Back From Lunacon, Now On Twitter

[dr_pretentious]

Apparently there is a standard way to assemble a table of contents while both keeping vigil over sleeping small children and attending a science fiction convention. David and I invented it by accident, but various people who had tried to combine editing with parenting wandered by us as we spread our index cards all over the hallway floor outside the room our two families shared, and all those veteran editor/parents sighed nostalgically to see us at work. The baby monitor buzzed. The toddlers barely peeped. We two passed first and last pages of manuscripts across the hall to each other, considering transitions, adjusting the positions of our index cards when a transition could be improved. We got in a good three hours of sequence-tinkering, and now it's time for us to read the stories, start to finish, in the sequence we're very close to deciding on. We're actually on track to get final answers out to all our authors by the end of the month.

The Broad Universe group reading went beautifully, and I got to know some of my fellow broads a little bit. Gail Z. Martin knocked my socks off. My fiction To Be Read pile is pretty high right now, but her how-to The Thrifty Author's Guide to Launching Your Books Without Losing Your Mind just jumped to the top of my non-fiction TBR pile. One section has a six-month countdown to book release day, with lists of all the things that need to be done and when they need to be in place. Since I'm about six months from the anthology release date, I'd better get cracking.

Every established writer at Lunacon who mentioned Twitter called it an indispensable tool for book promotion. I've resisted a long time, dismissed Twitter as a time sink, fought to protect my writing time and anthology editing time from yet another demand by the book promotion arms race. All right, Twitter, you win! I yield! (Grumble grumble.) The penalty for holding out so long is that some other person named Sarah Avery laid claim to the username before I could get to it, so I'll be tweeting as SarahAveryBooks. I can't complain too hard, since a search on my name doesn't get me any of my usual name-doppelgangers, but instead gets me two paranormal romance feeds that link to my guest post on Paranormality. I figure I'll be learning Twitter's genre conventions for a few weeks before I try to use it in any serious way. Who of you are on Twitter? Whose tweets should I be following?

Comments

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

I learned that I needed a Twitter account this weekend, too, for much the same reason. Perhaps we can leran to use it together.

Here, have a bunch of info!

[purpledice.livejournal.com]

I'm on with the username rularejo...as for recommendations, I can name quite a few celebrities, online shops, and artists (mostly of the webcomic variety), but not much in the way of books and/or writing. There is Mur Lafferty from ishouldbewriting.com, but that's about it (unless you count Wil Wheaton, since he's also a writer).

However, I'd suggest checking out http://wefollow.com/, a (or maybe THE) big-ol' Twitter directory of self-listed users under such categories as http://wefollow.com/twitter/writing. There's also Listorious, a directory of user-made lists of twitters, such http://listorious.com/tags/writers.

...I kinda know too much about random social media thing like this. Which reminds me: have you thought about making a Facebook Page for yourself or your book(s), or have you and I missed it?

(Finally: your last FB message about Gareth was so adorable I've been telling anyone who will listen, and some who won't!)

Re: Here, have a bunch of info!

[purpledice.livejournal.com]

Just thought I should warn you--I sometimes let out all the crankiness on twitter, and use it most when I'm bored at work, so there's sometimes lots of swearing, and sometimes lots of inanity, and sometimes lots of both. No hurt feelings if you don't want to follow me :)

[thunderpigeon.livejournal.com]

My eyelids are transmogrifying to lead, but I'm most of the way through assembling two MS Word documents that are the compiled halves of the antho according to the lineup we came up with on Saturday, and I hope to e-mail you these by tonight, possibly before I leave work today. I figure, if we're going to try to see how they'll look in the book, we might as well get the formatting uniform and booklike.

Actual word count (assuming no more changes) comes out to 54,684 for Trafficking in Magic and 52,455 for Magicking in Traffic, for a total of just over 107,000 words. More than the 105K we estimated at the time, but still within the realm of reasonable and balanced.

I'm going to follow up on some more of this stuff via e-mail.

[blackbear88.livejournal.com]

I'm hamaker88. No surprises there.

as someone who felt much the same way about Twitter at first, then came to quite enjoy it, I have to say it's not the timesink that everyone says it is, unless you let it be that way. Just don't keep it on in the background if you're easily distracted--check it periodically, but don't have it always-running-on-and-on at you. :) One comment, which you're welcome to ignore--a long username will make it slightly harder for people to respond directly to your tweets, as directing them at @sarahaverybooks is using up 16 of their 140 character limit each time. But if you find it's a problem you can change your address in a matter of seconds and it won't screw up your existing followers.

RE: author-types to follow, of course I'm following robin @robinmckinley. I also enjoy Elizabeth Moon's posts @emoontx. For pure entertainment value it is hard to beat @DRUNKHULK... David Malki, who does the online comic Wondermark (which you would love, if you're not already reading it) is @malki. I follow a lot of museums and zoos, you might just search for institutions you're partial to.

Tweet

[amushink.livejournal.com]

I neither twit nor tweet, but may at some point fall victim to yet another reason to sit at the computer.

Just wanted to offer a fresh pair of eyes, you know, if you need someone's new perspective in how the anthology flows...

Yes, I'm out of books since the public library in town shut down Sunday and Monday hours (budget cuts, dangit).