Mid-Year Bookish Wrap-Up

Photo by Karina Zhukovskaya on Pexels.com

Okay! It’s the middle of the year! I’ve seen the Mid-Year Book Freakout Tag making it’s way through the book blogging community. I decided to just do my own version of this. I’m not really feeling like half the questions. So I’m just making up my own thing, but of course, I’ve taken inspiration from the original tag.

Let’s start with my blog stats!

I haven’t quite beaten last year’s stats, but I’m pretty close.

My most popular post this year has been my post about r/redpillwomen. My interview with artist chiskeykku also performed really well. Most of that traffic came from the artist himself pushing the interview on facebook. My interview with a gentle dominatrix consistently gets traffic straight from search engines. That’s pretty cool. Then there are a couple of posts from last year that continued to perform well, but I deleted them because I decided I didn’t want them on my blog anymore.

And that absolute rant at the bottom continues to get views. ‘Random Noise on the Internet’ was written after the absolute sweetheart that is L.E.Kimball, a traditionally published literary writer and adjunct professor, decided to call me “self-absorbed” and tell me I was “wallowing” on a post where I wrote about being raped by my high school boyfriend.

That was her response to me talking about being raped. To call me self-absorbed.

But I mean, she’s just an all-around asshole. Here is some whole ass TERFery that she posted on purpose on her blog.

Look, you act like an asshole on the internet, other people get to comment on it. I’m commenting on it and I’m not sorry.

But yeah, her posting vile comments all over my blog, because for whatever reason a fellow woman processing her rape via the written word was so odious to her, led to a good deal of traffic. Lemons into lemonade.

Controversy leads to views. Her nasty comments left me a little shook, but at the end of the day, more traffic is always a good thing.

My blog does pretty good SEO wise. I’m including this about her, because I want this post to pop up in search engines when people google her. Although I guess just finding her own gross opinions is damning enough…

Again, act like an asshole, people are gonna comment on it. I am not at all sorry for bringing this up again. There are consequences to behavior. Plus, it was part of my blogging year *shrugs* It affected my traffic and my emotional state, so I’m gonna write about it.

But yeah, I suppose other than that, I haven’t had too many issues on wordpress this year. I’ve made a couple more blogging friends and got a brand new logo and color scheme put together by the amazing Pixie Stormcrow.

Now, let’s look at my goodreads stats!

I’m already doing awesome. I only read 33 books total in 2020. It’s only halfway through the year and I already almost beat that. I did include a couple of DNFs in my books “read” and I don’t feel super bad about it. If I read enough of the book to review it, I count that. Plus all the books I read on wattpad, Inkitt, and furaffinity don’t make it into my books read, since they don’t have goodreads pages. I think it all evens out in the end.

So…almost everything I read was romance or smut. A couple of academic works, classics, and fantasies thrown in here and there, but mainly romance/erotica for 2021.

Best Book of the Year

I highly recommend ‘Crazy Like Us’ to anyone who is critical of psychiatry and wants to learn more about the conflicts of interest between pharmaceutical companies and doctors, as well as the global influence of the DSM. It’s incredibly informative, and unlike a lot of non-fiction, is not dry at all. It’s full of stories about real human beings, making it a gripping and heart-wrenching read, despite the bulk of information included.

Worst Book of the Year

This book was so problematic. This is some real good-pussy-solves-bigotry other shit. The alien warrior is incredibly racist against humans. The humans even live in racial ghettos in his city. But then he fucks a hot human, so…racism solved??

Gross.

Most Anticipated 2021 Book

I don’t usually keep up with book releases and when they’re coming out, but since I had the opportunity to beta read this one, I’m pretty stoked for the release.

This is a unique twist on the mafia romance subgenre. It’s set in Hong Kong. The author herself comes from Hong Kong and has visited several times since moving to North America. She included so many interesting details about Hong Kong and in addition to the steaminess and cuteness of the book, there is also an incredible immersion into the culture and vibe of Hong Kong.

I preordered my copy! It drops July 15th!

And now for my Projects!

This year I…

*Launched the second edition of my most well-known work Combustion.

With the launch of the second edition, I actually did some legit marketing. I had a social media kit that some of my writer friends used to blast me on insta and their other socials. I also did a blog tour through Silver Dagger. I got to write a few guest posts and that was fun.

I’ve gotten a bunch more reviews and while sales haven’t risen drastically, I’m happy with the results.

Also with the new revised and expanded book on the market, I decided not to extend my KU contract. I took the book out of Kindle Unlimited, so that I could put the unedited first edition back up on wattpad. Readers now have the choice to read the first edition for free or buy a physical or ebook copy of the second edition.

*I launched the first two books in a 5 ebook series of Monster Girl smuts

I didn’t market a ton, but I did do a Kindle Countdown deal and booked slots in the bookspry newsletter. I also gave away arcs on booksprout. So far, this smut experiment has been a success. I’m not making huge bank, but I am making money consistently with both books. It’s cool. I can buy a small trip of groceries with the money I’m getting from the horny people of amazon

*I collaborated on a furry smut with Nik of Nikitty Studios to help promote the VN game he’s currently working on. You can check it out here.

*I taught a course on plotting in a Kindle Vella discord server

*I worked with other writers to get webinars/classes taught in my discord server

*I started a new youtube channel. Because all of my youtube subscribers were from the weird moment I had where I collaborated with manosphere humans. It’s not like I’m hiding the fact that I have a new channel. But I also don’t think any of them give enough fucks about me to notice. And now I only have other writers and readers following me, not a bunch of guys being all “women bad” in my fucking comments section (Dear God, everyone please forgive me for what an absolute tool I was for all of 2019/2020-I know nobody is going to completely forget about that moment, but as I said before, you act like an asshole on the internet….*shrugs* All I can do is try to be a tad less obnoxious moving forward.

Anyway, here’s the video on my new channel that I’m most proud of:

I’m trying to become involved in mental health reform activism. I’ve applied with several human rights organizations centered around lobbying to end the conflicts of interest between pharma and the DSM/APA/doctors and medical institutions in general. Just waiting back on those applications. In the meantime, before I’m in with a legit organization, I’ll keep trying to spread awareness on my own.

*I enrolled my story ‘Feels Bad, Man’ in Kindle Vella….and Vella is set to launch later this week! I’m excited and I will keep you all posted

Upcoming Projects I’ll be working on for the Second Half of 2021

*I’m working with another writer on an article about the problems in the mental health field. We hope to submit it to some online publications once it’s complete.

*I’m working on a romance and erotica anthology with several other indie writers. Deadlines for the stories is August, so I’ll be sprinting with another of the writers tomorrow. Tentative launch date for the anthology is December. I believe the anthology will be published just before the end of 2021.

*I’m working with a committee of people from my discord server to plan a digital book convention. We hope to put together some panels and guest speakers. Tentative date for the con is the beginning of Sept, but that could change as we don’t have our keynote speaker yet.

Speaking of that con, we are hoping to get more feedback from potential guests, and anybody in the bookish community will be welcome to attend. If you want to give some input into what topics/panels/speakers you’d like to see at a digital con, I have a short survey you can fill out here.https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc8Jd1hN-NI6YHkKsEFDhSojuVEFo-FHgDzVp8P8H0LsAiO3Q/viewform?usp=sf_link

*I’ll be continuing to revise and edit ‘Desire and Destruction’ as I hope to self-pub it before the end of 2021.

Photo by Ann H on Pexels.com

And…that’s it! That’s been 2021 so far! 30 books read, a new youtube channel, lots of traffic to this blog, and tons of community events in the works.

What’s your 2021 been like so far? Please let me know in the comments!