It’s a thing, I suppose, to choose a theme, a color, a resolution, (I almost typed revolution, and maybe with the current political environment in the States, it’s that, too) to express what we plan to do, to describe the vibe we want to put forth into the coming year.
For years I never bothered because I knew every year was going to be the same as before. It’s really depressing and soul-sucking to have a health issue that doesn’t seem treatable, much less curable, and I treated each year as the same. This post isn’t about what I’ve suffered with (I’ve made you suffer with me on this blog, and I know we are both tired of that) but I can’t deny that now that I know what’s wrong and that there aren’t more serious matters to contend with (no colon or ovarian cancer, yay!) I can’t help but think of the next year in a different light.
A romance author I know went though breast cancer treatment this year, and she said she wouldn’t be able to approach writing her books in the same way. That made a lot of sense because when you go through trauma like that and can come out the other side, maybe not whole, but in pieces that can be glued together, you can’t help but be a different person.
You all know I’ve been at this for a long time, (no, this isn’t a woe-as-me post . . . I’ve had almost a million page reads in KU this year alone, so I definitely know that I’m luckier than a lot of authors) and if you do something long enough, maybe you don’t lose your joy, but you know. It stops being exciting, it stops being . . . I don’t want to say fun because I still do, have fun writing, that is. But no matter how much you enjoy something, if you feel you have to do it, it becomes monotonous, even if only slightly.
So my word of 2025 isn’t a word, but a phrase. “Be still and know.”
What’s funny is my sister, daughter, and I were shopping downtown Fargo, ND, and there are all these trendy little shops. We went into one and this saying was on journals and mugs and pens and paperweights. I liked it, the peace of it, and I asked my sister where it came from. She looked it up on her phone, and it’s actually a Bible verse: “Be still, and know that I am God” Psalm 46 verse 10.
I’m not religious. My parents sent me to a private Baptist school from Kindergarten through fourth grade, then they sent me to public school in fifth on, though I did attend Sunday church services until I moved to go to college. That kind of ruined organized religion for me because even though I was young, I saw how hypocritical people were. There may be exceptions, but I grew up learning religious people aren’t nice. And I do see that, as an adult, people using their religion to feel better than other people, or as an excuse to do nasty things that Jesus definitely wouldn’t have done while He was here.
For a while, that tainted the saying for me, but like any religious person, I can twist it to what I want it to mean for myself. Just kidding, kind of. I still like the peace of it, the quietness of the meaning.
The last few years I’ve done nothing but move forward, and I have accomplished a lot in that time. I still would like to do a few things in 2025, and I let you know what those were in a previous blog post. But I’m going to look at things differently, slow down, enjoy the silence, and work on my books in a way that I want and find that joy again.
I want to finally stand still and appreciate how far I’ve come and all that I’ve accomplished. I want to rest and breathe and do other things that aren’t book-related. Moving forward is great when you have goals and plans and somewhere to go, but maybe I’m done moving forward. Maybe I’ve reached my destination, and you know, that wouldn’t be a bad thing. I actually rather like the thought of it. We liken being authors and publishing to running marathons but even runners finish their races, and if they truly can’t, they get picked up wherever they happen to be on the course. I don’t need a ride, but maybe I finished, and now I can eat my banana and power bar, drink my bottle of water, take a hot shower, and do something else. A runner never stops running (okay, I did but I still go for walks), and I won’t stop writing, but maybe I don’t need to train to run any more races. Writing can go back to being fun, and now that I’m feeling better, I’m interested to see how that incorporates into the next projects I’m going to work on.
I suggest if you want to move forward, have goals to work toward. Know what your finish line is. After all, what is the saying? A goal without a plan is only a wish.
But wishes are nice too. Especially if they come in the form of chocolate cake that has mocha mousse frosting on top.
Everyone is doing these and I thought I might as well. You can either look eagerly into the future or think it’s just going to be another year of writing to no one. I don’t really think that, I do have readers, but I know there are more than a few who do think it because marketing is hard and it’s harder still when you don’t have any money to buy ads or promos.
My goals for 2025 are pretty simple. I don’t have any. Of course, I have a list of things I want to get done, but when I think about goals and what I’ve seen from other authors, they aren’t the same. I don’t have a goal to make 10k with my writing or get an orange tag. I don’t have a goal to sell 100 copies of a book or even 50 copies and I’ll you why. Because I don’t have a plan to achieve those goals, and I don’t have a plan because if I knew what would work I’d be doing it. Goals are only as good as the motions you can put into place to achieve them, which is why the only things on my goals list are what I can control.
So, let’s begin:
Finish proofing the proofs of my Rocky Point series, upload, and publish new files to KDP and IngramSpark. I’m not going to get done this year. I wanted to, so I could start 2025 with a clean slate, but I won’t. Book one is a word salad of filler words and echoing that for some reason I didn’t fix the first time around (paper always reads different so it could just be I’m seeing them for the first time) and it’s going to take me probably until the end of the year just to finish book one. Even if I could finish book one before then, I have three more to go. I committed to editing these, so I’m going to finish it out to the best of my ability.
Finish editing Loss and Damages, a first person present Billionaire standalone that I started back in May of 2021. It’s finished and has already had one read-through and I added quite a few notes of what I need to fix. I want to finish those edits and get the preorder up, I don’t know when. I have no deadline, just do it as soon as possible after my Rocky Point series is squared away. My last book in my King’s Crossing series releases in the middle of April, and to give myself time to write, I decided on a September 15th, 2025 release date for Loss and Damages. Then, if I keep with the four-five month time between, I’ll have plenty of time to write more books, with an estimated release day sometime in January of 2026.
When Loss and Damages is completed and scheduled, the next book I want to write and edit will be completely from scratch and is a standalone Billionaire romantic suspense. I have it mostly plotted out in my mind (and to no one’s surprise, the cover is already done), and I’d like to write it before I forget what it’s about. Also, if I can make good use of my time and schedule it for the January 2026 release date, that will give me extra time to work on what I want to write next.
I doubt I’ll be able to get this done in 2025, but I want to finish a series I started back in 2021. I have two books written of a six books series, but after working on King’s Crossing (a six-book serial) and my Rocky Point series (four books that are connected but can be read as standalones), I don’t want to dive into another huge project. So what I need to do is rewrite parts of book one and cut out two of the characters or make it clear somehow they would be not be getting their own stories, so I only have two books to edit and two books to write. The combined writing, editing, and packaging of four books will take me a very long time, and I really don’t think I can edit a book, write a book, plus complete that series all in one year. I’ll need to figure out how much time I want to have between my January 2026 release and the series. I could maybe do six months and aim to have the series completed in enough time to put them on preorder in July of 2026, but I’m not going to think that far ahead.
I’m feeling better physically and in turn, mentally, so I’ve said I’m going to approach 2025 a little differently. I am, already veering away from series for a minute and I’m going to concentrate on editing Loss and Damages and writing Wicked Games. I need the break working on standalones will give me, and even though I could give myself a deadline, I actually haven’t sat down and written a book since August 2023 when I wrote A Heartbreak for Christmas and packaged that for its November release. All this time I’ve been editing, so it might be a bit intimidating to open a new Word document and try to pull words out of my head. Editing is a different beast, after all, and I’d like to have fun rather than just think of Wicked Games as another book I need to write and sell.
I’ve really grown as an author editing so many words this year, and the mistakes and filler words and general clutter I was using that I didn’t see are pretty blatant to me now. Loss and Damages and Wicked Games are probably going to sound better than any of the books I’ve written so far. Well, besides my King’s Crossing stuff because I went over those with a fine-tooth comb, and if some filler words managed to squeak by me, then they have earned the right to stay.
