Wednesday, April 20, 2022

What to do for Poetry Month

It is the month of April, and the month of April is poetry month.  There are many things people can do besides write poetry.  Most obviously, they can read poetry.  Of course, you can read the classics like Shakespeare or Dickon's, but you can read current day poets too, (like me).  If you read a poet's work on your kindle, they would appreciate a review or at least a star rating.  All you have to do is click a star.  I decided to read a poetry book for this April.  

This month I decided to read Misha Collins poetry book: "Some Things I Still Can't Tell You."  Misha Collins is not famous for being a poet.  He is famous for playing the character Castielle (an Angel), on the T.V. show Supernatural.  I was very excited when I found out he was into poetry.  I saw him recite some on my Instagram account, thought it was great, and asked my husband for his book for Christmas. My husband got for it me!  Misha Collins is a very good poet, and I am very glad that I have his writing in my possession.

If you are a poet, and are published with Amazon, you can give your book away for free for up to five days.  You won't get any royalties when you do this, but you might spread your work around the world a little more.  I chose to give my book away for 3 days at the beginning this month.  Four people took advantage of the offer.  I may give "Un-Clenched Emotion" more free days in following months.  It is on Kindle Unlimited, so if you have that, it is always free.  I found out that I do get royalties if someone buys my book that way.

Naturally, if you would like to, you can write your own poetry in the month of April.  There are many poetry challenges online where they ask you to write a poem a day for the whole month of April.  I have done this in years past, but did not do a poem a day this year.  I did write a few poems this month, which I plan to submit to publication.  They are speculative poems, poems that follow a fantasy or science fiction theme.  I have a title for the other poetry chapbook, (or perhaps whole book), this time, and some more of this book to put together. The theme for this book is the Seasons. I still have a long way to go to get this finished.

I challenge you to read and/or write poetry this month.  Promote what you have already written, or write a review for an author you have read.



Friday, April 1, 2022

April Poetry Month- Free book April 1st-3rd

It's been two years since I posted anything in this blog. Some good things have happened since then. I got my first Amazon rating for My Kindle E-book, "Un-Clenched Emotion". 5 stars, hooray! I had my friend with Kindle Unlimited download my book in the summer of 2021.  Last time I ran a free promotion for my poetry book, 6 people downloaded my book.

It's April, and April is poetry month. In honor of that, I am coming back to this blog.  I am offering "Un-Clenched Emotion" for free at: 

https://www.amazon.com/Clenched-Emotion-Natasha-Gruss-ebook/dp/B01LZNVH4Y




Surprisingly, I have a lot of traffic to this blog for not working on it for 2 years. I have played around with Twitter. I have over 500 followers and have never sold my book from there as far as I know. Yet, maybe someday! I do think it was Twitter people who downloaded my book for free last time.  If anyone wants to follow me there, my handle is: @natasha_gruss

In 2020, I got married and my name changed. It's actually Natasha McKinley now.  "Un-Clenched Emotion" is published under Natasha Gruss. As you can see that my Twitter handle is also still Natasha Gruss. If I publish more books, they will be under Natasha McKinley.

I am also on Goodreads. Once again my name is still Natasha Gruss there. I have a total of 7 reviews on Goodreads, which is great! Unfortunately, so far, it hasn't really helped in selling my book.  They are all positive reviews however, which makes me feel good. Goodreads has helped me give away my book for free! You can see my Goodreads profile here: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15863356.Natasha_Gruss

I am happy that I have gotten my this book out there so people can enjoy it.  I hope more people will take advantage of this free offer this time!  If you take advantage of this offer, I hope you post a review on Amazon. I could always use more reviews there.  Thank you for your time in reading this post!


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