Be My Troll Baby or How To Avoid the Trolls? You decide.

What is A troll?

A troll is someone who is a poop. No! No. Sorry, let’s try to be a bit more academic here.

WHY DO THEY TROLL?

All trolls are different and everything is a generalization but usually because they are bored and want some attention.

Don’t Feed Them

It’s incredibly hard not to feed the trolls, especially if they’re attacking your friends or fans. But even if you aren’t a massively well published author with a fan base of 5 million trillion (cough) you can still attract the attention of people who want negative attention. Don’t give it to them.

The more you feed the troll, the louder and lively and bigger they get. It’s like Pinocchio’s nose growing every time he lied. Every time you respond to a troll, they get bigger and stronger.

Have Rules To Deal With Trolls

Carrie has procedures where she almost always ignores trolls. She blocks or bans them from her feeds if they are spouting hatred or doing a lot of hate language. If she knows them in person or if she’s interacted with them before in a positive way, she gives them a warning. If they react with hate or continue, she blocks or bans them. She has banned other published authors before. She has banned people that she’s given gifts to.

It’s hard, but because she has set rules, she can look back to those and deal with less inner emotion.

It’s so hard, but don’t give it to them and escalate the situation. Ignoring their rants usually shuts them down.

Be Cool Inside With Who You Are and What You DO

When the attacks are personal it can be so hard, but the thing is that you need to try to find a way to feel okay with yourself no matter what other people think.

There are always going to be people who love what you do and people who hate what you do and people who are totally oblivious and one of the big life lessons is that you have to ignore those haters.

Writing Tip of the Pod

Look, when you write, you have to have villains and trolls, characters or situations for your protagonist to bounce off and overcome. Sadly, life can be like this, too.

Be as sure of yourself as you are of your main character. Have confidence as you write, in who you are as you write and live. Make the choices you can be proud of and give the middle finger to the trolls because they can’t touch you.

Dog Tip for Life

Dogs avoid the trolls. They sniff them out, growl at them if they pose an immediate threat and move on. And if they don’t move on? They give it their all to destroy the threat.

Chose wisely in how you destroy the threat.

Shout Out!

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.

WRITING AND OTHER NEWS IN THE WOODS – READ AN EXCERPT, PREORDER NOW!

My next book, IN THE WOODS, appears in July with Steve Wedel. It’s scary and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books for Summer 2019. There’s an excerpt of it there and everything! But even cooler (for me) they’ve deemed it buzz worthy! Buzz worthy seems like an