As far as other goals, my King’s Crossing series is done. The third book will release on December 9th, the fourth in January, the fifth in March, and the sixth in April. They are all loaded up and on preorder. No files need to be changed out, the covers are locked in. That series is gone in my mind, which is probably why I have such a hard time marketing. Once a book is up, it’s out, and I’m moving on to other things. I don’t have goals for sales or page reads, in fact, my expectations are quite low and will be until the last book is released. As a serial, a reader won’t know the whole story until the last book is released and since I have that information written in the blurb, readers might not even want to start the series until they are all available. I’ve kept my expectations realistic, running ads to create buzz and awareness (and bleeding into the red with clicks), and just focusing on editing my series to maybe boost my 3rd person backlist. I’ll be releasing four books in 2025, and anyone would be proud of that, other goals be damned.
I probably should try to think of some kind of plan to push book one out more, beyond the author driven promos and promos you can buy like Freebooksy, but that would require hustling and networking, and since I haven’t felt well, that just sounds exhausting. I have a rockstar promo opportunity someone sent me months ago and I just haven’t felt like reaching out to follow up, but if I want to spread the word I’m going to have to start doing the work and that can probably be one of my goals for next year. I need a mindset change because not feeling well has been a valid excuse not to do a lot of things, but I need to start being present in the present and not hiding, writing a book because my doctor didn’t know what was wrong with me. That’s all in the past, so 2025 will have to be different in that regard.
I don’t have a lot of goals and I really don’t want to make any beyond what I’ve touched on here. I’m not struggling as much as I have been, a clearer (and sober) mind has helped me come to terms with knowing that a lot of what I’m doing will (still) be on my own, ie, forgoing a beta readers/editors/proofers and cover designers. I have a few friends I touch base with, and I’m grateful to them because they keep me sane and remind me I’m not totally alone. Writing has always been something you need to do by yourself (have you ever tried to write while someone was talking to you?) so that part is understandable and something I have enjoyed even while I wasn’t feeling well. I’m just still adjusting to the loss of my fiancé who loved to talk publishing and a friend here and there who would like to brainstorm. Now that I’m doing better, I can focus more on replacing those relationships and reaching out to the romance community, which I should be doing anyway.
I’ll be approaching 2025 a little differently, trying to find the fun I lost in the writing, and trying to find the fun I lost in my life overall. It was a real miracle my doctor at Mayo knew what was wrong with me and could actually fix it (to the best of her ability) and while I’m adjusting to how things are in my writing and the writing community, I’ll be adjusting to my new way of feeling. I’ll never be “normal,” but I’m better than what I was and I’m grateful for that.
I suppose that’s all I have for this week. Four more weeks of 2024. Make them count, and maybe, maybe 2025 will actually be different for many of us!
I was going to blog about something different today, and I even had the post written and scheduled. It had to do with writing billionaire romance in the current political climate, but I don’t have the heart to post it. We had a chance to do something great, to make positive change, and we blew it. We chose hate and violence, and we will pay for that for the next four years, and possibly beyond. All I can hope is that the Democrats who did win state by state will slow him down and block him as much as possible. Maybe he’ll be too busy golfing to cause all the damage he says he’s going to cause.
I know lots of people didn’t get much done last week, and it’s understandable. I’ve always used my writing to hide from reality (or, more accurately, my health issues), and this week was no exception. I was able to finish editing my Rocky Point Wedding series, finish the covers, and order the proofs. I’m going to read them over to look for mistakes and make sure the changes I made make sense. I had a lot of timeline discrepancies because the first three books overlap and I didn’t keep track of my characters and what they were doing. Then I fluffed up some scenes, took out some things to streamline the prose, and I’ll just read them over quick before I approve them. I’m also interested in how the covers are going to print. When I chose the background stock photo, I knew I’d have trouble with the spine and back cover, so we’ll see if my “fix” looks good or if I need to try something else. On screen I think it looks okay and I tried really hard to match up the grey blocks and black gradients with the spine lines but printing isn’t always accurate, so we’ll see what happens.
I ended up using the same ISBNs for the books, which I probably shouldn’t have done since these will have new covers and substantial changes to the insides. On the other hand, unpublishing the old ones so I can publish new ones seemed to be a waste of ISBNs, especially since before I revamped them I wasn’t selling (m)any anyway. I put in the copyright pages that these were re-edited and re-released but I don’t know if it was necessary or will do any good. I have quite a few of the first book floating around out there due to free promos I’ve done in the past, but I don’t think it will make a difference to ask KDP to push out the new version to the readers who have the old version on their Kindles. I’ve heard of authors doing that, but I have never tried. If they don’t give me a hard time and just let me update, I think I’ll be happy with that and leave the rest alone. I don’t like messing with KDP, and I’m relieved that so far the preorders for my King’s Crossing series are still okay, that Amazon hasn’t arbitrarily canceled them. So, whether using the same ISBNs was the right call or not, I don’t know, but no one is really policing these changes, so I guess there’s no harm in it.
I’m going to do some more cleaning up of my third person books. While I’m waiting for my proofs to come back, I started re-editing The Years Between Us, an age-gap standalone. I’m halfway through the first chapter and haven’t found anything too bad, I just like to echo words and hadn’t caught on to it yet. No matter what Stephen King says, the thesaurus is your friend. I updated the back matter too, deleting people out of my Acknowledgements page that no longer had a place there, updated my Also By page, and a few other odds and ends. I’ve started directing all my readers to my vmrheault.com website and eventually I’ll take books off this one. It makes sense to turn my author website into my real author site and just use this site to blog. I’m having fun reading this book though, since I haven’t for many years. It has the same kind of tone Rescue Me does, and it’s funny that all my books have the same style, even between 3rd person past and 1st person present. I guess that’s why they say a reader falls in love with your voice. I won’t be changing the cover for this book–I think it looks fine how it is, and being that it’s age-gap, I doubt I’d be able to find a couple that fits as well as the one I found a few years ago. I know a couple years back I wrote a blog post on the differences, but I can’t find it now. For curiosity, this was the old one when I first published, then changed to the second when I couldn’t sell books. Very different vibe from the blurb.
I unpublished the two Large Print books I was able to publish before Amazon started blocking them due to duplicate content. I want to offer the same versions of all my books, so I unpublished the Hardcover versions of Captivated by Her, Addicted to Her, and Rescue Me. Hardcovers don’t sell and I wasn’t going to bother publishing more. Because they’re a mess and didn’t sell anyway, I also unpublished my two ebook boxset compilations–my Tower City series and my Rocky Point Wedding series. That sounds like a lot of unpublishing, but I mainly wanted to clean up my editions. The ISBNs will always be attached to those versions and they might even stay on my Amazon product pages, but from here on, I’m only going to offer the Kindle version and a plain paperback.
I was also going to unpublish the first three books I published (1700 Hamilton and my Summer Secrets series) but that would require updating back matter of books I’m not going to re-edit and I don’t want to do that. I was even going to unpublish my first trilogy, but then I remembered I wrote a bonus novella that sounds better than the original trilogy and closed out the story nicely, so even if they’re not well-written, I’d be taking down at least a quarter of a million words. I guess there’s no harm in keeping them up, but they aren’t my best work and I’ll never promote them in any way.
I probably should have done this stuff a long time ago, but I wasn’t feeling well and during the pandemic when everything was just kind of shitty, I wasn’t really thinking about it. I was more focused on building my pen name and writing books for that. Now that my King’s Crossing series is slowly releasing, I have a bit of free time, though not much if I don’t want my conveyor belt of content to slow down. I like knowing I have books scheduled–it takes the pressure off to write quickly.
