J.R. Pearse Nelson's Blog, page 31
January 15, 2012
Sunday Update
I hope everyone is having a nice holiday weekend. It's our annual family get-together with one section of the family, so I'm at a vacation house in Sunriver, Oregon with lots of family. Fun times. It's really fun to watch these folks with my kids, since they don't get to see each other very often. I did a lot of writing this week, so I'm happy to say I'm keeping up with goals in that area, and more. Yippee! Since Wednesday I've written 2,600 words on Flight, my paranormal romance in progress. That brings my manuscript to 6,900 words. Since I just started it not quite two weeks ago, I'm very happy with my progress. I also started something completely new and different. One of those "follow the muse" days occurred on Thursday. Afterthe kids were in bed I had a thought, which led to another thought, and I sat down to write. 2,200 words later I put it away. It's the beginning of something, but probably won't be a real story for a couple of years. That's the way my brain works. Stuff has to stew up there FOREVER before I'm ready to write. :)I do apologize for any typos in this post. Writng on my iPad, on shoddy internet. Not awesome. Hope everyone has a great week ahead!
January 10, 2012
Mid-Week Update and New Goal
I'm really happy to have progress to report in the middle of the week! I still didn't write on Monday -- I was under the weather and just not in the mood. LOL. But on Tuesday I wrote 1,800 words, so I've still managed to keep up with my cumulative goal.
I've written the first 4,400 words of this book in the last eight days, and that feels pretty good. I do need to pick up the pace, because I'd like to have the entire novella written by my birthday, February 15th, so I can relax for a few days before I pick up a big -- BIG -- editing project for the last part of Round 1. So I have five weeks to write another 26,000 words or so...that's just less than 750 words per day, or 5,200 per week. That's a lot of words, knowing that there are at least two days a week when it's really hard to fit writing in. But this is a challenge! It isn't supposed to be a cake walk! I'm gonna go for it.
New goal: test mile of 750 words per day, cumulative goal of 5,200 words per week for the next five weeks or until this book is finished. That feels good, and that's when you know it's right! I'm going to have to be strict with myself about not going online until I've gotten words on the page.
How's everyone else doing? Have any of you adjusted your goals yet?
I've written the first 4,400 words of this book in the last eight days, and that feels pretty good. I do need to pick up the pace, because I'd like to have the entire novella written by my birthday, February 15th, so I can relax for a few days before I pick up a big -- BIG -- editing project for the last part of Round 1. So I have five weeks to write another 26,000 words or so...that's just less than 750 words per day, or 5,200 per week. That's a lot of words, knowing that there are at least two days a week when it's really hard to fit writing in. But this is a challenge! It isn't supposed to be a cake walk! I'm gonna go for it.
New goal: test mile of 750 words per day, cumulative goal of 5,200 words per week for the next five weeks or until this book is finished. That feels good, and that's when you know it's right! I'm going to have to be strict with myself about not going online until I've gotten words on the page.
How's everyone else doing? Have any of you adjusted your goals yet?
January 8, 2012
Sunday Update
This was one of those weeks where life throws curveballs. Not anything life-changing, but roadblocks in the way of getting to MY stuff, like writing. I set a goal to write 500 words a day, but I still managed to write just two days this week. However, when I did write I accomplished a lot more than 500 words. 1,000 words on Tuesday, and 1,600 today. So that's 2,600 words -- 900 short of my cumulative 3,500 word goal for the week. I'm okay with that, given how the week went. I still like Kait Nolan's "test mile" challenge, and when I do sit down and write 500 words is pretty easy for me. If I wrote every day -- instead of the three or four days I usually manage -- I'd accomplish so much more! So that's a great challenge for me.
I did worse on my exercise goal. I hit the bike one time this week, instead of the three I'm shooting for. That's one I'll try to get into a rhythm with over these next couple of weeks.
How about the rest of you? Were you able to start the new year off with stellar word counts and awesome willpower? Good luck with the coming week!
