Here’s a fun fact that will make you feel really old:

THE Facebook’s original profile page in 2004

As of February 2013, Facebook’s been around for nine years.

Were you one of the first to join back in 2004 when it was exclusively for college kids?

I’m semi-proud to say I’ve been a Facebook user since late 2004, when my school (Florida State) was added to the elite list of colleges and universities allowed to participate in Mark Zuckerberg’s grand experiment.

In those days, we whispered about THE Facebook in class — daring to ask the cute boy in microeconomics if he was on the site so we could  run home, get on the computer and send him a friend request (because there was no such thing as a smartphone unless playing snake in black-and-white on an old Nokia was somehow considered smart).

Now everybody and their mom (literally…and in my case, my Nana too) uses Facebook to connect with friends and family all over the world.

But what can it do for us authors?Continue Reading

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If you’ll grant me just a second here, I’d like to pull out my crystal ball and see if I can call forward your current blog predicament.

Ah, yes, I see it here very clearly.

You spend hours of time (when you’d rather be writing or hanging with your family) slogging away to write new posts for your blog. Your topics are all over the place because you’re desperate to find something that will appeal to someone. You know you have a few readers, but no one’s ever interested enough to comment.

The only posts that get any attention are the ones you write about your author career, and even then they’re only picked up by other authors — not a reader who might be interested in your book.

So, what I see here in my crystal ball is this:

You’re frustrated.

But before you give up blogging all together, take a couple of deep breaths (and if you’re of legal age, a drink) and let me help you.

See, this crystal ball is actually a snowglobe from my Christmas collection. My knowledge of your blogging frustrations comes from my own experience because I’ve been there.

Starting with my LiveJournal way back in the day, I’ve had a series of blogs over the last decade or so and have run into the same problem with each one. I had no direction.

No direction means no readers.

No readers means no point in having a blog.Continue Reading