Category Archives: author update

Monday Misery and Giving Up (Kind Of)

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woman wearing floral dress under water. text says: when nothing goes your way, you can feel like you're drowning

It seems whenever I manage to figure out one thing, something else pops up in its place–which is the definition of adulthood, I guess. I’ve been feeling better, so of course that means another areas of my life have to go to crap.

Ever since we had to authenticate our newsletters and align them with our websites, I have had nothing but problems. From actually taking down my website for twenty-four hours (thank God the WordPress chat was available!) to the newest disaster–broken links in my most recent newsletter I sent out on Friday, this has been one headache after the next. That SNAFU, broken links going to a scary error webpage–

webpage error message. text reads, your connection is not private. attackers might be trying to steal your information from vania.vaniamargene.com (for example, passwords, messages or credit cards) learn more.

–ended up resulting in me having to upgrade my MailerLite plan so I could contact their tech support. Because of the number of subscribers I have, that totaled a whopping 30 dollars a month, and honestly, I knew it wasn’t worth it. I had a 30% open rate, send once a month, and can’t pinpoint exact sales that have come from my newsletter.

So, I did what I tell you not to do–I made a choice based in frustration and anger and deleted my MailerLite account. I didn’t wait for the tech to get back to me, just exported my subscribers, deleted my account, and said screw it. It wasn’t completely spontaneous decision–I have a link in the back of all my books pointing them to my website where readers can sign up to my newsletter and download my free reader magnet. Luckily, the link was to my website and not a MailerLite landing page. I amended my website, said I would be blogging in place of a newsletter due to issues with my aggregator and that they can still download My Biggest Mistake. But instead of having to sign up for a newsletter to gain access, the Bookfunnel link is right there. Giving away a book like that with no strings is probably crazy, and after a while I may sell it, too. It won’t be in KU, but I can price it at .99 and have it pull double duty as a reader freebie and a book in my backlist if they want it that badly. I have choices, at least, but it will have to stay free on my website unless I want to update back matter for 20 books, and I actually do not want to do that.

I just was so tired of all this stuff–I’ve been dealing with the issues this authentication process has brought on since January, and honestly, I couldn’t take it anymore. The last straw was when I sent out that newsletter that had broken links in it. I can handle things going wrong on my end, but I do not want to look unprofessional or spammy to my subscribers. They trust me to keep their information safe, and that error message when they clicked on a link looked terrible. I never want to go through that again. I’ve been blogging on WordPress for eight years now, and nothing has ever happened like that before. All the links work, my site is secure, and I will never mess with the DNS records again.

If turning my “newsletter” into a blog loses me readers or subscribers, so be it. Dealing with MailerLite and the high monthly cost would have been very bad for my mental health long term. I don’t mind blogging, in fact, I love it, and content is content as far as I’m concerned. I was able to upload my MailerLite subscriber list to my author website and my subscribers will get an email when I blog. If they don’t want that, they can unsubscribe, though I’m not sure why they would. It really doesn’t matter where the content comes from.

A lot of them never opened my welcome email though, so that means they didn’t download My Biggest Mistake, and they can’t now unless they visit my website due to the links that probably won’t work even if they kept my newsletter emails. When I write my first blog post I’ll have to remind them to download it. I probably still will only blog for my readers once a month and that was another reason I was okay getting rid of MailerLite. I wasn’t using it very often and it makes sense to stay with a more cost effective alternative.

Of course, I’m like a lot of people and lying in bed at night will think about something humiliating and embarrassing that happened twenty years after the fact. This sting will stay with me for a long time, even though it was a MailerLite problem and not my fault. It helps I’m familiar with newsletter mixups. I’ve signed up for several, and usually once a month someone sends out a newsletter full of links and five seconds later there’s an amended newsletter sent out because the links were wrong, broken, or missing. My readers are probably used to that kind of thing too, but I was so grateful to anyone who gave me their email address that swallowing this humiliation is going to take some time. The only thing that I am happy with right now is how easy it was for me to turn my author website into a blog and that I had the wherewithal to export my list and add them to my website. I paid for a lot of those with FB ads and people signing up in the backs of my books. Those emails belong to me until they unsubscribe and they can do that if they wish. I’m not going to worry about where WordPress’s emails end up–if when I blog the updates end up in their promotions or spam. My site is safe, and I restored all the original DNS records. Maybe my updates won’t land in their inbox, but at this point, I just want to get back to writing and updating my readers when I have something fun to share and don’t care about the rest.

It was a costly lesson, energy and mental health wise, to learn some things just don’t matter as much as some people tell you it should. It was a relief to leave my newsletter groups–people are still talking and doing damage control regarding their own authentication nightmares, and I don’t need to see that anymore. I don’t need advice on what to share with my readers–I’m a writer and creating content is what I do.

I finished editing the 5th book in my series, and now I’m taking a break before I edit the last. I have a lot of admin stuff that doesn’t include newsletter clean up, such as getting my promo list I started a couple of years ago finished. I wanted a comprehensive list of promo sites that included how much it cost, if there was a minimum number of reviews required, that kind of thing. There are soooo many promo sites out there and one of my goals this year was to try the littler ones to expand my reach. I started up a Google Docs, and I’ll have to check over what I have and see if all the information is still accurate or if I need to update some entries. I also have a lot of screenshots on my phone of promo sites people have talked about in various groups and I want to add those as well. David Gaughran has a list that he updated last year, and you can see it here. https://davidgaughran.com/best-promo-sites-books/ I borrowed heavily from it, but there are a lot of promo sites that I picked up just scrolling around in my groups. Lee Hall also has one on his site, and you can look at it here: https://leehallwriter.com/2021/02/23/a-concise-list-of-book-promotion-sites/ I’ll finish it up this month and make it accessible for everyone.

I also would like to add a tab to this website for book covers that I make that don’t have anywhere to go. I like making them when I’m bored and don’t have anything to do, or if I see an author cover that sucks and I redo it just for fun. Sometimes I’ll do a cover for someone without them asking, and as you can imagine, that never turns out well, and they say thanks, but no thanks. I’d like to put them up, free of charge for authors who need something but don’t know what to do or just need a placeholder until they can afford something better. One of the prettiest covers I ever did was this one, but I’ll never use it because I don’t write women’s fiction.

promo graphic of a fake book called the forgotten bride. a blurry woman, back to camera holding a bouquet of lilies.

Anyway, so I’ll do that when my series is all done and up for preorder. I have a lot of mockups in my Canva account, but I would have to download the stock photos and clean them up enough that I would only have to change the author names and titles. They wouldn’t be high-end by any means, but if an author is just starting out and sees a cover they could use, then it would worth it for me.

I think among that, getting my series finalized, and doing my promo list, I have enough going on. I need to shake off what happened to my newsletter. I’m not the first it’s happened to, and I won’t be the last. One of the last posts I saw before I left those groups is a poor woman who lost 800 subscribers because MailerLite got rid of the free classic accounts and her account and all her subscribers were purged. She was upset, to say the least, but MailerLite told everyone over and over again. It’s why I did the migration in December of last year, though that was just first of the headaches that started.

I think that is all I have for this week, but it’s enough. 2024 has started out with a bang, that’s for sure, and though this might be inviting trouble, I just don’t know what else could go wrong. And it’s really weird, I guess because I posted on a Thursday when my subscribers aren’t used to it, but I posted about author transparency last week and no one read it. So strange. If you want to read my goose egg post, you can look here.

Thanks, and have a good week, everyone!

Author Update: I Finally Made the Leap

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Words: 1828
Time to read: 10 minutes

picture taken by moi when her hands should have been on the wheel. Sunset, Fargo, ND #nofilter

Happy Monday! I hope your week is getting off to a great start, and may that include a bottomless cup of coffee.

Today’s post is more of “what’s going on with me” than anything else. I finally left Twitter for good after a scuffle over a tweet who was calling out authors like Stephenie Meyer and Sarah J Maas (and I think Rebecca Yarros was in there too). The person who tweeted brought race into it, and I scooted my butt out of that conversation. As a white cishet woman who grew up in a middle income family, I know how privileged I am in regard to anything, not just publishing. I’m fortunate I have money to play with ads, I’m fortunate I have a college education. I’m fortunate in a lot of ways, and I have never argued that. I know publishing has a long way to go in terms of marginalized voices. There’s no debating that whatsoever, but I think there’s a difference between hating books that have done well because you think they aren’t well-written and don’t deserve it, and hating certain (white) women authors because of how the publishing industry is. I believed that tweet came from the former perspective when it was the latter, and had I known, I wouldn’t have gotten involved. I’ve always defended authors like Stephenie, EL James, and Colleen Hoover (the vacuum lady, if your nickname can be that disrespectful. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to scrub this joke about her books from my mind: Nothing sucks like a Hoover). We always say that authors aren’t what they write, but then in the next breath we call Stephenie Meyer a groomer supporter because Jacob imprinted on Renesmee when she was an infant. I get tired of the hypocrites, tired of the bitterness. I won’t debate anyone’s experience, and I sure as hell won’t tell someone how to think or feel, so I bowed out. I blanked out my banner, took my personal profile picture down and said in my bio that the account is no longer active. I don’t like that vibe, only because yes, the industry does have a lot of work to do, but screaming about it won’t make change. Attacking people won’t make change. Spewing resentment all over the internet won’t make change. And I see this from everyone. It wasn’t that long ago a white author was editing Rebecca Yarros’ first page, saying what a crap book her Fourth Wing novel is and how it didn’t deserve to be printed. I stood up to her, but right or wrong on my part, when someone is calling me a mad white lady, I’ll graciously concede.

