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Old Journal Entries

From time to time I edit this page with updates on what I'm working on.

11/06/22

I’m nearing completion of writing The Handyman, which I will be offering as a free audiobook for subscribers. Originally I was going to call it Odd Jobs, but since I renamed the main book Hammer and Wails, I thought maybe I should go with The Handyman.

I’ve been doing lots of updates on my website, figuring out how I want everything to look, and how it will all mostly match the book covers as well. In other words: I’m branding. I’ve written a few blog post/articles that are fun extras. And I’ve even recorded them, so people can hear more of my narrating voice. Though the quality is compressed really low so the files don’t take up all my bandwidth, which means it doesn’t sound quite as nice! I’m really leaning in on the idea that you should, um, buy one of my audiobooks.

10/20/22

Work is leaving me with no motivation/energy to work on anything in my free time. So the great progress I was making in finishing Hammer and Wails has come to a slow crawl. I’m currently rewriting a few chapters that I’ve identified as weak points in the story. And I will say, the new stuff is definitely better. It’s worth it. But my timeline is being pushed back.

09/01/22

I’m trying to plan my next book launch better. Primarily, I’m writing a short story to provide to my new email subscriber for free. Most likely, it will be in audiobook format only. Yes, it’s a “reader magnet,” but it can also act as a way to introduce them to my new series. If they like it, they can read the actual book. If they don’t like it, they can unsubscribe. Right now, I’m waiting for one last person to read the first book before I commit to formatting it for publication. I think I have the book cover designed, but that can also be changed later if I decide it doesn’t work well. But I like it. Oh, and yes, I plan on self publishing this one too. I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to, but I’m going for it. I’m also going to make the ebook Amazon exclusive, though the audiobook will be available through multiple venues. Down the road I may take it wide, but for now, this seems like a better way to attract readers who are already paying for the service, and can take a chance on a new author.

06/28/22

I was out of town for most of June and hadn’t even touched a computer during that time, so it’s time to get back to working on writing projects. I still need to finish my next comedy-esque book and finish the audiobook of Observing the Inevitable. 24 chapters recorded at this moment. I wish it were more, but that’s life. The audiobook for The Way They Fell is actually getting listened to every once in a while, checked out through online libraries like Hoopla. I get paid less than a dollar per checkout. But it’s fun to see the number of checkouts tick up on occasion. Gives me something to look forward to. Ha.

04/27/22

I’m slowly getting the audiobook for Observing the Inevitable recorded. I only have 20 chapters done. At least one, maybe two, I’m going to re-record because the performance was lacking. But so far, I find that this audiobook is already better than my first one. I learned a lot from creating the audiobook for The Way They Fell, and I’ve applied what I’ve learned here. Plus, since I’ve upgraded my microphone, it sounds better too.

I’ve finished the comedy book I was working on. And I’m over halfway done with the second in that series too. I just haven’t decided what to do with it! Do I chance it with the dooms of self publishing, or submit it to agents and publishers? I’ve submitted it to a few agents already. Only two responded with rejections so far. The writing and characters are solid, and the humor is fun. My writing group akinned it to Abbott and Costello, Monty Python, and Fargo. That’s quite the comparisons… I like to add Trigun to that list. A friend of mine even said it was better than some of the light novels he reads, which is great! I really want to record the audiobook because it’d be a blast. But one step at a time.

In an earlier post, I mentioned working on a different project that I shelved… Yeah, it got shelved again. I really doubt it will ever go anywhere. I was really struggling to make it work.

01/25/22

Lol. Well, I’ve written a comedy. I was so tired of thinking seriously with all the crap in society, and I just needed a good laugh. So a wrote one, or two, or more. At the moment, I’m just working on making it longer. It’s too short as it is, so I’m fleshing out the story, building on the characters and the world. But it’s certainly vastly different than everything else I’ve written. I’m shooting for 40,000 words.

My audiobook on YouTube has about 70 views now. And the average length of listening is pretty low, 20 minutes I think? So . . . yeah. On the other hand, it’s been checked out from different libraries 6 times! I’ve made about $4! Woohoo!

The Way The Fell has had a few downloads, not many, though I’m not exactly sure of the sources at the moment. But I don’t make any money off of it since it’s, er, free. It does nothing on Amazon. I can tell you that.

