The Glowing Edge

Tag: books

  • Market Like a Mofo: How to Sell More Copies of Your Badass Book

    Market Like a Mofo: How to Sell More Copies of Your Badass Book

    Market Like a Mofo: How to Sell More Copies of Your Badass Book is here, and in honor of the debut of the fourth book in our Badass Writing series, Sonja and I have our sexy new Indiana Jones whips out and are shredding everything in sight. (You might wanna step back a few…)

    /insert whip sounds/

    Whassinnit?

    As soon as you get your copy, you’ll dive in and take the opening quiz, which is based on how much time and money you want to spend, and whether or not you are self-publishing or working with a traditional publisher.

    Then you’ll plummet straight into one of our four non-techie, done-for-you, can’t-possibly-miss marketing plans.

    Of course, we also tell you exactly how WE did it, and we have additional chapters for all you smartypantsers and those of you who want to roll your own plan.

    Sound like a giant hell-yeah taco with face-melting fabulous sauce? Well, it comes with a side of smokin’ hot FREE, between August 1 and August 5, so you better click through and grab you some digital “Yeah, Baby!” before they’re all gone forever.

    Here’s what it DOESN’T have…

    We didn’t write our book to tell you how to make a million, overnight, while you sleep. Market like a Mofo may be the ONLY marketing book you’ll ever read that does not promise you riches, or regurgitate rules about setting goals, monitoring, measuring, and refining your marketing tactics…

    In fact, we started out writing it that way, but then we held our fingers on the backspace key until that entire chapter was relegated to cyber-purgatory. Sonja and I didn’t pen the Badass Writing series to make a giant pile of doubloons (although we love doubloons, and wish we had some doubloons, and saying doubloooooons is fun). We wrote it because a) we were drinking at the time, b) it was a blast, and c) it feels great to stop taking everything so damned seriously. All that hyper-serious shit impedes forward motion, especially when you’re first getting going on this adventure. The point is to write, dammit, ship it, then let people know about it.

    If you go on to become one of those Kindle Millionaires, drinks are on you, Big Daddy.

    How to be a real hero

    And hey, if you read it and get something good out of it, would you please give us a review on Amazon? It’s not nearly as fun as a wine slushy, but it puts virtual jet fuel in our writing biplane and pays for new whips. Every badass writer needs a whip. And they wear out so quickly. Snif. So please write us a review, and if you’re feeling extra givey-helpy, go through and “thumbs up” the other great reviews you see and like.

    How to wrangle an invitation to our “Whip Party”

    The most reviews we’ve ever gotten for a book was for our first one, Bagels, Dirty Limericks, and Martinis: The Badass Guide to Writing Your First Book. As of this post, we have 25 for that one, most of them 5 star. If we get 25 reviews for Marketing Mofo, we will hold a “Whip Party” online.

    Here’s how a Badass Whip Party works…

    Once we get 25 reviews on Marketing Mofo, we will send out an email inviting you to tell us your toughest book writing, publishing, or marketing hurdle that you just don’t seem to be able to clear.

    We’ll also add you to our Private Badass Writing Whip Party Facebook Group.

    Then, on a specific date (we’ll announce it via our email list, so go sign up at BadassWriting.com), we will post the problems and our answers/ideas for how you can whip that problem into shape. And of course, all of you can introduce yourselves and help each other out with cheering and more advice on how to navigate past the poison dart walls to nab the golden writing-publishing-marketing statue.

    If you can’t be there on that specific date, you can always take a look at the thread later and keep interacting with the others from the Badass Writing community.

    Big. Solid gold. Win.

    So. Your Mission…

    1. Go get your free copy of Market Like a Mofo.
    2. Write us an awesome review on Amazon. (Thumbs-up other great reviews, as desired.)
    3. Email us your toughest writing, publishing, and marketing problems.
    4. (Once we pass 25 reviews) JOIN OUR WHIP PARTY on Facebook!

    Whip it, badass. Whip it good. Then sit back and enjoy your dirty martini. You’ve earned it.

    Cheers,

    Lisa & Sonja
    The Dynamic Duo of Book Badassery

    PS: How would you write a whip crack sound? Wuh-PSHHH, maybe? Kuh-TCHH! Wah-TCHA? Hm. Please leave me a comment and tell me the answer.