It was a lesson to keep scrolling if you don’t like what you see, and if you’re online you’re going to be tested many times. I joined Threads with the hope that I can stop myself from commenting if something makes me angry (after a week in, there is a lot that makes me angry). I have a low tolerance for stupidity and there is a lot of it in the self-publishing industry. I saw this on FB last week! This is the stuff that makes me mad, and this is the kind of reply that gets me into trouble.

Original post: For all the author's not being paid by Amazon we need to get together and make a move and demand our money. If you are being told they are probably lying to you like thousands of other author's. To find out how many of your books have sold do Google your name plus the name of your books PLUS "in stock" Those words are important because if they are in stock they were paid for by the book store. My reply:What are you talking about? Amazon doesn't cheat authors. If you don't like how they treat you, don't publish with them. There are a ton of other platforms that will sell your book. And please learn where apostrophes go!
name and FB group blanked out to protect the intelligence-challenged.

I get tired of people saying that Amazon cheats its authors, get tired of being called a sheeple because I like to write to market. Maybe my books don’t deserve to sell either, because I write romance, use tropes, and have fun writing my books (and can write them quickly too, oh snap!). It’s just another form of gatekeeping as far as I’m concerned, but I do understand there isn’t room at the table for everyone, and I’ve been eating my meals on the floor for a long time. At least I have a piece of carpet, and I know a lot of authors don’t. So, I’m trying approach my time on Threads in a more positive way–be helpful if I can, be encouraging. But mainly, I joined to keep my thumb on the pulse of the industry–indie pub as well as romance in particular. Like Tyrion Lannister, I like knowing things, like the RWA embracing AI and hosting classes to teach writers how to use it to write romance books.

Romance Writers of America (I believe this is a Facebook screenshot) Dive into the exciting world of AI-assisted romance writing with Rachelle Ayala, a multi-published romance author working on book number 100. Rachelle has been using AI for a year, and she's happy to cut through the hype and show you insider tips--from sparking new story ideas to refining your manuscript, generating scenes or penning compelling market copy. This session is packed with live demos of how Rachelle uses AI, practical advice on how to get started, and a glimpse into the future of how AI will impact writing and storytelling. Visit https://www.rwa.org/chapterevents to lear more and view all the upcoming RWA chapter events offered. Hashtags.

I like knowing things like the cover for Gothikana was made with AI elements and the publisher is claiming “not to know.” You can read the Publisher’s Weekly article here. I just like knowing that stuff because I feel like it’s part of my job as an indie author to know what people are talking about. There was some of that on Twitter too, but there was too much bitterness to wade through to see what I really wanted to see. I could have just started blocking people, but that kind of atmosphere isn’t good for anyone’s mental health. So far, Threads seems to be more pleasant and professional, and that can be a good thing, but also maybe a not-so-good-thing. I do a lot of things that are looked down on, like editing my own books, doing my own covers. Shilling Bryan Cohen’s free ad class when a lot of people don’t think of him as anything more than a hack. You don’t want to be anything less than who you are online because that will always come back to bite you, but I’m going to be a lot more apprehensive and careful about what I share on Threads. Mostly, I just needed a new place to scroll, and I’ll follow people if I like their content without thought of gaining followers. I don’t need them–I’m not planning to try to sell my books on there in any way. If you have an account and want to connect, here’s my profile: https://www.threads.net/@vaniamargenerheault

Speaking of selling books, my Amazon ads are still on fire, and I’m having to keep a close eye on them. Unfortunately, they are doing really well impression- and click-wise, and it triggered my fear of missing out. I don’t want to turn any of them off just in case I’m pausing highly profitable ads. And you really don’t know that until you turn them off and over the course of a couple weeks your sales die. Having FOMO in this industry is terrible. I buy classes, let ads run, join author groups I probably don’t need to be a part of. I probably COULD turn off half my Amazon ads and I would be just fine, but I already compromised and turned off all the ads in the UK, so I’m just going to have to watch them like a hawk. I’ll use this blog as an accountability partner and compare royalties and ad spend on a biweekly basis. I don’t want to do so much of that in real time as I’ve said before, Amazon’s reporting isn’t that great, and a book that looks like it isn’t getting page reads could prove me wrong when the reporting catches up.

I’m on chapter nine of the 5th book in my series. I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish by the end of the month, but getting both done by the end of March seems doable. I should start playing with the covers more seriously so I don’t have a panic attack when the editing is done but the covers are still unfinished. I’m not even sure the direction I want to go in anymore, except I like the frames, and I found some gold filigree that I put together to make them that looks really nice. I still need the men, maybe the backgrounds. I bought a few font duos from Creative Fabrica the other day (thank you Stanee in the Design Resources Hub on FB for posting the sale), and the only way to know if they’ll work is to try them and see. There’s no point to that though unless I can get a template cover firmed up, but I’ve been playing so I don’t feel too lost or like I’m starting from scratch.

Scrolling through my author FB groups made me realize that my email attached to this website wasn’t accepting incoming email. Apparently, it’s an issue for anyone who was messing around with their DNS records. I already knew how to restore records from when a WordPress tech support person helped me get my website back up after I accidentally deleted my A records, so restoring my email DNS records was easy. I was cautioned and was told that my authentication wouldn’t work anymore if I did that, but I reran all the tests, and it looks like everything is still fine. I feel bad that people couldn’t email me for a whole month because I didn’t know, but I’m lucky that not many people reach out to me anyway. Now that I figured that out, I hope all the damage control that I needed to do to get my newsletter and website aligned is over. But, as I’ve said, that is one of the reasons I’m in so many groups. You need that kind of information because you don’t always know what you don’t know.

I’ve been trying to do the things I said I was going to do if I felt better and I do, and I’ve been going on more walks in the evenings. Since I’ve been on my “ovary pills” as I call them, a lot of my negative feelings about going for walks are gone, and I’ve enjoyed my time outside. I guess I was feeling hormonally depressed and those pills have elevated my mood, which is funny because the order that went with my prescription is to “take as tolerated” and I am tolerating them just fine. That’s a good thing–I haven’t felt this much like myself in a long time. I also said I wanted to watch Queen Charlotte, and I have two episodes of that left. I have to force myself to watch TV because it’s not normally something I like to do anyway, but I’m enjoying the show and I’ll be glad to be caught up. I still want to rewatch the first season of Carnival Row on Prime and watch the second/last season. I really enjoyed that too, and I was happy they finished it off as COVID delayed the filming. It will be nice to see how it ends.

I think that is all for now. I hope you all have a great week, and thanks for all your support. I’ve had a lot of people say they are happy I’m feeling better, and I appreciate it a lot. It’s been a long three years, and it’s nice to be excited again.

Until next time!

Monday Musings; Do What You’re Supposed to do Already

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Words: 1707
Time to read: 9 minutes

Happy Monday! I can honestly say that because Mondays are my Saturdays, and I’m fortunate I can work through the weekends and avoid them. I always say I don’t have much to say, but this week, it’s really true. I’m only three chapters into the fifth book in my series, and this chapter is 20k words long. It will take a bit to edit it, but getting through these is starting to burn me out, so I don’t mind going slow. It’s a big project anyway, and I should start playing with the covers when I don’t feel like editing. Mostly for now that’s just scrolling through stock photos and that’s becoming more and more disheartening. I can try a couple of different sites like dreamstime.com and 123rf.com. I don’t mind paying if I know I’ll use the photos. I’ve downloaded quite a few with my DepositPhotos packages I purchased through AppSumo, and I don’t end up using all of them. Because they were so inexpensive, it doesn’t matter, but if I’m going to go through a different site, I need to make absolutely sure I’ll use them and so far I haven’t bothered to hunt and peck through those sites.

It’s been a week and a few days since my appointment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. The good news is she seemed to know what was wrong and I left with a couple of creams and a medication that suppresses my ovaries. This was part of the best news because since I had my hysterectomy in March of 2022, my ovulation cycle has made me feel like garbage every month. She explained why and when she offered me that medication, I jumped all over it. I’ve only taken it for eight days, but I can already tell a difference in the way I feel. The other stuff I’m dealing with hasn’t lightened up, but I knew going in that since I’ve been suffering for so long, there wouldn’t be an overnight fix. My treatment at this point is more of a journey than a destination, and I have a follow up appointment at the end of May. Now that we know what to expect and how to get around, this will just be a quick overnight thing and more than likely we’ll head back after my appointment instead of staying for another night. They were very efficient and she seemed to know what was wrong with me just by talking to me and a quick exam. So, there’s that update. Nothing too new there, but life has been smoothing out for me, thank God. I went and got my teeth cleaned and my oil changed last week, so now that my bumper fiasco is over, besides getting my taxes done (which is tedious because I print out all my book spend and report my royalties to the IRS in case I ever strike it rich), most of the drudgery of adulting is finished for the next little bit.

