S.J. Pajonas's Blog, page 95

Sunday Update – October 22, 2017

IT IS DONE!! I have finished my final edit of Hikoboshi 2!! I’m so glad to be done with this book and I’m also very glad that I did this final edit in the month before I write the next book in the series. During the edit, I got lots of great ideas of what to do for the next and through the rest of the series, so that was an added bonus. I plan to get the pre-order, blurb, and cover up for this book in the next week, and I’m aiming to publish it on November 16th. Stay tuned!

It’s apparent that when I’m working hard on edits, I can’t do much of anything else, including updating this blog. Lol. But I have this week off from writing/editing so I plan to put a Book Chat up and talk about my redesign of the Miso Cozy Mysteries covers. I talked a little about them in the newsletter I just sent out. Did you get my newsletter? Hope you did!

We had a busy week with lots going on here while my husband was out of town in the UK. I made sure to do something fun with the kids each night for dinner including hand-pulled noodles that they helped me with, a night of fish tacos, and watching Supergirl while having pizza.

For work, I just plowed through every day, marking each chapter off on my calendar, editing, and listening to each before moving on to the next one. It’s tedious work, but since I can see the progress as I go, it feels like I’m actually accomplishing something! I love the feeling of finishing it too. Love it.

I can’t remember what I did each day this week, so let’s move onto the photos!

I had finally had it with the state of my front hall closet. I took some time out of edits to get in there, clean it out, and reorganize it. My pantry is next this week!

It’s been so nice here that our sunflowers bloomed again.

I made mock-chicken noodle soup with hand-pulled noodles. It was tasty! And both girls ate it!

We had our first ghosting! Someone left this bag of candy on our front doorstep, rang the bell, and took off.

Sunday Update – October 15, 2017

Well, I thought I’d do a Book Chat, but it turns out that when I’m doing revisions, I don’t have much bandwidth for anything else! I’ll be saving up my books for whenever I have room in my schedule to write a post up.

On Monday this week, I dealt with plumbing issues in the Pajonas house. I called in a plumber to fix three major things and get my house back in working order. The kids had a half day and it rained, plus we had a playdate and gymnastics in the evening. It was a busy day.

Tuesday was for work. I started revisions on Hikoboshi 2 and set up a schedule for working every day.

Wednesday, I worked at home while the cleaning ladies were here then the kids had tennis lessons in the afternoon. Thursday, I ran errands in the morning between revisions, and then in the evening, my oldest kid did some community service with her Girl Scouts troop.

On Friday, I went to Panera with my writing buddy, Amy, after getting my hair cut. Then I napped before getting the kids from school because I knew we’d spend the whole early evening at LensCrafters, which we did. My youngest got her eyes checked, and she has eye strain from too much screen time, and I thought I was being good with limiting her! Gah. We obviously need more limits and more breaks so we got her a pair of blue-light blocking glasses and now we set timers for spending time at the computer or iPad. The oldest got a new pair of glasses too and I asked for the blue-light blocking filter for them as well. They should take about a week to come in. I got behind on revisions on Friday.

Saturday, I tried to concentrate on revisions, and I did, but it wasn’t enough to make up for being behind on Friday. I took some time off from the computer to make apple crisp though and have family movie night.

Today, Sunday, I worked on revisions most of the day but was careful not too overdo it. I don’t want to get sick from being on the computer all the time. It’s not good for me! So I took some time off to knit and watch Project Runway.

What else happened this week?

I set up a revisions schedule which I hope to (mostly) stick to. I’m already behind but only because several of the earlier chapters are really long. I may be able to catch up later this week with shorter chapters.

Some cool lawn mushrooms from up the block.

I enjoyed some awesome rum punch today.

I’m seeing a lot of my keyboard this week as I do revisions.

LensCrafters is always an epic trip. Glad we only do it once per year.

And there’s nothing like apple crisp baking on a Saturday afternoon. Yum!

Obviously, I’ll be very busy with revisions this week but I also plan to drop by and update you all on changes to the Daydreamer Detective covers! I hope to get those done later this week as well as putting up the pre-order for the fourth book on Amazon.

Have a great week!