I did worse on my exercise goal. I hit the bike one time this week, instead of the three I'm shooting for. That's one I'll try to get into a rhythm with over these next couple of weeks.
How about the rest of you? Were you able to start the new year off with stellar word counts and awesome willpower? Good luck with the coming week!
January 2, 2012
Happy New Year! Round of Words Goals
Happy new year, and welcome to another round of A Round of Words in 80 Days! I've enjoyed this challenge the last two rounds I've participated. This community helps me keep striving toward my writing goals, inspires me to press my limits, and encourages me when I falter. I look forward to seeing what new heights all of you reach in your writing endeavors in 2012. :)
Now to my goals for the round:
1) Write Flight, the third Children of the Sidhe novella, by writing at least my test mile of 500 words per day. (Nice challenge, Kait Nolan!)
2) Work on the paper edit of Queen Witch, the book I wrote last round, by editing 10 pages a week starting February 19. Until then, I'm getting some distance from that project.
3) Exercise three days a week for at least 30 minutes, to improve my energy level. :)
That's it, I'm keeping it simple. My husband is looking at grad school, and he's going to need some support so he can be the one at the computer for once.
I wish all my ROWer friends a great start to the new year, and happy writing!
Now to my goals for the round:
1) Write Flight, the third Children of the Sidhe novella, by writing at least my test mile of 500 words per day. (Nice challenge, Kait Nolan!)
2) Work on the paper edit of Queen Witch, the book I wrote last round, by editing 10 pages a week starting February 19. Until then, I'm getting some distance from that project.
3) Exercise three days a week for at least 30 minutes, to improve my energy level. :)
That's it, I'm keeping it simple. My husband is looking at grad school, and he's going to need some support so he can be the one at the computer for once.
I wish all my ROWer friends a great start to the new year, and happy writing!
December 29, 2011
Write Romance? Publish on All Romance Ebooks
Before I tried publishing on All Romance Ebooks, I'd heard different things about the site. First of all, I knew it was a site with a high volume of traffic and decent promotional opportunities. When I checked into it and found out how many formats I'd have to get my book into, and what it cost to have that work done, I put it on the back burner. When I got back to researching it, I found I could make the most popular formats (PDF, ePub & PRC/Mobi) myself, with free downloaded software called Calibre and a little blog reading about how other authors had accomplished it.
On December 1st, I uploaded my two novellas to All Romance Ebooks. There's an option to discount your work for a period of two weeks. I took it, discounting them 50 percent. Then when the discount went away the week before Christmas, I went back in and discounted them again. Since publishing on that site, I've sold four times as many books there as on Amazon Kindle. That may say something about what I'm doing wrong on Amazon...but it also says there are opportunities beyond Amazon. The discounting also helped out (it's impossible to tell how much), because it landed my books pretty high up on the "Hot Deals" page of the site, which made them much more visible.
Now let me tell you something about my two published novellas. They're hot. Too sexy for many readers, I've heard. But many readers on All Romance Ebooks are seeking, and buying, hot books.
I'm going to quote a few numbers from the recent 2011 Trend Analysis from All Romance Ebooks:
Talk about traffic: All Romance Ebooks now gets about 5.8 million hits per month.89 percent of All Romance Ebooks sales are purchases by women.97 percent of the books sold are rated three "flames" or higher -- in other words, it's the sexy stuff that sells.In terms of which romance sub-genres owned the biggest piece of the pie in 2011, the top 10 are = Erotica, Vampires/Werewolves/Shapeshifters, Gay Fiction, Paranormal, Contemporary, Sci-fi/Fantasy, Multiple Partners, Interracial, Historical, Time-travel, Drama, and BDSM.
How about you? Have you published to All Romance Ebooks? How has the experience been compared with other major retailers?