Even social media has been quiet, not much on Twitter (though I am liking to call it X more and more simply because I feel like it’s a warning to stay away), just some reviewer shaming, some people who are complaining about their books being returned, that kind of thing that I don’t see in my author groups on FB at least. It still is surprising to me how writers think that if they’re querying they don’t have to do anything. Don’t have to edit because an agent/acquiring editor will take care of it, don’t have to market because the publisher will take care of it. Even just today I saw a woman lamenting because she queried too soon (I wonder how she figured that out?), and I mean, if you get a book deal, wouldn’t you want to work your ass off to promote your book? Shouldn’t authors feel that way no matter who publishes their book? Yet it feels like so many writers think all they have to do is crank out 350 pages of brilliance and their work is done. A huge controversy last week (cause by this now-deleted tweet)–

–was over whether querying writers should have a website–some said no, some said yes–but if you don’t want to, is this a hill you’re going to die on? It’s free to set one up. Isn’t it better to have a social media presence before you query so potential agents have something to look at? Querying/having an agent and publishing is a partnership, but it seems like writers don’t want to be a partner, they want it all done for them. Let me tell you, from doing this from the ground up and seeing some of my author friends who have given up their rights to small presses and gotten them back, it’s a hell of a lot easier to be in charge of all your stuff yourself. And this isn’t a debate between querying/trad pub vs. self-pub. This is talking about taking control of your book business in any way you can. To know how to do covers in case you ever want to be hybrid and put out some books on your own, to know how to format, to know the back end of your own website. Knowing how your newsletter provider works. Knowing how to do things for yourself will never hurt you in the long run. Because you know what sucks? Depending on people to do stuff for you. You’re at their mercy . . . if they’re busy doing something else, if your relationship with them goes south, if they simply drop out of the game. Publishing is work. It will never not be work, and I should stop being amazed at the writers and authors who think someone else should be doing that work. Honey, just because you wrote 80k words, your work is only just beginning. Suck it up, pay for a Canva Pro account, and learn how to use it.

I had some super awesome Amazon ads going, so much so I spent 100 dollars in five days. Super good! Not really, because I wasn’t getting the sales or borrows (checking your rank to see if it goes up will tell you if you’re getting borrows. There really is no other way as Amazon sees a borrow as a sale and adjusts your rank accordingly.) Fifty pounds, fifty US dollars. I paused my UK ads because I couldn’t afford it, let my US ads keep going, and they are still rocking forty dollars later. I’m having some good impressions and clicks in Canada, too, but not nearly as expensive at only seven dollars, so I left those alone. Maybe my Lost & Found trilogy covers are working after all. I’m always very very leery of turning off a well-performing ad. Mostly because of ad and royalties reporting. Nothing Amazon does is in real time, and I would hate to shut off an ad only for my sales to die. In fact, they even added this disclaimer to their dashboard: All numbers are based on the time zone of the marketplace where the purchase was made. Please note monthly KENP numbers may change and will be finalized near the 15th of the following month.

text on plain white background says: Dashboard All numbers are based on the time zone of the marketplace where the purchase was made. Please note monthly KENP numbers may change and will be finalized near the 15th of the following month.Learn more about the Dashboard.

Waiting until the following month for real page reads numbers…..yeah…..so you know not to do anything drastic or be ticked off too soon. You should never make decisions when you’re angry or disappointed. Things can change in an instant and you never want to regret anything. Pausing your ads and then restarting them can make them not turn on again at all, ruining the momentum they had before you shut them off. It’s the risk I took pausing my UK ads, but I’m going to have to be okay with it. I don’t have the cash to pay 50,000 dollars for 100,000 dollars worth of royalties. While that’s great ROI, I need to start smaller, and I’m guessing you do too.

I’m also running FB ads, so I’ll always have something going that costs money, but it sure would be nice if I could come out ahead every once in a while. Not that I’m complaining. Breaking even is fine too–I’m finding readers and that’s a good thing.

That’s about all I have going on for this week. I’m going shopping with my sister on Tuesday so I can buy some bookshelves for my living room. I live like a college student (and a poor one at that) and it would be nice to display my books. Now that we don’t have cats, I don’t have to hide them from a furbaby who wants to eat all my covers. She’s ruined plenty of spines using them as a scratching post, so while they will be displayed in a more pleasing manner, they will look well-loved indeed.

Speaking of querying and newsletters and all that, I must have gotten purged from Jane Friedman’s newsletter. I admit I don’t open my newsletters enough, and I missed hers, so I signed up again. She’s a good source of publishing news and also she hosts inexpensive classes with industry experts. If you want help with your query or first pages, take a look at this class hosted by her with guest Allison K Williams. https://janefriedman.com/get-past-gatekeepers/ (This is not an affiliate link.)

taken from Jane’s website

I’ve taken some of her classes before, and if you can’t watch it live, she makes the replay and all the handouts available after the fact, so don’t worry if you can’t fit it into your schedule. Her class with Allison is March 20th, 2024, from 1-3pm. It’s $35.00 and it will be worth every penny if landing an agent is one of your goals for 2024.

I hope you have a wonderful week ahead and good luck with all your endeavors! It’s not too late to hop on my social media calendar. I may end up making one for March. I’ve been able to stick to posting. My engagement isn’t the best, but it keeps my pages from looking so bleak. Nothing works without consistency, so we’ll see what happens in the coming months.

Until next time!

Monday Musings: Ghosted

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Ghosting someone isn’t this cute. (Judy Kao’s Images via Canva Pro)

Since my trip to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, I’ve been thinking a lot about ghosting. Being ghosted and doing the ghosting. I think we can all agree that being ghosted feels like crap. You have no idea why someone decided not to talk to you anymore, why they would drop off the face of the earth without an explanation or a goodbye. Maybe it’s easier to understand if you’ve done the ghosting in the past–we all have reasons why all of a sudden we would stop talking to someone. I have done the ghosting and have been ghosted and neither feel particularly great.

My appointment went well–all seventy minutes of it–a timeframe that I most definitely would not have been granted here in Fargo, ND. She asked me to start at the beginning of my troubles, and I did. She gave me an exam, consulted with a dermatology specialist, and we came up with a plan. It all seemed to easy, too good to be true, but it’s too early to know if it is or not. I didn’t expect a magic bullet–I’ve been suffering for three years. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it took that long to find some normalcy, though she did assure me that I would start feeling better in the next couple of weeks. I go back for a ninety day followup at the end of May, and I thank God I have the resources to do that. I know how fortunate I am that I had the means and support to travel, but it’s pretty sad that I had to resort to that in the first place.

Anyway, so I’m not proud to say I’ve ghosted people, and not just because for the past three years I’ve been dealing with a health issue. Back when I first started writing (and unfortunately, publishing) I was really involved with Writer Twitter, and I met a lot of really nice people and made a lot of friends, some I still have today (though they’re more acquaintances now). But like anything, networking and friendships need to be kept at a moderate level, and I reached a point where all I was doing with my time was talking to people. Culling relationships to make room for the real reason why I was on social media to begin with hadn’t been on my mind, but some of those relationships made it easy. I ghosted one friend because everything was about her. Her books, her writing, her life. Friendship needs to go both ways, and frankly, after a couple of years, I got tired of supporting her with nothing in return. Looking back, I should have been grownup and told her I wasn’t getting out of our friendship what I needed. Being a grownup is difficult though, and I took the coward’s way out. She let me go easily enough and maybe she didn’t care I faded away. At the beginning of our friendship she said she had trouble keeping friends, and I had no idea why, but after a couple of years it became apparent. If someone tells you they have a hard time keeping friends, believe them. Why will come out soon enough.

I ghosted someone else because he was involved with so much drama on Twitter, I honestly thought he was going to drag me down with him. A stalker latched on to him and he ended up having to leave Twitter for good. We corresponded by email for a bit, but I didn’t want my relationships to be about drama, I wanted to talk writing and publishing. I stopped responding to his emails which was probably for the best. I think he dropped offline all together and his last book was published in 2017. He’s unpublished all of his books, which is really too bad. I own all his paperbacks. He was a good writer.

I don’t have a great track record with people in my real life, and I probably sound like a horrible person. I haven’t had the energy to keep up with anyone, like my friend I used to run races with back when I was running instead of writing. We’ve been friends for twenty years, but dealing with my stuff, I just couldn’t. I texted her recently and she gave me a short text back, but if I want to try to salvage that relationship I’m going to have to apologize and explain. I probably won’t have any energy for that until I know this treatment is going to work. There are other people who haven’t heard from me in a long time, people who have emailed me or messaged me on Facebook’s Messenger. I just get tired, and though I know I owe them responses, that’s as far as it’s gotten.

I could argue that I got carried away with my writing and let it take over, and that’s pretty truthful too. Once I started writing, almost ten years ago, I didn’t care about anything else, and still, to this day, no matter what the reason is behind it, I put in 30-40 hours into my books a week. Hiding from COVID and my health issue, yeah, but it’s also just a mental thing. I’m obsessed and not in a good way. I never found balance, and since I started my pen name, it’s gotten worse. All I care about is writing, and my relationships (and health as I’ve gained some weight) have suffered.

But, I’ve been on the receiving end, too, coworkers who have turned friends who have gone, or are going through, their own stuff, just decide to drop off. One coworker is doing that to me now–I haven’t heard from her for weeks, and she knew my Mayo appointment was important to me. Not a “good luck,” or a “tell me how it goes.” It hurts, and I know my behavior has hurt other people. If she ever decides she wants to start talking to me again, I’ll have to decide if it’s worth it. Like the people I’ve ghosted, you break trust, and she’s hurt my feelings. At this point, I doubt I’ll want to talk to her ever again, because what’s that saying…with friends like that, who needs enemies? I’ve gotten along fine without her, and it’s obvious she doesn’t need me, either.

I think the moral of this whole story is we know who we want in our lives and who is expendable. No one likes to think we aren’t important, but no matter what we’re going through, we make time for the people we want to keep close to us. Surprisingly, I haven’t alienated everyone in my life, and I would have to think if that was deliberate or if the people I have kept worked a little harder at keeping me in their lives. Not that I’m proud of that, either. Like I said, friendship goes both ways and I would never force someone to pull more weight than me in our relationship. I try to reach out as much as someone is reaching out to me. So, take from that what you will and apply it to your own life. Mediocre relationships aren’t worth the energy–sometimes it’s easier to be alone. You make that choice about people, and people make that choice about you.

