Howdy! I'm active on TikTok and likely migrating to Clapper due to the upcoming ban. If you're not aware, TikTok has until September to remove Chinese leadership in order to remain in the USA app stores. This is supposedly to protect US American privacy. Meanwhile Facebook has been selling our DMs to Spotify, and every free app is selling our data to the highest bidder. The alternative app being thrown around is Clapper. So, I've attempted to use that.
I'm more of a creator than a consumer, meaning I haven't actually looked at other people's videos yet, on Clapper. I've been uploading my old TikTok videos I'm more attached to, and saving them as drafts. The experience has been lackluster. Clapper makes every video quiet, so I have to drag them into Capcut to boost the volume before uploading. Clapper offers minimal music options which aren't searchable. I assume they aren't able to feature popular music, given what they offer, and not wanting my videos muted or taken down, I've been dragging them into Capcut, muting them, and setting them to free-for-commercial-use music. Which is a headache. There is no means of setting music to a segment of a video, rather than the whole thing, on Clapper. Clapper is useless for editing videos thus far, aside from shortening them (by cutting the ends off. There is no speed-altering available) or merging them with other videos. I can't post or edit captions, so far as I can tell. There isn't even the ability to search specific folders on my device. I have to go through the entire selection of videos saved, in order to upload one. It's a huge frustrating hassle. Anecdotally I have heard that users get more views there. I'm planning to post in a similar order to how they originally were on TikTok. If you're not familiar with these apps, TikTok offers all of those features, and while it can be glitchy, TikTok is a remarkably more user friendly app than Clapper. Which is more of an insult to Clapper than a compliment to TikTok.
What's odd is we-the-people came out in force to harass our corrupt politicians to keep TikTok here, and TikTok thanked creators by halving their pay like a week later, permanently. I'm so tired of social media. It's great to see what other artists are doing and I appreciate my writer pen-pals but everything else is a mess of ads and glitches. I don't feel like being a product anymore. Not that I have a choice. This is the only real means I have of promoting my books. It's just a pain.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by. I drop a blog post every Monday. Toodles!
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Howdy! This past week I focused on editing Soul Walker, my adult paranormal women's fiction novel. Anxious Eva's quarter-life crisis is exacerbated by news that she's possessed and can see the dead. Luckily this spirit is set on living his best life. But his best isn't hers and the only means of exorcism is death. Adding to the blog post above, having to censor myself when discussing writing projects, over social media is likewise, aggravating. On TikTok, I'll have to pussyfoot around the word, "death" going forward.
I managed to cut a chapter, getting the word count back down to 99K, but I'm about to add a big funeral scene, so that's going right back up. In the next draft, I want to focus on making each soul have its own writing & dialogue style. Which will be a challenge, but a good learning experience. Then the final draft, before submitting it, should be solely to focus on spelling and grammar.
I did also remake my business cards today. I'm reasonably excited about how they came out. This past week I ordered a purse of my novel, Light Step, and the plan is to use the purse (and earrings that already have) to market the book. Ideally when folks inquire as to what book that is, I can hand them a card. I guess I'm my own street team at this point.
I'm not sure I'll make the cut but I did apply to participate in May's First Friday in downtown Bryan. Now that the limit is 25 art vendors, rather than 50, I can't assume my application will be approved. Unfortunately. While I wait to hear back, I'm keeping an ear out for other vendor opportunities.
Thanks for stopping by! I drop a newsletter every Monday! Toodles!