When I went to CanCon, a few weeks ago, I assisted to a panel about blog tours. This panel was the reason I started this blog, and the reason I purchased the domain aureliaosborne.com. The first stop to any and all online presence for a writer is that writer’s website, or so the panelist said. So I got a website.

The panel was very informative, with the section “what to look for in a tour host” being a personal favorite of mine to this day. As I am helping my friend Caroline Fréchette, author of Blood Relations, organize her blog tour, and as I begin the preparations for a blog tour of my own for The Admirer, I am also learning first hand the truth of another thing that panelist had said: Organizing your own blog tour is extremely time consuming. Just the research is a couple of hours every night. After that will come the initial contact, and the follow-up, the writing of guests posts or the answering of interview questions, the creation of a banner, which is apparently crucial and in my case means learning how to code, or finding someone who already knows. And on each tour stop, you’re supposed to spend at least some time answering comments.

Me from CanCon didn’t doubt that touring would take a lot of time, but she sort of rolled her eyes in a “it’s so obvious, why bother saying it” way. Me from now wants to shake her and say “no, you don’t understand.” And I couldn’t, really. It seems to me that it’s the sort of things you can’t know unless and until you actually do it.

It’s like Nanowrimo: most people would agree that typing 50 000 words in one month is a lot of words, but until you try (and most likely fail, every wrimo’s I’ve every met would come short one day and have to play catch-up on the week-ends) to write 1667 words every day for 30 days, you just don’t know how hard it is. I’ve done it three times since 2007, and I’ve learned a lot about myself and about the craft of writing.

So good luck to all the wrimo’s out there! Enjoy Halloween; it’s your last day of freedom until December. As for me, I’ll be writing in November, and in solidarity, I’ll giving myself Nano-esque goals. But I’m also planning one book tour, and helping out on another, and planning a book launch, and working on this online campaign thing that I can’t talk about because spoilers, and I have a day job.

I don’t think my family and friends will see much of me this November.