Reactions wanted!

I’ve often said that I’m a feedback-whore – I love hearing from readers. It makes me happy.

I try to keep as many avenues for feedback open as possible, and am always on the lookout for new ones. With the Apocalypse Blog, it was emails from readers. With Starwalker, it’s comments on the blog, and then the forum. On the weekend, I added a new way for readers to give feedback to Starwalker.

First, let me explain how I got there. I was doing my semi-regular poke around the Web Fiction Guide forums, when I came across a thread that started out discussing weblit and traditional publishing, and wound up pondering the familiar question: why don’t more readers comment?

As it happens, one weblit author did a survey into exactly that, and her results are interesting. Not entirely unexpected, but it does have some great insights – I recommend that any weblit authors take a look.

It’s also worth taking a skim over the comments on that page, as that’s where I found the suggestion to add reaction buttons. Thanks to another helpful weblit author, I discovered that there is a handy WordPress plugin that adds reaction buttons to posts.

Commenting takes time and effort on the part of the reader. There might be many reasons why someone chooses not to comment: some readers don’t want to take or have the time to do that; others may be looking just to be entertained; and others may simply have nothing to say. That’s all fine! I know I’m often too busy to fill out a comment form when I’m going through blogs, and most of the time I wouldn’t have anything particularly interesting to say beyond ‘I agree/like this’. Sometimes I make the effort, but often I don’t.

Having a button to click is much easier. One click and there, feedback given. You can indicate an opinion without filling out a form or trying to formulate actual words. Quick and easy, so even a busy person won’t feel held up by it.

It’s not intended to replace comments at all – I still love and encourage comments. I do adore it when readers cheer on my characters, just let me know they’re reading, and all the other fun stuff I get in comments. Keep it coming! But now you can click when you’re not feeling so chatty.

I had a bit of a headache over what to put on the buttons. This particular plugin is very configurable – you can have as many buttons as you like with any labels on them. Awesome! Wait. What do I want people to click on, now? Um.

I wanted a negative-reaction button, because it feels weird to me not to give someone the chance to give negative feedback. I struggled with finding a label, though – I started with ‘sucks’, and then downgraded to ‘needs work’, and gave up because I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t troll-bait. So right now, there is no negative option (though there’s always the comments!). I might rectify this if people want it and I can think of something to put on it.

So, there you have it. A new avenue for feedback – click away! Tell me what you think! Suggestions for more/different buttons welcome. And the buttons are on every post, so readers can go back and click on favourite ones if they want!

Have fun!

Engage catchup

So, I had myself a little hiatus. Spent time with visiting family, moved house, settled in, got back to work, caught up with the backlog there, said goodbye to my manager, started training the new one in the wonders of technical documentation…. Yeah, it’s been a crazy crazy time.

Things are settling down a bit now. I’ve managed to find enough time to get back to writing this week. I’m sure that you’ll all be glad to know that a new Starwalker post is now up! (I just got done sorting it out and formatting it all.)

I looked at where the story was and decided that three weeks is just too long between posts. I’d like to keep the real-time aspect of it, so I’ve backdated the new post to be where it should have been, if I hadn’t gone on hiatus. My goal is to fill in the missing two posts as I go – I can do about a post every two-three days at the moment, energy permitting, so by the end of next week, I should be roughly up to date. (I’ll probably post them all at once, so don’t hold your breath, but there’ll definitely be at least one going up next Wednesday!)

I’m not sure when I’ll go back to my original schedule of three posts a week. I’d like to stick to once a week for a little while, build up some buffer (oh, how I miss it) and spend some time editing the Apocalypse Blog. I also have another couple of projects I need to find time for.

I’m still getting used to this new schedule and longer days. The CFS is not my friend right now, but I’m sleeping better lately, so hopefully it’ll remain manageable at least. Maybe even improve some. So while I like my return to hour-long commutes on the train, I’m still working up to being having enough energy to fully utilise it. Sometimes, it’s just too necessary to doze all the way home at the end of the day.

I look forward to the time when I can write a post in the morning’s commute, and do something else on the way home.  Edit, rewrite, plan plots. Who knows?

In other lovely news, Kylie Chan is coming to talk to my writing group next month! (Why does everything happen at once?) I’m looking forward to that, and hopefully a good-sized group will turn out for her. Fingers crossed!

