I am usurping my own blog post about my focus group wrap-up until next time, because the Lunar New Year has begun! I like to highlight the Lunar New year because there’s just so much to learn, no matter how long you’ve been celebrating it.

We all know about the Chinese version of the Zodiac, which is determined by the year you were born, versus the month you were born in the Astrological Zodiac. There are 12 animals in the Chinese Zodiac, and this year is the rooster’s turn.

I started seeing things on the internet about how this year was the Fire rooster year. And I thought, wow, that sounds really cool, but what what what? I’d not heard of the fire rooster; was it different from the normal rooster? Was there a particular year that was singled out in Chinese history that warranted this special fire rooster designation? Does each animal have a fire counterpart, like could I possibly have been a fire pig all these years and not have known?!?

As this year happens to mean a lot for me as two very special people in my life are roosters, I had to find out what the fire rooster was all about. And thanks to the internet, I did!

Turns out that each animal is also broken down into 5 sub-types of animal: earth, gold, water, wood, and fire. Again, the sub-type of animal you are is dependent upon the year you were born. Thus, if you were born in 1957 or 2017, you my friend are a fire rooster!

Traits are associated with each animal, but now with this further stratification, you get more specificity about your traits. The fire rooster is trustworthy, and is particularly punctual and responsible on the job.

For ALL you roosters, your lucky numbers are 5, 7 and 8. Your lucky flowers are gladiolas and cockscomb. And your lucky directions are south and southeast.

So, happy Lunar New Year everyone! Make it a great one!

I’m so happy to announce the rescheduled date for the unveiling and critiquing session for book 2 in the Centipede Dragon series! It will be held during the weekly Maker Cart Madness at Charles Beatley Central Library in Alexandria, VA, a week from today, Tuesday, January 24, 2017, at 7pm.

This weekly event is targeted toward children ages 8 and over, however, younger siblings of these children are welcome so long as a parent attends with them.

I’ll open the session with a brief overview of the elements needed in creating a story. Then we’ll get to see and listen to book 2. Then, we’ll have a Q &A session where the participants can voice their opinions about the book. And finally, we’ll practice our skills in identifying these elements in book 2. Finally, we’ll work together on developing characters. Or, whatever!

I really hope to see you all there. This is the most critical step--FEEDBACK--an author can get for his/her book. So please help me out. And thanks in advance!

Hi Centipede Dragon friends,
Thanks again for hanging on as long as you all did for this post. In this new year, I have begun many new adventures, but I am ever mindful of what I could’ve lost in recent history, and ever grateful that things turned out such that I could return to writing for you!

While I wait to confirm the re-scheduled date for the focus group for book 2 originally planned for December 2016, I thought I’d forge ahead with our always winding journey in self-publishing. I left you a while back with a very daunting flow chart outlining all the tasks needed to be done prior to self-publishing, and all the tasks I faced immediately after publishing. A good number of them had to do with promoting sales of the book, which unfortunately IS the measure for success in this business. So that’s where I was, cold calling, cold e-mailing, preparing press kits, seeking out various local groups and opportunities to showcase my book. At every turn, each lead actually led to many more leads; trying to determine which leads to then follow up on was even more daunting than the flow chart bespoke.

But one very important piece of the puzzle that seems obvious to consider prior to attempting sales promotions is categorizing your book properly. Categorization has always been a part of organizing any book system, simply because if a person searching for a book doesn’t have a specific one in mind, but happens to like books about pandas, for example, then s/he can search for all the books that have to do with pandas and not for instance, start with all books about animals or even all books about bears.

However, if that search returns 127 books, and the person is giving this book as a birthday present, the party of which is in 32 minutes, said person doesn’t really have the time to go through 127 books about pandas to determine which might be best for the recipient.

So then say the recipient is interested in only factual books about pandas. Then the search can be narrowed to non-fiction books about pandas. Suddenly, there are now only 8 books to consider (these numbers are hypothetical). The point is is that the more defined the category, the more useful and productive a search is that will also likely lead to the finding of the most fitting book.

These search engines use search words that are associated with your book. Now, there are many universal systems that name the categories into which a book goes, and they start with very broad categories, with each category then getting broken down into more defined/specific categories. So thank you BISAC, for creating one of the many useful cataloging systems.

So, who then, puts your book into which category/ies? Answer, next post!