Figuring out my audience while trying to communicate with them

So Alicia, my dear friend and co-conspirator, recently informed me of this wonderful new channel of communication called the Internet.  While most have dismissed it as little more than a fad with the staying power of Nu Shooz (they made a song with video that had all kinds of stuff moving around), Lis is an irresistible saleslady, and so I gave in.  Thus, about a month ago, with the power of WordPress in my holster, I have begun work on the Legends of Steragos blog.  It’s pretty bare-bones now, but it’ll grow.

Legends is a book for young readers I self-published in August, whose story is centered around the battle between three talented, enterprising, tough-as-nails princesses and the very vengeful, heavily-armed Baba Yaga, who has kidnapped a prince that the Royal Trio are trying to rescue.  As if her inestimable help with the book wasn’t enough, Alicia has also helped me build this Frankenstein, drawing on her experience in building this very website that you’re reading.

So, Steragos.  It’s a fictional, fairy-tale country where all the action takes place, a peninsula on the planet Unica.  As if I have some kind of genetic deficiency which prevents me from making my stories short and sweet, I’ve been unable to resist my compulsion to build a big, whopping world and history around my characters (I haven’t yet established the longitude and latitude of the country on a Unician globe, but gimme time).  While the primary use of the blog will be to promote the book (as well as future books in the series), I’d like for it to take on a life of its own as the place to read about the universe of LoS.

Have you ever had any experience in doing this kind of thing?  I stink at self-promotion, so any advice offered would be appreciated.  This is a project that Alicia has a lot of enthusiasm for.  Let’s not let her down!

KMS

25 December 2013