Right, back to the grindstone. More catching up to do yet – if anyone is waiting on a response from me about something, I’ll try to get back to you soon!

Hiatus

Since my last post, things have slid further into chaos. Not all in a bad way, but definitely in ways that make everything more complicated!

First, I got sick. The bug going around work decided to bite me, in a low-grade miserable way that dragged at me for 2-3 weeks. Lovely.

Then, things with my family came to a head and I decided not to renew the lease on my house. Instead, I am going to move out and shift in with my folks, taking over the bottom floor of their house. This will let me help them out and avoid some more serious problems down the track.

When I made that decision, I had three weeks to sort everything out. One week of that is taken up by my brother’s visit (he’s around the world for my dad’s birthday), so I really only had two weeks to sort the move out.

Then at work, my manager announced that he’s leaving. One week after my move finishes, he’s off. The best manager I’ve ever worked under is leaving, and we don’t know what’s going to happen after he’s gone. The department will be restructured and we have no-one to voice our needs for us at management level. I think I’m going to have to become more vocal.

Oh, and we have some redundancies coming through, too. I heard just today that my team is safe, but for the last couple of weeks, it has been a worry.

On top of that, there has been getting the new teammember settled into her work, and preparing everything for my couple of weeks off to be with my brother and then move house. We have a big release coming up just after I get back from my leave and there’s lots to sort out to make sure that that happens, too.

Just when I thought nothing else could go wrong, the bookstore where I hold my writing group emailed me to tell me that they’re not opening late any more. So now I have to find somewhere else to hold my writing group every month. Before the next meeting. Aaaaah.

That has been the past couple of weeks for me. The good news is that everything seems to be going to plan so far. The move is all lined up – everything is booked and ready. Currently giving my brother a whistle-stop tour of the area and doing lots of family stuff. Work doesn’t appear to have imploded in my absense yet.

I am bone tired. I slept most of today in the car as we drove around between pretty sights, and I’m still exhausted. I can’t remember the last time I just stopped and rested. I am looking forward to getting rid of this house and settled into my new rooms downstairs, and then sleeping for about a week.

The upshot of all this is that there’s no room for writing. I could probably squeeze in some time to throw something together, but my head is so full of everything that’s going on that there’s no room for writing. I don’t want to sacrifice the quality or story of Starwalker any more than I already have thanks to all of these distractions, so it’s time for a break.

This is why I’m taking a short hiatus. Just for a couple of weeks, enough time to get me past this visit and moving house and caught up with all of my other responsibilities. I’m going to be pretty absent from everything for the duration. I should be back up and running by the end of the month, and will update again once I have a clearer idea of how all this stuff is turning out.

Thanks to all of your for your patience. On the plus side, once I’m moved I’ll have my one-hour commute on the train each way, and will have plenty of time for writing! Or sleeping. We shall see!

Catch you all on the flip-side.

Change of plan

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past couple of weeks. Things have not been going well for me, and if I’m honest, I’m struggling.

There are a lot of reasons for it. Work is stressful and I’m constantly fighting to keep all the balls in the air there. I’m managing more people, more projects, and tighter deadlines than we’ve had before. I’m still learning what the hell I’m supposed to be doing half the time, and every time I turn around, the goalposts have shifted six inches to the left. We’re doing all right, we’re still on-track, but that’s only because I’m busting my ass trying to make sure that’s where we are. I like clear goals. I like to know what I’m aiming for. I do not like playing catchup, especially not when it’s someone else’s fault.

There are also family-related factors at play that I don’t particularly want to get into. Let’s just say that it’s another source of concern, but not one I can do anything about (which is probably worse) except be there for them. It’s frustrating.

And then, once I’ve dealt with all of that, there’s my writing. I’m falling behind with everything. Organising my writing groups is simple – a couple of emails a month each (I have two groups), turn up and pretend to be competent, and enjoy the company and conversation. Easy, right? At the moment, it’s one more thing that I have to worry about, and the other week I started to seriously consider stopping them. Or at least one of them. But then I go to a meeting and I love it. It’s so worth it. It’s the bits in between, sending out the emails and having it niggling at the back of my head, all ‘don’t forget about this!’ Those are the parts that wear on me.

