Guest Blog Information-A Writer’s Garden

Hi, and welcome to A Writer’s Garden—Through the Garden Gates blog series.

If you are interested in being a part of this blog series, which runs from April through October, and haven’t received an invitation from me, please contact me via the contact page on my website. Please do not send any posts until you have been assigned a post date.

This blog series celebrates gardeners, gardens, and authors who love gardens. Please keep in mind that even though authors may include their book cover and book blurb with a post, this series is not about your books. Your post should reflect your garden or your love of gardens and how you as a gardener and writer relate to it. My hope is by showing a part of our lives, not about our books, authors may connect with other gardeners and those who love flowers or gardens who want to meet other gardeners. Meeting a writer/gardener is a bonus, hopefully.

You do not have to be a gardener to participate in this series. You just have to love flowers, gardens and garden related things.

I do promote most writing genres in this series, but ask that any books promoted here are clean (no bad language). If your book is a romance, I’d like to be a sweet romance (no open door love scenes). If you are unsure of your book’s heat level, please ask and I can help you decide if it will fit my parameters. On occasion I will host an author whose book might be a bit on the sensual side. If I decide your book needs it, I will post a warning to readers of sweet romance. Occasionally I may need to edit a post for length or content. If I feel it needs too much editing I may not be able to accept the post.

A Writer’s Garden is one of the most popular blog series I run. To help boost our writer/gardeners’ presence on the internet, I’m asking everyone to promote each other’s posts as much as possible. I’ll send all the series’ participants, via BCC, a permalink to the week’s post that they may use to visit and promote the post. If you join this series I ask you participate in this promotional aspect of the series.

For an idea of what kind of posts I’m looking for you can check out the blog series A Writer’s Garden or Through the Garden Gates by searching on the search bar at the top of this page.

Here’s what I need from you should you be accepted to post on the blog:

In a SINGLE word document please send:

  1. A 250-500 word post about your garden. If it waxes a bit longer I don’t mind, as long as I can keep the post and book blurb under 1500 words. The following list is just a few examples. If you have other ideas you’d like to write about, please feel free to query me about them.
  2. How your garden(indoor or outdoor garden) inspires you, or how your neighbor’s garden inspires you.
  3. How you care for your garden- organic gardener or not? Hand pick those bugs or spray them?
  4. What you love most about gardening.
  5. What you hate most about gardening.
  6. Garden trials
  7. Garden success.
  8. Your favorite spot in your garden. Go ahead and wax poetic about it.
  9. Veggies or flowers, or both
  10. Garden styles-raised bed, rows, intensive bed, pots, you name it.
  11. How you became a gardener.
  12. Why you love flowers
  13. Why you love to visit public gardens
  14. Picture tours of public gardens, or neighbors gardens, you’ve visited. You must own the copyright to all photos of these gardens.
  15. Gardening with your children/grandchildren/your community
  16. Your favorite plant(s), whether they’ve been handed down to you, etc.
  17. A garden/writing analogy, as long as the post doesn’t specifically promote your book too much. This series is not about your book, but your garden.
  18. A garden devotion.
  19. Talk about the birds, the bees and the insects in your garden. Got a photo? Be sure to include it.
  20. Or talk about whatever you wish that is related to your garden or public garden visits.
  21. Photos, YOU HAVE TAKEN, of public or private gardens you, as a gardener/garden lover, have visited.
  22. A short bio that includes the following information:
  23. A sentence or two about your love of gardens
  24. The genre you write in. (Please include the heat level of your romances in this section so readers will know what they are getting when they pick up your book. I don’t want to accidentally shock any inspirational or sweet readers.)
  25. The name, genre, heat level, and buy link of the book you want to promote. Please remember I’m an inspirational and sweet author when choosing your promotional books and be sensitive to my author branding.
  26. Your website link
  27. Three social media contact link of your choice. (If you send more, I’ll choose for you.) Please hyperlink the URL (that starts with the http://) to the social media words that best represent the site. E.I Facebook, Blog, Twitter , etcetera. Often the link that contains the http beginning is embedded in a longer word link when you copy from the internet and WordPress doesn’t like that long word link and will refuse to link to your sites or books.
  28. The buy link for the book you are promoting.
  29. Your book blurb

Please combine the items listed above into one Word document, in the order listed so it will be easier for me to load. POST, BLURB, EXCERPT, BUY LINKS, BIO SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS.

Sent as SEPARATE Attachments  I need:

  1. Photos of the garden, or garden item you are writing about. These must be photos that you hold the copyright to. Taken by you is best. Please be sure the photos are .jpgs. WordPress is persnickety about other picture formats.
  • A head shot of you. One of you in the garden would be fabulous, but a regular headshot will work, too. If you’ve sent me headshots in the past there’s no need to duplicate this, unless you want to update your photo. Again, these must be photos that you hold the copyright to. Please be sure the photos are jpgs. WordPress is persnickety about other picture formats.

I Please make your pictures as small as possible when sending as WordPress often has trouble loading if they are close to, or larger than, a MB. This will help me so I don’t have to do extra work to reduce them.

If you know where you’d like the photos to appear in your post please indicate that in the document. Your post document and pictures should be sent as attachments, NOT IN THE BODY OF THE EMAIL.

Please send all of the required documents to me no later than two weeks before your blog date. As soon as I have the blog scheduled and have a permalink, I will send it to you. On the day the post goes live, I’ll send a BBC email to all the participants of the blog series so they can help promote your post. The post will go out to my social media outlets, but please post on yours as well to help insure you have guests.

If you don’t already follow me on any of my social media platforms, please consider doing so on the platform(s) of your choice. You can find me at:

Catherine’s blog: https://catherinecastle1.wordpress.com/blog/

Catherine’s Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/catherinecastle

Catherine’s Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7085414.Catherine_Castle

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AuthorCCastle    @AuthorCCastle

Facebook: https://facebook.com/catherinecastleauthor

To make it easier to know when you have a comment on your post, click the “notify me of comments via email” box in the bottom of the comment box before you hit publish on the first comment you make on the blog. After doing so, you will receive an email notification every time someone leaves a comment on your post. Or just follow my blog and you can get the posts delivered directly to your email box.

Thanks, and I’m looking forward to hosting you and learning about your gardens.

Catherine Castle

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