Starting a Successful Blog

So you've thought about starting a blog, maybe out of boredom or to help launch that writing career you keep telling people you'll do one day. You sign up for a service like Blogger or Word Press and then what?

I've actually been in this position before. I made several unsuccessful attempts at starting blogs, only to have nobody visit them. Eventually I lost interest and moved on.

Since then, I have started this blog. Traffic was slow at first, but it has been picking up steadily since. Along the way I have learned a thing or two about how to successfully launch a and maintain a blog. Here are my tips:

1. Pick a passion. You need to write in your blog consistently to build a following. if you don't pick something you're passionate about, then you will fizzle out in a hurry. This may take some soul searching and pure honesty with yourself. Don't write what you think you should, but instead what you feel.

2. Use pictures. A blog without pictures is boring. You may not use them in every post, but you should use them in most. Pictures help increase traffic and gets visitors to look around more.

3. Use spell check. I can't believe I have to say this, but use your spell check! Some people and their grammar scares me since I wonder how they made it past the 7th grade. Have a friend read your posts over.

4. Use SEO. If you're scratching your head, wondering what SEO is, look at hiring a writer like me who knows SEO, which stands for search engine optimization. To be brief, if you write in certain ways, you actually increase traffic to your blog by having your blog come in high on Google, Bing and Yahoo search results.

5. Offer something more. The best blogs offer something like books, suggestions of restaurants to try or places to visit. By giving your readers an experience related to your blog that is not online, you integrate your blog in their life.

There are more ways to improve a blog, but that should give you a good start. Until next time...

October is Almost Here!

I've always liked Octobers, since I was very young. In part I really like Octobers since I was born in October. That's right, I was born on a Friday the 13th, to be more precise. Strange, I know.

I also like Octobers for the change in the season. I enjoy summer, with the long days and warm temperatures--to an extent. After living in the Phoenix area for a year and then Central America for two years, I came to Utah and really looked forward to that first winter. I relished when the weather started to change, and the leaves caught fire. It's really hard to curl up with a nice cup of hot chocolate when oranges are still growing on the trees in December. There is just something magical about nature starting to hunker down for the coming snow storms.

October is also really great for the fact that people's attention turns more to things that go bump in the night, as well as other paranormal phenomena. Perhaps those long nights spark people's imagination, or they are just home more to experience strange things in their own home. I don't know what the real reason is, but I do know that my paranormal fiction sells quite a bit, starting in October, and usually going strong into March. Of course, this summer's sales were extremely strong, blowing away the winter's, so I have no idea what to expect this October.

October also brings with it Halloween, one of my very favorite holidays. Basically, it and Christmas rule, with all other holidays paling in comparison. Sometimes I fantasize about being a Jack Skellington type and combining the two holidays. That would be wonderfully awesome. I'm not a huge fan of cheesy Halloween decor or costumes--especially the blood-and-guts garbage--but I really do love original decorations and costumes. Every year I say I am going to start making my own decorations, and I really think next year is the year (yes, I am procrastinating again). Last year I received some glowing compliments from some trick-or-treaters who were probably too old, because they loved the music I had playing at the door (a combination of scary scores from some of my most favorite movies). I really need to plan for what I am doing this year, but honestly I have been so busy that I haven't gotten much of anything ready. Last year we had decorations out on October 1, but this year I am wondering if that is going to happen.

So hooray for October! I will be posting about different things this October on the blog, including my list of top scary (but not gory) movies and some original things you can do during the Halloween season.

Stay tuned for more...

Frustration

Writing can be an extremely frustrating profession, even though I love it with all my heart. Being a writer comes with a constant stream of criticism, which may or may not be warranted. Being a writer also can mean loneliness of a sort. I do not go into an office everyday, and my colleagues are spread across the globe, meaning I don't get much live interaction with them.

Book sales, article traffic and even traffic that comes to this blog may be sporadic at times. Sometimes I am left guessing why one month my book sales suddenly tripled.

Sometimes as a writer I feel like I am loving a dream, but I also have my bad days. Sometimes I wonder if anyone cares about what I've written and what I'm working on now. It's always nice to hear from fans at those times to help keep me moving.

I suffered what I consider a major setback on The Devil's Nightmare, pushing the book's publication back at least a year. The same problems also tabled my Shades of Night series of short stories. More frustration. I know I should just roll with it, but I expect a lot from myself. I have so many good stories to tell, but telling you that means little while actually showing you the stories means so much. If I had my way, I would have three new books out in the next year. Perhaps once I start selling a lot more books that will happen, but for now I live on planet reality.

Movie Review: The Rite

It seems like lately the topic of exorcisms has been popular fodder for horror/thriller movies. One of the latest exorcism movies is The Rite. The story is about a young American man who wants to back out of seminary due to a lack of faith in God. Upon the urging of a priest who has acted as his mentor, the young man attends a training course on exorcisms at the Vatican. Through the course he makes the acquaintance of a priest who is a famous exorcist with some unorthodox ways, played by Anthony Hopkins.