Starwalker is going really well. I keep meaning to post updates on this blog, but it’s yet another thing that I just don’t get to these days. Last month, SW had over 1,000 visitors. As in, different people, all coming to the site to read it. One thousand. And the feedback I get is amazing. People are talking about it. They’re getting excited about the storylines, and attached to the characters. I feel so lucky when I see that! I look at the stats and the comments and I’m all: “Wow. People like my stuff.” It’s a lot to get my head around!

It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever written. I’m going to all these new places with it, juggling and adjusting things as I go to make sure it hangs together, trying to get the physics right enough to be convincing. So far, it’s all working great! I have all of these plans for it, so many avenues still to travel down. It’s exciting, but it’s hard.

I think the difficult parts aren’t entirely down to SW itself. It’s everything else that gets in the way. It’s shifting mental gears whenever I sit down to write, trying to put all the job-related and other stuff aside for long enough to focus. It’s sitting down on the train for twenty minutes at a time and trying to get part of a post down. It’s giving up three evenings a week to pull a post together, edit it into something coherent, and get it posted. And more than anything else, it’s the exhaustion.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome – it is the bane of my life, once again. All of that stuff I’m juggling makes me stressed, and stress makes the CFS worse, and then I get exhausted and that makes it more difficult to deal with the stressful stuff. Fun, huh? It has been bad (and getting worse) for the last couple of months. I keep trying to take some time off, take a break, catch my breath, and that works in tiny portions. Unless it puts me behind with everything (which it usually does), in which case I have to bust my ass to catch up again, and I wind up exactly where I started – exhausted and struggling to keep up.

Last year, I set my sights high. I didn’t do everything I aimed to do, but I did most of it and I came out of it all feeling really good about how it went. This year, I didn’t set myself targets that were anything near as ambitious, I’m not doing everything I aimed to, and I’m still failing. A week ago, I had that thought, the one that says ‘something has to give’. I’ve been here before, looking at myself in a downwards spiral, and unless I change things, I’m not going to get out of it until I hit bottom and have to stop doing everything. That was five years ago, and it was a lot worse than it is now before I realised how close and inevitable that bottom really was. Funnily enough, the key stress- and frustration-factor then was my job, too.

That, sadly, isn’t something I can change. It’ll get better eventually and now is not the time to change jobs. I am in a really good position; the best one I’ve ever been in, professionally. I’m doing well, despite all the crap I’m handling. And more than anything else, I need the stability of that place right now.

And, dammit, I don’t give up on shit easily. It’s probably part of what’s made me so sick – I should have done this a while ago – but having dealt with chronic conditions of one kind or other my whole life, I’m stubborn when it comes to this kind of thing getting in my way. There’s a part of me that suspects I should take a proper break from all the extra things in my life – the writing groups, the blogfic, the novel that’s waiting for me to edit it, the Apocalypse Blog stuff that I promised to do this year. But even as badly as I’m doing right now, I’m not ready to go quite that far. Like I said, I’m stubborn about this kind of thing.

But I have to change something. I need some way to get back on my feet. Right now, I feel like I’m failing at everything, even though it probably doesn’t look like I am. I’m told that it doesn’t show in SW yet – but it will. A post was due up yesterday and I haven’t even started it yet. I’m so exhausted that it’s difficult to think straight enough to write this, let alone slide my brain into Starry and try to step forward with her story.

I’m not going to do yesterday’s post. I’m not going to force it and have it come out half-assed. It’s time to be realistic and cut back. I thought three posts a week would be easy, but when the CFS is this bad, it’s too much. I’ve been tossing around the idea of dropping down to two posts, but I have to be honest with myself – that’s not enough. I’m not going to stop Starwalker – mostly because it will be incredibly difficult to start again if I do that – but I am going to bring it down to one post a week. Take a proper breather in it. Not permanently, but long enough for me to sort the rest of my life out. I’m not sure how long that will be yet.

I don’t know how this will affect the real-time aspect of Starwalker, but I’ll deal with it if and when it becomes a problem. I still love the story and its characters. I’m still excited about sharing it with everyone. Hell, the other day, I was pondering an old storyline I created a few years ago and realised that it would fit into the SW world perfectly. My original planned plot just got extended by another story arc. I am still committed to making this story work and won’t let this CFS screw it up completely.