Do I have amends to make? Yes. Will I make the time when I feel better? I hope so. Feeling normal seems like a pipe dream, though, and if I truly do make progress, maybe that will be the boost I need to reach out and at least explain. Then if people don’t accept my apology, it will be what I deserve and nothing less. I’m okay with that.

As far as author news, I realized I didn’t have any Amazon ads going (all the end dates came and went), so I decided to create a few new ads. The auto placement ads do really well for me (which tells me my 7 keywords that I set up when I published and my categories are on target) and I started getting impressions the next day. I also did some for Canada and the UK, but I’m going to have to watch those UK ads–they spend like crazy. I did ads for the first in my Lost & Found trilogy and the first in my rockstar trilogy. Read through really is the only way you can make any money if you’re spending money on ads.

I did the new Sponsored Brand ad for my Lost & Found trilogy, where now you have to choose a graphic to go along with your books. This is how the display looks in the ads dashboard. I don’t know how it looks in the wild, as they say, and I doubt I’ll bump into my own ad.

I was surprised they suggested comparing your books to others’ because with the Sponsored Products, you can’t mention other authors in your ad copy text (that I’m aware of, correct me if I’m wrong here). I’d already bought the graphic from DepositPhotos for a TikTok video I didn’t end up creating, but I think it fit perfectly with the background I chose for my books (I think they are both LA at night). We’ll see if they make any headway. I think the covers are working better, but I don’t read through my reviews to see if the edits are making an impact. I may not know that anyway as I never had a negative review saying my writing sucks. Here are my stats for this ad:

The left column is impressions (20,321), the 2 indicates clicks, the $1.44 is spend and the 209 is supposedly the page reads in KU that that have been attributed to the ad (though I’ve heard that’s not accurate). I’m not sure why I’m spending so much for a click–either I forgot to change the default bid, or I forgot to change the bid to dynamic down only. Either way, I’m going to have to keep an eye on it so it doesn’t get out of control. I don’t mind spending money as long as I come out even or ahead, but I’m also running FB ads and those use up a lot of money too. I like seeing the impressions though, knowing I’m getting my name out there. At the end of the day, it’s all you can really do.

As far as my February social media posts go, I need to backtrack for Saturday. I missed because I used all my time to edit after my trip. I finished book 4, but book 5 is going to need a lot of work. I wrote quickly, used a lot of garbage words, and FFS, I have a 90k book and only 11 chapters. These chapters are long, and if I remember right, one is over 20k words. I’m not going to change that during editing, that was definitely a deliberate choice on my part and it’s too late now. But I think I’ll be using up the rest of the month to get this book done. Even longer, maybe. Tedious no matter how I’m feeling.

That’s about all I have for this week, though I suppose it’s enough.

Have a great week!

Monday Author Update: Sweet Nothings.

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Words: 1757
Time to read: 9 minutes

Happy Monday! Well, I hope it’s happy for you, but if you’re not a full-time author, by the time you read this, you’ve probably guzzled a gallon of coffee and you’re sitting behind your desk at work wondering why you haven’t won the lottery. I know, I’m such a downer, but that’s life. I was scrolling Facebook yesterday and bumped into this motivational piece of perfection….

I don’t know why stupid stuff like that makes me laugh, but it does.

Anyway, not much on my plate this week besides going to Rochester, MN on Tuesday for my Mayo Clinic visit that’s scheduled on Wednesday afternoon. I’m fortunate we’re having a mild winter and I don’t have to worry about blizzards. Over the past three years I’ve talked a lot about how icky I feel, and I’m trying not to get my hopes up. This is an old subject, so I won’t waste any more time on it. I’ll be sure to update you next week, though, and hopefully I’ll have some good news to share.

I’m proud of myself and I’ve been doing the prompts that I made up for the February social media content calendar I shared with you last week. I don’t mind talking about myself, but I was at a loss of how to do it. The prompts help, and I’ll schedule posts for when I’m gone. The Canva scheduler makes that easy and I post to my FB author page and to my IG page. The algos don’t know who I am so I don’t get many likes or comments, but if I can teach them to know who I am (again), maybe that will change and I can start building my following (again).

Here it is if you missed it last week. It’s never too late to start posting.

I’m more than halfway done editing book 4 in my series. It’s slow going, taking out all the whens, whiles, and withs and some becauses. I definitely took the easy way out when I wrote these, and I’m still layering in feelings, emotions, and descriptions into the scenes. This book isn’t too bad. I’ve only added 1,000 words so far and I have 4 chapters left. I won’t get it done before my trip, as rewriting takes a long time, but I’m hoping to get all of them done by the end of March. I still have to do covers, and I wish I could afford to source my stock from a site that wasn’t DepositPhotos. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there and right now, I’m at their mercy. I think I’ve got the template ready to go–the backgrounds and possibly the title font (though I’m always on the lookout for beautiful font duets). I’m keeping the series logo I made for the other covers. There’s nothing wrong with it. Will these be the books where I start chopping heads off? Stay tuned.

I’m thisclose to joining Threads. I vowed I wouldn’t add another platform to my social media, but I see teaser posts on IG and FB enticing me to join. I’ve exceeded my limits of clicking and reading without having a profile. It’s not because I want to promote my books–IG and my FB author pages are enough for that. No, the posts Zuck’s been teasing me with are what I’ve been missing since Twitter went to the way of X. I need a place for book news. Facebook and the author groups I’ve joined fill in a lot of that, but I had to leave 20booksto50k for ethical reasons, and I left the Self Publishing Formula group that’s hosted by Mark Dawson after all that plagiarizing stuff came out. Losing those two groups hasn’t been a big deal, but I’m seeing that BookThreads could be what I need to fill in the gap. Twitter hasn’t been the same, and I got treated to more BS the other day when someone was commenting on this article:

https://www.theverge.com/c/23194235/ai-fiction-writing-amazon-kindle-sudowrite-jasper

They talk about about authors using AI to get ahead, write faster, crank out more content. I’ve often referred to self-publishing as a hamster wheel, that little furry guy running faster and faster but not getting anywhere. The industry is full of books and when you release a book that sinks the second you hit Publish, it can feel like you do a lot of work for nothing.

I keep my mouth shut a lot of the time now. I’m not popular on Twitter, my views are not well-received, much like Joanna Penn who said in the article she had to step away because she’s an AI cheerleader and she got a lot of pushback for that. I am not an AI cheerleader, but I feel out of place all the same.

I really do just want to make one thing clear–I do not blame Amazon (KDP) for the grind self-publishing had turned it. I’m not denying at all that it’s common, COMMON, for authors to publish 4-6 books a year. And not novellas, either. Full-length books. It’s common. But it’s the KNOWLEDGE that it’s common that can eat at you. You know authors are doing something you can’t. I can’t publish four books a year. Not without writing them and saving them up. Writing, editing, cover design, proofing the proof, it all takes too long. Especially if you’re dealing with a series. Especially if you want to publish something that’s got some quality to it. It’s not easy writing a book full of twists. Half the reason I sat on my series for so long is that I have 540,000 words of an intricate plot that I needed desperately to make sure held together. Only time away could give me that clarity, and it has proven to be valuable so far.

The woman featured in the article turned to AI for help. She’s living off her book money and that in itself, I’m sure, is stressful. I’m at the point where I don’t think I’ll ever be able to quit my day job, and that’s okay, but trying to find time to write after working 40 hours a week is stressful in its own way. I’m not not blaming this woman for letting AI write part of her books, that’s her choice, but the WHY she did it I don’t agree with. She said her readers would drop her if they had to wait too long between books, and I think that is complete BS. Okay, maybe not complete because I do think you need to have consistency when publishing. Even if you train your readers to only expect one book a year. Publishing is the fastest moving sloth there is, and yeah, you’re going to have your work cut out for you if you’re writing a series and need five years between books. That’s why I write my series before I publish them. People binge now, and I just go with it. But rather than turn to Al for help, there are things you can do.

Keep your readers informed. Start a newsletter or post consistently on social media. If you let your readers know what you’re doing, what you’re working on, and when the next book will come out, they will wait for you. Build a connection with your readers. Care about them, and they will care about you.

Recommend other books. Listen, when I was reading that article, I felt her desperation, but in the end you are not going to be the only author a reader reads. It’s impossible. Romance whale readers can read a book a day. There’s no humanly possible way to keep up with that pace. Instead of being scared of being replaced, embrace the idea that books are a community and you are only a piece of it. Recommend other books–you should be reading them anyway–but that’s why it’s important to create a niche. On my V’s Vixens FB page, I post books that are free and in KU and pull quotes from books that are similar to mine. I’m building a readership of the kinds of books I write. If you’re all over the map, your readers won’t know what to read. They read YOU and want to read books that are similar to yours. Make it easy for them. Recommend books that you like so when your next book is ready to go they know exactly what they’ll be getting.

Relax, but not too much. I like rules, and if you’ve read my blog for a while, you know I do. Stick to one genre, know reader expectations. Cover your book to market. Learn an ad platform. But the one rule I have never ever agreed with is to write every day. For some people it’s not possible, and beating yourself up over it won’t make things better. If you can’t write, you can’t. Thinking is writing. Plotting is writing. Sorting through stock photos is, maybe not writing, but you get the idea. Don’t lose your joy, or like woman in the article, writing will be come work and not the good kind. She said after she started using AI for a prolonged time, she didn’t feel connected to her characters anymore, would lose the theme of her books. She didn’t wake up thinking about her characters, she didn’t go to bed and they were the lost thought in her mind before she drifted off. You know what? When characters claw at you from the inside out, that is the best part of writing. When your characters need their story told so badly they don’t let you go. I felt sorry for her when I read that. If you lose your joy, there’s not much to write for anymore.

