August report

Another big month, mostly editing in preparation for publishing The Conjunction, which will finally go live in 3 week's time (so much excitement!) :D

Until then The Conjunction is still available for pre-order on amazon

The Conjunction has gone to my copy-editor, and I've been integrating their edits as I go (I'm about halfway there). It then just requires a proof-read and it'll be ready to go by my 21st of September target.

I had fun with the amazon 5-day ad-challenge, and learned a little bit about how to get my book in front of the people who will hopefully enjoy it the most. I'm getting plenty of impressions (around 5000 total), and about the right amount of clicks (4) - but no sales that way so far. I wasn't actually expecting any sales, my book is a singleton from an unknown author and not even available for reading yet. But it was a great exercise, and cost me a grand total of 84c, so I may keep the ads up for a while and see if anything changes when it comes out of pre-order.

My cover artist (Burning phoenix covers) has come through with another exciting cover for the second book: King Tide, and I've been updating the blurb for it to fit better too. So it'll all be ready to put up for pre-order the moment that The Conjunction is published.

I've created my proper author website (through Nerdly) here: Taryn East Writes and I'll make my book pages there in the future (though I'll keep this as a blog for now).

I did some planning of the series-arc for the Hope Gray series. I'm planning roughly 6 books in the arc, and I'm at the very early pre-planning stages. I don't have a really solid idea of exactly what will happen as I'm a bit of a pantser, and want to leave myself open to finding out more as I go along. But I do have a rough overview that will be a good scaffold for the final shape of the series.

Finally, I had a lot of fun at the beach with kidlet building sandcastles and playing in all the playgrounds. It was a great break from it all and reminds me of the important things in life. :)

For September:

1. I will finish integrating my copy-editor's suggested changes, which I'm doing at a rate of around 2 chapters a day, until I'm done (hopefully before the 10th Sep).
2. I'll generate the finished manuscript so it can be checked for final errors.
3. I will integrate the proof-read in the final week.
4. I'll push the manuscript up to amazon so my pre-orders will get the book on the 21st.
5. Maybe put a taster up on book-funnel to let people have a taste before they buy
6. I'll make the pre-order page for King Tide.
7. Still need to find a decent photographer to do an authorial head-shot, though I've found a reasonable one for the meantime (it's on my author website now, alongside the 20YO one) :)
8. Take a bit of a break ;)
9. Finish outlining the last third of King Tide so I can begin writing that section.
10. More planning of the full series arc (building on my notes).

In the meantime, I've read Between Jobs which was a bit of fun; and The Broken Cage which is the 7th book in Sarah Painter's Crow Investigations series and another great page-turner.

I'm currently reading: Throne of Jade which is the 2nd book in Naomi Novik's delightful Temeraire series. It's like Hornblower on Dragons and worth a look.