Words: 1338 Time to read: 7 minutes I don’t listen to many podcasts anymore–I’m hoping that will change after I get more answers at my appointment on Tuesday… and after I get this blasted series done. I have four chapters left, but I know in one of the chapters there’s a scene I want to add to, just to circle back to something a character mentioned in book four that would wrap up this couple’s HEA all the better. I don’t want to rush the rewrite and I conceded a long time ago these would be done when they get done. I’ve been working more seriously on the covers, but damned if I can do be ..read more

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a great weekend. I can’t believe how fast May is going by, and it doesn’t bode well for all the things I want to get done before the end of the month. We’ve had some nice weather in the past few days, and on a walk I took a couple pictures of some berry trees. I’m trying to get out a little more to boost my spirits. Since I’ve been feeling slightly better, I’m not as comfortable sitting in my bedroom alone hiding from the world. The sun perks me up, as does taking walks to the river and back (that’s a short 1.5 mile stroll) and I’m trying to do better as it h ..read more

Words: 1445 Time to read: 8 minutes I really don’t have anything to write about this week. I finished editing book five of my series, and I’m on to book six … I’ve been looking at my covers thinking they’re a little plain, wondering if I should break my brand mold and put couples on them instead, but I don’t really want to do that. I don’t hate the covers I have now, but this series is special and I feel like they need a bit more pizzazz. Something might come at me while I’m updating the formatting–it seems my best covers materialize the night before I want to upload files, but all I kno ..read more

It worked for Cinderella Words: 2974 Time to read: 16 minutes A lot of people wonder, when they start the publishing game, just how long and just how much money it’s going to take until you “make it.” And without muddying the waters with things like “success is what you think of it” or “every sale counts” let’s assume that “making it” is earning a full-time wage. That will be different for different people too (I could do a lot with an extra 30k a year) but let’s go with 50k since the group 20booksto50k put the number out there. When you’re getting your book, or books, ready to publish, y ..read more

Words: 2519 Time to read: 13 minutes I was going to write about book covers at the end of my post, but I decided to move it to the top so if you don’t want to read my author update but still want to read that part, you don’t have to scroll to skip it. One of the things I’ve been seeing a lot of online is scammers who are making premade book covers. That doesn’t seem so terrible–even I’ve mentioned making covers and putting them on this website, only for free in case anyone is having a difficult time and needs something quick that looks decent–and it’s not terrible, if they go about it ri ..read more

Words: 1670 Time to read: 9 minutes I was going to write about Indie April in a different post, but I don’t have to much to say regarding my author update, so I thought I would squish them together. I wrote out my first blog post on my author website last week. I gave a brief update on my King’s Crossing series and let everyone know that I’m going to put Give & Take back to the normal price. It’s been .99 for a long time and I need to put it back before the summer promotions begin and my series launches. I can update you on how many views/visits it received once it’s been up for a bi ..read more

This photo has nothing to do with anything. I just really liked the colors. Most of the marketing we hear about is how, what, and how often to post on social media. Snippets and book trailers, TikTok videos and reels. Be yourself, don’t talk about your book all the time, support others. Like I mentioned in a previous post, we think about marketing after we’ve written our books. That’s… not a great time to think about it, to be honest. Yes, we should all love what we’re writing and I’m not even talking about that, necessarily. One of the lessons I learned too late was how important your cover a ..read more

Words: 1700 Time to read: 9 minutes If you celebrated Easter, I hope you had a lovely holiday. We’re celebrating today, in fact, because I work on Sundays and there’s no reason to use PTO to take the day off. We’ll dye eggs and I’ll cook a chicken casserole. A coworker gave me the recipe she found on TikTok. It sounded yummy and easy and I’m all about easy. I’ll let you know how it turns out. I finished editing the last book of my series. I had to revise parts of the last two chapters and I wrote a 1900 word Epilogue that I think ends things beautifully, if I do say so for myself. Of cou ..read more

Words: 2202 Time to read: 12 minutes I’m not sure what got into me last Thursday, well, I do, but I think I need to start finding other ways to, ah, voice my displeasure and unhappiness. I’m not all gloom and doom–if I didn’t like being an author and publishing books, I wouldn’t do it. Anyway, read on if you want a more sophisticated update on what I’ve been doing lately. I’m almost done editing my series. After a heart to heart talk with myself, I admitted I need to rewrite most of the ending. It’s not as heart-wrenching as I want it to be… what I have now isn’t worthy of half a million ..read more

This is a whining post. If you don’t want to hear it, check in on Monday for a more grown-up Author Update. Words: 985 Time to read: 5 minutes A friend of mine, well, we haven’t been friends for a while now but we’ve remained… acquaintances?, wrote all her friends/followers/readers and told them that she was leaving the writing/author community… again. I don’t mean to pick on her, but she does this every once in a while, and every time she does, I get reflective and think about where I am and where I want to be. I’ve been writing and publishing for about eight years now, and I have never ..read more