Write on Wednesday's #Wow February 8th 2012.

Welcome to Write On Wednesday's # WOW for February 8th 2012.

Anyone can play along.  It's simple , (well it is once you've done it a few times). It takes very little time and presents a great opportunity to promote your own work and the work of an author you have recently been reading.

Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• On YOUR BLOG site Share six (6) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. (No more than 8 if possible)
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other #WOW  participants can add the book to their To Be Read Lists if they like your teasers!
•  I also add more, such as the cover and buy link but that is completely optional. It just adds a bit of color to the post, but up to you entirely.
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• Then...you have the opportunity of sharing your own work by doing the same thing again all in the same post (See mine below)
• Grab your own book
• Share six (6) sentences on your BLOG. Share title, author...you get the drill.
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• WHEN you are finished and happy with your post publish it and link it to the Linky list appearing below this where it says......"You're next. Click here to enter."
• Don't forget the object of this entire exercise is to reach new readers for the work you are promoting here YOUR OWN INCLUDED)... and to explore and perhaps follow new blogs. 
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• So you have the entire week to pop in to as many of the blogs on those listed below as you wish, and hopefully they will reciprocate. The end of the week should see more blogs added. This is a newish blog for me, so lets see if it takes off and gets new readers and followers for all the participants...and me of course.

 Teaser 1 for this week ..."Dark Running" by M.Cid D'Angelo

Suspended – shadow in light – in a shower of glass. Pain, yes, but not enough to matter, and although the headlong crash through the bottom window dazed him, the sorcerer never thought he might actually die. Gasping, he cast his hands outward, a shiver of blackness rippling the air like a miniature tsunami. The glass he’d broken in his fall pulled back from the concrete and reset itself intact in the pane behind him. 

 He took a breath – two – he was ready. Now he was ready. It wasn’t going to catch him off-guard again. He snapped his head at the dull glow of the lamps along the walk through the park. 

Buy Dark Running here.

TEASER 2. I HAVE OPTED TO PROMOTE ANOTHER BOOK I HAVE ENJOYED  rather than my own work this week.

 Teaser...from "Black Shadows" by Simon Swift.

23 October 1935
Newark, New Jersey
When the shooting started, I was tucking into a nice, bloody
porterhouse steak. A generous portion of mashed potatoes, string beans
and turnip accompanied it, swimming in the tasty juices from the meat.
A half empty bottle of claret stood in the middle of the table and a
basket full of bread rolls sat at the edge. Three other men were eating;
Terry Shadow was on my right, a small, wiry Irishman faced me, and
Dyke Spanner was next to him.

The first few shots took us by surprise, but as they were not meant
for us it did not really matter. A small man dressed in a brown suit was
firing a pistol, but it was his partner, a larger, angrier, uglier man that
was doing the damage, pumping the room full of shotgun blasts. Three
of their intended targets were sitting in the far corner, and were all badly
hurt in the opening exchange.

Buy Black Shadows here..

The TRUE story of Rudolph.

The True Story of Rudolph



A man named Bob May, depressed and broken-hearted, stared out his drafty apartment window into the chilling December night.


His 4 year old daughter Barbara sat on his lap quietly sobbing.


Bobs wife, Evelyn, was dying of cancer.


Little Barbara couldn't understand why her mommy could never come home.

Barbara looked up into her dad's eyes and asked, "Why isn't Mommy just like everybody else's Mommy?"


Bob's jaw tightened and his eyes welled with tears.


Her question brought waves of grief, but also of anger.


It had been the story of Bob's life.


Life always had to be different for Bob.






Small when he was a kid, Bob was often bullied by other boys.


He was too little at the time to compete in sports.


He was often called names he'd rather not remember.


From childhood, Bob was different and never seemed to fit in.


Bob did complete college, married his loving wife and was grateful to get his job as a copywriter at Montgomery Ward during the Great Depression.


Then he was blessed with his little girl.


But it was all short-lived.


Evelyn’s bout with cancer stripped them of all their savings and now Bob and his daughter were forced to live in a two-room apartment in the Chicago slums.


Evelyn died just days before Christmas in 1938.


Bob struggled to give hope to his child, for whom he couldn’t even afford to buy a Christmas gift.


But if he couldn’t buy a gift, he was determined to make one – a storybook!


Bob had created a character in his own mind and told the animal’s story to little Barbara to give her comfort and hope.


Again and again Bob told the story, embellishing it more with each telling.


Who was the character?


What was the story all about?


The story Bob May created was his own autobiography in fable form.


