Time for a Change

[Stephen Brayton]

A couple things have happened in the last month or so. They have me thinking about changes.

I really dislike change, even though I know sometimes, even most times, the new situation will be better. I’m resistant to jumping into the water without a net…or something to that effect.

The first thing was that my goofball landlord, who hasn’t deigned to take care of the place from about day one of his ownership, put the apartment house up for sale. There have been  interested parties looking over the place, but at the time of this writing, I haven’t seen, or heard about any real bites. A new landlord might spruce up the place, give it a load of TLC, and probably raise the rent. I don’t think the place is worth any raise in rent unless several things are improved.

The second thing to occur is that the motel I work for is also being sold. A gentleman from northern Minnesota has put down earnest money. I’m not happy at the current owners because they’ve screwed me over twice now by selling a property where I’ve worked. I’ve looked at their recent history and in my opinion, I’d hate to be a current employee because of the number or properties they’ve sold over the last year. Any change in ownership in an industry like this puts employment at risk. Anyway, I don’t know the ways of the new owner and my future employment at this property has question marks all over it.

Neither of these situations bode well for future promotional events on my latest book, Alpha. If I don’t have the money to travel to various places and my time is needed to look for another job, another apartment or both, my marketing strategy I submitted to my publisher gets clouded. Any plans may be delayed.

However, I want to discuss another change related to Brayton’s Briefs.

During the recent Killer Nashville conference I attended a marketing seminar which provided me with a lot of information and ideas. One of those, which makes sense, is that I shouldn’t have a writing related blog. The reason for this is that I’m trying to sell books. I need readers and fans, not necessarily authors to be viewing my blog. Yes, authors buy books, but if all I’m providing is writing tips to authors, that’s all they’re going to get. I need to branch out and make the blog more user and reader friendly to attract more people to it, thereby increasing my chances of future sales.

So now I’m in a dilemma. I’ve wanted to start a series of blogs based on my

2011 November posting of the 24 Adult Truths. They were meant as a bit of humor, but I can relate them to writing. I have all but two completed.

Should I dump them in favor or other posts? What kind? I don’t want to throw up regular bits of fluff about how my week went, what I had for dinner, or how my cat has been acting. I don’t care for those types of blogs because I’m interested in writing tips and new books and author interviews. If I want fluff, I can read Facebook entries.

Since I’m involved in martial arts, I thought about putting up motivational articles and bits of taekwondo and related news. In the past, I’ve written guest blogs where my main character of Mallory Petersen was interviewed.

Maybe I could do something along those lines. Give time to some of the characters in my books, delve into their personalities. I have one particular character who doesn’t currently have a last name. Maybe a contest is in order.

What about those author interviews on which people have commented? I have one more in the queue I thought about putting up next week. Should I continue those?

So, what do you think? Is this the type of change which will be better for everyone, to attract new readers? No, I don’t plan to constantly barrage you with pleas to buy my book (ahem, okay, but please do, ahem.) I want this blog to be interesting, entertaining, informative and informative. I don’t necessarily have to dump the Truths or the other writing bits, but maybe I can spice it up and keep it fresh with a variety of new material.

I’d appreciate any suggestions or ideas.

Thank you.