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!

Meme party bloghop Feb 29-Mar 4 - If I were a season, I'd be spring...

I found this on C Lee Mckenzie's blog. Join Tara Tyler, Christine Rains, and Lee on this easy-peasy HOP. Post a MEME during the week between Feb 29 and Mar 4 (use your own pic or an easy meme maker app) - and if you can't think of anything, pass on encouraging words from one of your reviews, or an inspiring quote!

Visit others. That's it!

Then the awesome hostesses will hop around and Ooo and Ahh and choose one entry each to win an ebook. AND two lucky random participants will win a $20 GC. Enter and spread some warmth!

No winter blues where i live at the bottom of the world, but I'm taking part anyway. 

I saw this meme on Writer's Ramblings ages ago, and I've filled it out myself. Now I'd love to see your answers. Do it quickly without over-thinking it. Then copy as much as you like (all or some) and post in comments for us to enjoy...

http://www.travelization.net/

- If I were a season, I’d be Spring.

- If I were a month, I’d be June.

- If I were a day of the week, I’d be Sunday.

- If I were a time of day, I’d be 9pm (reading time).

- If I were a planet, I’d be Venus.

- If I were a direction, I’d be South.

- If I were a tree, I’d be a eucalyptus.

- If I were a flower, I’d be a lavender sprig.

- If I were a fruit, I’d be a mango.

- If I were a land animal, I’d be a horse.

- If I were a sea animal, I’d be a dolphin.

- If I were a bird, I’d be an eagle.

- If I were a piece of furniture, I’d be an art deco lamp.
- If I were a liquid, I’d be tea.
- If I were a stone, I’d be turquoise.

- If I were a kind of weather, I’d be sunshine.
- If I were a musical instrument, I’d be a guitar.
- If I were a colour, I’d be white (uh, hum, it is a colour!)
- If I were a facial expression, I’d be a smile.

- If I were an emotion, I’d be happiness.

- If I were a sound, I’d be water running over smooth stones.

- If I were an element, I’d be water.

- If I were a car, I’d be a classic.

- If I were a food, I’d be cheesecake.

- If I were a place, I’d be France.

- If I were a flavour, I’d be chocolate.

- If I were a scent, I’d be lavender.

- If I were an object, I’d be a Mont Blanc pen.

- If I were a song, I’d be "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - U2.
- If I were a pair of shoes, I’d be ballet flats.
- If I were transportation, I’d be a plane.

- If I were a fairy tale, I’d be Cinderella.
- If I were a holiday, I’d be Christmas.
- If I were a novel, I'd be Beach Music by Pat Conroy. 
- If I were a movie, I'd be Moonlight and Valentino.

All right - your turn!

Thanks for reading!

Now off you go and read some more from the linky below.

Do you have goals bloghop...share them....

On the spur of the moment I joined this regular bloghop hoted by Misha Gericke and Beth Fred . The idea is simple, really. It's to keep us honest to what we hope to achieve in our writing and we are to post about it the last Friday of every month. Can you believe it's the last Friday of February today?!?


You're more than welcome to join this bloghop. All you need to do is read and follow the guidelines then SIGN UP HERE...

1) Beth and I Misha will be co-hosts of this list.
2) If you do enter your link into the list, please be supportive of the other entrants.
3) Keep us up to date with how you're doing. Update Day is on the last Friday of every month. Even if you don't think you achieved much or anything, write a quick post to say so. We can't encourage if we don't know. 
4) When you enter your blog's address write your goal as the link title. For example, my link's title will be "earn $7500 per month." Not your name or your blog's. This is so we can keep track of who's doing what. 

MY WRITING GOALS for 2016

I signed up as 'publish a novel and submit short stories' this year. I have been researching for the second in my paranormal series to follow Under the Tuscan Moon and the adventures of Vipunin and Cuchulcain and have tons of notes. Now I need to get into the right headspace and get my notes into some sort of order. I was hoping to publish my second novella by the end of January, but this hasn't been possible as I've been away from home and not in a position to write as much as I wanted to. Just keeping up with the blogs and working on my Paris short story was all I achieved. 

So...in April I plan to create my own little NaNoWriMo again and write every day. Last April I wrote 25,000 words on a Paris Cookery novel and hope to pick it up again as I'm SO EXCITED about this book but haven't been able to get to it for months! But the research has been delicious!