The post Sunday Update – October 15, 2017 appeared first on S. J. Pajonas.

Sunday Update – October 8, 2017

Well, my fingers suffered the agony of writing but I finished THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE RETURNS A FAVOR last Sunday. That’s my huge news for the week! It happened after I posted my Sunday Update but I referenced it in my October Goals post.

On Monday, it was back to school and work. In the morning, I pulled SUMMER HAIKUS from Amazon, waited for it to be unpublished, then I uploaded the new version. I then worked on new covers for my Daydreamer Detective series! They will all get an update later this month and the Daydreamer Detective has a new blurb too! I got one professionally written, and it’s so great. I can’t wait to use it!

On Tuesday, I walked, per usual, worked some more on random stuff I had put off while finishing Daydreamer 4, and then got our veggies from the CSA share. Then I had the evening to myself because my husband had work in the city.

Wednesday was a super busy day. I walked in the morning, showered, drove to the grocery store farther away, stocked up stuff we had been running out of, came home and put everything away. I then ate a very rushed lunch, went to the chiropractor and acupuncturist, then got the kids from school. Not long after that, I took them to their tennis lessons, came home, and made dinner. This was also the day I got my new computer up and running! I bought a PC, a Lenovo Flex 5, to run Dragon and a few other programs I can’t get on Mac. In between all the other things I did on Wednesday, I also was working on that. I was pretty beat at the end of the day!

Thursday, I met up with my writing buddy Amy at Panera. We arrived a little later than usual because she had trouble locating her computer in her house! I’m so glad she found it. Then I ran an errand on the way home, and we had a nice chill afternoon at home. Finally, no place we had to be! Until the evening that is, when I had to go to the middle school for Back to School night. It was long, two whole hours, but it was fun and I got to meet all of my older kid’s teachers.

Friday was finally a regular day. I got the kids to school, walked, showered, went to Whole Foods, had lunch at home, napped, and picked up the kids. Then we chilled all afternoon and evening because my husband worked from home.

On Saturday, the kids had piano lessons in the morning so I cleaned while that was going on, ate lunch, went for a walk, and worked in the afternoon. Then in the evening, we had english muffin pizzas as a family and played Monopoly together. My husband crushed us all in the first game and won. Lucky bastard. In the evening, we stayed up to watch the Michigan State vs University of Michigan football game, which is a huge rivalry. I’m a MSU alumni, so I root for the Spartans and they won! I went to bed tired but happy.

Today, we spent most of the day out on Long Island visiting family for my nephews’ birthdays. The ride out there and back were both not too bad, so a good day all around.

In more work news, I’m currently reading Hikoboshi 2 and making notes along the way and I hope to start editing it tomorrow. Today and yesterday, SUMMER HAIKUS has been available for free on Amazon. As of this moment, I have given away over 2100 copies of it! I had an ad in Freebooksy today that put me over the top and now it’s #80 in the Free Store and doing well in the charts. I hope some people in KU have been clicking borrow instead of just downloading the book because I’d love to get a leg up in the Paid charts tomorrow and some page reads as well. We shall see.

What else happened this week?

I finished up THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE RETURNS A FAVOR! Woo hoo!!

I’ve been working my way through my Japanese monthly snack box backlog. These were really good. Little brown sugar cookies. Mmmm!

Say hello to my new Dragon master! This is the Lenovo Flex 5.

During Back to School night, we were “forced” to do science experiments, complete with safety goggles.

I flew my Spartans flag outside for the big game on Saturday!

My new knitting project is pooling badly. So I’ve woven in a life line and I’m going to rip back and fix this by alternating with the other end of the skein.

And finally, here’s where SUMMER HAIKUS is sitting today! Looking good! I’m so glad I republished this book.

Coming up this week on the blog: I think it’s time for another Book Chat. I have some audiobooks I can write up!

Have a great week everyone!

The post Sunday Update – October 8, 2017 appeared first on S. J. Pajonas.

SUMMER HAIKUS Is Free Today And Tomorrow!