I didn’t get into with that guy, though he spouted off a few more things about how evil KDP is and how there isn’t an alternative to publishing. Maybe KDP has the biggest slice of the pie, but they gave us the pie. I truly think Amazon gave us opportunities when we wouldn’t have had them otherwise.

That is all I have for this post. I hope you all have a wonderful week ahead, and if you have time, sign up for ProWritingAid’s Romance Week. I always sign up but never watch anything. I still have all the 20booksto50k videos from their November conference. Plus two of Alex Newton’s K-lytics reports. But if you’re interested here’s a non-affiliate link to sign up. https://prowritingaid.com/romance-week/sign-up

Until next time!

Monday Author Update

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Words: 1627
Time to read: 9 minutes

Before I get into my post for this week, I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has given me their time reading this blog. I just posted my 500th post, and I have over 700 subscribers. I appreciate anyone who has stopped by, even if it’s just to grab the directions on how to make a full wrap paperback cover in Canva. I’m delighted, truly, that those instructions have helped so many people, and in doing so, brought their dreams of publishing their books one step closer. I know how hard it is to publish without resources, and I am grateful to be a part of anyone’s journey.

In January alone, my updated instructions have been viewed 235 times, and almost 3,000 times since I published it in the summer of 2022. Thank you so much.

I don’t have an author update, but for lack of anything better to title my blog, there it is. I have the hardest time coming up with “clickable” subject lines. I really struggle with my newsletter, too, trying to sound cute and funny, sexy and intriguing, and everything in between so people will open my newsletter and not empty it out with the social and unwanted promotions. You would think that people would unsubscribe if they didn’t want your mail in their inbox, but at the same time, I think I have to delete something for a whole year before I get tired of it enough to open it up and find the unsubscribe link. Maybe they feel guilty they took my free book and think that unsubscribing will hurt my feelings. What I know of the backend of newsletters now, I actively encourage anyone who has subscribed to my newsletter to click that unsubscribe the second they don’t to be on my list anymore. Because you know what? An unsubscribe doesn’t hurt my feelings, but a low open rate does, haha. Okay, so that’s my intro for this post.

Editing my series is slow going, and I blame two things: I’m already so familiar with the story that it’s a drag to read it over again, and these books need work. I’m at one part now where one character is in a room talking to another character and then boom he’s somewhere else a paragraph later. I need him in both places so having to rewrite that scene is kind of a pain, though, to be fair, I’m glad I caught the inconsistency to fix it in the first place. But still. This is what I’m dealing with and being kind of, I shouldn’t say, but I will, bored, isn’t helpful. I don’t believe in belittling your content in public. I think it’s a bad omen to put derogatory comments about your books online. You never know who will be reading, and if the author him/herself isn’t confident about his or her work, then why would anyone want to read it? I love these books, and I do try remind myself that I should enjoy the editing because once I read the proofs as a final check, I won’t be reading them ever again. Though I complain now, it will be bittersweet to say goodbye to characters I will have spent three and a half years with.

So while I should be trying to get these edited as quickly as possible, it was a nice surprise when someone asked me to help her with her series covers and I jumped into the project with both feet and a big sigh of relief. It’s been a welcome break to scroll through stock and experiment with the fonts and the design. I’ll let her do the cover reveals, and maybe after they’re done we can do a collaborative post about working together and bringing an author’s ideas to fruition. I have worked with enough people by now that I know I would never want to do covers for other people as a side hustle. I’m not a perfectionist by any means, but when you’re doing something for someone else, you want to give them the best product possible. It can be stressful, especially if your skills aren’t there like mine. She knows I don’t do this professionally and was okay with that. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to do my absolute best or that I won’t try to stretch my skills. It’s why I like helping others in the first place. Whatever I do for someone else can only help me and my covers later on.

I finally heard about my car and will be driving a rental this week while my bumper is getting fixed. It will be a relief to get that out of the way. Finding the damage and having to make arrangements to have it repaired has been stressful and just when I cross something off the list and I think my life will calm down a bit, something else pops up. Lately after work I’ve been decompressing with a glass of wine and rewatching Bridgerton, but I should be using those hours to edit my series. I know I can’t give them the attention they deserve if I’m stressed out and tired, but the lack of progress is still in the back of my mind and I truly will relax and celebrate when they’re all done. This is my biggest project to date, and I don’t think I have it in me to work on something so huge again.

That’s really about all I have for this week–I know you’ll be shocked that this isn’t another 2,000 word post. Oh, wait. I had a BargainBooksy last week, and you probably want to know how that went. I probably shouldn’t even bother with posting the results because they weren’t great. I always blame the operator, not the machine, so I’m not sure what quite happened. My cover, even after redoing it, maybe didn’t hit the mark, or the blurb wasn’t that enticing. Whatever it was, I only sold 10 on the day the promo ran and 53 over all for the month of January so far because I’m also running a Facebook ad to it. At .99 that doesn’t bring in a lot of royalties, and I’m counting on read-through to the other books to make up that 35% rate on KDP. This is what my feature looked like in the BargainBooksy email. You can say the model I chose still isn’t conventionally handsome, and maybe.

I’ve seen less attractive men on covers, so, like I said, I’m not sure what happened. Written Word Media doesn’t share the click through rate, so it could be I had many clicks and readers didn’t like my whole blurb. I would hate think that these have already peaked, but if they have, I don’t know how to bump them up without spending a lot of money I probably won’t get back. The book has 90 reviews and a 4.4 rating, so it’s not that. I don’t know. I’ve heard overall that newsletter promos like this have lost their luster, but if that’s really the case, then I’m not sure what indies can do besides picking up the TikTok mantel and forging on. Newsletter promos used to be a sure way to nudge your book up the charts and into readers’ hands. I’ll dig deeper, but I can only afford to experiment so often. Facebook ads are expensive, (I’m not losing money, but you still have to budget in that expense) and I’ve been pouring all my budget into those right now. The one for Twisted Alibis has taken off and it has a lot of social proof:

That ad keeps my trilogy selling at a steady, not huge, but steady pace. I haven’t put the first book on a promo yet. I’m reluctant to do so since they’re selling okay without. Maybe at the end of next summer I can do the first one for free for their anniversary.

Anyway, I’ll report the 90 dollars I spent as a business expense to my tax guy and keep on keeping on. There’s not much else I can do. (Well, there is a lot can do but I need to get a few financial things off my plate first before I can try shoving money at a different promo.)

One of the things I was saying I missed most is going for walks and listening to podcasts. BookBub sent me an email with a list of podcasts for writers and authors, and they segmented them by marketing, craft, industry insights, and author life.

photo taken from the blogpost

Here is the link for the post: https://insights.bookbub.com/podcasts-authors-writing-publishing-book-marketing/

Starting a new podcast is difficult. If you’re like me, you like to start something new at the beginning, but in the publishing industry, old news isn’t always the best news. Plus, if the podcasts have had a long run, there could be hundreds of episodes to listen to. I think I’d like to start a podcast about industry insights, and if I sample a couple, I’ll let you know which ones I like best. As long as it’s above 0 degrees Fahrenheit, I don’t mind being outside, and walking and listening to publishing news is probably better for my mental health than drinking and watching Netflix. I know you need a break every now and then, but as I’ve said, immersing myself in books is what saved me the past few years. If I can get some answers at Mayo next month, I can enjoy all things publishing again instead of using them as a coping mechanism.

I hope you all have a good week, and let me know if you try a new podcast!

Until next time!

How to plan your 2024 (or not).

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green desk and office supplies. text says planning your 2024

We’re already eight days into the New Year, and if you’re still reeling from 2023, I don’t blame you. 2022 was more of a shitshow for me than 2023 was–mostly last year consisted of mental health damage control, not that I did so great in that department. Still, I’m alive, barely, and planning ahead keeps my head above water.

I’m not going to into what I plan to do this year. You already know I’m getting my series ready to go and when that’s done, jumping into writing what I want to publish beginning in the middle part of 2025. I won’t have my series ready for a while yet, and I’ll space the launches out to buy myself some time to write. I’m not in any rush–my rockstars are doing okay and now that my Lost & Found Trilogy is how I want them, I’ll start pushing them. I have plenty of books to market while I get my series finished, and I’m not going to publish them before they’re ready. The insides need to be how I want them and I need my covers to be perfect.

But this is the time of year when people start thinking of all they want to do, and if you’re like me, the call of the PLANNER is like a siren to sailor . . . much too enticing to ignore. You know what I mean, all those cute 2024 spiral-bound, sticker-filled planners on every endcap of every store daring you to be a better person than you were last year.

green flat desk. text says, you don't need a new plan for next year. you need a commitment. Seth Godin

This is also the time of year where everyone has gone over what they did the year before. There are a lot of successful people out there, and their stories (and screenshots) of all they achieved can make you feel like crap. You don’t have to feel sorry for yourself if you run into stories like that, and you can do what those planners dare you to do–be better. Perhaps not a better person entirely (there’s probably no need for that unless you’re a despicable human being and if that’s the case a planner won’t help you anyway), but if you had plans last year that you didn’t get around to for whatever reason, maybe this year is going to be your year. Of course, if you’re like me, every year is going to be “your year” and last year was the first year publishing where I actually felt like I made a little headway in that department.

