Early January 2007 Blogs
Friday January 12, 2007 Additionally, I visited the Durham Writers Group Wednesday night and read aloud from my novel Death Cabin. On Tuesday, I met with a couple of staff members from Lulu for lunch, and we had a great discussion of ways that I can coordinate Meetups and bookstore events with Lulu staff. I'm very interested in setting up Meetups in various cities (Greensboro, Charlotte, Greenville, Atlanta, Augusta, Columbia, etc.) in order to generate a grass roots campaign for what I've come to call the "Write to Publish Program." Basically, I'd like to organize bi-monthly meetings at coffee shops in various cities in my region in order to help bring other writers together. There are three purposes for doing so. 1) To generate writing critique groups for writers who attend the Meetups, 2) To help guide writers who are ready to publish their books, and 3) To help writers who are self-published or published with small presses in order to get their books into bookstores and get them on a public speaking circuit. What's cool is that it looks like I have the support of Lulu in order to do this. It'll be very interesting to see how this unfolds in the next 6-12 months. I am excited about the possibilities. I am meeting for an interview tomorrow with the host of the Lulu Radio Podcast. Sunday night, I have a public speaking presentation in a theater in South Boston, Virginia. I began writing up the presentation last night, and I continued working on it today. I'd like to have the primary outline for the speaking engagement laid out by tomorrow evening with all my materials ready to go! My class at NC State went very well yesterday. It's time for me to go feed Sam. 11:23 P.M. Stacey Sunday January 7, 2007 The idea behind public access television is that it provides a television studio and equipment to members in a community. I had never thought about using this service, and so I looked into it online by Googling "public access television Raleigh." From there, I found Raleigh's community television station info, and I called. I discovered that they do, in fact, have a studio that people in the community can use. They have a free orientation, and they offer cost-effective training in video production. There's even a way to begin your own television show. Like I said on Friday, it's become my conviction that one of the keys to becoming a household name in America is through national television broadcasting. At this point, I'm just interested in learning how to make a studio-quality television production so that I can use that knowledge to reach a greater audience. Plus it's fun! Stacey Friday January 5, 2007 My big thing now that the speaking events are beginning to pick up momentum is that I'd like to make regular video documentaries of the events. I have in mind a kind of MTV Road Rules/Dog The Bounty Hunter-style reality TV documentary of these events. It is my conviction that regular national television broadcasting is the key to household name recognition and coincidentally bestsellerdom. Right now, there aren't really any popular television shows about writers. I'd like to get in a regular habit of filming my author events with a long-term goal of being able to film a national book tour in an edgy and interesting way. I've managed to do a little writing this week, bringing the word count total for Sacred Kill up to 29,982 at 155 pages. Stacey P.S. Check out the new trailer for my novel The Colorado Sequence...
It has been a very busy week. Classes started back at NC State; this semester I'll be teaching on Tuesday and Thursday.
I had a great conversation with a friend yesterday who used to be in television and film production, and she helped me brainstorm ideas for video-taping these speaking engagements that I have coming up. One idea she recommended that I had not thought of was contacting local public access stations.
I love it when things are hopping. I've been incredibly busy the past few days. I currently have eight literary agents who have contacted me, requesting sample chapters (or the full manuscript) for The Colorado Sequence. On top of that, I'm putting the final things in place for my bookstore event in Pittsboro on January 20, 2007, as well as my speaking engagement in South Boston, Virginia on January 14.