08/21/21

‘Tis the busy work season, and I’m not much in the mood for writing after work. The Inevitable Series is on pause at the moment, but I’ve been revisiting an old story that I started at the end of 2019. I had written over 20,000 words, but it needed some re-direction, and at the time, I needed to focus on my current series, so I shelved it. Now, it’s a welcome change. So, I’ve been bringing it to my writing critique group and slowly making edits to it. I think it’s a really enjoyable read, and keeps people moving. It’s vastly different from The Inevitable Series, which is why I’m working on it. Sometimes you need a breather from a project. This is one of those moments.

I’m still not running any ads, and I get next to no downloads/sales/listens. Yesterday I had a surprise purchase of my two published books. But, that’s about it. Thus, the importance of marketing. But I need to figure out how to not spend so much money on marketing to make it actually worth it. One day, I’d still like to give a Christmas bizarre a try, or something like that. But again, there are large upfront cost in stocking myself with enough books to sell.

07/10/21

I’m bleeding money into advertising, and it doesn’t convert. I’ve paused everything right now to evaluate what I want to do. Right now, I just don’t want to spend all this money and have no return. People had been downloading The Way They Fell (which is free), but no one was buying the next book.

Update on the YouTube audiobook:

I can’t say it’s been all that successful… with an average view time of 19:23, I think most people aren’t looking to invest in listening. How many listen that far out of pure curiosity and no intention of staying? Will those people return to listen later? I’m really not trying to market it at all, so we’ll see if it gains any traction down the road. YouTube is not an effective way to find audiobooks, so I don’t have huge hopes of being found there, but it’s worth a shot. I’ve seen other well established author perform well, but they already have a decent fan base to promote their content to (See the image below for the actual video statistics).

A while ago I got in touch with EarnestlyEston and mentioned that he might enjoy reading my book, and I’m glad to report that he did! He recorded a book chat on it here. It’s interesting to hear someone else talk about your book without any prompting. You get to hear what stood out to them, and how they interpret the story and characters. I’m grateful that he took the time to read a book from a small time author like myself.

05/08/21

The audiobook for The Way They Fell is done. Last night I uploaded it to Youtube and didn’t tell anyone yet. I thought I’d do a soft launch, like everything else I do with my books. My main reason for doing this is that I didn’t want to wait. I uploaded the files to ACX, which publishes it to Amazon, Audible, and Apple, but the review time for it to be accepted could be a month! I’ll also be uploading them to Findawayvoices, but had a slight snag in that process as well.

Since the audiobook is on Youtube, I also added it to my website to maximize the exposure. The ultimate goal (or be it experiment), is to monetize the video with ads, so I can make money off people’s views. However, you can’t earn money from Youtube videos until you have 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watched content. That’s a big hurdle to get over, and I’m seriously thinking over how to get more content on my channel to reach that goal. If you have any ideas, let me know! Lol.

04/23/21

My paying job has picked up so I haven’t worked much on book projects. I also had a massive dip in motivation, so things have been moving slowly. But I have the audiobook of The Way They Fell fully recorded and in a state I’m happy with. I don’t plan on doing any more major recording on it. I am currently working on rerecording mistakes and where pops and clicks from the mic distort my voice. I’m also sending it out to some beta listeners to hopefully catch any glaring mistakes I might have missed. When I am satisfied that it all sounds good, I then will do the fine editing of mouth noise removal and gross sounds the mouth unfortunately produces. Then, upload?

This first audiobook has taken me a long time, but I think all others after this will greatly benefit from the time I’ve spent on it (and of course this one too). My performance really improved, and I’ve learned a lot. The next ones will be even better, and should hopefully go by much quicker!

03/09/21

How many times do I have to record this chapter until I’m happy with it? Today I am annoyed at myself. I’ve recorded chapter 9 two times already, and both takes I am not happy with. Finding the perfect balance of voice fluctuation is a challenge, but so very important for the audio to be engaging. And I’m not the most expressive person normally, so I walk a fine line between sounds-good-while-I read-it and sounds-good-when-I-edit-it. I’ve recorded a few chapters twice, but this one has been the worst. Am I in a mood or something? What the heck.

That being said, the rest of the book sounds really good. I’m just annoyed at the moment and tired of reading the same frickin’ chapter over and over.

Also, marketing is hard, and is going to be expensive unless I can find some better way to do it. What will the ROI be? It’s not looking so great.

02/15/21

Grrr. Last night I found a pretty glaring mistake in the ebook. The pop-out table of contents (ToC) was wrong. It worked, but the text didn’t match the chapter titles.