That’s what I’m doing until the end of the year, and I have to remember what I do on KDP I have to do on IngramSpark. I updated the interior of All of Nothing after I re-edited it a few weeks ago, and I’ll have no choice but to replace both the interior and cover files for my Rocky Point series. Even though it’s going to cost a good $200.00, there’s just too much discrepancy for them to share the same ISBNs but look so different on other retailers. I used to get free revisions with my Alliance of Independent Authors membership, but now I noticed that instead of five or six free revisions you only get one. When I re-edited and re-covered my Lost and Found trilogy, I had enough revision codes I only had to pay $25.00. Unfortunately, that seems not to be the case anymore, but I’m tenacious and I’ll see what I can find when it’s time to do it.
I’d like to start 2025 with a clean slate, putting my 3rd person stuff behind me and looking forward to the future and building my 1st person pen name. I just felt like my 3rd person stuff was unfinished somehow. This won’t make that feeling entirely go away, but I can push them aside knowing that they’re better than they were before. I know for sure that my Rocky Point series sounds 100% better and I don’t consider the time I spent on them a waste, even if it will be an expensive hassle to swap out their files on Ingram. (It was actually fun to see how far my writing has come.) I might even stop putting books on there. There’s no real benefit, but it’s easy because I do my own formatting and covers. All it costs is a bit of time.
That’s about all I have this week. I’m busy doing what I want to do. I’m not going to worry about sales or page reads anymore. Those numbers have been dismal since summer and I honestly don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m doing all I can, and I need to find the fun in writing again. I’m proud of my books and what I’m doing for the indie community with this blog, beta reading, formatting, and editing for others. Sometimes I forget about what matters most, but it gets easier as I feel better. I have more gratitude for the small things and maybe getting my 3rd person stuff situated feels like a bigger project than I really wanted to tackle right now, but it will be a relief when it’s all done.
I said this was a massive update only because it felt massive. I never thought I would unpublish anything, and pushing unpublish made my stomach quiver. It’s nice because KDP keeps your title there and if I ever wanted to publish those things again, I can, but I think I’ll stick with my decision to keep my books in KU, offer the Kindle version, and price my paperbacks as cheaply as I can. There are discrepancies with some of my prices too, like my series versus standalones. I just price whatever I feel like pricing which doesn’t look very professional, but that’s something I”ll have to look into another time.
For the rest of this week I’ll be re-editing The Years Between Us and diving into proofing my wedding series proofs. I’m on track to get those done by December so I can promote them for Christmas. I think that may be my last hurrah I’m going to give my 3rd person stuff.
2025 is meant for new things. I’m going to leave behind the people who have hurt me, focus on marketing my King’s Crossing series, and plan my next releases. Now that I have a diagnosis, I’m feeling better than I have in a long time and I can leave those four years behind me.
I hope 2025 can be the start of something new for you too, despite the election outcome. We’ve dealt with him before, and we’ll do it again.
Take care of yourselves, and I’ll catch up with you you next week!
I didn’t make any progress on my small town series last week, at least, not on my days off. I was silly and reread a standalone I published a few years ago because someone bought it and I was like, “Wait! What is she reading? What did she pay for?” And I really have to stop doing that every time someone reads something in my backlist (the reason, you’ll recall, I’m editing my small-town series in the first place), especially my 3rd person stuff, because there will always be mistakes to fix. I think that’s just the law of being an indie author. But it was worth it in other ways, as I thanked people in my Acknowledgements who no longer deserve it, and it was a relief to just delete the page entirely. One wrote under a pen name that doesn’t even exist anymore (so I doubt she’d want anyone to look her up anyway) and the other was my ex-fiancé who doesn’t need to be attached to anything I’ve done or do. I don’t need to keep reminders of people who have hurt me, even if back then they were important to me. A long time ago I wrote a blog post about this, and I think my opinions have changed. Then I advocated to leave the pages, since those people were a meaningful part of your life in some way, but now I say, change it if you want. Do whatever you need to do to protect your mental health and move on. You can read it here: https://vaniamargene.com/2018/05/31/acknowledgements-and-dedications/
I was also able to update my Also By page in the back and add all my first person stuff. I’m the same person so I thought, why not. The long list looks nice, anyway, haha. I didn’t do anything else with my back matter, though I could have put in a call to action (CTA) because it didn’t have one. I should have, but I was in a hurry, that side project not intentional, and I was mad at myself for wasting time. Oh well, it doesn’t matter since on the way home from dropping my daughter off at work the other morning I decided to stop with the hard sell.
A few years ago, during COVID, I guess, I listened to an author marketing podcast and one of the pieces of advice was to give them the CTA the second the book was done. I followed that advice and the back matter for Faking Forever‘s ePub looks like this:
The end of the story bleeds right into the call to action, and I don’t like it (anymore). I want a reader to be able to sit back and savor the ending of the story, not have my newsletter subscribe link shoved down their throats. It probably still is good advice, to hit them when they’re feeling good about your story, feeling good about you as an author because you delivered on your promise and didn’t waste their time and money. But I don’t think it hurts to give them room to breathe, either. If they liked your book that much, they’ll find a way to follow you, even if that means simply “flipping” the page to see what’s in your back matter.
Anyway, so editing All of Nothing was a side project I hadn’t counted on, but I’ll try to keep my eyes on my series now and get that done as soon as possible. I have a potential beta reading and formatting project I might be helping with that I really want to do, so that’s an incentive to stay on track.
Sometimes I think when I get sidetracked it has to do with how I’m feeling. I was a little lost last week. Just normal social media experiences that can rub you the wrong way or leave you feeling out of sorts. My friends and I talk about this a little, about the need to find connection, but when you’re online trying to reach out, you get your hand bitten off or snubbed. It’s common, and my experiences weren’t great. So, of course, when you get to feeling down like that, it’s easy to start wondering why you work so hard on your books for no reason, blah, blah, cue the violins, right? My mental health has gotten a lot better since my diagnosis, but there are a few things that can still bring me down. I’m not perfect, but things out of my control shouldn’t have that kind of effect on me and it’s something I’m working on. I can log out of Threads or even Facebook, and my books will always be there. Except Canva. I can never log out of Canva, haha.
Otherwise I don’t have much else. I posted on social media today, for the first time in a while. I think I need to keep this tab open, because the graphics BookBub highlights in their blog post can be a good source of inspiration. I was reading this today: https://insights.bookbub.com/bookstagrams-ebooks/. If you need a free place to make a book mock up, even if you just want your book’s cover on a Kindle, you can look here: https://diybookcovers.com/3Dmockups/#
I posted this pic on Instagram. It’s pretty simple, but I forget it doens’t take long to make something like this and who knows who could see it.
I was sent a scam email today that said I need to appeal a Facebook ad because I broke copyright. Anything like that makes you want to take action right away, but there are a lot of scammers on Facebook; I get messages on my Facebook author page and my reader page all the time. Here’s what the email looked like:
It wasn’t sent to my Spam Folder, it went to my Inbox, which gave me pause. But I didn’t click on the link, thank goodness. I checked all my ads first because I know enough if Facebook thinks you’re violating copyright, they’ll take your ads down and maybe even suspend your ad account. I checked my ads, and they were all running fine, so I reported the ad as phishing and sent it to Spam. The things you have to be aware of as an indie is getting out of control, but I was proud of myself that I didn’t overreact and click the link, which gives them access to your ads dashboard (and my ads dashboard is connected to a bank account I assigned for my marketing budget. Needless to say, that’s money I don’t want to lose). So if anything seems suspicious or fraudulent, take a deep breath before freaking out and check things out first.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it in a while, but if you’re looking for a good book marketing resource, Nicholas Erik has a wonderful book on it. I bought his second edition and was sad when he unpublished it because I recommended it to everyone. But, he revised it and released the new version. I bought it on his website but it’s also available on Amazon. This isn’t an affiliate link, I just like to recommend his book because it really helped me see book marketing clearly. If you’re interested, look here: https://nicholaserik.com/books/marketing/ Also sign up for his newsletter. He gives a lot of good advice in there, too.
Image borrowed from his website.
