2,061 words
11 minutes read time

You may not be used to this level of positivity from me, but I am excited to say that I’m doing pretty good. It probably helps that I’m feeling not too bad today, physically, and that always helps. Even on my “good” days I don’t feel great, but on my “bad” days I feel even worse, so you have to celebrate the little things.

Last week I finished Wicked Games. It came in at 97,606 words, and I’m really happy that I was able to finish it. I had given myself until the end of April, thinking that my funk would last longer than it did, but I got past a slow part, came up with the last little plot point I needed to push to the end, and that was it. It helped that for the past couple of weekends I had really great word counts, and it just snowballed. I hadn’t expected it since the days I felt down I felt really down, but I should realize by now that hormones play a huge part in how I’m feeling and that how I feel at that time won’t stay. I’ve already read through it once, but I’ll set it aside now and let it breathe while I work on Loss and Damages. I have a lot to do to get the ARCs ready for July, but looking at the cover gives me motivation to get the last edits done, format it, and write the blurb.

That’s not to say that the blog post I wrote a couple weeks ago was a waste, because I actually did have a pretty big epiphany that I think I realized but didn’t understand the full meaning of until I was emailing with a friend. Back when I pivoted to first person present POV in 2020, I was actively looking for ways to build a readership and to turn my writing from what was then a hobby into a career. I did a few things they say you should do, like write a reader magnet and start a newsletter. I’ve always had a website for this blog, but I created a new one that was for my author business only. I started taking my titles and my covers more seriously and instead of putting what I liked on my books, compromised and started doing research on what belonged on commercial genre covers. I started thinking about my brand and my books as a product to sell.

Maybe I never thought that I would become a millionaire author like some of my fellow romance authors such as Elana Johnson, Lucy Score, Melanie Harlow, Sadie Kincaid, or LJ Shen, but there are plenty of mid-list romance authors who write full time and are able to live off their royalties. I wanted to at least be a mid- mid-list author, making part time wages to supplement my day job. That came to a halt this year after I did my 2024 taxes. So it wasn’t that long ago actually when I decided that I was done trying to build a career. I have all that in place–the reader magnet, the blog/newsletter, the website. My brand is pretty well established if you scroll through my books on Amazon, at least for my pen name. I’m not going to be taking any of that down, and I’ve gone into why before and don’t want to repeat myself. But, I am going to change how I come at my writing. I’ve set myself up so that I’m ahead. I’m spacing my books out to give myself time to write, but I’m back to where I was in 2017 when I was writing because it was fun and publishing was exciting. (Though I don’t think after pressing Publish the night before I’m going to wake up rich and famous anymore.)

The longer you’re in the writing community, the longer you’re exposed to possibilities, and I think that’s what trips a lot of us up. We have no idea that money can be made until we start talking to authors who are making it. We have no idea we can build a newsletter subscriber list to the tens of thousands until we start hearing about authors who are doing it. And we think, Well, if they can do it, so can I, but the problem is, just because they’ve done it doesn’t actually mean you can. Some things are possible, just not for you, and it’s a blow to realize that, you know?

It puts you in a place that you’re not sure about. I’ve given 20-40 hours a week to my writing since at least 2020, possibly earlier than that. I bought into the belief that you can’t make it as an author if you don’t treat your writing like a job, something I really hounded you guys on over the years on this blog. I scheduled time to write and cranked out books like you wouldn’t believe. Of course I had fun, you can’t do something like that if you don’t like it, but looking back now, there was an underlying sense of, I don’t know, unhinged and deranged work ethic that demanded I spend every waking second I could writing because I wouldn’t get anywhere if I didn’t. Guess what? I didn’t get anywhere anyway. I’m proud of my backlist, of course I am. But no one is reading (and the zeros on my sales dashboard over the last few days are proof of that), so there wasn’t a point in working that hard and missing all the things I missed. A habit like that isn’t something I’ll be able to shake off so easily, and I wrote Wicked Games in two months. I started on February 5th and finished April 8th. I didn’t need to write that fast except that I had the plot in my head so it was easy to get it down on paper, and I enjoyed it. I love Seth and Avery, like the twisty plot. But it is kinda crazy to be writing with this resignation that I’m writing for myself and will only be writing for myself.

