Marketing your novel, Dreamers and Doers

cj Sez: This on Jane Friedman’s blog by author brand expert Andrea Guevara. “Writing a book and then promoting it can make authors feel a lot like that dorky kid in high school trying to get a seat at the cool kids’ table.” 

 (This from cj: Marketing is one of the hardest things for me to do. That necessary chore takes me way out of my comfort zone.)

Be Yourself So Your Readers Can Find You | Jane Friedman

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  I was feeling maudlin today and found myself thinking of my childhood and how far away yet near to my heart that special time was and is. What follows is a poem I wrote years ago that was ePublished by The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature in 2012. 

DREAMERS AND DOERS

In quiet times when past and present flow into one

Moment and melancholy dulls the senses and time ceases,

Memories steal me away to a place of tiny towns and meager farms

Worked by a few determined immigrants coaxing bounty from a dowry of hope.

A bundle of dreams wrapped in desert tan, banded by ribbons of

White caliche roads and faded asphalt highways,

Dotted with corn stalks,

Grain shocks

And monoliths to crude fortunes

That spill upon the land in clear pools

Or spout in unctuous streams.

 

I roam prairies where The West begins;

Where dust devils haunt wide-open spaces;

Where shimmering heat mirages join in gay dance,

Dodging prickly cactus and gnarly mesquite.

I wander pastures, skirting clods of Angus,

Me, age 3

Shielding my eyes from the livid sun

Punctuating a sky swept by mares’ tails

And little funnel clouds that spin around

The heavens but never touch down

Like the big ones do. 

Awash in twilight stands a child, 

Barefoot in the hard-scrabble dirt

At the edge of a cotton field,

Wearing a sun-faded dress

Handstitched from a cotton feedsack.

 

An ethereal landscape on a sepia canvas;

Where dusk brushes the sunset in smears

Of gold and purple and pink and mauve;

Where color drains into the horizon

With the sinking sun, applauded

By the throaty rumble of thunder

Chasing lightning through distant clouds

That only sometimes rain

But send breezes to winnow the dust

From the cool night air,

Where I shall sleep . . .

Under a canopy of stars.

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  As the masthead of Lyrical Pens says, if you have a book you want to promote, old or new, let me know. We can arrange a blog date for your book tour. The only caveat is that this site is PG 13.

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  Okay, that’s it for today. You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same. Raising prayers for a happy and safe you and yours.

cj

Now some words from my sponsors:

  Having a book to read is the perfect entertainment for those holiday and summer vacation downtime moments. THE DAWGSTAR and DEATH ON THE YAMPA are available on Amazon or through your favorite eTailer and bookstore. Got a library card? You can read the ebooks free from Hoopla.

  Nota bene: Angela Trigg, the RITA Award-winning author and owner of The Haunted Book Shop has a few signed copies of my paperback books in stock. TO ORDER, contact: https://www.thehauntedbookshopmobile.com/contact-us 

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