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Archive for the ‘Self Publishing’ Category

Blog Tour Wrap Up

Posted in Books, Cafegirl Books, Self Publishing, tagged , , , , , , on January 27, 2012| 3 Comments »

As part of my 2011 book promotion / marketing efforts, I participated in WOW!’s Blog Tour. For those of you who are new to The Chronicles, WOW! stands for Women on Writing and it offers genre-specific blog tours to authors via its extensive blogger network.

The tour took place in November / December 2011 and included guest posts on participating blogs, interviews, one podcast and a book giveaway contest. It offered one free copy of Any Color but Beige to individual readers and an opportunity for one lucky book club to win ten copies of the book. All international winners received an eBook or Kindle format of the book. To be eligible, the blogs required readers to tweet about the book and that increased my exposure in cyberspace.

Here’s what I liked about the tour:

It was well organized. Participating blogs posted topics well enough in advance of the tour, so I could prepare just the right posts to help promote the book.

It gave me a list of topics to write about. Sometimes writing about a particular subject is a lot easier than coming up with a topic on your own.

Once the guest posts were published, I could use them on my own blog. This bought me some much needed time off in the month of December.

Some blogs reviewed the books. It was good to get different viewpoints from people who knew nothing about me, my blog or my story. Objective reviews help a writer see things in a different light. Or consider things they wouldn’t have previously thought of.

The tour was international and that was perfect because it’s in keeping with who I am and what I do. I was a guest on blogs in Estonia and Finland. And some of the contest winners were as far away as Australia and Malaysia. The winning book club was from Madrid, Spain. I will be participating in the Madrid book club discussion via Skype in the spring.

The one drawback to the tour was that the tour could not provide any real quantitative data analysis. However, my own analytical conclusion is that my fourth quarter 2011 blog views were up a whopping 60%. How much of that is attributable to the blog tour I can’t say for sure. I can say that, post for post, the only thing I have done differently between 2010 and 2011 is take part in the tour.

The bigger question is did it lead to an increase in book sales? And here I would have to say I don’t know. I have no basis of comparison because sales are similar across the three months since the book’s release in September.

Were the dollars I spent worth it? I would say yes they were. I consider the dollars spent an investment in the Café Girl brand and my ongoing stories.

photo: © istockphoto.com/scanrail

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Drum Roll, Please…

Posted in Books, Cafegirl Books, Chapters - condensed, Self Publishing, tagged , , , , on January 2, 2012| 4 Comments »

As promised here’s the first chapter of my next book. It’s the follow up to my first book:  Any Color but Beige:  Living Life in Color.

I’ve created a separate tab at the top of the Home Page.  To read it all you have to do is click on the tab that says New Book / New Chapter.

Happy Reading!

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New Year, New Beginnings and a New Chapter

Posted in Books, Cafegirl Books, Lifestyles, Self Publishing, Social Media, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 31, 2011| 13 Comments »

In every writer’s life there are two stumbling blocks to overcome. On second thought, make them stone walls to surmount: writer’s bloc and writer’s resistance. Writer’s bloc, as I learned from a Robert McKee Story seminar, occurs when you run out of ideas. Writer’s resistance is a lack of dedication to your craft. Lately, I’ve been suffering from both.

“How is that possible?” you may ask. “She’s been posting content consistently all through December.”

Well, I have a confession to make. I’ve been coasting. Yes, that’s right. For my December postings, I’ve mined content already created for my WOW blog tour back in October and November. Regular readers of just “The Chronicles” may not have noticed this, but crossover readers between it and the WOW tour found at least one familiar post.

This strategy gave me a much-need rest, but now I’ve run out of content just as I’ve fallen out of the habit of writing every night. Of course this would happen just when my blog took a significant uptick in readership and e-mail subscriptions – for which I am amazed and incredibly grateful. In fact, all of this new interest, new subscriptions, increase in comments and “likes” has given me a new sense of purpose. I am now accountable to a new and growing invisible group of friends who drop by the Café regularly to catch up on the latest happenings.

Realizing that I might find it tough sledding in December I also promised my readers a chapter (one with a surprise ending) of my second book by the end of December. Many of you have also been kind enough to ask me about a sequel, and both things have motivated me to sit down and write.

I’m happy to report that although it doesn’t quite have the surprise ending I had in mind, I do have a chapter ready for you to read. It’s a Destination Chapter. Those of you who are familiar with the structure of my book Any Color but Beige will recognize that this chapter picks up the story where my first book leaves off. Where we go from here remains a mystery.

