Monday Again and Marketing

Well, not to shoddy of a weekend for sales of my novels and books. I went up into Pintrest today and noticed others are pinning my books which helps get the word out about them.

Most Mondays for me is spent in reviews; reviews of sales, reviews of twitter, Facebook, GoodReads, etc. I answer emails which to date are close to 300 per day.

I'll browse Facebook for messages otherwise I'll wait for an email that someone has sent me a message. When I first started with Facebook it took up a lot of my day instead of writing. Twitter is just insane with my screen rolling faster than I can read...mostly about nothing.  Is MySpace still alive? I haven't gone into it in a while...read almost a year.

My Google + account gets checked about once every two weeks. I know I'm just being slack. But I'm juggling like a mad woman working, writing, marketing/promotion as an indie author. I could spend all my time just on the marketing, but my love is writing.

Today my daughter (my pastry chef) got a phone call from a five star four diamond resort about possibly coming in as their executive sous chef of pastry. She called me all flustered. Then reality hit when she heard the salary. Keep in mind an executive pastry chef can earn way upwards of $35K a year and salaries of greater than that are often considered the low end of the scale. The salary offered was in the medium bracket for this field.

After she got off the phone with them, she immediately called me. She told me she was scared. I asked why, I mean she had worked on Sea Island's Cloister Hotel which is five star and five diamond in the past. She knows the pressure of the job, the time, and more importantly it was all reinforced with college classwork less than a year ago. She is afraid of disappointing others who recommended her for the position. She's afraid of not being able to do the job since her brain tumor took out a large portion of her memory. In other words, she's afraid of failure.

Aren't we all afraid of this when we put ourselves out there? I say failure be damned! If you don't try then you will never know. While by a lot of other people's standards I'm a failure at writing because in the past year... I've had mediocre sales by publishing standards. I haven't promoted myself much as an author. Done two book signings. Attended no special events. I really haven't branded myself to one type of literature. I'm just out there sometimes, by choice. This isn't a 9-5 job for me. I can spend days in front of my computer not focusing on writing or promotion. Just playing around as it were.

So what's my point? Basically you have to do what you love to do and makes you happy. I love putting words together into sentences. I love writing scenes and dialog. I love playing what-if games with my characters. As far as my daughter goes, I asked her if she still loved what she does with wedding cakes, pastries, and chocolate. She said yes, of course. My answer to her was, "What are you waiting for? Grab the bull by the horns and ride that sucker! Momma wouldn't be a writer if she didn't. Have faith in yourself and the Power Above."

Keep writing and loving the Lord.