Online Shopping

DO NOT BE ALARMED!  This is not an ad, you will not find the best deal on the latest 'last' wrench that you will ever have to buy or 30% off any item in the entire blog.  I did not diligently spend the last few months compiling a list of the best interweb retailers complete with coupons and driving directions.

So you can rest easy for the remainder of this post.

Personally, I can not understand why people stampede to an event known as 'Black' anything.  It was only very recently that I became aware that the phrase Black Friday was meant to imply something good - I was stunned.  The vocabulary of American descriptions have offerings ranging from Black Tuesday when the market crashed in the 20's, Black Sunday a movie about terrorism at the Superbowl and the Black Dahlia who was a homicidal villainess.  So the logic of this shopping event escapes me.

But, no matter, I am immersed in a shopping expedition of a very different kind.  I've written a book!  You may have heard already, but The Last Prospector is available RIGHT NOW on Amazon.com and I would love it if more people knew that little tidbit.  To that end, I'm trying to set up my first virtual book tour and am scouring the net for good blogs to approach.

A virtual tour is very much like a physical one in many ways, or so I've read.  Instead of traveling in the real world from location to location, I will be traveling to different blogs who will tell their readers about my book via articles and contests.  Like just about everything else worth doing in this world, it looks a lot easier on paper.

Not that long ago, Clyde took me to Broderick for a drink so I would take a tiny break from stressing.  He's a clever guy and knows that some alcohol and truly amazing french fries can cure a multitude of mental illnesses.  Somewhere mid-Banh Mi fries (crazy but delicious), I confessed that if I had known how vast the world I was stepping into would be, I might have chickened out before I even wrote the first chapter.

But it is far to late too back out now, I love my story and I know that others will love it too.  I refuse to be that woman who decides that she doesn't really want to be a mother while in the delivery room AND, out of respect to Joel McHale, I'm also not birthing up a toilet baby.  Nope, Prospector deserves so much better than that, so this mother will keep pushing until my baby is fully in the world.

But blog shopping only sounds easy because there are as many blogs out there as dust bunnies (I'm obsessed with dust bunnies and am convinced that they target me).  Out of every hundred that I look at, only one will meet enough of my criteria for me to send a query.  The blog needs to be current with a large audience that would have some interest in my story, so blogs about MMA, car repair and steam punk are out.

But that leaves a lot of open territory because the series speaks to many niche markets.  Obviously, there are people who love fantasy stories and I'm researching those blogs, but I'm also trying to reach out to people who love cats, food, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Springsteen and reality television.  Heck, even Kansas City Chief fans, if there are any left, because there is an homage to vintage Chiefs in the first book -- that's a Valentine to Clyde, I hate sports.

So, while I would much rather be writing book four because writing is the easy and fun part, this intrepid lady is diving back into the blog pool.  It's time to wade through all the cute girls posting pix of their newest thrift shop finds and endless adorable grandchildren until I find that perfect blog.  Then all I have to do is find ten more after that and I'll be in business.