I is for I Smell Sheep

I IS FOR I SMELL SHEEP!

Welcome back to the A-Z Blog Challenge, those of you who are playing along this game. I've met some wonderful people so far and followed some awesome blogs.

I did an interview with a pair of bloggers, who just tickled my funny bone. Their blog is called I Smell Sheep, and ewe are in for a treat! Because they did such a great job with the Q&A I sent them, I'm going to just repost that interview, along with the quirky pictures they provided. Enjoy! And all of you who blog or like to follow fun things, (I mean why do the other stuff anyway?) here they are (used with permission):  Sharon and Katie.

1. What kinds of books do you review and why?

Katie: First, thanks so much for having us over! We review paranormal romance and urban fantasy the most, but anything in the speculative fiction arena we will take a look at! Plus we review comic books and interview both authors and actors!

We're at comic book conventions and readers gatherings. The Sheep are taking over the world!

Sharon: I personally prefer dark urban fantasy, but I dip my toes into the paranormal romance pool occasionally…as long as there are monsters involved. I adore horror comics that have a dash of campy humor too.

2. Do you review audio books and why?

Katie: We don't review audio books right now, but maybe in the future!

Sharon: I haven’t reviewed any because I don’t have slots of time conducive to listening. I can read faster than I could listen.

3. Give us a little rundown on the blog's history: when formed, how it grew, how you helped make it grow and where you are headed in the future?

Katie: I started the website 5 years ago, after my Mom pretty much forced me to finally start writing down all my random and at times off-beat opinions. I'm not a strong writer by any means and totally admit that! I try and write from the heart and make, not only my writing tone colorful but add some facts along the way.



Not long after the site started, I reached out to some folks who were leaving comments and the first guest reviewers came on board. About a year into the site Sharon Stogner burst into the scene. She's now a huge part of what we do, while it's a collective, Sharon keeps us all in line and on track to meet deadlines. We wouldn't be where we are as a site today without her.

I don't know what the future holds for the Sheep, but I'm excited to find out!

Sharon: Don’t let her fool you…her writing style is truly unique and her enthusiasm, when she writes about a book she loves, is infectious! We also have some devoted followers who spread their love of all things sheep. The I Smell Sheep Facebook group is where the crazy happens. Everything from the reviews to the interviews to the guest post topics is quirky and fun. You never know what you will find each day when you visit us. But behind the scenes, we are serious about what we do and our professionalism when dealing with authors, publishers and readers has helped us become what we are today.

4. How many followers on each post do you get per daily average?

Katie: It depends on the post and honestly we try not to focus on the day to day numbers of visits. For those out there needing a number, we have an average of 50,000 page views per month.

5. In your opinion, why is your blog so successful? Why did it win the awards it has? 

Katie: I think the website has been successful from all our hard work. Through marketing on other online sources, creating a Facebook and Twitter page. Social media has really helped us spread the word about I Smell Sheep. Though it could also just be that we are something a little different. Strange even. Offbeat and proud of it. We are weird and we are proud to be this way. Normal is scary to us.

We recently won the Preditors & Editors Readers Poll for Best Review site 2014. That's still shocking to say, we never in a million years thought an award this big would come our way!

Sharon: Katie developed, before I came onboard, a quirky style for interviews. Authors/actors often thanks us for the atypical questions. We also have unusual guest post topics and features. We also try to be flexible when working with others. And under all the fun and quirkiness we have built a foundation of trust and integrity.

Shout out to our followers who voted for us! Big sheep kisses to everyone. It is quite humbling.

6. If you could give advice to a struggling blog, or someone wanting to start blogging, what would you advise, based on your experiences.

Katie: I would say, do whatever you love. No matter what it is. Don't hold yourself back or shut any doors with inner thoughts of doubt. Be realistic though, there's a very slim chance you'll make enough money to blog for a living. But if you want to find another way to be creative, then go for it and don't look back!

