Melanie Thurlow's blog

I'm so glad I found Melanie Thurlow's blog. She has a number of interesting conversations on Twitter that I'm following at the moment.

#DecTheShelves invites independently published authors #indieauthor to post buy links for their books in the run up to Christmas. It's a great way to promote independently published works. Thankfully, a few days ago, Melanie posted a list containing 181 titles to choose from which I am finding very useful.

#DecTheShelvesChallenge asks readers to commit to buying 25 books/e-books by independent authors between 1st and 25th  December. I thought this was a brilliant idea; a way to buy lesser known works for Christmas presents and stock up on my own reading material. However, I've already got a bit carried away. We are only on Day 5 and I've started reading 5 books I've bought for the promotion and had only just started reading Serena Mackesy's 'The Temp' when the challenge began. I need to buy a book every day and save it to read later... something I am currently struggling to do. Today, Amazon have sent me the boxed set I pre-ordered yesterday, 'Holidays Ever After: Contemporary Romance Holiday Boxed Set', and it has 20 full-length stories... My resolve to save it for later might be sorely tested today!

While #DecTheShelves is great for promoting already published works, Melanie has also created  #WIPTruthOrDare with Heather Hayden. It is a game where you tweet a truth or respond to a dare each day of the month. Melanie has provided the full list of 'truth or dares' for December and I thought I'd casually sign up and 'play the game' this month. What I have found is that this game is actually helping me focus on particular characters and develop the story line of my next novel. If you're writing something, perhaps you would like to give it a go too.