Layla M. Wier's Blog

I’m not going to be abandoning this blog, but one of my goals for the new year is to consolidate my social media presence a bit, and to that end, I’ll be doing a lot more of my blogging over at http://www.laylalawlor.com and mostly linking to posts from here. Not that I’ve ever been that great at updating this blog, but, well, that’s the problem, really … there are only so many hours in the day, and one of my “to do” things during the last couple weeks of December is to look at how I use social media and where I can trim and consolidate so I’m not spread quite so thin. Laylalawlor.com is going to become my main social media hub, and I’ll be doing more with Twitter and Tumblr, and then linking from this blog and a few of my other social media hangouts. I’m hoping to be able to do more with my social media (and have more fun!) if I’m not trying to use it in quite so many different locations …

It’s like having two birthday parties! I’m having another release party today on the Dreamspinner Press blog (it ended up being rescheduled for multiple reasons, mostly to do with me being a FLAKE and not getting all of this ready back in October …). Anyway, I’ll be posting excerpts, doing another giveaway or two, and chatting about the writing process behind the book. Feel free to stop by and say hi!

http://dreamspinnerpress.com/blog/

Held For Ransom by Layla M. Wier

Length: Novel/200 pages

Genre: Contemporary romance/humor

Ebook on DSP | Paperback on DSP (**25% off!**)

Kindle | Paperback on Amazon

Nook book or paperback on B&N

Motorcycle-riding mystery man Ransom has a plan to help DJ save his town’s Christmas carnival. Can DJ save him in return?

Today I’m at Aidee Lanier’s blog talking about female characters in M/M fiction. Both my current novel and my previous one (Homespun) have a major female POV character, and I was a little nervous if it would hurt the novels’ reception, but at least so far, the reaction seems to be positive. Your thoughts are welcome!

If you’ve been following the news about Ferguson, MO, I have a post over at my other blog about ways to help.

Has it really been a week since I last posted here? Predictable.

I had a guest appearance at Anna Butler’s blog yesterday, and will be at Aidee Ladnier‘s tomorrow, talking about writing female characters in m/m fiction.

I was kindly hosted last week by Jana Denardo and Grace Duncan.

I will also be having a release party on the Dreamspinner Press blog this upcoming Saturday (the 29th).

As noted in last year’s blog tour post-mortem, I feel as if I spent way too much time on the “Homespun” blog tour writing guest posts — time I could have spent more usefully writing more novels! Not that guest posts aren’t useful — they’re vital to networking, really, and I deeply appreciate people giving me space on their blogs! – but I felt like I poured far too much energy into writing long, detailed guest posts compared to the amount of return that I got on it. Most people don’t do blog tours as in-depth as my first one. I can see why.

This year was MUCH more efficient. I did nearly all of my guest posts in one day … okay, largely because of time constraints, but I don’t feel like they suffered terribly for it. Not every guest post has to be a lovingly detailed work of art. I included more excerpts, which are fast and easy, but probably just as good an enticement (if not more so) than the photos, videos and so forth that I was doing last time. I also had a more streamlined blog tour with fewer stops, but spread out over just as many weeks.

… that said, my sales on Held For Ransom are definitely down from where Homespun sales were at this point (if I remember correctly). So maybe the extra promo actually made a difference? Except we aren’t deep enough into either blog tour this close to the release date for it to make that much difference, I don’t think. It’s so hard to say because every story is its own creature. Homespun was a little more unusual and maybe therefore it found readers more easily in the early days. (But HFR is more conventional so I would expect it to do better? DIFFICULT.)

On a small point of squee, Held For Ransom has a review on Amazon already, and the reviewer liked it. :>

Well, today was my first full-on Facebook/blog/Twitter release party, so now I’m writing up notes to help me in planning future events. (And perhaps other people will find this useful too! Learn from my mistakes.)

Overall I was pretty happy with it. A bigger turnout would’ve been nice, but given that I really didn’t advertise it AT ALL beforehand so it was basically just drop-in traffic from my various social media, it went well! I also got some people entering the contest and “liking” my FB blog that I didn’t know, which means I managed to expand my reach just a tiny bit outside my normal social circle, so that’s a success then. \o/

Between FB/Wordpress/twitter/tumblr, I ended up getting 14 contest entrants, which was actually better than any of my one-day contests last year on the DSP blog. On the other hand, it was spread over a bunch of social media and I wasn’t requiring anything more demanding than liking a post, whereas people for the DSP contests had to answer a question, so there is that. On the third hand, the majority who entered my contest today actually went above and beyond the basics, by reblogging/sharing and otherwise helping me spread the word, or commenting and chatting with me, so that is great. :D

I realized in late afternoon that the contest post, which is what everyone was linking to, actually didn’t have the name of the book or a link to it or really anything to advertise the book at all, so that’s not so great. :P I went and hastily edited it in, and I don’t think it matters all that much since most of the people coming to the contest post today were coming by way of another post somewhere else that did have the information, but I really need to remember that in the future.

I also didn’t mean for this to consume my whole day the way that it did — mostly because I didn’t prepare anything beforehand, so I had to write up everything as I went along, select excerpts, etc. It would have been a lot more efficient if I’d prepared it all ahead of time. Although it would have still taken up my time whenever I did it, so maybe that part doesn’t matter.