The character he created was a misfit outcast like he was.






The name of the character?


A little reindeer named Rudolph, with a big shiny nose.


Bob finished the book just in time to give it to his little girl on Christmas Day.


But the story doesn’t end there.


The General Manager of Montgomery Ward caught wind of the little storybook and offered Bob May a nominal fee to purchase the rights to print the book.


Wards went to print, ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ and distributed it to children visiting Santa Claus in their stores.


By 1946, Wards had printed and distributed more than six million copies of Rudolph.


That same year, a major publisher wanted to purchase the rights from Wards to print an updated version of the book.


In an unprecedented gesture of kindness, the CEO of Wards returned all rights back to Bob May.


The book became a best seller.


Many toy and marketing deals followed and Bob May, now remarried with a growing family, became wealthy from the story he created to comfort his grieving daughter.






But the story doesn’t end there.


Bob’s brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, made a song adaptation to Rudolph.


Though the song was turned down by such popular vocalists as Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore, it was recorded by the singing cowboy, Gene Autry.


‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ was released in 1949 and became a phenomenal success, selling more records than any other Christmas song, with the exception of ‘White Christmas’.


The gift of love that Bob May created for his daughter so long ago kept on returning back to bless him again and again.


And Bob May learned the lesson, just like his dear friend Rudolph, that being different isn't so bad.


In fact, being different can be a blessing.

Marketing? Who me? YES...you.

Marketing…the word raises a shudder with most of us. Damn it we are writers. Writers write. Marketers market…simple.



NEWS FLASH…not any more my friends.


The joy of writing shouldn’t be diminished by the need to market yourself and your work. Sadly we all get caught up in it and find to our dismay that our writing is suffering as a result.

 DON'T allow that to happen.


Our creativity is being stifled, I hear many people say.

Utilize that marvelous creativity to assist those juices to flow, your web/blogsite can be a source of inspiration to yourself and others. It doesn't have to be like force feeding yourself broken glass, it just seems that way at first.


Okay. So what can we do? What can we expect?  Where do we go?


Hands up those who have already created their own blog site/web. Well done. More yays than nays. I hope so.


That is STEP ONE.

Experiment with different free sites until you find one that offers you what you’ll think you need. Look at the sites that may you say "Ahh". You will be delighted to find that a great many of them are free sites. This one is.

Make certain that you can add features {WIDGETS} to it. You will need them, trust me.

You may need more than one site. I for instance have 4. One is strictly to have some fun on, with like minded people. One is for my biography and related information.

One is to promote my book "Dudes Down Under" a comedy/satire that would clash badly with the biographical content of 'Empty Chairs."


And this one, to hopefully and genuinely help myself and others learn more about this marketing stuff.


STEP 2. Don’t be selfish. If you are not prepared to assist others by offering feedback and links, comments and reviews, then forget it. Marketing is all about interacting with people, give them what they want and they will follow

Don’t make the mistake of attempting to create a blazingly clever site straight up.

Peruse the other writing sites; there are literally thousands of them.

The most visited sites are usually very clean and organized to look at, people don’t want a degree in geography just to navigate the site.

Give them what they need to know on the very first page. Links to other writing sites. The ability to connect with the big social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Buzzer, Digg, Blogger, YouTube, Google…yes all of them.


Make your content stand out…you can’t do that unless you are prepared to take some risks and push the envelope further than you initially believed you had to.

There is absolutely no point putting up a site that doesn’t benefit the people who visit it.


They should be at the very least be informed. Encourage them to interact with you and the other followers of the site.

If you find something useful share it with your friends.


Book Giveaways: Contests: details of signings or media launches. The choice is endless.

What you offer them may not be unique, so make it as enjoyable, and user friendly as you can.


Don’t let yourself get bogged down with this blog stuff. Keep it simple. You need to put a minimum 1 hour a day into it at first. Stay up to date with it.

Blog every day, if you have something to say. People are genuinely interested in what you have to say, "IF" it can somehow help them.

If you want to write about the kiddies, don't for heavens sake put it into a blog tagged, Authors, publishers, editing, etc. Unless Junior is the subject of your Pulitzer Prize winning novel.

Be accurate when researching, acknowledge blogs and websites that have assisted you in the post. Watch for copyright.

Many blogs do not permit a repost of their work in full. You may however share it with a link .

Have some fun with it, experiment and before long it will seem easy, it will also help you  pursue the dream and continue with what you really love doing…writing.

Be patient; ask questions…and if something is not working then delete it and try something else. Remember whatever attracted you to a site, is what will attract others to yours.