Extra! Extra!

Read all about it!

So goes the cry of the traditional newspaper boy. That seems to have drawn enough attention in its own time to get some readers; unfortunately this isn't much of a venue these days.

I'm still trying to figure out just how I should go about advertising myself. I've passed out the blog link to real-life friends. I already had some sort of presence on fanfiction.net, and I've frequented some of the forums at NaNoWriMo and Forward Motion Writers. I know that some of the forums have gotten me attention here on Blogger (although my number one source of hits seems to be some site called vampirestats).

At the same time, few of those viewers turn into commenters, so I'm not sure how well it's really working. I also have a whopping number of official followers (zero), but it's obvious at least one person has kept up with everything.

The hits have been increasing, though, so I'm hopeful that's going to continue. At the same time, I feel like I should kick things up a notch, but how? I have no Facebook, and I feel like if I made one it would either be entirely ignored or under constant assault from university friends. I don't have a Twitter and, as a writer, I'm not too sure about the format and word restriction. Apparently everyone also goes to Pinterest now, but that seems to be a lot more image-oriented, which doesn't work well, especially when I have all of one cover design (and a debated one at that).

For now I guess I'll just keep updating posts and chatting in my forums (and I've also decided to comment on some DeviantArt works, with a link to the blog in my signature). If anyone knows a good networking site or anything else I could do to get some attention as I work towards publishing, I am definitely open to suggestions.

Fame (What's Your Name)

So, Break Out has finally arrived. It's really been worrying me because its readers have such high expectations, and it's in such a different vein than The Rules, being off the island for the most part.

Even so, I went ahead and whipped up the first (and second) chapter and posted. 23 reviews, 10 favourites, and 19 story alerts are the results, as of today. I can't say how much I freaked out upon opening my inbox to over a page of emails notifying me of these things.

It's really nice feeling famous again, especially when very few are interested in The Long and Winding Road. Between that, Unsurvivable having almost 100 reviews less than its predecessor, and the direction Break Out is going, I was terrified everyone has either moved on or would after seeing how different the sequel is. Certainly it's a bit early to judge, but since most of the 23 reviews are people being extremely excited just to see a chapter posted, I think I'll be optimistic about the fans I have outside the BDDSG.

Of course, I always love my BDDSG'ers and being able to count on regulars like OWL-F reviewing.

It's just the difference between feeling loved and feeling outright famous, I guess. Of course, once I felt so famous I decided to compare myself with other Hetalia fan fictions... That brought the mood down quite quickly. No matter the criteria, there are always some 7 pages of stories with double what I have.

That's all right, though. I'll just pretend that all of that is only because they include yaoi and turn the other way. I may do some catering to the audience, but I'm not going to break with everything I do just to get more reviews. Certainly other factors are going to be involved, likely among them quality of writing, but those are impossible to figure out without analyzing all of those ahead of me, and I'm not going to bother with that. A loyal fanbase is a loyal fanbase, however much buzz they give your work.

Also, the title of this post is from the David Bowie song, for those confused.