Ramble on!

I should make an update, I suppose. So I'll cover the positives first. I picked up a copy of Alice: Madness Returns, and I've played about 2% of it according to my stats. What I've seen so far is really different from the first game. It's evolved, and the use of cinematic cut scenes with paper puppets sets is really intense, at times even gory. Yet the game is also very pretty. The first game feels very boxy and dated after spending just a few minutes exploring the new locations. The first shots of London and its characters show off the game engine nicely, but then you get to Wonderland, and…my gosh, it's breathtaking.

In Teen Wolf, the alpha was revealed, and my wild guess was totally wrong. (No, I'm not going to spoil this for people coming to the show late. You deserve a chance to enjoy the mystery too.) But I'm not disappointed by who it is, and I am in fact antsy to get the next episode. Really cannot gush strongly enough about this show, peoples.

My diet and exercise are working to trim me down. When I started, I looked skinny in photos, but if I smacked my tummy, the fat rippled around to my butt and all the way down to my knees. People often can't grasp that a skinny person can become too fat and no one notices. But as I gain fat, I lose muscle. So for a while, even I have trouble telling when I'm starting to pig out.

But when I smack my belly now, only my belly jiggles. My thighs are all mucle again, and my butt looks fantastic. (^_^) This progress is in spite of all the bad days where I laid on the couch in agony from weather shifts. So I have to say, the Kinect was a great purchase for me, and it's really helping me to get back in shape.

But, all the exercise still has not helped with stairs, and yesterday during our shopping trip, the stairwell leading out of the subway was like someone got behind me and started stabbing with a short pocket knife. Nothing so deep and painful that it would stop anyone, but enough to put a wince on my face with every step. Once I got home, I had to stand up for periods of time because sitting or laying was painful. Just…can't win sometimes.

And speaking of which, it's starting to look like The Life and Death of a Sex Doll will be another bust. While pleading for more readers, I had a friend message me on Twitter and say that the sci-fi genre was harder to break into because the readers only want something "groundbreaking."

But you know, I'm not really convinced on the idea that sci-fi readers are a tougher market to crack. I haven't had much luck with any market thus far, and as I've been rambling about in a forum, I don't have a clue what I'm doing wrong, or what I was doing right with my successes.

Now all throughout the past few months, I've talked about the books that I wanted y'all to buy. This last week, I chatted up two books that I wanted to get in your hands. On opening day for Peter the Wolf, I got one sale…for Dating in the Post-Zombie World. That would be one of four books I released last month with no advertising, and no cover. But the book I bought a pro cover for and spent all this time drumming up sold nothing on opening day.

It later sold copies, but I can still count my sales on one hand. I can also guess who most of those folks are. (And thanks, guys. I really do appreciate y'all, and I hope you know that.)

So, release book, don't advertise=get sales. Three of the four books I released without ads or covers have sold copies. But nothing I do to drum up attention of my new books does anything. My promotions don't make impressions or generate traffic. There's not even people looking up the previews.

This really is not a case of anyone being snobby, or at least, I don't think it is. But looking at traffic, I see I'm still failing to interest anyone in coming to Peter's page, and very few people have read the promos I did for The Life and Death of a Sex Doll. The problem here is still targeting. I need to aim for multi-genre readers, people looking for something a little different from the standard fare. I've only found a few at this point, and most of those were random connections.

So here even before any reviews come in, I can pretty much predict that Peter the Wolf will flop. Not because I didn't promote it, but because I'm not promoting it to the right people.

Final thought: I don't tell you people thse things because I'm going "Aaarrgh, why aren't you buying stuff?" There's really not that many of you here, taking the NR review crowd into account. I think those of you who do show up for the book stuff probably have bought a few books at this point.

What I'm doing is nothing different from what Amanda Hocking does when she talks about her promotions and writing. The difference is, she has more successes to celebrate in her updates, and I only have more confounding mysteries to unravel. The few readers and reviewers I can sway have said my books are good. The writers and editors who I asked to check out my stuff come back with positive comments too. Surely, if I can please these finicky folks, there has to be a market of readers who would like my books. But if there's a site for me to locate those readers, I've never been there.

So if my rambling over my failures annoys you, I'm sorry. But I'm not saying, "What's wrong with y'all?" I'm asking "What am I doing wrong?" It's just, there's apparently no straight answer to that question, either.