(This is a duplicate of the post at http://www.madison-woods.com/Wordpress/sunday-musings-finding-my-niche/. I don’t post all of my posts here, so if you’d like to keep up with me, please go to the new blog and sign up to follow there – thanks!)
It’s 20*F outside this morning and the birds are tweeting like it’s spring already. The sun is shining and I love the way it creeps over the top of the mountains before it shines down into the valley.
Still a Social Hermit
While I haven’t been socializing as much, when I do get on I seem to be getting more accomplished both online and off. I’ve been doing a lot of editing and making good progress on Symbiosis. I’m starting to collect email addresses of people who are interested in reading it when it’s finally on the shelves. If you would like to sign that list it’s right here at the bottom of every post. There’s a widget to put something at the bottom of every post, by the way, if you’re a WP user and want to try it out. It’s called “Bottom of Every Post“.
Announcement form
I’ll probably post this at the bottom of every post from now on. Or for as long as I’m building a readership, which will hopefully be from now on. My writer-friends who frequent my site will hopefully let it drift to the back of their consciousness so it seems less of an intrusion. But I want newcomers to my blog and potential readers of Symbiosis and future books and stories, to always have a no-hassle way to sign up easily for announcements without having to worry they’ll get swamped with blog posts or junk mail.
This list does two things
- Notifies
- Proves
It will let the readers who are waiting know when it is finally available to purchase. This will be more than a year from now even if I find an agent and publisher on the first attempt. It just takes that long for the publishing wheels to turn, from what I understand.
It will also show any agents or publishers that I am working on building a fan base and that there are readers who are waiting to read what I write. This could prove valuable, or it might not matter at all, depending on the agent or publisher. I’d rather have it and not need it, than not have it and try to scramble a list together in a week or two. It isn’t easy to convince people to drop their email address like that.
Submissions
I have two short stories out on submission still.
Website Housekeeping
Aside from the editing and list-building I’ve been working on optimizing my blog and website. I’m doing one thing in particular that I hope will improve my ranking in search engines. I’m trying to establish my niches. One of the ways Google ranks pages has to do with content and if a website author is an “expert” on a topic, it ranks better. To be considered and “expert” means the author has many posts on a particular topic.
A topic I can use to establish my expertise is the predator-prey relationship. So I did a search on my own site for that keyword and created an “index” to all the posts I’ve made that mention or have to do with the predator-prey relationship. This index is now a Page: Category- Predator vs Prey. As it turns out, this keyword phrase is the one that brings the most traffic from searches.
When I have more time, I’ll make category pages for the other search phrases that bring people to my site. I’m trying to capitalize on what I’m already doing, and do more of it.
On the Personal Front
My personal life has been hectic lately. At least one of the crisis were solved over the weekend last weekend when my son and future son-in-law retrieved my horse from THE NEIGHBORING COUNTY. Not only did he escape the field where he was being kept, but he got hooked up with a pair of wild, roving mules and I was afraid had reverted to being wild himself. Now he is home where he belongs.
My daughter is due to have a baby on or near April 20 (yeah, we laugh about the date too…) but she went into premature labor a couple of weeks ago. After a few days in the hospital they managed to stop the contractions but now she’s on complete bedrest. Not only is she going stir crazy by now, but the rest of us trying to keep her horizontal are also getting a bit stir crazy as well. Still, every week she can hold on to baby in the belly is another week of better odds for baby.
And my future husband sent me a picture of him at work standing by a sign that gives me a giggle. When he saw it while walking past it to a job, he must have thought it perfect too:
He has a collection of stories and pictures he calls “Kandahar WTF” because they’re either so stupid it’s hard to believe, or just plain unbelievable for other reasons. This one’s funny to me because of the singular ‘man’ at work, haha. So now you get to see what my man looks like 
We’ll be getting married in late September this year and he’ll be done with the gig in Kandahar in December. After that, we’ll both be working on our home businesses and our joint dream of becoming sustainable on our homestead. Our list of things to do is a mile long and from the look of it, we’ll never truly “retire”. Which is fine by me. It also means there’s never going to be a boring day for the rest of our lives.
So there’s the update on what’s up with me these days. Are you working on any new projects or making good progress on old ones?
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If you give me your email address, I’ll let you know when Symbiosis and future books hit the shelves. You won’t get blog posts, or junk mail. The first announcement will be when Symbiosis has found an agent or publisher. You are not obligated to anything at all by signing up, but it shows potential publishers that there are people interested in reading it when it’s ready. Thanks in advance!
Click here to sign up for the announcement list:
http://forms.madison-woods.com/Symbiosis-Announcement/index.php