  • How to Lose or Quit Your Job and Become a Badass Writer

    How to Lose or Quit Your Job and Become a Badass Writer

    My compadre in badassery Sonja made me take out most of the all-caps words for this new little book of ours, but it’s still undeniably loud, rude, and strewn with inappropriate and deliciously fun tips, tricks, anecdotes, and EVEN some powerful real-life pointers. If you’re thinking of becoming a writer, and you’re not scared of having a little fun along the way, you must read this book!

    It’s FREE (just for a day or two, then $2.99, woah!)

    And as of the time of this posting, it’s free! That won’t last, so click over and gobble up some yummy chocolate-and-whiskey-flavored pixels now!

    And it also includes…

    You’ll hear her tearful tale of woe and wonder, and I’ll tell a bit of my own story, which includes spreadsheets, sharks, and unicorns. Sadly, we forgot to include more cowbell, but wait! You’ll receive not one but two, two check sheets for capturing your own whiskey-pissing dream unicorn AND (spoiler!) yet another limerick. Maybe even two.

    I promise not to include any more limericks in future books. Unless you just want more. Let me know. I’ll pander to anyone.

    We hope you’ll leave us a review!

    And we both know it’s a monstrous pain in the patootie, but if you would be willing to write us a review on Amazon, we promise to send you a virtual karmic whiskey-scented massage and some heavy (but entirely pleasant) vibrations of intense and slightly drunken happiness.

    Like this… (You people ROCK our world)

    Just finished this ebook and was actually guffawing into my morning tea and toast. (And it’s research AND I still have time to write this morning.) As a writer (note how I said that, ladies)…working on my first textbook, I found this book hilariously on point with the process, not to mention downright practical. But not just for writers! If you have ANY project or goal that you wish to reflect your core beliefs on how to get more out of your dreams, this book is worth checking out. Peppered, ok–littered– with irreverent slang and saucy language, you’ll imagine yourself at a girl’s night out with free-flowing wine as you read this. (At least that’s how my book club runs, doesn’t yours?) Or maybe you’ll just feel that one of these girls is actually your best high school girlfriend and MAN, are you glad she’s still in your life. READ!

    — Crystal Robbins

    Snif. I just love Crystal, and ALL OF YOU ROCKSTARS who left us amazeballs reviews on our first book, Bagels, Dirty Limericks, and Martinis: The Badass Guide to Writing Your First Book.

    Next up: Publish Like a Bona Fide Badass + TREAT

    We hope to release Book Three, on Publishing, in the Badass series next month, and even before then, we’ll have a special little TREAT that you’ll only be able to get by hopping over to our website at BadassWriting.com (hint: it’s a free book, and you LOVE free books) and getting on our email list.

    I PROMISE YOU we aren’t sending many emails over there (too much work, and we’re basically lazy-asses); just letting you know when we publish something new. The TREAT will be available in the next week or so, but you gotta be on the list to get it!

    And even MOAR…

    We have books on marketing your book, editing, and blogging coming later this year! Why? Because we like you. If you work it juuuuuust right, you can replace the M-I-C with B-A-D… K-E-Y with A-S-S… Then you have to kind of squish in W-R-I-T-I-N-G. But it works. We made it work, anyway. Of course, we were drinking. (But only one of us filmed ourselves drinking, heh.)

    Now go get your Whiskey-Pissing Unicorn badassery without delay!

  • The Badass Guide to Writing Your First Book

    The Badass Guide to Writing Your First Book

    Are you ready for the first non-boxing post I’ve written in a while? I LOVE having a blog where I can do any damn thing I want to, y’all. And the bad-a-licious news is that the first book with my evil twin Sonja Foust, “Bagels, Dirty Limericks, and Martinis: The Badass Guide to Writing Your First Book” is LIVE and available on Amazon. I almost said it’s “finally” live, but the little bastard was so fast and easy to write (we did it in less than 40 hours of time each, start to finish) that “finally” doesn’t really apply.

    Three in a row, you win the giant plush martini!

