New Blog Up at Wordpress

I've decided to move my blog/website over to Wordpress, so for those of you who'd like to follow me over there, here's the link - http://www.davidnalderman.com. I'm going to be blogging a lot more over there - multiple times a week - and I won't just be talking about writing anymore, although some of my writing will be found in some of the posts - such as today's Friday Muse piece on the new blog.

Hope to see you all over there!

January Update

Is it really 2014 already? I feel old. I remember watching the clock strike midnight in 2000, waiting for Y2K to send our country back into the Dark Ages. I was working at Jack-in-the-Box that year as an assistant manager and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. This New Years I spent some time with my dad and watched the ball drop in Times Square, grateful for family and this awesome journey God has had me on.

Anyway, I digress. Now that the holidays are behind me and the new year is before me, it's time to start sinking my teeth into my list of 2014 writing projects. Those of you who have been following my email newsletter and/or blog know that I have quite a lineup of awesome stuff coming down the line this year: VRKA, The LZR Project, Of Dreams and Faith, and Flash Fiction Fridays (which will resume next Friday, January 17th). I am also finishing a story for The Untold Podcast, something fans of my Black Earth and Expired Reality series will enjoy.

Aside from those specific projects, I am also going to be giving some serious attention to this blog. I have some personal experiences I have been wanting to write about and some great posts I want to put out in regards to my writing process as well, so in the next couple of weeks my blog will be off and running with more content than you can fit into Mary Poppin's bag.

2013 - A New Season

Well, 2012 is finally behind us. I can't say it was my favorite year, but it certainly wasn't a bad one. Challenging, yes, but not bad.There were many highlights to the year that made those challenges worthwhile. I published two novels - Black Earth: Dark Masquerade and Black Earth: Exodus. My wife and I celebrated our seven year wedding anniversary. My son turned one. It was a great year.

I learned a lot of things by the end of 2012, especially in terms of being a self-published author. I learned that edgy Christian speculative fiction can be a viable genre. I learned that FB can be a minefield of timesuck. I learned that all the rules that other authors give for self-published authors to follow aren't always the right ones for me - such as getting myself plugged into as many social networking outlets as possible, and taking five years to write a book. I learned that I am unique - both as an individual and as an author - and that I need to utilize this uniqueness in the public field.

2013 brings with it a slew of new challenges for me, both personally and professionally. My wife and I have plans to move to San Francisco early in the year to take part in a church plant called Canvas. I will resume writing in my young adult series, Expired Reality, and FINALLY get the third book in that series finished and published. Our son will turn two, and my wife and I will celebrate eight years of wedded bliss. This will be a fantastic year. I'm sure there will be ups and downs, I'm sure I'll laugh and cry, hurt and heal. But that is life.

Most of all, I will write. I have never been one to actually stick to a writing regime. I usually write when I 'feel like it', and a majority of my writing frenzy occurs during National Novel Writing Month. This year though I am committing to an hour of writing each day. This commitment will help me learn to separate my writing time from my editing time. Editing is not writing - necessarily.

I am also making a commitment to cut out a good portion of my social networking pursuits. I've already purged my FB friend list on my personal profile from over 1500 friends to 115. I'll use my actual author page to promote my work and interact with my fans, and my personal profile to interact with friends and family. I've also cut out Red Room, Writing.com, and some other sites, simply because I don't have to the time to dip my foot in all these swimming pools, and because I don't have a lot of time to interact with other authors. Readers are who I need to be interacting with, so I'll be spending some more time over in the Kindle and Nook forums, Goodreads, and my FB pages.

Another place I'll be spending more time in is The Crossover Alliance, an online community I built for readers/writers of edgy Christian speculative fiction. I have some more content I want to add to the site - reviewers/readers who enjoy this type of fiction, some giveaways, and more resources for those wishing to self-publish in this particular genre.

I will also be taking a serious look at what I want to accomplish with my blogging habits in this new year. I've had a difficult time coming up with new content for this blog simply because I've tried multiple times to streamline the content I put up here to topics relevant to self-publishing or my own writing experience. This strategy has hindered me in regards to being more 'unique', in that I haven't really delved too deeply into showing the world a lot about me per say. I have written posts regarding my hobbies or the things I like, but those posts have been few and far between. And they are probably some of my favorite posts to write.

