Tits and Bobs and perfectly passionate poetry

Nope, not a typo.

A couple things to cover. First of all, I can’t stop thanking people for all they have done for me since releasing my book last week. Carmen Stefanescu rocked my world this morning with her awesome and unexpected promo on her site, which you can find here. http://shadowspastmystery.blogspot.ro/2015/07/guest-promo-ci-ionia-martin.html?m=1 I hate to admit that I cry, but I did.

Thank you Carmen. Love you.

Also huge thanks to people who left a review on Amazon. I was so excited I nearly peed.

Second, some questions and a few declarations.

I have new respect for all of you indie authors. I have been writing and publishing for years under a couple of different pseudonyms and have always had a publishing house behind me. Even when I put out some previous “indie” novels, I had other people working on promoting and covers and such. I didn’t do it all myself, by any means. Now, I’m doing that for the first time and I’ve got some questions for the pros out there.

Other than the titles that appear here, under Ionia, I write adultish-romance and erotica books. I’m not ashamed of this. I enjoy doing what I do. I review everything but those, because believe me when I tell you there are some strange…worse than strange sub-genres out there in the erotica world and I figured I would spend more time updating my guidelines to exclude dinosaurs and bigfoot than I would reviewing. Erotica books tend to sell themselves. If you’ve got a kink for sale, then there is usually an audience for it somewhere. I’m concerned with the other, less vice-like titles.

HOW DO YOU PEOPLE FIND TIME TO WRITE, EDIT, MARKET, WRITE BLURBS, DESIGN COVERS, MAKE DINNER, DO THE LAUNDRY AND STILL SLEEP?

SUPERHUMANS!

Question 2. How do you get over the shyness of asking people to help promote you? Even when someone does something you didn’t ask them to do, don’t you kind of blush and kick your heels in an awe shucks manner? I do.

Question 3 Would you be interested in sharing a bit of your journey? I am figuring things out as I go, but I’m thinking about putting together a page here on Readful that is an advice from indie authors page. Free for anyone to look at if they want some info, and just collecting answers to some basic questions about writing and publishing indie stuff from various authors who would like to contribute. Links to your blogs would be included, of course. Would anyone be interested in doing that?

Next Useless factoid: I’ve only got a couple of indie novels left on my reading list and will soon be accepting more titles. I will still have to limit how many I take on. (Not just indie books, but books in general–I’m an addict and books are crack.)

I will start considering review requests unsolicited books again on September first.

Finally, Poetry. I love it. Poems seem to be closer to the heart of the author than a lot of other forms of writing. They can express mood, thought, emotion, a personal viewpoint–so many things. That said, it is also a really difficult category to sell books in. I would like to offer a spot on Readful Things every Friday for one author to promote your poetry, either through a poem with links to your blogs or books or through a cover image and sample of your work. I don’t guarantee thousands of views, (I don’t guarantee one, for that matter,) but if it will help get the word out then let’s do it! Contact me via readfulthings@gmail.com and send me an HTML post. I will let you know what date I will have your post up.

It will look something like this:

(Shameless best friend promo to follow)

Pamela Beckford writes poetry designed to inspire emotion. She is the author of three solo poetry collections and co-author of another. If you are interested in some steamy, emotional reading to share with your lover or to read on your own, check out her solo works, which show many different aspects of love, in beautifully worded poems.

Find Pamela’s entire catalogue of works on her Author Central Page

Pamela Beckford’s Author Central