Last month, my friend Heather Kindt and I sold books at Albuquerque Comic Con, our fifth event where we shared table space, learned and relayed each other’s pitches, and vied for the attention of new readers. This being our fifth time selling together, in addition to each of us attending writing- and book-related conferences individually,…
Two weekends ago, Heather Kindt and I co-rented a booth at Albuquerque Comic Con (read her post about it here). Check us out in our costumed glory. You can’t see my A+ Rey hairdoo game, but I think the foam belt and wrist thingie get the point across. Heather thought her web outfit was lame,…
There’s an interesting phenomenon in the blogospere and in social media. It looks something like this: “I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while.” “I’m sorry for posting so often.” “I apologize for the political post.” “Sorry for all the book posts.” And on and on and on. I noticed the first example in blogs…
If you know me in real life, you know I go to Starbucks a lot. A lot. My kids attend Taekwondo classes across the street from the Starbucks location I frequent the most, and they pretty much live at Taekwondo, especially around tournament time. The baristas know my name. I gave them copies of The Seventh…
Before I get started on today’s topic, I want to express a huge thank you to everyone who supported my fundraiser for Houston disaster relief or gave directly to an organization that will help people in need. We are seeing the best of America coming through every day, and if there’s a silver lining to…
When I was in high school band (yes, I was just that cool), the director of the brass line would sometimes lead practices, and one of his favorite things to say was this: He said it in a Yoda voice and I didn’t really get it at the time, other than it was a Yoda…
Another year is coming to a close, and that means a time of reflection and resolution is upon us. 2016 was rather tumultuous, to say the least (we’ll miss you, Princess Leia!), and many are happy to see it go. Some good things happened, though – I heard a bunch of people in India planted…
I like to think I’m pretty savvy when it comes to the interwebs. I took to blogging easily, Facebook and Twitter are my favorite hangouts, and I’ve operated my self-publishing business almost entirely online. So imagine my surprise when I recently discovered two things: 1. That StumbleUpon exists, and 2. That it’s existed since 2002.…
When I published my first book twenty-one months ago (two years ago come February, so you don’t have to math), I didn’t know what to expect. I knew I’d sell some copies, probably my friends would read it, and it would get a handful reviews (hopefully good ones). If you’ve followed the blog for a…
I have exciting news! Remember that writing conference I went to a few weeks ago with Jenny and Dan? Well, I thought to myself, Self, I write books and know things. Maybe I know things the conference organizers would like to see in workshops. So I applied, and guess what! My proposals were accepted and I’m officially…
Allison Maruska 