The good news is that my novel will be out in March.
The bad news is that Academadness will therefore NOT be out in March. 😩 I’m pushing it back, yet again, this time to May.
Learning how to write short fiction and then long fiction that people might wish to read apparently isn’t enough. It turns out I am now neck deep in figuring out how to promote and market myself. This might be my most brutal endeavor yet, and I’ve birthed multiple children and countless research papers and grant proposals. What are the best days of the week and times of day to post something on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram? Mind you, the answer is different for different platforms. Is Canva Pro worth the money? Why the heck is it law to have to specify a physical address at the end of a newsletter? Should I pay for a virtual mailbox? Or just get everyone to subscribe to my website and receive blog posts as newsletter? And don’t even start on getting reviews lined up before the book comes out! Is NetGalley worth it? Probably not, but what about doing it as part of a co-op? How about forgoing NetGalley and just sticking to BookSirens or Booksprout? And how does Bookbub fit into all that?
In other words:
In all seriousness, I know all this would be necessary even if I had gone with a big press. And my publisher, as small as it is, has been doing a bang-up job with every aspect of the process so far, so no complaints there. (Btw, if you’re a longtime blog reader and would like to read and review an ARC of the novel, send me an email or contact me through the blog contact form.)
In academic news, semester proceeds apace. This one isn’t too bad in terms of my teaching workload, but I need to ramp up my grant-writing efforts, which means papers have to go out ASAP. So that’s what I should be doing instead of being a dilettante publicist.
More on academic stuff soon, and in the meantime, some Twitter levity. Or at least I thought it was levity, but upon inspection of my bookmarks, it turned out a high percentage were of the existential-dread variety. 😬 Oh, well.
xykademiqz 
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