So there you have it. I’m not giving up, not stopping. But I do need to step back for a while. I’ll aim to post on Wednesdays, I think, because by the end of the week I’m usually so tired I can hardly see straight. I still have to look at the other things in my life and see what I can do about them. I need to fix some non-writing-related factors as well, like the exercise I’m not doing and how often I can’t be bothered to cook. They’re next on my list.  I have some time booked off work coming up, too, and hopefully that will help me get on top of things a bit.

Wish me luck - I think I’m gonna need it – and watch this space!

Kreativ Blogger Award!

The other day, I noticed a new comment pop up on my last post on my writing blog here. When I checked it out, I discovered that my friend, reader and fellow writer, Rissa Watkins, had chosen me for an award.

The award is called the Kreativ Blogger Award, given by recipients to others they believe are worthy of such a title. Clearly whoever started this off is creative in the spelling department (enough to make my internal editor twitch and claw at the insides of my delete key), but it’s a lovely idea. It’s also an honour to be chosen.

Rissa has been a wonderful supporter of my writing since I started the Apocalypse Blog. I met her over on the Accentuate Writers Forum and haven’t looked back since; she’s one of the reasons that I keep going back there! Thank you, Rissa!

So I suppose I should get on with this whole award thing. How does it work? Right. Here’s what I cribbed off Rissa’s post:

1. Thank the person who awarded me the award, and link that person’s blog on my blog. (Check! Go me!)
2. Identify seven things about myself. (Ah, crap.)
3. Award seven bloggers with the “Kreativ Blogger Award,” post links to their blogs, and leave a comment on each of their blogs, to let them know of the honour. (Wow, seven? Well, okay then.)

Seven things about myself. Oh, I hate these. I could cheat and list things most of you already know, but I guess that’s not really the point of this. So let’s try something a little bit different:

• I’m still waiting to grow up. I’m <censored> years old, have my own (rented) place, would love to own my own house, pay all my own bills, and am sidling into management at work. I also dye my hair to hide all the white ones sneaking through. And still, I feel like a kid half the time, especially around people I respect, and have to remind myself that I am, in fact, an adult. It doesn’t help that I play video and computer games and make stories up every day.
• I’ve never truly punched someone. As in, totally lost it and smacked someone in the face. I know how – I’ve studied karate, sparred and even done competition fighting – but I’ve never done it in anger, or fear, or need. I am pretty sure that if it came to it, I would, though, and that scares me.
• I’m not as organised as I look. I make a lot of stuff up on the fly and am lucky enough that it usually works out just fine. I used to be concerned with being prepared for everything, planning and revising, and to an extent I still try to do that. But time and pressure have eroded away opportunity, and apparently, if you drop me in the deep end, I’ll do all right.
• I prefer driving a manual transmission to an automatic. I like the extra bit of control it gives me over the car, and I don’t like having a car think for me. I know what gear I want, thank you very much, and I’d like it now, not in a couple of seconds when you’ve had a chance to consider what my foot up your ass means. Never met an automatic car I liked to drive as much as any of my manuals. It’s perhaps ironic that I’m currently writing a story about a strangely sentient vehicle that doesn’t always do what it’s told.
• I have pretty good coordination. I pick up physical techniques easily, especially routines. It was very handy when learning karate and kata, and probably a holdover from the dancing I did when I was little. I still hope to one day put it to the test and learn to fly a helicopter.
• I like to fix things. I’m a problem solver and if someone brings me an issue, I’ll do what I can to fix it. I enjoy helping people, whatever that means at the time, though that doesn’t mean I’m a doormat. I once shared a house with a girl who didn’t believe that altruism existed in the world and not all the help I could give her was able to change her mind.
• I hate these ‘say something about yourself’ memes. Same with self-promotion – it never feels quite ‘clean’. But apparently, if you say something nice about my writing, I’ll do it anyway and be unable to shut up. Luckily, I think this is number seven, so I’ll stop now.