2013 will be great! Not just good, but great! So as we venture into this new year together, keep your eyes peeled on this blog for a few minor changes in content, and look for me at the streamlined list of social networking hubs I'll be visiting from time to time.

Onward into 2013 I venture!

Photo Copyright Michal C. Alderman

New Blog Design

This week I've been working diligently on some new design aspects to almost all of my social networking hubs. This blog was the first to get a makeover. For a while now I've had my sights set on Blogger's new dynamic templates, and so I decided to give it a shot.

So far, I like how the daily posts are set up so you can see the last week at a glance, and then scroll down to see older posts. That's in the Magazine view, and if you want to change how you view the blog, you can click on the drop down menu near the top left of the blog and change it to something else. I have it set at Magazine by default though. You can hover over the right side of the blog to bring out tabs that show info about me, my blog followers, the post archive, and other things. The only drawback to using the dynamic template is that I'm limited in the number of Blogger gadgets I can use, but I like this new design enough to put up with it for now. And you can still access my pages at the top of the blog to find out more about me, my books, and the genre I write in.

The next design element I'll be rolling out is a new logo - for my writing empire as a whole, and for me as an author. I know it's usually frowned upon for authors to brand themselves with a logo, but I've never been good at following the status quot. Besides, I sort of already have a logo - the white oak tree - at my main website, I'm just sprucing it up a bit and putting some more meaning behind it.

After the logo, I'll be cleaning up my main website a bit - making things easier to read, polishing up the format of the Compendium entries, and cleaning up the book pages to be more informative. That will probably take me a few days to a week. In the midst of doing that, I'll also be creating some nifty cover images for my FB pages, and finishing up October's email newsletter to go out in the next week.

A Week of Writing and Design

This week I'm taking a little hiatus from my blog post series regarding my Black Earth characters and the themes found in my Black Earth novels so I can focus on some writing and design.

First off, starting today, I'm participating in the Writing.com PreNaNo Challenge. This challenge requires me to participate in a writing activity each day of the month to get me ready for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November. I'll be writing up protagonist/antagonist profiles, environment descriptions, backstories, and outlines, all to get me ready for November.

Second, I'm going to be doing some design work this week on my main website - www.davidnalderman.com, this blog, and my FB pages and Twitter profile. My main website has had some design issues I've been wanting to resolve for some time now. This blog needs to be cleaned up a bit and possibly changed to a new style. And my FB pages need new background images, and now that Twitter has added deeper customization to profiles, I figured I'd tackle that while I'm at it.

Throughout the week, I'll be posting some of the challenges I'm doing for the PreNaNo, starting with today's which calls for me to write out my NaNo novel's premise.

First off, the tentative title of my NaNo novel is Black Earth: Spectrum. My plan is for this to be a novella set in the Black Earth timeline, but with new characters and storyline. None of the plot will take place on Earth, but in some will take place in space after SilverTech's shuttles have left Earth to head to Anaisha.

One particular shuttle - the Adengors - comes into contact with heavy space debris and is forced to crash land on a nearby planet: Spectrum. Spectrum was originally mentioned in the third novel of my Black Earth series, Dark Masquerade. The planet is the most technically advanced in the universe because twelve spies were sent out to reach twelve different areas of space to obtain knowledge and technology which was then brought back to Spectrum, and now the planet is an all-powerful utopia of knowledge, technology, weaponry, and defense systems.

I haven't sketched out any of the new characters yet, but I know that some of them will be the flight crew of the ship, and others will be wealthy inhabitants of Earth who were able to pay SilverTech's exuberant fee for shuttle transport to Anaisha. Since a good portion of the story will take place on Spectrum, many of Spectrum's inhabitants will come into play, including the Spectrum council and the Ryloc's, which were mentioned very briefly in Dark Masquerade. I will also reveal a bit of what happened to Evanescence's magical staff, which was taken to Spectrum during the novel series.

Blog Post Series Recap

For those of you just joining my blog, I thought it might be a good idea to give you a recap of the posts in my currently running series.

