Sunday, August 19, 2012

A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones

"A Song of Ice and Fire", better known as "The Game of Thrones"
is a series of fantasy novels that were written by George R.R.
Martin. While I cannot truthfully say that I have read these
novels, I can say that they are next on my list of must-reads.
If any of you have seen the HBO series "Game of Thrones", you
would want to read these book as well. While I am partial to
medieval stories, I am not easily amused. Many have failed to
deliver a captivating storyline but that is not the case with
this "Song of Ice and Fire" adaptation. I am a Game of Thrones
fan for life. I would like to do a mini-series about the show.
It should kick off next week. I want to do a brief re-cap
before the new season starts. While I will touch on some of
characters and general gist of the story, I will not be giving
out too many specifics. Like the show, these posts will leave
you wanting more and I shall not disappoint! Stay tuned!

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Twitter contest

Hey guys, I am always looking around the Internet for good promotional opportunities. While it is usually a "swing and a miss", I just found something that could truly be beneficial to anyone who is trying to build their following and their brand. I joined a site called myblogguest.com and I found some contests while browsing the forum. One of the contests offers free retweets to bloggers who post information about their contest. It is a really interesting opportunity because we all know that Twitter is extremely popular and can be a powerful tool in any author's toolbox. Check out the contest here:

http://internetdreams.com/social-media/contest-1-win-free-prizes

Monday, August 6, 2012

Higher standards

Recently, I went onto the Amazon discussion boards. Many readers are upset about the fact that lots of Ebooks are being published with a lot of errors. While I would like to say that this is not the case, I must admit that it is the case. While not all Ebooks are riddled with grammatical errors, lots of them are. I was under the impression that this was getting better but I am not so rue anymore. I went to Barnes and Noble recently and read some books via my Nook (yes, that is a cool feature that Barnes and Noble has provided its customers..eat your heart out Kindle, ha ha). It was disheartening to see how many Ebooks has mistakes in them. Many of these mistakes were so obvious that I am led to believe that the person did not even use the 'spell check' feature before converting and publishing their work.

I am not the grammar police. I commit many structural sins with regard to sentences. However, one of the easiest things to correct is spelling. I am not saying that Authors should be perfect with no flaws. However, I am saying that we need to be more mindful of what we publish. You do not need editors to find the errors that I found. We have to hold ourselves to higher standards. Just because it is easy to publish an Ebook doesn't mean that we should throw caution to the wind. Our readers are looking at us very closely and they do not like what they see.