I’m superstitious so I decided to post it the first day of 2012 rather than the last day of 2011: a new chapter equals a renewed sense of purpose.

I’d also like to wish all of you a very Happy New Year. Whatever your projects are this year, may they bring you the satisfaction and joy of doing something you love.

Back Behind the Computer

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Baring Your Soul for a Memoir – Cat Uncovered

Posted in Books, Cafegirl Books, Lifestyles, Self Publishing, tagged , , , , , on December 16, 2011| 10 Comments »

The secret is out. Now that my life is officially an open book, the world (I have friends on six continents) knows that I am not Wonder Woman. It is an image I struggled for a long time to preserve, but with the publication of Any Color but Beige: Living Life in Color I have given up that struggle. And I feel the lighter for it.

I didn’t intend to write a memoir and I certainly didn’t mean to bare my soul to strangers. Because up until recently, I have often said that I would rather chew broken glass than admit to any vulnerability. Ah, vanity!

On the surface I was calm, cool and confident as I shrugged off life’s slings and arrows, like some superhero in a movie. I’ve traveled the world for my job, lived abroad in some very nice cities and had a romantic life that was ripped from the pages of a Harlequin romance novel. It made for some sparkling conversation over cocktails with the girls for whom I put on my game face and pretended that my life was perfect.

But it wasn’t. The truth was I was in a blue funk nursing a broken heart and I didn’t know what to do about it. So I started to write. I poured my heart onto the page because I wouldn’t allow myself to cry. All of the emotion I felt went into my writing, and slowly I began to get my bearings.

Before I knew it, I had 200 pages of perspective. Having gone that far, I sent it off to a freelance editor for an evaluation. The minute I pushed “Send,” I felt a rush of embarrassment. What did I just do? I asked. I’ve sent 200 pages of total nonsense to a complete stranger. I was mortified. It took a month before I heard back from her and each time I thought about it, I’d squirm a little bit in my skin.

Much to my surprise, the evaluation came back positive and with it a long list of recommendations, one of which was to create a blog based on my experiences. The blog helped me build an audience for my book and hone my voice. It also helped me to get over some of the awkwardness I felt when writing about my experiences. I soon learned that what I had to say resonated with readers.

The blog was good practice for writing the final version of the book. Through it, I got used to gradually exposing me and my life. Because the blog preceded the publication of my memoir, and chronicled my life, it felt a lot like the gradual opening of rose – one petal at a time. At its core lay the sweet essence of my book.

Now when I think about the book, I think about the authenticity of its story. Now, rather than feel embarrassed, I feel relieved at having shared it. I used to think I was alone in my experiences. So many people have told me that they have found themselves on its pages that I realize the feelings of love and loss, happiness and disappointment and, most importantly, optimism are universal. And feelings are always better when they’re shared.

Photo: © iStockphoto.com/olandesina

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My Carrie Bradshaw Moment – My First Public Reading

Posted in Books, Cafegirl Books, Self Publishing, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 30, 2011| 9 Comments »

I’ve had a lot of Carrie Bradshaw moments over the last few years: walking away from the wrong man at the right time, falling for the wrong man at the right time and an amazing rescue by my Café Girls when I returned home from a disastrous foreign love affair – on Valentine’s Day with nothing but the clothes in my suitcase. They were there with food, shelter and friendship. What more could a girl ask for?

Carrie and I have the great good fortune to live in magical cities that we love – she in New York, me in Montreal. Writing is our shared passion. Carrie writes a column and I write regular posts on a variety of topics including sex in a few cities, travel, relationships, careers and cultural commentary for this blog which has steadily grown in readership over the last year.

And now I too have my own book, Any Color but Beige: Living Life in Color. In season five, Carrie agonizes over her image on the book’s front cover appropriately titled Sex and the City. It was all about what she should wear, how she should dress. For me it was about the shoes, and the challenge of securing permission to use the beautiful red soled Christian Louboutin shoes on my cover. We both succeeded in creating memorable book covers.

We each attended our respective book launches solo – but in my case, one was the luckiest number and not the loneliest number. While an eleventh hour rescue by Jack Burger gives her the plus one she’s been looking for. Stuff like that only happens in TV.

We’re both lucky to have loyal readers who support our efforts and show up at launches and public readings. Last week, I gave my first public reading at a The Munich Readery which is run by Lisa Yarger and her husband John. It was an especially fitting place for my first reading because I had read a few chapters of the then untitled and unfinished manuscript to some of the same people the year before.

An intimate group of friends and fans of the book and the blog attended. This official first reading ranked right up there with my book launch and my recent Girls’ Nights In cocktails moments pressed into the scrapbook of my memory. 