In case you missed the news this morning via my newsletter, SUMMER HAIKUS is free today and tomorrow on Amazon. Besides a few weeks of being free here on my blog, I’ve never offered this book for free on any of the vendors. And you might notice a change to it as well…

That’s because just this week, I republished SUMMER HAIKUS! I put it through a rigorous edit and cleaned up the typos, plus I edited the sex scenes in the book to make them more fade-to-black. Then I gave it a new cover, pulled it from sale everywhere, and republished it like new. It was originally on Nook, iBooks, Kobo, and Google Play but had only sold one book between ALL of those vendors in the last two years. So now, with a fresh start, it is on Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited only. Plus, it’s free today and tomorrow! You should totally download it and read it. It’ll make your weekend.

October 2017 Goals

September meant everything was back to business. The kids went back to school and I got back to writing full time.

What Happened With September’s Goals?

Finish Daydreamer 4. This is finally done!! Thank god too because I was really struggling in the last quarter of the book. But I figured a bunch of things out and I made the story work. I’m happy with the outcome and I think readers will really love this story. I have a few formatting things to do and then it’s off to my critique partner.

Walking, reading, knitting, and not freaking out. All is well here. Walking went great as evidenced by the Runkeeper stats below. I did do some reading but it was mostly audiobooks. I didn’t do a ton of knitting but I did take it out several times and got some rows knitted. I did not freak out about school starting. We handled it well, and middle school is going well for my oldest.

Let’s look at the Runkeeper stats for the year.

I’m now at 800 miles for the year so far, and I’m at 80% of my goal. It’s been 274 days of this year so far. Multiply that by 2.74 (the minimum I need per day to hit my goal) and the total is approximately 750 miles. I’m more than 50 miles past that. I’m doing great with this goal! Yay!

As for the month, I surpassed the needed 82.2 just barely by walking 85.6 miles. I took several days off and the majority of my miles now come from school walking.

A Look Back at September

Business Goals For October

Edit and republish SUMMER HAIKUS. I haven’t talked about this much except to address it in my anniversary post, but SUMMER HAIKUS has flopped so badly that it’s only sold 1 book in a whole year. I believe this is due to two things: the cover and it not being in Kindle Unlimited. Since KU favors brand new books, I’m completely unpublishing this book, editing a few of the sex scenes out, and republishing it, possibly losing all of my reviews. That will be happening this coming week.

Edit Hikoboshi 2 for publishing in November. I will be getting this ready for publication. I have a few tweaks to make and then copy edits. Then it’ll be ready for proofreading and ARC readers.

Reveal the cover, title, and blurb for Hikoboshi 2. I’m dreading this because I hate writing blurbs. Lol. But I plan to do this near the end of the month.

Brainstorm ideas for HIkoboshi 3. I’ll be writing Hikoboshi 3 during NaNoWriMo, so I need to have some ideas of what to write!

Update all the covers for the Miso Cozy Mysteries Series. Basically, I’ll be doing some small edits to the current covers (getting rid of the black bar across the top and brightening up the colors), a brand-new cover for OZONI AND ONSENS, and a new cover for THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE RETURNS A FAVOR aka Daydreamer 4. I will need to upload all of these to the vendors and update the ebook files with them too, as well as ask Lola to update them on Goodreads.

Personal Goals For October

Walking, reading, knitting, and more audiobooks.The usual! I’d like to keep up the audiobook listening as this is the best way for me to get “reading” done. Lol.

Enjoy your October everyone!

The post October 2017 Goals appeared first on S. J. Pajonas.

Sunday Update – October 1, 2017

Where has this year gone? I feel like my whole life is sliding by and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Maybe this is why some people enjoy writing time travel novels. Time marches on but they can still play with. Lol. We’re now in the final quarter of the year and there’s still lots to do before 2018 sets in.

Since today is October 1 and I usually do a post about my monthly goals on the 1st, I’ll be publishing that tomorrow.

Let’s look back at this week.

Monday was a chill day at home. I’m so glad that we have no real obligations on Mondays besides getting my youngest kid to gymnastics in the afternoon. We had her friend over after school and I also took her to gymnastics since they’re in the same class.

Tuesday, I made applesauce in the morning while listening to my audiobook after a long walk. Then I worked more on Daydreamer 4. In the afternoon, we picked up our veggies as usual. It was a hot week! The temperature was balmy and I think Tuesday it got to almost 90°F. Crazy hot for the end of September.