That’s enough about me! More than enough, I think. So, moving swiftly on to the lucky recipients of my vote for the award. This has been hard to pull together, because I don’t read a lot of blogs in the five minutes a week of spare time I have. Here are my choices, in no particular order:

• My dear friend Clover, author of the Inventor blogfic. It’s a wonderful story she’s got going there, rich with details from the city she lives in. She does a great deal of personal exploration to get her authencity down and it shows.
• Tonya R Moore, writer of science fiction stories, both serials and short stories. She runs a  a web fiction directory on her website as well. She’s friendly and supportive, and always a pleasure to talk to. She doesn’t keep a writing blog, but do her serials count? Well, good enough for me.
• Becka Sutton, writer of fantasy fiction, mostly online serials. She also maintains a writing blog, on which she does frequent reviews of other online fiction. It’s always wonderful to see someone offering their opinion on others’ work, supporting other writers by doing reviews. She gives honest reviews as well, which is important, in my opinion and as a writer.
• Ann Somerville, author of gay romance stories, from short stories to epic novels. She offers many stories for free on her website, but also has many books for sale.  Her blog contains a wealth of information about writing, the communities she is active in, and self-promotion for authors. She’s honest, no-nonsense and doesn’t pull her punches, and it’s great to see someone telling it how she sees it.
• Gabriel Gadfly, poet and short-story writer. He offers his work for free on his website, and his blog contains lots of useful observations and insights into the web fiction world. I enjoy his poetry, and the advice he offers is well worth taking a look at.
• Naomi Kramer, short story writer, all offered for free online. She also keeps a personal blog, where she talks about lots of stuff, including her writing. She offered a promotion service for web fiction writers through Twitter and a Free Fiction Online blog, though sadly she hasn’t had time lately to run those.  Her website says she’s too busy with her writing – I hope that’s true, and I hope she finds time to come back soon too! Whether she’s active right now or not, I still think she deserves an award for her hard work.
• Zoe E Whitten, writer of ‘dark and weird stories’. She offers lots of work for free online, including e-books and serials. They’re a lot of fun to read, and her blog is well worth checking out, for fiction, news and reviews.

Congratulations to all of you, and thank you for your work. Your creativity shines on the rest of us. May you continue to do so!

Forward thinking

With the Apocalypse Blog running headlong towards its conclusion, I have been turning my brain to the brightening question: what next?

Some of you may know that I’ve had another blogfic knocking around in my brain for most of the year. As often happens when I dive into something new, ideas clamour for attention. When I was getting into the groove of AB and loving it, I asked myself ‘what else can I do with this format?’ And an answer came immediately to mind. I have held off doing anything with that idea, because I wanted to remain focussed on AB and get that done before something else distracted me.

More recently, I’ve had another couple of ideas crop up, one with a story attached and the other more of a character and concept. These are both blogfic-type ideas as well. They’re not very well-formed, but one might take shape soonish if I have the time.

There are some other things that I have been putting aside in order to focus on AB as well. The post-a-day schedule really hampered by ability to get any other writing done, and the novel I wrote last year has fallen by the wayside. I’d like to get back to it, edit and redraft it, and start to do something with it. I also have a short story that I stopped halfway through (I can’t remember why – I think I hit a snag with it), and I want to get that finished too.

And because I’m a glutton for punishment, I am not quite ready to say goodbye to AB forever once the new year rolls around.

So, things I have lined up for the next year:

• Novel – edit/redraft. Aim to submit.
• Apocalypse Blog -
  • Finishes 31st December 2009.
  • e-book it – need to look at how, where, etc. Also need to decide whether/how much I should edit it.
  • Shorts – short stories showcasing different cast members. Masterson, Jersey, Bree – I think I can do these without any problems. At some point, I might look at the Seekers’ future, too.
  • Merchandise – design and make available (?).
• Other blogfic -
  • Starwalker – a ship’s log, told by the ship. Site is halfway done, planning is partly done, needs some work to nail down cast and details. Posting 2-3 times per week (none of this every day craziness!).
  • A smite-happy angel in a Hawaiian shirt. Earth suddenly cut off from Heaven and Hell. Ahhh, handflappy. Yeah, that’s all I have right now. Tentative name: Earthwalker.
• Short stories – various. Finish that outstanding one! This one is definitely a maybe.
• Do more writing tips posts.

Hmm. It’s a lot, looking at it like that. I get tired just thinking about it all. The first thing I have to do is finish up AB. It’s a struggle at the moment – I still have over a week left to write, and it’s hard to find the time and energy with everything else going on right now.

