Welcome to my blog! I'm both excited and nervous about this new venture because I know how much work a blog takes to maintain. But I also have a deep rooted belief that hard things open new doors. So, here I am, beginning again.
Blogging has a special place in my heart. Three years ago, my writing group (Writing Through Brambles) decided to start a blog for writers to build our individual platforms before we dove headlong into the query trenches. At that time, only one of us had a book published, so it was our hope that our blog would help us level-up. And it did. In a big way.
Today, between the five of us, we have 9 published novels and 8 published short stories.
We don't maintain that blog anymore, but I feel like we each discovered something about ourselves during that time. It helped us dig deeper than just our dreams about writing. One of our members became an audiobook reader and after narrating some amazing stories, purchased a sound booth for her basement. Another one of our writers decided to rapid release a self-published series, and is seeing amazing things happen with her career. A third member of our blog recently became an acquisitions editor for an indie publisher. And after realizing that all of my articles revolved around marketing, I dove headlong into the world of publishing and became the marketing manager of Immortal Works Publishing.
In short, I think that blog helped us find our footing in the the many niches of the publishing world. By digging deep every month to find content that we found valuable, it gave us the tools we needed to chase our dreams. It wasn't easy keeping the blog running for two straight years. We didn't miss a single week during that time! But I think the writingthroughbrambles.com blog helped us chase our dreams in a way we didn't think we could.
So, here I am... Starting a blog of my own. I have a lot of goals for my own career, but more importantly, I'm learning a lot that I think I can share with you. Marketing, writing, reading, publishing, editing, advertising, researching... I'm constantly learning. Hopefully over the weeks, I can share content that's both valuable and entertaining for those of you on this crazy publication road with me. Let me know in the comments if there are any topics specifically you'd like a post about!
Happy writing!
Rachel