Tag: social media

My New Author Website!

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Important Update: My Website has moved and is now available at:

http://literarykornerpublishing.net/

ATTN: This is the permanent website of Yecheilyah Ysrayl. Please go here to purchase books from now on. The old site will remain open for a while during this transition. Thank you for your patience as we strive to improve your buying experience.

The Winning Letter

So Monday I set up a poll asking you guys to help me to choose what I should do this week in preparation of launch day, based on what sounded like the most fun. Your choices were:

a). Hold a 3 Day Giveaway (8/19 Wed-8/21 Fri)
b). Hold a 1 Day Giveaway the day of Launch (8/24)
c). Create a Contest with one grand prize winner announced on Launch Day
d). A and C

And the winning letter is (drum roll please):

C. Create a Contest with one grand prize winner announced on Launch Day.

I thought sure A would win!

To spice this up a bit, I have decided to do a Trivia Day instead of a contest to give more people a chance to win lots of FREE prizes. This gotta be fun!

Thanks guys! Stella will see you all Launch Day with the Grand Trivia Event.

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Its the countdown! 5 Days to Go!

S / O to South Africa!

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So yall know every now and again I check to see who stopped by the PBS Blog from across the water. I say every now and again because I try not to get too caught up in the stats every single time I post. I just don’t want to get distracted. I prefer to be lead naturally toward post ideas without the influence of how little or how great the views are. So I’ve organized my thoughts to take a look at them only enough to stay in tuned, to stay aware but not to depend on. So anyway, when I noticed more views from outside countries I did a blog series where I gave them a shout out. Only because other countries don’t get the same representation as America does. I decided then to shine some light on my viewers from across the water, those outside of the U.S. Make a long story short, I’m sitting here in the late hours drafting tomorrow morning’s post and decided to stroll on over to my stats. This is when I noticed I’ve received a total of 65 views from yesterday (7 / 30) from South Africa alone. Now yall know they deserve a shout out! I know some of you veterans out there are used to this but I’m really excited to have so many people from one place to support this blog and from Africa of all places is icing on the cake! I guess you can call it a milestone. I didn’t set out for this specifically, but I am always excited to reach as many people as I can. Even if their eyeballs slightly brushed upon the page its really cool to see just how many people viewed your blog and I want South Africa to know that I appreciate your support. I also appreciate everyone who supports this blog by sharing my posts, participating, commenting, and reading in silence.

The Crick

Short, sweet, and to the point. Love the message Van. 🙂

vanbytheriver's avatarvanbytheriver

It was the forbidden place. A small creek at the end of our unpaved alley.

Filled with all sorts of dangers, it was our second home. The parents might have known about it, and looked the other way.

There was a primitive tree house, a rope swing, a log bridge over the water. tree-house-rope-swing

There were also small snakes, frogs, biting insects of all kinds, and as we learned a bit too late, poison ivy.

All that aside, it was paradise, our everyday summer destination.

The pictures shown here are very similar, but not the real thing. It did not exist, so how could there be actual photos?

It was not gender-specific, it could never be. There were too many alpha females in the hood.

There were no passwords, no secret handshakes, no rules. If you and your friends got there first, it was yours, at least for an hour or…

View original post 66 more words

When Are You Done Succeeding?

I thought this was a great post by Shayla of Curiouser Editing:

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As an entrepreneur, do you consider yourself successful? Or do you feel like you’re not quite there yet? Do you sometimes say, “I’ll be happy/successful when I get to this point”?

In the business world, we are engrained with the mentality that success is defined by numbers. We are told that it is something measurable. We are not successful until we get more followers, get more clients, get more engagement, get more subscribers, get more money, get a dream house, getgetgetgetget…

And it’s still not enough.

Because we keep going and we keep pushing ourselves to get better and be all of these things that our inner child would think were nuts.

So when is it enough? When do we get to say, “I did it. I’m successful”? When does that happen?

When are you done?

When you get 10,000 Facebook followers? When you make $8,000 a month? When you can hire your first employee? Second? Third? When you land an interview with a multimillionaire exec?

Speaking of interviews, I recently read one with a millionaire shop owner. She said, “We haven’t succeeded yet. We’re not at a point where we’ll all take a deep breath. I don’t know when we’ll ever stop.”

A millionaire said that.