I don’t buy planners anymore, no matter how pretty they are (and there are some gorgeous ones out there). I don’t want to waste the money or the paper. The last planner I bought was a really cute one covered in cartoon cats . . . at the end of 2021. But the problem I have with planners is that I don’t need one. I know what I want to get done and then I just do it. You might be asking, “What witchcraft is this?” but the simple fact is I like writing and publishing and I don’t need the extra push to get words down or books published. I have a little trouble with posting on social media. I still haven’t found anywhere I like to hang out to talk books–you all know how I feel about Twitter and I’m not going to add any new platforms like Threads or BlueSky if I can’t make what I already have work (my experiment with TikTok was a flop, but I haven’t completely given up). But when it comes to planners, I doubt even the prettiest one would help me anyway. What am I going to write, “Post to Social Media” at the top of every day? Very easy to ignore, especially if you don’t know what to post, which is what most people face. If I want to challenge myself, I can commit to posting on Instagram and my Facebook author page every day and see how that goes. After publishing eleven books, finding content shouldn’t be a problem, it’s just taking a half an hour off the top of every day and “getting it out of the way” but that’s a terrible way to think about it and not at all conducive to enjoying reaching out to readers.

I do have to keep track of some things, though, and what I’ve started doing is buying a large grid calendar from Walmart. It has big enough spaces that allow me to write in the squares giving me a month-at-a-glance view. It’s not elegant, but it gets the job done.

https://www.amazon.com/Large-Grid-Blue-2024-Calendar/dp/B0C3WTDKYB

Sometimes the months are sparse–if I don’t have a release or a promo planned then they’re going to be. Sometimes they’re busy if I scheduled a promo and want to remind myself of when it is so I can set up ads, schedule social media, and send out a newsletter. Authors in my writing groups are putting up their calls for round robins and newsletter swaps. A calendar would be a great way to keep track of all that. I don’t have enough books to join in round robins in addition to the promos I buy through Written Word Media, so I’m not up for doing any of that right now. (Most of the round robins I see your books are supposed to be free and I don’t have enough to put up a free book every month and not enough free days to only do a select few.)

The calendar is great to keep track of launches and things like when I put my book up on Booksprout and when they’ll drop out and into KU, and when my paperbacks go live (thanks to the new KDP scheduler), that kind of thing. It can at least give me quick visual which is what I want.

Planners are good for writing down your daily activities, and if you have a lot going on, then maybe that’s what you need. But if you don’t feel like writing, putting “2,000 words on my WIP” in your daily reminder isn’t what’s going to get your ass in your chair. That is something you’re going to have to figure out on your own, pretty planner or no. I know there are some authors who can’t get anything done unless they have their books on preorder, and if that’s what you need to light a fire under you, then go for it. I think that would cause me more anxiety than anything. When my books are on preorder, I only put them up for a couple of days, long enough to get some ads going and grab the buy-link, and then they go live. I have all my files ready to go. I don’t announce launches until my books are done because you just never know what could happen and I don’t like making promises I can’t keep.

There are a few planners that authors swear by like Sarra Cannon and her HB90 system. You can get the information here on her website: https://heartbreathings.com/tag/hb90-method/, or look at the product on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1603823270/hb90-method-planner-q1-2024-printable

I purchased this planner by Audrey Hughey a couple years ago thinking that I would dive in and change my ways. It looked great and there was no reason why it wouldn’t have worked for me. It’s spiral bound like a lot of daily planners are, and that’s really convenient. The price has gone up a bit, but anything made with paper has, so that’s not a surprise. You can get information about her system on her website here: https://www.audreyhughey.com/ and you can look at her planner on Lulu (she prints there for the spiral binding option): https://www.lulu.com/shop/audrey-hughey/the-2024-authors-planner/paperback/product-p6djwd6.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Honestly there are so many planners out there–and geared toward writers–but only you can decide what is going to best fit your needs and what those needs are going to be to get your butt moving to get your goals accomplished.

If you had a bad year in 2023, you can turn it around. In my experience, success breeds success and the more you accomplish, the more you will accomplish. I think one of the most important things you can do for yourself is to have a couple of accountability partners, but not just anyone. Someone willing to take the risk of making you mad telling you when you’re lagging behind and falling onto excuses. Everyone should have a friend who won’t lie, but sometimes you just don’t want to hear it. If that’s truly the case, maybe find a successful indie whose career you want to emulate. With social media, it’s easy to see what they do. Check Amazon and see how often they publish. Sign up for their newsletter, follow their Facebook author page. Romance authors release frequently. We have to–we have to compete with the output of other authors and we’re fighting against every algorithm known to man. I know releasing so many books last year was one of the keys to my best year. I may never be able to release that many at one time again, but hopefully the momentum never slows.

green flat desk. text says, action is the foundational key to all success--pablo picasso

Whatever you have to do, find your process and do it.

Even if that includes a pretty planner.

My Year-End Recap and What’s Ahead in 2024

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I re-read the blog post I wrote at the end of 2022, and it’s interesting to see how things changed with what I thought I was going to do. My main change was my publishing schedule–back then I thought my rockstar romance was only going to be one book and then out of nowhere it turned into a trilogy. That was a stroke of luck on my part (and for Eddie and Brock who had their stories told and ended up with HEAs I hadn’t planned on) and actually made up the bulk of my sales this year. I have that blog post pulled up–let’s compare.

Books/Novels/WIPs

Number of books written: 3.5
I wrote three and a half books last year, too. I finished Twisted Alibis (I had 58k of it done and the total number of words in that book are 107k) and wrote Twisted Lullabies and Twisted Lies and also, at the last second, wrote A Heartache for Christmas I was able to edit and cover in time for the holidays. Last year, in 2022, I wrote 286,000 words. This year I wrote 340,000. My rockstars are long (the shortest coming in at 92k) and my Christmas romance added to those at 97k. All in all, I had a good writing year.

Number of books published: 4. Wait, no. 8.
I forgot I published my Lost & Found Trilogy in January. That’s three. Then I published Faking Forever in May. I published that as filler while I was writing my rockstars and published those in August, and also my Christmas romance in November for a total of eight books. Sounds impressive, but my Lost & Found Trilogy was written in 2022 and I only pushed Publish. Faking Forever was also previously written and all I did was order a fresh proof and proofread that. My rockstars were the biggest project I completed since pivoting to first person present and I’m really proud of them.

Year-End Royalties: $4,404.19 (This figure will be off by 7 days as I am writing this a week before the end of the year.)

taken from the Chrome extension BookReport

As always, forget about the total number of books there. BookReport crams all the formats together. That is definitely up from the $670.55 that I made last year, and I owe half that to my rockstars and the other half to Facebook ads. Like last year and my disappointment with my Cedar Hill Duet, I’m sad my Lost & Found Trilogy didn’t do better, but that was my own fault–with covers, and more recently, my dismay at having found a writing tic I edited out not long ago. Now that the covers are how I want and the insides are going to be the best they can ever be, I’m going to start running ads to them after the New Year. I’ll report back if I can get them to sell.

As for Amazon ads, I didn’t throw the money at them I have in the past. Last year I spent $112.55 and this year I spent . . . $835.67. Just kidding. As my character, Agatha, in Twisted Lies says, Jesus Christ on a bicycle. I didn’t know I spent that much. I spent $200.00 in June alone, so I guess I better add watching my freaking ads more closely to my 2024 goals. FML.

I knew Facebook ads going in would be expensive (but so can Amazon ads if you’re not keeping an eye on them, sigh) and I spent $1,238.60 (I had to go through my emails and tally the invoices they sent me that I set aside for my accountant, so no screenshots available, I’m afraid.) I actually thought I spent more than that, but I didn’t start running ads until May of this year, and I didn’t crank them up until August when my rockstars came out. I didn’t buy a Freebooksy this year, so Amazon ads and Facebook ads are the only ad spend I had, for a total of $2,074.27.

I had other yearly expenditures like my WordPress fees, my Alliance of Independent Authors membership, BookSprout, my Office 365 renewal, and Canva. I did more than break even this year, and surprisingly I’m ahead by about $1600.00. I’m not going to add up Canva and the rest. That’s just extra fluff I pay for that I would regardless if I was making money or not. I get so much out of Canva (not just covers) that paying is a necessary evil, and I need my Office 365. My Alli membership is just insurance for my author career as far as I’m concerned because I need someone to help me if Amazon decides to think I’m doing something I shouldn’t be doing and suspends my KDP account. I throw money at other things like fonts and my KU subscription, but I behaved myself when the AppSumo deal for DepositPhotos came out last month–somehow I convinced myself the 300 images I still have in my DepositPhotos account is enough. I bought a marketing book and a couple of Alex Newton’s K-Lytics reports, but I’m not going to nickel and dime myself. Like any other *cough* hobby *cough* you spend money. That’s just what happens if you enjoy doing something.

So, my numbers aren’t bad, and I’m finding readers. I think Facebook ads can be profitable if your hook, ad copy, graphic, and your actual book can mesh together into something that your target audience wants. I need to do more research on FB ads and see if I can level up. I have the books to sell.

Website/Blog Stats

My views went up a smidge but my visitors went down, also by a smidge, compared to last year, and I don’t know what the difference is.

I also posted one post fewer and eight thousand words fewer, too. I was so busy writing my rockstars, I think, that I didn’t bother commenting on any of the book drama. I can’t remember what any of it was now, but I’m sure there must have been some. I really just don’t care anymore about authors behaving badly and maybe that’s just a byproduct of dealing with my health issue. I don’t waste time with people who can’t follow through, I stop reaching out to people who can’t be bothered to message me first once in a while. Twitter is still just a pit of people whining because they can’t sell books or get a book deal, but if I don’t keep my ear to the ground, I just do not have much to say. My blog has turned into more of an online journal than an informational blog, but it is what it is. I don’t care if someone is trying to copyright the sun or if a big-time indie is being accused of plagiarism. I just am really tired of people who expect things without giving, but retreating into my books doesn’t give me a whole lot to share, and I would imagine this trend will keep going into later years.

