Authors, Kai Strand & LA Dragoni

There are certain decisions that become more important when you know they will be on display. Which travel mug to use? The ceramic Starbucks hot air balloon. Lip color? Nothing too dark. The shadows can make you look like you’re going for the goth look. Pants or skirt? Pajama bottoms – it’s Skype, headshot only. If you’re on my social media, you know I had the amazing opportunity to visit with a class of tenth grade literature students from Lycée International Nelson Mandela, Académie de Nantes . For those of you who have no working knowledge of French “Acad é mie de Nantes” means school of Nantes. As in Nantes, France. Nantes, France is approximately 5,000 miles from my hometown of Bend, Oregon. Needless to say, I had to get up early that day. But not to travel, just to do my hair and make sure to catch the students before they went home for the day. There's quite a time difference between the west coast of America and France. Last July the very innovative teacher, M...

Let’s have some fun! Help introduce me and my work to fellow readers and you might win one of two fun big mouth key chains. Bright and early each morning during the week of October 10 – 16, I’ll put a post on my Facebook page and Twitter that you can share. You’ll know which post because it will include the hashtag #BigMouth. Each time you share them, you’ll be entered for a chance to win one of two fun key chains. The winners will be chosen randomly (week of October 17 th ) from a pool of all the shares. Just to be crazy, I’m gonna make this open internationally, so share and share and don’t worry about who’s watching, because everybody can get in on this one. To qualify to win not only must you share my message on Facebook and/or Twitter, you must follow me on the social media outlet where you shared my message.  On Facebook and Twitter, enter "Kai Strand #BigMouth" in the search field and share and/or retweet each result! Thanks for your participation! ...

Have I ever told you how much I love spreadsheets? Yeah. *Sighs* I’ve got a spreadsheet for everything. Henceforth, I know the last three things I submitted were novels to my current publishers – two years ago. They were all accepted – so yippee for that! There are points in your career when you stop and re-evaluate the direction you want to go, the opportunities you have, and if your goals have changed. I’m sitting smack dab in the middle of that point right now. It’s like a huge, deserted crossroads. It’s dark. There are tumbleweeds and maybe a scarecrow – or an ax murderer. Like I said, it’s a dark and vast point. I can’t really see where any of the roads lead. They all seem to have similar terrain; things to trip over, rises and valleys, occasional smooth, groomed patches. I’ve traveled along a couple of the paths already and had a mixture of good experiences, mediocre experiences, and lackluster experiences. In other words no path is perfect and sometimes knowing the path m...

Happy Memorial Day weekend! I've put together a quick giveaway for the weekend. If you are on Twitter, I hope you'll participate. All you have to do is click on the following link. It will take you to a pinned post on my twitter profile. Retweet the post and your retweet will enter you to win an ecopy (pdf or Kindle) of Finding Thor. http://bit.ly/1FCEqcA Super simple, huh? You have until 11:59 pm on the 25th to retweet the message, so hop over now so you don't forget. Thanks for your support. About the book: Cara Cassidy always envisioned love as Thor, slamming his hammer into the earth, and the vibration resonating within her for a lifetime. She never expected love would be a thousand tiny actions from a normal boy. When international intrigue hits small-town America, more than the car chases will get your blood pumping. Tragedy has left Cara Cassidy broken and the only thing keeping her from giving in completely is her guilt. Until Nik Rock. Nik ...

I’m excited that Kai asked me to talk about my experiences marketing as a debut novelist. My first novel, True Colors, about an eighth grader dealing with frenemies, self-esteem issues, cliques, and being yourself, came out this summer and it was an amazing time. I feel like I haven’t sat down to relax since I signed the contract for the book over a year ago! It’s been an amazing journey and I’m so thrilled that soon the sequel to the book, (titled Best Friends…Forever? ) will come out as part of the Landry’s True Colors series . So I’m here today to share what I’ve learned along the way on my path to publication.   First, I want to share how important it is to prepare and learn the business. I began going to writing conferences and workshops right after I graduated from high school. It was a great way to learn about the business side of writing. I remember those first couple writing conferences where I was sitting there confused and clueless. I’ll never forget being in an au...

Frustrated that news of your book hasn’t gone viral? If you want people to share your message you have to keep it simple for them. Even if they are willing to, you should never expect them to shorten your links or read through your entire book blurb and come up with a catchy phrase to sell your book. There have been plenty of times I wanted to share info about someone’s book, but I just didn’t have the time to do the work for them. Nor did I have the understanding about their book to come up with a catchy phrase. If you aren’t familiar with the websites that shorten urls, there are a few out there that are free and very easy to use. I use bitly.com ( https://bitly.com/a/bitlinks ). I like that they track the number of clicks on your link, show you when people clicked so you can get an idea of the best time to share as well as what kind of message gets the most engagement. They even allow you to create bundles so you can share links to your book series with one shortened url. I’v...