On December 1st, I uploaded my two novellas to All Romance Ebooks. There's an option to discount your work for a period of two weeks. I took it, discounting them 50 percent. Then when the discount went away the week before Christmas, I went back in and discounted them again. Since publishing on that site, I've sold four times as many books there as on Amazon Kindle. That may say something about what I'm doing wrong on Amazon...but it also says there are opportunities beyond Amazon. The discounting also helped out (it's impossible to tell how much), because it landed my books pretty high up on the "Hot Deals" page of the site, which made them much more visible.
Now let me tell you something about my two published novellas. They're hot. Too sexy for many readers, I've heard. But many readers on All Romance Ebooks are seeking, and buying, hot books.
I'm going to quote a few numbers from the recent 2011 Trend Analysis from All Romance Ebooks:
Talk about traffic: All Romance Ebooks now gets about 5.8 million hits per month.89 percent of All Romance Ebooks sales are purchases by women.97 percent of the books sold are rated three "flames" or higher -- in other words, it's the sexy stuff that sells.In terms of which romance sub-genres owned the biggest piece of the pie in 2011, the top 10 are = Erotica, Vampires/Werewolves/Shapeshifters, Gay Fiction, Paranormal, Contemporary, Sci-fi/Fantasy, Multiple Partners, Interracial, Historical, Time-travel, Drama, and BDSM.
How about you? Have you published to All Romance Ebooks? How has the experience been compared with other major retailers?
December 22, 2011
Round of Words Wrap Up
We've reached the end of another Round of the Round of Words in 80 Days writing challenge -- the challenge that knows you have a life. I've made more writing friends and continue to be impressed by the cumulative production of this group of writers. Telling others about our goals and then supporting each other as we push toward them, Kait Nolan had a brilliant idea here, and it really works. I've participated for two Rounds now, and I'll be back in January and throughout 2012. For me, the loose accountability of this challenge -- where we're free to change and update our goals, and celebrate what success we do achieve -- has made writing more fun. Gotta love that!
My initial goals for Round 4:
Complete revisions, beta and publish Vessel, the second novella in my Children of the Sidhe paranormal romance series. I'd like to publish before Thanksgiving. Finish the first draft of the urban fantasy Queen of Peace, with another 20-25k.Write the first draft of the third Children of the Sidhe novella, which will probably take about 25-30k.Those goals were ambitious with my current family and work commitments, to put it mildly. With two kids under three, and a day job, writing is something I fit in through a sheer act of will. But I can't ignore my kids or my job, so there you go. I actually regretted the word count I'd set as a goal from the instant I posted my goals. That was not a good sign, so after a week or two I decided to scrap the third goal to take the pressure off a little. That was a good thing, because I just finished my draft of Queen Witch (title change!) this week. I added about 25,000 to it this Round, but it took a couple of odd directions these last couple of weeks, and I need some space from it at this point. I'm calling the first draft done, and I'll revisit it in 2012, after I write my next novella. I published Vessel the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I didn't realize I'd come that close to my initial goal, so I'm pleased with that! I'm actually pleased all around. I've accomplished a lot this year, and set myself up for success in 2012.
How about you? Have you met your goals for this ROW80 round, or this year?
Now I'll take a ten day break before Round 1 of 2012 starts on January 3rd. Wishing all my writing and blogging buddies holidays filled with peace and joy!
My initial goals for Round 4:
Complete revisions, beta and publish Vessel, the second novella in my Children of the Sidhe paranormal romance series. I'd like to publish before Thanksgiving. Finish the first draft of the urban fantasy Queen of Peace, with another 20-25k.Write the first draft of the third Children of the Sidhe novella, which will probably take about 25-30k.Those goals were ambitious with my current family and work commitments, to put it mildly. With two kids under three, and a day job, writing is something I fit in through a sheer act of will. But I can't ignore my kids or my job, so there you go. I actually regretted the word count I'd set as a goal from the instant I posted my goals. That was not a good sign, so after a week or two I decided to scrap the third goal to take the pressure off a little. That was a good thing, because I just finished my draft of Queen Witch (title change!) this week. I added about 25,000 to it this Round, but it took a couple of odd directions these last couple of weeks, and I need some space from it at this point. I'm calling the first draft done, and I'll revisit it in 2012, after I write my next novella. I published Vessel the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I didn't realize I'd come that close to my initial goal, so I'm pleased with that! I'm actually pleased all around. I've accomplished a lot this year, and set myself up for success in 2012.
