What is Twitter Etiquette?

As indie author's one of the most powerful tools for getting our name and product out there is social media. It's been a learning process over the past year, but we've finally got it down. I'm not sure about Von, but my favorite social media tool is Twitter. It's short and sweet, no need for extraneous content, 140 characters and you're done. If I happen to find an interesting article or picture, I just click on the blue bird, it's miniaturized to Shrinky Dink size and posted to our Twitter page, easy enough.

As our Twitter followers have grown over the past few months, so have our interactions, or Retweets. At first, we would send a Thank You tweet, thanking them for thinking of us, but we soon discovered that retweeting the retweeters content was even better to return the favor.  If an author happens to follow us then we make it a point to follow them back. It's a good way to grow your network and interact with other people trying to do the same thing you're doing.

I got quite a shock, one day while trying to thank one of our retweeters. I clicked on that author's name to find a profile page full of nudity, whips, chains, and handcuffs. Okay, if we're not comfortable even looking at this person's page, do we have to retweet their material because they retweeted ours?

Another question concerns serial retweeters. If we know they retweet our stuff almost automatically, sometimes several times a day, do we retweet their stuff multiple time also?

What about Followers who speak an entirely different language? Do I follow someone even though I don't have a clue what they're saying?

It's not like someone wrote a handbook on proper Twitter etiquette. I hate being rude and don't want our Followers to think we're trying to snub them. So we had to make up our own rules.
If a Follower is into something risque that we're not quite comfortable sharing on our page, we'll send a thank you Tweet or retweet something safe they've retweeted from someone else.

For the serial retweeters, we retweet them once or twice. Anything more and you're caught in a vicious, repeating loop.

The rest is just play it by ear and stick with our own judgment.  If we're not comfortable with something, than the best course of action is to leave it alone. Over time you'll gain Followers and you'll lose Followers, that's just the way Twitter goes.

Excerpt from The Body Hunters: Paradise Denied-Eric's Murder

Enjoy a snippet from the second novel in our series The Body Hunters: Paradise Denied. This is the murder of Eric Winston our suspect's first husband.

Eric Winston expertly trekked soundlessly over the rugged Alaskan terrain of Denali State Park. Mount McKinley, the highest mountain summit in North America, was in the backdrop, its snowy peaks stretching into the early morning sky. With the plush clouds and fluffy snowcaps, the breathtaking skyline looked like it had been painted by the hand of God. Denali State Park's scenery varied from lushly populated green forests to seemingly untouched icy tundra. Year round frozen glaciers jutted from the landscape like jagged shards of glass feeding into the cool channels and streams. Denali State Park was a nature lover's paradise.

Opting not to employee a guide like some inexperienced novice, Eric left camp at daybreak to explore the park. Not satisfied with the nature trails that catered to the tourist population of the park, Eric decided to walk on the wild side, literally. The temperature was comfortable, in the mid 60's, his sweat cooling off his body before it could accumulate. Eric was six foot tall, his body composed of lean muscle mass acquired from his active outdoors lifestyle. A mutinous mop of black hair covered his head and his eyes were the color of flint. His female fans on the blogs called him a heart throb. One zealous devotee even commented that he was a pretty boy, but the tangible type, not one of those Hollywood guys that needed makeup before they left the house. Eric liked the critique very much.

Today he was traveling light, dressed in loose fitting camouflage pants, a black long-sleeved t- shirt that clung to his upper body, and a hunter's orange hoodie. His lucky, well-worn Timberland boots protected his feet from toothy rocks and the roughened topography. Over his back he lugged a backpack full of health bars, water, his digital camera, batteries, and other necessary equipment, while on his left shoulder was a quiver full of arrows. He held his newly purchased compound bow in his hand, ready for his quarry.

For the better part of the morning he had been tracking a large, bull caribou. Being mid-August, he was just in time for caribou hunting season, and he wasn't going home empty handed. Eric kneeled, observing the fresh caribou tracks running along the stream. He cursed, having just missed the beast by mere minutes. The creature had stopped to drink from the stream before heading right back into the wilderness. Consulting his compass, Eric noted that the beast was headed east. He had been on the caribou's trail for awhile and wasn't going to lose him now.

Shifting the weight of his backpack and quiver on his muscled back, Eric followed the hoof prints. A stark white snow hare darted out of his path. Songbirds anointed him with their serenades as he entered the wooded area. Solid thickets of plant life impeded his travel, low hanging limbs from young spruce trees slapped him in the face, but he would not be deterred. This is the life he loved.