The responsibility of a book's promotion lies with the author. Even an author who has a publisher that promotes or a huge following of readers who automatically buy every newly released book, has to keep their finger on the pulse of their book's success and step in when sales flag. Because of that, we often search for new ways to spread the word. That is exactly what I did when considering how I wanted to approach promotion for POLAR OPPOSITES, book 2 in my Super Villain Academy series. I collected votes about supers and super powers before my book signing for King of Bad . I wanted to collect more votes through my website for the second book, but knew I would have to do something to drive people to my site. I got a new tablet for Christmas and that gave me the idea to take my promotion to the streets and record an interview series that I could post through YouTube. But I knew nothing about making videos. Turns out there is an app for that (thank goodness!). My tablet has W...

Happy New Year Boys and Girls! Sorry the blog has been on radio silence. I’ve been contemplating its future. I still haven’t come to a decision, so I guess things will continue on—as is—until I have some sort of blog epiphany. Those happen, right? Today I want to talk about Facebook. There are many social networks out there and I’m active on several of them. Regardless of their seeming self-sabotage, I prefer Facebook to any others. What do I mean by self-sabotage? I’m referring to their need to make constant changes that tend to alienate so many people. Though I sometimes find it tiring to log on and find buttons/tabs switched from the left to the right, rearranged columns, or a new font for the notifications…most of the changes simply take getting used to. But some of those changes are less obvious and harmful to those of us trying to create a presence on the site. Most recently (beginning of December), Facebook changed the algorithm used to decide what shows up in...

Writing : A totally exciting year. I had two books published this year (Guardian Angel Publishing and Featherweight Press). My short stories were included in two anthologies this year (Wayman Publishing and Knowonder). I signed contracts for two more books to be published in 2013 (Whiskey Creek Press and MuseItUp Publishing). And expect more anthologies, the first one releasing on January 1 st , 2013!   I finished a novel at the last possible moment. Wrote loads of short stories and saw most of them published by Knowonder, Beyond Centauri, Spaceports & Spidersilk.   I thank each and every one of these publishers for taking a chance on my writing and me. I value the work you put into producing a quality product and I work hard to spread the word about it so that we can both stay in business and continue to work together into the future.   Social Media : I continued to love my weekly blog feature Three Times A Charm. I’ve met so many wonderful peo...

I attended a local writers guild meeting last week. Author, Paty Jager gave a great talk on promotion. Some things I knew and already do, some things I knew and choose not to do, but there was one thing I never even thought to do. I’m still scratching my head and wondering, “Why didn’t I know about this sooner? How did I miss this information before?” QR Codes are two dimensional barcodes that act like hyperlinks when scanned with the proper app on a cell phone. The code can take your browser directly to a website, a social media page, a google map. You can use it for many different reasons.  But for this blog post purposes, I’m going to focus on writing. When my third middle grade novel was published, I had new bookmarks printed that included the cover of each book and a blurb. Across the bottom of the bookmark is my website. Then I learned about QR codes. DOH! I created a code to take people directly to the middle grade page on my website, which offers downloads and th...

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you Natalie Isabelle Cailean Edwards. The N.I.C.E. girl who doesn’t always finish last – though sometimes it’s a struggle. Prissy and proud of it, Natalie always has a sappy, inspirational saying to offer. Smarter than your average 8 th grader, Natalie is working on her latest invention, the texty-talky, with a little help from her three best friends. Save the Lemmings, coming this summer! I’m in love with this cover. It really tells you so much about the story; Natalie’s prim wardrobe, the media blitz she is subject to, she even has a Save the Lemmings pin! And I love the fonts used. Isn't my name pretty? (Is that vain? I don't mean for it to be.)  I can’t wait for you all to read Save the Lemmings! What do you think? I'd love if you could help me share my new cover. Use one (or all) of those handy-dandy share buttons to spread the cover all over the internet.

Once upon a time there was an emerging author who simply wished to sign a book contract with a publisher. EA thought her talents were natural and developed and couldn’t understand the rejections she received from editors and agents galore. EA finally joined an online critique group. She smugly submitted a story for critique and sat back waiting for the praise. Her ego was purplish and tender after reading through the honest (and frankly well thought out – yeah, whatever!) evaluations of her work. Stupid critique group. What do they know? However, there was enough praise peppered through out that after a bag of Reeses and a bottle of Shiraz she cautiously submitted another story to the critique group. And then another. Then she critiqued the work submitted by her fellow critters and learned even more about her own work and saw shining examples of strong writing. EA was inspired to write. To write a lot. And to write better. EA developed a huge crush on her critique group (as a who...