How about you? Have you met your goals for this ROW80 round, or this year?
Now I'll take a ten day break before Round 1 of 2012 starts on January 3rd. Wishing all my writing and blogging buddies holidays filled with peace and joy!
December 18, 2011
Tribute on Two Blogs Today
My work is being highlighted on two blogs today.
Laurie, at Bitten by Paranormal Romance, interviewed me as part of her New Author Spotlight series. Check it out! And if you've never visited Laurie's blog before, be prepared to spend some time, because she has lots of fun stuff to look at. If you're a paranormal romance reader, check out her reviews.
Also, Nuayma Jeggels, an author and blogger from South Africa, has featured Tribute in her Indie Spotlight Sunday today. I love that reach -- the idea that I'm connected with an author in South Africa is exciting! The world of ebooks and self-publishing knows no borders. :)
Now a Round of Words update: I wrote about 2,500 words this week on Queen Witch, the urban fantasy I've been wringing out of myself word by word since August. I'm super excited about it right now. Once again I got the word count on the page in ten to twenty minute increments. The holidays are busy, and it's definitely a challenge to finish a book in December. Remind me of that next year when I'm being lazy while all the NaNo wrimos are writing whole books in one month. This week I also made breakthroughs on the outline of Flight, the third book in the Children of the Sidhe series. I'll be writing that book in January and February.
Happy holidays, everyone! Wishing all of my blogger and writer friends a wonderful season!
Laurie, at Bitten by Paranormal Romance, interviewed me as part of her New Author Spotlight series. Check it out! And if you've never visited Laurie's blog before, be prepared to spend some time, because she has lots of fun stuff to look at. If you're a paranormal romance reader, check out her reviews.
Also, Nuayma Jeggels, an author and blogger from South Africa, has featured Tribute in her Indie Spotlight Sunday today. I love that reach -- the idea that I'm connected with an author in South Africa is exciting! The world of ebooks and self-publishing knows no borders. :)
Now a Round of Words update: I wrote about 2,500 words this week on Queen Witch, the urban fantasy I've been wringing out of myself word by word since August. I'm super excited about it right now. Once again I got the word count on the page in ten to twenty minute increments. The holidays are busy, and it's definitely a challenge to finish a book in December. Remind me of that next year when I'm being lazy while all the NaNo wrimos are writing whole books in one month. This week I also made breakthroughs on the outline of Flight, the third book in the Children of the Sidhe series. I'll be writing that book in January and February.
Happy holidays, everyone! Wishing all of my blogger and writer friends a wonderful season!
December 11, 2011
Round of Words Update: 12 Days of Christmas
We've reached that glorious season, where Christmas music spurs us on to greater shopping, baking, get-togethering heights! I hope your season has been magical so far, and will continue to be so. We got our tree this morning, so the rest of the day we'll be decorating, and going in for a family photo. So much fun to dress up our little girls and go take pretty pictures!
The 12 Days of Christmas Reading promotion is going on over at Nadja Notariani's blog. Submit a comment about your favorite Christmas song to be entered for the giveaways. We have thirteen authors participating. Fun stuff!
I published my books on All Romance Ebooks. You can find Tribute here, and Vessel here. They're even on sale for $1.49 for about ten more days. :)
I amazed myself this week by writing 3,800 words on Queen Witch, my urban fantasy work in progress. I'm nearing the end, and since I've gotten back into the story, it's really been flowing when I sit down to write. The reason my word count was amazing is that I usually have a few hours of dedicated writing time on the weekend where the bulk of my word count makes it to the page -- I didn't have that this week. I just fit in fifteen minutes here, thirty minutes there and got my word count done. At the moment that was possible because I'm really feeling the NEED to finish this draft, despite other commitments.
