Juggling Act

I know . . . I know . . . once again my blogging tasks have fallen to the wayside. The only excuse I really have is that I'm trying to bring you a number of awesome stories in the shortest time feasibly possible (without sacrificing on quality). Unfortunately, one thing I've learned since Through the Fire went live in October is that while writing, editing, and formatting a book are important they're just the tip of the iceberg in demands for author time. There is social media to manage, online parties to arrange (and some offline ones too if your lucky), review requests, blog tours, blogging, release day promotion, networking, accounting and tracking income/expenses, scheduling, troubleshooting, the list goes on and sometimes it feels a little endless. And I'm not doing half the promotion of other authors I know/have seen who post in every Facebook group and comment on every "Teaser Tuesday" post around. Whether those posts get seen or not, whether it helps get them a sale or not, I have no idea. Some of them seem to be doing okay, but very few seem to put up their hands and say that they're not.

For me, this is all done around my family and my full time day job. I really do love it, but there are many, many days I wish I could have just one hour more to get a blog post up, or to finish editing the chapter, write another 1,000 words, something--anything--productive. There are people around who can help with elements of these things obviously, but at the moment my entire income from books, and my everything spare in my budget from my day job, is being spent on editing and cover design. These are two areas I refuse to sacrifice and skimp.

Because of all the different things authors need to be doing, the indie world ends up feeling like a great big juggling act. There are some days where I feel like I have all the balls in the air and am wowing the crowd with my prowess. There are other days where I feel like each ball has just dropped on my head in successive order and all I should do is bow off the stage and let the professionals do it. Most days though, I feel somewhere in the middle. Like I'm holding my own just by not letting the balls fall onto the ground. Blogging and networking are the two balls which have come the closest to falling lately, but hopefully once I'm through the current round of edits, I can dive across the stage to get them back in the air.

The one thing which I always try to remember is that whether the days are good or bad, I'm just lucky to be here playing with the balls at all. (*snort* sorry, I had to. I can only say balls so many times in one post before my juvenile part pipes up and considering that juvenile part is currently driving Declan's story, I can't suppress it too much hehehehe)