This happened because I copied the ebook for Observing the Inevitable and changed the contents. I wanted the formatting to be consistent between both ebooks. Everything looked stinkin’ perfect when I was done, so I uploaded the new book. Well, on the back end, I had to update the ToC too, which I completely forgot. So The Way They Fell had chapter titles in the ToC from Observing the Inevitable. It is now fixed, but I am not pleased that I could overlook something so important. It’s good to get it all taken care of now, while less than a hundred people have downloaded it, but man, one is too many for this one. Anyone who has downloaded the faulty one may request a new ebook from me. I will gladly provide the updated book.

02/11/21

I’m in the process of uploading The Way They Fell to all the stores. I had a little hiccup with the paperback version and had to resubmit it, but nothing serious. With the paperback version, I spent more time on it than planned because after receiving a proof copy of the book, I decided I could make the font size larger, so I had to reformat it. It will make it easier to read. However, the font size for Observing the Inevitable will remain smaller to keep the book size down (it’s comparable to a mass-market printed paperback).

I did have to make some other changes to Observing the Inevitable, too. I had originally planned on it being book one, but I have now made it book two to make the reading order easier to understand. So that took a nice good chunk of time, editing the ebook and paperback, and uploading the changes to all the stores.

Work on the audiobook for The Way They Fell is in process, but the process is SLOW. It’s an incredible amount of work, especially since I’m not skilled at reading without mistakes (that being said, I think my reading voice is quite good). So it takes me two hours to read an hour’s worth of the book. That means I have to edit out an hour’s worth of mistakes…Then after that, I’ll go through and rerecord places that still had mistakes, or I thought my delivery needs improvement. Then after that will be yet another round of cleanup, as I remove all the mouth noises, pops, and clicks. I suspect this will take me up to 400hrs….but I hope not. I’m trying to track my time to see how long it actually takes. I’m around 10hrs right now.

01/29/21

Last week I sent the manuscript of The Way They Fell to a copyeditor. I should have it back in a few days, then I’ll get started on the ebook, paperback, and audiobook.

I recorded about 12 chapters for the Observing the Inevitable audiobook, however, I have decided I can do better. I’m learning how to be more engaging with my reading, and will be redoing it all. That’s the thing about this process (including the writing), I have to give myself room to learn and use the process to get better. It’s not about finishing as fast as I can. It’s about growing in skill, and producing the best content. And if that means I have to scrap a few hours of recordings, then so be it.

I’ve been editing quite a bit for one of my writing group members. Her story is really good, and I’m excited to help her finish. As of now, when she finishes, I’ll most likely be reading her audiobook as well. She was very impressed with my example narration, and I’m excited to be able to read her story as well.

01/05/21

I’m rewriting the end of The Way They Fell after some input that it wasn’t satisfying. When that’s done, I’ll be going over two characters’ transitions/growth throughout the story. One reader thought it was too sudden, so I want to take a look at it before moving on. Maybe one day this story will actually be finished. Gah!

Also, I’ve noticed that everyone and their mother decided to write a book in 2020. I’ll admit, it’s quite disheartening more than anything. I spend years working on a story, and now it’s a fad. Does that make me a self-publishing hipster? Anyway, I get the most discouraged when I think about my niche audience, and how hard it will be to sell my books, when I could have written some cozy romance and have people gobble it up. Although, to be fair, I read one person’s 2020 book, and thought it was a solid first draft, full of plenty of irks–they published it not long after. I spend a huge amount of time ensuring the quality of my story and my writing is good, and I have to remind myself that is how it should be. No cheating and pumping out stuff that is barely passable.

12/18/20

“A Time Forgotten” is already the name of two books, I just found out. But at the same time, that title doesn’t give a potential reader any clues to what the story is about. So, the title as of now is “The Way They Fell.”

The story is really good. I’m darn proud of where it is. I’m incredibly grateful for my beta readers and critique group for all their suggestions. It has made the story that much stronger. I’m at a point in the writing/edit that I stare at the story and can’t think of any other way to make it better. Now, I’m just trying to get my critique group through the last few chapters, and hopefully get one final read over by someone else, then it’ll be ready to send to the editor.

I’ve practiced a few times recording the audiobook (not the whole thing mind you), and I’m very excited to get started on that. I am borrowing some sound panels from a church (old cubicle walls that were donated to them and they aren’t using right now). So I’m going to make myself a makeshift recording studio.

I also made a song for the intro and outro, which is pretty solid too. I need to work on the Observing the Inevitable music, though, as I will start recording that while the prequel is getting finished.

