Deborah Woehr

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the goals for my blogs. I’ve cut out one and plan to cut out another when I return. That leaves this blog, The Writers Buzz, and Self-Publishing with Lulu.

Is The Writers Buzz of any value to you? Do you read it anymore? Why?

So far, I’ve gotten some great feedback and questions on the Self-Publishing with Lulu blog. I plan on writing a walk-through instructional series, like I did last year. Lulu has long since updated its software and Distribution services, which outdates my original series a bit.

Right now, the focus of this blog is on novels. But I’d also like to include other series, such as photo and cook books. What do you think?

I’ve added a new link category as well as a very interesting blog on the subject of horror writing and writers. Guy Adams, the author of The Dark Room, is a published author and Senior Editor of Humdrumming Publishers. For those of you who are interested in this genre (thinking of you, Ben and Fred), it’s definitely worth a look.

This is an excerpt of an interview of me, given by Laura Spencer, who writes for Associated Content. I’ve given interviews of other writers for The Buzz in the past, but this was the first time I’ve ever been interviewed.

Deborah Woehr’s popular blog, The Writers Buzz, highlights the work of new authors by posting excerpts and reviews of their books. Deborah also has a blog under her own name at www.deborahwoehr.com where she comments on the writing industry and on her writing experience. She also blogs professionally for Syntagma Media.

When she makes observations about writing and about books, Deborah knows what she’s talking about. Deborah is an editor, a writer, and (of course) a blogger. She recently created the 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology, and has several other books are currently in progress.

The reviews and excerpts on Deborah’s The Writers Buzz cover a wide variety of genres. From fiction to nonfiction, from Young Adult to Horror, from Romance to Politics - this blog reviews them all. In the interview that follows, Deborah shares a few of her favorite titles.

Deborah Woehr’s blogging skills have already landed her a spot on the C-List at Blogebrity and The Writers Buzz has the potential to become even more popular as booklovers and writers explore them as a way to discover and discuss favorite new books.

Recently, I caught up with Deborah and she kindly agreed to the following interview. I think you’ll find that she’s got some interesting things to say about blogging, publishing, and where the writing industry is going.

Read more at: Deborah Woehr of the Writers Buzz

I found “Blooks” Are in Bloom while researching for information to answer a question for an interview. Yes, I’m being profiled. More on that later.

Big-name publishers such as Putnam and Little, Brown & Co. have begun releasing books based on blogs. “I am now more open to blogs than I would have been [before],” says Judy Clain, executive editor at Little, Brown. And a dozen new businesses have sprung up with the intent of helping scribes turn their blogs into books. Blogbasedbooks.com, specializing in blooks, has set up shop on the Net.

I checked out their website and found one blook about the stewardess who got fired for posting “inappropriate” pictures of herself in uniform on her blog. That doesn’t interest me in the slightest, but the Reality TV crowd will surely love it.

I’d be more apt to buy one of the Iraqi soldier blooks or the Julie & Julia blook (a blogger’s experience with cooking Julia Child recipes). It’s comforting to know that sensationalists aren’t the only ones who are attracting publishers.

I’ll be watching this trend over the next year to see if it “takes off” with the public eye. If it does, then we may be witness to a new publishing revolution.

How many of you have written a blook or are writing one right now? If you’re not, would you consider this option?

Many people I know have expressed a desire to travel to Europe, the Orient, or Australia. While I’d like to go to these places eventually, there is so much of my own country that I have yet to see and would like to see.

When I came back from my vacation, I was itching to create a blog about Arizona and even went so far as to research blogs, keywords, etc. Then John approached me about writing for his lastest blog, Americana Dream. I couldn’t resist.

I’ve traveled all over the west coast, the southwest, and a few states on the east coast. I’ll be writing about those, as well as the places I’d like to visit. I’m still in the brainstorming process of exactly how I’d like to write this blog.

Right now, my anal tendancies are pushing me to write one state at a time, starting with the places that I’ve been and ending with the places that I haven’t. Or, I may organize this by city or region. I haven’t made up my mind yet.

If any of you live in the midwest or the east coast, could you point me to some sights of interest that aren’t the typical tourist traps? In exchange, I’ll post your link on the Americana blog.

I haven’t had the chance to check this blog’s stats since I returned from my vacation. This morning, I decided to check them out and found out that I’ve been awarded the SOB: Successful and Outstanding Blogger Award! This is too cool!

