Good news!  The postcards came in just in time for the Pet Writing Conference!  Speaking of, this morning I sent an e-mail to the Pet Writing Conference because the trains in the northeast are running on a limited schedule and the ladies I was planning on traveling with were planning on taking a later train which would put us in NYC 15 minutes before registration ends and it is a 20 minute walk from the train station.   I immediately had a phone call from Charlotte Reed who is the one putting the conference on.  We had a lovely 20 minute chat and she gave me some really awesome suggestions, from when to arrive to what to wear (or what not to wear.)

She was so adorable, she told me to take the earlier train, sit in the front car with the engineer and bring a blanket and try to get some rest on the train.  She also gave me her cell phone number and told me to call her when I got into the city.  She was really wonderful and she made me feel like this is the right thing to do and it will all work out.

I am looking forward to sharing my experience with you and learning what is the best way to get started with this career.  On that note, I wanted to thank those of you who left comments with suggestions for me, I hope you like the new theme of the blog and that it is a bit easier to read.  Please don’t ever hesitate to make a suggestion to me about how I can make this better.  I want to attract readers and as you are reading this, I need to know what will bring you to my blog and what will compel you to share my blog with friends and family.  I look on this blog as a learning experience and the more you can share with me, the more I can learn! 🙂

Every night I write this blog and post the link on facebook.  I have sent a mass e-mail out to all the people in my address book as well as people I am close to at work.  How do I get some readers?  What do I need to write about, or how do I need to write in order to attract people to the blog?  Do you have any thoughts or suggestions?

A couple of you have asked me how you can help me with getting my book published and I thought before I go to the Pet Writing Conference it might be a good time to reach out to you and let you know how I think you can help.  Of course I am always open to your thoughts and suggestions as well, since two heads are better than one.

There are a number of things I am thinking of, first and foremost if you haven’t already please subscribe to this blog and please feel free to leave comments.  I truly appreciate you liking my links on facebook (don’t take this the wrong way) but facebook doesn’t have a site statistic option whereas this blog does.  I can track how many people use this blog on a daily basis, it is great to be able to tell an agent/editor/publisher what type of fan base you have.  To those who do comment, I really appreciate it!  Once you have subscribed to this blog, please feel free to recommend it your friends if you are enjoying it.  Then ask your friends to subscribe and leave comments; and request they ask their friends.  

Next is facebook, I publish the link to the blog every night when I make a post, if you could re-post the link or “like” it; that would be one way to help.  Sampson and Delilah also have facebook pages; you can like them or suggest to your friends that they “like” them.  Every morning I post a “thought for the day” on each of their pages (on their behalf at their request) 🙂 You can interact with them, there are a number of people who are friends of Sampson’s that I don’t know who they are.  And that is a good thing!

Next as you may remember, I ordered some postcards that I expect to receive very soon; you can help me by taking some postcards and 1) handing them out to family and friends 2) think about the public places you go, or the people you know where you can drop some postcards off, I will be leaving some at doggie daycare, the place I purchase dog food at and the hair salon I go to just to name a few.  If you prefer you can send some postcards to family and friends.  I will provide the postcards free of charge to you and even pay for the stamp.

I would love to be able to offer up some T-shirts or tote bags and if I have enough people interested (to be able to keep the cost low) I will certainly do that.  There may even be some other marketing tools I can use that wouldn’t be too expensive.

So what do you think?  Can you take some postcards and do you have any other ideas that might help?

Thank you for all your support, I truly appreciate it!

XOXO