On Wednesday, my husband worked from home and the cleaning ladies came, so I left to go to Panera with my buddy, Amy. We had some time together to talk and brainstorm and have lunch. Then I went to acupuncture. In the afternoon, I took the kids to tennis and we all had pizza for dinner.

Thursday was my day to buckle down and get work done. I cruised into the last 8k of Daydreamer 4, baked some bread, and made soup. I got a lot of work done on Daydreamer 4 which was good because we had Friday off.

Friday, we slept in because the kids had no school. Normally I would love this and it was actually a pretty chill day, but it took forever to have time to write. I took care of admin things in the morning, got the kids dressed, and then we went shopping at Whole Foods. My oldest daughter got sushi for lunch!! I was so proud!! She was so picky until recently and now she’s eating more and more different foods. We had lunch at home and then I took them to the school to ride bikes. I got some walking in by walking around the black top a million times. I finally got to writing in the afternoon.

On Saturday, I realized that though my new keyboard has eliminated some of my hand pain, I am still in a lot of pain typing for long amounts of time. I have avoided using my old PC with Dragon on it because it’s so old and slow that it’s a struggle to get through the dictation. It’s finally time to bite the bullet and buy a newer PC for Dragon and other Windows programs I need. It seems dumb to have two computers but my MacBook Air would struggle running Parallels so this is my best option. My husband is cashing in some Amex points to lighten the cost and I’ll be ordering my new computer today. I will then hand it over to my husband to set up because I am not a Windows person. Lol.

Besides shopping for a PC on Saturday, I also did a lot of writing. I got up to the last chapter of Daydreamer 4 and I’m going to finish it off today!!

So today, Sunday, not only will I be finishing Daydreamer 4, I’m also taking today off from walking as I need a rest. I hope to do some cooking or baking later or to read. We shall see.

What else happened this week?

I kept fueling the writing fire this week by breaking out the Japanese candy. It was obviously worth it because I really cruised through to the end of Daydreamer 4.

I made some really awesome applesauce from our apple picking outing and I’m going to make oatmeal for breakfast this coming week so I can enjoy the applesauce with it.

I’ve been enjoying all of my Japanese snacks from my Bokksu boxes.

I got some more baking done this week and I made English Muffin Bread. Yum!

Proof positive my daughter is coming out of her picky eating phase. She had tuna roll for lunch on Friday.

And I’m totally fascinated by all the crazy mushrooms/fungi growing around my neighborhood. These were particularly ugly/awesome.

Coming up this week on the blog: October 2017 Goals.

Have a great week everyone!

The post Sunday Update – October 1, 2017 appeared first on S. J. Pajonas.

Read An Excerpt From UGLY BEAUTIFUL GIRL By Tracy Krimmer

Congratulations to Tracy Krimmer, my awesome crit partner, on the release of her new coming of age novel, UGLY BEAUTIFUL GIRL!

This is my stop during the book blitz for Ugly Beautiful Girl by Tracy Krimmer. This book blitz is organized by Lola’s Blog Tours. The book blitz runs from 27 September till 3 October. See the tour schedule here.

Ugly Beautiful Girl

By Tracy Krimmer

Genre: Coming of Age/ Contemporary Romance

Age category: New Adult

Release Date: September 27, 2017

Blurb:

Nerd. Weird. Ugly. That’s me. And I don’t want it to be anymore.

Now is my time to make my mark on the world. My college roommate doesn’t make it easy. Neither does her brother, Jesse, but for completely different reasons. He makes me feel things I’ve never felt before.

Wanted. Important. Beautiful.

But we can’t be together because it isn’t real. Someone like him could never fall for someone like me. We aren’t meant to fit together.

Even if I fall apart without him.

You can find Ugly Beautiful Girl on Goodreads

You can buy Ugly Beautiful Girl here on Amazon. Ugly Beautiful Girl is available on Kindle Unlimited.

Excerpt

“He’s so nice.” Janna takes another cookie and hands one to me as well. “He’s so out of my league, though. Hell, he’s out of most people’s leagues.”

