Linda Nagata: the blog at Hahví.net

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Book Quote Wednesday

September 14th, 2016

Nagata-hepen_the_watcher_BVC133x205I’ve participated in “Book Quote Wednesday” on Twitter for the past several weeks. Though the activity was created as a promotional tool, my experience shows it to be ineffective in that regard. I haven’t seen any effect on sales. Nevertheless, it’s kind of fun.

The idea is that a group of writers are given the same, simple word. They find an example of the use of that word somewhere in their work, and post the snippet on Twitter.

I’ve collected all my quotes from one novel — Hepen the Watcher — book 2 of my under-read and overlooked fantasy duology, Stories of the Puzzle Lands. The two books in this set are totally unlike anything else I’ve written. They’re straight up fantasies with magic — sardonic, violent, and darkly humorous. Sword-and-sorcery maybe. Of the first book in the duology, Fantasy Review Barn said:

“…It is the amount of heart this book has that really sells it for me. It is a book that falls into the gritty fantasy label for sure, but with a certain amount of sweetness. I will be reading the second of the duo in the near future, and have no problems recommending this one.”

So, back to Book Quote Wednesday. Each participating writer is asked to include the hashtag #bookqw in their tweet, so readers can check out other participating writers. Since I couldn’t fit a decent-sized quote within Twitter’s character limit, I started by posting simple screenshots of text.

On August 10, the word was “please”:

And on August 17, the word was “fast” or a variation thereof:

Then, like most of us, I got a bit fancier with experience:

August 24 — the word is “face”
htw_promo-face

September 7 — the word is “work”
htw_promo-work

September 14 — the word is “voice”

These are the things writers do instead of writing. Go figure.

Posted on: Wednesday, September 14th, 2016 at 4:30 am
Categories: Meanderings, Promotion.
Tags: , ,

2 Responses to “Book Quote Wednesday”

  1. Mindy Klasky Says:
    September 14th, 2016 at 10:33 am

    I didn’t create it solely as a marketing tool. I was mostly intrigued to play with ways to use Twitter. (And if book sales happened, hurrah!)

    I’ve been fascinated to see how I use language. Some words that I’d expect to be scarce in my books are used in every single chapter.

    And I’ve also been intrigued to see how authors play the game — who uses images, who posts one quote, who posts every single occurrence of a word in their work, who evokes an entire story with a perfectly chosen snippet.

    I’m glad you’ve been joining us!

  2. Linda Says:
    September 15th, 2016 at 8:39 am

    Hi Mindy! That’s cool that you invented this. I didn’t realize. Somehow I thought it was a pre-existing activity.

    It’s been fun to do. I like to look for the more outrageous examples to use, and this book is a good source. 🙂

    I do look at activities like this as marketing tools. It goes back to that “Would I Be Better Off Writing” meme. (Or reading… I have so much research reading to do.) I’m still looking for the magic marketing pixie dust that will get these fantasy novels selling! 😉