    Now that I’ve written that subhead, I’m wondering just how flexible Cafe Press might be… But what I was going to say is that Sonja and I started writing the first Badass Guide in January on a whim, and damned if it didn’t just come right together like a group of hungry monkeys over a pile of raisins. It happened so fast we had trouble slowing down, and two more books are also finished and in the editing stages. You can take a look at those two over at the site we whipped together called Badass Writing.

    While you’re over there, sign up and we’ll ping you when the next ones come out (expected publication dates of April and May, 2013). We’ll let you know when they are FREE FREE FREE, (more…)

  • Bookmarking Schools of Thought

    Bookmarking Schools of Thought

    This is my genetic material at work.

    When I was in college I highlighted about one-third of each of my textbooks, even if they were already highlighted by the generations of students who had the book before me. The Husband, on the other hand, comes from the Minimalist School of Bookmarking/Highlighting. If the book was already highlighted, he would rarely add anything, and if he was the first one into a pristine textbook, you would have to hunt carefully to find his notations. If I had to guess, I’d say he highlighted no more than one or two sentences per chapter. Weird, right?

    Thankfully, my gene is dominant, as you can see from the photo.

    The Maker loves poetry, and he’s a huge fan of Shel Silverstein in particular. He gets hours of enjoyment trying to puzzle out Runny Babbit (which we purchased as soon as it came out), and he recently brought home Falling Up from the local library.

    His bookmarks are color-coded (blue = favorites, pink = most favorites) and systematically laid out in ever-increasing height so that they are easily accessed. (That’s his father’s genetic material.)

    I actually counted the bookmarks — there are 47 of them, in a book that only has 170 pages total.

    Post-its are awesome. But just wait ’til he discovers Delicious.

  • Blows to the Head: How Boxing Changed My Mind

    Blows to the Head: How Boxing Changed My Mind

    Last year I got a lovely email from a woman who, after greeting me politely and complimenting The Glowing Edge, mysteriously indicated that we might have some things in common. Intrigued, I clicked through and discovered Binnie Klein, a psychotherapist in New Haven, Connecticut, a Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University, host of a popular weekly music and interview show on WPKN radio, and… you guessed it, a boxing woman.

    And since she was looking for even more things to accomplish, she’s just written a book about it.

    Her book has just been published and my copy has arrived in the mail; expect a review from me (plus a chance to win a free copy of the book!) as soon as I’ve read it. Meanwhile, she and her publisher gave me permission to share this excerpt with you.

    *     *     *

    My coach John, a former middleweight state champ (aka “The Punisher”) was acutely aware that the men in the lives of his women boxers were not always supportive.  Maybe that’s why he often asked what my gentle and peace-loving husband Scott thought about my boxing. Scott wasn’t the only one who was perplexed.  It’s not like I was Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby; I wasn’t battling for recognition, and no one was standing in my way.  People looked startled when they heard I was boxing. “You?”  they’d say.  Why are you so shocked? I wanted to ask, Is it because I’m older? Because I’m not trim and fit?   Because I’m a woman? Somehow the aggression or intensity required to hit was understandable coming from a man.  But with a woman, it was an anomaly.  Why on earth would a woman want to punch?  Or be hit?

    Or was it something else altogether that people were thinking?

    Maybe they don’t think my profession fits with the sport.  You’re a therapist, they scold, as if reminding me that in choosing my career I was to be denied the physical plane altogether, a brain suspended in a tank like in a 1950s science fiction movie.

    You’re not supposed to be aggressive, right?  Aren’t you supposed to have it all analyzed and sublimated?

    Yeah, right.  There’s nothing like donning boxing gloves and headgear to make you face your own competitiveness, rage, and desire for dominance.  My inclinations were shocking.

    People ask me – do your patients know?  Some do because I’ve referred them for boxing lessons to help them feel their own physical power and competence.  Therapists fall into two groups:  those who pretend that their patients know nothing personal about them, and struggle to keep it that way.  They won’t give opinions, and they won’t tell you where they’re going on vacation.  You’ve already guessed which group I’m in.  The mystery therapists may be perfectly helpful therapists; they just don’t roll that way.  But there are the inevitable clues emanating from their faces and their walls, whether their humor is direct, sardonic, or missing altogether; whether their offices are adorned with Klee prints and tasteful soapstone sculptures or a just a dusty row of crookedly-hung diplomas; whether they are outfitted in blazers and chinos or Flax clothing and chunky jewelry, and whether the car sitting in the therapist’s space is a Prius with a “Think Globally, Act Locally” sticker or a brand-new Saab with a ski rack.

