Breaking News: Using Facebook Pages? Log in ASAP

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up who is using Facebook “fan” pages. Yesterday, Facebook changed those pages to look more like profile pages, and added some new functionality. 3rd party ads are now more visible, you can provide a status update and they look more like a personal page. (Additionally, there is no ability to update your status message automatically by adding an “app” to connect with Twitter, either.)

However, if you have an existing account this new functionality is a hindrance rather than a benefit. The profile information that you had filled out to go underneath your logo is shifted to a new tab, and most of your customization has shifted.

If you’re using a Facebook page, I recommend logging in to see if this works for you. Otherwise, you can join me today while I dig around and see how I can make mine look better.

Need Help with Twitter? Free Webinar!

Hi everyone, just wanted to briefly pop in and mention that I’d like to invite you to sign up for a free webinar that’s going to occur this Wednesday. The webinar, led by Eric Glazer from Marketing Studio with three other professionals, is about “Leveraging Twitter to Grow Your Small Business.”

We’ve already got quite a few attendees, and I’d really love it if you joined us. My portion of the panel will be for business-to-customer relationships, and I’ve got a lot to share with you. Also, I’d like to point out that there is a Q and A section at the end of the webinar.

Sign Up for the Free Small Business Twitter Webinar.

Thanks to Elliott over at Good Plum for recommending me to speak on this webinar geared toward small businesses.

Hope you can make it!

On Writing a Serial Novel

Violet WarLast Spring, I had announced that I was working on a free urban fantasy website called Violet War. The goal of the website was to promote a series of books I’ve been working on and offer the first draft of the series’ first book (Argentum) for free.

Since starting this project, I’ve found that writing a serial novel comes with its own set of challenges related to the fact that this is a novel of discovery.

In this book, the main character (Sophie Miller) is an exile (think convict) from her magical world. Sophie committed a terrible crime and was later experimented on by the Alchemists then imprisoned by them in a House of Illusion. Those experiments ripped apart her memories, so much so that when the illusion “breaks” she is forced her to deal with the world around her in unusual ways. At first, she doesn’t trust herself but later questions everything she sees.

These questions have turned into information dumps at times, so much so that some chapters rely on discussion rather than action to drive the plot. Fortunately, I’ve been able to catch those moments by sketching out the entire novel from beginning to end. Pacing is really important to me, because as a reader I get very bored when the story doesn’t move, so my chapters are relatively short. They range from one thousand to twenty-five hundred words for that reason.

Another way I’m circumventing those information dumps is by adding chapter breaks which are memories and pieces of info that Sophie knows. Once the “House of Illusion” is broken, she begins to remember bits and pieces of her former life. The things she remembers may seem innocuous at first, but might have a larger impact on the overall story in the end. (*hint*)

Technology has also played a big part in my presentation of this novel. If you look at the physical structure of how Argentum is laid out, you’ll see that there are section breaks in the book. This structure is intentional because of the way this template handles numeric chapters. If I didn’t have a section, then Chapter 10 would have shown up after Chapter 1, which would have made things really confusing for my readers.

I’m pretty excited to have made so much progress on my project this past weekend. This is definitely new territory for me as an author, and I hope you get the chance to read my work.

How the Publishing Industry is Evolving

This article entitled “Have We Reached the End of Book Publishing? spells out what I’ve suspected for so long and heard from some of my fellow writers — that the very nature of the way major publishers do business does not bode well for aspiring writers. Large, million-dollar advances taken on new authors spell doom for literary writers, who find their advances shrink every time a publisher makes a “new” discovery. The argument of whether or not e-book readers will kill book sales continues to resurface, and the very nature of how corporations function take their toll on editors’ morale.

The book business as we know it will not be living happily ever after. With sales stagnating, CEO heads rolling, big-name authors playing musical chairs, and Amazon looming as the new boogeyman, publishing might have to look for its future outside the corporate world.

There is no doubt in my mind that the publishing industry is fractured. Read More…

Update on Network Neutrality – ISPs Rolling Out Caps for Internet Usage

One of the issues that I’ve been following fairly closely, is the concept of network neutrality. What is it? Wikipedia defines it as:

Network neutrality (equivalently net neutrality, Internet neutrality or simply NN) is a principle that is applied to residential broadband networks, and potentially to all networks. A neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, on the modes of communication allowed, which does not restrict content, sites or platforms, and where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams. –SOURCE: Wikipedia entry for Network Neutrality

While there have been laws introduced to make network neutrality “official,” to date it’s just been a business concept. Highly contested, many big-names have come out in favor of net neutrality including Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. Recently, though, many telecom companies are testing the waters a little more fervently these days by putting caps on downloads. For example, Comcast will Cap Data Transfers at 250 GB October 1st and, as this YouTube! vlogger reported: TimeWarner is Experimenting with Capping Internet Usage in Texas. (About 2 minutes in.) Here’s a link to an article about Time Warner metering internet usage in Texas. Additionally, small ISP provider Frontier is toying with a 5 GB download cap.

What does this mean? It means that the concept of network neutrality is alive and well not only in Congress, but in our everyday lives affecting how we access the internet for email, gaming, blogging, banking, etc.

I hope that you will take time to read up on both sides of the issue, and whether you’re for or against it — realize that network neutrality is a topic that isn’t going away any time soon.

Save the Internet – a website that is for legalizing Network Neutrality

Hands Off the Internet – a website that is against legalizing Network Neutrality

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Looking for Monica’s books and games that are still in print? Visit Monica Valentinelli on Amazon’s Author Central or a bookstore near you.

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