Category Archive

As of thirty minutes ago, Wren book 6, Enemy of the People, is finished!! Hurrah! It is closing out at 85,000 words. It’s still a month until launch, so I’ll use that time to edit it, proofread it, polish it up. I think it’s pretty much polished already, so that shouldn’t be too hard. I already have the cover, and it is epic. I’ll share that shortly. What else is there to say? Nothing much. I’m feeling super pleased. It is often the case through the middle of a novel that I am uncertain if I will be able to …

I’d hoped I might close out the whole of Wren book 6, Enemy of the People, this week, but in the last couple of days progress slowed a little as I chewed the great wodge of words I’d produced in the last week. I also spent some time fooling around with ads. Wren 6 progress Right now we’re at 71,000 words. Everything but the finale. This time last week I was at 57,000, so that’s 14,000 words this week. 2,000 a day, not bad. Is it all great? It may get trimmed on the edit, but I think it’s all …

It’s a big writing week this week, in line with my offensive to get book 6 done by the end of May. Last week (which was actually Sunday, because I did it late) I was at around 40,000 words. Today I reached 57,000, and I might do a few more today. Writing I’d hoped to hit 60,000 and close out chapters 30-40. I’ve hit chapter 38 and just need a few scenes to hit 40. Today or this weekend. Next week will be the final push. Would be amazing to close it out at 80,000 words within a week. A …

It’s been 2 weeks since my last update, and they’ve been crazy weeks. We got our first Covid jabs, AstraZeneca, and they knocked us a little sick. In the midst of that, we were first deeply contemplating big home renovations, then chased that by making moves to sell our house and move, and chased that by realizing we were actually super happy where we were, with the house as it is, and putting the FOMO days of Covid firmly in the past. I will be so glad to have coffee shops and restaurants as a home away from home again! …

The last 2 weeks have seen my ads settling into a 50% return zone, with click costs rising. I wrote a handful of new words on book 6 and mostly focused on getting books 1-5 updated and into print. Wren 1-5 in print I don’t usually bother with print. For my zombie books I made book 1 in print then never bothered with books 2-9. It’s a big hassle and I rarely sell any print copies, so it didn’t seem necessary. Recently with the thrillers though, people kept asking me about paperbacks. Part of this is a corollary of my …

Wren 26,000 words This last week I’d hoped to get 30,000 words on Wren 6, after several weeks of aiming for that same goal, and I finally came close with 26,000 words. It’s incredible how much more slowly I write now. I put these down to 2 main things: I’ve taken on so much feedback on my writing, that I am always second-guessing the creative process. This sounds like it would be bad, like you shouldn’t let anything get in the way of flow – but I find that in my case this is a little like adult control of …

This week I’ve mostly been absorbed with scaling up my FB ads while writing a couple new chapters for Wren book 3, Make Them Pay. FB ads scale up I’ve been serving my suite of Saint Justice ads (5 of the book covers in both square and rectangular, copy is the book blurb) to 3-4 primary audiences for the past month, but never really knowing which ones were working and which were just spinning my wheels. Now, thanks to judicious use of affiliate links, I have a much better idea of who converts and who doesn’t. This is super valuable. …

Early this week I made my first major post on the 20booksto50k Facebook page. It’s the biggest group of Indie authors I think there is – almost 50,000 members, brought together by a shared ‘climb up the mountain’ toward book writing/publishing/marketing success. On there you’ve got folks making 100k+ a month and more, and sharing how they did it. You’ve got people who run their own small presses, who write a book every two weeks, who’ve been full time indie authors for a decade and more. I’ve never written a post there before – lots of comments, no real content, …

I already wrote in 12.1 about finishing up Make Them Pay – through the week’s end I chased that with some oddball tinkering on books 1-3, re-made the boxset and re-issued it, then dug into book 6. Also lots of ads nonsense ;). Enemy of the People 1/4-point I had been concerned even before this latest spate of rewrites that the Enemy of the People opener was not propulsive enough. It is all down-time reaction to the events of the last book, with some problems of Wren’s physical and mental state. At the core though – it’s not fun to …

I just closed out the Make Them Pay, Wren book 3 rewrites, and am feeling celebratory. I already wrote about everything I did to change the book, but as I accelerated toward the end, I was really feeling it. This thing hums. I am getting better at spotting the bits that lag. I had 2 chapters that were kind of coda, catching up on where everyone was up to. Now I’m thinking that kind of stodge is a readthrough killer. If you give kind of happy-ever-afters to all the characters, and end with little sense of threat and a feeling …