Category: This Blog

And I thought I won a lobster…

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

The other day I found a comment on my blog telling me I was nominated for a Liebster Award.  Rotten speed reader that I am, I thought I’d won a free lobster dinner.  But this is even better.  It seems the Liebster Award is designed to promote the blogs of lesser-known writers.  A big thanks to my friend thecoffeefox for thinking of me, and especially for the nice things she said about me and Baker’s Dozen on her blog.

I guess I should post the award now.

liebster-blog-award-2Just what this place needed: more pink hearts. 🙂

Oh, the rules!  Here they are:

1. Each nominee must link back the person who nominated them.
2. Answer the 10 questions which are given to you by the nominator.
3. Nominate 10 other bloggers for this award who have less than 200 followers.
4. Create 10 questions for your nominees to answer.
5. Let the nominees know that they have been nominated by going to their blog and notifying them.

 

I hate talking about myself (lie), but if I must I must.  Here goes.

1.  Why do you write?

Because I’d rather not spontaneously combust.  I just took about a year off of writing to deal with personal changes; it was definitely making me hot under the collar.  I look forward to going home tonight and writing.

2. Who or what do you like to read?

I don’t read a fraction of what I want to.  I like to read within the genres I write (sci-fi & fantasy), but my tastes tend to wander.  I’m particularly partial to humor.

3. What gives you inspiration?

What doesn’t?  Whenever I say something stupid and face the consequences of it, I try to remember what great story fodder it will make later.  Or if I read a science article, it makes me want to write a science fiction story.  Or if I study a mathematical concept, I want to incorporate it into a magic system.  Every author hates the question, “where do you get your ideas?” Ideas and inspiration are everywhere.  The question is: how do you turn it off?

4. What is one thing you would like someone who reads your blog to know about you?

I started writing with no formal training.  I read how-to-write books and read good science fiction and fantasy and I wrote my butt off to get where I am.  And where is that?  It doesn’t feel like I’m anywhere when I look toward where I want to go, but looking back I can see how far I’ve climbed: 25 or so sales including Writers of the Future, being a panelist at cons, self-pubbing a book of my short stories (and actually selling some).  It’s not an easy road, but I love to write so I do.

5. What is your favorite color?  (Seriously.)

Purple.  Not exactly my favorite, but it’s my daughter’s favorite so it’s the color I respond to best.  Second is pink.  I’m kind of partial to black, green, red…but that’s all secondary.

6.  What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?  (You can use your imagination, offer the standard quote, or just smile.)

I know I swallow without chewing if I get in a hurry, so pretty fast I’d say.  (resisting…quoting…Python…)

7. Do you like your given name, and if not what would you change it to?

I like my name.  I contemplated a pen name, or even a nom de plume, but I decided against it.  I do wish more people remembered the W, though.

8. What is the dumbest or least favorite question someone has ever asked you?  (You can’t say #6. Unless that’s true.)

I once had a student ask, “Are there really space whales?”

9. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Home.  I am a bit of a homebody, but I’d love to go to Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and/or on a cruise to…anywhere really.

10. What is your favorite cartoon character?

Dr. Doofenshmirtz.  Raised by ocelots, had to be a garden gnome…backstory gold!

So, there you have it.  Looks like my next duty is to select ten more victims, er nominees.  Let me wander through my blogroll here and see who’s deserving…

1) Annie Bellet – Annie has been an internet friend since early in my writing career.  She’s a Clarion grad and has been seeing her share of success.  (It’s been a while, but Hi izanobu.)

2) Alex Kane – Alex is another old internet friend and also a Clarion grad (of the West variety).

3) Andrew C Porter – Andrew is a SF in the same state as me (disarray?).  He doesn’t update his blog often, but I enjoy seeing what updates he offers.

4) S.C. Wade – S.C. is a speculative writer and a devout Christian (which his Facebook posts regularly reaffirm).  He’s very much a community-minded writer and likes to help out other writers.  And a generally nice guy.

5) Diabolical Plots – This is one f my favorite blogs.  David Steffen and Anthony Sullivan (and occasional guest bloggers) offer interviews and reviews and lots of other good stuff.

6) Brad R. Torgersen – I met Brad at the WotF workshop several years back.  Since then, his career has exploded with award nominations and Analog publications out the wazoo.  Oh, he also has a novel forthcoming from Baen.

7) Jason Fischer – Jason is another bloke I met at WotF.  He has very quirky taste and an amazingly awful wit that always gets a laugh (horrible puns, anyone?).

8) Alex Black – Alex continues the WotF 26 trend.  I enjoy his blog, which recently has me itching to start watching short films.)

