Tag: satire

Video Trailer: My Funny Valentine

You forgot Valentine’s Day was coming, didn’t you?  Well, since you’ll be in the dog house if you forget, you might as well have a laugh at your own expense.  Here’s the video trailer for My Funny Valentine: America’s Most Hilarious Writers Take On Love, Romance, and Other Complications, edited by Linton Robinson.

My Funny Valentine: America’s Most Hilarious Writers Take On Love, Romance, and Other Complications is available on Amazon.com, and most online bookstores. You can learn more about the cast of contributing authors on the book’s web page.   [subscribe2]

The IU Polling Poll

An evil mastermind’s job is never done.

Last week, we realized a moment too late that the polling software we had for the writing exercise contest was insufficient to meet the needs of our 100 Megawatt nuclear-powered Death Star of a blog. The crack engineering team here came up with a workaround, using Facebook polling. This was suboptimal.

To address this problem, we put in place different polling software. We blew that up too when we tried to test it out, as helpfully pointed out by the first three comments below.

Damn soviet surplus.

As a result, some personnel changes have been made. The surviving members of our crack engineering team are hard at work finding a polling plug-in that will meet our needs. In the mean time, if anyone knows of some nice free polling plug-in that works well in WordPress, let me know.

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Wanted: Celebrity Endorsement

Tom JonesYesterday I got an email from my publisher letting me know they had accepted my latest work for publication. Awesome. Now that made my day, week, month and maybe even year.

But it also posed a conundrum. I’ve been taking online seminars and reading reports about marketing your wares. It seems if you have a celebrity endorsement you are golden: magazines are more inclined to review or feature your product, and of course the press is more likely to give you coverage. So it makes sense to find a celebrity to review the book, and get it on the back cover before it goes to print.

How exactly does one go about this finding of a celebrity to endorse one’s book? It seems to me you would have to know someone who knows someone…but as far as I know I don’t know anyone who knows anyone. This was going to take some thought, some strategizing and even more networking. I put out the word. Continue reading “Wanted: Celebrity Endorsement”

Desperation: The Mother of Invention.

Yes, I do believe necessity IS the mother of invention. I don’t know who K. S. Brooks on Snow Shoesoriginally said that, and I’m too damned lazy to Google it. Huh, in fact, I’m so lazy that I just used “Google” as a verb. So there.

I have no intention of defending my laziness. Frankly, I’m proud of it. I use my energy solely for writing and marketing my books. My houseplants are wilting and my dinner is still in the freezer. But I put in a long day filled with paper cuts, taping my fingers together and filling in U.S. Customs paperwork so I could send out “Advance Review Copies” of my new book.

There’s that word: review. That all too elusive review – the one that should be written quickly and gladly by the person receiving your book for free. But it doesn’t go that way, does it? BE HONEST – you know it doesn’t. Even though they basically gave their word they’d review your book – what percentage of them actually do it?

Continue reading “Desperation: The Mother of Invention.”