What keeps you motivated, and what tricks are you using to fit your writing in around your busy schedule this holiday season, fellow ROWers?
The 12 Days of Christmas Reading promotion is going on over at Nadja Notariani's blog. Submit a comment about your favorite Christmas song to be entered for the giveaways. We have thirteen authors participating. Fun stuff!
I published my books on All Romance Ebooks. You can find Tribute here, and Vessel here. They're even on sale for $1.49 for about ten more days. :)
I amazed myself this week by writing 3,800 words on Queen Witch, my urban fantasy work in progress. I'm nearing the end, and since I've gotten back into the story, it's really been flowing when I sit down to write. The reason my word count was amazing is that I usually have a few hours of dedicated writing time on the weekend where the bulk of my word count makes it to the page -- I didn't have that this week. I just fit in fifteen minutes here, thirty minutes there and got my word count done. At the moment that was possible because I'm really feeling the NEED to finish this draft, despite other commitments.
What keeps you motivated, and what tricks are you using to fit your writing in around your busy schedule this holiday season, fellow ROWers?
December 10, 2011
My Christmas Post! 12 Days of Christmas Reading Gift List
Welcome to the 12 Days of Christmas Reading Gift List, a great place to track down fun titles to fill up that new e-reader for a loved one -- or fill up your own, for that matter! I hope you have fun checking out all of these titles, and reading about the authors' favorite Christmas memories and traditions.
For me, Christmas will always hold a romantic air. My husband and I make time to be together on Christmas. We haven't been alone these past couple of Christmases, we've been spending our Christmas mornings with our daughter (now two daughters), as we remember doing with our parents as children. The afternoons are filled with family celebrations, which have regained that chaotic, fun vibe you get when you add the next generation to the mix. But there's still time for cozying up with our Christmas tree alight and enjoying each other once the kids are in bed.
Christmas is special to us. My favorite Christmas memory starts when my mother asked, the year I graduated from college, what I was up to Christmas night. We were standing in her kitchen, a place we've shared a lot of moments over the years. I was excited to share that I was spending the evening with my love. It was the first time we'd dedicated Christmas night as a time to be together. We both have large families, and our holidays were already full of several weekends worth of family time. We never piled on the pressure over the holidays, it was one way we appreciated the shared experience of large families -- and the way my husband treats his family was one of the ways I knew he was my mate. That night I found out there was a reason he'd been so insistent about spending Christmas night together. He proposed! Family time became OUR family time. And every Christmas after has been a reminder to appreciate each other and what we're so blessed to have.
I wish you and yours the best this holiday season. May your days and nights be filled with joy and brightness.
Now click that button and go check out more of the 12 Days of Christmas Reading authors and giveaways! To enter the giveaway, post a comment about your favorite Christmas song on Nadja Notariani's blog! Giveaways will happen every day between December 10 and December 22.
For me, Christmas will always hold a romantic air. My husband and I make time to be together on Christmas. We haven't been alone these past couple of Christmases, we've been spending our Christmas mornings with our daughter (now two daughters), as we remember doing with our parents as children. The afternoons are filled with family celebrations, which have regained that chaotic, fun vibe you get when you add the next generation to the mix. But there's still time for cozying up with our Christmas tree alight and enjoying each other once the kids are in bed.
Christmas is special to us. My favorite Christmas memory starts when my mother asked, the year I graduated from college, what I was up to Christmas night. We were standing in her kitchen, a place we've shared a lot of moments over the years. I was excited to share that I was spending the evening with my love. It was the first time we'd dedicated Christmas night as a time to be together. We both have large families, and our holidays were already full of several weekends worth of family time. We never piled on the pressure over the holidays, it was one way we appreciated the shared experience of large families -- and the way my husband treats his family was one of the ways I knew he was my mate. That night I found out there was a reason he'd been so insistent about spending Christmas night together. He proposed! Family time became OUR family time. And every Christmas after has been a reminder to appreciate each other and what we're so blessed to have.
