Well, kind of. The General Hospital mob anyway.

Actors, producers and TV show creators are getting more creative, people. So must we writers!

I’ve always been vocal about the fact that I’m a (big) fan of General Hospital. Well, you can find a couple of ex-GHers on MySpace. It’s common now to see actors on MySpace. But wait.

On Facebook, three-Emmy winner Sarah Joy Brown has a page for her newest character—Claudia Zacchara. Great. Idea. Sarah. Seriously. :)

So what does this mean? It means as writers and authors, we’re competing with a lot of other mediums to get our message across. Actors, who want to be in the public eye as many writers want their books to be, have taken serious steps to breaking down old boundaries that stood between us (the regular people) and them (the Hollywood stars.)

Innovative writers and actors are using the Internet to give us a glimpse into publishing and the movie business by reaching us through their characters. That sells, in a subtle way, their product and gives us (the interested fans) something back. There’s a sense of “someone’s making an effort to reach out to readers and viewers” with this type of medium. I love it!

Sarah Brown and Meg McCafferty (MySpace) both have pages for their respective characters. (Jessica Darling sure has a lot of friends!)

On Sarah’s Facebook page, she shares behind the scenes photos of GH (how generous and cool!) and answers questions about her character. So, she has increased her visibility as an actress, “bonded” in a way to her fans and created an interest in her art form—acting. It worked for me, Sarah, and I’m definitely taking notes on creating a character profile that draws friends and fans.

It’s the same with author created characters on MySpace. As authors, we’re not blatantly yelling “HEY, BUY OUR BOOK, PLEASE!” Instead, we’re connecting to our audience and growing our audience base through our characters. It’s an extension of ourselves.

I think these pages created by actors and authors also serve to show people we are NOT our characters. :) I’ve read articles about people believing how an actor plays onscreen shows the kind of person he/she is in real life. Um, no. Same for us. I’m spunky and outspoken, like Sasha, my main character in Take the Reins, but we’re not the same person.

In short, I wanted to give a shout out to Sarah Brown and other actors and authors who are working hard to connect us with them. They’re definitely chipping away at the barriers.

Cross-posted from Blogger
You guys had some great thoughts yesterday on the Facebook vs. MySpace debate. I do think that for now, anyway, MySpace is THE place to be to market to teens. But now that Facebook is open to everyone, we'll see how that changes things later, perhaps.

So, is anyone writing through the holidays? Going to be scribbling in a notebook while sipping Aunt Lena's eggnog? :) I'll be working because... I'm just over 10k words away from finishing my second book in the Canterwood Crest series! Yahoo! It's all downhill from here, baby. I want to have it all bright and shiny when I present it to Agent A next month. The lack of good TV has kept me writing much later into the evening than usual.

Also, I rearranged the blog a little and put 2007's read books at the very bottom of the page. The new titles for 2008 will fill their old position in the sidebar. I really wanted to create one link that would take you to all of those titles, but I haven't figured out how to do so yet.

So, I'll ask. What's your favorite book that you read in 2007? It doesn't have to have been pubbed in 2007, if you wish.

Note: from now on I'm going to keep cross-posting here and on LJ. There's such a great LJ crowd (waves!) that I was leaving them out by only posting here.

 

On several listservs that I belong to, the hot topic now is marketing to teens and tweens via the Internet. Especially the use of social networks such as MySpace and Facebook.

What's your take? Do you have a MySpace page? Facebook? Do you use them to market or just to make friends in the hopes those friends will purchase your novel?

This summer, I finally hopped on the MySpace train and got a page. I've been on Facebook for much longer. A while ago, I created a MySpace page for my main character of Canterwood Crest and while I'm working on it now, I'm keeping the page private until next year.

I'm interested in hearing your take on online social networks!

**In other veeerrry unrelated news** Jamie Lynn Spears (yes, Brit's sis) is pregnant. She's sixteen. Sigh.

 Cross posted from Blogger

Thanks to everyone who responded to my post yesterday. I feel much better now considering I know I'll be talking to lots of friends and family over the next month and will get that question a few more times.

Since I'll be doing a little shopping on Amazon soon, does anyone have any marketing books to recommend? I've gotten a couple of recommendations and if anyone has another to offer, I'd love to hear it. I've been combing through a couple of books at Books a Million, but haven't found one with fresh marketing ideas that would be do able. So far, I've been filing all of my marketing ideas into a folder and using a huge desk calendar to plot out when I need to do things in 2008 and 2009. Who knew that marketing was such a big part of an author's job! I do love it though, and am learning a lot about the business side of things instead of only the creative side.