Just writing the above has got me excited. Now I'm back home, I've dropped one day off my teaching schedule. Now I will have more time for writing.

Here is a great post from Juneta Keys with so many useful links regarding 

Marketing, Promotion, Self-Publishing For The Writer

How are you going with your 2016 Writing Goals? Please share or join the hop.

GREETINGS FROM THE “DON’T YOU HATE BOOK TOURS?” Book Tour!

Today I'm taking a 'sickie' as we call it in Australia, so I invited my long-time blogger friend and prolific author, Roland Yeomans to help out. Roland just happens to have a new book out...what a surprise! So being addicted as I am to the Reader Discussion pages at the end of novels, I asked Roland to talk about this new addition to his latest...

Anyway, I've got to be going...Here's Roland to entertain you.

Whoa!  Look at all those rolling eyes out there.  It’s worse than the audience to the last Presidential Debate.

I understand. 

It seems we are drowning in a sea of cover reveals, book tours, and guest posts.

Ah, forget I said that last one, will you?

Anyway, since my latest book has a Readers’ Discussion Guide at the end, Denise thought you might be interested in why I included that section.

www.taftpubliclibrary.org

By some estimates, Tweet: five million Americans gather in someone’s living room, a bar, a bookstore or local library for a #bookdiscussion on the finer points of “Middlemarch” or “The Brothers Karamazov.” (If you find this interesting, please TWEET).

They are always on the lookout for a new book that will make club discussions easier. Libraries often stock these books on request as a service to book clubs, which means more SALES!! (((happy dance)))

Tweet: As #writers we need to reach #READERS. (If you find this interesting, please TWEET).
We have been fishing in our little pool and wondering why our catch is so lousy.  Go where the fish are!

And it’s not just a big-city thing:

In the event that you find yourself in Waco, Texas., check out “A Good Book and a Glass of Wine,” which has 21 members (women only) and is always looking for new ones. All you have to do is go online to source one near you!

I have written a novel which includes a variety of strong women: thinkers, inventors, newspaper correspondents, leaders – all believing they are right but some are very, very wrong.

Since we live in a world where you don’t have to actually “be” anywhere, it’s not surprising that virtual clubs have lately appeared on the Internet.

ZolaBooks bills itself as a “social eBook retailer” that connects readers. 

Goodreads gives members the opportunity to read a book together, install books they’ve read on their “shelves” or find “friends” with whom to share discoveries.

But the most prevalent way of conducting a book club is still in someone’s living room.

A book club meeting is a way of interacting through books that you don’t get through any ordinary transaction in life.

It’s like sitting around the campfire toasting marshmallows, gossiping about people, only you’re gossiping about characters in fiction, which is more meaningful and won't give you indigesion.

HELLO!  ANYONE STILL LISTENING OUT THERE? 

Here are our readers waiting for us to be discussion friendly. So how about I share my foray into the Novel Study Guide...

HOW DO YOU WRITE QUESTIONS FOR YOUR OWN NOVEL’S STUDY GUIDE?

THINK THEME.

Beyond the events of the plot, what is your book about?

MUSE YOUR CHARACTERS’ JOURNEYS

What do your characters learn along the way? How do they change and grow because of the events of the story?

PONDER THE PLOT

Rehashing the events of a book does not a book club make. They’ve all read it. How else might the events play out? How did the plot events affect the characters, and the readers?

CONSIDER YOUR CHARACTERS

What are their attributes and flaws? How are they like—or unlike—people around you? How do their flaws affect the story?

ASK OPEN ENDED QUESTIONS THAT DO NOT HAVE WRONG ANSWERS

Oh, what about my own study guide for … wait for it …

A few teasers …

- Did you know that in 1998 that 200 year old skeletons of four adults and six children were found buried beneath the home that Benjamin Franklin lived in while in London?  Was Franklin a serial killer?

- How much do we really know of history?  Are there secrets in the lives of our Founding Fathers?

Franklin was a member of the infamous Hellfire Club while in London.  Was he there as a spy or a participating member?

- In the mid and late 19^th century, women were exploring where even white men feared to go.  Ada Byron Lovelace invented the first computer language 100 years before the invention of the computer.

- Margaret Fuller, first American woman foreign correspondent for Horace Greely, manned the ramparts during the bloody Italian Civil War.

- What lessons can we draw from the feminist pioneers?