I wish you and yours the best this holiday season. May your days and nights be filled with joy and brightness.
Now click that button and go check out more of the 12 Days of Christmas Reading authors and giveaways! To enter the giveaway, post a comment about your favorite Christmas song on Nadja Notariani's blog! Giveaways will happen every day between December 10 and December 22.
December 4, 2011
Round of Words Update: December!
Hi, everyone! I need to write a quick update today, because I have a lot of writer business to get to, as well as a Sunday at home to enjoy with my family. :)
We're now less than a week away from the beginning of the 12 Days of Christmas Reading promotion hosted by Nadja Notariani. I've been helping to organize the promotion, but I haven't yet written my own post or given Nadja my links. Shame on me! Ha! I'll get to it today. I'm super excited to see how this turns out, and get to know more about my fellow authors and their books.
I've had All Romance Ebooks on my radar for some time, but creating the different ebook formats had me stumped. I finally looked into it and it turned out not to be very hard -- maybe because I use Apple products? I was able to download Calibre for free, then I turned my Word manuscript into an HTML document using Words' "save only display information into HTML" feature. By pulling that document into Calibre, I was able to create the .epub and .mobi files to sell on All Romance Ebooks. Then I emailed them to myself and opened them on the iPad to check the formatting out. Since I'm writing fiction and it's just text with minimal formatting, they came across quite nicely. Of course, now I need to find an hour to get all versions of my two books uploaded to the site. That's going on the "it's not urgent and it's the holidays for goodness sake" list. :)
My cover artist was kind enough to put together a banner for my blog, and it is oh so pretty! I love it, and I think it gives readers a much better idea of who I am as a person and an author. The night sky, a full moon and the forest....you'll find me there. Tishia at Paragraphic Designs is working on a profile pic for me (I have such a love/hate relationship with my current profile pic!), and business cards using the same theme. Branding is super fun!! I hope to get business cards displayed across my metro area, and since I'm in Portland, home of "Keep Portland Weird" and all things indie. We're very independent here by culture, and I anticipate a lot of support from young Portlanders in my indie efforts. Having a pretty business card will make it easier for me to get the word out.
A final thing I want to mention today before my terrible word count update. Ha! I've noticed quite the increase in traffic to my blog in the past month, and I think it has to do with the types of posts I've been running lately. Yes, I'm getting "out there" more in general, so it's hard to tease out exactly how people are finding my blog. I've expanded my reach on Goodreads, Twitter, and released another book. However, the posts that are getting the most attention (hits) are those I'm running about what other authors/writers are up to! I ran an excerpt from an indie epic fantasy by Tracy Falbe one month ago that is now my most viewed post of all time. Maybe that says something about Tracy's reach, but the hits have kept on coming all month. I also did an interview with Reina Stowe, who will soon release her second erotica short story. And I had Alexia Chamberlynn do a guest post about newsletters and the author platform this week. Those two posts are now also among my top four posts of all time in terms of page views. I'm excited by this, because I think it speaks to indies' potential when we help each other get the word out. These posts weren't hard for me to run. They took a little more organization and coordination with other authors than my usual "what I'm up to" posts, but they were also apparently more interesting to my readers and potential readers. Even if it wasn't my books drawing people to my blog, I got much more exposure than if I was playing an "I need to do everything myself and look out for number one" sorta game. That's exciting and invigorating, and I look forward to doing more of it.
Word count wasn't awesome this week...my dedicated writing time has been virtually nonexistent the past couple of weeks with publishing a book and the holiday season upon us. I also needed to get back in the groove on my WIP since I hadn't worked on it in a couple of weeks and left at a pivotal point in the manuscript. So I did a bunch of reading through, light editing, and thinking back to my storyline and the purpose of different scenes, where I need to do more work, etc. And my word count was 1,300 words written yesterday. So I feel like I'm on track to hammer through the rest of this manuscript (word count presently 35,500). My goal is still to finish the first draft of this book this Round, and by golly, I'm gonna do it!
