Looking back on July

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. So far, August for me on a private level has been the month from Hell. But I wrote this post at the end of July, so I thought I’d post it now, just to try to cheer myself up. It’s not meant to be a list of how wonderful I am, just a reminder to myself during the darker times, that things can go well.

What a month July has been as an author! To start with, at the beginning of the month, I heard about the Smashwords Summer/Winter Promotion. I decided to add Treespeaker to it, to see what happened if I just gave it away free for a while. The answer was, it did a whole lot better than selling it, the high point being one day, early on, when I gave away eighteen in one day. 

Later in the month, a lovely little site called Love Thy Author, which features Indie books and links them back to Amazon, included Treespeaker, listing it as an “Undiscovered Gem”. While I was still high from that, I received a great review from Tracy at Booked Up. 

Still flying, I sent an interview to India Drummond as I’d arranged to do months before. It was only supposed to stay up on her site for a few days, but was actually there for two weeks and I began selling books at Amazon, even though I was still giving copies away via Smashwords. At the same time the number of people ‘adding’ my book on Goodreads began to grow.

The cover of Treespeaker was also featured on Cover Art Review. That was less successful, with the few comments it got being rather negative, but at least they were looking at it!

In the meantime, I had two projects on the go – firstly to get a new website up and running and secondly, to get my children’s book ready for epublication (as I mentioned in my last post)*. My website was sadly out of date and because I’d done it myself and then lost all the files when the computer crashed, I couldn’t do much about it. I couldn’t even take it down and start again, because the most up-to-date Microsoft Office no longer has Front Page, which is what I’d used. Then I discovered Weebly, which allowed me to do everything I needed free-of-charge and keep my old domain name. If I’d know how easy it would be, I would have done it ages ago. It’s simple, but I can add to it as I go along.

Towards the end of the month, as an experiment, I changed the category that Treespeaker was listed under to “Christian Fantasy”. It’s not a book about Christianity, but it does have Christian themes and nothing that might offend sensibilities, so I thought it might appeal to that market. I sold two books in Britain one weekend and it shot to #6 in Christian SciFi and Fantasy which was a thrill while it lasted!

I also added a tag to the book of ‘Environmentalism’. Within days the book was being advertised on various environmental websites. I’m not sure that it led to sales but it was interesting to see that happen!

Another thrill was when only three days after joining iAuthors.org, my book was chosen as ‘Book of the Day’. Not only that, but a piece on ‘professionalism’ was put with it to explain why it had been chosen.

So, that was the month of July. Now to try and get this month back onto an even keel personally, so that I can relax again and start writing.

*The book, ‘The Dragon Box’, edited and with the cover approved by a class of ten-year-olds is now available on Amazon

New Year's Irresolutions

It’s that time again; that time when everyone starts talking about New Year’s Resolutions.

I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve made just one. My New Year’s Resolution is that in 2008, I’m not going to make any New Year’s Resolutions. That probably sounds crazy, when I wrote, only weeks ago, about the need for goals. But I have my reasons.

This year, I made only two real resolutions. The first was that I would lose weight. I wasn’t well and my weight was beginning to creep up. That fact was making me even more miserable. So I resolved to lose weight. It didn’t happen. The more miserable I was the more I ate and vice versa. It wasn’t until I started to deal with why I was miserable that I began to feel better. Straight away, my weight turned around and it is ever so slowly creeping back down. No diet, no extra exercise, just a healthier outlook on life. I haven’t lost weight, I’ve just gone up and down to the same place. But that's something positive. Nothing to do with any resolution on my part, though.

My second resolution was to find a publisher for my story for adopted children. I had it critiqued, got professional advice on it (from a friend who’s an adoption psychologist) then started looking where to send it. I made the mistake of thinking I’d found the perfect place for it – a small publisher who was actually calling for stories specifically for adopted children. I e-queried them as they requested and waited the number of months they specified. Nothing. No answer whatsoever. So I learned a big lesson there, but I still have an unpublished story.

For a while, thinking on all this, I was a bit down. Then I turned it around and started thinking about what I did achieve in 2007 and decided that having failed my two New Year’s Resolutions wasn’t so bad. After all, I finished the first drafts of both my novels, I wrote two more picture books, I illustrated two more picture books (by other authors) and they’re both now on the bookshelves. And the piece I had accepted for an anthology on adoption three years ago finally got published. To top it off, I got the job I’ve had my eye on for the past ten years. That’s not a bad haul for a year. So I think I’ll resolve to just keep plugging away as I have been, taking each day as it comes, grabbing opportunities as they arise and setting short term goals as I need them.

Yes, that sounds good to me.