Surviving Facebook

Social networking is now touted as one of the best ways for authors to promote themselves, and perhaps it’s true. If most of us primarily sell books to friends, it makes sense, and sometimes even cents, that the more friends we have, the more books we will sell. So we sign up for MySpace and Goodreads, Twitter and Facebook and start collecting friends like so many stamps. If a thousand friends are good, then two thousand are even better. If two thousand are good, then let’s aim for ten thousand.

While frantically collecting friends, we forget two things. First, social networking is about being social. It does no good to have connections if, to them, we are merely a nameless face, or worse, a faceless name. Too many people use their book cover for an icon, though it seems to me it defeats the purpose. How does one make friends with a book cover? You are, or should be, aiming for long-term relationships. You don’t have to waste your time playing games with your connections, but you can comment on their status updates and photos, you can post interesting links and notes on your profile, you can participate in discussions.

Second, we forget that these online sites, especially Facebook and Goodreads, were set up for real-life friends to interact. They were not set up for promotion.

Goodreads automatically limits your activity, so it’s hard to abuse their system, but Facebook is a different matter. Several of my friends have had their Facebook accounts disabled because of “abusive” behavior, though they were doing what we all do — making connections with strangers. I have become good friends with many of the strangers to whom I sent friend requests, so by limiting myself to people I know would have greatly limited my Facebook experience. Still, Facebook says they aspire to be an environment where people can interact safely with their friends and people they know. Accordingly, they expect accounts to reflect mainly “real-world contacts.” They do not endorse contacting strangers through unsolicited friend requests as such requests may be considered annoying or abusive.

To prevent this type of behavior, Facebook has limits in place that restrict the rate at which you can use certain features on the site. Your account can be disabled if Facebook determines that you were going too fast when sending friend requests despite being warned to slow down, or because your friend requests were being rejected at a high rate. Your account can be disabled if you send too many of the same message, post too often to other people’s profile, or indulge in repetitive, promotional activities.

The problem is that Facebook does not tell you ahead of time what their limits are, so it’s a matter of guessing.

So far, I have survived Facebook. I have over 4, 000 friends. I administer one group and co-administer three others. I send weekly group messages informing people of the featured discussion. I have a fan page. I post daily status updates, feed my blog into my profile page, post links to sites where I am a guest.

So, how did I do it?

Every day, I added ten to fifteen friends — no more. When I reached 2500 friends, I stopped sending requests. The rest of the connections came from my accepting others’ requests. At the beginning, I accepted everyone, but now that I am nearing the limit Facebook allows, I am a bit more careful whom I accept. For example, I won’t accept requests from icon-less people unless I know them personally. (Here is the dichotomy of Facebook. You are allowed 5,000 friends, who are supposed to be people you know personally, but who in the offline world has that many friends and connections?)

Although it’s one of the things marketing coaches recommend, I never thanked people for accepting my friend request. Besides emphasizing that you’re not friends, the comment can trigger a warning from Facebook, especially if you post too many similar comments in one day. You can post almost anything you want on your own profile, but you are constrained by Facebook’s unwritten rules as to what you can post on other people’s profiles.

The best thing I can tell you about surviving Facebook is this: if you get a warning, stop. Do not use Facebook for at least a week. If you don’t heed this advice, and you get another warning within that time, your account will be disabled, and all your work will be wasted.

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Even Comment Spam Can Sometimes be Tasty

Spammers have discovered one of my more obscure blogs, but some of the spammers got wise — instead of the usual gibberish (which I was going to post here to show you how totally giberishy it is, but decided I’d better not attract their attention) these spammers post quotes, and it works! I don’t delete them. Just goes to show that not everything is all bad, not even comment spam. So, here are a few of the quotes left on the blog, author unknown (at least to me):

I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.

The ‘Net is a waste of time, and that’s exactly what’s right about it.

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

Memory feeds imagination.

To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all.

Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important.

Get pleasure out of life…as much as you can. Nobody ever died from pleasure.

In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred.

I write because I’m afraid to say some things out loud.

As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.

The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.

Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice.

Prolific Blogger Times Three

The blogosphere has spoken. For two years I have kept up this blog to little acclaim, and now that I’ve taken a step back for a short while, barely blogging once a week, I have won not one, not two, but three prolific blogger awards! So now that the blogosphere has spoken, what is it saying, that I’m more interesting when I don’t blog? That I should hurry back and refocus my energies on blogging again? I hope it’s the second. Perhaps by the end of this month I will be able to return to a more regular blogging schedule, but until then, you should check out the blogs of those who gave me the awards. They really are prolific and terrific bloggers!

 A.F. Stewart’s Blog

JaxPop, Haunted City Writer

Joylene Nowell Butler, One Moment at a time on Cluculz Lake

Congratulations are especially in order since blogging on a regular basis is giving way to microblogging on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Friendster, particularly among young people. Apparently, the long form of blogging, which tends to be 300-500 words, is way too involved and time-consuming for the younger set. Those of us over thirty are still plogging away.

