Back on the blogosphere with news, views, and a pretty picture.

I have a good friend, a marketer by trade, who knowing of my interest in marketing for authors sent me this link to David Meermans Scotts web blog.

Trawling around the site I discovered little gems on marketing and case studies where companies have got it all right The world wide rave....or horribly wrong....the worldwide rant.....

Have a look. David talks about how Lisa Genovia self published a book and then through great viral marketing it became a NY Times best seller.

We came back from the extended holiday a few days ago and in the midst of getting children’ ready for school and dealing with the ‘on hold until we get back’ issues, I have been working and swearing about the latest funding application for the Conference.

In mid December we released information about the conference inviting people to register their interest by going on our mailing list.....wow what a flood of interest there is....we sort of suspected there would be.... the list is climbing towards 100 and that’s after only a month in the blogosphere and being emailed around.

If you haven’t registered your names for early bird updates do so...the intention with the mailing list is to let everybody on it know first, before the general public, when registrations open...It will be on a first come first served basis...i.e. because we only have 80 places.

The big bloggers are waiting for our official logo (coz they like pretty pictures) and the mocks of the proposed logo look funky indeed. We have some amazing speakers confirmed we’re waiting on a few more....and obviously funding applications because our overriding quest is to provide you with a conference YOU CAN AFFORD to go to.

In our conference meeting on Saturday...two of our number have confirmed books coming out this year and two of us have been rejected due to the recession....(I’m one of them... yet again it was we would publish but.....) I will be very interested in the quality of the books published this year by the publishing houses who have contacted me with their rejections....I would like to have a career not a hobby.

I would like to thank my eldest child...smart, beautiful and most of all kind... for looking after the younger two so I can use the computer with relatively little interruption....

Just a little note as I tweak my blog layout....I came across this from Janes blog...Does the author need indie epublishing platforms....lots of food for thought....go look....

pic is tulips among the vegies in our garden...

writing... or not... in summer

The holiday blog....
Ah summer....when you take the kids away from their regular routine...insist they go to bed when the sun is still in the sky because you are knackered from being beaten at ‘Risk’ by the teenager, teaching swimming most of the day to the middle kid and convincing the baby that just because the place is different, the food is different and the bed is a BED... they still have to have an afternoon sleep.

However there are little gems...

My family pointed out that this weekends regional paper carries a nice review of my book BONES. 8 out of 10 Thank you Northern Advocate. Fleur your book got 8 out of 10 too.(what good company I am in.)

I scanned the New Years Honours list for familiar names...didn’t see any children’s writers...which reminded me that last year I did the same thing because a couple of us got together to nominate Jack Lasenby...imagine our disappointment when we found no mention and we had a stellar support letter and major published articles on Jack and his work...I found out later that he was offered a very nice award...(he could have accepted it....)

I hope to finish...get closer to finishing... my Mars novel while I am up here in the North. Well that’s the plan...but you know the best laid summer plans...I’m not even thinking about the revised budget for the conference (sorry Fi but you did send me away and tell me to work on the novel....)
So if I get an internet connection...if the novel is going OK....If I get sick of cocktails on the deck at four, pulling my waterlogged kids from the pool and endless sunshine I’ll post again before February.

Maureen

pic is Martian dust storm over Phoenix in October 08...(probably more than you wanted to know but as I'm writing about Mars at 50 below while the temps here are 30+...)

This is an image of Mars taken from orbit by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's Mars Color Imager (MARCI). The Red Planet's polar ice-cap is in the middle of the image. Captured in this image is a 37,000 square-kilometer (almost 14,300 square miles) dust storm that moved counter-clockwise through the Phoenix landing site on Oct 11, 2008, or Sol 135 of the mission. Viewing this image as if it were the face of a clock, Phoenix is a shown as a small white dot, located at about 10 AM. The storm, which had already passed over the landing site earlier in the day, is located at about 9:30 AM. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems