Running Behind, a Pack of Savages on my Heels

I’m going on a Social Media Blackout. I’m running behind on the Hammerblood short stories by two weeks and it’s going to take me another week to finish the first.

As much as I want to keep up with the recent blogging, it is NOT the reason I wake up in the morning.

It is disappointing to see my little production schedule crumbling, but things happen. And though part of that reason is my ancient eight-year old laptop causing more trouble than it’s worth, at least I finally broke down and bought a new one that can blow through some of the speedbumps I’ve had to endure.

So, until the short stories are done… See you on the flip side. Know that I will break that rule if I see something really shiny.

(For the newsletter crowd, you’ll continue to get weekly updates on further chapters. It’s because I love you more.)

SEO Butchery for Your Fantasy Novel

How many keywords can you cram into your title? I had to wonder after doing a recent Amazon search.

But first, a quick primer for the SEO uniniated: SEO is Search Engine Optimization. A fancy way to say that a search engine is more likely to find your site (or in this case: book) than someone else’s.
1) Use meaningful descriptions. As in, don’t title your website “Clifton’s Hair-Brained Adventure”, call it “A Fantasy Writer’s Adventure”. Boring, yes, but it is what a lot of people swear by.
2) Add lots of keywords that relate to your craft, site, book, whatever, and voila! You have SEO.

I was doing some research for my book’s release and searched for "epic fantasy" on Amazon. I found The Way of Kings (yes!), some Kindle e-books promoted as Free (to be expected) and a new series titled: An Epic Fantasy.

What? They really called it An Epic Fantasy? That just strikes me as odd. Clicking over, the book descriptions for ALL of the author’s work included SEO keywords galore.