    Boxing is a bit like being part of a sexual minority – we take pleasure in something many people don’t understand, and feel compelled to judge us for – but sometimes when I talk about boxing, a surprising amount of people, both women and men, begin to imagine themselves with boxing gloves on.  I recognize the look.  Their innocent eyes widen.  They start talking about how they did five minutes of kick-boxing in an aerobics class once.  They’re intrigued…and then they’re curious…and then, in almost a whisper:

    “So where did you say you do this?”

    This excerpt was adapted from “Blows to the Head: How Boxing Changed My Mind” published by Suny Press, January 2010.

  • This Just Proves I’m a Nerd

    This Just Proves I’m a Nerd

    I didn’t bring this book home, the Husband did, but it had a really cool cover so I picked it up. And I meandered through the first several chapters because anything that explains my husband’s brain to me is frequently of interest.

    And after those first few chapters (during which I learned that Pythagoras was so aware of the import of his formulation of the Pythagorean Theorem that he ordered 100 oxen barbequed, super cool!) I suddenly stumbled on a gem: a chapter giving the foundations of physics.

    EVERY time someone asks the question, “Is light a particle or a wave?” I experience a rush of ecstasy.

    “Yes!” I shout, then force myself to stillness so that I can fully appreciate the story of the double-slit electron experiment. It’s like opening the same Christmas present every year; I already know what’s inside, I’m thrilled to be getting it again, and I can’t wait to play with my quantum erasers and half-alive, half-dead cats. The Copenhagen interpretation is my launch point into the greatest joys of the universe.

    For me, physics is like a hot tub in the middle of a giant parking lot full of gravel. Mathematics is the gravel.

    For me, physics is like a hot tub in the middle of a giant parking lot full of gravel. Mathematics is the gravel. I am forced to walk barefoot over all that wretched, sharp gravel before I can sink gratefully into the steaming warmth of physics, both quantum and planetary.

    My husband, on the other hand, is a born mathematician. For him, the gravel is actually the glowing, thousand-hued crystals of an enormous multi-dimensional puzzle; one he would happily spend the rest of his life working to solve. The hot tub he barely notices as he gleefully sorts crystals into organized piles, stacks, and towers.

    Sigh. I guess what I meant to say is that we’re both nerds.

  • The Maker’s Spot Cake

    The Maker’s Spot Cake

    All our boys loved the Spot books when they were tiny. And with our history of all-out birthday cakes it was inevitable that one of them — in this case The Maker — should request a “Spot Cake.”

    Go easy on the icing SpotTechnically, it’s the cake Spot baked for his father, but that point was lost on the Maker, who was most keenly interested in the great shining swaths of chocolate frosting capped with green, and the dizzying loops of pink on top. The M&M’s were the best part because he could poke those on — or alternatively, eat them — himself.

    That photo at the top on the far right cracks me up; it’s like he’s saying, “Careful with that thing, Dad, you don’t wanna get it on you.” This after we had to do a full hose-down of both him and the kitchen after the “making of” and before the party.

    Making the Spot Cake

    It was a smashing success in every respect, and one of the few birthday cakes I can lay claim to having orchestrated myself, and I didn’t even use a mix. Those were the days.

  • Twilight Didn’t Do It For Me

    Twilight Didn’t Do It For Me

    When I was in school the only book we ever passed around was Judy Blume’s Wifey, which had sex scenes. We shared the novel furtively, like we were slipping over a nickel bag of pot; no one knew who owned it — the same dog-eared copy must have passed through the locker of every female in 8th grade.

    So imagine my surprise when the First brought home a honking doorstopper of a book which — get this — a girl had loaned him. No sex in the entire thing, either. You guessed it, it was Twilight.

    I tried to engage with the Twilight phenomenon, I really did. But it clearly wasn’t written for me so I returned the 4-pound hardback (the First had read it in a flash) and back it went to the girl who convinced him to read it in the first place. (She soon sent home boat anchor number two in the series.)