Sharon: There are a lot of bloggers out there willing to help and give advice. Visit blogs you admire. Talk with the people behind the scenes and ask questions. We have an amazing network of blogging friends. We help each other out. Integrity and trust is crucial to success in blogging. You can’t build trust overnight, you have to earn it from readers, other bloggers, publishers and authors. Break that trust and you are done.



Thank you so much. Here's how you can stay in contact with Sharon and Katie. Ewe won't regret it! 

website: http://www.ismellsheep.com/

fb group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/113479318706362/

pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/sstogner1/i-smell-sheep/

G+: https://plus.google.com/+Ismellsheep/posts

tumblr: http://ismellsheep.tumblr.com/

twitter: https://twitter.com/k28dalton

tsu: http://www.tsu.co/ismellsheep

I Smell Sheep emails:

flockparty@hotmail.com

If you would like to follow the A-Z Challenge, click the button at the side/bottom of this blog page and you'll be directed at random (how fun!) to another A-Z Blog Challenge poster. Enjoy your ride. And may the sheep take over the world!

Behind The Grog

A big thanks to Sharon for hosing us all here this week, for being a fan of The Naked Hero and WG2E, and for offering up our insight to you all. What a fun, fun idea!

Making a grog work means that everyone knows the expectations, everyone is on board with those expectations, and everyone has jobs they understand and can commit to. I’m definitely the Behind-the-Scenes girl of our blogs, running the dashboard, organizing our content, structuring the blog pages, etc.

Was I always a techy girl?

Nope! I learned out of necessity. We launched our blog way back when and I wanted it to look a certain way. I wanted to have links in the sidebar widgets. I wanted content organized just so. But none of the original founders had the money to spend on any more than the custom Wordpress design we’d agreed on (customizing a Wordpress design is very easy and one of the most affordable ways to get a blog/grog rolling).

Now, I should interject here and say that my parents call me a pioneer woman. That is, I am rarely idle, and I do what needs to be done, particularly when there’ s no one else to do it.

So, a little HTML didn’t scare me. I dove in, began reading about SEO and code and Wordpress, and I experimented. I learned. And while I’m no pro and would never quit my day jobs, I do enjoy having the ability to manipulate the look of our websites, add the content that the other gals want added, and I’ve grown with the industry and the world by learning to be techy.

I love participating on both The Naked Hero and WG2E (I also write for the grog, Killer Characters). They all give me something different--outlets for creativity, thoughts, and a means to hone my craft and dig deeper into the industry. Working with others means the pressure to produce a daily blog isn’t there. I write on my day and trust that the others will meet their commitments and write on their days. This is super important for me because I:

• Am the Marketing Director for Entangled Publishing ( http://entangledpublishing )

• Am a mother of 5

• Am a wife

• Like to read

• Want a life

• Am a writer ( http://misaramirez.com )

Blogging is fun. It’s important for different facets of my career. It’s an outlet. But it’s also work, so doing it with other people who I enjoy spending [virtual] time with makes it all the better. We’re our own little family-- lots of love, some squabbles (like DD said, we don’t always agree on everything!), and the knowledge that we always have each other’s backs.

About Misa/Melissa

Melissa Bourbon, who sometimes answers to her Latina-by-marriage name Misa Ramirez, gave up teaching middle and high school kids in Northern California to write full-time amidst horses and Longhorns in North Texas. She fantasizes about spending summers writing in quaint, cozy locales, has a love/hate relationship with yoga and chocolate, is devoted to her family, and can’t believe she’s lucky enough to be living the life of her dreams.

She is the marketing director at Entangled Publishing, is the author of the Lola Cruz Mystery series with St. Martin’s Minotaur, A Magical Dressmaking Mystery series with NAL (Pleating for Mercy: http://www.amazon.com/Pleating-Mercy-Magical-Dressmaking-Dressmakers/dp/0451234367 ), and is the co-author of The Tricked-out Toolbox and two romantic suspense novels to be released in 2012.

BLOGGING: How We Work/How We Get Along

WAVING from Kentucky! Yes!~ we do have internet service here!

Most people know me as Tonya Kappes, mother of four, but readers know me as The high-class hillbilly that writes romantic comedy and cozy mysteries.

