Category Archives: Uncategorized

Social Media Pet Peeves

I’m a pretty easy going person and I don’t let a lot bother me. But I do have some social media pet peeves. Who doesn’t?

The new Facebook changes. Hate them. Now, I know it’s a free service and they can do what they want and at least there’s a work around if you hate the new news feed but I am getting close to jumping ship. Google+ is looking mighty good right now. If I could just get all of my Facebook contacts over there.

Had to get that off my chest. What I really wanted to talk about were things the people who use social media do that annoy me.

1. InkCanada – ignore this one, it doesn’t apply to you. If you’re inviting me to an in person Facebook event make sure I’m at least in the same province as the event. You can imagine how ridiculous it is to be invited to something that isn’t in my province but I get ones that aren’t even in my country.

2. Friends who turn off their wall functionality.

3. A gazillion posts a day, every day, promoting your book. Keep it up and I will unfriend you.

4. Protecting your tweets. If you don’t want people reading your tweets send an email. I won’t request to follow you.

5. Using a service to verify I’m a person. I won’t click on that link either.

6. People who aren’t celebrities who have hundreds (or thousands) of followers and only follow a select group. If you have 4000+ followers and you only follow 100+ who do you think you are? I won’t follow you.

7. People who aren’t celebrities who don’t @ reply if you tweet them. I’m lucky that most of the people I tweet to do reply.

8. People who use a service to find people to follow and then auto unfollows them if you haven’t followed them back in X number of days. People are busy. They have lives, families, vacations, work. Sometimes it’s not possible to follow you back within three days. I don’t follow back until at least the fourth or fifth day to weed these ones out.

9. People who follow just to get followers. You know the ones. If you don’t follow them back they unfollow you. FYI, not everyone is going to follow you back.

10. People who aren’t celebrities who don’t follow you back. It’s just good Twitter karma to follow back. There are ways to filter tweets, mute people, if you get too many tweets in your stream.

Okay, here are some celebrities who have been known to @ reply or retweet. Keep in mind they don’t ALWAYS reply or retweet:

Jason O’Mara, Angie Harmon, Gordon Ramsay, Eric Johnson, Alyssa Milano.

Until next time…

Cindy

You know the old saying

Don’t judge a book by its cover. Clichéd, yes, but so true. Now that my Daphne books are here I finally had a chance to start reading them last weekend. I can’t tell you what category I’m judging or what books. But I can tell you that the first one I read I thought was going to be – let’s be nice here – not that great. And I thought that because of the cover. I saw the cover and cringed. Yes, actually cringed. I thought about reading it last. Don’t you always leave the hardest task until the end? But it was a relatively short book so I decided to try it first. Guess what? Read it in one day! Yep, one day. Not even a full day since I woke up late (some time after noon). What can I say? I needed to catch up on sleep apparently.

So, does this mean we shouldn’t judge a movie by its trailer? That would be a big fat yes. How many times have you seen an awesome trailer, gone to see the movie and felt cheated? Too many times to count for me. There are still movies I’m bitter about wasting hours of my life I’ll never get back. Insomnia and 30 Days of Night, for example. But I will keep going to movies with amazing trailers because every once in a while the movie is actually better than the trailer. I’m hoping that will be the case for a few movies coming up that I can’t wait to see. Star Trek, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

And here’s another old saying. Thank God it’s Friday. Man did it take forever getting here. No movies for me this weekend though. Have to finish those Daphne books.

Until next time…

Cindy

Rejected

I’ve been a very bad blogger. I haven’t been around much lately. I’ve been pouting. Wallowing. The usual stuff you do when you get a rejection on a complete. On the plus side the editor at Harlequin gave me a very detailed rejection letter about what they liked and didn’t like. At least I know I have the right amount of sensuality for a Blaze. So I’ll be able to do that in another book. And knowing what was wrong with this book will (hopefully) mean that I don’t do those things in the next one.

Right now though I think I’m going stay away from the straight romance novels and work on the mainstream. There’s absolutely no romance in Simon Says. But as an author at our March TRW meeting pointed out, that doesn’t mean there’s no emotion. So I have to go back and put in more of that.

Right now it’s late so I’m going to bed.

Happy blogging!

‘Tis the Season

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I’ve been slacking in the blogging department lately. But in the new year I should be posting more regularly.

I hope everyone got what they wanted and spent the holiday with friends and family.

May the New Year bring joy and publishing contracts.

I’m official!

I finally have a website! Now that I don’t have to do the fussing over it maybe I’ll actually get some writing done. I love how it turned out. Way better than anything I could have come up with. Now that I have an official home, I plan to blog more regularly. For now, I’ll post this and try to write for a bit before bed. But I’ll be back…

Happy blogging!

Welcome to CindyCarroll.com

The best place on the ‘net to find out about me and my books. Be the first in the know. “Like” me on Facebook to be informed of my sales, booksignings, workshops, read samples, etc. The rest of the site has tons of research links and resources for writers. Check out my almost daily blog for my ramblings on daily life and trying to get published.

WHAT’S UP

For Writers – Having trouble with your pitch? Is your 25 word logline ending up being 45 words and still doesn’t convey what the story is about? How about your three line pitch? Is it falling flat? Join TestYourPitch to get feedback from members so you can improve your pitch before you submit.

For Readers – Samples – Writing samples and the occasional recipe are up on my Facebook page.

Workshops – I’m revamping my Is That Hollywood Calling? workshop. It’s going to be bigger and better than ever. And geared towards both novel writers and screenwriters. See how thinking like a screenwriter can improve your novels.

Guest blogging – I’m guest blogging at Paranormality. Stop by and say hi.

Guest blogging – I’ll be guest blogging at Magical Musings June 25th. Be sure to stop by and say hi.

Interview – Part 1 of my interview with David Rambo (writer/producer from CSI) is up on my blog.

Part 2 of the David Rambo interview.

Part 3 of the David Rambo interview.

Productivity – Need a push to finish that script? Join the Script in a Week loop where challenges happen monthly.

Workshops – Check out my workshops page to see when I’m giving my Is That Hollywood Calling? workshop

Contest Finals – Nov. 13, 2007 – My Scottish Time Travel – The Wishing Hour – is a finalist in the Chase the Dream Writers Contest. Thank you to everyone who took the time to vote for my entry.

Script Success – Oct. 23, 2007 – Both of my Supernatural scripts (His and Hers, Never Again) received honourable mention in the 76th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition.

Added – Script writing section on the For Writers page.

Thanks for visiting. Enjoy your stay and come back soon.