Right now I have a series running that takes a deeper look at some of the characters of my Black Earth series. So far we've explored:

Cynthia Ruin (Blog Post) (Compendium Entry)
Alpha 1 (Blog Post) (Compendium Entry)
Daisy Pierce (Blog Post) (Compendium Entry)
Pearl (Blog Post) (Compendium Entry)

I have another series running parallel to the Character Spotlight series which takes a look at the different themes found within my Black Earth series and the ways these themes can be used in Christian fiction:

Sexual Content (Blog Post)
Violence (Blog Post)
Faith (Blog Post)
Inherited Religion (Blog Post)

And I have another series running in between all of this that explores the self-publishing side of things, starting with the love and task of writing:

The Right to Write (Blog Post)
NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month (Blog Post)

Later this week we'll take a look at Ryan Anderson from my Black Earth series and explore the theme of betrayal in Christian fiction.

Blazing A Trail For Edgy Christian Speculative Fiction

I've been running this blog for a little over four years now. It's gone through many changes - both in regards to design and content - but I think I'm finally feeling comfortable and confident with what it stands to represent now: edgy Christian speculative fiction, and my road through self-publishing. The two go hand in hand because A) I write edgy Christian speculative fiction and B) I self-publish the edgy Christian speculative fiction that I write.

That being said, now that the solid themes of my blog have risen to the surface, I'm ready to start getting real serious about my blogging habits and the direction I want this blog to head in. For a while now I've been attempting to blog three times a week, if anything to keep me disciplined in my non-fiction writing habits. Until now, it was hard to stay disciplined when I wasn't all that clear on what my blog was trying to focus on. I easily put up posts about my books and some fun tidbits about self-publishing, but overall I feel - whether it's true or not - that this blog has been missing some meat. It hasn't been used as effectively as I'd like it to be used.

I want to blaze a trail for edgy Christian speculative fiction and self-publishing.

In a post I put up last week, I explained how my Black Earth series came about and I talked a little about some of the challenges I have faced trying to mix Christian themes with science fiction, fantasy, and edgy content. But what good is simply doing a single post where I gush about a few hurdles? The genre that I describe is a tough one to sell - both to Christians and non-Christians alike. Many Christians are put off by anything containing edgy content - including movies, books, music, etc. (More on that next week.) Many non-Christians have no desire to read Christian fiction in any form, mainly because their idea of Christian fiction is a well-told (if that) sermon.

So here I am, three books into my Black Earth series, and I have a monumental challenge ahead of me. See, I write for a living. I don't work a '9-5', I don't scribble out short stories in my 'spare' time, I don't do this for giggles. I am serious about my writing because it is my calling, my purpose. It is my ministry. It is NOT my everything, but it is what I have been called to and that means I am expected to give 110% to it. My best.

The real question that rises to the surface of this dilemma is this: How do I reach both sides of the fence with my fiction? I mean, I know how to write good stories. If you check out most of the reviews posted on Amazon for my novels, you'll see that my work is given pretty good ratings and reviews. So the next step in this is to get this unique work out there to more people.

And that's where this blog comes in.

Part of my plan to spread the word about my writing and this particular genre is to bear down on this blog and introducing some real, though-provoking content. Yes, I'll still be revealing stretches of my journey through the self-publishing obstacle course. But I want to start talking about real issues, real-life themes, many of which are found throughout my Black Earth series. I want to discuss how these themes came about in my series, how they can be used in Christian fiction to help build a realistic world that readers can relate too, and how these themes can be used effectively to tell a great story in general.

Themes like violence, inherited religion, slavery, sexual promiscuity, aliens, super powers, faith, etc.

A good time will be had by all. I guarantee it. I'll be diving into these themes, and exploring the many characters of Black Earth and showcasing how they fit into these themes and into real life. I may even throw in some exclusive content relating to the Black Earth series, like fiction pieces and the like. I will also be posting new Compendium entries that tie in with these posts on the website. In between it all I'll be dropping posts on other things as well, such as self-publishing, book reviews, and miscellaneous whatnot.

We'll start this party out next week when I'll be exploring Christian attitudes toward art and entertainment, looking into some of the negative stigma surrounding Christian fiction, and discussing the need for excellence in the self-publishing realm. From there, we'll head straight into a detailed look at Cynthia Ruin, a complex and broken character in my Black Earth series, and explore the theme of sexual promiscuity.

In the meantime, have a great weekend everyone!

Check It Out...I'm Over At Reader's Den Today!

I'm guest posting over at Reader's Den today. For those that don't know, I've been taken on by the wonderful Tiffany Cole as a contributor to the blog. Head over there and read my post on Microsoft OneNote and how it can be an author's best friend - http://www.readers-den.com/2012/02/microsoft-onenote-authors-best-friend.html.

