Insecure Writers Support Group #IWSG post--my special guest Ann Best is back to say hello and share her take on SEOs!

It's the first Wednesday of the month, and today I'd like to thank Alex J Cavanaugh and his trusty co-hosts who will do the rounds, making sure everyone's post gets a look in.

Co-hosts! Please visit:

Lauren Hennessy
Lisa Buie-Collard
Lidy Wilks
Christine Rains
Mary Aalgaard

Today I invited a long-time blogger friend from back in the day when blogging seemed so much simpler and yes, friendlier. I was sorry when my friend Ann Best, known to many of you, decided twice that she could no longer handle blogging. Thankfully, this successful memoir author is back with a WordPress blog where she hopes to garner new readers. 

Ever wonder about SEO? Well today Ann is sharing with us what she's hoping to achieve. At the moment she's feeling somewhat insecure as she builds her audience. I hope by putting Ann front and centre on my blog today, a little of her insecurity will float away as you make her welcome.

Over to you , Ann...

It’s wonderful to be blogging again. 

It really is. 

I’ve missed you, “Old Friend from Far Away.”

That’s the title of a wonderful memoir I just bought by Natalie Goldberg, and it reminds me of “old” blogger friends. Of so many of you who are still “out there.” I hope you’ll stay around for a while because it’s so true what Ms. Goldberg says in her almost-haiku introduction:

To have an old friend visit

    from far away—

      what a delight!

Memoir is the genre that life led me to, culminating, when I was 58, in a rough draft of my published memoir, my first and probably only published memoir, In the Mirror. A Memoir of Shattered Secrets, published by WiDo Publishing.

Though you never know. I didn’t know about two years ago, at age 73+, feeling overwhelmed from over 28 years of caring for my disabled daughter, that I would ever come back to blogging.

Why am I back?

Because I like people, and I like to write.

Because I thought, I’ve written a memoir that I’d like some more people to read. We're all insecure about finding new readers – aren’t we? We all would like to make some money with our writing – wouldn’t we? And even if we get a traditional publisher, we still have to do our own marketing, something that most of us are insecure about.

And so . . .

I was browsing the Internet. I think I was on Facebook when I saw the advertisement: Join Wealthy Affiliate. Turn Any Passion Into a Successful Marketing Business. This is where you promote other’s products. But I soon decided, after joining, that I’d set up a site to promote my own product – my book. And with Wordpress you can monetize (mine isn’t a free one).

I’ve been walked through building the site, the basics. I’ve learned about keywords (extremely important) and search engine optimization. And more.

Still learning. I don’t intend to be a marketing guru. Mainly just a blogger. And a writer. You write copy, or in my case it’s more personal essay.

I know the unspoken rule these days in blogging is to be short and sweet, but you need at least 1500 words for the search engines to notice you they say. And at least five posts. And more. And more. 

I’ve managed two posts so far.

I’m having a wonderful time.

I feel energized.

Ideas are everywhere. 

As a personal blogger, I stroll through my childhood, teen years, marriage, divorce, disasters. And research what others have written. IMO there’s always something to write about.

It won’t be exactly like the good ol’ blogger days – the world has changed. But I’m so happy to be back, and look forward to reconnecting with “old” friends “far away.”

Thank you Ann.

Please Tweet: Join #memoir #writer Ann Best at http://ctt.ec/b3Gj0+

You can find Ann's new WordPress blog HERE. Please visit and say hello and check out her latest post, The Walking Wounded!

Ann didn't ask me to promote her book, but it can't hurt if you like to read memoir.

$2.99 Amazon.com

179 reviews!!

• Have you ever taken a long blogging break?
• How difficult was it to return to regular blogging and find readers?
• Are you on WordPress or do you find blogspot satisfactory? Or are you on both (like me).

After you leave a comment for Ann, please click HERE and read more IWSG posts.

And the Write...Edit...Publish (WEP) winners are announced today! Please visit and congratulate three clever authors if you have the time!

Christchurch NZ earthquake. Publication Party! Seventh and final session. Author Ann Best. Win a critique or the Grand Prize!

Before our session gets underway I want to offer my thoughts and prayers to those across the Tasman Sea in Christchurch New Zealand, who are enduring yet another earthquake disaster. This time there has been an appalling loss of life as it happened when people were at work. Many of these high-rise buildings have collapsed. It looks like a war zone over there. Queensland has sent many Search & Rescue personnel and equipment across to help in the recovery/retrieval operations. Help has been offered from around the world. People are sending messages from the mobile phones from amongst the rubble. Hopefully there will be many more survivors...

Now, amidst yet another tragedy, life goes on. Ann Best has been waiting in the wings to speak to us.

IT'S A NEW PUBLISHING WORLD OUT THERE

Hello one and all! Today is our final session of our memorable publishing series. I, and so many other aspiring authors, have learned so much from very hard-working, never-give-up speakers. I've found each and every session an inspiration and as this series comes to a close I will be able to go back over each session and follow through many of the links I've not yet found the time to thus far. 

So, a big thank you to all you wonderful authors: Christine Bell, Clarissa Draper, Alex J Cavanaugh, Helen M Hunt, Lisa Maliga, N.R. Williams and today Ann Carbine Best. If you're new to the Publication Party concept, it would pay to go back and read over the sessions. I've provided the links at the end.

