Author Archives: dborys

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About dborys

Author of STREET STORIES suspense novels

One Shoe at a Time

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Just yesterday in a post on my Self Publishing blog, I posted about putting one foot in front of the other and just keep on going. Then today I found something that I think echoes that sentiment.

The Night Ministry posted a link on Facebook to an article which I then quoted on my novel website which I am now mentioning here. Those are the most recent steps that show one “flutter of a butterfly” can affect the universe.

The butterfly started with Chicago Tribune reporter Erin Meyer who did a story that was published in Sunday’s paper on Young homeless gays wander streets of Boystown. In it, she interviews a homeless young man whose feet were aching because he only had “worn-out gym shoes” to wear.

On Monday, part of the article was reposted by the Trib’s website Redeye Chicago and was seen through their Twitter posting by a woman who then asked them how she could give that homeless young man a pair of shoes.

I know exactly where she’s coming from. When I was volunteering in Chicago, one of the youth I was tutoring in essay writing for his GED had a pair of shoes that were literally destroying his feet. They had sores and were painful and he actually had to have a doctor look at them.

Even though it was against policy for a volunteer to buy things or give money to one of the youth, I said screw that shit and took him to DSW Warehouse and let him pick out a pair. They weren’t high end super-star named athletic flyers, but they were sturdy and comfortable, and fit right.

The woman in the article was pointed in the direction of The Night Ministry so they could help her do the same thing. In addition, a short article about the woman was posted at Trib Nation which included information about how to contact the Night Ministry and led to the Night Ministry posting about it all on Facebook, which led to me posting on my novel site, which led to…. Well, I think you get the picture, right?

One sentence in one article. One person wanting to buy another person a pair of shoes. One blog post after another and another. And I know there are others out there who are going to see, comment on, pass on, act on and move this shoe/foot/butterfly forward.

ONE thing CAN make a difference–you just have to do it.

As Simple as Shoes « Painted Black.

The Thing About Self-Promotion

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Quote via The Thing About Self-Promotion « To Self Publish or Not to Self Publish…..

Thanks to @HopeClark on Twitter for calling my attention to this post by former-literary-agent-turned-author Nathan Bransford. He explains exactly how it feels to be where I’m at right now when it comes to self promotion. I especially need to do it if I want my novel, when it comes out finally, to sell more than a dozen copies to my nearest friends and relatives. I don’t have a large publishing company behind me going to give me a big (or even that much of a little) marketing push. New Libri is a small press with a small budget.

But I am such a newbie at this that I’m sure I’m not keeping the balance between “used car salesman” selling and “quiet as a mouse” living in obscurity. So I keep apologizing when I do anything promotional-like which makes me look/feel …dumb I guess. I keep asking everyone to be patient with me while I stumble around trying to figure out how to do all this. But it’s me who has to be patient with myself. And when I think about it, stumbling through this self promotional maze isn’t so different from what I feel like I’m doing in life,,,,just putting one foot in front of the other and hoping I avoid most of the large piles of poo.