July Report

Wow! What a month!

I did a full read-through of The Conjunction, editing as I went - adding in some more snappy lines and a few extra fixups based on some beta-reader commentary.

I then did a hard edit using ProWritingAid. Goodness, that is a really useful app! Well worth the lifetime subscription! It pointed out a lot more things than I’d have thought, and by the last few chapters I was editing a lot of the things as I went, rather than waiting for ProWritingAid to point it out to me.

I also played around a lot with Scrivener to produce a final-ish copy of the document - with table-of-contents, front and back matter, etc.

I’ve now handed the complete novel off to the copy-editor/proof-reader and am eagerly awaiting their results (and the next round of editing) 😃

In the meantime, I signed up for the “5 day amazon ad challenge” (cos it was free). I set up a few ads - totally not expecting anything at all to happen, because: first novel AND only in pre-order. I got a few hundred impressions and only 2 clicks - which is fine as my expectations were very low, and I’m ok with spending a whole 80c on the campaign 😃

But I learned a lot about how ads work, and also got some great insights into writing an exciting hook, and even re-did my whole blurb with the knowledge I gained, so I’m happy I did it.

I also got back in touch with my cover artist (Burning phoenix covers) - firstly to add the series-name to the first cover, and also to build the cover for the second book - as I hope to put that on pre-order (even if the date is a year out) before the first book drops - just so people will have the chance to pre-order straight away, if they liked the first one. And to show them I do actually have other books in the pipeline.

Finally, I did a soft-launch to my friends-list - asking for friends that are already urban-fantasy fans that might be interested. I sent each of them the first chapter, as well as the link for my pre-order. Result: I got my very first ever sales (a whopping 5 whole orders) 😃 but hey - I am now officially a published author with real sales (0-1 is always the hardest yeah?) 😉

Goodness - reading back over that, I did even more than I thought!

For August:

  1. I will edit based on the copy-editing/proof-reading I get back - making the doc hopefully ready to go by the end of the month (so I can do a final read-through/fix in September).
  2. I really want to get off my arse and get a proper website, rather than just (ab)using blogger pages. I got a few months’ free trial for nerdly through an infostack bundle - and I mean to actually try that instead of just the pages here.
  3. Setting up the pre-order for the second book means I should start thinking about a blurb... which feels weird to me as I’ve not actually written the ending yet. But I’ve got ~3/4 done so there’s enough story that I know what I can use as a hook.
  4. I need to go over the content I have for things like my author-page, which I just threw together quickly. I also am using an ancient photo of mine - as it’s the only one that feels “writerly” for me... so I should probably think about finding a decent photographer to do an authorial head-shot that doesn’t make me look like I’m perpetually 20 (not that there would be anything wrong with that) ;)
  5. in August I always do a short beach-holiday with kidlet - just special one-on-one time for us (as well as being a mind-break from social media etc). So that’s important too. :)

In the meantime, I'm reading Midlife Witch Hunter: the next book in the Forty Proof series by Shannon Mayer. It's Paranormal Women's Fiction - which is middle aged ladies saving the world with magic. This genre is a bit hit-and-miss still, but Forty Proof is another series where I've bought every book on preorder as soon as it comes out.

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