Mid-Month Update

I can't tell you all how happy I am that it's Friday. I love weekends, mainly because my wife is home with me and my son, and I get more solid time to work on writing/self-publishing/marketing related projects.

Speaking of which, here's a little rundown of some of the things I'm currently working on.

For starters, I'm trying out a new schedule on myself to see if I can get be more productive. For a while now I've been trying to squeeze writing and other related projects into the time my son is down for a nap during the middle of the day. It works, just not all the time. As anyone who has a kid knows, they don't always follow the schedules you set for them. The problem with this, is that if my son decides to have an off day, my work suffers for it. I try to use my evenings to compensate, but most of the time my wife and I have plans.

So, to rectify this quandary, I've decided to do something some may think is drastic, but really isn't. I'm going to return to my night owl roots and set 2am as my working punch-out time. This means when my wife and I get done with our plans for the night - or even if we don't have plans at night - I'll have my butt here in this black leather office chair writing - or something relevant to writing - until 2am.

I've been getting up every day at 6am. Sometimes I'm woken even earlier if my son (who has club feet and constantly has issues with his feet hurting him) ends up having a particularly rough night. Mathematically, this means I am only - at best - going to get four hours of sleep. So, I'll be using the naps my son takes during the day to catch up on my Z's, instead of trying to get so much work done during those times.

In essence, I'm simply pulling a switcharoo with my work habits. I used to live and breathe night owl, so this won't be horribly difficult to slide into, but I have gotten older since those days, so it will take a little bit of getting used to - and maybe a bit of Mountain Dew. But it has to be done, because these books/projects HAVE to get finished.

One of the projects I'm working on, as everyone who reads my blog already knows, is Black Earth: Dark Masquerade - the third novel in my edgy Christian speculative fiction series. I've been getting more candid with my writing process and have already posted two major draft excerpts from my work on the novel:

Hortus Tenebris - The Dark Garden 
(a scene with Daisy and a surreal environment called The Dark Garden)

The President's Dark Advisor
(a meeting between President Amanda Stone and her dark advisor, the Man of Shadows)

This book is due in my editor's hands by the 15th of March. And when I send it to her on or before that date, it will be the first deadline I will have kept to without having to alter it because of my poor work habits.

Next project on the list is the Expired Reality Double Pack. Just like I took Books 1 and 2 in the Black Earth series and put them in an ebook double pack, I'm going to do the same for Endangered Memories and Lost Birth - the first two books in my young adult series. I just have to create a cover for it and do some formatting and then a release date will be revealed. I plan on it being soon though.

Another project (well, you can call it a project I guess) that I decided to take on is to be a contributing writer over at Tiffany Cole's website, Reader's Den. I am really excited about this because it will give me the opportunity to reach a crowd of readers/writers that I may not be reaching with my own blog. And I get to contribute to a wonderfully crafted website dedicated to readers and fans of writing. I plan on making my debut post over there in the next week or so, and I'll announce it here before it goes out.

I am also proud to say I am on track with my reading schedule for the year. I have 20 books on my to-read list on Goodreads, and I've already read two of them and am currently on my third. Here's a link to the review I posted for the first book in the Han Solo Trilogy, The Paradise Snare. I still mean to write a review on Awakening Evarun Part II by Thomas Barczak, but know that I gave it five stars. He is an incredibly talented author/illustrator that everyone should be watching very closely. 

The third book in my to-read list, which is the second book in the Han Solo Trilogy, The Hutt Gambit, will be finished and reviewed around February 25th. These Han Solo books are easy to review because I originally read them back in '97 and am rereading them because they were just that flippin' good!

One side note I'd like to include is in regards to my website, davidnalderman.com. I have some ideas running through my head on how I want to add some additional content to the website, like character profiles, exclusive downloads, and even a timeline/chronology that will fill readers in on where each of my books fit into the master timeline of both my series. I'll keep all of you updated on those elements via this blog and the email newsletter.

Well, there you have it. A little update from little ol' me. To boil it all down - I'm right on track with my projects so far. This makes me very happy. And I'm sure it will make those of you who have been waiting for more from the Black Earth series - and my writing in general - happy.