My short stories, Masked Souls, and Another Quirky Christmas are published through a small press. Recently I Indie published my debut novel, Carpe Bead ‘em and excited to say it hit Amazon’s bestsellers list in the United States and the United Kingdom! Needless to say, I’m over the moon.

Enough about me….

When Sharon asked our grog to take a week and blog, we were delighted. I decided to tackle how we work, cooperate and just plain get along.

Now I’m not gonna lie, sometimes we want to spit in each other’s eye, but we don’t. We chew harder on that piece of straw and bit our tongue because none of us have the same opinions. You see, we all have different writing career paths and no matter which path we are on, it’s not the wrong path.

That’s what makes The Writer’s Guide To E Publishing work. We bring all different sort of opinions and ideas.

When D.D. and I came up with the idea, we wanted a place where writers had all the new electronic publishing tips in one place. D.D. is Indie published, Lee is polishing her manuscript, Misa is big six published and indie published, I am small published and Indie published, so we bring a lot of industry knowledge to the site.

First we got a yahoo loop. We each took a day, and since D.D. had so much information already, she took on a lot of the other three days. But Lee is doing a lot more of that now. Anything that needs to be discussed, goes through the yahoo loop.

We all agreed, that we would be honest in our journey. Honest about what we like about publishing and what we don’t like about publishing. Lee gives the facts, I try to make it fun, and Misa and D.D. just tell it like it is. And sometimes we don’t agree. But that’s okay! It’s what makes the grog work.

WG2E was designed to give the writer every option they have to make the most of their careers. We wanted to pay it forward and give back to writers. WE believe in KARMA, good ju-ju, and this was our way of doing it.

For example, my experience may be different than Lee’s, but at least the writer gets to look at all our experience and not go into something with a blind eye like we did. We aren’t saying it’s a bad blind eye, but we are honest and let you know what to expect on all fronts.

So come on by WG2E, no matter what stage of the publishing game you are in. I promise you will learn something new!!

Tonya Kappes is the author of Carpe Bead ‘Em , that hit Amazon’s Hobby Fiction Best Seller’s list only six

days after the debut. The Ladybug Jinx, a romantic comedy novel will be available in August 2011.

Tonya is the author of two short stories which can be found in the Something Spooky This Way Comes

and Believe Anthologies. Her, co-authored, non-fiction book The Tricked-Out Toolbox, helps writers

explore the best promotional and marketing strategies for their career, will debut January 2012.

Besides being the co-founder of the beyond quirky writer’s grog The Naked Hero

(www.thenakedhero.com), she also is co-founder of The Writer’s Guide to E Publishing

(www.thewritersguidetoepublishing.com).

When she’s not writing about quirky characters and even quirkier situations, she’s busy being the

princess, queen and jester of her domain which includes her BFF husband, her four teenage boys and

two dogs.

Why write a book with beading elements? Once upon a time, Tonya was the proud co-owner of a very

successful beading company, Beadnicks LLC.

Grogging Your Way to Readers and Sanity

Hello, Sharon Hamilton-Land!!!

I’m Bestselling Romantic Comedy and Cozy Mystery Author D. D. Scott, plus the #1 Amazon Bestselling Author of MUSE THERAPY: UNLEASHING YOUR INNER SYBIL, and without a doubt, me and my muses too are huge fans of all-things-grogging!

What’s Grogging?

Grogging = Group Blogging

Doesn’t the name itself just sound sooo cool rolling off your tongue?!

Anyhoo...

Why Grogging?

Well...because of two reasons:

1. We’re Writers...and thus our ultimate goal is to “find” readers

2. We’re Writers...and thus hanging onto our sanity can be a bit of a rough ride, right?

To that end, first, let’s get the writer’s sanity issues out in the open...

Yesterday, on one of my grogs The WG2E http://thewritersguidetoepublishing.com to celebrate the release of my 5^th Indie Epubbed book –THUG GUARD - I kicked-off my D. D. Scott “Put Your Big Girl Panties On & Deal With It” Blog Tour.