I had to pause a couple of my Amazon ads because even though I knew I was paying for exposure, it was getting to be too much. I’d already spent $29.00 by the 13th of this month, and my sales and preorders definitely weren’t reflecting that. I knew the clicks would start adding up, but I didn’t pause all of them because I know exposure is only the first step in selling books. I boosted a post on Instagram that I made about my Goodreads giveaway, and that was a little over 1200 entries the last time I checked. It will be interesting to see if anyone who wins the first one will buy/borrow the others, but like any promo, it could be months or even years until I find out, if I ever do.
That’s about all I have this week. I won’t be getting distracted by anymore side projects, though I have plenty of books I could read through on a whim. I need to get this series done because I have plans for it around the holiday season.
If there’s one thing I can say about the last four years or so, it’s that I’m glad life didn’t get me down to the point I stopped writing. When I bought those dryer sheets and my life turned upside down, I could have easily given up. I’ve accomplished a lot in the four years I’ve been writing (launched a whole new pen name and will have seventeen titles released by the time all the books in my King’s Crossing series launch), and if you’ve written despite the odds and against life’s challenges, I’m proud of you. I can look back on a long list of books, whether they need a bit of a polish or not, and be proud of myself.
Take care this week. I’m taking Friday off and we’re going to the state park to look at the leaves, then we’re trying a new bar and grill that opened in the town next door. It will be a fun day, and hopefully I’ll be celebrating being that much closer to done on my series.
It seems odd that Mondays come around so fast. My weekends are Monday through Wednesday, then boom, I’m working the rest of the week wondering why I only got through half a chapter. Last week was different as my daughter started her first job and we were getting used to her schedule. Because I wasn’t feeling well for the past four years, she’s eighteen and doesn’t have her driver’s license yet. I take responsibility for that, never feeling good enough to drive with her, and I had to give her rides. So, being in the car on the days I have off will take some time away–I just need to use the time I do have better.
On Wednesday, I went to Best Buy and bought a new Mac. My T was driving me insane and I wanted to replace my computer before it gave out completely. Now that I don’t have to push on the keys so hard to type, I’m hoping some of my carpal tunnel pain will go away, too. My arms would ache after a long typing session, so replacing my old laptop (it was seven years old!) was a must. It’s a little smaller than the one I had before, so I regret getting another MacBook Air and not the Pro, but the images are sharper so maybe that will make up for it. I saved the receipt they emailed me under my 2024 Book Spend as I fully intend to give it to my tax guy as a writing expense.
That leaves me with only one more thing to do when it comes to adulting, and that’s to make an appointment for new glasses. I’ve been putting it off because I’m so sick of doctors, but like finally spending the money on a new computer, I think I’ll like having new glasses since they’re two years old and more scratched up than my furniture (I used to have three cats). I think once I get that taken care of I won’t have to adult for the rest of the year. I’m still trying to find some normalcy when it comes to how I feel. I rarely drink anymore, and that’s helped a lot. I still get nauseated sometimes and overall just feel “off” but that’s probably due to hormones more than anything else, and I’m already on birth control to keep my ovaries steady. Since there’s not much more I can do about that, I have to take each day as it comes and if I’m feeling good, enjoy, and if I’m feeling not so good, stay home and rest. At almost fifty, I could be worse off, so I’m trying to be grateful for what I have.
As far as writing is concerned, I’m trying to get through edits of my old third person series. I’m in the middle of book three (of four), and while I can honestly say I’m enjoying the stories, either my writing style has changed or I just got that much better, but it seems almost every sentence needs some kind of tweaking. I’m taking out a lot that slows down the pace, on a paragraph/sentence level, and then adding more words to plump up scenes here and there and finish conversations where the characters just seem to sputter out. I mean, when someone says, “Have a nice day,” someone else doesn’t just get up and walk away without saying anything back or at least acknowledging it in some way. It was a weird thing I held on to all the way until last year. But while I can say I’m enjoying the stories because I haven’t read them in so long, it’s a freaking pain in the butt and a project I honestly didn’t think would need so much time and work. So, I’m dragging my feet, but knowing it has to be done, and the only thing keeping me going is the fact that these books are going to sound SO GOOD when I’m finished. Could be for nothing–does anyone read third person anymore? I have no idea, but it will be interesting to see what they do with new covers and a little ad money thrown at them. That may be my experiment for 2025.
Book two of my King’s Crossing series will be out this month, on the 28th, I think, and I’m getting some good feedback on Booksprout already. I have a couple preorders for it, literally, two the last time I looked, but I didn’t put them up for preorders for people to actually do it, anyway, so that’s fine. Just passing along the information that my preorders are there, Amazon hasn’t messed with them (yet), and they look good on my Amazon author page.
What am I going to do for the rest of the year? Well, get my old series done ASAP. I’d like to promote it in December if at all possible, and then I’m going dive into a standalone that I wrote a couple years ago. I read through it once since I wrote it and made some notes on what needs to be fixed. Add more chemistry between the characters, fix a few inconsistencies, that kind of thing. I have him wearing jeans when he would never wear jeans–he’s just not the type. Now that I know most (hopefully all) of my writing ticks, like overusing words like “with” and “where” “for” and “from” and dialogue fading off into the sunset, I’ll be able to whip that book into shape pretty easily (as easily as 109k words can get whipped into shape). Don’t know if I’ll find a beta reader for it or not. I love my coworker and value her time but in the end she doesn’t give me the real feedback I need to make the story better. After working with someone who backed out of reading my trilogy last year (when I had given her so much of my time, too), I kind of soured on working with anyone, as detrimental to my career as that may be. I don’t think too many people really admit that they write, package, and publish their books all their own because being a one-stop-shop has a bad reputation, and rightly so. It takes a village to raise a child, and it also takes a village to publish a book. Too bad sometimes my village resembles more of a ghost town these days. Not a whole lot you can do about it either, especially since paying for services doesn’t mean you’re going to get what you pay for, or anything at all.
I sound like I’m whining, but I think it’s a reality for a lot of authors now. We can try to make connections and friends, but the sad truth is, people are too busy. Too busy with life, too busy working on their own stuff, too busy with the friends they already have. I should probably be grateful I can do so much on my own because I know there are authors who can’t and I feel sorry for anyone who has to wade through the scammers and the people who aren’t qualified to offer the services they offer to find real help. Anyway, so that’s what I’ll be doing for the last three months of the year, besides living it up on my birthday on Thanksgiving Day. My ex-husband said he’d come over and cook dinner so I wouldn’t have to, so I may just end up sitting around drinking Prosecco and eating chips and dip. I’ll definitely have stuff to celebrate, like my King’s Crossing series finally out into the world, my old series hopefully done by then, saying goodbye to all my undiagnosed health issues. 2024 was rollercoaster and I threw up a few times, but maybe I can get off this crazy ride in 2025. I would welcome solid ground under my feet.
My Goodreads giveaway is losing steam, but as the days go on and more giveaways are added to the list, that’s to be expected. An author is supposed to do their own promotion after all, but I already tapped out my FB author page, my Instagram, and my newsletter. All I can do now is boost a post here and there, so I might do that before the giveaway ends on the 25th.
I think my newsletter signups are getting sick of me as I lost ten in the past week, and I only had a 29% open rate for my most recent newsletter. That’s not great, but since I’m treating it more like a blog than a newsletter and posting more for the public consumption of it, I guess I’ll have to expect people who signed up to react to the shift in vibe and opt out. That’s fine, maybe a little counterproductive since I want people to sign up rather than unsubscribe, but my sales have also dropped which means fewer people signing up from my books’ back matter. I’m not sure what to do about it at this point because it sounds like a lot of us are struggling. The best thing for me at the moment is just to keep my eyes on the end of the year. I would be really disappointed in myself if I didn’t finish editing my series. I was the one who started it in the first place and doing the relaunch over the holidays would be perfect.
