April Platform Challenge from Robert Lee Brewer

So to help my career I am going to do the April Platform Challenge posted by Robert Lee Brewer her was day ones Goal.

“For Day 1, define yourself. I don’t want you to worry about where you’d like to be or anything in the future. Instead, I want you to take a look at who you are, what you’ve done, what you’re currently doing, etc.” -Robert lee Brewer

 

 

Name (as used in byline): Dustin Slater

 

Position(s): Client Service Rep for Limolink, Father, Aspiring Writer, Blogger.

 

Skill(s): Creative Writing, Customer Service Consultant, Comedian, Speed Reader.

 

Social media platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Blogger.

 

URLs: http://www.facebook.com/DustinSlaterFW , https://plus.google.com/109579303472372328628/posts?hl=en , https://slatersgeekdom.wordpress.com/ , https://twitter.com/#!/DSlaterfw ,

 

Interests:  Family (being the best Husband and father I can be), Writing (Sci Fi, Mystery, Supernatural, Horror), Zombie Movies, Reading, Drawing, Blogging, Becoming the best damn author I can be.

In one sentence, who am I? Dustin Slater father of 3 wonderful children I am working on my freelance writing and novel, Inspired and dreamer all in one.

Top Ten Reasons I Am Distracted

So I have been a little lax in my recent updates, and needless to say it’s not because of a loss of interest. Now starting next week I am working overtime at my job but plan on trying to post at least twice a week because let me tell you I have a ton of things going on in this s noggin of mine so now here is my top ten list of recent things that have been on my mind.

Number 10. Godfather Five Families,

Ok so I started playing this game and relies what a mistake it was. I love it but wow it sucks away the time fast. I have always been a huge history buff and the gangs of the 20’s and 30’s always fascinated me. There was sometimes an elegance about how gangs where in the past. They wore suits in some cases they were pillars of the communities bringing in jobs. However the death and easy with which the muscled people out or even the bullying of small business owners just trying to take care of their families showed that they were mostly just thugs.

 

www.kabam.com/the-godfather

Number 9.  My Children

I love my Kids they are my light and since I started working second shift I don’t really get to see them as much as I wish I could So on my lunch I drive home and eat dinner with the family. Of course they usually want to eat upstairs in there little play room and watch their TV.

Number 8. Dogs

So we had adopted a dog she was a black mouth cur/retriever mix the issue is that we have a back yard the size of a postage stamp and she really needed more room than what we could provide. A nice family who lives on an acre of land adopted her they had just lost their dog who their oldest daughter had grown up with and Boo (that’s the dog’s name) looked just like their old dog. So needless to say she is very happy having so much more room. So now I have been thinking we need a mellow house dog and of course I have always wanted an English Bulldog so help me out with finding one.

Number 7. The Hunger Games,

I love all three books and eagerly waited for the movie and what do you know when it came out I was blown away. I loved the movie and have to say it was visually spectacular and followed the book very closely. One Blog  http://hotnerdgirl.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/hungry-for-some-hunger-games-movie-edition/ spells it out perfectly.

A Critique of Zombie Fallout

Metamorphosis of a Blog

Hello all and welcome to my little corner of the blog-o-verse … blog-i-verse … blog-verse, well whichever one of those three it is this is my corner of it. So for anyone who has read my blog or followed me knows that I am using this medium to help launch my freelance writing career. Well as I grow and learn more about what I am doing and where I want to go I am learning that my blog is undergoing a change. Everyone says write what you know learn to be an expert and build on that so as you can see by the name of my blog this is my Geekdom and I am going to start writing more about what I know.

I’m a nerd too. I just found that out tonight. We have news for the beautiful people. There’s a lot more of us than there are of you. I know there are alumni here tonight. When you went to Adams you might’ve been called a spazz, or a dork, or a geek. Any of you that have ever felt stepped on, left out, picked on, put down, whether you think you’re a nerd or not, why don’t you just come down here and join us. Okay? Come on. – Revenge of the Nerds 1984

Nerd, Geek, Dork, really these are all words that were used to hurt people that where different from others or smarter than others, however in this day and age where everyone has a computer in their home, games based off of D &D have millions of followers including stars we find these words have lost meaning. Some people proudly claim I am a geek, or I am a nerd and they have no fear in this.  We are a world of change and labels have lost their meanings that is until an election comes around and we end up with people trying to force their issues and belief on us. Now this is my first post in this ever changing blog and it seems to have taken a turn for the series which is strange because this is not what I had intended when I sat down to write out my blog today. I guess this shows us no matter what our intentions are when we actually start writing the words kind of take over and you end up molding them in away that works.

revenge-of-the-nerds

Well another day another dollar in my pocket, and I have to say today has been a good day. I am at my (regular rent paying job) which I have to admit I really like and its been a fairly slow day which is good and bad because it can make the day drag on but also gives you time to formulate and come up with ideas. Once I have my work done and in between times I love to sit her and come with ideas about stories or articles or in this case work on a post.

