December 2005

From sf/fantasy writer Tee Morris: “I found your blog through the Frappr maps and thought you might want to give my blog/podcast a visit/listen. You can also subscribe to my podcast (via iTunes) and other directories. This podcast is called The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy and its host blog is http://www.teemorris.com/blog. My aim for the show is to go into promotion of yourself and your work.

There are a lot of podcasts out there about books, reviewing books, publishing, and getting published, but there are few (if any) podcasts out there on how to market and sell your books once your car stock arrives. I not only talk about strategies and techniques that have worked for me, but I’m going to interview other authors (big and small press) and ask them what they do to get their name and their books into the public eye.”

I’ve subscribed to Tee’s podcast and it’s well-produced, informative and entertaining, with a focus on promotion and marketing for writers. The most recent podcast covers a number of writing-related topics but focuses on answering the question: “Book reviews: are they worth it for writers?” The lengthy advertisement of the podcast host station in the middle of the episode is somewhat annoying but worth plowing through to get to the second half.
The subtitle on Tee’s blog reads: “An average of 170,000 books are published in one year…and out of those 170,000 books, you want the world to read yours.”). Even if you’re not an sf/fantasy writer, Tee’s podcast offers valuable tips and info about how to promote and market yourself as a writer; I strongly recommend it.

Telescripter.com is a site for telecommuting freelancers in general, but listings and info appears to have a heavy leaning towards freelance writing.

I started using SuperNoteCard from Mindola software when it was still called “Miss Lonelynotes.” It’s gone through several upgrades since, and is now specifically geared towards writers.

SuperNoteCard uses virtual notecards to help writers capture and organize content in fiction (including screenwriting) and nonfiction projects. You can define and track characters, plots, and references in your writing, using “drag and drop” to organize the flow of ideas and information.

I’m using it to organize info for my YA novel and have also used it to organize info for magazine articles, and am finding it pretty useful. I’ll post a more detailed review on this new version once I’ve had a chance to play around with it some more, but you can try it out yourself for free for 30 days, after which you need to buy an activation code (only US$29).

I’d be interested in hearing feedback from others on this software, positive or negative. Please do send your comments to me at inkygirl-at-gmail-dot-com and I’ll compile them into a future post.

Well, the cold is gone…just a highly annoying hacking cough left. And Buckley’s Cough Syrup is evil and vile, just in case any of you out there didn’t know.

Some freelance news: For those interested, my review of the past year in the magazine industry is in the Writer’s Digest “Writer’s Yearbook 2006″, now on newsstands. You can see the cover here.

Also, I’ll be launching a new comic strip through Offpanel Productions early next year called Will Write For Chocolate, with a focus on freelance writing. More info after the official launch.

I owe e-mail to some of you; I’ll be catching up this week.