First things first, if your very kind friend offers to throw you an amazing book signing party for your debut YA fantasy novel, The Travelers, and invites a bunch of local friends, their young adult kids (eg, your audience), and several local librarians, here are things you should NOT do. (Yes, I moronically did all these things!)
I've lived in 4 places in my life - Northern Virginia, central Virginia, NYC and NJ suburbs. So, essentially, I'm a North East kind of girl. That said, I've seen a lot of places in and outside the US. I've visited Australia, Spain, France, Ireland, Australia, Canada and Mexico. I also get to travel extensively in the US for work. In the last year, for some reason, Dallas is a hot spot for travel. I've gone there 5+ times in the last 12-ish months...
Once upon a time, before I’d even decided to try to publish my own book (The Travelers, Saguaro Books), I was unaware of the world of independent publishers. I didn’t read books by small presses and I definitely did not read anything self-published. I determined my reading list based friends' recommendations or reviews in large media outlets. (Don’t judge. I just didn’t know better at the time!) Until one day, a friend recommended that I read this new book “Lost Girl”...
So, I am new to the world of twitter, facebook and Instagram. I’d used social media in the past, but in very limited circles with very limited posting of my own. Now that I’ve published a book (The Travelers, Saguaro Books), my world has changed. It’s opened up to the wonders of social media and this thing called #Bookstagram. I’m obsessed. So, now, for my top 5 off the week!
The Books Over Looks blog series focuses on how to encourage children and young adults, particularly girls, to look to books and reading to increase self-esteem and knowledge rather than appearances and material possessions. At some point as girls grow up, they become very aware of and concerned about their appearance. They start to derive self-esteem by how many likes they get on Instagram or the number of followers on Snapchat...
It's t-shirt Tuesday. The day where I choose one of my husband's many amusing t-shirts as inspiration for my blog. Given my continued struggle with the book-mas tree this week (see blog from this weekend) and the fact that it's still not complete, my choice of t-shirts this week will seem pretty fitting. And since it's Tuesday, let's combine TWO things and make it a Twos-day: T-shirt Tuesday and Tuesday Top Ten.
It's Monday morning. And I'm tired for one of the best reasons! Last night was the monthly meeting of my book club, the Nightlighters. And we definitely lived up to our name, talking pretty late into the evening for a school night. As it is the holiday season, we decided to do a book exchange and we were supposed to bring a book to give as part of this. Sounds easy right? Well, not for me. I was worried...
Have you ever heard of a book-mas tree? Well, it’s essentially a tree made of books that you decorate with lights and other ornaments for the holidays. Sounds great, right? I love books. Therefore, I decided this year our family would make a book-mas tree. Here’s how it went, step-by-step, if you’d like to replicate our experience. Although you may want to read the how-to before trying it yourself…
K.L. Kranes 