The young man at first tries to explain away the events surrounding several people who are supposedly possessed, but eventually the evidence becomes too much for the man to deny. The way the skeptic vs. believer in the paranormal events played out in the movie almost--almost--reminded me of the X-Files when it was in its early seasons. Any time a movie, book or television series hearkens to such a great work, it is a good sign. By the time the main character in The Rite begins believing the possessions and demons are real a demon has singled him out and begins to wage war on him with a fury the young man has never experienced.

The movie had some promise, but I felt the climax fell a little flat for the building up. Some of the scenes portraying demonic possession can be frightening, depending on your tolerance level. I am a big fan of Anthony Hopkins, and he did not fail to deliver in The Rite, but I could not say the same for all of the actors in the movie. Ultimately, though, The Rite's undoing was a script that was not completely developed, leaving a doughy and half-baked taste in my mouth.

Interested in What I'm Working on Now?

In case you haven't noticed at the top of the blog, just below the title, are several tabs such as "Home" or "Steven's Titles." I have added a "Future Projects" tab recently that serves to keep you, my readers, in the loop with what I am working on currently. I will be updating the tab as different projects come closer to release and as I start working on new projects.

If you click on the tab right now, you will see that I am working on three different creative projects. One is adding to my short stories series available on Amazon, called Shades of Night, and specifically mentioning a character that will start appearing in multiple installments of the series. The second project is The Devil's Nightmare, which I have mentioned on this blog before. I am hoping that I can have The Devil's Nightmare ready for publication by late next year, but I will keep you all updated.

The third project is a young adult or middle reader book (I'm thinking on the same reading level as the Chronicle of Narnia series) that I have actually bumped in front of The Devil's Nightmare. I am staying tight-lipped on the subject and even the name of the book, but I will say it involves ghosts. Hopefully I will be ready to release more information on the book in the not too distant future. As of right now, I am planning on a release date of approximately a year from now. I am very excited for this book, since I think it has a lot of potential, and it is different from what I have published up to this point since it is aimed at a younger audience (although adults may enjoy it as well).

Writing and Entrepreneurship

With the writing world (including the book industry) changing at an increasingly rapid pace, writers who want to succeed are being forced to keep light on their feet. This means that a writer nowadays is more of an entrepreneur or a small business owner--the days of writers just writing and doing nothing else are over.

If you are not interested in business management, marketing and the like, writing may not be the profession for you. You do not need to be the next Steve Jobs (although that wouldn't hurt) but you do need to get your hands dirty. Authors--whether they have a contract with a publisher or they are independent--must roll up their sleeves and put in a lot of work to promote their book. If an author does not do promotion, thinking he does not need to, that author sells few books.

This means you must work, work, work to make it in the writing world. There is a lot of competition at the lower levels of the industry, partially because the profession looks sexy or easy to a fair amount of the general public. Overnight success stories in the writing world, such as JK Rowling or Stephenie Meyer, happen almost never. Most writers must fight and claw and scratch and put in blood, sweat and tears to become big. You are your best salesperson, marketer and publicist, even if you have people working on those areas. You have to be comfortable talking to people about the work you do, spreading the word and increasing sales. 

On the flip side,

La Llorona or the Ditch Witch

Anyone who has grown up in the southwestern United States or Mexico has probably heard of La Llorona. The tale is of a woman ghost who looks for children to take and murder. While La Llorona has fame across the region, the exact story of who she was, how she died, where she dwells and what she does with children changes depending on the area.

I grew up in New Mexico, where in grade school we would listen to scratchy old recordings telling the tale of La Llorona, or the Ditch Witch as she was called in the Land of Enchantment. La Llorona was supposed to have been a woman who lived in or near Santa Fe (if my childhood memories do not fail me). I heard two different versions of what happened to her. One was that she did not want children but her husband did. One day she found out her husband was having an affair, and so in a fit of rage she threw her children into the river so they drowned. After realizing what she had done and crying quite a bit (hence the name La Llorona, which in Spanish translates loosely to "The Crying One") she threw herself into the river and drowned as well.

In another version I heard, she let her children play by the arroyo or ditch in the evening as the sun was setting. One of the children fell in because the child could not see, and the other jumped in to save them. When the woman realized her children had not returned home for bed, she went looking for them and found their bodies floating in the water. Stricken with grief, she jumped into the water to end her own life.

Both versions warned that the ghost of La Llorona did not know she was dead (cue the Sixth Sense theme music) and so she wandered the arroyos and river banks looking for her children still. The tale then went on to tell about kids playing in the arroyos or by the rivers and La Llorona coming up, screaming and whaling, as she tried to take the kids and drag them into the water, etc. Some people claimed she left huge scratches on children's backs and tore their clothing.

Really, La Llorona served a good purpose since we lived in flash flood territory. An arroyo could be dry as a bone one moment, and then have a ten foot wall of water traveling over 30 miles per hour rush down it the next moment. Playing in or near arroyos and rivers was dangerous, without a screaming ghost lady grabbing kids.

