I'd planned to read and review over the nine day half term holiday with my monsters and away from social media. Instead, I spent the time revising my planned May release and side story in the Redemption series - Reunion at Kasha-Asor. You'd think that after releasing 14 titles and three and a half years as a published author, writing would and should be easy. But it isn't.
The worst thing is that the changes I need/want to make to Reunion aren't even that hard. They don't require me to spend a ton of time and effort doing research or learning a foreign language or becoming an expert on meteorology or anything. And yet every word has been a battle, and I'm not sure why. Am I burned out? Have I lost my enthusiasm? Am I just tired?
I don't know. I've been through another phase of 'why am I doing this?!' over the holiday. I think it's mostly that I now seem to spend a huge amount of time marketing to no apparent avail, and it's disheartening. I think I've come to publishing about ten years too late. Not contributing to the family household financially and my inability to master any kind of marketing skills are eating away at the joy I got from writing. Sure, I'd love to be writing just for fun but part of the idea was to earn an income, and I'm just not making it.
So the reality is I will be hoping to have a job by the end of this year, early next. I'll keep writing and probably publishing, but it'll go back to being a hobby and I certainly won't be as prolific as I have the last three years. I'm not complaining. I've had fun. I just wish my passion could pay its way...
The Final Countdown
You've got just one more week to read and review Keir for free via NetGalley HERE. After that, Keir's Fall will be available at NG HERE. If you're reading this after the deadline, you can still go to either The Romance Reviews site or Manic Readers to read and review my older titles, or if you want something new you can sign up to my ARC Read to Review form HERE and get your hands on my books before the rest of the universe! At the moment the next read available is my hot space opera short Quickshot (releasing 31st March). You can even tell me what content you don't like so I can tailor what I send you to read, and it's dead easy to unsubscribe at any time. The only requisite is that you must have read and reviewed one of my previous titles.
And if YA is more your thing, my young adult titles are now up at YA Insider, where you can also read and review for free.
It's also the last week to enter the Goodreads giveaway for a print edition of Keir's Fall.
New Release and a Preorder
Zombie Girl: Dead Awakened (my YA zombie novella previously released last year with Lycaon Press and live for just nine days) is now available to buy (or to read and review for free at YA Insider).
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| YA Zombie Dystopia Novella Goodreads | Website Available from... Amazon | iTunes | Omnilit Kobo | Smashwords | B&N |
Quickshot is up for pre-order at Amazon only, releasing 31st March.
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| A Space Opera Short Story Goodreads | Webpage Amazon inc KU |
New Pets!
Sadly over the holiday we lost our Leghorn Bantam Eowyn (the white one in the picture). We think it might have been old age. She'd shown no signs of illness or anything, and her death was sudden so at least she didn't suffer.
On the up side, we bought four new chooks on Sunday to join our menagerie. We now have eight in total, all bantam Pekins. At the time of posting, we still have our old girls Scoop, Kyru, Chiana, and Rush. They're now joined by Fizzgig (my chocolate brown frizzle - dark brown with feathers that look like they've been stuck on backwards), Pitch (black with white specks), and Spaghetti (the light ginger one). The white frizzle is my daughter's and has yet to be named.
We also got three new guppies - Leo (black tail), Nova (bright blue tail), and unfortunately the last one just got called Spotty.
New Author
Over the holiday, we discovered my 11yo is going to become a published author in May. His 100 word story The End of the World will be part of the Essex and Kent Young Writers Time-Travelling Tales, going to the British Library and others across the UK and Republic of Island. I'm both chuffed and stunned! He didn't even tell us! Inspired by this he's also submitted his Christmas story that he wrote for his school newspaper to the 500 word writing contest this week. With my eldest also set on publishing something sometime, we could well be a multi-author household in the near future.
So what did you get up to? :)
"You'd think that after releasing 14 titles and three and a half years as a published author, writing would and should be easy." No, I wouldn't think that at all, Pippa!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on the wee one making it into print. Essex and Kent, eh? I just finished re-reading Heyer's The Unknown Ajax, set on an estate that straddles the boundary between those two counties, with one scene in Rye. I imagine you've read it?
Oh, fellow authors know the struggle! Not sure if readers always do.
DeleteNo, I've not read that one - I know my mum had a few Heyer titles but I tended to go more for my dad's Ian Fleming and Alexander Kent books. I'll have to look it up. I'm always curious about books written set around where I live though. Thanks!
I could not feed myself with what I wanted to do, music composition and production. I tell myself that it has never been easy to do that, historically, and I have more fun at my job than I would have at the promo and marketing end of the music biz. I write music (and now words) for me now, and although I wish I had more time and energy for it, handling the self-employed business part would make me bonkers.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on your oldest being published!
Yeah, the business part drives me bonkers too. Thanks!
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