🎙️ 8 Years of the Author Diary & Lessons on Branding | Author Diary – October 10, 2025 📚🧠

This week marks eight years since I started this podcast—back in October 2017, I recorded the first episode, and here we are in 2025, still going strong!

I reflect on the lessons I’ve learned about author branding, especially as I launch my new pen-name, J. Cronshaw, focused entirely on domestic psychological thrillers. Narrowing the audience has made everything—from messaging to marketing—so much easier.

Branding has always been a challenge for me. I’ve wrestled with how to define what I do when my books range from dark fantasy to wacky steampunk to near-future sci-fi. Maybe I should have embraced pen-names earlier… but then again, setting up a new website, newsletter, and socials has been a lot of work.