A Year of Possibilities

Well, the holidays are over, the new year has come, and I have a desk full of projects to get done and very little time to do them - conditions that usually help me work better. There's something about a deadline - especially a seemingly impossible one - that moves me like nothing else can out of procrastination and into a massively productive mindset.

So here's my list of projects for 2012 and the deadlines to go with. And these are deadlines I will reach, regardless how many nights I have to burn the midnight oil. The past couple years I've made a lot of deadlines that I didn't even come close to reaching and that behavior is being put away in the trunk, wrapped in iron chains, and dropped to the bottom of the Hudson river. Or the Salt River, since I live in Arizona.

Lost Birth - an Expired Reality novel -
This book, the second in my Expired Reality series, has been an elusive project that just hasn't cooperated with me in regards to getting edited and published. I'm happy to say it's finished, ready to be published in ebook format (paperback to come soon), I'm just waiting for opinions to come back on the back cover copy.

Black Earth: Dark Masquerade -
The third book in my Black Earth series, Dark Masquerade (tentative title), is my current WIP (Work In Progress). I wrote out a skeleton draft of DM during NaNoWriMo 2011 and plan to turn the final product (final according to what I can do with it) into my editor's hands in March.

Black Earth: Bridge to Eternity -
The fourth - and final - book in my Black Earth series, Bridge to Eternity (tentative title), was also built into a skeleton draft during NaNoWriMo 2011, and will be worked on starting in late February, once I have the majority of Dark Masquerade written out. I plan to hand Bridge to Eternity to my editor in May.

Email Newsletter -
I've been fickle and wavering in my attempts to keep an email newsletter going over the past couple years, but 2012 will be different. Starting in February, my email newsletter will be back with a vengeance. I plan to release a new issue each month and each issue will be packed with updates to my writing projects, writing tips and advice, links to writing/self-publishing resources, and various reviews on books and video games.A sign up box will be placed back on my website in the next couple weeks and I'll announce it here when it's up. *I want to extend a special thank you to those who have waited out my spontaneous behavior with the newsletter*.

Blogging -
I'm going to be more consistent and serious with my blogging. Before the holidays, I noticed most of my posts were about updates to my projects. I'm going to try and put more substance into my posts from now on. Some things I am interested in blogging about on this blog in particular are writing, self-publishing, Christianity and it's impact in fiction, book reviews, and my thoughts and comments on certain video games. (I'm a huge gamer, I just can't find enough hours in the day to entertain the hobby.)

Reading -
I set myself up with a goal to read 71 books last year. I read four. That's right. It took me an average of three months to read one book. Can't do that again this year, especially since I'm actually a fast reader. I'll set my book reading goals to a more realistic level though, the list of which I will be posting soon, both here and to Goodreads. Needless to say, I will be first reading the books that have been stealing all of the space on my office desk before I go venturing out in search of new horizons.

And, last but not least, the most important project I am going to be working on this year is...

Business Restructure - 
My ultimate goal this year - especially at the beginning of this year - is to restructure my business model. As a writer, when I first started self-publishing, I was (and still somewhat am) overly eager for people to read my stories/purchase my products, with little to no regard to how much money I'm bringing in. The simple fact is, my writing is a career, a business, and this is what I do for a living. I don't have a '9-5' job. My wife works full time so I can stay home with my son and write. I need to treat it as little more than a hobby, despite that some people I know think of it only as such. Sorry haters, but writing is more than a hobby, regardless if one is making money off it or not. However, I need to restructure my business model to start a) reaching more people, and b) bringing in more residual income. Those two things are what I will be focusing on over the next couple months, during which I'll be taking a closer look at what works/doesn't work in my website and blog, how I'm influencing people through my social networks including Facebook and Twitter, and how I can reach more people through product design via Zazzle and my own literary creations.

Along with the business restructure will be a new pricing model for most - if not all - of my books. I'm not going to go with the 99 cent business model for my ebooks anymore, unless it's a novella - in which case I might make an exception. Making 30 cents off every ebook I sell isn't working out too well when I'm still paying off the book's editing and cover design out of that 30 cents, and I'm selling less than 100 ebooks a  month. I'll be raising the prices of my 99 cent ebooks to at least $2.99, and I will also be raising the prices of my paperback novels as well, although I'm not sure by how much yet. As far as the ebooks which are already $2.99, I'm not sure if I'll raise the price of those or not. I kind of like the $2.99 staple. Don't worry though, I won't be charging an outrageous $9.99 for my ebooks like some big name sellers. If one is paying that much for a digital copy of a book, they better be getting a dinner at Jack-in-the-Box to go along with it.

