Building a platform.

I can hear it now. My new literary agent and I will talk for the first time. I'll tell her all about my book. She'll sound enthused. I'll feel encouraged. And then she'll say it. "Do you have a blog?" 

I might as well face the truth. If I want anyone outside of my very close-knit Catholic community to read In the Palace, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and expose my innermost thoughts and feelings to the whole Internetian world. To an introvert, that feels like a cut above a slow, agonizing death by quicksand, but like the postulant nurses carrying bedpans in The Nun's Story, I will say All for Jesus! and feel less pain. 

To sell a book, it's no longer enough to write a brilliant piece of literature (not that I have, but God knows I've tried.) Those days are gone. Now, an author needs a platform, a brand, and a social media presence. Ugh! I loathe Facebook, I have never tweeted in my life and hope never to do so, and Instagram sounds like a cross between graham crackers and Minute Rice, a tasteless, unappetizing paste if ever there was one. 

But in the interest of making a small profit, paying off my bills, and maybe having a little left over to help out some good personal friends of mine, I'm going to be a team player and hop on the train headed for Blogville, that legendary place where authors speak intelligently and entertainingly about interesting topics of the day, post cute little colored squares with pithy sayings (called memes, apparently), and don't intentionally offend anyone. 

Pray for me. 

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