Writing Shenanigans: McAllister Series 2019 Silver Dagger World Book Blog Tour: Sep 17-Oct 17

Here we are, at the kick off for the McAllister Series 2019 Silver Dagger World Book Blog Tour. This is actually the first blog tour I’ve done and it’s kind of terrifying.

What happens on a book blog tour? The blog tour was put out there, managed by Silver Dagger Book Tours, open to anyone and everyone interested in participating. Bloggers sign up and get a free copy of the book(s), in this case four-book McAllister series, in exchange for blogging and/or reviewing the book(s). The idea is to get unbiased reviews and commentary on your books in the hopes readers will discover and love them.

Over the next 31 days 62 bloggers will have unfettered access to read, review, and blog about the four-book McAllister Series. 61 of these people are total strangers! (I recognize one name on the list, but I won’t tell you which one).

Why is it so terrifying? Well, to start these are strangers. Ever heard of “stranger danger”? Of course you have. But this is the author’s version of “stranger danger”. With the single exception, these are people I don’t know. They don’t know me. They have no reason to be nice to me, although this is kind of the point of unbiased reviews. They are not supposed to write rosy blog posts and reviews just to be nice. They are supposed to give the good, the bad, and the ugly of what they really think of your book.

What they say about the McAllister Series is going to tell people whether it’s rubbish or not. (A lot of us writers secretly think everyone else will think our writing is rubbish.) Their views will either possibly potentially maybe hopefully drive readers to actually buy and read your books, or tell them why they should absolutely run the other way and spend their book fund on someone else’s books. And this, getting readers to find your books (and even more so to actually buy them), is no mean feat with the overwhelming exploded at the seams Cthulhu on steroids sized market of available books out there.

It is kind of terrifying. Okay, a lot terrifying. 61 book bloggers over 31 days reading and commenting on my 4-book series. To add to the, ‘will they hate it,’ fear, I’m not entirely a conventional writer. I’m not a follow the rules writer. I don’t conform to the status quo, the norms; the overall expectations of, ‘This is how it has always been done, so this is how you have to do it,’ mindset. I write entirely by the seat of my pants, outlining only after to keep details straight, and use a style, tense, first, second, or third person as it feels it fits the story.

So yes, I am going into this with that little bit queasy feeling of dread. The dark pall of knowing you are about to find out what people (who you don’t know) are going to actually think of your books that you labored so many hours over, putting pieces of your soul that you will never get back into (literally, I AM an author of dark fiction, after all). Half of me thinks they will hate them. The bigger half. A little piece is in wonder and awe. People, strangers, are going to read them. That makes the fearful half grow. Somewhere in there the writer in you tries to find the silver dollar, the silver lining, the little golden nugget of hope, whatever you want to call it. Maybe they won’t hate it.

Okay, time to push the doubts back into the darkness where they belong and talk about the more interesting than a writer’s self-doubts part of a book blog tour.

Photo by BSD on Unsplash

You, my wonderfully dark-loving readers, if you follow the tour will get to learn little tidbits about the author. That’s right. You get to learn some of my not so dark secrets and inner thoughts.

Part of the tour is a Q & A, which is doled out in bits to the book bloggers to share with their readers. Things like what is my favorite color. Okay, that one wasn’t actually on there, but to share the secret I actually have more than one. I love colors for different reasons. Green; for being the color of summer, green grass, trees, leaves, life living at its fullest. Purple, I just like purple. It’s kind of like a best of worlds in between pinks and reds and blues all melded together. But I do answer some questions about me, me as an author, writing, and writing the McAllister Series.

I tried to make my answers honest and entertaining at the same time. Unfortunately, I’m usually the only one who actually thinks my humor attempts are funny, so please humor me (and forgive the pun).

You also get the inside scoop, and hopefully not too many spoilers, on the stories that make up the four McAllister books.

So let’s kick this thing off, and please try to be gentle with my writer’s self-bruised ego (we authors tend to be our worst cynics, critics, and ego beaters). Visit Silver Dagger Book Tours to see more about the tour and follow the book bloggers’ good, bad, ugly, and hopefully not too dark views on why or why you should not want to read The McAllister Series.

Along with the Silver Dagger kickoff, the first stop today is a blogger called Insane Books. Let’s see what they have to think about the McAllister Series . . . just as soon as I pour this big glass of wine. I think I’m going to need it.

And in the meantime, Old Mill Road is just now brand new sparkling and shiny in a dark horror fiction monster kind of way NEWLY RELEASED! This book is the free giveaway (ebook) part of this book blog tour! (Other available to buy books include Garden Grove, The Gypsy Queen, and, yeah that’s it except for the McAllister Series. I’m working on finishing The Woods for the new year.)