I’m still doing “fun” things that indie authors do, like I just made mugs that use my King’s Crossing chapter headers and I used the font in one of the title words on the covers:

I used a promo code on Snapfish and ordered two. They’re big (20 ounces) and sturdy, and came about to be about $15.00 a piece because of shipping. I can’t sell them because I didn’t buy the extended license for the vector, but I might do another giveaway at some point or I was playing around with doing a couple book boxes and seeing if I can build a little buzz, though with the last book out today, that might be too late.

I also made some cards (the size is 6 x 4 inches) that have the QR code to my website’s subscribe page where people can download my reader magnet.

I ordered them from VistaPrint, and I paid $25.00 dollars for 25. I don’t know what I’m going to do with them, keep them in my purse and pin them to community bulletin boards and whatever. Maybe buy some author copies of a standalone and tuck them into Little Free Libraries this summer while I’m out walking. I can do these things knowing that they won’t really do anything. I’m back to where I was, many years ago.

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I started reading the first book in the next series I’m going to finish, and I must have gone through it a few times already because it’s pretty clean. That’s kind of depressing because it sets up five more books and I wasn’t really in the mood to write another long series. So my thought was it would have been easier to tear up a book that needed work. It’s a cool concept though, a woman’s father creates a list of men he thinks would be acceptable for her to marry, and each book is for a man on the list. Maybe I will just write them all. The second one is already written and the third is set up in it. I have the MMCs for the fourth, fifth, and sixth, but not any plots for any of them. No backstories or love interests, so I’ll be doing a lot of brainstorming if I’m going to go through with it. I don’t know. I’m glad I started reading the first one though, because I used the same last name in Wicked Games for one of my secondary characters as I did for the main female character in the first book, and it will be a lot easier to change it in one book instead of two. I’m starting to look at cover concepts though, because I’m running out of ideas on how to brand a series, so I’m hoping that will get me excited, too.

I know this blog post sounds a lot like what I’ve been writing about before, but it really was an “Ah-ha!” moment for me when I decided to stop chasing that career dream. It was like when I went to school for human resources and decided I didn’t want a job in HR after all. All that schooling, all that tuition. Just kidding! Right? Education is never a waste, just like the books I’ve written in the past few years aren’t a waste either, but it is a shock, a let down, a broken dream. (Though, to be fair, no one dreams about a career in HR, and if you thought writers drink, you’ve never seen a group of HR reps during happy hour.)

Where am I going from here? I’ll be doing the same I’ve always done. Work on my books, publish them. But I’ll take more time for myself during the day, during the week, only write when I feel like it. Which is still a lot because it’s something I like to do, but I have different expectations, different hopes, for the outcomes of that writing. It’s not a job anymore and any royalties I earn I won’t consider as wages. Maybe I’ll break even at the end of every year after paying what I have to pay to keep my hobby going, maybe I won’t. So far I can afford to keep investing, like I worked new running shoes into my budget every six months when I was running and racing a lot. I need to focus on my health too, so maybe I’ll get back into that. I know I’d feel better if I dropped a little weight as I’ve been a slug for the past five years, but it will be a painful process and I’m not looking forward to it at all.

Now that I’ve had my lightbulb moment, I can stop thinking about it and if I do need to muse about it any more, I’ll put it on my mental health blog. I don’t use that blog anymore since my anxiety faded. That too, has been a journey full of ups and downs and the final destination was a letdown, but it’s better to know how things stand than live under the guise things will get better.

I have a couple blog ideas for the coming weeks, and an author interview in the works. I’m going out of town for a few days with my sister and daughter at the beginning of May to hit up Mall of America and the Minnesota Zoo, and after that, I’ll hopefully be setting into the lazy days of summer. I’m getting a new mattress for my bed delivered tomorrow and Wednesday I’m finally getting my hair cut. I wish that once I marked something off my list that something else would’t take its place, but I suppose that’s what being an adult is. Still, my car’s been holding steady for a while now and I’m grateful for that, and my kids are working and seem to be doing fine if not spending too much time in front of their screens, but I’m not one to judge.

Things are okay here, and I hope they are for you too.

Have a great week!