Happy Birthday Atomic Summer

The first day of summer marks the one-year anniversary of the release of Atomic Summer and the accomplishment of my goal of being a published author.  The last 365 days have been an adventure with some wonderful experiences, learning opportunities and a few frustrations. In honor of this momentous occasion, I thought a recap was in order.  So here is my version of David Letterman's Top-Ten experiences:

10. Tweeting - Before last summer, it was something a bird did!  Now I have 1400 Twitter followers and have TWEETED 1300 times.  Does this make me a ‘bird brain’?

 9.  Amazon - Ok, everyone has heard of it, right?  But have you ever heard of KDP?  Me neither.  But now I know it’s Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform and if you want to feel like a best-seller you should have watched the stats page during my KDP promotion when 17,000 copies of Atomic Summer were downloaded in a 5-day period.  I am surprised my computer didn't freeze from hitting the refresh button so many times to get an update.  It was soooo addictive.

 8.  Facebook - I joined Facebook years ago because I needed to know what it was about before my daughter started using it.  I would maybe check it once a month to see if I had any friend requests. Oh how the times have changed.  Now I check it every day, have a fan page to connect with my readers and share my news and even have a Facebook app to share my book.

 7.  Goodreads - Where have you been all my life?  It’s a phenomenal online community of readers and writers.  We share thoughts on books, blogs, ideas on writing, promoting, and events.  It’s one of my favorite hangouts on line.  And can you believe I have 1100 friends?  You all have to try it!

 6.  Epub, Kobo, mobi, etc. - What are these?  Some new fish on my sushi menu? No, they are all forms of e-books, each one having its own unique format.  Needless to say, I needed help making Atomic Summer available in all those formats.  But we did it.

5.  Book Festivals- Okay, I admit it.  The only book festival I paid attention to was the Tampa Bay Times Book Festival but it’s local so why wouldn’t I?  No more tunnel vision here.  There are a lot of great festivals, including the Southern California Book Festival which awarded Atomic Summer an honorable mention in the general fiction category.

 4.  Websites - Of course I now have my own.  My name in BIG, BOLD LETTERS - ELAINE D WALSH.  Imagine how this played to my ego.  After all, I did call myself ‘Elaine the Great’ when I was a child.  Building this site was no easy task, but it’s been one great learning experience.  And don’t even get me on the subject of SEO and text anchoring.  Still working on improving that.

3.  Reviews - NOW YOU ARE TALKING. I still remember reading the first one.  I mean the first one from someone unrelated to me - not a co-worker and not a member of my social circle. 5-STARS!  Yes I looked at it again.  5-STARS!  -  A writer's dream come true.  They loved it!  And every day I still get that same rush when I see another review come through.

 2.  Blogs - Everyone has one now, don’t they? But me, who wants to hear what I have to say? And what will I talk about? Well, to be honest I still struggle with blogging ideas, and sometimes I am not as diligent at posting as I would like to be. But I am making a commitment to my readers to share more often because when I do they respond. And if all those women on Bloggy Moms can do it, so can I!

 1.  And the # 1 experience I want to share about this past year as a published author...Can I have a drum roll, please?  It's being able to connect with readers and fans and hearing about their impressions and emotional responses to the story and characters.  After all, writers write to be read and so when someone invests their personal time to read my story, it is humbling.

There you go!  My Top-10!  And now I am sure all of you want to know what's next.  Take a journey over to my website to check out my new header to find out.