Greetings, all my fans who read these posts but never comment! (I’m sure there are hundreds of you, silently enjoying everything I write)
Sorry I’ve been silent for a few weeks. I fell down a hidey-hole for a couple reasons: marketing fatigue, and finishing up the Red Election!
Ever since I returned from the RWA conference in late July, I’ve felt drained and unenthusiastic about this whole author branding thing. Specifically, I’ve HAD IT with marketing and publicity advice and don’t want to do it anymore, dammit.
Here’s the MINIMUM of what you’re supposed to do: ask for reviews from dozens of bloggers, give ARCs to anyone who will take one, guest blog on sites your potential readers frequent, leave “bread crumbs” to your website to entice people to sign up for your newsletter, have giveaways and a release party, and be active on social media.
Suffice it to say I did all those things and haven’t seen a corresponding spike in sales, to the point where I wonder if I would have gotten the same result if I’d done nothing. So now I’m taking a “SCREW IT” attitude to pumping up my marketing jam, and I’m going to get giggy with doing whatever I feel like – at least until I have another release on the way…
…Which I’m happy to say is hopefully imminent! I’ve finally finished The Red Election! My Original Gangsta fans might recall reading parts of this YA sci-fi novel as a work in progress a couple years ago. Now it is complete and awesome! I made a blurb and book cover for it and everything (see below)!
Anyway, now that I’m between projects I’ll start posting more often…and make some movies like I threatened to do a while ago.
High school’s a bitch, and then you die…
In the year 2045, Major Cora Johnson and Captain Quentin Rose are members of an elite US Army squad in a dying world, where mysterious time-altering weapons have started a second Civil War and pushed humanity to the brink of extinction.
When a bomb goes off during their attack on a temporal weapons facility, Cora and Quentin die…and then wake up in their teenaged bodies in our present day.
As they navigate the take-no-prisoners world of high school—and grapple with their growing attraction to each other—things get even stranger when they begin receiving orders to kill. Should they obey like the good soldiers they’re supposed to be, or resist and risk destroying the future?
