Christopher D. Schmitz's Blog, page 8
July 9, 2019
July 8, 2019
State of Writing
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It seems like I’ve been slacking, I know. I haven’t posted a wednesday article for a couple weeks now. some of that has been me pulling away on purpose. I’ve been trying to funnel more of my spare energy into fiction writing. I finished something like 3 chapters this week while at MN’s largest convention (beginning on the 4th of July–it’s almost been a mini writing retreat, except I’m worn to the bone on the sales floor and hitting some of my highest sales numbers in my home state and meeting lots of new people.) I think I’ve gotten past the half-way point in Dekker’s Dozen 3 and on the business side of things I’m looking at some great new release ideas (possible rapid release and a solid launch for my upcoming comedy.) More coming soon, I’m going to try to put down 3 chapters per week until this next novel is done (crossing fingers, I’m looking at about 1 month)
July 2, 2019
July 1, 2019
State of Writing
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I’m so tired (that’s why this post is about 8 hrs late). Last weekend, I went to a convention in Nebraska and had my highest sales event ever… I ran out of books, like, halfway through. The trip there and back was difficult, though… long drive by myself and my AC had recently gone out (it was 97 degrees and climbing by 9am every day). Ick.
That said, I did get a lot of writing done, too! I wrote at least 2 chapters in the next Dekker’s Dozen book, so I’m very excited about hitting that mark. I have another con this weekend (fingers crossed that my book re-supply arrives in time). I’m gonna shoot to finish the chapter I’m working on now, plus one more!
June 28, 2019
Author Feature: Joanna White
[image error]Joanna is the author of THE VALIANT book series.
Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:
I’ve been writing since I was ten but after high school I wanted to turn it into a career, so I self published at first, until Hunter and Shifter both got accepted by traditional publishers.
Tell us about your stories:
I write Christian fantasy and I want to encourage and inspire other people and give them worlds and stories they can delve into with characters that they love that also show the truth without anything bad in it (clean novels).
What kind of success have you had?
One way I measure success is how many books I’ve written (54 novels); the Valiant Series is a 17 book epic high fantasy series and I see that as an achievement because I started it setting out to make an epic franchise and feel that’s what I did. Being traditionally published has always been a dream, so Hunter and Shifter being out in the past couple months (and July 1st for Shifter) is another success. But all success comes only from God.
How doe you get your ideas?
It’s a mixture of God’s direct inspiration, with my amazing husband and how creative he is. Usually my husband and I bounce ideas back and forth between each other until a great story plotline comes together.
Give us an insight into a time you wrote a scene with feeling.
Too many too count but everything in the last two books of the Valiant Series. Probably a major character’s death at the end that for me, parallels with the story of Jesus in the Bible had the greatest impact on me. God helped me write that scene and make it powerful.
Check out this book by out FEATURED AUTHOR.
[image error]Joanna White earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing for Entertainment at Full Sail University. The Valiant series is her first published work, which first started off being updated on a website called Wattpad. She lives in the countryside of Missouri with her husband, where she continues to work on her other upcoming books. Writing has been a passion since she was ten, when she wrote her first book. Ever since then, writing has become her life outside of her family, God, and being a nerd.
[image error]Beroan is a shapeshifter, part of the dragon clan. His clan’s Alpha, Sirath, wants to watch the world burn.
For ten long years Sirath has attacked villages, killing thousands of humans and burning towns to the ground. Beroan has had enough, but his resistance will only end in suffering.
Nsi is a human living in a small village with her grandmother and cousin. Her ignorance about the existence of shifters won’t protect her for long. Her family was killed in a dragon attack when she was younger, and now dragons have come again. Now she will stop at nothing until the dragon shifters are stopped, to save humans from suffering the same fate as her family.
Together, Nsi and Beroan will risk everything to save humanity from Sirath.
Darkness is spreading through the galaxy, Corrupting one world after another, and now it has come for theirs. Sirath already belongs to the Corruption of darkness.
He will not stop until he burns down the world and leaves it covered in fire and ash.
Book 2, Shifter releases July 1. Check it out here!