So much has been happening and I want to compile all my exciting, sparkly book news into one place. Releasing in 2012: Save the Lemmings 8 th grade inventor, Natalie Isabelle Cailean Edwards is the N.I.C.E. girl who finishes last with the kids in school. Sappy inspirational phrases and monochromatic outfits have all but her best friends wrinkling their nose at her. When Natalie’s invention, the Texty-Talky, goes nationwide, she becomes an overnight sensation. Suddenly her days consist of photo shoots and interviews with little time left for her friends. A local reporter shatters her good-girl image by reporting a graffiti incident and the media launches into a smear campaign. It is so bad, even her friends start to believe the stories. How will Natalie stop the lies and win her friends back? And who will SAVE THE LEMMINGS? The Wishing Well, Another Weaver Tale Molly Minstrel is treated worse than Cinderella by her mom and sisters. When Molly meets the magical...

Now and again I like to share a recap of my social media outlets. I’m thankful to all of you who read my posts. Welcome to the newbies who’ve been around less than a few months. If you are also on these sites, I’d love to friend, follow, like you there as well. Facebook author page Twitter Linked In Goodreads And of course my website: http://www.kaistrand.com/ which info and fun downloads and fun stuff like that. Please visit.

I’m perusing the internet this morning, email, blog posts, Twitter (haven’t even gotten to Facebook yet) and I’m awash with all this love for my fellow kidlitters. Perhaps it’s because I slept an extra two hours this morning, but I’m inspired to share it with you. Think about writers of yesteryear. They sat in converted attic rooms and pecked away on stiff old keyboards. Their fingers got all inky when they replaced the ribbon. They used that strange eraser paper (before white out). They allowed spiders to spin webs in the eaves, so that when they mumbled or ranted, they weren’t talking to themselves. Writers of today have it so much better. They can take their laptop or ipad to the beach and only worry about dive-bombing seagulls while they work. Their cursor moves backward as much as, if not more often than, forward. But the most effective tool a writer of today has is social media. They can hop online and ask, “Would a 13 year old still take a stuffed animal on a sleep over...

cross verb to move, pass, or extend from one side to the other side as in cross promote. Having a hard time coming up with content for your blog? Think before you say ‘yes’ because really it is a bit silly if you are. I’m going to assume that you are somehow involved in children’s publishing or writing whether it be as a writer, an editor, illustrator, or a book blogger. You do something that makes you care that people come to your blog and learn about you. So you struggle time and time again trying to think up a new topic to blog about. Or you take a topic that has been covered over and over in the blogosphere and desperately try to make it interesting. You invest a lot of time in your blog and yet you are still having trouble bringing people to your sight. Two words. Cross promote. You have a ton of people out there who are more than happy to spend a day on your blog. Invite them in. Get to know them. Find out what they do that is similar to you and ...

Connected – –adjective 1. united, joined, or linked. Are we connected? Here is where you can find me: My website Author page on Facebook, all I ask is that you like me. My blog posts to two different host sites, because life is all about the choices you make: Strands of Thought on Blogger (follow me) Strands of Thought on Livejournal (friend me) Twitter (if link doesn’t work, search for KaiStrand) Email a bit old fashioned these days, but I can’t help it, I love email! I would love, love, love to be connected. Please connect with me in all formats available and leave info in comments where we can find you ! It’s all in who you know, right?

You reluctantly closed the back cover on the book. A sense of loss and longing washes over you. You don’t want to be finished. How can you walk away from the storyline or the characters who you think you’ve seen downtown, they’re so real? But wait. Maybe the author has more books. Maybe this is a series. You jump online and GoodSearch her name. You find her website and see that she doesn’t. WHY?????? Well, probably because her writing hasn’t taken off yet and she has to earn a living with a day job.   How can you help change that?   How can you help your author toward financial freedom so that she can be writing all the time? Word of mouth is HUGE ! Tell all of your friends about the book. If you can part with it, loan your copy to a trusted friend or family member. Donate a copy to a library. SPEAK out loud frequently using the book’s title, the author’s name. You hold the power! Make it social. There are many, many ways through social media to help your author attain a f...

Way back when I created my blog, Strands of Thought, I researched and researched the different blog host sites.   I read numerous blogger opinions on why they chose the host they chose. I read many reviews about what was right and what was wrong about different hosts.   Then I chose Livejournal as my host site. But now I’m not so sure it is the best option out there.   It seems to me that bloggers tend to get more followers on Blogger because of the ease of following.   I also like the look of Blogger better.   I don’t know how to write HTML code or change it to suit my needs and I’ve never figured out how to customize LJ because of it.   I think Blogger is more user friendly in that regard.   Well, time will tell.   I’ve taken the plunge and I’ve created a mirror blog on Blogger.   It will be the same as my LJ blog, so if you are a friend on Livejournal, I’ll still appear on your friends page.   I know you couldn’t live without m...