Young Adult Wendy Mills' Blog

Snakes, Dogs, and Lotsa, Lotsa Bookstores

3/29/2015

It's been a breathtakingly busy book promotion week, but the icing on the cake came today with a good Booklist review for Positively Beautiful. Yay! I can't share the whole thing because, strangely enough, the review gave away ALL the important plot twists (um...???), but this gist of it goes like this:

"In this poignant contemporary drama, a teen is forced to confront not only the loss of a parent to cancer but the fact that she may also carry the BRCA gene, a mutation that would make her more prone to cancer herself… [t]he emotional core of the novel is convincingly powerful. Even through their inevitable tears, teens will likely appreciate the well-researched depiction of losing a loved one to cancer."

In other news, I signed at the incomparable Macintosh Books on Sanibel Island on Friday, where I met some great people and ate way too many cookies. It's hard to see, but there's a black snake in the bushes below. This friendly snake and its buddy kept me company while I signed outside on the porch. It's a great location! The bottom picture I took on my way off the island. Ahhh, the water!

Also this week, I visited TWENTY-FOUR bookstores in two days. I traveled to Tampa and Orlando with my mom and aunt (and my aunt's itsby-bitsy dog) where we (in no particular order) came close to wrecking three times, traveled over a bridge big enough for a cruise ship to sail under, snuck an itsy-bitsy dog into a hotel when every other hotel in the city was booked, met some awesome booksellers, and found Positively Beautiful on the shelves of most of the bookstores. My biggest regret is that I lost my notes on the names of the people pictured below. I'm blaming it on the itsy-bitsy little dog (just because), though my aunt vehemently disagrees. I've listed the names from memory, so if I get anybody (or everybody!) wrong, please leave a note in the comments or shoot me an email.

View from the top of the Sky Bridge. Note: I did not take the picture! My mom did. :) I've been on a cruise ship that steamed directly under this ridiculously high bridge.

Jake and Eugene at Bradenton Books-a-Million. My first stop of the trip and they were great guys!

Rachel at Books-a-Million

Lindsey at Barnes and Noble.

Tiffany at Books-a-Million.

I also visited some awesome independent stores, including Haslam's in Tampa, where Raymond was very welcoming. I arrived at Inkwood Books in Tampa at ten minutes to closing time, and Stefani, i.e. the "Book Mama", kept me in stitches for a wonderful thirty minute chat. I also visited Books at Park Place in St. Petersburg and Writer's Block Bookstore in Winter Park.

All in all, it was a great week!

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Positively Beautiful: Second Week

3/13/2015

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I made the drive to beautiful Marco Island and visited both locations of Sunshine Booksellers. Not only did they have Positively Beautiful, but they were very friendly! I don't know how I've never been to these bookstores, but I highly suggest you pay them a visit if you're ever in SW Florida.

The view from the SS Jolley Bridge was worth the drive to Marco Island alone!

Working on candy jars for bookstores, and getting postcards ready to send out to bookstores and libraries. Realized I put text where the stamp goes on post card. Ugh!

Another sighting of Positively Beautiful at Naples B&N. Yay!

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An Oldster Looks at Social Media

2/10/2015

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Lately, I’ve been feeling like an old lady. One of those who sits in her rocking chair and gazes up at the planes in the sky with befuddled skepticism at the new-fangled flying contraptions. You put wings in a brick and throw it hard enough, it’ll fly, I reckon. We’ll see, won’t we?

Let me explain. I’m only forty-one, so while Depends seems like a pretty nifty invention when I sneeze, or laugh too hard, for the most part I don’t feel particularly old. But when it comes to promoting a book, I’ve been feeling pretty ancient. My last book came out ten years ago (second baby arrived, and wow, there were a LOT of things that seemed way more important than publishing for a while), and I have to say, I was pretty good at the promotion merry-go-around. I had a smaller publisher, and we were expected to do most of the promotion, which meant a ton of cold calls, setting up my own signings and printing out bookmarks and posters to advertise, and the endless round of stock signings that seemed like a very bizarre episode of Groundhog Day. Fifty-fourth bookstore, same as the first!

I had a website, yes. I believe there was even something called Myspace back then (flashback Tuesday, anyone?), but if Facebook was around, I was not aware of it, and there was definitely nothing like blogging (like we know it today), or Twitter, or Tumblr, or Instagram, or… well, you get the picture. Sending out emails was second choice not first. I recall putting together hundreds of advertising packets for bookstores and libraries, and actually going to post office, and MAILING them, and a good old-fashioned phone call was always the follow-up.