In my original planning, I had hoped to be having a break right now. AB was supposed to have been finished off in November, leaving me a couple of weeks of December to myself as a break, and then a couple of weeks of planning for the next one. AB would post itself up until the end of the year, and by the time 1st January rolled around, I’d be ready to start posting the new blogfic. Perfect.

Yeah, that hasn’t happened. I’m still writing, editing and posting AB. I’m still rushed off my feet with everything. My head is reeling with everything I have to get done, and I am never going to get everything (anything?) prepared for the next blogfic before the beginning of 2010. Considering how painful it is to write and post with no kind of buffer, I don’t want to start the next one without at least a week or two’s posts in-hand. Preferably two weeks’ worth.

I’m the only one setting these schedules for myself. And you know what? I don’t need to punish myself with them. So I’m going to take January off. I’m going to take that month to do my planning, set up the site/s, build up a buffer of posts, and get myself ready to dive into the rest of the year. I need a chance to get my feet under me before I set off running again.

So that’s the plan. Get through the next week and a half, collapse, then catch my breath and start the craziness all over again. With slightly more planning and maybe a trace less crazy. Who knows?

You gotta try, right?

Picking up

I’m doing better. My last post was somewhat dire, but it needed to be said. I had been silent too long. I am immensely grateful to all of those who responded, publicly or otherwise.

At the moment, I’m in the process of disconnecting emotionally from all of that stuff. It’s not an instant thing – it’s a gradual separation, and I have to remind myself sometimes that this thing doesn’t matter, and that thing isn’t quite so important. I’m dealing with the fallout and attempting to reduce any further damage to myself or anything else I still care about, but I’m getting there. I’m like a buoy that has remembered how to float again.

I’m also sleeping better. The chest pains still come and go, particularly if I get wound up (they’re one of the more extreme and unpleasant symptoms of CFS, and only turn up when it’s particularly bad for me), but I’m starting to come back to a more even keel. It’s never great, but at least I’m not as shaky and emotionally strung-out as I was.

As I’ve said a couple of times over the past few days – I prefer my drama on the page rather than in my life. Let’s put it back where it belongs.

So, I’m picking up the Apocalypse Blog and slinging it in a new direction. Both the blog and I needed a change and a bit of rejuvenation.

I allowed a post to get a little bit romantic, after fighting to stop it from becoming sappy. I think I rearranged it about three times before I was happy. It was fun! It has been ages since I’ve had the chance to do something like that, mostly because I’ve been beating Faith down with very unromantic stuff. But it’s still there, bubbling under, and Faith deserves to have a bit of a break from being pounded on emotionally.

The other plot-stuff relating to Haven is also coming up towards a turning point. It has been a long climb, and it’s almost time to run down the other side. I just have another thread or two to get in place, and then we’ll see what the shape of it all looks like. Now that I have more mental energy to devote to it again, I’m looking forward to seeing how it all comes out.

I had two bits of bad news today. The first was from an old friend of mine, someone I haven’t spoken to in a while due to various life stuff on his end. I didn’t know how bad it was until he spoke to me this morning. I’m helping him out where I can, though it’s difficult when he’s on another continent. We worked something out, and hopefully he’ll be able to get himself and his fiancee in a more comfortable position now. I’m relieved that I was in a position to help him out.

I came across an inspirational quote earlier, which made me think of him: “Emotional security is just as important as financial security.” (P.K. Shaw) I think he’d agree with that.

It relates to the second bit of bad news I got today, too. It’s family-related and I don’t want to get into it right now, but it’s more saddening than stressful. I’m doing what I can to ease things, even if it’s just being an ear when it’s needed, and offering a spare bed. It’s not a problem I can solve but that doesn’t mean I can’t help the people I love.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another at the moment. But I’m okay. I’m healing. Things aren’t great, but they’re getting better.

If you want an image to take home with you: My heart is as big as a star and covered in bandaids. They’ll fall off when they’re ready.

Web Fiction Links & Resources

Over the past nine months, I have picked up a number of useful links for registering online fiction, communities, and other resources. Partly for my own sanity, here’s a list of them for reference – I know some of you out there are thinking about starting your own online fiction, if you haven’t already!