9) Tom Crosshill – Another WotF 26er?  Why not!  Tom had a Nebula nominated story and a good nose for story.  And I understand he’s an incredible ballroom dancer.

Last but not least…

10) Jordan Ellinger – I’ve known Jordan electronically for years and finally met him at the WotF 26 workshop (he was a winner for volume 25).  He’s a writer, publisher, and all around busy guy (maybe that’s why his blog seems a little un-updated).

Wow, I did find 10 people.  Now for their 10 questions:

1) What’s the hardest thing about writing?

2) What’s the best thing about writing? (It might even be the same thing as #1.)

3) What is your day job?  (If it’s writing, tell us how that happened.)

4) Think back. What book/story/writer/event made you decide that you could write?

5) Name your favorite villain (one from books/stories, one from tv/movies).

6) What was your favorite subject in high school? (Lunch doesn’t count)

7) What’s the best movie you’ve ever seen that other people probably haven’t?

8) What was the last book you finished reading?

9) iPhone or Androd?

10) If you could travel back in time and interview one person, what would the two of you have for lunch? (Hey, I have to give lunch some love.)

Wow, that makes for the longest blog post I’ve had in quite a while.  Thanks again, thecoffeefox, for involving me in this shameless promotion scheme.  This was fun, and looking for 10 blogs was a trip down memory lane.  I hope some of my nominees perpetuate the pyramid.  Have fun with it.  I know I did.

Where to REALLY find me

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I was skimming my blog stats (as I do periodically in my attempts to track what topics that I discuss might actually interest people) when I realized someone had clicked on one of my “truly useful” links at the right: Where to find me.  My memory blanked on that particular post, so I clicked it myself.

April 2009?  Wow, a lot has changed since then, huh?  Not that my stuff is billowing out of the bookshelves at Border’s (oops, maybe a bad choice), but I can be found much more easily nowadays.  For instance, this old post suggests I have no stories available here.  That’s inaccurate.  I recently removed the story “Blood of a Soldier” which was no longer fitting to my style and replaced it with “Excuse Me“, the story my WotF peers referred to as “a 1500-word fart joke.”  More me, but not indicative of all my stuff.

You might luck out and find a copy of Writers of the Future volume 26 in a real brick-and-mortar bookstore; so far I’ve only spotted it at a Books-A-Million.  There’s almost no chance of you spotting Zero Gravity: Adventures in Deep Space occupying retail space, but that’s by no means due to any form of inferiority compared to other sci-fi anthologies.  Both of these are available through Amazon as well as on the Kindle…and I suspect other devices I do not own.  “The Drake’s Eye” and “How Quickly We Forget” are both flash fiction pieces still archived online at Every Day Fiction.  Oh, and don’t forget (no pun intended) that the latter of these is in The Best of Every Day Fiction volume Two.

The products from that old post contain my stuff as much as they ever did, but I’ll be damn impressed if someone who reads this blog also stumbles across a copy of NFG issue 2.  Or The Drabbler issue 6.  Or Triangulation 2004.  If you have one of these or find one, let me know.  You can send it to me and I’ll sign it and send it back.  It’ll be worth a lot a collector’s item when I’m famous.  I’ll even pay the return (domestic) postage.  Beyond Centauri volume 27 is out there, too.  (Heck, I’ll sign anything else of mine you send me, too, but you’ll need to cover the return trip.)  Drop me a line and I’ll give you my address.

The blog post in question also made reference to me polishing up “Chasers” to send to reprint markets.  Mind you this was two years ago.  I just sent it to Escape Pod today, before clicking on the link.  Weird.

This is all on my Bibliography page, of course.  I guess this post is just me pimping my wares.  For the record, I fully intend to (but have not yet) crack some other markets soon, like IGMS and DSF, maybe some other jumbles of letters.  So keep an eye out for my name, W and all.

Blogroll Update

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 5 Comments

I’m in the process of updating my blogroll and links.  There are a number of people I need to add.  I don’t want the list to be so long that no one can find anything, so I try to subtract occasionally.  If I remove your blog and you want me to add you back, let me know.  Mostly I remove blogs that seem inactive or slow.  (Not that things here have been breaking the sound barrier.)

I’ve been blogging for…what, two and a half years now?  I have far from the busiest blog in the world.  But I like my little corner of cyberspace and it’s nice when new people drop by.  And after having a similar discussion in comments with S.C. Wade (incidentally one of my new additions to the blogroll), I thought it might be worth while to discuss ways to get more people to visit a writer’s blog.  More importantly, some ways to get them to come back again.  Most of this is elementary, but worth a quick rehash.