My website (to find out more about the Valiant Series and get free book recommendations): https://www.joannamariewhite.wixsite.com/mywebsite
Facebook: facebook.com/joannamariewhite
Twitter: twitter.com/joannamwhite
Instagram: instagram.com/joannawhite316
June 24, 2019
State of Writing
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I’ve been aiming for a chapter per week on the new scifi–so far so good. I’m also working on some new devo installments for a co-op book that should drop this fall. I’ve almost got mine done, plus a few installments for a future release.
Truthfully, my writing output was rubbish this week, except for a good push at the end. But i did feel like I accomplished a lot at work this week (lots of volunteering) and I spent 7 hours behind a wheel on saturday to get to a bagpipe gig… so I feel like it was an okay week… I’d love to double my output this week. Ideally, I would love to put out 10,000 words per week (thats a half million per year.) Maybe it’s a goal to shoot for in the future 
June 21, 2019
Book Club review
I just had a great message online. A book club read and discussed my Sci-Fi book, Dekker’s Dozen: The Last Watchmen. Check this video out here:
June 17, 2019
State of Writing
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Lots of good inspiration this week. I have a newsletter dropping and did a bunch of work last week. I’m about 20% done with the new Dekker’s Dozen book. I also got a lot of progress completed on a co-written book along with a few other authors.. I’m excited for it to continue picking up speed .
June 12, 2019
Be careful with your monkeys: how to accidentally mess up with Mailchimp’s new changes
So Mailchimp made some very unpopular changes which affect a lot of us indie authors. Part of their appeal had been to offer free services up to 2,000 people. Some of their shenanigans have really put the screws to those of us who spend more time writing new stories than managing our lists.
A lot of folks who are better at this than me can speak to the shady maneuver the head chimps pulled to sneakily insert useless data into our lists and inflate them. if you only have 100 or so readers it is no big deal–but if you’re constantly hovering around the 2,000 subscriber mark, it makes a world of difference! What happens when your mailchimp audience/mailing list hits 2,000 members?
I’ve tried to get better at managing my lists and sending great content in my monthly newsletters–content that interests, engages, and has some value/substance. Still there will be some folks who won’t read the content (or never saw it because of deliverability). We need to keep a watch on the health of our lists. After a few months of inactivity (for me, if they haven’t opened a message in a few months–it may look different for you,) I drop a person from my mailing list if they are fairly new. If they have been around for a while, I might keep them a little longer, but I’m trying to cultivate an active community of readers and so I’m quick to prune my lists. I’d rather have 2,000 active subscribers with high open rates than a 10,000 member list with low open rates (reengagement tactics be damned.)
So in my constant efforts to grow my list and engage with others, I’m constantly hovering around 2,000. I’m a little over, a little under, and flip flopping as I cull and merge data to keep enough headspace on my list, weeding out dead leads and improving list health.
I noticed a few weeks ago that I was getting new list subscribers (I run 5 lists with different automation sequences, depending on the source of the subscribers) but I was not getting the normal unsubscriber numbers. You will always have a certain percentage who will drop off a list after receiving a couple messages–they hopped on to get a free book/reader magnet and didn’t want any further information (for the record, that’s totally cool and you would rather those people leave the list if they aren’t super thrilled to be there–luke-warm list members are the hardest to engage and can be something of a black hole that skew your list data when you try to strategize on how to use it.) At first I thought, dang, I must be doing something right… after two weeks I realized that was a ridiculous thought. I logged in and had a small spike that put me over 2,000 (mainly because my final deletion hadn’t processed through the queue and I’d busted the cap.)
Breaking the automatically paused all of my automations with a forced membership upgrade that needed to be authorized by me (with credit card info, etc.) Basically, I’d sat for half a month with new users who signed up to receive a free book from me or an invitation to engage that never got my responses/automated links and info because every email the system wanted to send them turned themselves off.
Be extra careful when you are butting up against that magic (cursed?) number. You don’t want to have a couple hundred people sitting in queue–you must always strike while the iron is hot.
As for me, I’m following the trend and switching over to Mailerlite, which had always been my intention. I still plan to leave my automations running at Mailchimp, but will manually merge relevant data and then hard delete the old info.