To someone, that kind of dynamic attitude is contagious. It’s always been for me. But then when a friend asked me, “When are you done?” I began to rethink the definition of success.

Success means, “the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame.”

I believe it’s time to change the definition of success. I believe we are more than the numbers on our Facebook page. I believe we are more than the amount of subscribers who read our blogs. I believe we are more than something that can be measured on Google analytics.

Here’s a thought: We already are successful. We were successful the day we put ourselves out there and hustled for our dreams. We were successful ages ago, but for some reason, we thought it wasn’t enough.

We have already succeeded. No amount of fans, followers, likes, subscribers, clients, or dollar signs can ever change that.

Here’s my new definition of success:

The act of waking up each day and being in love with what you do and who you are as a person.

It took me longer than I want to admit to realize what success truly means. It is not a number. It is being happy with who we are and who we strive to be every day.

So are you successful?

Something You Didn’t Know – Open Invitation BlogShare

Something You Didn't Know-PBS

We had quite the drive to Chicago. As a result, my brother came up with a great road trip idea:

Go around the car and each person reveals something about themselves that they didn’t think anyone knew. It was a challenge because we all know each other pretty well but we managed to create enough laughs for memory sake. So anyway, I thought it would be a great idea for a blog-share. (I also want to do this because the internet is so filled with phonies and fakes, but here’s a chance for us to be real with one another. It is the only way to grow.)

So, on your own blog, create a post of your choice that tells us something about you that we didn’t already know. Try to be specific to what can’t be found on your blog or its about page. It can be a short story, a poem, a collection of pictures, or just a small paragraph.

Tag your post #SomethingUDidntKnow and

 
Pingback to this post so that I see it and can respond and tweet it for you.
Be sure to visit other people’s blogs, like, and re-blog so that others can get in on the fun

 
My own “Something You Didn’t Know” will follow this post. I first want to give you each the opportunity to understand the rules and tag your post accordingly. (*Try to limit your tags to 15 including categories which act as tags also. This will ensure others will see your post).

 
So, who’s up for a challenge? I know you’re not gonna leave me hanging here are you? C’mon! Tell us something we didn’t know!

#Ronovan #Writes #BeWoW Prompt – Family

Welcome back to another episode of Ronovan Writes Be Wonderful on Wednesday. As I thought about this prompt, I was led to an older post of mine. As I read it, I could not help but see the family connection. I decided then to incorporate portions of that post into this week’s prompt because it is fitting:

be-wow-bloggerFamily…

My nephew has my birthmark on his chest. My face has my mother’s nose, and my smile is etched with my father’s teeth. I interact with the world as if on my own. It never occurs to me that I swing my arms like my Aunt. Or that the decisions I make may have already been made before. After all, they say there is nothing new under the sun. I cannot swim. But maybe that’s because the Great Flood has traumatized me, for I can still taste salt water seas on my tongue. Have you ever thought about the make-up of a blood line? The reality that maybe you inherited these ways only to gift them to someone else one day. I smile at the thought. What would a little girl look like with my eyes, my words and my hands on her hips? How do I know my favorite tree in which to rest my exhausted spirit from the soles of the Earth did not bleed with the stench of my ancestors? And have I ever fathomed why Hurricanes take the exact same route as the slave ships? Can it be that suicides still burn like melted ash upon the ocean floor? Its smoke intermingled with the wind as if to intercourse themselves into one before marching out to the beat of Negro Spirituals I could have sworn I just heard on the radio last night. Or maybe that’s just the Harriet in me. Family. We bond deeper than flesh and thicker than blood. A connection of bodies strung together, we thread ourselves into mixed fabric. Family does not relegate itself to kin, but it surpasses genetics and is reflective in a close friend, a loyal co-worker, a longtime lover. Family is the strength of struggle, reaching down to scrape me off the floor, or build me up when need be. I could Webster dictionary Family, but it is of no use. A dictionary cannot page itself into the substance of what it means to treat others as you yourself would like to be treated, or ponder the reasons why deception never really could separate close friends. Among its many words a dictionary will never fully articulate the experience embodied simply by way of a bloodline. So I suppose I could seek to decipher the definitions behind the syllables but they will not fill me. How could Webster ever fathom the depth of someone who is willing to die for you? This is family.