- In 1858 designs were drawn up for an air/steamship.  How different would our history have been if we had achieved transatlantic flight so early?

- Abraham Lincoln engaged in ethnic cleansing of Apache, Navaho, and Dakota Indians during the Civil War.  General Sherman ordered the killing of women and children in Georgia (from his own orders to his officers). 

- How much collateral damage is acceptable in war do you think?  And is targeting non-combatant civilians ever acceptable?

- We have fun musing in my study guide for THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS ABROAD.

Board the Xanadu, the first Air/Steamship when it sets sail in March for an adventure of a lifetime.  Passage is only $9.99!

See you there.

Blog / Amazon Author Page

Thanks Roland for saving me! (I've been travelling for the past month and needed a helping hand). Roland has been a loyal participant in RomanticFridayWriters and now Write...Edit...Publish since its inception. This week we announce the winners of the WEP Valentine's Day challenge, judged by my original partner for RomanticFridayWriters, Francine Howarth, now a prolific Regency Romance author. 

#WEPff challenge...#Valentine'sDay...A Letter. My #flashfiction

Hello there!

Time for the WEP Valentine's Day blogfest. I have written a flash fiction in letter form to suit the theme. I hope you enjoy it.

"To my darling Valentine...

“There is no end to things of the heart.”

I’ve believed this ever since the words passed your lips when we declared our undying love at twenty years of age. I took those words, rolled them around my head until they became reality. Not being of a romantic bent, nevertheless I tried to understand, to make sense of those words. My conclusion was that if you took someone or something – a person, a place, a dream - into your heart, brought it inside those red velvet folds, it would reside there forever. A strength. A comfort. Forever. Something to rely on in this capricious world. And it did work that way. No matter what happened, love was there.

Sacred.
Untouchable.
Unbreakable.

Those secret folds protected it. Always. Every time my heart beat, it reminded me of the precious secrets it kept.

Today I am approaching fifty years of age. I still try to believe there is no end to things of the heart. When I woke this morning, my beating heart comforted me for a time, recalling how I took you into my heart those many years ago in complete trust. You are still somewhere hidden in those red velvet folds along with those I have added over the years - people I have loved, people I have hurt, people I have helped. When I take time to examine my heart, they are alive in me, as familiar as my beating heart.

But you were always the best of my secrets.

As the sun rises over the far horizon, I hear the beat.

Seconds.
Minutes.
Hours.

Time means nothing when you are alone in a *humpy in Australia's Simpson Desert, surrounded by stunted trees, wild animals and rocky outcrops. There is water here. Old **Jacky Jacky could find it in a heartbeat, but what's the point? My water is long gone and I'm not someone who is going to drink the blood of animals to survive. Why bother? I comfort myself that I will not be found in this godforsaken place.

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh. Here's a Polaroid I took when I arrived and was still in control of my senses. This is my view each morning. Not godforsaken like me when I think about it. Quite beautiful, really, even when seen through a haze.

You, my love, will never know that my heart ceased to beat on Valentine's Day 2016. I can hardly place my letter in a bottle and cast it upon the waves. See, a sense of humour to the last. My parched lips crack as I smile. No, my letter will be hidden in the secret folds of the desert sands.

Be still my beating heart. I always loved those words. I resist the urge to smile. I can taste the blood from the last attempt. 

What will become of the secrets hidden in my red velvet folds? Will they die with me? Or will they fly away, released from the prison I have guarded these many years?

You lied to me that golden day when our love was young and forever and ethereal. You said, “My darling Byron. There is no end to things of the heart.”

Pfft! I will prove you wrong.

There is an end to things of the heart.

The red velvet folds cannot hold duplicity. Cannot cover love that is no more. Cannot beat when its life-force has shrivelled and died."

***

I hide the picture under a rock. Maybe someone will find it and wonder.

I lay down my imaginary pen and prepare.

Goodbye, my precious Valentine.

* A humpy or gunyah is a small, temporary shelter made from bark and tree branches, traditionally used by Australian Aborigines, with a standing tree usually used as the main support. 
** Jacky Jacky was a paternalistic name given to helpful Aboriginal people in the old days.

WORD COUNT: 600

FCA

• Thank you for coming by! I appreciate your taking the time.
• Please click on more Valentine's Day entries with a DL (Direct Link) next to the name in my sidebar or go to WEP.