Lisa did a thorough job publicizing the event through the store’s e-mailing list and the local English speaking online publications. She laid out a colorful counter of fancy cheeses, figs, beautiful German breads and jam and a variety wines. It’s times like this I like to step back and take in the scene as an observer of my own life. Sometimes I just have to pinch myself just to make sure I’m not dreaming. Friends and family have been enjoying the process as much as I have it seems.

Tucked in between floor to ceiling bookshelves (I thought I’d died and gone to heaven), I sat in an oversized chair surrounded by my own books, amidst the small group who listened attentively to two selections that Lisa had selected “Destination Paris” and “Chapter 12: Unfinished Business.”

I read Any Color but Beige aloud dozens of times during the proofreading process but this was the first time I “played” all of the people in each of the chapters. I had fun taking on different roles changing my voice, my accents and my tone to reflect the individuals in question. As I looked from face to face, I could see my audience as lost in my story as I was, laughing at the funny bits and growing quiet in the sad ones.

Moments like these made me feel like Carrie Bradshaw, with one huge difference for which I will always be grateful: all of my memorable moments are real.

Photo: © iStockphoto.com/digitalskillet

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Girls’ Nights In — Celebrating Good Times, Good Friends and a Good Book

Posted in Books, Cafegirl Books, Self Publishing, South Africa, tagged , , , , , on November 25, 2011| 4 Comments »

People often ask me, “Why did you write a book?” If they are friends who know me well, I will often mischievously reply, “I did it for the party.” And there’s a grain of truth to that response. As months go by, there have been more celebrations. Who knew the ancillary benefit to all that hard work would be enjoying the fruits of your labors with friends?

It started simply enough with a family get together in August just before I launched Any Color but Beige. My large and loving family went out of its way to host a surprise barbeque complete with a heartfelt toast from my brother Jimmy, an endless buffet of homemade Italian and American specialties, and many desserts. They marked the occasion with a present meant to represent all the hard work I’d done: a framed pen and ink drawing of black and red dance shoes, just like the one that appears on the book’s cover. Their pride was palpable, and I felt like I had just been handed the Pulitzer Prize.

Further fetes included a couple of Girls’ Nights In (GNI), hosted by friends in two places so different from one another in geography – America and Africa – and yet so similar in the comfortable familiarity of female friendship.

At the first one, I partied with Judy and her friends in the wilds of a Wisconsin, so starkly beautiful in its winter’s dress that it

Wild in Wisconsin

took my breath away. Inside we moved between kitchen and living room, eating, drinking and talking. Judy had blown up an old high-school picture and used it as a buffet centerpiece. Bowls of brightly colored M&Ms added just the right amount of color to the event as did my colorful “tales told out of school” about Judy. (See Destination:  Chicago in the book for their significance.)

The second party had the lush green landscape of suburban Johannesburg as a backdrop. Julie had ordered bright yellow helium balloons and tied them to the mailbox ensuring that no one missed the house. We congregated in the kitchen, chatting and eating and were about to move from the kitchen to the living room when Julie asked me to leave the room for a second.

From the next room I had heard a gasp and wondered what had happened? Had someone spotted a scorpion or snake? I didn’t have to wait long before they called me back into the kitchen and I saw the most amazing the sight. Leana, another Café Girlfriend, had made a cake in the shape of a book – my book. It was a carrot cake and everything, from the colorful book cover to the beautifully fashioned dance shoes was edible. I didn’t want to cut it, but cut it and enjoy it we did.

After the cake, it was time for me to talk about the book. I could have done a reading but the setting in both cases didn’t lend itself to that; it was much too informal. And so I told the “back story” about how the book came to be. And I also talked about each of my respective hosts’ role in the book. (You can find more about Judy in Chapter 3 and Julie in Chapter 25 of the book.)

Like the American Café Girls, the African girls had lots of questions and lots of stories of their own to share. Some things are universal, and it looks like Café Girlfriends are the same the world over. We’re all united by our shared experiences in life and in love. And Any Color but Beige is chock full such experiences it seems we can all relate to.

The conversation and the wine flowed freely, and everyone was reluctant to call it a night until we all agreed that we would somehow, somewhere meet again to continue our stories. At both parties, some of the girls were meeting for the first time so we ended up not only celebrating the book but also friendships old and new. I said in an earlier post that to be successful in this self-publishing business you not only have to be talented you have to be lucky. The excitement, enthusiasm and thoughtfulness of my family and friends have showed me just how lucky I am. As for the rest, it’s just icing on the cake.

