JUST CHECKING IN

As of this morning I have finished re-reading and double checking the changes made by my editor.  Along the way I’ve tweeted a few places to enhance the continuity of my story.  Should be finsihed reviewing the last 3 chapters later today, and then it’s off to writing anew.  Would like to have my next 2 chapters completed by Wednesday.

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SELECTING CHARACTER NAMES [PART 2]

Unfortunately, I couldn’t post the two listings for my book in one blog,

This is the listing for the popularity of names for people born in 1897.

Popularity in 1897

Rank	Male name	Female name
1	John	Mary
2	William	Anna
3	James	Helen
4	George	Margaret
5	Charles	Ruth
6	Joseph	Elizabeth
7	Frank	Florence
8	Robert	Ethel
9	Edward	Marie
10	Henry	Emma
11	Thomas	Lillian
12	Walter	Edna
13	Harry	Bertha
14	Arthur	Grace
15	Albert	Clara
16	Fred	Alice
17	Clarence	Bessie
18	Willie	Hazel
19	Roy	Rose
20	Paul	Annie
Note: Rank 1 is the most popular, rank 2 is the next most popular, and so forth.

As can see this site can be extremely in the selection process for the names of our characters.

SELECTING CHARACTER NAMES

Every author in writing their book(s) has to face the dilemma of what to name our characters, luckily for us if our story takes place in the United States, we have a superb tool to help remedy the situation.   When we name our characters, we want their names to be appropriate for the time period the story is taking place, and of course it would be wonderful if we can know what the most popular names were for our characters when they were born.

In my YA story I want my characters to be around 13 years old which would mean they were born in 1997.  And since my story has a time travel element to it, I would also need to know the most popular names in 1897.

There’s a lot more fun stuff there…you can find out how popular your name has been since  you were born.  Here’s the link to the site.

http://www.ssa.gov/babynames

Here’s the listing I got for 1997.

Popularity in 1997

Rank	Male name	Female name
1	Michael	Emily
2	Jacob	Jessica
3	Matthew	Ashley
4	Christopher	Sarah
5	Joshua	Hannah
6	Nicholas	Samantha
7	Brandon	Taylor
8	Andrew	Alexis
9	Austin	Elizabeth
10	Tyler	Madison
11	Daniel	Megan
12	Joseph	Kayla
13	Zachary	Rachel
14	David	Lauren
15	John	Alyssa
16	Ryan	Amanda
17	James	Brianna
18	Anthony	Jennifer
19	William	Victoria
20	Justin	Brittany
Note: Rank 1 is the most popular, rank 2 is the next most popular, and so forth.

A -BLOGGING I WILL GO

Each one of us, especially those of us, I feel, who are pursuing a writing career, in the hopes of one day becoming an author need to make ourselves known before making our debut as an author.  It is EXTREMELY to sell your book, if no one knows who you are.  You not only have to market/promote your book, you must now market/promote yourselves.

One way to accomplish the task of marketing/promoting yourselves is through the use of blogs. Each blog community will tract a different population of followers. Why? The answer is varied. The answer could be as simple as the functionality of the site, some followers simply like one site over another simply because of the way you work with.

The more blogs you have, the better chances you have in creating a base of followers who might/should be quite interest in buy what you have to offer in terms of your book.  So far, I have four.  This one being my latest addion.

The other blogs I have are =

TWITTER –  http://www.twitter.com/mypennameonly

WEBSITE/BLOG  –  http://www.mypennameonly.webs.com

BLOG  –  http://www.mypennameonly.blogspot.com

Might you, handling more than two, is not really for those who are faint of heart, it takes time, and when you consider your emails, and monitoring of a possible group, and of course writing your manuscript it can become a full time job without any real benefits except for your end product.

It addition to the above, I am the creator of a group on Linked In, which is an excellent place to be to learn and hopefully create a following from your interactions with the group in terms of your responses to posts and the posting of your own discussions.  My group is called

“Authors/Writers Helping Authors/Writers”  To get there, click on this link

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4173121&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

Until my next post

Caio

ABOUT MY FIRST YA PARANORMAL/TIME TRAVEL/FIRST KISS NOVEL

Mary is rather plain looking, and smart as a whip.  When Jonathan moves to her neighborhood and joins her class, she’s volunteers to help him with his studies so he’ll be able to join the school’s baseball team.

The relationship begins to grow, despite his becoming popular with the other boys in the school and most of the girls.  They both like each other for being themselves.  But their relationship comes to an aburpt end.  Mary has to move away because her father has gotten a promotion on his job.  She decides to do something special, and devises a plan to give him a kiss, the first kiss she had ever given to a boy.

Once in her new house, she quickly discovers that she has a specter living there as well. Their friendly relationship starts to grow.  When summer is over, she’s finally able to start making friends, everyone had been away at camp.  The only problem is they continually tease her about being haunted, and continually to go inside her house because of it.  Little do they realize the house does have a real ghost living there.

George helps Mary with her homework, and starts to take her in his past, the past in which he was still alive.  Eventually Mary begins to love going into past.  The problem with her friends never wanting to come into her house is there until Mary decides to have a Halloween party, a Halloween party for which no one could refuse to go to.  In the days after the party is over, her friends finally decide it would be okay go inside to play,

What does George do to help Mary with her homework?  What happens when George takes Mary into the past?  How does their relationship develop?  What happens at the Halloween party to make them change their minds to play with Mary inside her house?  Is there another kiss involved, and what happens if and when it does occur?  These questions and others will be answered when my book is finally published.

Plase follow me on TWITTER   http://www.twitter.com/mypennameonly