A New Blog Idea

Right after I started writing a new manuscript with the working title The Assassin, I came up with what I think was a cool promotional idea. The blinding flash of brilliance (at least in my mind) was to share the experience of writing a novel with potential readers.

My first reaction was to run it as a second blog on my web site. After thinking about it for a day or so and for reasons known only to God and broccoli (I don’t like broccoli), I rejected the idea. But, the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of a blog tied to a novel in process of being written.

So, I turned to the Texas Authors, Inc. which besides having a web site, runs book fairs, has a radio network and other promotional vehicles for authors based in Texas. Alan Bourgeois, the founder, is open to new ideas so I penned him an email with the idea fleshed out. Keep in mind, I had was an idea and not a clue of how to link his site to this blog, my site and make all this work, but what I would do is provide the content several times a week.

Readers of the blog would get to share the challenges, frustrations, excitement of an author while he was writing the novel. To preserve the raw emotion and immediacy, the blog wouldn’t be polished as it would be in a book. The content will vary from entry to entry. There will be some info on the general topic of the book, the overall plot, the characters but details on exactly what will happen will not be there for two reasons.

One, I won’t know until I finish writing it and two, because I’d like you to read it when it gets published. Once it is on the market, you may have fun and go back and forth between the blog and the book trying to figure out what happened in my warped mind as the book was being written.

My commitment was a series of short blurbs, all under 500 words several times a week. They’d be written as I wrote the first draft of the manuscript. There’s no outline, no planned sequence of topics, just my thoughts as I write.

We agreed that when I finished the first draft, we’d re-evaluate because before doing the first major edit, the book sits on the shelf for a few weeks to give my brain a chance to clear. Our thinking is we’ll keep going and see what happens. Initially, the blog will go until I finish it. Then, we may continue as the next phase, the first major edit and the most difficult of all, finding a publisher.

Enjoy it, ‘cuz its fun writing it.

Marc Liebman

January 2018