If you want to read even more about La Llorona, click here.

Should I Be Jealous?

There is a ton of buzz going on not only in the book world, but in the general media and public about the book and movie adaptation of The Help. I have not read the book or seen the movie, but I have heard quite a bit about both. A good portion of what I have heard about the book comes from my wife, who has been reading it quite voraciously.

In fact, she has been reading it with more vigor than anything I have written--at least I say so. She, of course, denies that she has not read Shadow House or any of my other works with as much excitement. Ah, the life of a writer. Not many husbands would be jealous of their wife reading a novel, at least not for the same reasons.

Should I be jealous that my wife is enjoying reading The Help so much? On the one hand, I am always trying to get her to read more (I do this with a lot of people who are close to me). My wife is not a huge fiction reader, so the fact she is so into a fictitious piece is great. On the other hand, I just can't but be a little jealous. Okay, a lot jealous. Really, really, really jealous.

I'm sure I'll get over it. Maybe with my next rough draft manuscript she will forget all about that other book. Maybe. I'm hoping.

Volume Ain't Easy

I wish I could remember where I read this, but I can't so I'm going to do what I always hate and say that I read this "somewhere." It was a columnist--a rather famous one from what I can recall--who was criticized by a reader once for a piece he wrote. I don't remember the exact criticism, but the reader basically said he could write a better piece. "Ouch," some of you may say, but this happens to writers quite a bit.

What was memorable was the writer's reaction to the criticism. He essentially said that he did not doubt the reader could produce a better piece. The writer went on to explain that what people do not understand about writers is that while we may not always be producing the highest level or writing, we often produce high volumes. Producing original pieces of original thought at a regular pace is the real challenge, something the reader did not care to consider. The columnist probably produced the piece in question in a short amount of time over the space of a day or two, meanwhile the reader would have labored over his superior piece for days or maybe even weeks.

We writers have to eat like everyone else, and so part of what we must do is produce a lot of writing. Unless you are in extremely high demand, a writer must be constantly writing to make a good living. It's always easy to criticize from the sidelines, but doing the job is always a different story. Of course, part of being a writer is dealing with criticism as people contend that they can do better, but often stay in their armchair instead of even trying.

Weird Paranormal News: My New Project

I have taken on a new endeavor, or another blog, called Weird Paranormal News. As the title of my new blogs hints at, I will be providing commentary on paranormal news items from the week, with a special emphasis on the very strange. The commentary I will be adding to the news items will also feature an occasional splash of humor, mostly in the sarcastic sort of way.

I have already written a few posts for Weird Paranormal News, but I am now looking to make posts more regular. What is my objective with this new blog? Well, you could say that it is to make the public aware of paranormal events as they are covered by the news. Mostly, though, the object is to entertain people with some really crazy stories, including crazy people who swear they saw Bigfoot break dancing in the woods or that a UFO landed in Times Square. 

With this new blog, I will be scaling down--not eliminating--the amount of posts on this blog about the paranormal. This blog will mostly focus on my work as a writer, with Weird Paranormal News covering a wide variety of paranormal topics. Since I am no longer working as the Salt Lake City Paranormal Examiner, I have felt a need to stretch my wings and report the paranormal news again.

Check out my new blog by clicking here.

Here Comes the Next (Insert Popular or Timeless Book Title Here)!

You always know an industry is desperate for success when it constantly is looking for the next big success from duplications of past success. Take a look at Hollywood and its remake fascination for a prime example of this (most of which are horrible failures, ironically). The book industry is no different.

Just a few years ago, everybody was looking for "the next Harry Potter." I noticed an overflow of books about young witches and warlocks going to grade school for magical beings and playing soccer in the sky. Talk about generic. J.K. Rowling did not make it big by copying others; Rowling marched to the beat of her own drummer and wrote about a wizard school when nobody else was. Now I seem to her about "the next Twilight" all the time. And yes, I see books about Bigfoot seducing Medusa at an American community college or a banshee-weretiger-zombie love triangle or the sorts all the time. Again, Stephenie Meyer did not hit it big by copying the current trend (although I do think there is a good argument that she borrowed heavily from Ann Rice, for better or for worse).

So why is everyone trying to follow these trends in the book industry? Are they really all that unoriginal? In part, I think some people really do lack originality and so they want to follow what others are doing. I periodically see advice from some authors who are good at following the trends and feeding off of the sales of others, encouraging others to keep a finger on the trends among the New York Times Bestseller List titles, emulating them so they can have sales success by being trendy as well. That's just not me, since I cannot follow the trends. I have my own ideas and don't care if they become trendy or not.

For those who are looking for big success, you must follow the old business adage: the bigger the risk, the bigger the potential reward. Following the trends admittedly decreases your risks. I could write some vampire erotica and probably capture some decent sales (and lose some of my integrity in the process). By writing something original you take a big risk, but it is the only way you will have any chance of making it big in the book industry.