That’s about all I have for this week, but I’ll leave you with a warning. You know I keep my opinions on AI to myself. I’m careful how I use it and use it very little. I like to brainstorm with Al about blog subject lines or hooky tag lines for ads because I’m bad at that, but I’ve never used it to generate photos or write for me. I’ve never written a blog post with it, never used it to edit my books. Mostly because I’m not interested–the things Al does I can do myself, and an AI photo generator doesn’t offer anything you can’t find on DepositPhotos. But if you do use it to generate pictures for a blog post, aesthetics, ads, social media graphics, or for your book covers, or if you use ChatGPT to edit for you or write portions of your books, you need to be careful because not everyone is going to be so blasé about it. There are witch hunts online, a lot of it on Threads, some in FB groups, and there’s a list going around of authors who use it. I don’t condone this list (like my lovely governor says, Mind Your Own Damn Business) and don’t know any of the authors on it, so far, but all it takes is one person to add your name and that will never go away. (Screenshots are forever, my friend.) That’s not the kind of word of mouth you want.
I know the writing community is small, I know that in comparison the reading community is a thousand times larger and maybe you don’t care what other authors think of you so long as readers like your books. That’s okay. I don’t bow down to the author community, but I have been ganged up on on Twitter, and it’s brutal on your mental health. There’s also a list of authors going around who are against AI, but I didn’t put my name on it. I started adding a disclaimer to the copyright pages of my books saying I don’t use AI for my book creation, and I’ll continue to add that, but I do it for myself and my readers. I’ve never done something just because someone else has told me to, and I don’t expect you to stay away from AI if you like using it just because I said so. But if you keep your ear to the ground, you’ll know this subject is hot and it would be bad to land on the wrong side.
I use this blog to pass around information I hear and hopefully help you make informed choices about your own book business. I’ve been on social media for a long time and this AI hate is on a level I’ve never seen before. It’s best to stay away from it or don’t announce it if you’re using it (though that can be for naught as people are pretty good at spotting it). I personally don’t care either way, this blog is a safe place for everyone, but I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention it because like I said, this is a level of hate I’ve never seen before and the mob mentality oftentimes leaves me speechless.
I hope you have a good week, and I’ll see what kind of progress I can make on my series. Hoping to get book three done would be asking way too much, but if I could get close, I would be very happy.
So, there have been a couple things going on that just make me shake my head because I have too much going on to care, and while I do take interest in most things, if my energy allows it, I’ll be patient and see what happens.
I guess there’s been some issues with the founder of WordPress and WP Engine who uses the… I want to call it software, but I guess it’s technology? I’m not really sure, but I did a little snooping and my website isn’t run by WP Engine, it’s through WordPress directly. I don’t know how any of that is going to affect anyone’s websites now, and it seems a lot of people are panicking and pulling their websites that use WordPress technology down and going with something else. From what I understand, a lot of websites are built using WordPress, but are hosted by someone else like GoDaddy. I never went with a different host, even knowing I wouldn’t have all the flexibility, but I never minded. My website and blog does what I want it to do. Not to mention, I’m not very tech savvy, and fighting to create a website didn’t interest me. (Not back then. I was too busy trying to figure out how to format my freaking books!) Anyway, since the issue is really with the founder of WordPress and the people who run WP Engine, I think I’m safe. Listening to my gut has paid off before, so I’ll wait it out and see what happens. Moving my websites somewhere else, or breaking off from WordPress hosting and going with a different host sounds like a headache and nothing I want to tackle. I did export my blog posts from January of 2018 (the first two years I blogged are a disaster and that information is probably useless anyway) up until now. That would be a lot of words to suddenly lose, and maybe it’s a good idea to do that once in a while anyway. TechCrunch summarized what’s been going on and you can read it here: https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/27/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/
I’m not actually sure what I expected, but I’m grateful there seems to be interest.
I knew this giveaway would plump up my “want to read” numbers, and that’s cool, too. I don’t do much with Goodreads, haven’t even bothered to change the old covers on some of my books. I don’t know really, if Goodreads is safe for an author who reads, and at this point, with all my health issues and other things going on, I don’t think I want to add another platform anyway. Alessandra Torre is a huge Goodreads cheerleader, and you can read (and watch) how she uses it here: https://www.alessandratorreink.com/home/2017/5/12/grpromo
She has quite a bit of information out there on how to use Goodreads, just search “Alessandra Torre how to use Goodreads,” and a lot of information comes up. I don’t read as much as I should, so maybe Goodreads isn’t that great of a place to hang out if you don’t, but I don’t think once a reader becomes an author that it’s an author’s place to review another author’s work. I see authors all the time who defend their right to say what they want, but then when they get an “honest” review of their work, they can’t handle it. Don’t be in the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat is all I have to say to that. You all know my stance. Stay out of reader spaces (even if you are one!). Leave people alone. Go write your next book. There are actually some things you don’t have to tell anyone about. Imagine.
Now that I got my sarcasm out of the way for today, no, I don’t think I plan to be on Goodreads all that much, even during/after my giveaway. This was mostly an experiment in paying for exposure, and I have no idea really if it’s even worth it. I have Amazon ads going to my series, and I’m getting quite a few clicks and lots of impressions, but all my books will be released into KU and that’s what my readers will wait for. I’m not running ads hoping for preorders, even though I dropped the preorder price on books two and three. Book one is still .99 and probably will be until the last book comes out in April. I’m trying to be pragmatic about this release, realistic, and even though they call it “rapid release” I know I won’t see any real movement until they’re all out.
I have a lot of thoughts on paying for exposure, and maybe I’ll do a blog post about it sometime. For now, let’s move on.
Actually, there’s not a lot to move on to. I’m still editing my series, and I did get done with book two on Friday after our trip to the zoo and the junk market and started book three while I was at work on Saturday. Book two needed some work, some plumping up, and I know why. That was the first book I wrote and I remember thinking it was too “quiet” to carry a series and I decided to make book two book one. Now that I’m reading them with fresh eyes, I think book two would have been an okay book one, but I hadn’t gotten into the flow of the characters and I added 1500 words to book two. That took a little time, and I added a lot to the ending because it didn’t quite make sense. I think I learned a lot writing my King’s Crossing series, handling all that plot and all those details. I have a better memory than I did when I wrote my Rocky Point series, or maybe I was just in a rush to publish and didn’t work on them as hard as I should/could have. Hard to say since I published them in 2018, and that feels like a lifetime ago now. Still, never too late to fix a mistake, and these will sound good when I’m done. I’d like to celebrate their rerelease since some authors do that, maybe do a couple of lives if I can get up the courage and I’ll order some author copies to give away. I know I need to start being more active online, engage with people more. I’m not sure why I have problems with it. Hiding behind a screen is the easiest way to communicate with people.
That’s really all I have left. My ex-husband has a key to my apartment (it was ours before we divorced and he kept his in case of an emergency) and he does weird things like come over while I’m working and drops off bags of garden veg he gets from somewhere. He did that a couple weeks ago and I put the squash on my balcony, jokingly referring to it as my fall aesthetic because I’m terrible at decorating. So, you all know I feed the squirrels and one of them decided to turn my fall aesthetic into a snack. She completely ripped the guts out of one and scattered them all over the balcony. But, she’s enjoying it, and I’ll let her have at it until there’s nothing left.
I took the picture through my screen so I wouldn’t disturb her.
That’s all I have for this week. I’m praying for everyone who was affected by Hurricane Helene. I’ve seen some pictures and read on Threads what’s been going on and I feel for everyone who has suffered. My thoughts are with you.
