It’s another Monday, and another week on my quest to get a castle. I find these things always start slow, and then they gain momentum. We get ourselves going and then have to find a way through the process. There’s something about being near the end of a goal, or close to it that lends itself to being done faster.
Perhaps it’s that all the thinking and agonizing about what to do and how to do it. When you get close to the end, it all melts away. It could also just be that getting near the end is exciting. Maybe a combination.
Either way, I’m not there yet when it comes to owning a castle retreat. I am near the end of several projects, however.
I mentioned last week that the way I plan to fund this castle is mostly my own creativity. Backed up with hopefully sensible financial decisions and investments, but mostly stories I’ve written.
With that in mind, and for a little accountability on making good decisions, pushing forward an hopefully retaining some momentum, here’s what I’ve achieved/done in the last week:
Monday last week I released the first book in my newest dragon series, which is a big deal for me. The first book in a series is the one I put all the effort in marketing, but this one is kinda special because it’s the third series in a linked set. I have a Dragon Protectorate universe and three series of 9 books each. They have three badass female MCs between them and I’m finally getting to tell the last of the story and tie it all together.
There were also quite a few delays on the series due to the other moving parts, so I’ve finished writing book 4 and financially I was very eager to get this one out. Promo also happened on Saturday which has got the book off to a great start.
On top of that, I finished off the edits for Guild of the Eternal Flame 7. That will be coming out early September, and has been up for pre-order since Guild 6 came out in May. I am glad to be done with this one. I struggled with it a little and there were more edits than normal. I think I’m finally happy with it. Pre-orders are still a little below the number I had for Guild 6, but there’s been some issues at Amazon and they froze for about a week in June.
Translations for Guild 6 have rolled out over the last while as well, and another one came out this week. They’re doing okay. German and Italian seem to do the best for me, but I’m still happy with the extra I get from Spanish and French.
I wrote 21,924 words, which is a low week for me, but I had tiny boy human and medium girl human home from school for the summer and that made it harder to work. It was still good words in general.
Oh, and I also wrote the blurb for 2 books. Not a task I enjoy, but they needed doing.
Guild 3 came out in audio on audible, and 1 is rolling out on youtube, 8 on my subscription platform. I had to schedule a whole month of rewards for that too. It’s all little things that add up.
Bryan handles my tiktok and newsletter, and I have another couple of folks on my team who help him with the audio and youtube, as well as booking promotions for me, liaising with my cover designers, making graphics, and sorting my translations. I’ve only recently really had a team, and I’m certain I will blog about that more in the future. It makes a huge difference to how much writing I get done.
My goals for this week:
Write 40k new words (including finishing the first book in another new series)
Write another blurb (Dragon Legacy 4)
Write Acknowledgements and Dedication for Dragon Legacy 4
Write a blog for Thursday (and the week after’s)
Set up more promo for the new series
Set up some promo for an older series
Plot Dragon Legacy 5
Format Mycroft 10-12 into one print book
Finalise Dragon Legacy 2 for publishing
Why so much for one week? I’ve got a week with no interruptions, no tiny or medium humans and I’ve got the chance to get my head down. Although it’s only really the words that are higher than normal. Being an indie author, even with some of my books going through various small press publishers, I have to wear a lot of hats and do a lot of the process myself. I also won’t have to do all of this unassisted, especially things like setting up promo.
I also like to juggle three to four different books at once. It just means I can shift to writing a different book if I get stuck.
There’s almost always something unexpected as well, but that’s where I’m at. Time to get to work.