People are still sharing my blog which is great to see. These are all-time stats . . . WordPress changed their platform layout so I had a harder time finding the information and it won’t completely match up with how I gave you my stats last year.

Number of Shares Twitter 5.2K LinkedIn 5.2K Facebook 5.1K Pinterest 4.8K Email 8 Press This 7
all-time stats from december 2016 to december 2023
Posts & pages Views Doing a Full Paperback Wrap in Canva for KDP Print (plus screen grabs) 2,781 Home page / Archives 2,502 Updated! Creating a full wrap paperback book cover using Canva (plus more screenshots!) 2,021 Getting reviews and my second try with BookSprout 703 Adding subtitles to your ebook on Kindle Direct Publishing 304 Another case of plagiarism. My question is why? 267 First Person POV Blurbs: A debate? 179 Thursday Thoughts: Claim your book on ACX and where I am right now. 154 Moving my books to IngramSpark. So. Much. Fun. 153 Keywords for your books. What are they and how to find them. 149
january to december 2023

It’s not a surprise that my Canva how-to posts have the top billing . . . again.

All-time stats Doing a Full Paperback Wrap in Canva for KDP Pri... Published Jun 24, 2021 Views 6.9K Likes 13 Comments 22

I’m glad that post is so useful, and I appreciate everyone who has commented, liked, and shared my blog posts. It means a lot that while I’m struggling I’ve been able to help people too.

Health Update

I still feel like garbage, but I’ve done all I can do on my own and I have to call after the New Year to make an appointment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. I figure I have access to it, I might as well go to the best of the best and see what’s what. They may not be able to cure me but at least they’ll know how to treat my symptoms so I feel better more regularly. I’m going in March while my daughter is on Spring Break and I have a few days I can be gone without motherly responsibilities. I’ll need to save a little for hotel and gas money as the clinic is six hours away from me, but I’m tired of dealing with the doctors in Fargo who don’t care if they can’t throw some antibiotics at you and call it a day. I’ve been dealing with this for a very long time, and I hope this coming year I’ll see the last of it.

What’s next for 2024?

I’ll be editing my King’s Crossing series until I get them done and ready to publish. That’s my goal–getting them edited, creating covers I won’t have to change, and setting them up on BookSprout for reviews and putting them all on preorder. I plan to schedule them two months apart to give me twelve months to write more books. I was deleting some screenshots off my desktop and I remembered a standalone I wanted to write. I should maybe do that before I forget the plot. So, after I get my King’s Crossing books squared away, I’ll be taking two months to write that out. It will be nice to work on a simple project after six books anyway. I’ll need to go slow, it’s twisty, maybe one of the twistier books I’ll do, and I need to make sure I lay the breadcrumbs correctly. After I write that, then I plan to move into Mafia–I even have a plot rooting in my brain–but after my Mayo appointment, if I can get to feeling better, well, even if I can’t I just hope I don’t have to do this feeling the way I do, I need to look for a different job. I’ve been pretty transparent with my financial situation and only my ex-husband’s alimony and child support are keeping me afloat. That will run out at the end of 2024 and I am grown up enough to know I cannot make it on what my work pays me. My royalties are not steady enough nor enough enough (especially after ad spend) to fill in that financial gap. Once I get a different job, I really don’t know how I’ll feel about writing or how fast I’ll be able to still write books. I’m not a seven-, six-, or five-figure author. I’m a four-figure author who shoved 75% of her earnings back into her business. Instead of being scared of it, I’m trying to look forward to it. I’ve been with my job for twenty-three years and I need the change.

But, if we don’t add a career change to the mix, I’d like to publish my series, write my standalone, and write my Mafia books which may be a duet or a trilogy, we’ll see how the plotting ends up. Those won’t be released until 2025. I have one more standalone on my computer that I wrote in 2020, so if I clean that up and package it, that’s four/five books I have on the docket in 2025. After that, I really don’t know what will happen. I would love for my series to take off and I could drop down to a part-time job somewhere (or even keep my current job), but in terms of more books and ideas, after I write my Mafia duet/trilogy, I have two books written of a six-book series that I would like to finish. They aren’t as complicated as the series I’m working on now, and I don’t think they would take me long, I just need to plan out the four remaining books. I’m not excited about the project, though I would really hate to have those two books go to waste. I haven’t heard of the concept before and I think they could sell well. I just need the motivation to finish them. I like thinking ahead, but 2026 is just a little bit too far, even for me. In the meantime I’m going to deep dive into Facebook ads. TikTok did nothing for me short of just making me mad, but I may give it another try. I don’t spend enough time on there networking and commenting, nor am I reading the books that have blown up, and I need to do that if I want to have anything meaningful to contribute.

I always share this quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger: I will always stay hungry, never satisfied with current accomplishments. It’s a lot easier to stay hungry when you’ve had a taste of what’s possible.

Write books people want to read. Figure out an advertising platform that you like, that you’re willing to invest some time and money into learning. Save for a bit if you have to, be honest and make sure your book is advertising-ready. If it’s not, you’ll waste money and all you’ll do is blame the ad platform instead of yourself where the blame would really belong. You are always in control and you do yourself and your books a disservice when you act like you aren’t. Choices can be made and unmade. Mistakes can be fixed. Learn your craft, meet readers’ expectations of the genre you’re writing in, learn how to make covers if you can’t afford to hire out. People are so concerned about being different, but there is value in sameness. People are comfortable with what they know. Saying your book is “unique” or “different” isn’t the marketing spark you think it is. People shy away from change and they won’t try you if they think your book will be too far off from what they already like. Where would your book go in a bookstore? Write for that audience, find a way to push your book in front of that audience once your book is written. Their readers are yours–there’s no point reinventing the wheel. Someone already did that, so why make more work for yourself?

It’s possible to turn this into a career. What steps can you take in 2024 to do that? Stay hungry. Never give up. One day you’ll reap the rewards. You just have to hang on there long enough.

Happy 2024!

books i’ve written and published (so far) since 2020

Thursday Author Update

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Words: 1539
Time to read: 8 minutes

I thought I would write quick update being that this will be the last one of 2023. Next Monday on Christmas Day I’ll post my year-end recap and on New Year’s Day, I’ve decided to take the day off. After that, I’ll post what I want to accomplish in 2024 and fall back into my usual posting schedule.

Mainly all I’ve been doing is editing my King’s Crossing series. I got through number one and added almost two thousand words. Some of the scenes were sparse and I filled them in. That is what is happening with book two–I’m only halfway through and have already added 1500 words. It’s really interesting reading these since they were the first books I wrote when I switched to first person, but not only that, I can tell I pantsed a lot of the plot (she just said what?!). I’m going slower than I’d like, but I have to make sure these are the way I want them to be before I publish. Like my rockstars, I’m not going back to edit them ever again, and though I know perfection isn’t obtainable, I want to make sure they are done to the best of my ability. So even though I said I would like to start publishing them in March, I might not be able to do that. I was hoping to get through each book in two weeks’ time, but there are some chapters that are so long that it takes me days to get through them.

Which leads me to this question: How long should a chapter be?

My most recent chapter I edited was 14,000 words long. There is one chapter in one of the later books that is 21,000 words long, and no, I didn’t accidentally add a zero.

When I started with the idea of dual POV, I didn’t think much beyond that I simply knew what it was, that’s how contemporary romances were being written and that they were selling. I had read books in dual POV like Sylvia Day’s Crossfire Series, and I never thought much about length of chapters. As long as there is stuff going on that moves the plot along, and the chapters are fast-paced and don’t drag, why should it matter how long a chapter is? I’ve read a couple books where the book is “dual” but we don’t hear from the male POV for chapters into the book. There was one book I read that took so long to get to his, I wasn’t even sure if his POV was included and I almost did not finish (DNF). I like the man’s POV more than the woman’s and I always have. I think that reflects in my writing too, where I wouldn’t be surprised if there is more male POV in my books than female. Writing that made me curious, and here’s the breakdown of A Heartache for Christmas:

Sawyer’s POV: 54,114
Chapter one, 1,611
Chapter three, 3,681
Chapter five, 8,152
Chapter seven, 7,266
Chapter nine, 4,894
Chapter eleven, 10,691
Chapter thirteen, 4,354
Chapter fifteen, 10,305
Chapter seventeen, 3,160

Evie’s POV: 43,050
Chapter two, 878
Chapter four, 5,907
Chapter six, 4,355
Chapter eight, 6,302
Chapter ten, 6,772
Chapter twelve, 8,930
Chapter fourteen, 2,750
Chapter sixteen, 7,156

As you can see, I started writing long chapters and never stopped. I gave Sawyer 11,064 more words, but in this case, it makes sense because he was solving a mystery and needed the page time. This also goes along with how I used to write my 3rd person books. I never wrote in chapters, only scene breaks, and then I would chop up my book in editing. I couldn’t think in chapters and maybe I still don’t. I end a POV when it needs to be ended and not any sooner to stay in line with some arbitrary chapter-length rule. Because if you have a POV that needs five chapters to be told, why are you cutting up that POV? It doesn’t make any sense, but then, I guess you don’t have a 95k word book with only sixteen chapters in it. Is there a wrong way? I think the only wrong way cutting up something into such small parts is if the reader doesn’t have time to get invested. Your readers have to care about your characters–that’s nonnegotiable. They can’t do that if they’re not given the time to do so.