Hope everyone else is doing great, unwinding from NaNo, and in general kicking back some in the last month of the year. We all need to give super-productive selves a break, too!! Pat yourself on the back and then go watch football, or wrestle with your kids or something. I think I'll do a little of all of that today. :)
We're now less than a week away from the beginning of the 12 Days of Christmas Reading promotion hosted by Nadja Notariani. I've been helping to organize the promotion, but I haven't yet written my own post or given Nadja my links. Shame on me! Ha! I'll get to it today. I'm super excited to see how this turns out, and get to know more about my fellow authors and their books.
I've had All Romance Ebooks on my radar for some time, but creating the different ebook formats had me stumped. I finally looked into it and it turned out not to be very hard -- maybe because I use Apple products? I was able to download Calibre for free, then I turned my Word manuscript into an HTML document using Words' "save only display information into HTML" feature. By pulling that document into Calibre, I was able to create the .epub and .mobi files to sell on All Romance Ebooks. Then I emailed them to myself and opened them on the iPad to check the formatting out. Since I'm writing fiction and it's just text with minimal formatting, they came across quite nicely. Of course, now I need to find an hour to get all versions of my two books uploaded to the site. That's going on the "it's not urgent and it's the holidays for goodness sake" list. :)
My cover artist was kind enough to put together a banner for my blog, and it is oh so pretty! I love it, and I think it gives readers a much better idea of who I am as a person and an author. The night sky, a full moon and the forest....you'll find me there. Tishia at Paragraphic Designs is working on a profile pic for me (I have such a love/hate relationship with my current profile pic!), and business cards using the same theme. Branding is super fun!! I hope to get business cards displayed across my metro area, and since I'm in Portland, home of "Keep Portland Weird" and all things indie. We're very independent here by culture, and I anticipate a lot of support from young Portlanders in my indie efforts. Having a pretty business card will make it easier for me to get the word out.
A final thing I want to mention today before my terrible word count update. Ha! I've noticed quite the increase in traffic to my blog in the past month, and I think it has to do with the types of posts I've been running lately. Yes, I'm getting "out there" more in general, so it's hard to tease out exactly how people are finding my blog. I've expanded my reach on Goodreads, Twitter, and released another book. However, the posts that are getting the most attention (hits) are those I'm running about what other authors/writers are up to! I ran an excerpt from an indie epic fantasy by Tracy Falbe one month ago that is now my most viewed post of all time. Maybe that says something about Tracy's reach, but the hits have kept on coming all month. I also did an interview with Reina Stowe, who will soon release her second erotica short story. And I had Alexia Chamberlynn do a guest post about newsletters and the author platform this week. Those two posts are now also among my top four posts of all time in terms of page views. I'm excited by this, because I think it speaks to indies' potential when we help each other get the word out. These posts weren't hard for me to run. They took a little more organization and coordination with other authors than my usual "what I'm up to" posts, but they were also apparently more interesting to my readers and potential readers. Even if it wasn't my books drawing people to my blog, I got much more exposure than if I was playing an "I need to do everything myself and look out for number one" sorta game. That's exciting and invigorating, and I look forward to doing more of it.
Word count wasn't awesome this week...my dedicated writing time has been virtually nonexistent the past couple of weeks with publishing a book and the holiday season upon us. I also needed to get back in the groove on my WIP since I hadn't worked on it in a couple of weeks and left at a pivotal point in the manuscript. So I did a bunch of reading through, light editing, and thinking back to my storyline and the purpose of different scenes, where I need to do more work, etc. And my word count was 1,300 words written yesterday. So I feel like I'm on track to hammer through the rest of this manuscript (word count presently 35,500). My goal is still to finish the first draft of this book this Round, and by golly, I'm gonna do it!
Hope everyone else is doing great, unwinding from NaNo, and in general kicking back some in the last month of the year. We all need to give super-productive selves a break, too!! Pat yourself on the back and then go watch football, or wrestle with your kids or something. I think I'll do a little of all of that today. :)