And while I have your attention: are you a romantic who loves baseball? Be sure to enter J. Conrad Guest’s contest, and you might win a signed copy of his novel Backstop and a signed baseball. All you have to do is write 200 words about a romantic baseball date, either real or imagined. 200 words? Not much for all you prolific bloggers out there! Send your entry to secondwindpublishing@gmail.com.  I’ll put in a good word for you. (Now you only have to write 199 words!)

I Smell a Blog Coming . . .

My brother sent me the Google Maps image of my parents’ house. There were several cars and a couple of people in the driveway of the house, and he was trying to figure out who the people were. I, of course, had no idea, but it turns out that one of the people was . . . me! I’ve made only a few trips to visit my parents in the past three years, and strange as it seems, during one of those trips Google photographed the house. Spooky as hell — no one on earth took that photo, yet there I am, frozen forever in the Googleverse.

I really had no intention of blogging about this, being in an unblogging frame of mind, but after we realized that the person was me (I always wondered how people recognized when someone looked like them — I didn’t even recognize myself!) my brother sent me an email, “I smell a blog coming  . . .” So, not to disappoint him, here it is. A blog about Google Maps and Me. (That was the title I had planned to use, but somehow I couldn’t pass up free words, so I used my brother’s instead.)

This sounds as if it has the makings of a good mystery. A woman is checking at her house on google maps to see if a new photo with the improvements she made have shown up, and she sees an unfamiliar woman skirting the house. Thinking it’s a meter reader, she thinks nothing of it, but then she finds out that all her meters are read automatically and becomes obsessed with finding out who the person is. Is someone casing the joint? Is her husband having an affair? Is her son?  

Or, use the scenario of my photo – my brother and I cannot figure out who the people are, though we ask around. So we become obsessed with finding out who the people are. One turns out to be a neighbor, but the other . . . the other is a siser we never knew we had.  What happened to her? Why didn’t we know about her? 

I smell a story coming on . . .

Making Time, Finding Time, Having the Time of Our Lives

Once upon time when I worked in retail, I noticed that whenever a day seemed to go slowly for those of us womanning the cash registers, customers would complain about how the day was dragging. Conversely, when the day seemed to fly by for us, customers would also comment on how fast the day was passing. I started taking an informal poll then, asking people if the day was moving fast or slow. With but a single exception, the days went either fast for everyone or slow for everyone, which made me think that time was variable, though somehow our bodies and artificial timekeepers managed to key into the new time speed, so there was no way of knowing that time moved at different rates.

Oddly, time is no longer variable for me. It speeds up and keeps speeding up until I wonder how twenty-four hours manage to fit into a single day. Except when I write, of course, then it seems as if time doesn’t exist.

Time is a major factor for all of us. People often ask me how I juggle promotion, writing, and offline life, but the truth is, I don’t juggle very well. I always drop a ball or two so that a single ball is kept in the air at a time. (Am I mixing metaphors?) Right now my offline life is taking precedence (nothing particularly good or bad, just work). I am doing almost no promoting, not keeping up with my discussion groups (except for this one), doing a single blog post a week, and yet all that and more used to fit into a few hours a day. Now it barely fits into a week.

So, let’s talk about time. How do you make the time to write? For those of you who are published, how do you find the time to promote? How do you make sure that you are having the time of your life when you are writing, or does it become work after awhile? If you don’t want to talk about time, feel free to talk about any aspect of writing or your writing life.

Let’s talk.

My writing group No Whine, Just Champagne will be discussing this article during a live discussion about writing and the writing life on Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 9:00pm ET. I hope you will stop by our Writing Discussion #96. If not, leave your comments here. I always enjoy seeing what you have to say.

The Scent of Channel Number 5

Lately in online discussion groups I’ve been coming across the attitude that only the story counts, that a few errors more or less in a book make no difference. Perhaps. I’ve been told that there are three errors in Daughter Am I, three in More Deaths Than One, and one in A Spark of Heavenly Fire. Of those seven errors, two were the replacement of the letter el with the number one and one was the replacement of the number one with the letter el, so I don’t really count those, though apparently others do. Someday, perhaps, I will get them corrected. But that’s not the point of this little discussion. The point is that although errors are hard to eradicate completely, some errors do count.

I was reading a thriller the other day, one of those convoluted stories with a dozen endings as if the author couldn’t figure out which ending he wanted to use. There were three crimes, all dealing with the same group of people yet none of the crimes were related. One of the crimes was a kidnapping, and though I know who did the kidnapping, the story was so complicated I still don’t know who instigated it. Despite all the flaws of the book, the one thing that took me out of the story was a typo. The author tried to set the scene using smells — the aroma of an expensive cigar, the smell of leather chairs, the scent of Channel Number 5 lingering in the air.

Channel No. 5? Makes me wonder that smells like. The English Channel? Salty, perhaps a bit fishy, perhaps a tinge of pollution? Maybe it’s a clean scent — after all, what do I know about the English Channel. Or perhaps it’s the smell of a television channel, though I’m not sure what that would smell like. Or perhaps it’s the smell of a gutter or a conduit. Not quite the feeling he wanted to portray! And if I hadn’t been so taken with the idea of Channel Number 5, I might have learned who the kidnapper was.