    Recently my nine-year-old son was loaned a copy of the Twilight movie by a girl on his bus. (What is it with girls today?) I figured the movie would be more accessible, so last night I sat on the couch with all three of my boys and watched the first half.

    Two things:

    1. There’s nothing interesting about these vampires. Yes, Eddie-boy is brooding and beautiful (I actually like the Jacob character more), but that isn’t enough to carry the film. Plus, the girl has one expression, rather like Elijah Wood’s Frodo in the LOTR series. Boy do I ever get tired of that same look.

    2. There’s nothing interesting about these special effects. Let me tell you who rocks the effects: Chow Yun Fat films and their like. You know, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Curse of the Golden Flower, Hero, House of Flying Daggers and all the others. Dude, ninja-types get me totally jacked up, how they can balance on a perfect autumn leaf in mid-air while their robes billow about them and their sword gleams. Epic. These vampires have a little bit of super speed, but CYF and his crew would kick their vampire butts in any show-down, any day, no question.

    So. I’ll finish watching it with the boys tonight, but I ain’t expecting much. Feel free to weigh in and convince me otherwise. Did you like it? Why or why not?

  • Drawing is Relaksing

    Drawing is Relaksing

    The Maker is new to public school, and one of the delightful things he’s discovered is that his teacher has a “Read, Write, or Draw” period every day. The first time she introduced this he made himself a book, of which this is the first page. He’s been a book-maker for years, and loves to compose and illustrate them. This one in particular tickled me because of the phonetic spelling.

    My favorite part is the very “relaksing” visual. Ahh, just feel the peace.

  • The Donkey Behind Door Number Three

    The Donkey Behind Door Number Three

    Let’s say you’re on Monte Hall’s “Let’s Make a Deal” gameshow. You get to pick a hidden prize behind door number one, door number two, or door number three. The trick is that two of the doors hide donkeys, and only one door hides the Maserati.

    You pick door number one.

    The host, in the countdown to your choice, shows you that door number three hides a donkey, and you gasp in relief. Aren’t you glad you didn’t pick that door?

    Now Monte puts his arm around you in a confidential manner, and asks if you want to change your choice. Are you going to stick with door number one, or switch to door number two?

    This is the question the Husband posed to me on our Date Night, and I said what many people say: “I’ll stick with my choice.” I figured I had a 50-50 chance of winning.

    But the simple mathematical fact is that I’m more likely to win the car if I switch.

    I had no idea people had been arguing about this for years. I can remember reading The Parade, which came as an insert in The Commercial Appeal, which was the newspaper my family subscribed to as I was growing up in Memphis, Tennessee. I mostly pulled out and read The Parade to catch up on the latest gossip about movie stars, but there was and still is a column called “Ask Marilyn,” where super-smart Marilyn vos Savant (who was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the person with the highest recorded IQ — 228) employed her exceedingly sturdy gray matter to solve problems that readers sent in.

    And in September of 1990  her counsel in the 3-door situation was to switch your choice in order to increase your odds of winning. She received an estimated 10,000 letters from people telling her she was mistaken. But she wasn’t!

    The Husband is a major math geek, and he’s reading a book called The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, where he came across the “Let’s Make a Deal” scenario. After he told me about Marilyn and the switch, I picked up the book myself and devoured the third chapter where the explanation occurs.

    And basically I failed to take into consideration the game show host. You see, Monte knows the answer. He’s not going to reveal the car, he’s going to show you a donkey. And thus he changes the odds for you.

    At first you had a 1 in 3 chance of guessing right off where the car was. IF you were lucky and the car really IS behind door number one, you’ll obviously win if you stick, and the odds for that are 1 in 3. But if you guessed wrong and the car is behind door number two, you’ll win if you switch, and the odds for that are 2 in 3. That’s better odds, isn’t it? The strategy of switching is on average twice as successful as staying with the original choice.

    I know, it’s confusing, and it took me a few times to get it, but once I did, I was pumped! You can play it out here and see for yourself how it works.

    So. What the hell am I going to do with this miniscule tidbit of super-kewl information? I am going to be the megastar of the next party I go to, I’m telling you. Math nerds are red hot.

    Um, aren’t they?

    Image credit: Wikipedia