I’ve basically ditch the minimalist covers I was playing around with. I also redid the prequel’s cover to make it a little more appealing to new readers (hopefully).

I’ve also been at work getting setup on Apple Books and Google Play. Both are pending full approval before I can actually upload books. I used a service called draft2digital.com to add the book on other websites I didn’t want to do myself.

11/05/20

1. It’s November, the prequel isn’t done.

2. After work, I’m not mentally all there.

3. Spotify plays an ad basically every two songs now. It is maddening (and distracting). Got on a family premium plan.

4. Playing around with some minimalist covers for both books (and future ones). Not sure if I’ll actually use them, but inspired me to update the font on my other covers.

5. Still getting good suggestions to improve the prequel. I’m excited to share it with everyone.

6. A few months ago I completely stopped trying to market my book. I just don’t think I have enough content for it to feel worthwhile. Waiting for this one to be finished and the audiobooks produced.

07/31/20

I’m running a little behind on my planned release schedule for the prequel. I hope to be done writing in August, where originally I was hoping it would be ready to publish at the end of the month. Now I’m shooting for September.

I still think this book is really good. Because the story is shorter, its easier to keep everything focused and the story moving. I’m exploring some different group dynamics in this one that are exciting to see unfold. Plus, I’ve been getting some great feedback, really making the details of the book even stronger.

06/13/20

The second draft of A Time Forgotten, my next book, is finished. Right now I have a few people reading it to comment on, so we’ll see what feedback I get. If all goes well, I might be close to submitting it to my copyeditor. I’ve been working on the paperback cover for the new book, too, so it’ll be ready when the contents are finished.

05/14/20

Before you read this entry, read the one below it.

If someone from India asks for your permission to translate your book, this is what they really mean: Please hire me. After back and forth emailing, that was quite frustrating because it was clear this person was expecting something from me, I finally got them to say that they wanted money. $6000 dollars they said to translate the whole book. Now, this is after I had told them many times that I am not giving them money, only permission. So, yep, the too good to be true story was indeed just that. Perhaps this person had a legitimate business, or perhaps they were a scammer. I don’t know.

Here are some things about their use of language that I found, interesting:

They insisted that we were under the same ministry now that I gave them permission. Odd.

They insisted that an author is an integral part of a translation. (a little research shows this is not the case)

They insisted (many times) not to hesitate. Very odd indeed.

They told me to speak to my heart, insisting that we are together, and that I should pray for them.

They insisted that to do good things, one must spend something. In this case, that is money.

They use language that can instill guilt, like how much work it will take, and the need to support a team, or a ministry, or state that your choices against what they want is “not good.”
Their English is not good, despite claiming to be a translator.

This, dear reader, is manipulative language. This is how people take control, all masked as a good thing. Claiming we are joined together! Yeah! Making statements to act quickly while our spirits are high! Woohoo! “Look deep and see that I speak truth.” Oh, certainly you must–you are so confident. “But see all these people working so hard? How will they survive? You can do good and help them! We are friends, partners in the ministry. Send me money.”

Well that was an adventure. Scammer, or legitimate person? I don’t think I’ll ever know.

05/12/20

Here’s a story for ya! In an earlier entry, I mentioned getting spam mail . . . well not long after I got that email I got another from someone claiming to be a pastor in India. My mind immediately thinks it’s a scam, but the email is a plain one, nothing overtly suspicious. In this email, the pastor asks permission to translate my book. My mind is still thinking this is too good to be true, and someone is trying to take advantage of me as an ignorant self-publisher. The person says they hadn’t read the whole book yet, which sounds even more suspicious to me, but I give them the benefit of the doubt, so I send the whole thing and tell them to read it all before making a decision to translate it.

The person gets back to me later, and says that they read it and still want to translate it. They say they wish to distribute it freely while they are doing ministry. I ask for more information about their ministry, and I get more than I expected. I think: what do I have to lose? I give them permission, so long as they don’t profit from it. I do not know what the quality will be, but there is a chance it might actually happen. My book, Observing the Inevitable, might end up in the Telugu language. That’s a pretty crazy thought, seeing that a total of maybe 10 people have actually read it all the way through.

I think to myself: there is more to this publishing thing than I originally gave credit for. This could be an interesting adventure, one that I have no idea what is going to happen.

Also, my book is now available for paperback. In English.

