Gotta get the word out.

There is a side of writing that I haven't talked about much, because honestly it is foreign water to me. It's called marketing.

When I started writing, just over two years ago, I was under the impression that I would write, send my manuscript to a few publishers and agents, get a contract, and the publisher would sell my book. I'd sit back, keep writing, maybe hit a few book signings here and there. Well...what can I say? The bubble burst quick.

I now know that a huge part of writing is making a name for yourself. I didn't get a book publishing deal right away, and turned to other ways of getting my foot in the door. I wrote a short story (which was published in The Absent Willow Review where it won the Editor's Choice award), and I now have a string of fiction pieces in online magazines. I dug into my personal life and forged several experience stories into devotionals and articles for Sunday School magazines.

My publishing credits are growing, and that is a good thing. And recently, I've taken another step--getting into print anthologies.

This is a turning point for me. I will soon have stories bound within physical books. Books that I can direct people to buy. Books that I can buy from the publisher myself and sell. This opens up a whole new world!

I'm hoping you'll travel this journey with me. I want to share my ideas, successes and failures with you. Maybe you'll give me some great ideas for getting the word out about my anthologies. Maybe you'll even buy one (or two, or three...) from me :). It's going to be an adventure, and a learning experience for me, and maybe for you, too.

Anyway, here are the stats on the anthologies so far:

--One personal experience story, which I infused with a bit of fantasy, will be in Grandmother's Necklace in February 2010.

--Two personal experience stories will be in The Ultimate Christian Living in March 2010.

--A short horror piece will be in The Four Horsemen: An Anthology of Conquest, War, Famine and Death by Pill Hill Press in June 2010.

--And there's always Vampyr Verse, that's already out--a snarky little limerick of mine is in there.

--I'm on the "potential short-list list" of another anthology, the name of which I won't mention here in case I don't make the next level (oh, please, oh, please....). But I will say that it releases in April or May.

--Last but not least, I'll have one, maybe two, personal experience stories in Women of the Secret Place, a devotional for women that will be released in June 2010.

So...here we go :).