Eric Winston was the Wildman, or so he was called on his internet viral videos. He had started off filming some of his outrageous outdoor adventures and daredevil stunts, and the videos had become so popular he was nearly a household name. Taking advantage of his Harvard Business degree, the twenty-eight-year-old turned his love of the outdoors and extreme sports into a lucrative multimillion dollar enterprise. His was the face that graced bottles of sports drinks, outdoor equipment, and sportswear. His agent was even working out a deal for an MTV reality show. He had literally become his own brand. He was living the American dream.

A year ago he had finally met the woman with whom he wanted to share that dream. Amanda McDuff, or Crystal Rose as she was called during her stripping days, was now his wife. He had first met Mandy when he was out partying in Boston and visited a topless bar with some of his randy friends. As soon as Crystal Rose took the stage, Eric was immediately mesmerized and had to have her. Model tall with coffee brown, shoulder length hair and topaz brown eyes, Crystal Rose seemed to be looking right into his soul. The woman knew how to captivate the room, leaving every male in the bar drooling and ready to leave their wallets and credit cards with her. With her stunningly perfect breasts and even more perfect backside, Crystal Rose was exactly what men's fantasies were made of. With her first twirl around the pole, Eric was ready to throw her over his shoulder and lock her away in his apartment.

Instead, he waited around for her until the club closed. Sitting on the hood of his Porsche he was biding his time for her. At first she turned him down when he asked her out. But after three consecutive weeks of him showing up at the club on the nights she performed, Mandy finally relented.

Amanda was a Boston Community College Student, a computer programming major, stripping to pay her way through school. When they got engaged, Eric insisted that she give up her college aspirations to help with his career. She’d remained hard headed about the subject, refusing to give up her schooling, but things were about to change.

Two days ago they made it official and finally tied the knot. After a lavish private ceremony, he had spirited them away on a private jet to Alaska. To say that she didn't appreciate their honeymoon destination was an understatement.

At first she complained that she didn't want to sleep in a cold tent, let alone spending their wedding night making love on an air bed. After having to rough her up a little, Mandy let him have his way. She woke up complaining about the cold, and he was forced to get her straight again. Now that they were married, he wasn't going to be putting up with her nagging. She was going to do things his way, or else.

On his way out to hunt, she whined about bears and wolves in the woods, so he decided to leave her with his hunting rifle. The gun was probably too cumbersome for her, but it would stop her bellyaching. Besides, if any wolves or bears came around, she would probably be toast anyway.

Eric tried on a wry smile at the thought of her, the typical city girl, trying to survive an animal attack. He stopped short, spotting his prey in the next clearing. Like a ghost, Eric silently plucked an arrow from his quiver and pulled it back against the bow string, all in one fluid motion. He was envisioning having the caribou's head mounted on his office mantle as a wedding gift to himself.

A crack of thunder sent the startled caribou back into the woods. It was funny because the weather forecast hadn't predicted any rain at all. Eric started to look up and realized he couldn't move, but there was an agonizing pain in his back, like someone had ripped it open with a crowbar. Slowly he touched his fingers to his chest, to find them slick with blood.

There was another crack of thunder and he was face first on the forest floor, slowly slipping out of time and into eternity. The assailant stood over Eric and emptied two more bullets into the back of his skull for good measure. Stepping carefully around the body, the attacker headed back out of the forest.

Eric was dead, steam escaping from his body and dissipating into the cool, morning air. The scent of blood drew carrion crows who began feasting on the body. The crows scattered when a rogue grizzly bear approached. The bear nuzzled the body, before grabbing it by the leg and dragging it to its den.

It Ain't Easy

If you talk to anyone who blazed a new trail or started their own business, they'll tell you how hard they had to work to get it off the ground. They can tell you stories about the nights where they got little sleep or the ulcers they got while working to make their dream a reality.  Having your own business is certainly not for the lazy or the faint of heart. Doing your own thing is hard.

My writing buddy and I have been on this journey for over a year; starting working on our first novel June of 2012, since that time we've released two projects with a third being edited right now and the fourth currently being written with a script for Amazon Studios also in the works. Not too soon after we started our endeavor, we discovered that the writing is the easy part.

One can not simply put their book on Amazon and wish it to sell, you've gotta hustle. Along with our day jobs, we have to write, and find time in our schedules to tweet, network, and blog. There are never enough hours in the day and any time you spend with trivial things can be time better spent building our brand.

Like crumbs to a starving person, we get our little signs that we're headed in the right direction. Maybe while out in about we'll see the exact make, model, and color car one of our character drives or maybe we'll one across someone with the same name living in the same location that our characters are from. Or happen to be driving behind someone with a vanity plate that says 'Author'. We don't see these as coincidences, but as mile markers on our journey.

The challenges one faces while working their dreams are there to weed out the weak from the strong. Nobody ever said pursuing your dream would be easy; ask the people who've been through it.  If you keep your eyes on the prize than it will be yours. One day this will all pay off, until then we'll just keep blogging, networking, and tweeting.