April Fool's--no joke

Last Friday was April Fool's Day.  And I'll be the first to admit that I don't like the traditional tricks and jokes that tend to go on, so my family is awesome in that respect and they don't mess with me. So many good things happened that I wondered if someone was playing a April Fool's joke on me.

The highlight was having my book mentioned on three blogs.  One blog was a planned interview, the other two were a total surprise.
The blog that excited me the most was a book review of GNOME. This review was so very special to me.
1)  It was my first book review that was exclusively on a blog
2)  It was a review given by an eleven-year-old.  The reviewer is smack-dab in the middle of my target age range.
3)  Not only was he my target age range for this story, but he was a BOY! I'd been told by so many agents/editors/bloggers on the internet that they want 'boy' books, as boys and girls will read boy books, but only girls will read girl books.  Uh, my character is a girl and I don't think that fact bothered him at all.
4)  I was more excited by this review than I was to be in the paper a couple weeks ago!
The third blog was a shoutout to Rubix Boy for joining the blog-o-sphere as a young reader/reviewer.

Rubix Boy's review excited me because I had been having a hard time finding reviewers who would read MG --a self-pubbed MG at that.  I knew what I wanted to do for my next step in marketing, but I didn't have the connections that I needed to get the word out.  In steps Misty of Topshelfebooks who helped me out by sending out the word on various FB pages that I wanted MG book reviewers. 

I had one teacher (w/150 6th-8th grade students, many with e-readers) and a few other parents request GNOME.  I happily gave them a coupon code to get a free copy from Smashwords with my only request being: post a review on Amazon Kindle, Smashwords and/or Barnes & Noble Nook. It can be a good review or a bad review, but I want it to reflect the brutal honesty of that age group.

But that's all the marketing/publicity news I have for now since I need to seriously get cracking on editing FAERIE.

After all, Rubix Boy requested the next book in The Goblin's Apprentice series . . .

Later, Peeps!