FOR AUTHORS!
NOTE: Email me directly at delilah@delilahdevlin.com with your response! You can promote a new or older title/series and connect with my readers!
*~*~*~*~*
Hey there, Authors! I like to host a guest blogger two to three times a week on my blog (www.delilahdevlin.com/blog/). Right now, I need to line up bloggers for dates from July through September 2023. Be quick to grab a date before it’s gone!

I will need bloggers for the following dates:
July 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 21, 23, 27, 28, 30
August 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 27, 28, 30
September 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 27, 28, 29

If you are interested in being a guest, please look at the available dates and let me know if you would like me to pencil you in. I advertise the daily blogs widely. I have 2,993 blog subscribers, who get posts sent straight to their email inboxes every day. My blog also feeds to my Facebook page, which has 4.9k friends, and my Fan Page, which has 4.3k follows. I also post the blog to my Pinterest—total followers 21.1k. If a date isn’t listed but is particularly significant for you, ask me about it anyway! I do try to work people in.

I prefer posts that talk about something more than just new or older releases, but you have room at the bottom of the post for covers, blurbs, links, and short excerpts. You can talk about hobbies, what’s important to you, what inspired this particular book—the field’s wide open, but remember, we wish to appeal to readers rather than other writers. Please keep the number of pictures you want posted to no more than 2, although that’s not a hard and fast rule. And readers love contests and love questions only they can answer that allow them to interact with you!

If you’re interested, contact me! Give me your preferred date(s). First come, first served.

Delilah Devlin
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author & Freelance Editor

UPDATE: The winner is…Miki!
*~*~*

A Quick Note!

Over on my Collections website, we’ll be posting “Getting to Know You” blogs about the authors who wrote stories for the Silver Soldiers anthology. We’ll post every few days, and there will be contests! The first post went up today! Be sure to check out “Getting to Know Rhonda Lee Carver.”

Contest

Solve the puzzle. These are my personal choices for movie stars I’ll drop everything to sit down and watch. It’s a subjective list. My list. Josh Duhamel isn’t anywhere near Gary Oldman so far as skill, but he’s lovely, isn’t he? So, solve the puzzle then tell me who you’d add to the list for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

Folks a while back were saying blogs were dead. That no one reads them anymore. That they’re a waste of an author’s time.

I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t now. Lately, what with the chaos over at Twitter, the rumblings are...blogs may be the only social media platform we can control. When something goes sideways, if you’ve already built your online blog community, you still have a place to connect with readers.

I’m lucky in that I enjoy blogging. I’ve been doing it for years! I open up my daily post, see that white space, ready to be filled, and I let my fingers do the talking. Yes, I still have Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. I have a TikTok account I haven’t yet put to use, but in the mornings, when I start my day, I find my rhythm here. Sure, sometimes I’m only posting games (I love puzzles!) or talking about my wacky life, my collections of junk that are so dear to me, my animals, my family… Everything that’s me. Do I overshare? Probably. I try to make it fun. I’m generally a very happy, upbeat person, and I hope that comes across. I love leaving folks with a smile.

So anyway, I do have a purpose today. I thought I’d remind you all that you can SUBSCRIBE to this blog. What does that mean? Every time I post a new blog, you get it sent directly to your email inbox. You don’t miss my free stories, the notices about my new books coming down the pike (what does that phrase mean?!), contests for gift cards. I ask you questions, and I READ your answers. I do love to get to know you. Plus, I love to share this space with other authors, so you get to meet a wider community of writers. I vary it as much as possible so it’s not boring! 

How do you subscribe? Look to the left of this post. See that FOLLOW MY BLOG at the top? Enter your email, and you’re done. Yes, I post once a day. Every day. You can decide to delete it if the topic isn’t to your taste. I try to alert you in the subject line when there are contests, excerpts, guest bloggers, puzzles. You can choose the content you want to open.

There. That’s my PSA (public service announcement). Now, go about your day. And remember, there are several open contests, a couple of them involving fun puzzles just below today’s post. Have fun, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

See? That wasn’t so painful, was it? ~DD

UPDATE: The winner is…Shirley Long!
*~*~*

I’m still working on the big plan, but I’m pretty sure about the stories I’m aiming to release this next year.

