Blog

For Wilshire Baptist Church

It wasn’t my best moment as a homeowner. Or a savvy troubleshooter. Or a tenacious investigator. Or a critical thinker. Or a take-charge alpha male.

It started when LeAnn came home from a morning appointment and said there was some kind of alarm sounding in the garage. I came downstairs from my office and could hear it as I walked through the kitchen. When I opened the door I was almost knocked over by the sound: three pulsing screams, repeating over and over. It sounded like a smoke detector so my eyes went to the ceiling, and no, we don’t have a smoke detector on the garage ceiling. But mounted high up on the wall was a small, square transformer. I walked toward it and, yep, it got louder. Found it. Continue reading “Tunnel Vision”

This is Day 1 of Lone Star Literary Life’s Aransas Morning Book Blog Tour. It’s 10 days of different people posting stuff about the book or me or both. The daily stops are different, but each one has links to all the stops that have come before. Each stop also has news about other books, so if you like books by Texas authors then this is a great way to discover some new reads.

Today A Page Before Bedtime  and Reading by Moonlight have both posted promos to kick off the tour.

As this goes along, I’ll add my own thoughts as they come to me. The main thing today is I want to thank Lone Star Literary Life and especially Kristine Hall at Hallways Blog for organizing the tour and showing me the ropes!

Here are the daily links:

1/23/18	Promo	A Page Before Bedtime
1/23/18	Promo	Reading by Moonlight
1/24/18	Guest Post	Chapter Break Book Blog
1/24/18	Review	Bibliotica
1/25/18	Excerpt Part 1	StoreyBook Reviews
1/25/18	Excerpt Part 2	Forgotten Winds
1/26/18	Review	Texan Girl Reads
1/27/18	Review	Tangled in Text
1/28/18	Author Interview	The Page Unbound
1/28/18	Playlist	Syd Savvy
1/29/18	Review	The Clueless Gent
1/30/18	Promo	Texas Book Lover
1/30/18	Scrapbook Page	The Librarian Talks
1/31/18	Review	Momma on the Rocks
2/1/18	Review	Missus Gonzo

 

I’m counting down the days to the launch of my first blog tour. If you’re wondering what a blog tour is, it’s basically a 21st century version of a book tour in which an author and readers get to meet and talk and maybe buy/sell some books but without ever leaving the house. I don’t have to travel and sit in a bookstore or library all day, and you don’t have to get out on a cold winter day to come see me.

As the banner above says, this Aransas Morning blog tour begins Tuesday, January 23, and will continue for 10 days with reviews, excerpts, photos, interviews, music playlists and some book giveaways. There will be links to follow when it starts and I’ll post those here and on social media and everywhere I know to get the word out.

Still, I’m not sure what to expect. I know it’s been well planned and organized by the blog tour experts at Lone Star Literary Life and so I know it’s going to be great in that regard. They’ve pushed me for content and stretched my imagination for how to market a book. But I don’t know what to expect in terms of people following the tour and becoming interested in a story I want to share.

And that really is the point: sharing a story. I’ve made my living writing other people’s stories about their businesses and products and what they do for a living and for pleasure. But now I’m telling stories for the sake of telling stories,  and the marketing and promoting of those stories takes we way out of my comfort zone. But this blog tour looks like a pretty good way to do it . . . so here we go.