PERSONAL UPDATE

It was my daughter’s 16th birthday last week and because we had to cancel our plans because of our friend’s health (not covid for once), we ended up having a party with the five of us, just like we did during lockdown.

It was great fun, although I dived out for ninety minutes to have a zoom discussion with some fellow authors. It was meant to go online live in the group but due to technical difficulties they only got it working once I’d left.

WORK IN PROGRESS

From The Dead – This Carrie Harris novel went to the editor last Friday and is due back before the end of the month. This is a manuscript review / development edit which looks at plot, character, setting etc to see if there are any major issues I’ve missed that need working on. I had thought about skipping this edit and placing trust in the fact that there wouldn’t be any issues with it, but then I thought, if it’s worth doing then do it right. I would only regret it down the line otherwise.

Purple Rain Series – Book 1 – This has been my only focus this week, WIP related at least, and I’m 18,000 words, or 20%, through the current development / edit phase. I’m working on grammar as I go but I’m mainly focusing on plot and development of the setting.

Marketing & Promotion

Sales are strong, and with two big orders from my website, profits are looking good. If I can keep the effort up, perhaps I can have my best month yet. I’m getting page reads for Fate’s Ambition every day now and that can only be as a result of my work in the fan club. Reviews keep coming in for most of my books, and all are either 4 or 5 star.

I asked in my fan club what else they wanted from me and the two stand out results were to be killed in my next book, but the top result, with 29 votes so far, is to offer paid and branded merchandise. This is something I’m definitely going to do and using a drop-ship method, there’s no outlay. Now I just need to decide on designs. I could just use my book covers, but I want to do more. I need to pick out some quotes from the books with I can centre the designs around.

It’s a shame my friend and designer is now a published author with a six-figure deal and has no time. Ha ha. Perhaps I can see if there are any designers in the fan club that want to give it a go!

That’s it for this week, there will be no post next Friday as I’m off hiking for the weekend with my friends in the Cotswolds. There’s no way I’m adding the weight of the laptop to the pack I have to carry.