I Asked and You Answered. Thank you!

A couple of days ago I posted a plea for interview questions to submit for my Blog Radio interview on Thursday at 12:30 pm CT, and you generously came up with some wonderful suggestions. I don’t know how closely the moderator, April Robins, will follow the list, but it should give us a great starting place. Thank you all very much!

Here are the questions I submitted:

You are the moderator or co-moderator of four successful Facebook groups. How did you get started, and how did you end up with four groups? What’s the secret to your success with the groups?

How much time and organization does it take to be active in online communities?

Is your Suspense/Thriller writers’ group only for suspense/thriller writers?

Does it make sense to join a FB group, like the ones you host, if the writer writes for the YA audience?

How do you balance your time between writing, blogging, promoting, moderating 4 groups, and other day-to-day responsibilities? Do you have a written schedule or “to-do list”? How do you keep up with it all?

You have three books published. What’s next?

What is the most common question you are asked by fans or would-be writers?

What are your writing goals for 2010?

Which of your books was the hardest to write/most research intensive? What’s the biggest writing challenge you’ve ever faced?

How did you decide your genre?

Please stop by April Robins’ Blog Radio show Red River Writers Live — Savvy Designs on Thursday, January 7 at 12:30 pm CST to hear my responses. You can also call in with additional questions. The call in number is (646) 595-4478. Hope to hear you there!

Brag Time!

I know I said my time for self-promotion is past, but I didn’t say I wouldn’t brag, and wow, is this something to brag about! I just saw a review on Goodreads.com for More Deaths Than One, and either Mickey Hoffman’s resolution for the New Year is to be kind to other authors, or she really liked the book. I’m going with the second option. Thank you, Mickey! I hope everyone reads the review. It’s the sort of review we all dream about and seldom see.

“What are you waiting for? Read this book. Now. “More Deaths” is much better than any “bestseller” out there. The plot is constantly surprising and intricate, the characters draw you into the tale and the overall writing is top notch.” –Mickey Hoffman, author of School of Lies.

You can read the first chapter of More Deaths Than One by clicking on the More Deaths Than One tab at the top of this blog. You can also download the first thirty percent of More Deaths Than One free from Smashwords. Hmmm. Do you think I mentioned the title enough?

Interview Questions Wanted

I am going to be a guest on April Robins’  Blog Radio show Red River Writers Live — Savvy Designs on Thursday, January 7 at 12:30 pm CST, and I need to supply ten interview questions. A few of those questions have to relate to the facebook groups I moderate or co-moderate, and the rest are up to me. I like a freewheeling interview, where we just talk rather than do a Q&A, but I can see that some guidelines would help. I will talk about my Facebook groups and how I ended up as moderator for four of them. And I will talk about how generous the members of all the groups have been with their time and expertise during the discussions, but beyond that? Haven’t a clue. If I were still in my blog tour/self-promotion phase,  I could feed April questions about my books, but that phase seems to have passed. I’m just me again, not an author on tour, and so I’m plumb out of questions.

Any suggestions?

Oh, and if you haven’t yet joined one of my Facebook groups, I am extending a personal invitation. Well, it’s more of an impersonal invitation, since I’m posting it here and not sending it to you individually, but still, it’s an invitation.

Suspense/Thriller Writers

Second Wind Publishing

Genre Book Club

Help Support Independent Publishers

And, of course, there is my live chat on Thursday evening at 9:00 pm ET. Always a lively discussion! So, feel free to join this group, too: No Whine, Just Champagne.

Whole Lot of Forgetting Going On

I find myself in a peculiar situation. For two and a half years, I lived for the Internet. First thing in the morning, I went online to see what was going on, checked again in the afternoon, and then spent all evening and late into the night in cyberspace. Most days I posted to my blog. That was always one of my favorite things — being able to say what I wish for everyone (or no one) to read. So it came as rather a shock when I checked my blog today and discovered my last post was ten days ago. Ten days! Whatever happened to my addiction? How is it possible that after all that time, I started forgetting to go online?

This has happened before. When I was younger, I used to run a mile every day. Did that for years. And then one day I simply forgot, and that was the end of my running. Same thing with writing — for eight years I wrote almost every day, sometimes two and three times a day. And then one day I forgot. And that was the end of that for a couple of years. To get back into the habit, about three weeks ago I started writing a page every night (mostly stream of consciousness, not fiction, but still it’s writing). And then one night I forgot. I was half asleep when I finally remembered, so I turned the light back on and did my page.

So, back my peculiar situation. I had resolved to cut back on Internet time — I really was spending way too much time here — and now I have to resolve to spend more time. Or not. I could just go with the flow, I guess, and see what happens, but going by past exerience, nothing would happen. I’d simply disappear.

Hmmm. That could make an interesting story, though perhaps it’s been done. The idea seems familiar, but if I ever read such a book, I forgot.