Anyway, so when I’m dealing with a 14,000 word chapter where parts need to be beefed up a bit here and there and then I have to go back and read, not only to make sure I didn’t add any typos but to make sure that what I added blends into what was previously there and what came before it, then yeah, the editing process slows way down. Unfortunately. But, on the bright side, I am still loving these books, and I’m enjoying the process. These will probably be the biggest project I’ll ever tackle. I’m not really interested in writing this big of a project again, and I have no idea how these are going to be received. I hope these sell well, even boost-my-career-to-the-next-level well, but these will take a time and money commitment from a potential reader and you just never know. No one wants to write books that no one will read, and there are no guarantees.

As for what else I’m doing, that series will consume all my attention, my every free second, until they’re done. I’m still aware I need to redo their covers too, as the more I read these books the more convinced I am that the covers they have now don’t and won’t do them justice. I’ve been playing with hiring GetCovers to do them. They are inexpensive and after I get my tax refund in February could afford to cover six books, but I’ve heard you get the best results if you find the elements (stock photos) you want them to use. Finding the male models is what takes the longest and if I’m going to do that on my own, I might as well do the whole thing myself. But I have plenty of time to play with that–I just need to remind myself that experimenting with cover concepts is just as important as the editing. Thank God the blurbs are done, though I’ll go over them one more to be sure they sound okay.

Be sure to check next week for my year-end recap. My rockstars boosted me up a bit, so hopefully I’ll have more to report. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas if you celebrate! I’m having my sister and ex-husband over and I’m cooking turkey, cheesy hashbrowns (we had mashed potatoes and gravy for Thanksgiving), green bean casserole, and the yummy cheddar biscuits from Red Lobster you can buy as a mix. It will be a small meal, but difficult to orchestrate as everything needs oven time and I only have one. Oh well. It will work out. I managed on Thanksgiving.

One last thing before I sign off for this week…there has been lots said about Bryan Cohen and his free Amazon ads course that he hosts. Some call him a scammer and only wants to recruit people into his Amazon Ads School, some say he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to Amazon ads, (calling his method throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks) some say if he’s not selling books not to listen to him (something I don’t believe because a lot more goes into selling books than knowing how to use an ad platform) but I’ve joined in with the challenge many times, and if you want a free way to learn Amazon ads, Bryan is the one to teach you to do it. There are many strategies to experiment with when it comes to Amazon ads, or any ad platform for that matter, and Bryan teaches you one way. For free. He goes into a lot more than just how to set up an ad. He goes through and makes sure you understand if your book is ready to throw money at it (and a lot of times people find out the answer is no) and teaches you how to write hooks and more. I’m not saying his way is the end-all, be-all way. There are plenty of people out there who do ads like Robert Ryan, Janet Margo, and Ricardo Fayet (from Reedsy), but if you join in with the challenge, you have a ton of help and people to bounce ideas off of in the Facebook group. You can use Bryan’s free course as a springboard for getting your feet wet, and then move on to other strategies by other people. Anyway, so I just wanted to throw that out there, and if you were planning to learn Amazon Ads in 2024, then you can sign up for Bryan’s course that’s starting on January 17th and decide for yourself if his spaghetti deserves a plate at your table. You can sign up here. https://learn.bestpageforward.net/jan24/ (These are not affiliate links.)

Enjoy the rest of the week and have a restful weekend!

Reading for pleasure and other things I should be doing

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After a chat with a friend, I realized how little I read for pleasure (well, I knew that, but she makes time to read and I…don’t). I used to love to read–I think most writers have been (or still are) voracious readers at some point, but like a lot of writers too, the moment I sat down to write my own books, reading for pleasure took a backseat.

There are a couple of reasons for this but the biggest one is that there isn’t a lot of time. Once you hop on the indie merry-go-round, it takes incredible willpower jump off. I’ve been running on it since 2016 chasing after that elusive brass ring that seems farther and farther away with every rotation. Doing anything that’s not working on my books feels like a waste of time (and needless to say, it’s what I enjoy doing most when I’m not working) and I know what a dangerous mindset that can be. Deep in my heart I know as a writer (and as a person, really) you need to experience new things, new ideas, meet new people. What is that saying?

desk with old typewriter, espresso cup, camera, notebook and flowers. Text reads, “In order to write about life first you must live it.” — Ernest Hemingway

This isn’t exactly an argument for writing what you know, but it kind of is, too. I went to Santa Barbara, California, for a writing conference… five years ago I think now. I’ve seen the ocean many times, in Florida and I once went to Cancún for spring break, but until you see the coasts in person, you don’t realize how different they are. It surprised the hell out of me that the Atlantic Ocean was cold. I’ve swam in the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico, but in June, in Santa Barbara, there was no way I would have jumped in (and this is from a woman who’s swam in Minnesota lakes). I was also surprised by how chilly it got in the evenings. I was expecting the Floridian heat and humidity, and I was pleasantly surprised. Fast forward to this year when I wrote my rockstars and Olivia moved to Malibu for the summer to help Sheppard. She was from Minnesota and had never been to California before. It was so much fun to push my experiences into her life. I never would have been able to do that had I not traveled to California for that conference. I met a lot of nice people, scooted out of my comfort zone, and learned a few things too. But, I took the time to do it, something that seems unfathomable now.

Reading has fallen to the faraway wayside, and I need to get back to it. Not only because I enjoy reading, but because you can learn from another person’s writing style, vocabulary, and their own experiences they put into their books. It’s important as a writer to read, especially in your genre so you understand reader expectations, tropes, and what readers are enjoying. I think taking this approach will help me read more. I’ve always been a sucker for research, diving into hours of YouTube videos to write Captivated by Her and looking up plane crashes like JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette’s, when I wrote the series I’m editing now. I can still get sucked into looking at photos of them and reading about their crash. Even when I wrote my rockstars, I watched Lady Gaga’s documentary on Netflix and read Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six and watch the series on Prime. I probably should have read more rockstar romances before writing my trilogy–I’m lucky they’re meeting reader expectations for that subgenre (At least, I think they are. I haven’t heard otherwise). Do you know the book I fell back on when the plot of Twisted Alibis landed in my lap? An old Nora Roberts standalone about a rock band called Public Secrets. Copyrighted in 1998, I read it many years ago, and no, I didn’t reread it when I was plotting my books.

Photo taken from Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Public-Secrets-Novel-Nora-Roberts/dp/0553285785

I probably shouldn’t feel like I need to look at reading as research, but I think I’m going to have to. I want to read, I used to enjoy it, and I had no trouble reading the book I mentioned in a previous blog post, or the one that came after that. It’s a mind thing, thinking that if I’m not working on my own books (or making graphics for them) I’m wasting time.

There are a ton of other things I want to do–shows to watch, cleaning, putting together bookshelves and weeding out books like the publishing books I bought years ago that are obsolete now. I said I was going to take December off, but I have no idea where that delusion came from–I want to get this series put up because I am really looking forward to writing new books. BUT, I need to research them so I can do the mafia subgenre justice. I need balance, but I feel like there’s lava on one side and a pool full of piranha on the other. I know working only on my own books isn’t good for me, or even my books, but damned if I can slow down for even a minute.

And to make matters worse, I’m not even all that fast. Most of the books I published this year I’d held back, so I wasn’t even really writing for a lot of 2023. Then you hear of the indies who do this full-time who say, “Oh, well, I published 8 books this year, but it was a slow year for me. I usually do 10-12,” and you don’t want to get left behind. What’s funny though, is I’m already behind, so the idea of being left there is just a figment of my imagination.

The bottom line is, I like working on my own stuff too much. All things should be enjoyed in moderation, but unfortunately, I started working on my series, and I honestly won’t stop to do anything else now until they’re ready to go. Tenacity and dedication can help you succeed, but I think you can appreciate it more fully if you take time out.

Not to mention, it’s nice to know what everyone is talking about on social media when it comes to the hottest new thing. It helps you join in the conversation, which is why I started watching Bridgerton in the first place. I wanted to know what all of Romancelandia was talking about. If you don’t know, that’s a different way to get left behind. Also, knowing who does what when will help you build your brand. If you’re an author, promoting books like yours can help build your platform. That’s where breaking out of the #writingcommunity can come in handy. You don’t want to only recommend your friends’ books. You might like reading other genres, but readers can be set in their ways and only read one thing. You can teach them to go to you for book recs and then when you have a new book out, you already have an audience who reads it.

Being this is the end of the year, I can put reading and “experiencing life” on my 2024 New Year’s Resolutions. There are also a lot of speakers I want to watch on YouTube from the 20Booksto50k conference last month. One of my resolutions is to get better with FB ads, and Mallory and Jill Cooper were there. As far as resolutions go, I’m paying off my car this week (YAY!!!), and instead of absorbing the payment into my monthly budget, I’m going to keep taking it out and save up for a BookBub featured deal. I think it’s time I start applying for those, but a Contemporary Romance spot is 665 dollars. I’ll have to save up for four months, but I think my backlist and my pen name are ready for that kind of boost. I have no doubt that my rockstars would give me the read through I need to recoup my fee. But all my resolutions would make for a good post next month, so I’ll stop there.

Next week I have my guest author interview. My year-end wrapup will fall on Christmas Day, but I’ll write it the weekend prior and schedule it. I can’t believe how fast December is going, but I’m hoping to get through book two before the New Year. It’s taking me a bit longer than I had anticipated to get through book one. I’ve read these so many times by now, and yeah, book one is a little slow because it’s setting up the next five books. There’s still stuff going on, but nothing is new to me and I’m dragging my feet. I’ve added 2,000 words already and I have 5 chapters left to go. Mainly just filling in some scenes that read too stark. I’m happy with the changes, and I’ll be very confident putting these out.

That’s all I have for this week. Read something that doesn’t have your name on it, haha.

Until next time!