Things I’m Currently Doing
I’m finally in the process of getting Daisy’s Prince Charming up on pre-order.
I decided to put it out on July 31. I don’t have links yet because the retailers need time to set things up on their end. I am putting it on the retailers that I usually do, along with including it in Kobo Plus. I’m waiting to get close to July 31 before uploading it to Radish and before I create an AI audiobook version on Google Play. It will be on Scribd, too, but that page doesn’t go live until the day the book comes out.
Before someone says something, I need to warn everyone that I had to go back to the $3.99 price. After going through my record keeping for the accountant, I ended up taking too much of a loss at the $2.99 price point. So I had to go back to $3.99. On the plus side, I loved writing this book a lot, and I can honestly say it’s one of my personal favorites. I feel that way about all of Tom and Jessica’s daughters’ books.
Still registering copyrights.
When I went through all of my copyright registration letters to organize them, I found out that I had never registered the copyright on a few of my older titles. I’m currently working on that right now. I figure I might as well while I’m doing all of this. Since I had sent in paperbacks to copyright my books in the past, the US Copyright Office requires me to do that for all of my books now. That required me to go and make some paperbacks. I’m not really a fan of paperbacks since I can’t read them anymore. I’d prefer to stick with ebook or audio, but I need to create the paperbacks, and sometimes making a wraparound cover is a pain-and-a-half to work with. Bookbrush makes it easier, but I still struggle in this area. Sometimes I opt for Draft2Digital’s option of just uploading the ebook cover and going with a plain back cover that only has text on it. That saves on time. If I have someone special in mind when making a paperback, though, I’ll take the time to do a full wraparound cover because it does look nicer.
The paperback book for the family friend has finally shipped.
It took about two months of fighting with formatting issues and the full wraparound cover, but the book finally met with the Draft2Digital’s approval process. It was shipped out yesterday. The sad thing is that I even had my editor’s help because some of this stuff was over my head. She does formatting in addition to editing. If you need a good editor or formatter, let me know in the comments, and I’ll pass along her information. Anyway, I am crossing all fingers and toes that this book is in the “ready to publish” stage. This guy is 91. He doesn’t have a lot of time left to see this thing in print.
Still running around doing errands.
Typically in the summer, things settled down on stuff I have to do that takes me away from writing, but this summer is different. Everything keeps piling on. It’s been any number of things. Sometimes it’s repairs around the house that can’t wait. Sometimes it’s getting IDs or renewing them. Sometimes it’s helping a kid with with driving and (God help me) parallel parking. Sometimes it’s dealing with a program through the school where I find out too late that I don’t have some ducks in a row, so I need to scramble around to get them all lined up. I don’t know why, but I had this vision in my head that when the kids got older, I would end up doing less for them. The opposite is turning out to be true.
Thoughts on technology.
I love the internet. It’s opened a world I never would have had. I don’t think I ever would have published a book had it not been for the internet. But I hate the texting, emails, and dealing with a phone call while I’m out running an errand. All this technology has done is create an atmosphere where I am never truly “away” from it all. I often leave my phone at home to get a break, but when I come back, there’s a text, email, or phone message about something I need to do, and most of the time, it’s something that needs to be done right away. The worst messages are about the things I forgot to do. *sigh* I think back on what my mom had to do, and I don’t recall things being this crazy for her. Maybe it’s me, but this world is just too fast-paced. I can’t keep up.
As I was writing the last paragraph, I realized why I’m having so much trouble writing. It’s not that I don’t want to write. I do want to write. I love what I write. I just don’t have enough time to write. I feel like I’m constantly being handed a To Do List, and the worst part is, the list never seems to go down. As soon as I’m done with one thing, another item pops up. I did manage to get 3,000 words written this week. That felt surprisingly good. It felt like some of the pressure was released. I just wish I could get more writing in. Then I would feel like I’m not treading water in these stories I want to get done. Would you believe I started Heiress of Misfortune back in November, and I’m still not done with it? I can’t believe it, either. I’m just shaking my head in disgust, but I also realize I can’t make more hours pop up in any given day. I have my limits, and I’ll have to learn to deal with them.