However, I do feel like I should have had less idle time and more posts to engage people. I got a pretty good response on discussion posts, so I need to think about that a little more more ahead of time and have more of that kind of thing!

Also, even if I don’t prepare much ahead of time, I really need to have my intro posts ready to go. For whatever reason, writing promo copy engages the social centers of my introvert brain and I ended up feeling socially exhausted after launching the release party, which meant I wasn’t as motivated as I should have been to keep engaging for the first couple of hours — exactly when I should have been doing the most to promote it and stimulate discussion! (Not that I didn’t enjoy it; I was just tired and having trouble coming up with new things to post.) So next time, I should do all of that ahead of time, so that when I’m ready to start I can just drop in my prepared posts and be ready to launch.

And so, a bullet-point list of notes for next year:

“Advertise” on social media ahead of time, so people know to expect it
Have more discussion posts to get people engaged
More excerpts (probably in chronological order from the book) and perhaps writing-process posts as well, talking about writing the book; I didn’t even think of doing that this time!
Get my launch posts, graphics and so forth ready to go so I’m not doing them at the last minute and wearing myself out before the party even starts
Start a bit earlier, so there’s more time for people to participate, especially in European time zones (I didn’t get it going ’til around noon my time, which is already late afternoon on the east coast, and bedtime in Europe)
Perhaps I could have games of some kind – round-robin fic, scavenger hunts on blog, stuff like that?

And stuff that worked, so I should keep doing that:

Promo posts at Tumblr and LJ
Twitter links to new posts on FB/blog
Contests
Discussion posts
Excerpts

And perhaps the most important note to me (something I DID do this year, and need to do next year too!):

Have fun, because then other people will have fun too!

…. and I’ve selected the winners of the giveaway (Veleda and Christine; congrats!) via random number generator and contacted them. The virtual release party is now over — and the nice thing about virtual parties: no cleanup! I really appreciate the comments, likes, reblogs and retweets, and I’m looking forward to hanging out more with y’all in the future. Thank you for the support!

There is still time to enter the contest if you haven’t already! And here is another excerpt from Held For Ransom – Ransom and DJ’s first meeting, when DJ notices a stranger picking up trash. (I really should’ve led with this one, rather than the one from later on – well, live and learn. Did I mention I’m not that great at self-promotion? XD)

–

The stranger was wearing a hoodie with a logo for the Aldona Raiders—the high-school football team in the next town—so he was someone local. DJ was still pretty sure he’d never seen him before. He would have remembered that narrow face, the long dark lashes cast down as the stranger hunted for cigarette packs and plastic grocery bags in the weeds along the fence.

“You guys must lose a lot of balls in that river,” he said when DJ was close enough.

He was still just as good-looking close up. His hair was dark and floppy, and longer than anyone in Osmar, aside from the Hilsinger cousins, would tolerate. It was almost down to his collar.

“The Reardons have a cottage industry fishing them out downstream,” DJ said. “They train retrievers, and the balls float.” The Aldona guy gave him a skeptical, are-you-shitting-me look, and DJ grinned. “Honest to God. It’s the truth.” He held out a hand. “DJ Lanning.”

“Ransom,” the stranger said. He stripped off his leather work gloves to shake DJ’s hand.

Well, the name fit in, at least. The Hilsingers would probably have named one of their kids Ransom if they’d thought of it. DJ had gone to school with a John Deere, two Harleys, and a Colt. “You’re from up Aldona way?” he asked.

Ransom shrugged. “I’m from all over. I saw you putting up flyers. Lost dog?”

“Lost carnival,” DJ said. Ransom looked confused, so DJ pulled out a wad of flyers. He’d found a piece of clip art showing a circus tent—he figured it was close enough—and below that, he’d thrown together some half-assed copy.

WINTER CARNIVAL!

FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!

DEC. 10 17

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!

555-1702

He hadn’t noticed ’til he’d printed them out that he’d put the wrong date on them. The carnival was usually the second Saturday of the month, but they were past that now. He’d spent a hand-cramping hour that morning crossing them all out and writing in Saturday’s date with a laundry marker. He’d also put his own number on the flyer without thinking about it. After fixing the first few, putting Inga Hutton’s instead, he gave up and just decided to deal with it.

“Sounds like fun,” Ransom said. “Where is it going to be?”

“At the ball field. Isn’t that on the flyer?” DJ asked. “Goddamn it. Well, everyone in town knows where it is, anyway.”

Ransom flashed a quick, white grin. “Small towns, huh? Wish I was sticking around that long.”

He hooked a thumb through the belt loop of his jeans. DJ realized belatedly that Ransom might be flirting, except it had been so long since anyone had flirted with him that he couldn’t figure out how to respond. Most of Osmar knew that he was gay, which meant the girls had given up a long time ago. As for the gay kids—well, there was that small dating pool thing again. So he said the first thing that came to mind, which was, as usual when DJ tried to get his flirt on, wildly inappropriate.

“That’s okay, it’s probably going to be a disaster.”

Still hours to go on the contest – enter here by commenting/liking, or promote on Twitter/Tumblr/etc for TWO chances to win! (Though you may have to tell me you did it because I might not notice otherwise, and I’d hate to miss out!)

Okay – new discussion topic! Tell me about a good book you’ve read lately. :) I’d love to find out about some new authors to look for!