Guest post. Karen Louise Hollis

I’m thrilled to have Karen Louise Hollis on my blog today. Karen runs her own (very popular) blog, alongside writing lots of beautiful books. I asked her about both and she’s here to tell us more.

From Karen:

I started writing my blog because I have been reviewing books online since 2000, when I wrote reviews for sites like Ciao and Dooyoo. I also used to review books on Facebook, but realised they could only be seen by my Facebook friends, so I decided to start a book blog two years ago.

This led to me joining various blog tours and using my blog to review those, alongside the odd blog post about my own writing and some interview posts. Then more recently, I decided (after finishing writing my third novel), I should put more time into my blog and try to create content on a daily basis, instead of the usual three posts a week I had been doing.

So I started to contact authors I knew online, or those who had written books I had read and enjoyed, or those whose work I was interested in to see if they would like to be on my blog. I was amazed how many did and especially thrilled that some of my favourite authors like Milly Johnson and Lisa Jewell said yes! Wow! I tend to ask the same ten questions, though I vary it occasionally depending on who I am interviewing.

I have written many more non-fiction books than fiction and these include lots of gymnastics books where I have interviewed gymnasts who competed for their countries from the 1950s to the present day. As both my parents were journalists, this feels like my natural home. I am fascinated by people and truly believe everyone has a story. I ask the questions I want to know the answer to and I hope readers will find the answers interesting too. This is the same with my author questions. My first question I ask is about the books and authors they read as a child and wow, nearly everyone says Enid Blyton (me included), she was such a wonderful writer for getting kids reading and caught up in all the magical worlds we find between the pages.

BLURB

Becki is fifty and a single mum to eleven-year-old Jemima, after being widowed five years ago. Dan is forty-eight and a single dad to eleven-year-old Freddie, after his wife left him five years ago. They have both given up on love. But when they all go to Silver Sands Bay on the Lincolnshire coast for the summer, will they be able to put the past behind them and find love again?

Links

Twitter – https://twitter.com/KarenLNHollis

IG – https://www.instagram.com/karenlouisehollis/

Blog – iheartbooks.blog/blog

Amazon Author Page – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Karen-Louise-Hollis/e/B00NSLQME6?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1691933322&sr=8-1

Bio – About Karen Louise Hollis

I was born in Lincoln, England in 1969. I loved writing from an early age, being the daughter of two journalists. I am a mum to five children and have three grandchildren. I have had over twenty books published and have written about a variety of topics including motherhood, poetry, Doctor Who and gymnastics. My first novel Welcome to Whitlock Close came out in 2022 and my second one Starting Again in Silver Sands Bay in 2023.

Pinned Tweets.

Happy new week! After the fun and excitement of my first book launch and solo blog tour, I am now getting back to sharing marketing and writing news each week. I will share things I’ve learnt on my journey so far with my latest book, Ninja School Mum.

NSM tweets

 

This week’s post is about Twitter and pinned posts. I really enjoy interacting with people on Twitter, but unless you are actually chatting and networking there, it’s probably a bit of a waste of your time. I have noticed lately that a lot of people leave a pinned tweet for a long time. A pinned tweet, is the first tweet you see when you open someone else’s page on Twitter. There is an option to ‘pin’ any of your own original tweets to the top of your profile page.

Many think that if you leave this pinned tweet, then it collects retweets and the numbers of RT’s look good if they are high. The problem with this, is that if someone like me, (who often visits the pages of my Twitter followers and likes to Rt their work), has to scroll through lots of tweets to find one about their work, I give up and move on. I can RT the pinned tweet, but if I have already done this, I can’t do it again. This is such a wasted opportunity. I always update my pinned tweet at least once a week, but often every few days or hours. That way, anyone visiting my Twitter page has fresh content at the top of my page, that they don’t have to page down or waste their time looking for. Everyone has busy schedules and this saves them time and makes the opportunity of a new RT more possible for me.

Check out some Twitter feeds you know and see if you agree.

 

3C4537F3-AF2B-46EB-A225-1BFB6620A153