Eighty People Validated Me

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Interviews, Book Excitement, and Follower Contests

I am sick today. Fuzzy head, achy muscles, and stuffy nose sick.

But it's okay! Because there are so many exciting things going on right now!

Interviews!! I'm doing a series on WriteOnCon's fabulous organizers about how it was to put together the world's first completely free, completely online writers conference, and what's next for WriteOnCon!

Each Friday, I post an interview over at the Operation Awesome blog. Currently, we've got:

Elana Johnson
Casey McCormick (this one's fresh from today, so skip over and say hi to Casey!)

I just recently posted an interview with literary agent Natalie Fischer, in case you missed that one. Update: This interview now includes her favorite TV shows and movies. Woot! She's a BONES fan. :-)

There's a tab across the top of my blog (go ahead and look) for all the interviews I do, whether they're based here or over at Operation Awesome. It's a great resource for writers who want to learn more about agents and the online writing community (which is probably the best online community in the history of online communities!!!).

Book Excitement!! Last night I finished reading Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, the second book in The Hunger Games trilogy. I am now officially caught up with y'all who are just now reading Mockingjay. Give me a day and I'll be caught up with y'all who already finished Mockingjay! :-)

Can I just say that all of you who read Catching Fire before Mockingjay came out are freakin' book warriors?! I think I might have gone insane from that Lord-of-the-Rings-esque ending--that wasn't really an ending--if I hadn't been able to turn to the first few chapters of Mockingjay immediately after. So I'm in the throes of District (no spoilers here) and the leaders who kind of creep me out. Pray for me to get to the sunshiny parts soon.

There is sunshine, right? Right? (See this post about my fear of dark literature.) Of course I am loving the trilogy, and marveling at Suzanne Collin's genius in creating something so compelling and complex.

Follower Contests!! Of all the funny situations: my blog following is now at 49 at the exact same time as Operation Awesome is at 99. We are just on the cusps of 50 and 100! I'm not making an official announcement, but I will say that we have something fun planned as soon as we reach 100. Thank you, by the way, for all your support of Operation Awesome! We are honored to have reached so many wonderful writers in such a short time (the blog is only 10 days old). Our goal is to give back and pay it forward, and that gets easier with every awesome follower who shares our links or retweets.

As for me, I plan to do something special when Mr. or Mrs. 50th Follower comes along.

*insert drumroll*

A contest to win my favorite punctuation book of all time:

EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation 

I read this years ago, but it stays with me always. If you'd told me before I picked it up that I'd actually enjoy reading a book about punctuation, I'd have given you that raised eyebrows look you're giving me now. Stop that! You'll wrinkle your forehead!

It really is hilarious, especially if you're already one of those people who can't stand it when people say, "I could care less" when they mean "I couldn't care less." Or maybe you're one of those people who balked when you saw the movie poster for Two Weeks Notice (where's the apostrophe?!!).

But even if you're not. If you're the opposite--someone who doesn't get punctuation (but desperately wants to)--this book is for you.

When I hit fifty followers, one winner will win this frawesome book! Update: WE HAVE OVER 50 FOLLOWERS! The contest is a go! Comment to enter.

To enter, leave a comment telling me on a scale from 1-10 where you stand on the punctuation train, 10 being punctuation expert and 1 being "where the heck does this semi-colon go?"

Happy writing, everybody! And good luck!

Twitter, revisited

Some additional things you should know:

#yalitchat happens on Wednesday evenings, and is a LOT of fun with writers, agents, and readers. Just search #yalitchat and you'll see everything that's being discussed. If you want to talk to somebody so that everybody can see, use the "mention" or "reply" feature. If you want it to be private, DM (direct message) them instead. I find this particular chat to be fun and helpful, but there are other chats, too. Usually, you can find them via writer and industry blogs.

The great thing about joining a chat-in-progress is that there's a steady flow of conversation and ideas, and you have a chance to be witty and quippy. People usually add you as a friend if they appreciated your contribution.

As far as garnering followers, I'm still figuring this out myself. Joining a chat seems to be a great way. I also retweet things I especially enjoy, and often the person I quoted follows me back.

Twitter etiquette: never reply to a stranger or DM them just to give them your links--unless they asked for it. :-) It's a big turn-off, and I've unfollowed people because of it. There are plenty of opportunities to tweet your links without this, anyway. The people who do this usually don't get many long-term followers. If somebody mentions you or retweets you, it's nice (but not required) to thank them, either publicly or in a DM.

All along, you'll get "spam" followers--people who have nothing to do with you or your tweeting subject, but just want you to buy their products. Just ignore them, unless they're offensive. Then I block them. If you ignore them, they'll probably unfollow you, but you're better off without followers like that!

If someone follows you who does share your interests--FOLLOW THEM. They're more likely to take an interest in what you're saying when you reciprocate.

My favorite published authors and agents on twitter are the ones who are friendly. They respond to a question of mine, or ask questions of their followers. e.g. "Writers, what would you like to know about the publishing process?"

The best way to use twitter is to correlate it to your blog. Whenever you update a blog post, tweet it--that's the obvious one. But people are getting really creative with it, too. You can have a twitter contest. The author of Gimme a Call started a twitter revolution when she invited tweeps to write letters to their high school selves in 140 characters. My fave was "Dear High School Self- Put the tweezers down! #gimmeacall." By getting everyone to use her title as the hashtag, people were (sometimes inadvertently) advertising her book! Publishers have had contests to win free signed books. One asked people to write a rejection letter to an author in 140 characters. Just make sure you tell them a hashtag (#) to use so you can search the responses!

Lead a discussion using the hashtags, too. Talk about what you #amwriting (a popular hashtag). Or make up your own hashtag and invite readers from your facebook page, blog, and twitter to contribute to a groupthink.

Those are just some of the ways I'm seeing twitter used successfully.

Follow authors (we always follow back), agents, editors, publishers (they are coming to twitter in droves). When you are looking at somebody's profile, you can see their LISTS on the side of the page. Agents often make a list of their authors, so you can actually click "follow this list" and now you have access to all of their tweets. I've done this on some aspiring authors' profiles who had an AGENT list. It's really helped me to discover more agents, which will be good when I'm done with my WIP and ready to submit. You can create lists, public or private. I keep my family list private, but my "Book People" list is followed by a dozen other people.

Find me on twitter: @Katrinalantznov