Comment on blogs you frequent. Think about it, if you like blog XYZ.com then maybe people who like XYZ.com will like your blog.  It’s reasonable.  Fit yourself into the conversation.  Pick blogs that don’t get hundreds of comments per post so you don’t get lost in the deluge, but chat.  Make sure you enter your info so people reading that comment will be able to click and get back to your blog (or website or whatever).  I find such links most efficient when they’re within the same service (WordPress, livejournal, etc.), but it usually works across providers.

Link to blogs you frequent. If you link to my blog, I get a trackback hit.  I even get an email about it, so I know.  The first thing I do (not everyone is the same) is go check out your link.  I am in part making sure you aren’t asite that specializes in marsupial porn that’s spamming me, but I’m also checking you out to see who you are and if I might want to visit your blog.  Or maybe my visitors might.  A badass site will warrant an immediate add, but mostly I make a mental note and watch for your comments.  Eventually I’ll add the blogs I’ve visited a few times so that I can get to them quickly and so that others have the same option.

Talk about stuff people search for. Some of my most viewed posts cover things like Clarion/Clarion West responses (of course), semicolons (really?), movie reviews, and links to other authors.  This doesn’t count whatever posts are accessible at a given time on my homepage.  People are finding these posts through Google, IceRocket, Technocrati, Bing, or some other search protocols.  By the way, you are registering your site with the big search engine databases, aren’t you?  (I won’t go into it here.  You should google it.)  Whatever it is that you do that other people do too, that will bring them to your site…if you talk about it.

Use tags and categories. It is annoying when someone has more tags than they have words in their blog post, but they focus searches.  Those words ping harder than normal words on a search engine and tend to open backdoors to your site (like through WordPress’s tag listings).

Get Published. For most people reading this blog, that’s probably your goal.  (That or reading my stuff or learning more about me…yeah, you’re mostly writers.)  But selling something will get your name out there and inspire people (even a few is good) to look for you.  Of course, publishing isn’t 100% within your control, but submitting is.  No matter what your slae percentage is, the more attempts you make, the more you will sell.  Also, find a way to subtly slip your web address into bios for those sales.  I have it in WotF 26.  When those books start selling/being delivered/getting read, my traffic should pick up at least a little.  (I hear Amazon has started shipping preorders and the book should be currently available on Kindle and one or more other electronic readers.)

Put your web address in your signature line. Yes, it’s annoying and mildly pretentious, but no more so than quoting Tolkein or Frost or whoever at the end of an email or message board post.  And it’s largely invisible to people not looking for it.  As I blogged not long ago, I recently had an editor check out my blog based on a submission.  If you can make someone curious about you, it’s good to give them a way to follow up immediately.

Have some personality. I have never had anyone comment on how useful my market list is.  It’s mostly there for me, so I can hop to my favorite markets easily.  I don’t offer much profound wisdom.  I’m not much of a stepping stone to bettering a career (yet).  The only things anyone ever says about this blog relate directly to my blog-personality.  Either I’m conversational or not too arrogant or funny or real…that’s what I have to offer.  Don’t offend people; don’t tap dance and juggle; just be yourself and let people in a little.  The ones you want around will likely come back.  And screw the rest of them.  (Too much?)

Be productive. Everyone hates wasting time (even three seconds) clicking on a link just to see the exact same that was there the last time you tried it.  You don’t need an hourly post or even a daily post, but I see that my hits increase when I have a new post.  People drop your links if you’re blog is too stagnant.  People come back more often if doing so has rewards.

Reply to comments. More than a word or two.  If someone bothers to share something with you, let the know you appreciate by sharing a little more back.  The more personal their sharing, the more interested your reply should seem.  This lets that commenter and everyone else who reads it know that you give at least half a damn about the people who come to your blog.  Again, this brings people back.

Don’t prattle on endlessly. Long blog posts are never read.  Really, did you read this whole thing?  The more famous/familiar/brilliant/funny someone is, the more likely I am to read their observations about life, the universe, and everything.  But even then I tend to skim for words I care about.  And if every post is a multi-page meditation, I’m not likely to return often.  I can read anything as long as it’s short.  Cereal boxes, shampoo bottles, haikus, the first page of a Jehovah’s Witness flyer.  I can find meaning in most of those, too.  So short is good.  And as I’m violating that rule more with each keystroke, I’m going to sign off.  Happy blogging, and welcome to my new link-ees.  (Link-eds?  Link-olns?  You get the idea.)