Crafts, Capes, and Carols, Oh My!

Tis the festive season my friends, and that means like most of us, it is the busy, busy, busy time of the year for me. Most of that I brought on myself in making Christmas gifts, baking, baking, and doing yet more baking, and did I mention there's more baking yet to come? Pizzelles, people, pizzelles. 

Some of my efforts, however, can be found at HorrorAddicts.net, as I've taken my crafting skills from Halloween into the merriment with some kind of pseudo Victorian ensemble featuring an outrageously tacky bonnet, shiny red cape, and a goofy little muff made with the leftovers. Oh, there's a bell brooch, too, so I can jingle all the way. What I thought was going to be a day's worth of hot glue and done turned out to be a quadruple fold project that took more than a week. You can head over to our Horror Addicts Facebook Group and discuss how I rolled with the sewing punches and made my lemons into some spicy ye olde wassail or you can laugh at my video of the glue gun drama. Whenever I actually get to finishing the video and putting it on Youtube, that is. It should have been today!

Naturally, this means a lot less of priority number one aka writing has gotten done this month. For me the point of documenting projects and making crafts, videos, audio, and all the other bells and whistles is to notify each audience of the writing behind it – the how to article, reviews, and essays. So, it's tough to balance doing everything in December when all the happy festivities intervene moreso than the rest of the year when real life obligations always push the pen and paper to the back burner. My fellow authors know exactly what I mean! Will the craziness chill by time we get to the next Horror Addicts.net Online Writers Conference in February 2020? I hope so.

And did I almost forget about our Horror Addicts special holiday Pumpkin Podcast? Yes I did. 

Fortunately, for those two of you who have missed my literary events, author panels, and speaking engagements, I will be taking part in A Christmas Carol reading alongside a Carol Hymn Sing at the FUMC Hammonton! If you are looking to belt some old time Christmas tunes or are just local Dickensian trash like me, feel free to join us 6 p.m. Sunday December 15. My spats, pocket watch, and top hat are ready!

"Wake Me on Christmas Morning."

GASP - Sometimes I Forget to Blog!

Hello All!

It's going to be a busy Spring between book fairs, podcasts, and getting good and dirty in the garden - “I'll be planting soon....” a la Sophia Petrillo.

Between our upcoming Mount Holly Book Fair April 29, HorrorAddicts.net delectables, ten year anniversary hi jinks at I Think, Therefore I Review, and you know, life, sometimes a writer just forgets to blog. 

 (Because every fricking thing you do has to come with visual media or its trash right? Word.) 

Shameless plugs aside, there are those the increasingly turbulent and wish I didn't have to use it Facebook dramas and the murky navigation of the crowded tidewaters on Twitter. You're either a noise maker, consumer commentor, or a constant content maker. It's all self promotion at its finest aka marketing. Authors must do it. You can't not do it when every publisher wants to see your brand, every magazine expects retweets, and ever link needs a #hashtag. It's become standard, normal, spitting in the internet wind insanity. Who has time for any long form click bait when we do all the little unnecessary necessaries 24/7?

In trying to meet my latest April deadlines, I realized it was time to check on my own blog, as a stagnant post from a few months ago ( We fudge and front for everyone too when it has actually been six months!) would be viewed quite negatively by literary peers, publishers, agents, or anyone you want to find you. Even if that post proves you are on the book tour circuit, active in freelance, and involved with your writerly peers.

For writers trying to make it in this book business, it isn't enough that you are here with blogs and social media, easily found with contact information for when you want them to notice your actual writing. You have to be instant, the latest, rising with your #amwriting – which I still don't know if it is meant to be 'I am writing' or 'A.M. Writing' but whatevs – before posting a picture of your go to coffee and literary lunch on Facebook, which has to be shared on each of your book pages, your profile, all the book groups, and tagged with all your writerly friends who will totally **get** the struggle. It was all probably conveniently shared from Instagram, too.

Maybe the trending topics, food photos, challenges, or contests lead to a great inspirational nuggets and your next blog post – guilty as charged I suppose – but all the social media chasing, promotion, and forgetting to blog, pinterest, Google +, and who the heck knows what else only leads me back to one thing every single time:

When in the heck are writers supposed to actually write? Amirite?!

Oops, I can't end there, every post has to have all the big links, right?! So Be sure to

SEE me at the Mount Holly Book Fair April 29!

HEAR me during the latest HorrorAddicts.net podcast season!

READ me at I Think, Therefore I Review, or someday whenever I publish some fiction again, whenever the heck that me be.

Toodle Loo until my next two times a day post – which translates to eight months in writer time. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