A few you already know about:

From Montana Bounty Hunters, Mica, which is set to release on February 28 and Jackson on June 16.

Then there are also a couple I’ll write for a new connected series, We are Dead Horse, MT: Hard Knox, which I hope to release in March, and Cold Hard Cash, set to release April 25.

Then there are some I don’t have covers or titles for yet, but I know you’ll be there when I do get them up, two new group-related projects in my sister’s Brotherhood Protectors world to join my previous efforts:

  

Beyond these? I’m not sure. I have a romantic comedy I started years ago that I’d like to finish called Little Green Dreams, and it’s about, you guessed it, aliens. Maybe another Cowboys on the Edge series story. We’ll see how ambitious I get. This year I slowed way down so far as the number of titles I released. I may not have published a ton of stories, but I’m very happy with the ones I did, so there’s that.

I need to light a fire under my butt. Or have someone give it swift kick every now and then to “motivate” me.

As for other promises? I’ll try to figure out some more fun things to do here on this blog. More guests, more contests, more puzzles? More free reads? A serialized story? More behind the scenes of a writer’s life? You tell me what you’d like to see here and be entered to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

Open Contests

1. Things on a Christmas Tree Word Search! (Contest) — This one ends soon! Win an Amazon gift card!
2. Tell me a story… (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!
3. Elizabeth Andrews: Starting the Countdown (Giveaway) — Win a FREE book!
4. New Year’s Day Word Search! (Contest) — Win an Amazon gift card!

A QUICK POST FOR AUTHORS!
(And then I’ll post a puzzle-contest for readers!)

NOTE: Email me directly at delilah@delilahdevlin.com with your response!
*~*~*~*~*

Hey there, Authors! I like to host a guest blogger two to three times a week on my blog. Right now, I need to line up bloggers for dates from November through December 2022. And if you don’t have a current or soon-to-be-released title to talk about, think about your backlist!

I will need bloggers for the following dates:
November 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 17, 18, 20, 21, 25, 27, 28
December 2, 5, 8, 9, 14, 18, 19, 26, 28 ,29, 30

If you are interested in being a guest, please look at the available dates and let me know if you would like me to pencil you in. I advertise the daily blogs widely. I have 2,976 blog subscribers, who get posts sent straight to their email inboxes every day. My blog also feeds to my Facebook page, which has 4,964 friends, and my Fan Page, which has 4,321 follows. I also post the blog to my Pinterest—total followers 21.2k. If a date isn’t listed but is particularly significant for you, ask me about it anyway! I do try to work people in.

I prefer posts that talk about something more than just new or older releases, but you have room at the bottom of the post for covers, blurbs, links, and short excerpts. You can talk about hobbies, what’s important to you, what inspired this particular book—the field’s wide open, but remember, we wish to appeal to readers rather than other writers. Please keep the number of pictures you want posted to no more than 2, although that’s not a hard and fast rule. And readers love contests and love questions only they can answer that allow them to interact with you!

If you’re interested, contact me! Give me your preferred date(s). First come, first served.

Delilah Devlin
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author & Freelance Editor

Hey there, Authors! I like to host a guest blogger two to three times a week on my blog (www.delilahdevlin.com/blog/). Right now, I need to line up bloggers for dates from July through September 2022.

I will need bloggers for the following dates:
July 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18, 21, 27, 28, 29
August 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 14, 18, 21, 25, 26, 28, 29
September 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 15, 16, 18, 21, 25, 26, 28, 29

If you are interested in being a guest, please look at the available dates and let me know if you would like me to pencil you in. I advertise the daily blogs widely. I have 2,971 blog subscribers, who get posts sent straight to their email inboxes every day. My blog also feeds to my Facebook page, which has 4,968 friends, and my Fan Page, which has 4,336 follows. I also post the blog to my Pinterest—total followers 21.2k. If a date isn’t listed but is particularly significant for you, ask me about it anyway! I do try to work people in.

I prefer posts that talk about something more than just new or older releases, but you have room at the bottom of the post for covers, blurbs, links, and short excerpts. You can talk about hobbies, what’s important to you, what inspired this particular book—the field’s wide open, but remember, we wish to appeal to readers rather than other writers. Please keep the number of pictures you want posted to no more than 2, although that’s not a hard and fast rule. And readers love contests and love questions only they can answer that allow them to interact with you!

