Well, that was a tedious weekend

So, last Thursday, I finally took my old laptop to the computer place for them to transfer everything to the new laptop. Because it didn’t all get finished prior to Friday evening, I spent my first weekend in probably YEARS without a laptop and therefore with no way to actually work on ANYTHING.

Did I weep with joy and read a lot of books?

No, I did not. I felt super deprived and annoyed, even though objectively speaking this was a good time to lose my laptop for a weekend. (That’s why I arranged to do it now and not earlier.) I remember dimly the years when I would take a months’ long break between writing projects, but right at the moment it’s just annoying to be forced to take a break. Hopefully I will get my new laptop this afternoon, but I will have to ask the IT guys to get Word working on the new laptop and whatever else, so the annoyance will continue for another day or so, probably.

However (1), TANO is out being proofread, so there’s nothing for me to do there. I expect the cover will be ready soon; I believe I should be seeing the first version this week. I hope I will be posting the cover later this week and also putting the book up for preorder hopefully this week, so that’s exciting! I feel like my personal year will start when my first release goes out into the world for 2023.

I think I will try to have something ready to go January 2024, get that year off to a fast start.

Meanwhile (2), NO FOREIGN SKY — I’ve got comments back from one reader, but not yet from everyone, so I’m feeling okay about putting off further revision, especially since I’m tired of messing with it. Not touching it this weekend is fine with me. Though you know what, I should also be seeing a draft of the cover maybe this week or next week, and that will be very cool. I think I forgot to mention to the artist that the turun look like giant troll-centaurs with four arms. I don’t believe that detail was included in the description I sent him originally. Well, we’ll see!

Meanwhile (3), TASMAKAT is in fine shape, but I do want to do the essential revision, hopefully it won’t be too much trouble, and THAT is why I miss my laptop so much. If you’re curious, a first reader suggested combining two characters and my initial reaction (oh no, I think that’s a good idea, aaagh) eventually turned into a more useful reaction (it’s definitely a good idea and also it’s not really going to be that much work). So, in keeping with the rule that everything in the Tuyo world is more fun for me, I would like to do that. But I can’t because I don’t have my laptop.

Meanwhile (4), the INVICTUS revision is just an intention on my horizon right now. Everything else comes first.

However (5), things about future books keep occurring to me and I can’t take real notes about any of them. I’m sending myself emails with those ideas, to be integrated into the appropriate files eventually. This is both the Lau novel where I have practically the whole outline in my head plus some detailed scenes I’m dying to write and also I now have maybe the first third or so of a prequel story about Sinowa and Marag getting together — a great opening scene and then a plot that unfolds from there, but I’m not sure where it goes after it reaches a certain point. But now that I’m this far with it, that’s looking promising. I may write the part I have clear and just see if the rest of the story cooperatively unfolds for me when I get to it.

So did I actually read ANY books?

Yes, including one I absolutely loved. I’ll write a review of that one to post later this week, and if any of you here feel like (a) dropping a book recommendation into the comments of any random post here, or (b) emailing me privately to tell me about a book you think I’d love, by all means do! Whichever is more convenient! That’s how I found out about this one.

I also went to my actual office so I could use the computer there to write some blog posts, which I have scheduled ahead, and schedule some book promotions, and work on a Newsletter to send right at the end of the month, and do various other things that are a pain in the neck or impossible to do from home.

Segue into comments about promotion:

The last book promotions I ran were in late August / early September 2022 and they were exceedingly disappointing compared to every other promotion I’ve ever run. As far as I can tell, Amazon either changed its algorithms in a way that hit me hard, or else I failed to space out new book releases properly and that means I got hit by some algorithm in a way that, again, was not good.

One possibility, and I mention this for anyone who self-publishes and may not have heard, but you know how you can put your book in up to ten categories? Amazon apparently started picking only three categories in which to show your book, no matter what, and not necessarily the three categories that suit it best. So some people are reporting that they are doing better by asking Amazon to remove all but the three or four best categories from their books. So I have tried that, and we will see how that goes.

Tip: You know what’s sensible? After you’ve gone to the trouble of figuring out the category strings that you may want to use for your book using this handy service, for heaven’s sake copy those into a Word or other document for future reference. If I ever want to add a lot more categories again (who knows, seems likely), then I will have the strings sitting there, ready to be used. What I mean by strings are these:

Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult eBooks > Teen & Young Adult Science Fiction & Fantasy eBooks > Teen & Young Adult Fantasy eBooks > Teen & Young Adult Coming of Age Fantasy eBooks

And I’m showing one I took out, because if you’ve only got three categories, then I think TUYO is more adult than otherwise.

Upcoming promotions:

To see what happens, I’m running promos for everything in March. That will be about six months from the most recent promotion, so that may make a difference compared to doing promotions more frequently. Or Amazon may have changed its algorithms again in some way that turns out to be helpful to me personally. Plus doing a release right before starting promotions may make a big difference. Or all three. I think my current sales are at the lowest possible ebb right now, so whatever I see in March, April, and June should tell me something.

However, the practical note for you all is that almost everything will be on sale for some five-day period or other in March.

I will mention each sale here and on Twitter and Facebook when it actually takes place, plus I will send out a newsletter. I should be sending one every couple of months this year because there will be so many new releases. But here is the first mention of upcoming sales:

March will be a good time to keep an eye out if you would like to pick up anything of mine that you have previously read on KU or for some other reason haven’t purchased, but might want to.

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