Delena Silverfox - The printed Fox

Today I have another Naughty Nights Press author to introduce. Please meet Delena Silverfox. Your blog is very new. Do you have an idea for a theme or recurring feature?

Well, The Printed Fox had its first incarnation, but there were a few technical difficulties, so I set up shop with a different URL and got everything running smoothly here. As an author blog, however, it's very new to me. I've only kept personal blogs before this. Blogging with an actual theme, with set goals and benchmarks to aim for, it's a different game.

The only theme I have is writing. So many author blogs I've seen are treated more like personal blogs. Don't get me wrong, if it works for them, that's wonderful. For me, if people are finding my blog because they're fans of romance, erotica, or are part of other author circles, the common thread there is writing. I just want to give people more of what they want and not distract with fluff.

I've never been able to maintain a personal blog. My life is just too boring! What were your first steps in building your blog?

Well, I thought about the blogs that I love to frequent. Why are they popular, and why do they draw me back again and again? They teach me something new, or remind me of things I forgot I already knew. I'd love to do that for others. I keep a list on my desktop that has blogging ideas, and I add to it all the time. Things to help people tighten up their writing, or sources they might not have thought of, fantastic reads I actually feel moved to recommend (which doesn't happen often), etc.

Definitely a 'writing' blog then. I have leaned to trying to target a different audience. I think blogging interviews are helpful for writers, but also for readers who want to review or just have a blog of their own. Did you run into any big challenges when starting out?

My only real challenge has been, and continues to be, time. In addition to writing, I'm a work-at-home mom to an extremely active toddler, a military wife, and full-time college student in my senior year (read: TONS of homework). Blogging takes up time, and anything requiring my focus the way writing does, I have to wait until my daughter's bedtime. At that point, I have to squish housework, homework, WIPs, and blogging into the remaining hours I have before I fall asleep at my desk. I'm lucky to work at home, but it does make for interesting time management.

Boy, do I understand that. It's the reason I do interviews, I can split the work! What social media are you using to promote your blog? Are they different than the ones you use for your books?

The main difference is Triberr.com I set up a group for other authors in my publishing house, Naughty Nights Press, to promote our blogs via Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. My focus right now is in helping promote other NNP authors and building my blog readership. It's a plan that yields less exposure for my book in the short run, but as I build momentum, will give some really great returns in the long run.

I, of course, am part of that tribe. :D I love that it reaches not only writers, but the readers of many writers as well. Now, cue spotlight, tell me about Hallowed Fiends, your release with Naughty Nights Press.

Actually, Hallowed Fiends was never intended to be published. It was just something I wrote for a lark and submitted to an online writing group I belonged to at Fetlife.com, where the theme was "Abducted, Ravished, and Kept." It was a fun theme, and a fantasy of mine, but the story had a mind of its own and took off running. A year after it was finished, I still had people emailing me, begging me to finish the story. Well, I honestly felt it was finished just the way it was, which is why I submitted it to NNP. However, after focusing on my current WIP, Devil's Bitch, some of my writing exercises starting turning up ideas for another plot, and I realized that Hallowed Fiends was just the beginning.

It's the story of how my heroine, Anyalise, and her hero, The Duke, first meet a mere hour before their wedding. It's after the wedding that the real fun begins! Poor Anya thinks she's being sold downriver to a strict, patriarchal culture after being raised in a much more lenient, women-as-equals environment. It's a huge adjustment, and she has to pay the consequences for some of her cavalier actions.

Have any questions about starting a blog? Triberr? Naughty Nights Press? Ask me and Delena!