Because yeah, to make it to your own Publishing Oz in our writing-for-publication, full of wicked witches publishing world, many days it simply boils down to putting on your big girl or boy panties and just dealing with all the crap piling up on your road to success.

Today, I’m sharing one of my “sassy observations about life...”...the writer’s life that is...on this fantabulous blog:

A Little Bit of Monika

http://monikamichalak.blogspot.com

So hop on over there now and catch my My Evil Editor Turd Anecdote straight outta my MUSE THERAPY book.

http://www.amazon.com/Muse-Therapy-Unleashing-Inner-ebook/dp/B004774LN4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306947576&sr=8-1

It doesn’t get much sassier than this...and, keep in mind...

This is...

no joke...

what actually happened to me at RWA (Romance Writers of America) Nationals in 2009.

Once you’ve read my anecdote, you’ll know why it’s sooo damn important to find any means you can to maintain your sanity along our writing-for-publication journeys.

One way I’ve found to do both that as well as continue to find new readers and fans for my books is to Grog with other authors who sooo “get” our sanity issues and challenges as writers and who also sooo hope to build their reader and fan bases too.

I became a Goddess at The Naked Hero in October 2010, then fellow Goddess Tonya Kappes and I brainstormed and created our next grog The WG2E – The Writer’s Guide to Epublishing – in December 2010, with the tech-savvy-super-smarts of Author Misa Ramirez and the indie epub newbie angle that soon-to-be-pubbed L.A. Lopez could also share!

Tonya had taken one of my Muse Therapy Online Classes, and she and her muse Lucky Lucy (formerly known as Lazy Lucy) immediately bonded with me and my muses The Carrie Squad (named after my beloved Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and The City fame).

Tonya asked me to become a Naked Hero Goddess, and I was thrilled to join her, Misa, Lee/L.A., and Heather Webber on Mount Olympus as the Hump Day Goddess.

I luuuvvv that with The Naked Hero, we’re really focused on Readers and Fans. We luuuvvv getting to know reader peeps and sharing all-things-books-movies-TV-pop culture-and-life in general.

Now, with our WG2E grog, we’ve created a destination site for all-things-Epublishing. We’re writers helping writers by Paying It Forward with real numbers and real experiences. On this grog, our goal is to share everything in our writing-for-publication worlds to hopefully make it a wee bit more pleasant for other writers traveling the Epublishing Road to Oz.

So yeah...we’re grogging for both readers and writers! And many of our grog fans participate on both sites...which of course we luuuuvvv!!!

With Tonya, Misa, Lee/L.A., Heather and I, we bring a wide range of experiences and career levels to our grog readerships...and I think that’s what makes us sooo successful.

We’re all coming at our writing-for-publication careers from different points and preferences.

And ohhh yeahhh, we sooo do NOT agree on all elements of our journey...but again, it’s that kind of innate differences, experiences, viewpoints, and opinions that really rock our readers and give ‘em that extra zest and spice to make our grogs must-visit-daily sites!

In today’s publishing world, perhaps even more so than that messed-up world of yesteryear, it’s even more important to be visible on every possible social networking venue – every day – and grogging gives you that kind of visibility EVERY DAY!!!

Thanks bunches for hosting me today, Sharon!

Please...feel free to comment and ask me any questions you’d like. I’ll be checking-in through-out the day!

In addition, you can always catch me at all my cyber homes:

http://www.DDScott.com

http://ddscottauthor.blogspot.com

http://thewritersguidetoepublishing.com

http://thenakedhero.com

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/profile.php?id=100001238957002

http://twitter.com/#!/ddscottromcom

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/949843.D_D_Scott

I look forward to welcoming y’all to my Bootscootin’ and Cozy Cash Mystery Worlds!!!

