I’ve started writing the sci-fi / time travelling story which is a new genre to me. I’m writing this to try out the genre to see if it’s for me. If it is then any full story would be an excellent edition to what I can sell at my events. I’ve also started on another writing project, but that one is top secret.

As I would suspect, the sci-fi story is slow going. I wrote the first chapter in a day because much of that was based on the pre-work I’d done before, and after four days and the weekend I’ve only got just over 3,200 words written across four short chapters. Only now am I starting to enjoy the process as I get a bit more confidence with what I’m writing. If this was STOPPING POWER Season Two I think I would be running at a chapter a day.

SHATTERED DESTINY is expected to be back from editing early January, but they often come back sooner. Either way, I can’t see it being out until the end of February.

I’ve commissioned the cover, so I’m might need to take a punt on the approximate paperback number of pages, or see if they will update it when I know. I’ve provided a series of suggested images, which I expect they’ll use one of, but still, I’m excited to see what they come up with.

Much of my concentration this week, outside of writing, has been on advertising. For some reason my Facebook ads are just not converting anymore and it’s very frustrating, either that or my KDP dashboard is broken. I suspect that’s not the problem. Giving it one more spin of the wheel, I switched to an old and reliable image and I’ve removed the landing page, instead pointing clickers straight to Amazon. It didn’t work after three days so I canned that too. I have no idea why all of a sudden the ads are not converting, but rather than banging my head against the wall I’ve decided to do more research. Using my Facebook feed I’m collecting ads from other authors that have a high level of engagement and when I get a moment I’ll see if I can figure out how I can make my ads better.

I’m also well into going through the Amazon Ads for Authors course and it’s taught me a few things already. I’ve also got six ad campaigns running and wait to see if they yield any results. I haven’t had any yet, so it’s clear this is not going to be some silver bullet, but I also haven’t got to the end of the course. This all makes me want to scream, which I think is the same as many other authors!

At least I know if I just cannot make it work in the online space I can max out my events and make some money for my books when I switch to my plan of being a full time author. Either that or I have to write a mainstream book and have success that way.

That’s it for this week. Catch you on the next.