When I signed with my splendiferous agent Sarah Davies more than two years ago, she asked me if I had a Facebook page or a Twitter account. Facebook I had heard of, and had been avoiding for a myriad of reasons (imagine Wendy being pulled into the technology age kicking and screaming) and Twitter?? What the hell was that? It sounded vaguely dirty, because sometimes when I look in the mirror, I still see a twelve-year-old. But I obligingly signed up for Facebook and Twitter and she was right (of course), because when I talked to my editor for the first time, we had a ten minute discussion about social media that I either faked very well, or actually DID know what I was talking about because she very nicely decided to offer me a contract. Still not sure she hung up the phone laughing her patootie off!

Flash forward to now, and I have a book coming out in three weeks, and I have a blog tour planned (Yes, I had to Google it because I HAD NO CLUE and yes, I’m extremely excited because what a great targeted way to meet readers who actually have interest in what you have to say!), my very own blog, a Goodreads profile (which also fell under the province of very-good-things-that-had-yet-to-be-invented-ten-years-ago), and plans to do a Skype book club tour in April. Again, to reiterate, NONE of the things I just mentioned were part of my promotion efforts ten years ago.

Yes, there are still the old standbys. I will still be doing signings and library and school appearances, I will still do stock signings, I will still attend conferences. I will still look into the eyes of a potential reader and talk very earnestly about why they should read my book. But as I prepare to launch myself into the wide-open skies of the social media world for the first time, I still can’t help but feel like that old lady in the rocking chair.

You put wings in a brick and throw it hard enough, it’ll fly, I reckon. We’ll see, won’t we?

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Blogging from the Fetal Position

1/13/2015

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Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m seriously stressed out about this blogging thing. It’s not that I don’t want to do it—no, no, quite the opposite— but I never expected it to be so complicated. I mean, I write every day. I’m an author, for God’s sake. My new book Positively Beautiful is coming out March 3rd (that’s my plug—evidently I’m supposed to have one, so here it is) and my agent liked it, my editor liked it, and some really generous reviewers are saying nice things about it. So evidently I can write, but by the time I read through fifty sites on how to blog I wanted to curl up into the fetal position and cry whhhaaaa!

How do I want to start this? Why would I want to start this? Well, mainly because it seems like nowadays most authors do it. No, Mom, if all my author friends jumped off a cliff, I wouldn’t follow, but if all my author friends were jumping off a cliff in Greece and landing safely in a pool of crystal clear water and then told me what fun it was—well, then. That’s different. I love learning more about the authors of my favorite books. I love reading about Sarah Desson’s dog Roxy and her fascination with GMA, and yes, I’m a nerdfighter. I want to know how Laina Taylor gets her hair that awesome pink color. Inquiring minds what to know.

But there are so many things to think about! Consider:

1. I’m supposed to have a message, a niche, a brand. Sounds like a fancy way of say I’m secretly brain-glomming you into buying my books.
(subliminal message break: buy Wendy Mills’s book, buy Wendy Mills’s book. And quit smoking).

I’m not going to lie, that would be really cool, but I would feel like a cheesy used car salesman if that was the only reason I was writing. I like writing. I like interacting with readers, not only of my books, but of any books. Readers are the coolest people around.

2. I have to decide what to talk about. Wendy’s epiphany an hour ago: “Oh, I know! I’ll write about how I’m trying to decide what to write about.” And that’s how you do it, folks. Wait. It’s not? Sheesh. Back to square one. I must, I must, I must write a post. I have a lot to say. Ask my family. But is anything I have to say worth putting in a blog? Pressure. So much pressure!

3. I’m supposed to provide value to my reader. You guys are supposed to be getting something out of this. Umm…. I’ll leave that up to you. Be kind.

4. And above all, Jane Friedman, who is a Goddess of Digital Media, says don’t pursue blogging unless you are COMMITTED. Gulp. That’s a lot of pressure. I like to write, sure I do, but what will I say? (See number two). And what if I don’t have time, or forget to write a post every week? Will I be able to live with myself? This is a woman who feels guilty when she forgets to check the mailbox every day and waters her orchards every single Saturday. Without fail.

You see my problem. Blogging is intimidating. But popular blogger Anne R. Allen says “Blogs are friendly.” I like that. I can be friendly. I can. Unless I’m standing behind Clueless Dude at Starbucks who doesn’t know the difference between tall and venti, in which case not so much. Then I can be very unfriendly in a totally silent, passive-aggressive way.

So, here it is. My first-ever blog post. I still don’t know anything about plug-ins, analytics or WP Smush it (what?) but I’ve had fun, which I guess counts for something.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Snakes, Dogs, and Lotsa, Lotsa Bookstores

Positively Beautiful: Second Week

An Oldster Looks at Social Media

Blogging from the Fetal Position

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