04/27/20

A couple days ago, I finally got the proof copy of my book from Amazon. There are a few issues that I have been working on. The inside of the book looks pretty nice, but the font is too small and too thin. I bumped the size up and increased the weight to medium. The cover is the biggest problem. I had elected to try out the matte finish because, well, it feels nice. But the black colors of the image look terrible. So, I’m brightening the image up more, and I’m blurring the foreground less so there is just a little more detail to it, too. I’ll be going with a glossy finish to preserve the blacks. I posted pictures of the proof paperback on my Facebook page.

I’ve also been experimenting with ads for my book, which may be what brought you to this site in the first place. So far I am definitely spending more money than I’m making, but I’m continually trying to optimize my ads and landing pages to make sure people are getting the content they want (which I hope will be my book, mostly). I’ve managed Google ads before for a larger company, so I’m not completely inexperienced, but I will say that trying to get Google to track conversions has been stress inducing, and hasn’t worked. I’m advertising through Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, which all operate a little differently.

04/16/20

The Kindle edition of Observing the Inevitable is now live on Amazon! I made an Author Central page, and added the X-ray features to the ebook. Now people can more easily see a list of characters if they know how to use Kindle’s X-ray. The book will be exclusive with Amazon for a while, giving me time to learn how to market and only fuss with one seller. At this point I plan to release through others, like apple books and maybe google play, but since Amazon has a bigger audience, I am starting with them.

I also found some used cubicle walls I can use for free to make a sound room (to record the audiobook). Now I just need to make up my mind if I want to use the Blue Yeti microphone I already have, or go with something nicer. I’ve been painting a house for my other day job, so I haven’t been able to spend all day working on the book.

I even got an email from some random people saying that “my description and cover are good enough for their service to promote my book.” Which of course, I would have to pay for. It was total spam (though a legitimate Facebook page with 30,000 followers), but for about a second I was flattered. Then I might have reported them as spam… The thing is, it’s really easy to get followers on Facebook through clever tactics. But in the end, those tactics don’t produce a quality list of people, “followers” probably just liked the page so they could get something for free–they don’t actually care about anything else. So as an author, a person should look for sites and pages with a reputation if they are going to fork over any promotional money.

04/14/20

The Ebook is done. I have uploaded it to Amazon. Awaiting their approval. I have made the full wrap-around cover for the paperback and formatted the interior. I am currently waiting for a proof copy to be sent to my home so I can review it before making the paperback available. Amazon says that within 72 hours the kindle version will be ready. Hopefully within the week the paperback will be, too. I’ll be sharing it with friends and family on facebook to hopefully get a few reviews in from some of them. When the paperback is ready, I might start reaching out to the people I do regular odd-jobs work for. Several of them always ask me about the book, so they’ll probably want to check it out.

It’s a strange feeling, on the verge of being able to say that I’ve published a book. I’ve been going through the motions of getting everything ready, and this just feels like another step. I don’t feel overly excited–it’s more like the feeling one might have toward something that was always meant to be. There is a familiarity to it. I’m a little nervous about the reception it will receive and what reviews might have to say. Apparently this is the peak of COVID-19, and I’m hoping that maybe more people are looking for books to read because of it! It’s a great book to make you think about your past, present, and future! Read Observing the Inevitable! Lol.

04/06/20

I got the manuscript back from my copy editor, and have the book roughly formatted for kindle. I am currently testing it out to make sure everything is working and present before uploading it to Amazon for publication. Unless something goes terribly wrong, it will be published this month! I’ve been tweaking the website a little more to prepare, got a Facebook page setup, and signed up on Amazon as an author. Once the ebook is done, I’ll move on to formatting the paperback, and then the audiobook. And, hopefully I can make some decent progress on draft two of the prequel. I got some decent feedback from my best alpha reader, Brent, and have already restructured the novella to clarify the story better.

03/18/20

Well, it doesn’t feel like a lot has happened, but I’m getting close to releasing 2 books! I just sent a finished first draft of the prequel to Observing the Inevitable to three people to read and give feedback on. The prequel is called A Time Forgotten, and you can check out the synopsis by clicking the link or going to the Books tab. Just last night I finished the cover for the prequel, so things are looking up!

Oh yeah, did I mention that I made my own book covers? Originally I was planning to hire someone, but I considered my own abilities in Photoshop and started tinkering. Soon enough I was making good progress toward something I liked. 40 hours later, maybe more, I had a finished cover (a note from the future: yeah, I still made plenty more little changes. It probably took me closer to 100 hours when accounting for the paperback cover, which I had to design the back of the book, too). Then . . . I did it again with the prequel cover, but it didn’t take quite as long.

