Time was, if you were a writer, you sat down and you wrote. When you had something polished and ready for submission, you hired an agent, who found you a publisher, and the publisher printed and promoted your book. Today’s writers are advised to “develop their author platform” – places online where readers, fans, agents, and publishers can find, follow, and even interact with them – and, ideally, do so long before they are ever published. They say to think of it as a “jump-start to the marketing of your book.” Bottom line: You need to start a blog.
I can only imagine what Dame Agatha Christie would have to say about this.
Well, if four years of Catholic school at an impressionable age taught me anything at all, it was to follow instructions, so here I am. Although I actually started with a Facebook Page. Then came the Twitter account, Pinterest, Instagram, and I’m getting a few others going, too. See, this whole social media thing was a big part of my life B.C. (Before Crime Writing), so this will be the easy part.
As I was struggling to decide how to open this blog (“Welcome, Mystery Fans!” was ruled out fairly early), I realized I didn’t want to just fall out of the sky into your cornflakes without providing any background or context. Then I remembered several “personal” posts from my long-running marketing blog that seemed a worthy starting point, as I think they’ll help you to understand who I am and how I came to be writing mystery fiction on a Maine island by way of New Jersey.
Those posts are significant for another reason: They were written on three successive December elevenths (12/11). There is no significance to that date, per se … but as I was importing them into this site, I noticed something … odd. In December of 2011 (also 12/11), when I exchanged my New Jersey cell phone number for a Maine number, the last four digits of my new cell number just happened to be … 1211.
Just sayin’.
By the way, these numerical anomaly-type things happen to me on a fairly regular basis. You might even find some of them occurring in my books, just because I find them interesting. And sometimes a little creepy … but in a good way. I believe Dame Agatha would approve.
Since I’ve deactivated the marketing blog, I’ve migrated the three December 11th posts to this site. You can read them here, here, and here. You’ll want to read them in order to see just how crazily our original plans morphed into where we are now. What a long, strange trip it’s been. (Hat tip to the Grateful Dead)
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