Today I was reading a post by Erica called Bestselling Author Shares 3 Tips for Building Your Blog Audience. It was advice from Rachel Bertsche whose blog MWFseekingBFF.com is a widely popular blog about her serch for a best friend in a new city.  As for the article the advice given was something many new bloggers should take to heart and I did.

I began looking over and finding blogs of interest to follow and read I started building my community so to speak and finding people and maybe new friends. Now I would be lying if I said this wasn’t a little selfserving at first by as I began reading and following other blogs I realized I was picking ones that really did not have anything to do with my goal but more about what I found interesting or what drew me to them.

I really think that to expand on what Rachel suggest when comminting or following blogs do not just look for self serving interest but look to what draws you in. I would rather have a community of followers and followees (yes I know its not a real word) that I truly enjoy reading what they write vs following people for the express purpose of promoting my blog.

Now somepeople may or may not agree with that but it’s how I feel so if you don’t like it I guess do what you want it’s a free world still we are all entitled to do what we want.

Finding a Webhost for your Blog By Dustin

So you have decided to try freelance writing or maybe you just have something to say and you want people to hear you out. The first thing you start doing is looking on the web for a blogging site to get started and let me tell you there are a lot to choose from. I mean it seriously just go ahead and type in blog sites in Google, or Yahoo, or Ask.com, or whatever search engine your heart desires. (there are about as many search engine choices as well but we can save that for another post.) OK so you typed it in an Abra-cadabra you end up with hundreds of choices as well as such wonderful sites as top 5 blog sites other than WordPress or Blogger.

Now its time to sort through the hundreds of choices but wait before you can even start doing that you have to decide a couple of things. First do you want your own website? If you do you need to find web hosting for that. (go ahead take a moment and search for that as well I’ll wait……I know crazy right.) Now you have another hundred or so choices to make of course that’s not the end of it all you need to decide what kind of blog you want , are you computer savvy do you have not clue one about computers or where to even start. It’s a confusing mass of information and now you have to wade through it and figure out what to do.

A little back story here on my own journey to give you an idea. I am a father of 3 wonderful children and I recently started a new job that I love very much but I work evenings and I am away from my kids, I do not like this at all my kids are my life. Well I have always had a passion for writing or story telling and as my wife points out I am a thinker and a dreamer so I have made the decision to become a freelance writer. So I purchased a copy of Writers Market 2012 which I recommend to anyone wanting to break into the writing industry. This book lays it all out for start to finish and needless to say helped me start everything. Now I have made this decision and realized hey I should start a blog and chronicle this little trip and see where it goes, so I did just what you did and Google searched blog sites and holy crap it was a lot.

Needless to say I ended up choosing Blogger because it linked through Google which I liked, but as I continued to think about my choices I realized I wanted to build my own site and get my own domain name which lead me to WordPress. The wonderful thing about WordPress is they offer Blog services but they also provide publishing platform and software for you to create your own place. They provide links to web hosting sites that are compatible with their service and it goes on from there.

Now WordPress ended up being the right choice for me and my goals and by no means am I saying its the best or perfect for everyone. Really the point is that you need to make a number of decisions about what you want and what your goals on when making this choice and really think before you leap. Do then research find what fits you best and go from there it can be a little intimidating I know but so worth the effort when you finally get started. So good luck on finding a home and if you would like some help or have questions feel free to let me know and I would be happy to help in any way possible.

 

My First Query Letter

So today I did what I set out to do I sent my first query letter out and fingers crossed look forward to hearing back about it. Now I was a little nervous because as I was typing it up I realized there was almost no way to actually fit it all on one page as it was suggested in the Writer Market 2012 edition. After thinking about I realized that guideline was really a suggestion, depending on what the editor or publisher is looking for. In this case they wanted details about or an outline of what you wanted to do and how you planed on doing it.

Now I feel like I rushed my query letter a little as I sit here and somewhat regret sending it so quickly however this is my thought on this. It is a learning experience, I mean do I really want to write the article I sent the query letter out about? yes. Am I passionate about the article I sent the query letter out about? Again Yes. So really at this point I can do one of two things I can rewrite and refocus on the query letter in the case that they reject it and then I could resend it with a better though out plan, or I can wait and see if they reply.

What I think I will end up doing is reworking the letter for practice and to work on my out line of a query letter for future use, this will also give me that chance to rethink and plot out my idea in a more cohesive means so if it is chosen and assigned I will be full ready with a plan. So what do you think or whats your feed back on this I would love to know and get an idea on other peoples processes.

Thanks for staying with me so far and I look forward to continuing this path for a long time my friends.

 

New Blog Site

So I have been looking and researching and decided to switch from my blog on Blogspot to WordPress. I feel that WordPress will give me more chance to get out there. I see a lot of Free Lancers use it and for now it is the best choice until I can afford to put out and maintain my own domain and website. At that point I will most likely still use WordPress because I like it but we will have to wait and see.