Everyone is out of my league. Between my Pinnochio nose, planet-sized ass, and the scars left behind from the great pimple outbreak of 2015, I’m far down in the lineup for anyone to date. I accepted that a long time ago. After being called a dog more times than I can count, I finally made the decision that maybe everyone is right. I’m not pretty and never will be. The more and more someone refers to you as something, the more likely you are to believe it.

“How is he so nice and his sister is such a jerk?” I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people so different from one another before. His first impression is the complete opposite from Olivia’s.

Janna begins walking so I step in line with her. “Who knows? They were both super popular in school but for different reasons. Her reasons are more X-rated if you catch my drift.”

Sex tape? Pictures online? Favors in the bathroom? I want to know but I also don’t want to gossip about Olivia. I don’t like when people say stuff about me so I don’t want to do it to her. Besides, things like that tend to come back around. I don’t want it to bite me in the ass.

“So this Tyler guy, was he your boyfriend throughout high school?”

“Nah. We dated senior year. That was it. I had one other boyfriend, Grant, freshman and sophomore year. I took junior year off of guys, I guess. Who knows?” She shrugs. “Sometimes I think about quitting guys all together.”

“Like dating girls instead?”

“Maybe. Or not dating at all. I’ll graduate, collect two dozen cats, and call it a life.”

She can’t be serious. I would kill to look like her. Okay, maybe not kill, but I could do some damage if needed. I doubt she has had any experience with being called names, and she’s had two boyfriends to my zero. I picture her strutting down her high school hallway sans book bag—she’s too cool for one. Her books are snug against her hip as she works her way down the hall as everyone glances her way. No. She can’t become a cat lady. If anyone should surrender her life to cats it’s me, and even I won’t do that.

“What about you? Do you have a special man in your life?”

Does my dad count? Probably not what she means. I almost kissed Shawn Solender once in sixth grade but that turned out to be a joke. Another time as a freshman I was supposed to go to Homecoming with Chris Henderson. I sat on the front steps of my house for three hours before I finally admitted to myself he wasn’t coming. On Monday at school everyone made fun of me and pictures were posted all over Instagram. Someone had stopped by and snapped as many shots of me crying as they could. The hashtags were horrible, things such as #loser, #whowoulddateher, #dogface, #dogbreath, #nobody. They got pretty negative, pushed me down to a point I almost didn’t want to get back up, but I did. I keep telling myself they are only words, no matter how much they hurt.

The change begins with me, right? If I’m going to create a better life for myself, I have to be confident. “No. There are a few guys who want to date me, but since I’m here I want to play the field.” I’m sure she sees right through me, and if she does, she doesn’t let on.

“Us hotties have to stick together and stay single.”

Hotties? She’s speaking of herself, not me. I appreciate the gesture, trying to include me in a clique I will never be part of. I’ve been through it long enough. I know the truth.

I’m the ugly girl in the room. I always have been and always will be.

About the Author

Tracy’s love of writing began at nine years old. She wrote stories about aliens at school, machines that did homework for you, and penguins. Now she pens books and short stories about romance. She loves to read a great book, whether it be romance or science fiction, or any genre in between, or pop popcorn and catch up on her favorite TV shows or movies. She’s been known to crush a candy or two as well. Her loves include fitness, reading, coffee, dogs, and naps (not in that order), and her dislikes are blue cheese, cold weather, and burpees.

You can find and contact Tracy here:

– Website

– Twitter

– Facebook

– Goodreads

– Amazon

– Bookbub

– Instagram

– Newsletter

Giveaway

There is a tour wide giveaway for the book blitz of Ugly Beautiful Girl. One winner will win a $10 Amazon Gift card.

For a chance to win, enter the rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The post Read An Excerpt From UGLY BEAUTIFUL GIRL By Tracy Krimmer appeared first on S. J. Pajonas.

Sunday Update – September 24, 2017

Oops, this Sunday Update is going up on Monday, as that’s just an indication of how busy Sunday was this week. But let’s start off with last Monday.

Monday, I don’t remember much of what happened except to say that I walked in the morning and worked hard through the rest of the day. I made a vegetable barley soup for dinner that night and picked up some ingredients for it from the store next to my daughter’s gymnastics gymnasium.

Tuesday was my 13th wedding anniversary. I met up with my writing buddy and friend, Amy, and then I went to Whole Foods to pick up some good things for dinner that night. I bought caviar and fancy cheese, plus some Chilean Sea Bass, and I cooked up a really nice dinner for us. It was a lovely evening at home.

On Wednesday, I had a very busy day with both an chiropractor adjustment and an acupuncture appointment. I’m still getting used to acupuncture. I wouldn’t say that I like it, but I think it’s working, so I’ll keep at it.

On Thursday, we had the day off from school for Rosh Hashanah. We spent the day at home and I took the kids to ride bikes at the school. Everyone was in a pretty good mood!

Friday was pretty easy. My husband worked from home, which is always nice. I shopped for the week of groceries and walked in the park again. The weather this past week was so beautiful that I spent most of it outside!

On Saturday, I got to see my family at my cousin’s daughter’s first birthday party. I haven’t seen my side of the family in a long time, so it was a real treat to hang out with everyone. I brought my oldest to the party and my husband took care of my youngest as she had a friend’s birthday to go to. We relaxed in the evening and watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

Sunday was apple picking day! We spent the noon lunch hour eating a packed lunch at the apple orchard, picked apples, bought donuts and cider and a few other things, then made it back home with plenty of time for my husband to take the younger child out to get her ears pierced! Then we had dinner together as a family and watched the last sumo match of the September tournament. It was quite the tournament this time around! Lots of injuries and upsets.

In writing and author news, I’m in the home stretch on Daydreamer 4 and I’m coming up on writing the last few chapters. That’s going really well. For author stuff, I ran into some drama on Facebook and have decided to just go it alone for a lot of my business from now on. Every time I try to follow a proscribed route to success, it all goes miserably wrong. It’s time to shut out all the distractions and be a lone wolf. I need to think outside of the box anyway!

What else happened this week?

Plenty of cooking going on at home between soups and grilled cheese making!

More beautiful days in the park.

Me and my cousin, Kate. I just love her to pieces.

I saw two different sets of crazy lawn mushrooms this week.

Anniversary dinner started off on the right foot.

And it’s a sure sign Fall has begun when you can go apple picking!

I hope you all have an awesome week!

The post Sunday Update – September 24, 2017 appeared first on S. J. Pajonas.

Sunday Update – September 17, 2017

It was quite the week around here! Not only was it another anniversary for 9/11 but then I also celebrated my 4th year as a published author. If you missed it, you can go back and read it here.

On Monday, it was back to school and back to work for me. I mostly worked on my anniversary post on Monday and thought long and hard about how I wanted to phrase my pull-back to part time author status. I think I did a good job and I’m happy with my decision to just let it ride on three books a year and pick up some new hobbies.

Tuesday, I went for a great walk in the morning and we picked up more veggies from the CSA for the evening. We got a really cool looking oblong yellow watermelon! It looks like a dragon egg. Lol.

On Wednesday, I had a frustrating day. My usual cleaning ladies were an hour late to show up and worked extra long for some reason. Which means I was able to shower but not eat before my acupuncture appointment. And that appointment was painful too. I ended up eating lunch really late and then had to take the girls to tennis. I barely had a moment to myself and felt very drained.

On Thursday, I had to drive into the city and back. This was also a very frustrating day. I was stuck in traffic for almost the entire drive in. Damned 30th Street! I am never going to take that crosstown ever again. I did get a nice shot of the Empire State Building on the way back to New Jersey, though!

On Friday, things got a little better. My husband took the day to work from home, so I walked first thing in the morning, and then I stayed home to wait for a package that needed a signature. Once that came, I did my grocery shopping and got the kids from school. My oldest daughter had her first dance/social at school that night and she had a great time. It was her first ever social. I can’t believe how big she is now!

On Saturday, I got in a nice walk in the park, writing, and time spent around home.

Today, I took the day off from walking to bake! I hadn’t done it in a while and I had tons of produce to use up. I made a loaf of banana pecan bread, vanilla almond zucchini bread, then a loaf of chocolate chip zucchini bread sweetened with Splenda for me. I’m trying to cut back on sugar and level out my blood sugar every day, so I thought this would be a good idea for me. Then I made pasta sauce this evening that turned out REALLY good. I also got in about 700 words of writing while I was at it.

I’ve had a good week of writing. I decided to cut back Daydreamer 4 by 10,000 words which was a good decision. Now that I’m 4 books into the series, I don’t need 80k to really massage the characters. 70k seems to be about right. It might be a little more depending on how I flesh things out, but once I cut it to a 70k goal and then moved some bits around, everything else fell into place. I should be able to finish it off before the end of the month!

What else happened this week?

My park was really beautiful this week, and I’ve enjoyed walking outdoors again now that the kids are back at school.

The fruits (and veggies!) of our CSA.

The Empire State Building on a beautiful day.

And all the quick breads I made today. Yum! I’m looking forward to enjoying them all week.

Have a great week everyone!

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Happy 4th Anniversary In Publishing!

Here we are! I have made it four years in this business, amazingly so. Can you believe it? I can’t. Some days I feel like I’m still a brand new author! I went back and re-read last year’s post to get a handle on how things have been since then and I’m surprised by how positive I was. I had a rough 3rd year and I was able to put a real positive spin on it. This year was equally hard, and I do have a few positive things to say, but I also have to reset expectations for the coming year.

Here is the TL;DR for below, in case you need it. I’m pulling back to part-time status, and I’ll only be publishing three books per year.

Please feel free to go back and check out my posts from Year One, Year Two, and Year Three if you want to see how far I’ve come. As ever, I will do my best to be as honest and transparent as possible.

• • • •

It’s my fourth year in this business, and again, I invested everything I made back into the business

Which means I wasn’t able to pay myself a wage again. In gross terms, I did better than the year before. My gross was around $3500 (for the whole year) but I spent almost all of that on ads. Despite working hard on every bit of ads, they don’t seem to have made a difference.

Just take a look at my top earning book for the year, and then the bottom earning book.

There’s a big difference here, and the book that I spent the most money on, SUMMER HAIKUS, between the covers, blog tour, ads, and editors, only sold ONE book in a whole year. ONE.

This is because visibility is hard to come by. And if you’re a small fry author like me, you have to pay for it. At this point, I don’t think it’s worth it.

Here’s why… I never saw any sell through to my other books. If I were gaining new readers who were interested in me, they’d be buying up my back list. And that just isn’t happening.

Every day, I see authors I know making $10k a month and not spending that much on ads. Then I know plenty others that ARE spending a lot of money on ads, but they’re making a healthy profit, an ROI of 150% or more. Then I meet new authors who have two or three books out and they’re making a few grand per month. Many of them without any prior platform or audience. Huh? Wow. That’s awesome, but that’s so not me, and I don’t know how to change it without fundamentally altering everything that I write or care about.

Information on how to really succeed and get somewhere in this business, besides knowing the basics and doing ads, is confusing and contradictory. One person says it’s all about ads. Another says it’s all about writing to market. Another swears by hand-selling at conventions. I was in a fairly popular author group earlier this year run by a NY Times Bestseller, and she said she doesn’t do any advertising. She told me personally, replying directly to my comment, that HER method works and it sells books. I was skeptical but excited that she was talking directly to me. I wanted to know what her method was! I want to write and reach my audience without having to constantly tweak and write ads. I asked her, “What’s your method? I’m excited to learn!” Nothing. She never responded. This is probably because she’s putting together a course to sell to authors and doesn’t want to give the information away for free. I see it happen all the time.

Okay then. Moving on.

I’m treading water and it’s exhausting

So, I have decided to scale back and make this whole publishing thing more of a part time job.

Why? Because it’s obvious I’m not getting anywhere. I’m treading water. How long can you tread water? Me, only about a two years before I begin to question my sanity. I love writing and I love the series I’ve created and the series I want to write, so I’m not going to stop, but something has to give.

Let’s look at some of the reasons I’ve decided to scale back…

1) I can’t write fast. I’ve tried to write fast and it all comes out like crap, even with revisions. I will NOT write crap for you all. I refuse to give you an inferior product. That’s my solemn promise.

2) I can’t grow my advanced reader team because no one new wants to leave reviews. I’ve asked my mailing list several times for advanced readers. Either no one signs up or I get one or two people who have never even read my work, want free books, and don’t know how to review on Amazon. I think that’s a sign.

3) I can’t seem to grow my newsletter with people who are interested in me and my work, not just free books. I did a reader survey this past year and a sizable amount of people on my list have never read one of my books. A large number of people indicated they would never pay for my books. And then, I get people who email me and tell me they want more free books. I already give away a lot of books, but they want more which I can’t sustain.

4) I spend tons of money advertising my books and I don’t make back my money. I was basically losing my shirt every month on ads the earlier part of this year. I’ve had to stop Facebook ads, and I’m scaling back my Amazon ads to manageable amounts. Still, I have never made a profit on this.

I knew all four of these points over the summer, but I was waiting to see how the launch of CRASH LAND ON KURAI would do. Thankfully it did well enough. But the sales never outpaced my ad spend, and I didn’t make a profit on the book like I thought I would.

So, I decided to call in the big guns

Three weeks ago, I got on the phone with a real professional in this business, someone who knows what he’s talking about. He had gone over my ad spend, looked at all my books, and helped me make plans to soldier into the future. Then he asked, “Let’s go back and look at a month when you did really well. Tell me the last time you made over $1000 to $2000 in a month and we’ll go over the numbers on how you can do that again.”

Uhhhh. *crickets* I had to break it to him that I’ve never made $1000 a month. Some years I don’t make $1000 in one year, not even gross. He was speechless. According to him, I have great covers and I’m a fabulous writer, I should be making a few grand a month.

That was news to me.

And that’s when it hit me. I defy all conventional wisdom in this industry. I can do everything right and still get it all wrong. I told him, “People tell me my books don’t sell because they’re about Japan.” And he told me, no. That can’t be it. So…?

Now what?

Now, it’s time to make solid plans

Most people would just give up at this point. I know I’ve thought about it several times. But like I said above, I love writing and I love my worlds and publishing my books for my limited audience. It’s time to be realistic about my plans for Year Five.

Last year, I said I would write what I wanted, when I wanted, and I’m going to continue that.

From now on, until things change, you can count on three books a calendar year from me: one mystery and two sci-fi.

So far this calendar year of 2017, I’ve published one mystery and one sci-fi. I have another sci-fi coming up that I’m excited about it! And you can also expect the next Daydreamer Detective book in January 2018 (it’s up for pre-order, in case you missed it.)

I also want to go back to writing more on the blog and being here more often. I love this place and I still have readers here. I want to provide content for you!

That’s it. I may write more, and it’s doubtful I will write less. This is a good pace for me. I don’t participate in anthologies or multi-author box sets because most are not a good fit for me and the organizers are not interested in my work. I occasionally write short stories, so maybe you’ll see some from me, but no guarantees.

What else will I be doing with my time?

Let me be clear that if I were killing it at this author thing, I’d be doing it 11 hours a day forever and ever. I’m a workaholic. I love being busy. I know authors who do work those kinds of hours. They’re successful and they work so hard, but they love it because they’re selling books. So, while I will be writing in my worlds and publishing a few books for you every year, I will also be trying some new things for me and going back to old loves.

I miss knitting. I put it on the back burner for a long time so I could concentrate on writing. It’s time to bring it back. It’s fun. It’s for me. And there’s so much out there for me to try.

I’d also like to learn a new hobby, but I’m not sure what that will be yet. I’m not especially crafty, so I thought maybe I’d learn something like a card game. My parents would be so happy if I learned Bridge. Lol. And now that my kids took pottery at the local museum, I’ve also been thinking about trying my hand at it.

This might also be the time for me to get back to my Japanese language skills. We shall see. I’m sure I’ll have plenty to talk about here on the blog!

There’s so much more ahead!

Even though I’m scaling back for publishing, I have a million stories in my head just waiting to hit the page! I can’t wait to write them all. I’m also looking forward to trying out new hobbies and other creative pursuits that will keep my writing brain happy.

I’m excited for Year Five! BRING IT ON!!

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