Directories

Web Fiction Guide – a great directory of web fiction, with good-quality reviews and a helpful community in the attached forums. Lots of good resources there.

Muse’s Success – again, focussed on web fiction and offers a rate and review function.

Web Fiction Directory – another directory focussed on web fiction. 

Free Fiction Online - blog listing all kinds of online fiction available for free. Also runs polls on fiction popularity. The lovely lady who runs it also has a Twitter account and tweets links and ads continuously. Worth getting on her list!

EpiGuide – web entertainment directory. Still getting to grips with this, but they do have some interesting features.

Technorati - blog directory, social networking thingy, uses ‘blogosphere’ a lot.

BlogCatalog – another blog directory. My entry is still awaiting approval, so I have no idea how good/not it is.

Communities

Accentuate Writers’ Forum – very friendly forum full of largely professional writers. Good advice and resources to be had, and very welcoming to newcomers. Competitions, freelance writing leads, and publication opportunities found here.

MobileRead Forums – forum for users of e-readers. Lots of good info about e-readers and full of readers of e-books. Not so great for an ongoing serial like mine, but they will help with making that available to e-readers, too. Friendly crowd!

Post Apocalyptic Media – forum and resources for anything post apocalyptic. Good for information and reaching out to an audience into this stuff.

Writing Resources

Blog Fiction – lots of advice and info for blogficcers. Also runs a widget that others can put on their sites that lists all the latest posts on active blogfics.

Writing Excuses – weekly podcasts by writers for writers. Solid advice, very encouraging, hilarious and only 15 minutes long. Love it (and am way behind, oops).

Advertising

Entrecard – free blog-linking advertising, requires a widget on your blog. Good for generating hits, but the quality of those hits is questionable – the Entrecard system encourages its users to visit sites to ‘drop cards’ and then move on again. Hard to say if it generates any actual readers (though it’s possible that advertising through it might).

Project Wonderful – get paid to host ads, and pay to place ads. If you do both, it should be self-sustaining. I haven’t actually tried this yet, but it is on my list of opportunities to look at. I have heard only good things about it so far. Payments are dependent on ad showing time, not clicks.

Google Adsense/Adwords – get paid to host ads. Payments are based on click-throughs, but only for ‘genuine’ clicks. I’ve heard that the classification of ‘genuine’ clicks is too narrow, which has made advertisers unhappy (and poorer). Won’t generate a lot of money. On the other side, I don’t know what kind of hit-rate you get by advertising through Adwords – I have a voucher somewhere that I should use. Again, haven’t used this one at all.

If anyone has any additions, suggestions or comments, let me know! Always happy to expand my list. :) If this winds up morphing into a big beastie, I’ll probably move it to its own page here on the blog.

Consider me kicked

I have just read a wonderful post about why writers should blog (or blog more, in my case). Lots of good points there!

It’s something that I know I need to work on more. I still have a list of Writing Tips posts that I need to write and put up. And there’s lots of other writing-related shenanigans that I could put in here, too.

As I mentioned in my last post, part of why I started this blog was to chronicle my adventures in writing the Apocalypse Blog. AB started out as an experiment for me, a challenge, and an exploration of lots of different facets of writing. It has grown to take over parts of my life, in ways that I can’t bring myself to mind. It’s fun, it has readers, and I can’t believe it’s still going after nine months.

Last week, it tripped over the 200,000 word mark. See, this is the kind of stuff that I should be putting in here! Also, holy crap. I haven’t ever written that much on one story before.

Also, a very kind person over on a new forum I tripped over last week has done me a cover for AB. As if it was a real book. How awesome is that? I’ll sort out posting it and stuff soon, to share it with you all. In the meantime, you can find it on the AB thread there (I think it’s on the last page).

So. Right. I’m going to make an effort to post more on here. There’s more I want to say about Dillon’s death, and other related musings. Keep an eye out, there will be more here soon!

Apologies, my commentators

I just found some of your lovely comments buried in my spam comment section. I didn’t put them in there, I promise! The blacklist looks like it’s a bit enthusiastic, so I have wiped it clean for now. You shouldn’t have any problems commenting from now on.

Big, huge apologies. Thanks for all your comments – I do love getting them, and I have (finally) replied to the ones I’ve found! I’m going through the spam section and will sort out any more I come across.

Okay, back to your normal service.