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To Tell The Truth

What a week! Visited -and subscribed to – all 217 writers in Rachael Harrie’s Second Platform Building Crusade, met some impressive new (to me) authors, saw some truly clever First Challenge posts. I, for one, didn’t know there were so many ways to use the words fuliguline and bloviate. I’ve had a lot of fun watching the comments here on Feathers and Crystals and Rabbits, Oh My, too – you may have noticed part way through the week I stopped saying “no one’s even close.”

So, to the chase: The winner of the gift certificate to All Romance E-books is Urban Fantasy author and fellow Crusader Jessica, who correctly guessed that my lie was finding the crystal balls at the bottom of my Easter Basket. I do have a very lovely set of Ben Wa balls (yes, that’s what these are!) given to me by my husband, but they’re not crystal and he gave them to me for Christmas, not Easter!

The rest of the post? My husband and I do write together under the pen name Adriana Kraft. My favorite rabbit is indeed purple (you do have to remember I’m an erotic romance author and we’re not talking fluffy bunnies here…). One reader wondered if I wasn’t truly thinking about Easter already – that was a bit of a stretch, probably. I didn’t necessarily think about Easter before receiving the Challenge instructions, but once I put together ducks and blades of grass I had my integrating device, and then I certainly started thinking about Easter. And I do love Easter baskets, a custom my mother continued even when I visited over Easter as an adult, and one I passed on to our boys.

As to our traits? Absolutely true. He’s the quiet, efficient one, on the page and in person, and by now, after so many years of marriage, the fact that I walk into the room already speaking to him is a running joke and we can laugh about it (most of the time, he adds).

And that’s our bottom line – whatever we’re doing, to have fun. Life’s too short to stay gloomy.

(P.S. for those interested in such things, the lovely crystal balls are available at Eden Fantasies sex toy store.)

 

Feathers and Crystals and Rabbits, Oh My!

Mardi Gras is still two weeks away, but I’m thinking ahead to Easter Baskets, one of my favorite things. Bright colorful baskets filled with marshmallow peeps, chocolate rabbits, curly blades of grass, fluffy yellow ducklings and other things fuliguline. What, you say, not a word you know? Me neither, but evidently fuliguline refers to sea ducks such as plovers, coots and eiders. And Eiderdown is definitely fluffy – the best source for feather pillows and down comforters. As a writer of erotic romance, I’m all for comfort! Um. Actually, my favorite rabbit is purple, and I’m guessing no one will dare put it in my Easter basket, though my hubby is just impish enough to try. One year when no kids were home he left these beautiful crystal balls hidden at the bottom of the basket!

Speaking of whom, hubby is definitely not someone who bloviates. Another word you didn’t recognize? Think about Sinclair Lewis’s character Babbitt, or maybe T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock or even some famous lines from Shakespeare, oft quoted by my mother: “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” To bloviate is to engage in pompous discourse – to prattle on forever, full of self importance over nothing more momentous than the “taking of a toast and tea.” My hubby, who is half of the pen name Adriana Kraft, does not mince words. If anything, he truncates, condenses, collapses and packs as much as he can into as few words as possible. Definitely a positive trait! Me? I tend to be the opposite – and he says my most annoying trait is to walk into a room already talking to him, without looking to see if I might be interrupting something. On the other hand, somebody has to break the silence!

Hmm, I may have revealed something about me that isn’t strictly true, can you guess what it is? Leave a comment below – I’ll be back later this weekend to tell you what it is. Any correct guesses will be entered in a special drawing for a $6.00 gift certificate at All Romance E-Books!

 

Platform Building Crusade

I just joined FaceBook (you can find me HERE) to improve my marketing platform. My first FB friends, of course, are authors I’ve known and marketed with for several years. So when fellow erotic romance author Savannah Chase posted a link to a crusade she’d just joined focused on platform building, I paid attention.

Rachel Harrie is a gutsy unpublished author who’s going about building the platform for her career the right way. When an author submits a query, publishers want to know what kind of marketing the author will engage in, and they’re not just seeking empty promises. Information like website hits, blog subscribers, Google ranking, FaceBook followers and reader base have become standard components of submission guidelines.  

When my first book released in September 2006, I didn’t have a website. Granted, the book had been picked up by an unknown and shaky new e-publisher that folded less than a year later. They should have known better, and I should have known better. I share that story as a way of saying I’ve entered the marketing arena bass ackwards and I still have a lot to learn!

Enter Rachel’s Crusade. There are now 211 of us, from all genres imaginable. We’re subdivided into groups – I’m in the Erotic Fiction and LGBT groups – and I’m sure we’ll do some things together as a group. But I’m also looking forward to exchanges with authors whose work is nothing like mine to help me think outside the box. Plus, I read other genres (history, poetry, women’s fiction) so it’ll be great to connect with them, too.

I’ll keep you posted – can’t wait to see what Rachel has in store for us. Oh, and if you’d like to keep up with our activities, the Twitter hashtag #amcrusading will take you there.

 
© 2012 Adriana Kraft. All Rights Reserved.