Looking for Love -- Or Maybe Just LIKES

In the past few days I've done a thing I really hate doing -- gone down my friends list on Facebook and asked people to LIKE my FB Author Page (Vicki Lane Mysteries.) That page is my official authorial site with links to excerpts from my books and my web site. And on the Author Page, unlike my personal Vicki Lane page, I stay away from politics (and baby pictures and dogs and cats and all that other stuff I talk about,) confining my posts to Things to Do with Writing.

Why, you may ask, why have I committed this egregious act of Blatant Self Promotion?

Well, at this moment, the manuscript (or its electronic equivalent) of my Civil War novel is in the hands of six different publishers. And while one likes to think that it is being judged on the merits of its prose alone, one suspects that the commercial side is being weighed as well. 

In short, it occurred to me that a publisher might wonder if I have any sort of platform on social media -- if there were people who might be interested in my writing -- i.e., potential book buyers. 

Yikes!  Maybe, I thought, I'd better ask folks for LIKES on my author page -- which has lagged sadly behind my personal page. 

So I began the process and have been really gratified by all the folks who've responded to my plea. (You LIKE me, you really LIKE me!)

It's one way of being proactive . . . and something to do while I'm waiting to hear if the novel finds a publisher.

 Of course I'll shout it out if anything good happens. But it may take a while. Things move very slowly in the publishing world.

At times like this, I find myself thinking of the saying (Robert Louis Stevenson) that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive . . . 

That's certainly true if there is nothing but rejection at the end of the journey.

But I hope that wont be the case.