A Party that Takes the Cake!

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The Best Night of my Life – Prove It!

Posted in Books, Cafegirl Books, Dating, Humor, Lifestyles, Relationships, romance, Self Publishing, tagged , , , , on November 11, 2011| 2 Comments »

When I mention to people that my book launch was the best night of my life, reactions vary from agreement to doubt. It’s interestingto note that only the men appear to doubt my claim. I find this puzzling because, given the differences between the sexes; I would have thought men would just get it. So this reaction surprised me.

Oh yeah?

Men, who by their very nature, are competitive beings, have played some sort of sport at least once in their lives or have “lived” an extraordinary moment: a game-saving tackle on the goal line, a home run in the bottom of the ninth, or a three pointer at the buzzer. Or maybe it was closing a million dollar deal, landing a new account, or cashing out a winner in poker. Whatever the event, it will go down in their memories as probably the best “moment” of their lives.

So why is it so hard for men to make the leap from pitch, playing field or boardroom, where the glad-handing and back-slapping of buddies is commonplace and where solo efforts of prowess are lauded, to the softer side of life where creation and not competition reigns supreme.

The cynic in me postulates that any achievement not involving at least the advice or counsel of a man is somehow lacking. How could she have done it without me? How dare she do it without me? It can’t possibly be the best without me. This last one may have a slight sexual undertone depending on whom I’m talking to. Wink, wink, nod, nod.

But the explanation is quite simple once I juxtapose it for them against a bigger picture –the marathon race we all run called “life.” People come and go and add and subtract from our lives (hopefully they add more than they subtract). And the memories created “a deux” can sometimes be tainted with sadness, despair and regret, should things end badly.

Our memorable solo moments, days, nights or seasons are the best because we own them. We are the sole architect of those pieces of happiness, achievement or glory. A moment, day or, in my case, night, is something, not even time, can take from us, nor memory taint. Savor them!

Photo: © iStockphoto.com/Ulvestad

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The Best Night of my Life

Posted in Books, Breaking Up, Cafegirl Books, Humor, Self Publishing, tagged , , on November 9, 2011| 14 Comments »

Everything was ready, and well in advance. I had booked the caterer, selected the menu, purchased an assortment of wines (sparkling, red, white) picked the mood music, Pink Martini, and organized a surprise salsa lesson for my 45 guests. I had found the perfect dress – red of course. And the shoes? We’ll they’re the same shoes that appear on the cover of my book.

And then friends and family stepped in and took over. My friend Nadia, who has managed more than once to put a roof over my head, organized and decorated a beautiful venue. Nadia is a sculptor with a great eye for color, aesthetics and proportion so the room was awash in color – everything from the table cloths and cocktail napkins to the center pieces and the flowers.

My sister, Margaret Mary, with the precision skills that come with being a mother of four, ran a flawless event. She did everything from welcoming guests and selling books to giving direction to the people who staffed the event.

Pierre, who is an artist when it comes to taking candid pictures, created a digital photo album that captures everyone at his or her best.

Giacomo stepped in and set up an extraordinary bar as his gift to me. He engaged the services of a magical mixologist, Thomas, who conjured up a “Café Girl Martini” to commemorate the occasion. (I didn’t drink anything during the event – my adrenaline didn’t need any outside stimulation – but I’m told that once everyone left I had three martinis in rapid succession as well as my own bottle of Prosecco).

All I had to do was show up. And thanks to them, that’s exactly what I did.

Technically the event was a book launch, but the reality is that it was a party for my friends and family – for all those people that I love who supported me through the entire process. Some friends traveled great distances to be there and others who couldn’t make it sent flowers. It was a celebration of friendship. I was happy to bask in their unabashed pride in my efforts. Authors get a lot compliments and criticism about their work  but words I will prize most are those five little words that I heard from family, friends and even colleagues – “I’m so proud of you.”

It was a night of eating, drinking, dancing and the great conversation that only happens when friends are reunited to celebrate a happy occasion. They all waited patiently as I signed the books they bought – I wanted to give them away but they insisted on buying them. I  wrote a special message in each one.

Later I remarked to my mom, who couldn’t be there, that the event was just like a wedding without the complication of a groom. I reflected on that for a minute and jokingly said, “had I known that 25 years ago, I would written a book instead of getting married.”

To which my wise mother remarked, “Cat, if you hadn’t gotten married, you wouldn’t have written this book.”

And just like a wedding, to commemorate the occasion, here’s the launch video for my book: Any Color but Beige: Living Life in Color.

 

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