Guest Post with Ana Blaze

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Ana lives just outside Washington DC with her very supportive husband and three rather demanding cats. She loves the ocean, Indian food, Ikea, and cooking. Ana admits to watching too much television and she swears that someday she’s going to learn how to play the guitar resting on the bookshelf in her office.
Ana is a member of Romance Writers of America.

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guest postOh the internet, it’s like every writer’s favorite frenemy. On the one hand, we do legitimately need to research and study whilst writing and then promote once we’ve published. On the other hand, we can easily lose entire days to clever gifs from the Hunger Games movies, Wikipedia articles on pagan holidays and tumblr posts pointing out the parallels between various couples on Once Upon a Time and other famous couples.

If we want to complete any projects, writers do need to learn how to balance their internet use. We need to figure out which sites are really worthy of our time. Because, as we all know, time could always be used to write instead.

I’m going to make the case for Pinterest. Writers should hang out on Pinterest more often. Seriously.

So you most likely already know about Pinterest. It’s awesome. Pinterest is essentially a virtual corkboard, or more precisely a site to create dozens of virtual corkboards. You can collect links to recipes or cute pictures of Benedict Cumberbatch. It’s a great place for readers to build a To Read list. They can link back to the actual review that made them want to read the book or sort the titles into mood categories. The possibilities are nearly endless.

Pinterest has great potential to help writers too.

First off, it’s a lovely place to create inspiration boards that help you picture your characters and the setting of your tale. I create boards for individual works in progress and then also have boards for quotes and images that may inspire a future project.

Next, Pinterest is a great place to keep track of your interviews and visits to book blogs and reader sites. I like having all the links in one convenient spot, and, as a bonus, those pins often draw additional traffic to those blogs.

It’s also a great way to cut down on time wasting. I know, you’re skeptical, but hear me out. We’ve all tried to look up just one quick thing, only to be distracted by six other things before we realize that time is escaping us. I’m suggesting that when you see that article with a quirky title that is pulling your attention away from whatever you ought to be working on, you pin it for reading later. You can make a secret board of all the silly or not so silly links that could be keeping you from writing and save them for when you’re sitting in the doctor’s office or waiting for your kid to be finished with her karate lesson and have three minutes and a smart phone.

I have several boards that are not directly writing related, but I’d argue that they are also helping me with promotion. I think there is certainly a chance that someone who follows me based on our mutual interest in veggie gardening also likes sexy books. And, even if that is rare, I think it is a really fun way for readers to get to know writers they enjoy. I’m sure my boards are a lot more interesting and telling than the little bio that appears at the bottom of my blog. A quick look at my boards will tell you that I like the color turquoise, recipes with mushrooms, actors with British accents and …well, I don’t know. Why don’t you take a peek and tell me?

 

 

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A Late Thaw
By: Ana Blaze
Publisher: Entranced Publishing
Published: Oct. 28, 2013
Genre: Contemporary Romance

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N

The town’s too small for Kiley St. Claire’s reappearance to be a surprise, still seeing her hits Cole Thomas like a punch to the gut. She ripped his heart apart when she turned to ice and ran away all those years ago. Now that she’s back, Cole’s going to say his piece and move on.

Even if she does look damn good in that uniform.

Kiley St. Claire is back in the small town of Barrett, Vermont, for one reason and one reason only: to earn some cash so she can survive her final semester of grad school. She’s not there for the sexy Christmas tree farmers.

Even the one who once held her heart.

 

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5 Thoughts on “Guest Post with Ana Blaze

  1. The blog and I don’t have a Pinterest account and I’m this close to creating one just for stalking purposes. I love photos and graphics but on the other hand, that’s another social media outlet to maintain and adding that to blog moderation, Twitter, FB, GR, etc. it’s too much work. Lovely guest post though, very insightful.

  2. Thanks so much for helping with my blog tour. 🙂

  3. Katherine W on 26 November, 2013 at 6:18 pm said:

    How about an international city such as Toronto, Vancouver, or if closer to home, a smaller town somewhere in Connecticut?!

  4. Meghan Stith on 27 November, 2013 at 5:00 pm said:

    I think an airport. Like maybe stuck because of a big storm…

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