Shameless self-promotion

Sep 28

3 min read

What would it be like to work and create courageously, without shame?

Sep 08, 2026

A 3-minute read (add many more minutes if you’re a link-clicker!)

Hoping this waving of my own flag will be good for all of us—there might be a couple of things to learn in here; and hey, maybe you or someone you know is curious about working with me, and this will tell you how you could.

Also, allow me to model for you—not necessarily in the humbling and weird bio pics below, but in my ability to talk openly and easily about my work. So go ahead, tell me what you’re working on! Comment/reply away, all about your sweet self: what are you up to and excited about?

Hey, it’s me, the extra piece of dark chocolate you eat when you tell yourself ‘it’s for creativity.’

Here’s what’s been happening in Imperfectville lately: mainly loads of finding interesting, ethical, and not-icky ways to help authors market themselves and their work—as in, find their people and sell their books.

This looks like building strategies and plans; creating graphics and social media posts; website creation and development; emails to media (ah, the database and I are not quite making friends yet), and chatting with truly delightful Bookstagrammers like @emsdailyreads and @davinareads. (10/10 recommend both.) Doing lots more, too, including navigating a learning curve that seems to stay vertical. Fortunately, acquiring new skills and knowledge is my (ADHD) jam.

One book I’m joyfully spending a thousand hours a week on is Family Rooms, by Dr. Jennifer Wilson and Dr. Carlye Jensen. The experience of working on this project is as delightful as the book itself, and I assure you that’s saying a lot. Fortunately there aren’t lives held delicately in the balance with my marketing—as there are in these touching, terrifying, and hilarious true stories about life as a rural family doctor.

One of the many ways in which I’m helping writers spread the word is through my casual and imperfect, teeny, tiny podcast, Imperfect Conversations. So far I’ve had a fun and informative chat with multi-writer (author, screenwriter, playwright) Claire Ross Dunn about her charming escapist novel Lost in France; and poet and artist Désirée Penner joined me to talk all about her viral rejection poetry. I have a few more folks booked in the coming months. Wanna be next? There’s a form for that.

I had the pleasure of my first rejection from a lit mag, and it didn’t hurt one bit because, in my sweet community of writers, we treat rejections in the same way we do acceptances: they’re all celebrations of doing the thing. Désirée did me the great pleasure of turning my rejection letter into a laughing matter. As she so wisely says, “There’s a poem in everything.”

Désirée’s courageous approach to submissions and rejections has had quite a ripple effect, in our shared communities, and in the world.

What would it look like if you created and shared courageously? What would your writing look like? What would your website look like? These are worth thinking about.

More self-promo: Want prompts for content creation? I offer you 180 of them! Want some random and interesting links and ideas shared by writers in Imperfect co-writing? Want to chat about a project or an idea?

Random link alert (which is also a bit of a teaser re an upcoming podcast guest): Fibre artist Kaffee Fassett’s gallery. Whoa.

In case you missed this, here’s an interesting update about Substack. Will you be participating in Substack TV? Are you, like me, grumpily poking around Notes to get to someone’s Substack home page? Why so difficult, Subby?

And now, three random and recent pics from my camera roll.