The Trouble with Twitters

I don't fully understand Twitter. I'm not having technical problems; I know how to tweet and haven't forgotten my password or anything. But I'm not sure exactly how I'm supposed to use it. First, I don't have a smart phone, so anytime something interesting happens when I'm out, I have to remember it until I get home and can get on my computer. Needless to say, I forget. And, frankly, nothing particularly tweet-worthy happens when I'm sitting at home in front of the computer. Do you want to know about "the cutest thing" my cat just did? I didn't think so. Since I don't want to spend untold sums of money for a data plan and a new cell phone, I think I'm stuck with uninspired tweets.

OK, I can handle that. I'll just tweet occasionally and follow other people who I find interesting. Which leads me to my second problem: How many people am I supposed to follow? Everyone I see follows hundreds or thousands of other people. THOUSANDS! How is that even possible? Even if every one of those people only tweets once a week, it would be a full time job to read all that stuff. Plus, there are a few people I'm particularly interested in, but if I'm following a zillion people, then the ones I'm most interested in get lost in the shuffle, and I never see their posts. What's the point?

On a related note, some people I've seen are tweeting constantly. Is it necessary to literally share a minute-by-minute account of your day? But if you start following someone like that, then isn't it rude to unsubscribe from their feed? Do they know someone has unsubscribed? Will they take it personally and have their feelings hurt? And if I want people to follow my tweets, then I assume I'm supposed to follow theirs, right? Is that a requirement? It seems like the polite thing to do, but I have no idea what kind of social rules apply to the world of Twitter.

Which brings me to another issue: It seems like everyone cheats the 140-character rule by tweeting links. Sure, I'm guilty of doing this, too, but I don't usually want to read an entire link. Whatever happened to just tweeting a short thought or comment? Don't people do that anymore? Isn't it possible to just subscribe to someone's feed, read a short thought or comment from them, then move on without having to click through a link to a whole article or blog or something? What's ironic is that I'm posting a link to this blog on my Twitter account, so people might read this rant against links when they've just followed a link. Is that irony? Or is that just a sign that I'm a sociopath?

As a result of all my confusion, I've found it easier to just not get too deeply into Twitter. I can't tweet much without a smart phone anyway, I don't follow many people because I'm afraid to unsubscribe if they tweet too much, and I'm not wild about having to deal with links in tweets. But maybe if you're reading this blog, you could explain to me what I'm doing wrong. Please tell me how anyone can actually follow 10,000 Twitter accounts. Maybe there's a trick that I don't know. And, no, I'm not willing to give up sleep in order to be an accomplished Twitter user. So if you can solve these problems, please send me a link to the answers. J

Happy tweeting!

Kim 

New Stones of Abraxas is here!

Finally! The new print edition of Stones of Abraxas is available through Createspace and by the end of the month, ebooks for Kindle and other formats will be out there, too. Even better, Book #2 of the Abraxas Pentagram series, Heroes of Abraxas, will also be for sale within the next month. I know it took forever. Believe me, it was frustrating to see my first Abraxas publisher leave the young adult market, which meant the book went out of print. Then I saw my second publisher go out of business entirely before either Stones or Heroes could be released. But now, thanks to the miracle of self-publishing, those books can be available again.

You can see the funky new cover for this edition of Stones as the profile picture for this blog. I have the Heroes of Abraxas cover, too, and while I love both of the covers, but I'm especially fond of the emerald green and gargoyle on the Heroes cover.  Thumbs up for my cover artist!

Right now, I'm busy working on Book #3 in the Abraxas series, called Rulers of Abraxas. I promise this one won't take nearly as long as it took me to get Book #2 out there! I'm also working on publishing a few other manuscripts that I've finished in recent years and will announce when those are available. It's so cool to have the ability to release books when and how I want. This modern technology thing is really beginning to grow on me.

If you get a chance, please head over to Createspace's e-store and check out the new print version of Stones of Abraxas. It's been a long wait, but don't they say good things are worth waiting for? https://www.createspace.com/3803104

Happy publishing, everyone!
Kim

New Stones of Abraxas edition almost here!

It's almost here! I've just placed an order for the first proof copy of Stones of Abraxas. Hopefully it will look as good on paper as it does on the computer page. It took a long time – way longer than I'd expected – to get it to this point, but now I'm really happy with the result. The print books should up and available for sale on Amazon by the end of April, and I hope to have the ebook versions available soon after. At about the same time, the Heroes of Abraxas sequel will be available, too.

I find myself looking back on the past months and wondering why it took me so long to get this done, but the fact is that self-publishing a book requires a lot of steps. Since this is my first attempt at self-publishing, there was a steep learning curve. Oh, and there was the work I was also doing to finish my latest nonfiction manuscript and find a publisher for it. The good news is I did find a publisher for that one, and the book will be out in January 2013. More about that in an upcoming post.

Anyway, here's what I've been doing to get Stones of Abraxas ready for prime time:

-        Edited the manuscript once, twice, three times, then another time for good measure. I added a few things and deleted others from the original version that Medallion Press had published back in 2006.

-        Researched publishing options and decided on Amazon's Createspace.

-        I figured out how to use Createspace's online publishing tools, including formatting my manuscript to work in their system.

-        Found an artist for the book cover. She did a great job on a very cool looking cover. Now she's got me on the schedule to work on one for the Abraxas sequel.

-        Put the inside and outside of the book together and ordered a proof copy.

-        Used the book cover to order promotional postcards to pass out at book signings.

So far, that's it. Now I wait for the books to show up while I get the ebook version formatted. After that, I get to start the fun part: Book signings and other promotional events. I've got a couple lined up, but there should be more soon.

That's it for now. I'll be posting the new cover on my website soon. Thanks for checking on the progress of the new edition of Stones of Abraxas. It will be available again very soon. Thanks for your patience!

Kim