I thought I would switch it up a little because all I did last week was housekeeping. I put the rest of my King’s Crossing books on preorder. I have the paperbacks to books two and three scheduled, but Amazon doesn’t let you schedule out that far in advance, so I’ll have to go back at the end of December and schedule the other three paperbacks. It’s fine, I was just hoping to get it all done at once. But, they’re all up on preorder besides book one that’s live, and they’re pretty to look at. I still have to write a series blurb. It’s on my to-do list, but I’m slowly checking things off so I should be able to get to it soon. You can see them here. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CX7SFGB5
Something else annoying is I had to contact Goodreads, again, and ask that all my books be moved over to my “real” profile as opposed to my fake one. My fake one doesn’t have dots between my initials like my pen name, but my “real” profile does, as that’s some kind of Goodreads requirement. I have to contact a librarian to have my books moved over every time I publish, and it’s mildly annoying. They’re pretty good about getting to it in a decent amount of time, though, and they were moved over the day I posted in the Librarians Group. It’s not really a big deal besides the fact I have to do it at all. This time I had an extra run around and had to verify my email address before they would let me post. That took me a few extra minutes because I didn’t know how to do that. If you’re ever asked to verify your email, this is what you do:
Click on your profile picture in the upper right.
Go to Account Settings at the bottom of the menu.
Then click on Edit Profile.
Once you’re there, click on Settings.
After Settings you’ll see where your email is. If it’s not verified, click the link and it will send a verification email to your email address.
Mine is already verified, so it doesn’t show it anymore, but if yours isn’t you might wanna go ahead and do it while you’re thinking of it. It might save you some issues in the long run, or trying to find this post for the instructions later.
How to do it was buried, as you can see, and Googling the instructions wasn’t that helpful, but it did at least send me in the right direction.
Anyway, so I verified my email and posted in the Librarians Group to move my books over, which they did.
Because of a crappy post on saw on Threads, calling Amazon criminal for charging for Goodreads giveaways, I set one up, almost out of spite. I’ve seen some really asinine things over there lately, and I realized it’s because a lot of those authors are new and don’t remember how things used to be (if you’re new as well and want to read some of the scammy things authors used to do, read here: https://vaniamargene.com/2020/05/04/scammers-gonna-scam/), don’t know how things should be done, or think they should be getting something for nothing. The Goodreads argument is valid, I can admit, considering they used to be free, but newsletter promo sites like Written Word Media, E-reader News Today, Fussy Librarian, et. al. have always charged, so when Amazon said Goodreads would start charging, it wasn’t that much of a surprise. I’ve heard conflicting stories of how effective they are, but at $119 USD, it wasn’t that costly of an experiment and I didn’t have to use any of my free days. So, I’m giving away 100 ebook copies of Cruel Fate, hoping to build some buzz for the series.
I didn’t realize you had to choose between ebooks and paperbacks, and I mistakenly ordered five author copies of Cruel Fate thinking I would need them for a mixed giveaway. So, now I have five paperback books coming, but maybe I’ll just run a giveaway on my Facebook author page in conjunction with the Goodreads giveaway and see what happens. I could have canceled the order, but I didn’t see the harm in having some on hand. The giveaway goes from September 25th to October 25th, which is good timing since the second book releases October 28th.
I’m still editing my A Rocky Point Wedding series, getting close to being done with book two. I took a couple days and read book four for pleasure (Autumn and Cole are my favorite characters in the series), noting some of the changes that would need to be made, mostly tightening up prose. I have three and a half chapters left of book two, but it’s a lot considering each chapter has about 7,000 words in it. I don’t know what I was thinking, chopping it up that way, but I do remember back when I wrote in 3rd person I didn’t break up my books until the editing phase. If I ever write 3rd person again, I’ll write the chapters in as I go. Switching to dual 1st person didn’t leave me a choice, so maybe writing in chapters would be more natural for me. I don’t mind working and reading in 3rd after so many years writing in first, and once I’m doing editing these, I’ll continue on with my “break” and read a few more books I’ve been putting off. Because once I go back to writing 1st person, I’ll stay in that lane for a while.
As far as personal things go, I’m taking Friday off work and going to large zoo 45 minutes from here with my sister and my daughter, and after that the fairgrounds in Fargo, ND is hosting a junk market. I love poking through antiques and stuff. There’s a fee to get in, unfortunately, so we’ll be paying to browse, but it will be nice to spend the day outside in cooler temperatures. It will be a long day for me as I’m still not used to doing so much all at once, but hopefully I feel okay and I’m very much hoping book two will be done by then so I can start on book three on Saturday.
So, things are moving along. I also started some Amazon ads on my series hoping to get some exposure. That’s all it is right now since preorders are usually a waste for me. Readers just wait until they’re available in KU, and I know that, and that’s fine. I very much know that every click on those ads is for exposure (I’ve only had one person read Cruel Fate in KU since release so far), but sometimes there’s no other way. Once I get a series blurb down I’ll create a FB ad for it too. Those clicks are usually cheaper anyway, but I need a good series blurb and tagline or the ads won’t do anything. I learned with my FB ads for my rockstars that you need a hooky hooky hook or no one will care. But that tracks–it takes a lot to care about anything these days. (Is it still COVID languishing or election fatigue?)
I think that is all for now. In the coming months, since there are weeks I struggle to find anything to write about, I may feature an old blog post that has done well, and muse about if I still agree with what I wrote or if my opinions have changed. I don’t mind admitting if I’ve changed my mind since we all grow and learn. It would be an interesting series, anyway, so we’ll see. Threads throws up different ideas here and there, but a lot of it right now is just Amazon hate, ISBN confusion because people need free ways to publish and ISBNs are expensive in the US, and people wondering why their books won’t sell when they have bad covers. It’s pretty par for the course, really, but nothing I can blog about.
Enjoy your week, and next Monday I’ll let you know if I find anything at the junk market!
I’ve actually had other things to write about lately, which is a surprise as well as a gift, so this week I can catch you up on what I’ve been doing without feeling bad.
Putting up my King’s Crossing series is slow. I’ve done two so far, hopefully three by the time you read this. I’ve been spacing them out because I didn’t know if putting all six up for preorder would anger some Amazon god. They already asked me for proof of licensing for the stock photos I used for book two. They accepted the DepositPhoto screenshots of my account and the licensing agreements and approved my book on the same day, but I decided to wait a couple days between that approval and book three. That happened on Wednesday, so I put up the third book on Saturday. At this rate it will take me a whole week to get everything up on preorder, which is silly since the first book is scheduled to go live on Monday, uh, today. I can’t even do anything until they’re all available in some way, can’t run ads and I haven’t really posted anywhere the first book is close to being released.
With a series, it’s a double-edged sword. You want people to know your books are coming out, or have been released, but few readers will dive into the first book before they know a series is complete and well, I don’t want them to because I know read through is where the royalties and happy readers are. In fact, someone on Booksprout thanked me for putting all of them up to read. I told her, of course, I don’t know how a reader would read them any other way. I’ve talked a lot about series before, so I’ll leave it there, but for me I can’t do anything until I have all the links. Until they’re all showing up on my Amazon author page. Then, and only then, will I start paying for traffic.
I did a crazy thing, too, and started re-editing my A Rocky Point Wedding series, a 3rd person series I released back in 2018. I had a friend say she read them, then someone else was reading them in KU not long ago, and I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I knew they needed work–I’ve learned a lot and have gotten better at self-editing in the six years since I’ve published them–so just to keep myself from going insane, I decided now would be a good time. I have the time while my King’s Crossing series is releasing and if I can get them done by December, I can push them hard because they take place around Christmas. I’ve already finished book one, and I estimate each book is going to take about two, maybe three, weeks. One week, possibly a week and a half, to do the initial edit, then another week to read it again to make sure what I fixed makes sense. These books are shorter, about 75k words on average, and that helps too, since most of my first person books hit 100k. I really like this series and I’m having fun.