About two weeks ago I sent Observing the Inevitable to a copy-editor. I came to a point where I said it is good enough, and that I can’t chase perfection forever–and quite frankly, I wanted to move on. That means that I might be publishing it live on Amazon in about a month. Once I get it back, I’ll review all the changes, then start formatting the ebook for kindle. I’ve started to teach myself how to format it so it looks nice, and all the extra stuff is working (like a clickable table of contents, and links to my website and other books). Since A Time Forgotten is 7x shorter, I will probably skip having it professionally edited. It is my long-term plan to make this novella $1, maybe free when it goes wide, we’ll see. I feel like having non-professionals edit it out of the kindness of their hearts is good enough. It’s also easy to update ebooks, so I can always fix the little stuff and re-upload the file if someone points out any mistakes we might miss.

I will be releasing on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited exclusively for a while. Staying exclusive to Amazon is not my long term plan, but I wanted to start small to get the hang of marketing. Plus, Amazon brings in about 80% of an authors income . . . I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts that convinced me this is not a good thing, but it’s what we have to work with right now.

Once I have the ebook and paperback versions up, next I’ll be moving on to narrating the audiobook, which will not be exclusive to Amazon.

My to-do has changed over the last few months, but the result will be the same: a published book (now two!).

02/25/20

Out of 12 beta readers, I only received feedback from 4. After listening to a few other authors, my ratio was higher than the normal . . . which is kind of sad. I have made some changes based on their feedback, and have just contacted a few editors to see if I can find a good fit. I have a good feeling about one person in particular, though her prices are higher than I was hoping to pay. I think, in the end, I will pay that price to work with someone I trust will do a good job, and I think I will work with well.

I have decided to write a novella about the ancestors often referred to in the book. My plan is to release this at the same time as the novel, and set its price to FREE. That way people can become familiar with my world and my writing before committing to the much longer book.

12/26/19

My first book is currently being read by about 13 beta readers. While they are reading, I’m going through the book with my writing critique group once a week, though few chapters are left to comb through.

Once I hear back from the beta readers I’ll review their feedback. If it’s positive, then I might make a few changes based on their comments, then start looking for an editor. If the reaction is negative . . . well, this process might be a lot longer.

It’s important to me that I regard my readers, since ultimately this book is for a wider audience than myself. The beta readers will help me determine if it is enjoyable, and whether I achieved my writing goals. If people are not motivated to continue reading, then I consider that a failure on my part, and I’ll have to go back and make larger revisions.

However, I’m optimistic. This is my third draft, and my writing has come a long way in the 3 years it has taken me to get this far.

There have been unexpected challenges to working with beta readers. I opted to use Facebook Messenger as my primary communication because I thought that would be easiest. It has, and it hasn’t been successful. Several of my readers hadn’t begun reading because they either didn’t see my message with the attached book files, or technical errors kept them from opening it. This was not communicated to me until I followed up with each person individually 2 weeks later. Many people have gotten caught up with life too (which is expected), and have not read any of the book. So, for my next project, I think I’ll use email and send to a larger group to ensure its delivery. This way, I can count on maybe half the people reading it and still have enough feedback to be helpful.

While waiting for my beta readers to finish reading, I have started another book. It is a separate series, and different genre altogether. Writing it has been significantly faster because it is more plot driven than my first book. At the moment, I have 27,653 words written, and my goal is a total length somewhere between 60,000-90,000 words.

Here’s a peak at my to-do list for my first book:

Beta Readers
Edit based on beta readers’ input
Find an editor, send book for editing, then edit
Have a cover designed. I already have a cover idea, but I’ll be open to the designers input
Make an official business (this might be before the editor)
Start a bank account for the business
Add to Amazon/Kindle. At this point, I’m planning a soft launch, so adding the book to one site at a time will help me learn easier. Amazon is definitely the most profitable seller of books, so I’ll go exclusive with them at the beginning.
Audiobook. I’m going to try to do it myself. Sounds fun.
And … the dirty work. Marketing and promotion.

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Paul travels The Wasteland looking for work, but he’s mistaken for a rampaging maniac. When he’s facing certain death, a townsperson saves him and gives him a job. Now Paul owes her his life. But as he gets to know this odd woman, he finds she’s just as unstable as the rest of civilization. Maybe she’s just another crazy person that’s managed to survive The Wasteland. Can he perform the job without being killed by others in the town? Can he clear his name and prove that he’s just a simple handyman? Or will The Wasteland prevail and take his life? Read more.

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