http://www.amazon.com/Bootscootin-Blahniks-Books-ebook/dp/B003ZDO30W/ref=pd_sim_kinc_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

http://www.amazon.com/Stompin-Stetsons-Bootscootin-Books-ebook/dp/B004DI7N32/ref=pd_sim_kinc_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

http://www.amazon.com/Buckles-Baby-Bootscootin-Books-ebook/dp/B004NEVZ6C/ref=pd_sim_kinc_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

http://www.amazon.com/Thug-Guard-Cozy-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00507FTQS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1306947717&sr=1-1

Sexy Sassy Smart Grogging & Sanity Wishes --- D. D. Scott

BLOGGING: How To Get Started

Welcome Lee Lopez, fellow chapter mate of mine at RWA-Black Diamonds in the East Bay, California. Lee not only has been a great friend, but she was one of those people who had to look at one of my early (oh! this is sooooo painful) first drafts. You know that one that we all have? When the critique partner starts the crit with, "Um." But she couldn't have been more helpful, and her kind and gentle approach to all things has inspired me in so many ways. A very public and well-deserved thank you, Lee.

I've been impressed and watched the success of their blogs: Naked Hero and Writer's Guide to ePublishing. Links are below. This week, we're going to be touching base with all the writers who contribute. Welcome to you all.

First I’d like to thank Sharon for inviting, myself and my blogging partners from the Writers Guide to E-Publishing, to be a guest on her site.

Sharon had asked me how do you create a successful blog, with four other individuals, with four different styles of writing, and four different backgrounds.

There is only one answer, not very easily.

This is where you start:

1. Know your partners. Make sure everyone is on the same page, and understands this is a commitment. No slackers!

2. All the parties involved, must come to an agreement on the format of the blog. Is it about writing, heroes, dogs, kids, etc.

3. Discuss responsibilities of maintaining the site. Who is the techie, who is PR.

4. Choose your days for blogging and stick with it. One of the biggest reasons blogs go under is one person isn’t holding up their end of the bargain. It can ruin friendships, when the group as a whole has to carry dead weight.

5. Talk to your partners. Keep open communication. If you can’t blog on an assigned day, let them know. Bring in a guest, or switch with someone. Remember it’s a commitment.

6. Be consistent. Readers return because of reliability. They become fans and expect a certain degree of quality. If you don’t post for a few weeks, you’ll lose readers.

7. Be careful what is written. Do research, and quote experts, don’t ever bad mouth anyone.

8. Remember what you write will remain in cyberspace F-O-R-E-V-E-R.

9. Know copyright law. Don’t enroll in law school, but research copyrights, especially on pictures copied to your site. No what you can copy directly and can’t. Getting a nasty gram from someone claiming you’ve copied them, is embarrassing.

10. You must answer every comment on the blog. It makes the commenter feel like they are saying is important, and it gives them a connection. They feel like they know you.

11. Have fun. Enjoy what you’re doing. Have contest, give away, make it fun.

I know it sounds like a lot, but it is what makes a successful blog.

Is it work? It can be, but once the rhythm of writing for the blog takes hold, its fun. My mind is always swirling around things to write about. And I find ideas in the oddest places.

When blogging first started, I heard many writers say, they weren’t going to bother, it was only another fad. Well, that was five years ago, and here were are with, probably millions of blogs in the bloggessphere. There is even a bloggers convention, with awards.

It is a personal choice to make this commitment. It is easier to go with partners, it keeps the blog up dated daily, and it brings fresh new ideas. Some prefer going it alone, and do a great job.

Right now I’m apart of three blogs:

The Naked Hero,

www.thenakedhero.com

The writers guide to e-publishing, www.thewritersguidetoepublishing.com

Voices from the Heart, www.voicesftheart.blogspot.com (I blog once a month there.)

HOW DO YOU START AND RUN A SUCCESSFUL BLOG?

The witty crew from WG2E are going to be here next week to show us the ins and outs of successfully doing a blog and holding it together.

Come back all week and check out what we have in store for you. And thanks to the gals at Naked Hero and WG2E for the gift of their time, and experience. I think you'll be as impressed as I have been with what they've done, and how they do it.

We start the week out with author Lee Lopez, on Monday, HOW TO START A SUCCESSFUL BLOG.