#MondayBlogs

Happy News! #MondayBlogs #amwriting

/ Marcia / 23 Comments

Happy Monday, Everyone. That’s possibly contradiction in terms for some of you, but for me, this is a happy day, indeed.  I am finally feeling well enough to get back to my WIP, which I had hoped to send off to editing a week ago, but which is still (sadly) lacking a final chapter and epilogue. SO, feeling up to writing–looking forward to it, in fact–is a big step forward from where I’ve been for the last week.

When they tell you a blow to the head can scramble your brains, they aren’t kidding. While I didn’t have any memory lapses, I’ve had trouble concentrating and have done some really odd things over the last week. But finally, I seem to be able to organize my thoughts and think creatively. Maybe. 😀 

I do want to let you all know that I’m taking things one step at a time, with the first one being to finish this long-overdue book. I do have a guest scheduled tomorrow for #ShareAReviewDay, but I’m not ready to commit to any other specific blog features, like #FirstLineFriday. I might put that off another week. A tortoise once told me slow and steady wins the race. 🙂

As I return to my normal blogging routine, I’m planning to make a change or two. For some time, I’ve featured mostly writing-related memes on Mondays, but I’d like to expand that to include more than memes. Articles, tips, shared posts, etc, related to writing might become part of Mondays going forward. We’ll see how that goes. #ThorsDaySmiles will stay focused on anything I think might make you smile. Smiling is good. Laughing out loud is even better. And because I enjoy it so much,  #FirstLineFriday WILL resume, I’m just not sure when. 

So with those thoughts in mind, off I go to work on that last chapter of The Light, and to think about what I need to do to get this one “out there.” But I’ll be at least a bit more visible here from now on, I think. 

Thank you all for your support, healing thoughts, prayers, and encouraging words over the last week. I may or may not be able to respond to you individually, but please believe I read and appreciated every single comment! 

Hope you all have a great, productive week! Go get ’em, guys! ❤ ❤ ❤

(And btw, does anyone know why all our sweet little hearts turned black all of a sudden? I mean, it’s really pretty sinister looking now, isn’t it??? 😀 )

#HealthNews – #BuildingALocalReadership – And a #MondayMeme (Or three!)

/ Marcia / 65 Comments

Every now and then, it’s good to stop and take stock of things–where you’ve been, where you’re going, how you’re planning to get there, and stuff like that. Thought I might do that today. 

Some of you may know I’ve had some health issues crop up in the last few months. Skin cancers, which aren’t new for me, Type 2 diabetes, which is, and other age-related things that plague all of us who persist in sticking around a long time. My thanks to everyone for all the support and encouragement! Hope you’ll forgive me if I update you all at once.

After having had many, many basal cell carcinomas removed over the years–I grew up under the Florida sun before we’d ever even heard of sunblock–I finally developed my first melanoma. Luckily, my dermatologist and I are old friends who see each other at least annually, if not more often, and it was caught very early and totally removed. Whew. The basal cell in my ear was a bigger problem to get rid of, though not as dangerous, and I was quite happy to keep the top of my ear. 

In May, I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, and I’ll tell you, it scared me more than you might imagine. My father passed away due to diabetes when he was a mere 8 years older than I am now. So, I took my doctor’s advice seriously, and determined that while I have no way of knowing whether I’ll be here in 8 years or not, I would NOT let diabetes be the reason I wasn’t. Continue reading →

What I’ve Been Up To – #MondayBlogs #Marketing

/ Marcia / 34 Comments


(Still Playing with BookBrush, Too)

A short time ago, I shared a post I found on The Creative Penn, written by Rob Eagar and regarding using language to help promote your books free. You can read the original post HERE.

I have been busily editing all my book sales pages on Amazon (via Author Central) to do one of the things Eagar suggested: adding accolades. I had thought you needed big-name Editorial Reviews in order to do this, but after some additional research and another great post on Indies Unlimited, Amazon Author Central: A Primer ( check it out HERE), I realized I could choose quotes from my Amazon or Goodreads reviews to share in the same manner. You can quote up to five reviews on your print book pages, but so far, I’ve only been able to add one on my eBook pages. (I’ve seen others with more, so I’m still looking for the workaround to that.) 

Here’s an example of what I did for my first Wake-Robin Ridge eBook page:

And here’s the Paperback page:

The process is pretty straightforward and easy, if you follow the steps outlined in the Amazon Author Central: A Primer link provided above. The longest part of the task was scrolling through my reviews, looking for lines that I thought would work well.

I don’t know if this will boost sales or not, but it sure can’t hurt, and hey–it’s free, so why not? And this may be old news to some of you, but it was completely new to me, so I figured I’d pass it along.

Also, as you can tell from the header at the top of the page, I’ve been spending a bit of time creating new  graphics on BookBrush. A few of you know I’ve been a bit under the weather lately, and haven’t felt creative enough to write, but I truly hate wasting time. These small promotional/marketing ideas have been productive ways to spend an hour or two each day, doing things that I wanted to get around to, anyway. Hope some of you will be inspired to give them a go, yourselves. 🙂 ❤

#MondayMeme – #MondayBlogs

/ Marcia / 18 Comments

A lot is happening around here at present–will fill you in on details in another post–so I’m keeping it short today. But I hope you’ll enjoy this one, anyway. I sure did, since it says something about being careful with punctuation, AND about the way men and women can look at the same thing, and interpret it so very differently!
😀