Many thanks to Liz Strauss of Successful Blog. This is is Liz’s concept behind the SOB award:

…bloggers who understand that the strength of the blogosphere comes from relationships, interconnectedness, and community. Not all of these folks have all of the links you might expect, but they will, because they show the key traits of a succesful blogger.

I couldn’t agree with her more. Community is the cornerstone of blogging. Without it, our blogs might as well be websites. I’d like to share with you the other blogs that got the award that week.

The Blogging Times
disruptive thoughts
Financial Reflections
Fuzzy Jones
Lorelle on Wordpress
It’s Not About Your Stuff!
Joy of Autism
urlfan
Workout4Bloggers

I treated myself to a visit at the bookstore on Friday, using the guise of buying a present for my oldest’s friend, who had a birthday. Naturally, I came home with two books, in addition to his gift card.

Best of Blogs is a neat little compendium of the most popular bloggers in a wide variety of topics, including writer’s blogs. I’d heard of most of these blogs, but there were a couple I hadn’t heard about, such as Alex Ross and House of Mirth.

Naturally, I wanted to hear what the Amazon.com reviewers had to say. There are only two reviews, and it is the second one that got me my gears spinning like mad.

Quoted from an Amazon Reviewer:

In any given area, the suggested blogs in the book are of course only a tiny sampling. Albeit these are usually the most frequented blogs. Take popular music. For news on it, only 4 blogs are given. But the authors readily concede that much more could be done. An entire book’s worth on each topic. Still and hopefully, this book will suffice to get you oriented in the blogosphere.

Back in December (before the blog anthology was even thought of) I set out to find as many quality writer’s blogs as I could, only to get discouraged. My research skills have improved since then. So far, I’ve catalogued 85 blogs in 12 categories (compared to the book’s measley 4) related to writing and books. That was on Friday, and I’ve just scratched the surface.

These are quality blogs, not the typical (like mine) that I found on Blog Explosion. At this time, I’m compiling a directory of these blogs for my own pleasure (my sidebar is only so big). Would you be interested in a book like this?

Nick Wilson of Performancing grumbles about blog snobs. I know. I’ve seen the self-proclaimed gurus, Nick is talking about. I read their arrogant and pompous words, and then I moved on because I didn’t feel that they gave me any knowledge that I hadn’t learned before.

His commentary reminded me of what I call Blog Trolls and Snipers, due to the personal attacks I’ve seen on a couple of blogs that I read regularly. The difference between the two is their methods. Snipers will attack you from their blogs while trolls will go to your blog and get in your face.

I ran across one sniper blog late in 2004 and another last week, where all they did was trash other blogs. Sometimes they were right. But often their words were just plain vicious and hateful.

One of my regular readers (who will remain anonymous) was a victim of a sniper attack sometime last year. They posted their attack, and he responded with anger. That was a big mistake. In the end, the sniper and his cronies ate this poor guy alive.

I was immediately reminded of my time spent on a large forum as a moderator. I’ve seen trolls in action and know that the best thing to do when confronted with these people is to ignore them. To respond is to invite a more vicious attack. The same goes with snipers.

The majority of the time, they are attention seekers looking to get their rocks off by tormenting others. Once they figure out that you aren’t going to bite back, they’ll go search for someone else to pick on.

Last weekend, we had an “almost” when my oldest decided to drink in the living room (against my explicit instructions) and spilled his water all over the table. That wouldn’t have been any big deal if it weren’t for the glass inlays, which the water seeped through and dripped on some old family photos.

Fortunately, the only thing that got wet was the paper frame that held my husband’s grandmother’s wedding picture. I still keep these out because I want my family to enjoy them. But this got me thinking about natural disasters and stupid little accidents such as the one above. With all this technology available, there is no excuse not to have backup copies of your photographs.

I’ve known about photoblogs since I signed up with Blog Explosion last year and even looked at a couple. One of my frequent haunts is opensourcecms.com, where you can test out a variety of Open Source programs without having to install them on your server. On Monday, I found two programs for photoblogs: Pixel Post and Plogger

I decided to install Pixel Post for a test run on Deb’s Photos and Drawings. I’ve just begun to play with it, but I like the fact that there are a variety of templates and plugins available. This program is very basic and easy to figure out. I had no problems with the installation or uploading and manipulating images.

One of the things I don’t like is that you can’t create subcategories. I guess I’m so used to the bells and whistles of WordPress that I’m spoiled.

Every now and then I find the need to declutter this blog. For instance, I’ve deleted the blogs that I don’t have time to maintain. That was something I’ve needed to do for at least a month.