Now before we get started I must announce the winners from last week's session. The winner of the critique is Zan Marie and the winner of the e-book is Kari White. Congratulations ladies. Contact N. R. Williams directly for your goodies. Her email is: gillael@aol.com 

Ann Carbine Best was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. She now lives in the Shenandoah Valley, her favourite place, where she is full-time caregiver of her disabled daughter. Ann lives not far from her and Larry's other three children and seven grandchildren.  She started writing when she was in elementary school, and for sixty years has never stopped. During this time she gained a B.A. in English and an M.F.A. in creative writing. Over the years, she has published and won awards for stories, personal essays, and poetry, and is currently plotting a MG novel, a YA novel and two novella-length memoirs. Her first full-length memoir, In the Mirror, is scheduled for publication by WiDo Publishing company this spring.



“I’ve lived long enough,” she says, “to write memoir.”

Over to you, Ann. Tell us about your writing journey.

Thank you Denise and welcome to you all here today. My journey is longer than most of the speakers who have addressed this enthusiastic group, but this just proves that every writer's journey is unique.

I was born in 1940. The Forties and Fifties was a great time to grow up. I was born at the beginning of World War Two, but I don’t remember anything about it. But I do remember the first story I wrote. I was in sixth grade. “Call of the Canyon” was its title. I don’t remember anything about it, but I do remember that the teacher had very shy me stand in front of the class and read it.

This hooked me on writing, and performing (I did oratory and debate in high school).


I didn’t buy books. I couldn’t afford them. During my teenage years, I rode my bicycle spring, summer, and fall to the local library, and checked out historical fiction and short story collections. I read a lot of the O. Henry Award stories. I loved the short story.


I loved reading and writing as far back as I can remember. It was my main interest (I also liked photography but never had the money to buy the equipment). My goal was always to be a published writer.


When I was about eleven, I started reading my country cousins’ collection of Nancy Drew mysteries. I wanted to write one like them. I couldn’t compose very well on Mama’s old Underwood typewriter, and so when I was twelve, in longhand on pencil tablets I wrote two Susan Benson mysteries. I also began writing improbable romances, all of them long since lost. The only romance I vaguely remember was based on a song from the Fifties: “Blue Star when I am blue, all I do is look at you.” I laboriously typed it then sent it to Redbook magazine. It promptly came back, rejected.

This was the golden age of the magazine market. Oh, those were the days! Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, McCall’s, Collier’s, the weekly Saturday Evening Post all published short stories. There were also several prominent teen magazines. I was a senior in high school when I submitted a short story to a Seventeen magazine contest. My name appeared with several others who received special commendation.

As an undergraduate in college, I took all the creative writing and literature classes I could handle. My stories, essays, and poems were published in the campus magazines. I won awards for some of them.


I married when I was twenty-one, and divorced my husband when I was forty because he wanted to live with his gay lover. Two years later I moved from Utah to Virginia to go to graduate school. The last eight years of my first marriage was the subject of the creative writing thesis I wrote for my Master of Fine Arts degree, a thesis that became the basis, twenty-five years later, for my soon-to-be-published memoir.


Personal experience has turned out to be the underlying successful factor in my writing. As well as my age. I can see life as a whole and my life more clearly at age seventy than I could even ten years ago. “Emotion recollected in tranquility,” as the poet Wordsworth said. In graduate school, I thought I was “tranquil” enough to write about my past--but I wasn’t! But I tried, and am so glad I decided to take my not-so-well-written thesis and try to turn it into a book worth someone’s time to read.


It’s been a long journey, but a fun one. I never dreamed when I typed my stories on typewriters the current generation sees only in photographs that one day I would be composing on a computer that doesn’t require making corrections on multiple copies. And that I would be making friends worldwide through blogging. Thank you, all of you, for making my writing journey so enjoyable.


I have learned that all things are possible for those who never give up on their dream. It might not come true the way you imagined, but that’s okay. What would life be without the surprises, even the not-so-good ones!


The biggest surprise was a small press accepting my manuscript. WiDo Publishing. It was the only press that I felt was a “fit” for my book. Happily, they accepted it, and worked with me for months on the editing. It needed good editors! I see now that I could have self-published, but I’m glad I didn’t have to. But either way, these days the author needs to do a lot of self-promoting. It’s a new publishing world out there. My memoir In the Mirror will be released shortly.

In the Mirror by Ann Carbine Best is the memoir of a woman who planned on her marriage lasting forever.

When Ann marries Larry in September of 1961, she’s certain he will be that eternal companion. Eleven years later, she is devastated to learn that he’s been having affairs with men. She wants to help him. She wants to save her marriage.

However, powerful emotions pull Larry away from his family, and eight years later their marriage ends. As a single parent, Ann is now faced with four grieving children who don’t want to leave their father and their home in Utah Valley. But Ann needs to start a new life in a new place.
In the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Ann at last makes peace with the past.

ISBN (print): 978-0-9830238-5-2

ISBN (ebook): 978-0-9830238-6-9

You can visit Ann at her blog Long Journey Home.

THE PRIZE TODAY:

Ann is happy to offer a critique for any one, any two, or all three of these: a pitch, a synopsis, ideas for memoirs. Please tell us in the comments if you want to take up Ann's kind offer.


AND THE GRAND PRIZE:

For those who have attended every party, your name goes into the draw to win: Typo book bag, Aussie Author Di Morrissy's The Last Mile Home, Fast Fiction magazine, filled with short stories from writers all over the world (next edition contains one of mine, woo hoo!), Typo desk calendar, Enchantez writer's notebook and a koala bookmark.


I hope the prize spurs you on to go back and read the previous posts.

Christine Bell
Clarissa Draper
Alex J Cavanaugh
Helen M Hunt
Lisa Maliga
N.R. Williams

Now, where do I go from here? Any suggestions?