I’ll take the opportunity to freshen up the insides, formatting-wise, and I can update my author bio and my ALSO BY list. I figured it can’t hurt to put my pen name books in the backs and I’ll direct people to my VM Rheault website just for kicks since I didn’t have a call to action (CTA) in the back matter anyway.
All in all, it shouldn’t take too long, maybe be done by the middle of November, then I can hype them up a little bit longer and take the rest of the month off, and December too, for a break and not think about book things during the holidays.
When the first of the New Year hits, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have a standalone that needs editing, so I can put that up after my King’s Crossing series has been released. Do you want to see the cover? I have a concept done already. Wait. What? Am I redoing the covers for my Rocky Point series? I’m glad you asked, because, yes, I am! I mean, yes I did. I am very sorry to say, as much as I loved, absolutely adored, looking for couples to help my friend Melody with her covers, I just couldn’t do it anymore, and breaking with the brand I was building under my Vania Rheault name, decided to go with single characters. Which actually turned out because of what the titles are. You’ll see for yourself.
Unless Amazon thinks Autumn is showing too much cleavage, I’ll finally be able to run ads to these. My ads were always blocked before because the characters were showing too much skin in bed.
Quite a change, but I think they look sleeker, simpler, and more angsty than the original covers. I may explore different fonts since I know the title isn’t legible at thumbnail size, but honestly, with the product page blaring the title and the blurb, I’m not sure how much difference that makes.
Hopefully the new covers and edit will draw readers in. Surprisingly, I don’t think read-through is too bad, though in book one I did catch quite a few typos and an inconsistency that I couldn’t believe I let slip by me. Editing book two will keep me on my toes because it follows the same timeline as book one. I remember when I was writing them that I needed more time, in the stories, I mean. There are four books that take place over two weeks, and the only way I could find the time for all four was to write book one and two during the same timeframe. Then three picks up the timeline and book four finishes out the two weeks. But I’ll have to double check all the characters and what they’re doing in book two line up with book one.
So, that’s what I’ll be doing in the next couple of months. While I’m working on these, I’ll try to remember to give my King’s Crossing books some love because I get way too focused on the current project at hand. I’ve always been this way, never stopping to enjoy the work I put into a book, but for some reason, I’m going to be absurdly proud of my A Rocky Point Wedding series when they’re all fixed up, and I may order some authors copies to give away at Christmas.
That’s about all I have going on here. It might sound like a lot, but I’m still taking the time to relax a bit and I’m watching A Discovery of Witches on Netflix. I already watched it once, but I liked it enough to watch it again. As far as health stuff, I wrote one last blog post on my mental health blog. Since I stopped drinking in June, I haven’t had nearly the anxiety and it’s difficult to write about anxiety if you’re not experiencing it. I still get nervous sometimes, that this is how I’ll feel for the rest of my life, but when the best of the best says, “It is what it is,” there’s not a lot that can be done. I won’t get into it anymore here. If you’re interested in that update, you can look here: https://chaoscoffeeandconfessions.blogspot.com/2024/09/nothing-good-in-good-situation.html
I might still write on it from time to time, to explore how I feel and what I’m doing. I’m trying to move forward the best I can, working on my books, trying to remember that it’s okay to take a break. I don’t think I’m going to be as hardcore in 2025 as I used to be. Things have changed, and I’m tired. I have my books figured out until August, and I need to find the fun in writing again. I have an idea for another standalone, about a woman who’s sister was involved in a kidnapping gone wrong, and my main character happens to fall in love with the boy’s father. I even have the cover for that one almost done, and I know I want it to be dark. Like depression, death, heartbreakingly dark. It might just be the thing to keep my spirits up because, like a lot of people these days, life has been kind of dragging me down.
Anyway, enough of that. There’s no point in wallowing. Life is good.
I think you all know I’m on a break. A “break.” I’ve said before after each release that I’m going to take a break. Refill my creative well like everyone likes to say. Rest. Recuperate. Reflect. I say it, and it lasts maybe a day before I’m back writing or editing another book.
Not this time. I’m holding true and actually…. reading. Watching a show on Netflix.
It’s weird. Quiet. Not all together pleasant.
The shadows of the urgency are still there. On Tuesday night I had my ex-husband and my sister over for dinner. Knee-jerk reaction to be annoyed my evening was gone, but then I had to remind myself that I’m not writing. Not editing. Not plotting. My sister stayed and we played Life with my daughter on her Switch. We played two games and my sister asked if we were going to play another. It was about 8:00pm. Everyone is used to me ending an evening before it practically starts and they fully expected me to say “No, I’m done.” I surprised everyone by saying, “Yeah, one more game.” Because…. I’m not writing. Not anxiously waiting to get back behind my keyboard to write another 1,000 words before bed.
Next week we’re going to a town forty-five minutes away to poke around and that night my sister and I are going to see Deadpool. A whole day, gone. Again, a knee-jerk reaction to be annoyed but I didn’t even have to remind myself I’m not writing to shake it off. Because, as surprising as it may be to you and to me, I want to do those things.
So I’m in this odd between space where I’m still blogging, still scrolling Threads for book news, still making graphics in Canva for what little marketing I do, but not writing or editing. Give & Take is scheduled to be a in a promotion soon, so this weekend I have to make graphics and write up a draft for my newsletter/blog. I did the cover for the next book I’m going to work on. It’s not set in stone–my covers go through a lot of changes before I hit upon the one I like best–but I like looking at it.
I don’t think it’s all because I’m feeling better or that I’m in the stages of acceptance that this is how I’m going to feel and there’s nothing more that can be done. It’s a big part of it, for sure, because I’ve said many times that I used writing and publishing to hide from how I felt. Not drinking much anymore helps, limiting myself to only two or three drinks a month. I broke that cycle and I’m feeling calmer and more serene than I have in a long time. Perhaps it’s a stepping back and wondering what I want from writing, because at this point I’m not sure what it’s given me or if I want to keep it.
I mean, I’m grateful it was there to hide behind. I don’t think anyone would resent a safety net. Writing, publishing, and the writing community gave me a place to go when the people in my life were tired of putting up with how I felt and how it affected me. (And I’m not stupid or naïve–I know I annoyed a lot of people not feeling well for so long.) I made a lot of friends, lost a lot of friends, too. I love helping people do their covers and edit and format for authors who are in a pinch. But I turned writing and publishing into kind of a conveyor belt of content, and only because I wasn’t feeling well enough to enjoy the product I was creating. I wrote fabulous stories, and I’m proud of all of them, but I didn’t savor them like I could have. And in saying that, I wonder how much better they could have been if I had. I don’t think I’m the only one who sometimes feels this way about their books. Indie publishing has turned into a rat race of content, not just for me. Like a shark that will drown if it can’t keep moving, indie publishing feels the same. If you can’t keep producing, you’ll sink, and that kind of thought, that kind of knowledge, that kind of fact, can wear you down fast.
I edited my King’s Crossing series while I was getting treatment, so I’m not sure how much better they are, or if the quality didn’t change. I won’t know if I don’t go back and reread some of the things I’ve written before, but I’m not too eager to do that. I recently re-edited my reader magnet and besides some typos and a small timeline inconsistency I doubt anyone noticed, I thought it sounded good. One of my best pieces, if I’m honest, because I shoved a lot of my misery into those characters. Maybe all my books are like that. That instead of my pain preventing me from creating amazing stories, it did the opposite and helped me create characters just as wounded as I was. If that’s the case though, I wonder how writing will be going forward. I mean, I’m not cured. I have the potential to feel worse as time goes on because endometriosis grows and maybe one day I’ll need another surgery to remove it, but for now, I’m feeling better, physically and mentally, than I have in years.
I suppose in the next few months I’ll be feeling my way around. I don’t want to be obsessed about writing anymore, but it does feel strange to have free time. I know finding a balance in all things will be easier said than done, but I fully plan to enjoy the next few months. Fall has always been my favorite time of the year and this year I’ll actually be able to appreciate the cooler temperatures and the leaves turning.