There you have it. My yearly goals - at least for the first half of 2012 - out there for the world to see. As soon as June hits, I'll be reevaluating my business structure and literary progress once again and come up with another set of goals for the second half of 2012.

What's in a Name?

Occasionally I like to read various blog posts and online articles on marketing, self-publishing and anything that falls in between. Over the last few months I've been seeing a lot of posts on the value a name holds to an author. The advice goes a little something like: Self-published authors should sell themselves, as authors, and not just sell their books. This way, backlists aren't ignored and if an author wants to change tracks and write something fresh, their following will (hopefully) do what they do best - follow. Selling yourself also brings your personality to the table, something that can help garner more readers and more book sales.

In this regard, I've been meaning to change the URL of this blog to my name, instead of A Broken Reality. The title, A Broken Reality, was originally used to describe the content within my blog, but it doesn't really make as much sense now as it once used to. I picked it because it had a connection to my novel series and time traveling and alternate histories. However, my intention is to start covering topics outside of just my novel series, and so I'll go ahead and move the blog URL to fall under the umbrella that is my name.

As of this coming Monday, December 12th, my blog address will be http://davidnalderman.blogspot.com instead of http://abrokenreality.blogspot.com. I don't think changing the URL will drop any of you as followers, nor will any of my posts disappear, but I will need to update my blog link in some different areas like my website, my ebooks, and social networking sites.

The Missing Element

I've been running these blog posts for a couple years now, and just recently I took a good hard look at where I want it to be and what I want it to offer to others. Over the years, I've detailed my journey through self-publishing, my walk of faith, and a little in regards to my personal life. I've even done some book reviews here and there.

But when I take a look at the posts I've offered up, I wonder where all the ones in regards to writing are. I mean, I'm a writer but I don't really talk about writing. I'm not saying I feel pressured to talk about writing. I actually want to discuss my process more - how I discover my characters, how I create my fictional worlds, what steps I take in writing a novel, etc, etc, etc.

I guess I've just always been a bit shy talking about those things, at least on a blog. If you get me talking in person though, watch out. I am a story teller at heart, and I can talk for hours about my inspirations and plotlines. I guess I just want that to come out more on this blog.

In response to this revelation, I sat down this last weekend and sketched out a slight restructuring of my blog, which will go into effect next week. Here's what it will mean in regards to the content I'll be posting up here:

• Each Monday of every week I'm going to post a writing prompt and a specific word count to go with it. In these posts, I will also include my own response to the prompt. This way, I'll be encouraging all of you writers out there to get off your butt and do some writing, while also sharing some of my writing with you.

• On Wednesdays I will continue to post about my self-publishing journey, including my struggles with marketing, my experience with book signings, the process of novel design, etc.

• And, every Friday, I'll write about my own process of, well, writing. I plan to share my own methods for creating fictional characters, creatures, and worlds. I'll reveal my process for writing novels/novellas/short stories and dive into the roots of my inspiration. I'll even introduce you to some of my characters, like the witch, Evanescence, of my Black Earth series, or maybe the Drain Sisters from my upcoming Expired Reality series.

I'll make sure to round the blog out with some fun and/or geeky stuff from time to time, just to shake things up a bit. I'm looking forward to the changes coming. I think it's high time I break out of my shell and let you all see what goes on behind the scenes, in my head and on the paper.

HootSuite

One thing that I have found since I started blogging is that the actual process of writing a blog isn't the most time consuming for me. The act of cutting and pasting it into different social network applications is. To resolve this, I did a bit of googling and found a really good - FREE - application called HootSuite.

HootSuite allows you to set your feed address (your blog) and then set up what social network avenues you would like it to be fed to whenever you post to that blog. It will create a tiny URL and send a link to your Facebook, Facebook Pages, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ping.fm and WordPress.

Another great thing about HootSuite is that I don't have to go to my Facebook, Facebook Pages or Twitter on different occasions. I can check their feeds all from HootSuite's interface.

I'm still exploring the application to see what other ways it can help me out, but so far HootSuite seems to be a good solution for helping me get the word out about new posts to the people in my social network.