Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Want some travel advice on best geeky sights in San Francisco & Silicon Valley?

If you always wanted to have a guide book which gives you an overview of the most geeky & techie sights of the Bay Area, you will enjoy my latest publication "The Tech Lover's 48-Hour Travel Guide to Silicon Valley & San Francisco" - published with Unanchor.com.





This itinerary to the geeky sights of San Francisco and Silicon Valley offers 48 hours of sights and tips specifically designed for tech-interested people who are interested in the startup and tech world of the Bay Area and might even consider moving to the Valley or Downtown San Francisco.
This is a two-day pilgrimage for the inner geek in you. It was made for two types of visitors:
  1. You are visiting the Bay Area and want to get an overview of interesting tech-sights (i.e. see HP Garage, visit Stanford Campus, drive by the Google campus) as well as restaurants and coffee shops where the startup-crowd hangs out.
  2. You are planning to work in the Bay Area and want to understand the culture of the valley by discovering the most relevant tech-sights (i.e. visit the Computer History Museum and get an overview of the most relevant incubators or local networking events).
The term Silicon Valley dates back to its large number of silicon chip producing companies. It can be considered the technology hub of the United States. But, recently a trend emerged: startup-companies like Airbnb, Dropbox and Yelp are choosing San Francisco over Silicon Valley. The numbers support this trend: while startups in Silicon Valley raised $1.17 billion between January and March 2013, San Francisco startups raised $1.04 billion. And while 107 deals have been counted in the Valley, there were 104 deals in San Francisco. It still sounds that Silicon Valley leads the game, but if you consider that Silicon Valley is made up of various cities (e.g. Palo Alto, Mountain View, ...) pulling in money and deals, one can see that San Francisco has been ahead of the game this year.
For this reason we are going to cover both Silicon Valley and San Francisco in this guide - along with the two best universities around: Stanford in Palo Alto and the University of California in Berkeley.

Enjoy reading it!
Yours Johanna 

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Read the first chapters from the upcoming San Francisco Novel for free!

Yes, for free!

How that works. You just exchange an hour of reading entertainment by a simple tweet with Pay by tweet or with a Facebook Post:




Enjoy reading!

Yours,

Johanna 

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The challenge of being a writer: to write everyday & never give up

Yesterday I read a facebook post (How to write for a living) from James Altucher. I consider him a role model for anyone serious in writing and for anyone serious in trying out new forms of publishing. He mentioned that one of the most important aspects of being a serious writer is to never stop writing and to develop a daily practice of a few thousands words. 

People might think that's a lot. But that is what it takes and there are lots of people who are pretty successful doing that: Theresa Ragan or romance author Maya Banks for instance. 

Writing everyday is the best practice you could get. It can be a blog post or an article, a book chapter or just a letter to yourself. The challenge I personally see is that I write a lot of emails every day and a lot of social media entries. And I caught myself trying to cheat by telling me that this counts towards my minimum of 100o words. It doesn't! 



Why? Because it isn't a practice of just being with yourself, focusing on one single topic and trying to get some writing done. It's rather conversational and won't improve your writing skills. 
Still, I have this inner battle everyday! And there is another challenge I have: which is to never give up! Especially if you are living in San Francisco, it feels as if there are overnight successes every single day. People sell their companies for millions and they publish books which instantly become bestsellers. Let me tell you: even in the glorified States of America there isn't really such a thing as overnight success. It is all hard work and many times those people have been putting lots of hours (probably more than 10.000 hours to become very well at what they do) into what finally becomes really good. Taking James Altucher as an example again: he has written lots of books before he finally landed a big success with "Chooseyourself". So really, you just have to work hard, and fall many many times to finally get up and succeed.
I'd like to give up many times: on finishing the next book, on starting my Indiegogo Campaign or on getting myself out there. I entered writing contests - many! And in January I felt that I won't need to do it anymore. Because nothing is coming out of it anyway. But then the unexpected happened: I received an email that I was selected as a winner for the upcoming writers workshop of selected semi-finalists at the Tuscon Festival of Books. Wohoo!! So, somehow my submission was considered good in comparison to another 550 submissions or so. And although it's still not the honeypot at the end of the rainbow, it makes me really happy and it gives me the energy to apply for another ten creative contests :)!


What are your experiences with never giving up and daily practice? Maybe for you it isn't the writing but another discipline!! I'd like to hear and learn from you!!

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

News on my upcoming Indiegogo Campaign and English book cover

Dear readers,

happy New Year to all of you!!

Having been in Germany over Christmas and New Year with rain and grey skies most of the time, I had quite some time to reflect on 2013, prepare for 2014 and get lots of writing done!

2013 was exciting: with "How to love San Francisco" being published and marketed in Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as winning the Writer's Institute of Madison University and finding an awesome translator from Stanford University for the English version of "How to love San Francisco".
2014 will be all about the launch of the San Francisco novel in the English speaking markets. I really can't wait to get your feedback and comments on the book. And with quite a few of you I have already been in active discussions via Twitter, Facebook and email.

Therefore: Thanks a lot to all of you to visiting my blog frequently and following the story of Hanni Bayers in San Francisco.

I have good news for you: over Christmas I had some time to prepare my upcoming Indiegogo Campaign and work on the book. More news on that in the next few days! My Indiegogo Campaign will be launched in the next two weeks and I am planning to launch the book in Q1 2014. The wait is finally over :)!

In addition to that the English book cover is finished as well - I tried to keep it close to the German style. How do you like it?



I you want to read an excerpt from the upcoming novel, visit me here.

Happy Tuesday,

Johanna