Anyway, I just wanted to share with you. I’m no longer struggling, not feeling like I’m drowning at least, more like treading water and realizing that I can stay afloat. I haven’t been able to enjoy anything for so long, and the simple fact that I can now leaves me reeling at times.
I hope you too, are able to find some enjoyment in your writing and publishing. I know I’m not the only one dealing with issues, mental or physical, but finding joy, no matter how small an amount, is imperative if you want to keep going and not burn out.
September will soon be upon us, and we’ll have only four months left of the year. Appreciate that time because it will move swiftly. Fall is in the air, a hint of woodsmoke and rain. Sip and savor. That will be my motto for the coming months. Wine, life, writing. I hope you can, too.
I have a couple of things to talk about today, but surprisingly, my life has calmed down by a lot. My ARCs have been up since last Tuesday. I was able to upload them into Bookfunnel for my author website and upload all of them on Booksprout too. My reviewers there haven’t forgotten about me, and 41 out of 50 copies were taken for the first book. The numbers dwindle as the books go, but that’s to be expected–that’s how it is on the sales floor, too. Readers will be able to snag the books for a couple more weeks, but I have the first one set to release on the 16th of September. I haven’t put the preorder links up yet, so they aren’t on Amazon right now. I’m going to wait until I delete my links off my author website and the campaigns close on Booksprout. Since my books are dropping into KU after their preorders end, I’m just being careful. This was a big project for me, and I don’t want to screw it up. Here’s my publishing schedule if Amazon doesn’t give me a hard time:
Cruel Fate, Book One, September 16th, 2024 Cruel Hearts, Book Two, October 28th, 2024 Cruel Dreams, Book Three, December 9th, 2024 Shattered Fate, Book Four, January 20th, 2025 Shattered Hearts, Book Five, March 3rd, 2025 Shattered Dreams, Book Six, April 14th, 2025
I’m a little disappointed more haven’t dowloaded off my website. Books 2-6 have about 9 a piece, and book one has 12. That’s not terrible….if everyone leaves a review when the books release, between what I’m giving away and my Booksprout copies, I could potentially have 50 reviews a book. But, I know since these are spaced out, the potential people will forget is high. Booksprout will send reminder emails, and I’ll write blog post reminders, but there’s only so much you can do. If you want to see what I did with my ARCs and the series page I created on my website, you can look here: https://vmrheault.com/kings-crossing-series/
I’m holding true to my resolution to take a break while my ARCs are up, and I’ve been reading my favorite Nora Roberts book, The Villa. I love the story so much and it was a good choice to dip my toes back into reading. After that I want to read Sadie Kincaid’s Mafia series. I got hooked on those snippets when I was on TikTok trying it out for myself, and I have all of them borrowed in KU. You can find them here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSQZPJ6H
Going forward, I’m going to try to find more of a balance between reading and writing. Since I saved up my books and the next standalone I’m going to release is in its editing stages, I feel like I have some wiggle room to actually read, go for walks, and spend more time with my kids while I’m getting this next book ready for publication.
I had another Mayo Clinic appointment on the 23rd, and my MRI showed signs of hysterectomy scarring and the presence of endometriosis. She didn’t recommend exploratory surgery to find out how much (which is the only way to know for sure), and I didn’t want it anyway. So my discomfort comes from nerve damage/scarring/endometriosis. There’s nothing more that can be done unless I want to try an anti-inflammatory diet–that I may look into–and I don’t have another appointment scheduled. I’m welcome to message her anytime, and I will have to next year when my lichen sclerosis cream runs out and I’ll need a refill on my ovary pills sometime next year as well. Whether she’ll want to talk to me during a virtual appointment, I’m not sure as she didn’t mention that, or she could just put the refills through my pharmacies if I’m not feeling any worse than I am now. I mean, I’m not feeling bad, but I’m not feeling good, and it’s disheartening to know that I’ll never feel “normal” again, even though I expected that kind of news before my appointment.
I’m still not drinking, limiting my alcohol intake to two, maybe three, drinks a month. Because of this, my anxiety is still under control, though I do get nervous from time to time. I get a little nauseous sometimes, but that could be from my ovary pills or from the endometriosis, since both cause that. My doctor hugged me when I left and said she was proud of the work I put in to feel better. I’m proud of myself, too, because I lived through some pretty bleak days, but she said she was especially proud I had the self-awareness to know drinking was causing me harm and knew enough to stop. She said some people get into a cycle where they don’t feel good so they drink, and then they feel worse because they’re drinking, and then they drink more because they don’t feel good. I never considered drinking could have such detrimental effects on your mind and body, but I can tell the difference. Now if I have something to drink I sip and savor. Life has changed since my first appointment in February, I’ll tell you that.
So, what’s next for me? I’m going to try to find balance in all ways. My body needs to adjust. I’m still not feeling well from the MRI I had on Friday (ironically, some kind of shot to slow my insides down gave me diarrhea), and I didn’t take the next day off to rest after my appoinments and traveling home so I worked all weekend. I’m going to try to walk more, especially now that the weather will be cooling down here shortly. My stamina is crap and I’ve gained a lot of weight since 2020. My series is done besides putting the books up on Amazon, so that’s a relief, and I’m going to try to find the joy I lost. Writing and publishing was more of a job I hated than something I started because I loved it, but that’s only because I used it to hide from how I was feeling. There’s no reason to do that anymore. I’ll never feel normal again, but I know the reasons why and that’s huge when it comes to my mental health. It’s scary when you’re sick and no one can tell you why, and they don’t want to find out for you, either.
It’s still in the back of my mind to write up my experiences and publish them in hopes of helping other women like me. One website said that women who have vulva lichen sclerosis live with it for 5-15 years before being diagnosed. I had it for four and felt like I was going out of my mind. I had other issues, like my ovaries out of whack because of my hysterectomy, but even so, women’s medical care leaves a lot to be desired, and if telling my story could help someone, then I think I should do it. I’d like to do it soon while all the details are fresh in my mind, but regurgitating all that could be triggering too. I’ll never forget the callous way my doctors treated me. Even lying to me in some cases, and being treated like that is just as difficult as living with whatever is hurting you. What’s sad is that I know people have been treated far worse than I have, and though I’ll never feel normal again, people live with worse pain, conditions, and symptoms than what I have. I have a lot to be grateful for after all is said and done and in the coming months and years I’ll be looking for peace to come to terms with what I’ve gone through.
I’m not sure how this will affect my writing, if it will. I don’t feel like writing and publishing is as important as they once were. I was using it as a shield to hide from how I was feeling, and I don’t need to do that anymore. I can write because I want to. I can publish because I’m proud of the story and want people to read it, not because I need the distraction and something to do to forget how crappy I feel. It will be interesting to see if I can find that joy again, the joy I had for writing and publishing prior to 2020, or if I’m so different now after those negative experiences that I’ll never feel the same way. I did the cover for the standalone I’m releasing next year, and it makes me excited for the book. I know I need the break though, a real break, so I’m not going to jump into editing it. Finding balance will be harder than it sounds, but I have to remind myself that it’s okay to slow down and rest. With as abysmal as my sales are, there’s no reason to rush anyway. No one’s buying and it could be a combination of things, but the bottom line is the books and readers will always be there so there’s no harm in taking some time for myself.
Anyway, that’s all I have for today. At some point I’m going to write the instructions on how to create an ebook cover out of the PDF full cover book wrap. A couple people have read my blog post on how to make a full wrap in Canva and they asked for directions on how to turn that PDF into an ebook cover. It’s quite simple, really, but it will be good to have those instructions out there, I think.
Have a good Monday, everyone! Take care of yourselves, and take a break! You’ll be thankful you did.
Vania Margene Rheault 