If you’re interested, contact me! Give me your preferred date(s). First come, first served.

Delilah Devlin
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author & Freelance Editor

Hello everyone!

I am so happy to be on Delilah’s blog. Today, I’m talking Social Media Marketing. Let’s dive in!

Years ago, I led a workshop on AOL as part of the writer forums. We met in a chat room every Wednesday night to discuss writing. One night during a session on promotion, a participant spoke up and said she could never promote her books. Write them, yes. Promote them? Not something she could see herself doing. In the days of Social Media Marketing now, I often wonder if she’s changed her perspective.

Social media has opened up ways of promoting that even the shyest person can do in some form. The key is finding the venues that work for the individual. Think of them as a conference. Just as you would choose a conference that suits your needs, you can select the social media options that will benefit you the most as well as play a key part in your branding: Who You Are, What You Represent, and Why You Are Here.

There are numerous social media platforms to choose from. TWITTER, FACEBOOK, GOODREADS, INSTAGRAM, BLOGGING and PINTEREST are just a few available.  Picking the ones that are right for you can be a challenge. Your first consideration is what you want to do? Do you want to educate other writers as well as have a landing page for your own promotion? If so, then a blog is a good option. Do you want to connect more with readers? In that case, you will want to learn the ins and outs of Goodreads, Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is also a great venue if you envision doing a virtual book launch with fun games, guest authors and prizes to attract readers. All of them are great places to network with prospective editors and agents.

Choosing the right tracks and working them can be daunting for some people. I have Five Tips to take the edge off… consider this your glass of champagne at the conference meet and greet.

1 – Pick no more than 3 to work with.

2 – Make Friends

3 – Be a Friend

4 – Be Genuine

5 – Monitor your TIME

My top three platforms are Blogging, Twitter, and Instagram. I have to admit that I work the Instagram more for my art/music while I want to focus on Goodreads this year for my writing. But Blogger and Twitter are my ‘go to’ for any of my promotions across the board.

When it comes to making friends, build a following before you step out to begin your own promotion. Get to know people. Think of it as being at a conference. Start by looking for others in your genre. Authors, Publishers/Editors. See who they are following or friends with. Walk around the room and introduce yourself. Find out about each of them. For example, I want to write for Hallmark movies so I’m looking for other Hallmark authors, actors, producers, etc. as well as authors who write sweet romances in general.

Be Genuine. Sure, you’re there to promote yourself and your work, but you also need to be  interested in what others have to share and say. You would expect no less from them in return.

Share Information. Find things other than your book to talk about. Follow other authors and find things to share that fall in their wheelhouse. Even if you write Science Fiction or Paranormal, find and share links to things that might be of interest to the Historical writers that are on your stream. Think of it as being at a conference and while you don’t write what the person you’re talking to does, you have something he might be interested in. Respond/ Share to others comments/ posts.

Like any other conference or gathering, there has to be a time when you thank your hostess and leave. If you KNOW you can’t control the scrolling through post after post, set a timer.  Can’t get enough of those crazy cat videos? Don’t start watching them until your work is done.  This is a picture of the page marker in my planner. I run down this check list every morning before doing anything else.

Make a list of what you need to accomplish that day on each of your chosen Social Media tracks.

Do you want to find ten new friends on Titter? Share five posts on FB? Write the blog posts you need for this week? (Blogging is a whole different workshop). As you get into a routine, doing these tasks will begin to take less time. You’ll get into a flow and Social Media won’t be the black hole of time… or as scary.

I’ve given you the bare necessities here. If you’d like a full-workshop on Social Media Marketing, I’ll be speaking at the 52^nd Ozark Creative Writers Conference October 11,12,13. This year’s conference information will post on the website in mid-February at www.ozarkcreativewriters.com. This is an intimate, multi-genre conference with lots of great info and pitching sessions. I’m also available as a blog guest or in-person speaking.

Now, go make friends!

Angela Drake

Blog – http://angeladrake.blogspot.com
FB – https://www.facebook.com/AngelaDrake.author/
Twitter – @AngelaDrakeA
Amazon – amazon.com/author/angeladrake