Archives for April 2012

My lovely NA sister Bailey Kelsey tagged me on this game.

To keep on the game, I must reveal 7 facts about myself then pick 7 people to do the same thing.

Bailey changed the rules and so will I *snickers*

I’ll reveal 7 things related to my writing and then I’ll tag other 7 writers.

1. Music has to be ON. Actually, music has to be ON every single minute of the day, unless I’m sleeping ;) I have several playlists, depending on the scene I’m writing.
2. Usually, I drink chimarrao when writing (photo bellow). Chimarrao is a typical tea-like drink from the state I was born in Brazil. Here in the US, it’s hard to find (only on Brazilian stores in NYC or Chicago and such, and they cost a whole lot more here). But I brought a few bags of the herb with me ;)
3. I tend to write too much backstory at the beginning. I ALWAYS have to fix this in revisions.
4. If I don’t pay attention to characters personality, I’ll always make my hero very rude to everyone, especially the heroine, because of some element from his past, and the heroine will slowly smooth him out.
5. I suck at naming organizations or special characters. I want to be creative and change the normal names people use, like Elders or Guardians or Oracle or Brotherhood.
6. I also suck at naming the actual title of the manuscript. Usually, I start with a name related to the book, then later, much later, I think about the title. For example, when I was writing Sands of Hope, which is set in Egypt, I named it Egypt.
7. Since taking writing seriously, I wrote 4 novels, plus 5 unfinished ones (two up to 50k words and one up to 35k), 2 novellas and 1 novelette. I queried only one novel so far. I’ve got some requests then personalized rejections … I’m shelving it for now (while planning big revisions) and I’ll re-start one of those unfinished novels ;)

This is Chimarrao (it has a ~ over the second a)

I choose Lauren Garafalo, Lena Corazon, Em (ha! Gotta ya now!), Fabio Bueno, Ryan King, Karen Rought, and Rebecca Barray, all my friends and mates at the ROW80 challenge, to keep the game alive ;)

Cheers,

I changed from Blogger to WordPress over a year ago because I could have my website and my blog together. I also liked many of the themes and layouts and found it easy to use.

I still prefer WordPress, though there is one thing I don’t like and it’s a recent thing: Google Friends Connect isn’t available for it anymore.

So, how to expand on followers from now on? Tough question, but I think I solved it.

I thought about adding the Networked Blogs widget to the sidebar, but I’m not sure about that yet. Then, I added a RSS button (the orange button on the bottom footer under the Find Me On feature).

Clicking on it, you can add my blog to practically any reader (including Google) or receive my posts through email.

The downside? It doesn’t show how many followers I have on my blog (I bet there is some plugin for it, though). I know it sounds stupid, but when we first visit a blog, we all scroll down to look at how many followers the blogs have, isn’t it true? So, wanting or not, it does matter.

If you were a follower from the GFC before it went extinct, don’t worry. You’re still my follower and will keep receiving my posts through Google reader. At least, I think you are.

UPDATE:  I just changed my Google profile—I have now a personal profile and a professional profile—and because of that I’m re-following everyone and, when possible, I add directly to my Google Reader. So, if you don’t see me on your following gadget, don’t worry! You’re on my reader ;)

If you’re not on blogger either, how are you dealing with following issues? Do you guys use Google Reader, or any other reader? What do you think of Networked Blogs? Any thoughts are welcomed.

Cheers,