Saturday, October 18, 2014

Am I Online? Let Me Count the Ways

When I sold my first book to Carina Press in Summer 2011, I had no online presence at all, hard as that is to believe nowadays. I did blog weekly behind a firewall at the day job but that doesn't count much in the general scheme of things.

So as soon as I became an about-to-be-published author I established my blog. It's a simple Wordpress site, not even a web page, but I'm not very tech-y so it had to be something I could handle. My first post in September 2011 was "Why Egypt?", attempting to explain my fascination with all things ancient Egyptian. This was in honor of the fact that Priestess of the Nile was to be my first published work. I blog 2-3 times a week, usually about things that interest me or that happen to me - also magazine quizzes (I love to take those), reviews of old movies, a Wednesday Whimsy feature where I'm currently showcasing my collection of 1880's Victorian trade cards, which can get very whimsical...guest posts, my own books occasionally....I do the Weekend Writing Warriors eight sentence excerpt blog hop every Sunday...I almost never write about matters of craft.

I save that for here, on Saturdays! I also blog about once every 45 days on Here Be Magic, and once a month on Paranormal Romantics...

I write the SciFi Encounters column for the USA Today Happily Ever After Blog, every other Thursday and specials maybe once or twice a month. Despite the column's title, I also cover Fantasy and Paranormal (a tiny bit).

TWITTER! After my blog, that's my number one favorite online social media. I LOVE twitter. I'm @vscotttheauthor Yes, with three T's. Unfortunately when I joined twitter, the other iterations of Veronica Scott were taken and I was trying to make it clear I was the author, not the fashion designer or the TV reporter. I use Tweetdeck to keep up with the twitter timeline and Tweetbot on my smartphone.
tweeted over 66,000 times....who knew I'd enjoy it so much? It's like one big conversation to me and I enjoy talking to people. I occasionally tweet promo for my books as one does, but I also curate content, retweeting all kinds of things I think some segment of my quite diverse Followers might enjoy. And I just plain converse. Snark and sarcasm extra, when called for.

Here was my first ever tweet: Should be working on new novel but wanted to get going on Twitter today, no more procrastinating!

OK, I'm on Facebook but it's not my natural habitat the way twitter seems to be. I came to it late, not until 2011, and thanks to some very good friends, I've kind of gotten the hang of it and I try to Share and Post daily. I find I do enjoy keeping up with people this way and my wonderful aunt and uncle in Florida were delighted to find they could now include me in family news. (We have a big, sprawling, Irish family.)

I'm on Goodreads but still learning the ropes and trying to be very respectful. I've recently joined two really terrific groups and I'm starting to feel a bit more at home there. (And by the way I did NOT write the book Indonesian Betrayal, which somehow shows up on my profile. That's another Veronica Scott, who I'm sure is a lovely person but not me.)

I don't do Tumblr, Pinterest or anything else. Although I love looking at the Tumblr photos my fellow Word Whore Jeffe Kennedy collects! Usually NSFW but oh so tasty....I was deathly afraid that both of these would become huge time sinks for me if I started pinning and posting, and I already spend wayyyy too much time on twitter, versus working on my novels.

I did join Google+, about one day before it was announced that Google wasn't investing any more effort or energy in the tool. Great timing on my part, yes? (I think they've said since that they are still planning great things for it but I sure haven't seen any evidence. Still, I keep adding people to my Circles and sending my blog posts to  it, just in case.) I also send my blog posts and book news to LinkedIn but that's another "it can't hurt, right?" thing.

So there you have it, my online presence in a large nutshell! Hope to see you there...or here....





4 comments:

  1. Liked and followed and friended wherever. =o)

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  2. Oh thank you very much! I've done the same :-) Happy Weekend!

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  3. I'm more on FB but I'm working on my Twitter interactions. It's hard to balance writing, building a platform, and a day job...oh yeah, kids, husband. Thanks for the great post.

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    1. I'm fortunate that my daughters are grown and on their own, never could have done all this if they were little, I don't think - not enough time! Hard enough to do now with "just" the day job and myself...So I admire you for making the balance work :-)

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