in the next plot twist, and have to figure out how to have "the end" hit at the right word count.

But none of this is related to the topic of today's post, unless you compare watching tennis to another time suck, Social Networking, which is the topic of today's post.

Keep Reading...

Back in May, I blogged about Looking at the New Old Days, and included some comic strips about Social Networking Sites.

The influence of these phenomena seem to be growing exponentially. And will Dictionary.com have to revise it's definition of "friend" which has 5 definitions as a noun, and one as a verb, which it says is rare usage, and really means befriend?

Do I play? A little. I have sites at a lot of the networks. One I haven't yet succumbed to is Twitter (and there's now a whole new definition of "tweet", which has yet to hit the dictionary).

I check in to my Facebook page a few times a day. I notice a few people have dozens and dozens of updates that are fed through their Twitter accounts. Trust me, I'm not THAT interested. And even more importantly, I'M not that interesting. I think Brian Crane says it very well in his Pickles comic strip


Nor am I that interesting. Friends, Followers, whatever. I have to agree with Wiley Miller in the June 30th Non Sequitur comic strip.



When we're lucky enough to sell our house, I'm pretty sure none of those hundreds of friends I have on my social network pages are going to be helping us move.

Yes, I know there's not a lot of "meat" in today's post. I was going to talk about the differences between suspense and thrillers, but I'm saving that for another time. Please come back tomorrow for the conclusion of Detective Hussey's Exhumation chapter.