About the guest-blogs

On Wednesdays, when possible, I run a guest-blog post. More often than not these are by friends or friends of friends. But if I don't know you, that's OK, I'm happy to consider your query for a guest-blog post. Please note, however, that I am not looking for original essays and I do not offer payment. With search engines in mind, I use a specific 5-link format and request a maximim of 400 words, and in fact, I prefer 300 words or less.

The specifics of the 5-link format

So, dear potential guest-blogger, can you tell me and my readers something new, useful, fabulous, amusing, and/or surprising? Better yet, something about a subject / place / person / book / movie / etc. people frequently "google" and don't often find on-line?

Here's what works for "Madam Mayo":

If you are promoting a new book, CD, podcast series, app, workshop, reading, concert, movie, etc that in some way relates to the subjects this blog covers (books, creative writing, literary translation, Mexico, Washington DC, the world, human potential, soundwork, and pugs):

In an e-mail, provide your website and / or blog address, and a brief (about 100 words) description of what your new book (or etc) is about. I will use this to introduce you.

Provide a list of five links that are in some way relevant to your new book (or app or whatever it is you are currently promoting.) For example, if your new book is about widgets, say, 5 favorite novels about widgets (with links to read more about each).

Tell us why you recommend them. Just a line or two will do; brief is best as blog readers aren't big on having to scroll down.

That's it!

For those of us on the mossy side of 45, it is sometimes a little difficult to "get" the importance of quality links in a blog post. Please keep in mind (and I myself need to be reminded on many an occasion) that a blog post is very different genre from an article for print publication because your blog post may be read at anytime, anywhere, and readers may come in directly from my blog's home page, or any one of a number of other pages, including a "google" or other search. Therefore, for your five links, providing one such as "www.wikipedia.org" or, say, The Great Gatsby on www.amazon.com, is nearly useless; everybody already knows about it, and a "google" search with those terms will find your post buried on the the dark side of Mars.

Links to books need to be specific. Just plain vanilla "www.amazon.com" or the web page to your publisher's home page doesn't do it. Think about it: you just mentioned a fascinating book and a reader took the trouble to click on that link and, huh? They're at amazon.com's home page?! They have to, like, actually lift a finger and t-y-p-e in the name of the book? It's 2011, folks. I don't mean to be unkind, but, sorry, that isn't good enough. A good link would be to the specific page for the book itself. Here's what that looks like:

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Tales-Winnie-Pooh/dp/0525457232

So go to that book's page, look in the URL up top, right click, save, and paste it into the text of your e-mail to me. It's that simple.

If you have not already received an invitation to guest-blog, please send your query to cmmayo ( at ) cmmayo ( dot ) com

Thanks for reading, thanks for considering, and felicitous blogging to you!