Today starts my very first blog tour. Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is featuring The Fence My Father Built for 3 whole days on a whole slew of blogs around the world. Here’s how a CFBA tour works: Bonnie Calhoun has rounded up dozens of blogs, sites, book clubs and library systems that make up the CFBA. They do charge for their tours these days, but it’s fairly reasonable considering the exposure an author gets. Participating bloggers/reviewers receive a copy of the book, and then on a prescheduled week, they all put up at least the book’s cover, author pic & bio, synopsis and more. Many write reviews, which one hopes are objective (I don’t know very many of these people yet so in my case it’ll be objective for sure). During the 3 day tour, the book gets in front of scores of readers who depend on these blogs for reading suggestions.

A blog tour is one of the most positive uses of the internet yet. Instead of needing to stumble upon a print ad for a book, or manage to find it in the stacks of a bookstore or a library, a blog tour provides a window of awareness to many many readers I could never reach on my own. Can you tell I’m excited? You bet!

Writing Tip for Today: When you look at a rough draft, make sure you’ve allowed the manuscript time to “cool off” or sit until you’ve gained some distance. You’ll be more likely to cut where cutting needs to happen. And remember: Your words are like Doritos–you can always make more. BIC and burn up those keys, people.