Write with Fey: 2024

I have two post ideas to share in January, but as far as any other blogging plans for 2025...I don't really have any. I won't even be participating in the April Blogging from A to Z Challenge. It seems that I do it two years in a row and then don't participate for a few years, so I guess I'm on par.

For 2024, I didn't have a plan come January, but I ended up getting ideas for posts, as you can see with the lists above.

For 2025, my 13th year of blogging, I don't know what I'll be doing here.

I still have one feature idea that I've been mulling over for a couple of years now. This feature wouldn't be for writers/authors. They'd be more for girls/women. It'd be memoir style like Caitlin Moran’s How to be a Woman. So that means there will be stories about my childhood and growing up as the youngest sister. I mean, I have an essay about shaving, so yeah. HAHA. There's also stories about living without electricity and without a bed, etc. I'm still not sure if I'll do this, but I don't know what else I'll do with this content. Once, I thought I'd publish a memoir, but I don't want to do that anymore. My blog is the only other place I can think of sharing these essays. I'll continued to mull it over.

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HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

December 10, 2024

Listen. I'm Saying It Again.

I'm sharing a few posts for Ghost of Death and Witch of Death, the final stories I promoted this year in an effort to promote my published work that was an epic failure.

Yup, it's the broken record again.

How pathetic this made me feel makes me not want to promote my work on social media ever again. Especially when trying to get interest in works-in-progress is also an epic failure. It's a huge letdown how these platforms are run and how the algorithms ruin everything. I know so many authors/writers who no longer want anything to do with Instagram because of how their posts get buried or are never shown to our followers.

Anyway, the graphics below are clickable if you want to see the captions on Instagram.

I hope you enjoy!

Let me know your favorite quote/graphic in the comments. 😊

WITCH OF DEATH

GHOST OF DEATH

December 02, 2024

It's Challenging, Don’t You Think?

This year, I participated in a lot of monthly Instagram challenges with daily prompts. It was a tactic I was trying to see if it'd help my engagement on Instagram. I didn't post every day in these challenges, although I certainly tried in the beginning until...

I noticed that my engagement wasn't much different, even when I did two challenges in the month of August (with some posts tying together both challenges). At that point, I started to just do the prompts I thought looked like fun, especially if they were about our characters or our stories.

I'm going to save those posts about my characters and works-in-progress for another time, maybe when I'm closer to publishing those stories *insert hysterical laughter here*, but here are some of the posts that I did that I really liked.

They are all hyperlinked if you'd like to read the captions on Instagram. 😊

November 19, 2024

The "Gift" That Keeps on Giving

Last month, I shared a few of my favorite posts for Hurricane Crimes, Seismic Crimes, and Tsunami Crimes from my failed promo efforts in this post: Desperate Is as Desperate Does.

The annoyance I have for my failed promo efforts from this year is the "gift" that keeps on giving.

Now, I am sharing a few posts for Flaming Crimes, Frozen Crimes, and A Fighting Chance. They are clickable if you want to see the captions on Instagram.

I hope you enjoy!

Let me know your favorite quote/graphic in the comments. 😊

FLAMING CRIMES

FROZEN CRIMES

A FIGHTING CHANCE

November 05, 2024

Desperate Is as Desperate Does

In a previous post, This Promo Thing Is Crap, I talked about my failed promo attempts on social media for all of my published stories and how Instagram's algorithms are horrible and make everything worse.

That's why I've decided to share a few of my favorite posts for Hurricane Crimes, Seismic Crimes, and Tsunami Crimes right here in this post. They are clickable if you want to see the captions on Instagram.

I hope you enjoy!

Let me know your favorite quote/graphic in the comments. 😊

HURRICANE CRIMES

SEISMIC CRIMES

TSUNAMI CRIMES

October 14, 2024

How Did the Movie Gothika Inspire Me?

In my Thursday 13 blog post titled Movie Lists Fun (Childhood Favorites, Comfort Movies, All-Time Favs), I shared lists of movies, including my all-time favorite movies. Next to several of those movie titles there had been an asterisk, indicating that those films had inspired/influenced me as a writer.

The Movies:

The FINAL movie spotlight is for...

Gothika

How did it inspire me?

Every single moment Miranda (Halle Berry) is locked up in the psychiatric hospital.

I don't think it's trailer quite does it justice.

I watched this movie so many times while writing Part Two in Book 2 of my Secret Book Baby Series, which takes place in a psychiatric hospital for women and girls. The writing is darker because of the setting and what happens. The dark, grim, spooky mood of Gothika helped to inspire me.

In one scene of Gothika, Halle's character has a possessed moment. Well, my character experiences something kind of similar...but not. LOL

I'm not sure what else to say about this movie except that I simply love it.

October 01, 2024

This Promo Thing Is Crap

The Plan:

Last year, I had the idea to promote one of my published stories each month this year while offering the eBook on sale for 99 cents. I'd create pretty and cute graphics with some of the best quotes from my stories to post on Instagram and Facebook. I'd even planned to create a couple of reels, too.

(I love it when authors I follow do this. There's been many cases when I've added a book to my TBR list or bought it because I continued to see their posts and enjoy the teasers they shared. My hope was to generate the same outcome.)

The Plan Ruined:

Well, my plan immediately unraveled when my publisher said that they no longer mark eBooks on sale for 99 cents UNLESS the author is doing a big advertising push and paying for advertisement during the sale.

Look, I'm single. I live alone. I'm on a budget. I cannot afford to pay for advertising.

Hearing that was such a HUGE disappointment.

I'd already created a lot of graphics for my stories, so I thought I'd still go ahead with my plan, minus the sale.

The Outcome (so far):

In January, I started with 30 Seconds, my romantic-suspense novella. The first few days, the engagement was decent. Then it dropped.

Lesson Learned: DO NOT do a month-long spotlight. LOL! I had too many quotes that I liked that I'd wanted to share, but that was my mistake. I should've parred it down to two weeks of content, four days per week.

February, I moved on to 30 Seconds Before, the prequel to 30 Seconds that can be read as a standalone. I thought the engagement would be decent, again, like how it started out with 30 Seconds, but it was well below par.

March through September I spotlighted a story a month for the Disaster Crimes series. And that was just...brutal. *sigh*

Lesson Learned: Promoting an older published and completed series is HARD, especially if you're promoting each book separately. I honestly have no clue how to promote my series now.

Instagram's Sucky Algorithms:

Now, I know this problem is not just with me, and it's how Instagram's horrible algorithms bury our content and never show us posts from accounts we follow. Ever.

My posts now get a handful of likes. (Don't get me wrong. I am grateful for all of my followers, although I'd prefer it if IG let them SEE my posts, and I am grateful for the likes I do get.)

Sometimes, though, I get just two or three likes no matter what I try.

And I've tried it all: more hashtags, less hashtags, different hashtags, same hashtags, trying to hit high engagement days/times, Canva graphics, photographs, censoring words that romance authors use a lot so that I don't get put on some naughty list, but nothing makes a difference.

Instagram just hates me.

It is incredibly discouraging, and I know I'm not alone in this.

Some Content for Fun:

Because my posts weren't seen by many, I thought I'd share a few of my favorites for 30 Seconds and 30 Seconds Before in this post. They are hyperlinked if you'd like to visit the post on IG.

30 SECONDS: