Back From the Dead ... Sort of ...

I took a longer break from work that was planned. P.R. and I had a great time on our vacation. I can easily say this was the best birthday of my life.We got home and returned to our normal working lives and P.R. got sick. I was doing my best to be a good caretaker and get P.R. back to full health, which I did. P.R. wa only down for a few days and then went right back to work.A day after P.R. left town, I got sick. The thing with having the kind of condition I have is that when I get sick, I don't just get the sniffles and need a day or two in bed like most people, I get very sick. I have been in bed for a week now and still have a long way to go to be healthy again. Not going to bore, or gross out, anyone with details but it will be a few days yet before I'm really up and around again.Right now the only things that are really getting me up and out of bed are taking care of Shaggy and going to the bathroom, evening eating is not really mandatory at this point. However, as you can see, I did get my butt up long enough to do at least a tiny bit of work today, which actually turned out to be a bit depressing.I've been dealing with some hard issues about my writing career. I need to make some money and so far this western serial just isn't cutting it. I can't seem to find the right combination of promotions, brides, or just outright begging to get people to post reviews or share my posts. It could be the genre, westerns are not a huge selling market. It has been suggested that the covers aren't interesting enough or that the fact that I promote the serial novella category too much and the actual story line not enough. I don't know.Then there are the audiobooks. I'm doing more and more research into how this is done and I think it will be a revenue boost but the technical part, if I want to do a good product, is going to take a bit more time to learn. One thing I have decided for sure is, right now I need to put the audiobooks on the back burner for a few months while I learn more about the production side of it. I am not scraping that project, I just won't be making that my main focus right now.So now what to do about the actual books?I love these characters and this story and I have the next two books plotted out in my head and ready to be put on the page. But will the work be worth the money? Last year I made a total of $75 combined from every book I have out. (I have a feeling those were all bought by two people, my mother and my friend Gayle Kelley.) I could have made more selling plasma. I have been taking money from my 401K to help cover my time off to get a writing career going but I'm getting to the limit I set for myself to take out. I lose so much in penalties that at some point I might as well just set all my cash on fire, it's that kind of waste.I have friends who are self-publishing in romance and erotica and are making a small but steady income with their books. I had wanted to write something with more heart and deeper cultural significance but I think that only works if you are George Orwell or Jane Austin. The vast majority of today's readers want to 50 Shades of Grey not Pride and Prejudice.No matter what, I need to finish this western serial. It will forever be in my head and won't go away until I write it down. But do I finish it right now or do I take a short break and write one book that could bring in some money? That is the real question.I will be doing a lot of thinking today and I hope to make my decision this week.