Category Archives: Social Media

Adventures!

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What do you do when you suddenly feel like you’ve lost control of . . . everything? It doesn’t happen often, but when it does I feel like I’m running around trying to balance too many plates in the air at the same time. My life is always changing, as it should be, but over the last year I’ve ventured into unknown territory.

At the end of 2017, my husband and I will be relocating to Florida, to be closer to the water. It is definitely something to be celebrated, and excitement abounds. In the meantime we need to downsize. A daunting task and the source of much unanticipated anxiety. Suddenly every item in my house is a family member.

In March, Tim and I attended the Left Coast Crime conference in Hawaii. The trip was far beyond anything I could have imagined. I’m still missing the sand, sun, resort atmosphere, bursts of color everywhere, and meeting fabulous authors I didn’t know, and many that I did. Tim sat on the beach, while I attended fascinating sessions about murder, and we ate dinner watching the sun set over the ocean.

I’ve completed my first murder mystery novel, Death Fetish, and am currently writing the last 1/4 of my second, Killing Rose. These are the first two of my Cali’s Kindred Spirits series of three books about a recent retiree, widow and Southwest artist, California (Cali) May who sees the ghosts of murder victims and thinks she’s going crazy. I’ve also been writing short stories. All of my writing is a learning experience, and I’m thoroughly enjoying every minute of it. Like all things, it takes time, practice, and patience.

On top of all this, I changed my email address, missed reminders from GoDaddy, and didn’t realize my domain name had expired and this site had been down for 10 months! For this I sincerely apologize to you, my readers! Definitely a plate came crashing down, slid right between the cracks in my amazing, but sometimes out-of-control life!

As you can see from this blog post, I’m slowly but steadily picking up the pieces. Eventually I fully expect:

  • to have a series of three Southwest murder mysteries published by next year’s Left Coast Crime conference in Reno,
  • my treasures sold through my Etsy site (Shore House Vintage) to patrons who will love them as much as I have,
  • our move to Florida completed and everyone, including the dog, settled in,
  • (our dachshund trained to do her business on a leash)
  • and all my media, like my website, up-to-date.

Too much, you think? The way I figure, if it’s not on the list, it won’t get done. Let’s shoot for the stars and expect the very best!

~ Wendy

 

 

 

 

Tweeting in the New Year

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Yesterday, on Christmas Day 2015, my daughter, Deb, introduced me to Twitter. Not just HOW to tweet, but WHY. As a late blooming writer, I’ve adapted to Facebook, established an email list, and started blogging.

Why add any more technology to an already overloaded Artist’s brain? As an artist, technology isn’t supposed to be my strong suite, I argued. But something amazing happened this Christmas. I received an awesome electronic game designed by Jacquie Lawson that was packaged into her beautifully designed Advent Calendar. I had been avoiding electronic gaming like the plague, afraid of being sucked into a time sink. Smashing Christmas ornaments became my new addiction. My right brain (creative) was absolutely enthralled, my left brain (strategic) totally baffled…until I realized that to win the game I had to use my whole brain.

It turns out that knowing WHY I Tweet is key to engaging my whole brain. And at that point, tweeting became my new favorite pastime. Why should I tweet as an author? Because it has the potential to put me in front of more eyeballs than any other cyber tool, not as an artist (totally right brain) but as a writer (whole brain). And that can be pretty seductive.

Deb’s comment: “I’ve created a monster!”

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Art Geek’s Christmas Wreath 2015

 

WordPress vs Blogger: An Artist’s struggle to master social media

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I currently use and maintain a WordPress blog at WendyFallon.com. However, I’ve just learned about the expanded distribution I might receive through Blogger via Google. As an artist and writer, technology is not typically my thing. I’ve often said, and believe, that I can learn and know just enough about social media to make a mess of it. But there’s really only one way to find out, and that’s to jump in and try it.

I’m fascinated by the idea that I just might be able to communicate, even interact with, people from all over the world, essentially for free! So here is just a bit about me.

About Me
In my day job I spend my time formating, editing and writing about software. In my spare time, I write for myself and create art. My latest interests have been publishing my own books through Createspace and  making them available on Amazon, creating book cover art for other published authors, and am currently writing a American Southwest Paranormal Murder Mystery. I love to create scenes and stories in my head and have finally decided to develop one ‘on paper.’

Creative Process
Just as I love hand drawing, I also prefer to hand write my stories rather than type them into my laptop. For me, the whole creative process revolves around pencil and paper, scribbles, drawings and bubble diagrams. I think this is because it involves my right brain functions much more than typing does and allows me the posibility of forming three dimesional characters and worlds from a two dimensional piece of paper, just as painting or drawing does. I am actually conscious of the grain of the paper and the sharpness, or dullness, of the pencil. Often I’ll finish up a writing session and have several doodles in the margins.

Opinion
Blogger is certainly easy to set up, change colors, fonts, and backgrounds. WordPress was also easy to set up, but not nearly as easy to customize. So far, Blogger is flexible enough to satisfy my inner artist. I’ve succesfully uploaded an imaage of a few of my doodles to my first post on Blogger. However, I’m having trouble ‘sharing’ my Blogger post with the world. It looks like this may take more investigation. ~ Wendy