Get comfortable with Twitter, even if what you think you’re saying is the stupidest thing ever. Trust me, other people are saying stupider things than you can come up with.

Twitter is like when my job told me I had to engage other people. I gaped at them, said it wasn’t possible, then I went ahead and did it. You get used to the idea over time. It’s not a change that’s going to really hurt you unless you would destroy yourself in general. Twitter just…

Speeds things up a bit.

I’ve been told for years that Twitter is helpful for authors. I know hashtags are important, but they always irritate me. Possibly because anytime I see the hashtag sign in front of a word a high pitched, teenage voice then says the word in a far too excited tone.

I wish I knew where it came from.

When writing tweets, the rules of grammar don’t matter as much. You can drop a hashtag in front of a word in the middle of a sentence. Tell your inner editor to calm down, you won’t be doing it outside of Twitter.

You do have to react in real time. Which for those of us with full-time jobs, is a little complicated.

So, for example:

Wednesday morning I woke up to Twitter informing me of someone mentioning me in a tweet. I responded, followed them, and then went to check Amazon. Where suddenly I had a spike.

… so I reacted. Ask David gave me links to make instantaneous tweets, so I used one. It was mid-morning probably.

From there I really just cheerleaded on Facebook and Twitter for the rise in the ranks that Trouble was seeing. Trouble at #11 is seeing the most distance travelled. That’s what I’m calling it, distance travelled. Trouble at #8 was pretty well ignored.

The next day I tried Ask David again, early morning with different hashtags. I did get a re-tweet from someone.

The trouble with the next day is that I as full on sick and … don’t really remember what I did. I think I was on Twitter most of the morning because I woke to like four new followers and one of those followers had retweeted Trouble‘s tweet from Ask David to his … some tens of thousands of followers.

Trouble did some that day, but not as much as the day before.

I still have no idea what happened the day before. Did one tweet do that? Really? I searched through everything I could… nadda.

I submitted to between fifteen and thirty different sites for advertising while Trouble was up in the ranks. I was accepted into one that, upon reading the submission guidelines, I have no idea why I applied. They required ten to twenty reviews on Amazon. Trouble has six.

So far I’ve been accepted to three (that have notified me) and Bknights again with the addition of a “viral Facebook post.” Upon review, I was a little silly and chose to be submitted to fifteen Amazon sites instead of what I had done before. But they promise screenshots of the before and after. Awesome, that means I don’t have to take the pictures.

I work the full-time job tomorrow when the advertising hits. On the plus side, I’m working with people who I told about Trouble, and about it’s recent rise in the ranks. If I squeal like a girl half my age who has spotted a member of One Direction, at least they’ll understand.

My next goal (there’s always the next goal) is to bring Trouble to the top five or hit the top 100 of overall books.

Sit Pretty and Dark Spirits are still in the six digits, but even on the best day with a price attached, Trouble only ever made the high five digits.

All right, it’s back to bed for me. Nap time, to help my body fight the sickness.