Guest Blog: Marcia Mickelson

I first met Marica Mickelson when her first book came out, and we've been friends ever since online and through LDStorymakers. I'm delighted to be a stop on her blog tour for her new release, The Huaca. 

Shyness Is Not Good Marketing

I’m extremely shy and sometimes find it hard to talk to people, and this is especially true when it comes to talking about my books.  When I first started writing, I felt it suited my personality perfectly as I prefer solitary activities, such as being shut away in a room to write. This is perfect for me!

Then… I realized that once the book is complete and has been published, it is guess what? Time to talk about your book! I hadn’t counted on that, but it is true. It’s an author’s job to talk about her book and to market her book. This realization has caused me to slowly come out of my shell.

It has been slow, though. Just ask my co-workers who didn’t know I wrote books until almost two years after I started working there. Why, you might ask? I don’t exactly know…shyness, I think. I can’t tell you how many times people have come up to say:  “I didn’t know you wrote books.”

It is a good thing that I surround myself with people who help me do the talking that I find difficult to do. My husband is a prime example. Just recently, he was taking a picture of me at Barnes And Noble as I was holding my new book. A few young women were nearby and after realizing that two of them had photobombed our picture, I turned the nearest corner to hide. He, on the other hand, approached them, started talking to them, and then handed each one of them my business card.

Earlier that evening at a restaurant, the manager had come up to us to see how our meal was. We made small talk about how the school year was almost finished, and it came up that I was a teacher and just as eagerly anticipating the end of the year. Immediately, my seven-year-old son says to the manager: “She’s an author too.” This led into a conversation about my book, and my husband then handed her a card, which she asked me to sign.

So, there you have it! Shyness is no way to market your book. Once the “easy” part (writing the book itself) is done, then it’s time for the hard part (marketing) to begin. First, surround yourself with awesome family and friends that will help spread the word about your book. Second, forgo the shyness and talk about your book. And, for goodness sake’s, don’t work someplace for two years without telling your co-workers that you write books!

Here’s a little bit about my book.

Seventeen-year-old Ellie Cummings just wants to be a regular teenager, but after her mother’s mysterious murder, she isn’t sure if she’ll ever be normal again. Her mother’s death has left Ellie and her father worlds apart. And when her best friend abandons her, Ellie has no one else to turn to—except for the strange boy who says he can help.

Gabe de la Cruz seems to know way too much about everything,
and her instincts tell Ellie to stay far away. But when he claims that he can communicate with the dead through an ancient Incan artifact, Ellie can’t resist the temptation of seeing her mother again. In the hanan pacha—the Incan afterworld—Ellie’s mother sends a message to help Ellie understand what happened the night of the murder—a message that may be better kept a secret . .