Rock Star Tips

Yesterday I guest blogged and promised tips on building self confidence for public speaking (Rock Star Tips) and realized that post is no longer here. Only a silly nattering on about how I was nervous conducting my workshop Channeling Your Inner Rock Star.

Here are my tips in a nutshell (acorn, if you're wondering)

When speaking in public or just meeting your public:

1. Wear something fabulous that makes you feel extra special. Even a pedicure counts because the whole idea is to make you FEEL like you are extraordinary. Carry a small token to give you courage, like a seashell.
2. Give yourself a stage name if you don't already have a pen name. This will be how you refer to yourself in your own mind when summoning the alter ego who is fabulous in front of crowds and oozes self confidence.
3. Imagine that person has an entourage, a secretary, a personal umbrella handler (PUH) and twenty employees who handle her every need. She also has a second home in ______. You fill in where you've always wanted to live, given scads of moulah.
4. Smile, Nod, Take deep breaths. People will wait if you seem confident. Don't be afraid of dead space. It is like the period after your profound comment.
5. Imagine the group in front of you as a gathering of friends who love you. They WANT you to be fabulous, engaging, honest. There's nothing worse than trying to watch someone who is terrified of failure or rejection. If you believe you are wonderful, the audience will too.
6. Don't look directly at anyone, just scan the sea of faces, in a large crowd and play to the back of the room.
7. If they laugh at your joke, use that pause to collect yourself and proceed.
8. Try to enjoy the fact that people are listening to what you have to say. It doesn't need to be profound, only temporarily entertaining. For the moments you are speaking, you must imagine that they find you interesting, or they wouldn't still be sitting there.

There are scads more tricks but these are the essentials. Feel free to email me if you need some personal love or attention about speaking in front of a group. You are FABULOUS!
Kim

The Dream Jumper's Promise #2!!

I have no problem being #2. Ever. In any situation (except love). At this point - 36 hours into a 48 hour FREE KINDLE giveway on Amazon I have 'sold' over 10,000 copies of this novel and am holding at #2 for Women's Fiction and Contemporary. I'm holding at #3 for Romantic Suspense. Strangely enough, the gal who is beating me has both books above mine. I won't put her name here and give her free publicity until my free days ends. BUT I did email her to say congrats. I'm not a total jerk, just partial. Having auditioned all my life for parts in acting, I won't help another competitor during the competition. Learned that lesson the hard way. I'm thrilled she and I are doing so well and I bet she is too although she is not a new author.
I can't pull myself away from the computer today except to get tea, drive my son to sell a soccer jersey and go to the loo. It's so exciting. Both nights I've stayed awake watching the numbers go up.
Last time I went free I got to #6 in Women's Fiction for one hour but mostly stayed below the top ten line for all 3 days. This time I did more marketing, tweeted, FB'ed to the point of nausea and changed my blurb and cover.
The cover now has more of the bronzed bodies on the front cover, darker blue in the sky and a more compelling lead line: "A mysterious ability, a broken promise, a life changed forever"
And I put Christine M. Fairchild's quote at the beginning of my description to get her opinion on the page seeing she's the Editor Devil and they keep removing her great review.
The blurb now focuses more on the romance. I didn't want it to sound like the typical romance blurb but I think it came off showing the reader that there will be some hot stuff in the pages of this book. After all, I want to represent it truthfully and also sell books. What I noticed last time I went free was that the top downloads had couples on the cover in an intimate pose. And that the blurbs were not beautifully written. So I went ahead and tried to model them.
I read a review this week for an edgy book called Sins and Needles and she rounded up many pro reviews before her free days and put them before her blurb. Her book did really well on the free listings so I copied her.
Must go now and tweet again. Maybe some last minute efforts to sell in the UK too before all the Brits go to bed!
Wish me luck
http://amzn.com/B00AA4FAJC

Free Kindle Download Feb 1 and 2- Fiction 5 stars

I can't sleep I'm so excited over here in Seattle. Yipee! The free days are almost here and I'm looking forward to getting my book's face out there, like a mother whose child has an audition on America's Got Talent.
Tomorrow (tonight at midnight, actually) my baby, The Dream Jumper's Promise, goes free on Amazon Kindle. http://amzn.com/B00AA4FAJC
(I can actually type that link now with one hand tied behind my back and my eyes closed.)
If you like commercial women's fiction where the romance might not be primary but is extremely important, this is a great beach read (page turner). It has wonderful reviews, 4.7 stars on 30 reviews and is climbing steadily in the rankings.

“Fantastic mix of women's fiction light with a twist of magic/psychic without being heavy handed so the 2nd chance love story stays the main focus. The surprises at the end are worth the wait!” Christine M. Fairchild, Editor Devil, Author, An Eye for Danger

Ten months after the presumed death of a missing surfer, Maui SCUBA shop owner, Tina Greene, still can't accept her husband Hank’s death. Without a body, her undying hope for his survival lives on.
Jamey Dunn, an old boyfriend, arrives on Maui from his tour of duty in Afghanistan where he’s a dream jumper for the military. Tina’s inconvenient feelings for him resurface and, even though he dives on her boat daily, she tries to avoid the man who betrayed her years before. Nightly dreams of diving with Hank haunt her and the edge between dreams and reality blur. Sensing danger, Jamey stays close to the woman he’s always loved but Tina turns to Hank's best friend, Noble for comfort. Thinking he can help, Jamey offers to visit her dreams. Tina is distrustful and hesitant to let him into her subconscious mind, but relents. As the threesome come closer to solving the mystery of Hank’s disappearance, danger sets in to reveal that one person is flirting with insanity, one is a traitor, and one is an imposter.

* * * 

I changed the blurb to include Christine's quote seeing they take her review off every time she tries to put it on there because she's an author and Amazon has some dumb-ass rule about other authors reviewing. And I changed the blurb to focus on the romance more.

Let's hope new stats give it that jump it needs to get up there with the top ten.
Please check it out and 'buy' it even if your Kindle, phone, PC or ipad are full up at the moment. You can always library it and pull it out later. The Dream Jumper's Promise.
Thanks a bunch!
Kim Hornsby
Sleepless in Seattle