July 9, 2022: Weekly Writing Intentions
Daily Diary, Day 677:
This is a perfect morning to set goals for the coming week. Almost all the work putting the house to rights after the family visit is done (I just swept the last of the sand off of the laundry room floor), and I have had a good break from my daily routines, as a result, I am anxious to get started on my next project.
Short Term Goals: Get Mrs. Stein Solves a Crime ready to publish, then publish and start to market.
While waiting to get the novella back from the proof reader, I need to spend time today getting ready to publish the novella. This means finishing writing the product description (I have a draft that needs tweaking), making a final list of categories and keywords (which the different distributors will ask for as I upload.) Decide on the price. This novella is longer than my other ones, which are priced at $2.99, so I did think about raising it to $3.99. However, with inflation, I am leaning to keeping it at $2.99, at least for the next six months when it is most likely to be bought by fans of the series. Then, I might revisit this decision.
Once I get the proof back (which I hope is this weekend), I will make the changes needed, upload into Vellum, which is the software that formats the book so it has nice little gifs for chapter and scene breaks, etc. Vellum also lets me create epubs that are specific for each of the distributors I upload to (KDP, Kobo, GooglePlay, and Draft2Digtal––which distributes to Nook and AppleBooks and libraries.)
Next, I will start the uploading process (with my cover, categories etc), then check to make sure the uploaded book looks right in each bookstore, then hit publish. From getting proof copy to hitting publish takes about half a day. The book generally goes live from between a couple of hours to 48 hours. Then I get to tell you all about it and where you can buy it.
I realize that I have done this for 31 books (counting short stories and collections), so it has really become routine.
If all goes well, by mid-week at the latest, I will be into the marketing of this book, which consists primarily of posting about this on facebook, substack, sending out a special promotions newsletter, and telling BookBub to send out a notification to my followers.
Longer term goals: I need to decide on my next writing project.
I have two partially completed projects I could finish. One is the novella that is to be the sequel to The Stars are Red Tonight, the novella in the Paradisi Chronicles universe I co-wrote with my daughter. I am about 2/3 way through, but stopped working on over a year ago to write Entangled Threads. The second is a story I wrote for a workshop that I think I can turn into a novella and could be the start of a new series for me.
However, I have been rereading my Caelestis trilogy in preparation for a podcast interview I have week after next. This has gotten me excited about writing another book in that series, picking up where Through Ddaera’s Touch left off. I wrote that book in 2017, but as I reread, I am remembering how much I loved the characters in this series. So, I am rather leaning in that direction.
I hope by the end of this coming week I will have finished rereading and start to see if I can come up with a basic plot that excites me. Maybe by next Saturday I will have decided, so stay tuned.
Here are some rose blossoms I saw on my walk this morning
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