October 6, 2021
Day 370, Week 52
- Emotional State: Finding my way through the maze
The First Book & Second Book
Book 1 is chugging along. I’ve gotten more sales than I expected and I have no idea how. I even got a sale through an Amazon ad. Never mind that it cost three times as much as I made on it, but a sale did happen. And then Amazon suspended my ad because I had ‘Big Bad’ capitalized. Seriously, their terms are silly; at least I think so right now.
But do you know what is even more silly? I CAN’T EDIT THE AD. They just turned it off. And even if they hadn’t, I still can’t edit the ad. So how exactly do I fix the problem they spotted? I have no idea. I googled it. Outdated articles told me I can edit the sponsored ad and pointed to a tab that no longer exists. No other magical research showed me the answer, which means…
You can’t. I ended up creating a new campaign and redoing the ads that way, but what a stupid, frustrating system. I have more thoughts about the Amazon platform, but since that’s more marketing (and requires dredging up my past in marketing, which I’d rather not do), I’m going to move on to my other freakout.
Book Two. The mystery. Oh my gods (as Seraphina would say). The mystery. I had a plan. It was a good plan. Okay, maybe an alright plan. But I had one. And then I went and had an inspiration. It’s a good one too. And that meant moving THE mystery, the not-so-terrible one, to Book Three.
That left book two with nothing. Nada. Zip. Lots of world building, some character growth and a whole lot of not much else. I do not want Book Two to be that in the middle, not really satisfying bridge to Book Three. I want it to stand on its own as its own story, yet connected to the others. And so…
Mad brainstorming has ensued. I think I may have an idea, but it’s not very good and I worry that I’ll get another review saying something like, ‘she writes the standard cliches, but in an interesting way.’ (yes, that’s from a very nice solid review of my book and it’s sticking in my craw just a little bit). So here I am, at the end of Act 2, pantsing like crazy to figure out how the end I envisioned can happen when I killed the mystery that was leading up to it.
Panic. Drama. Lots of heavy thinking and trying not to overwhelm my husband with the discussion, yet again. Will I get there? Yes. Will it be a cliche?
Probably.
Are we having fun yet?
In other News
I recently appeared on a free hour long promotional segment for my book. It’s hosted by another writer and is featured on Amazon Live. Which I didn’t know existed (Amazon Live, that is). But I digress.
One hour of free promotion with free links to my book? Yes, sign me up. The host was lovely and bubbly. Basically, she was working it and trying to make it easy for everyone. And she did.
Except for the part where I had to talk about my book.
If you catch any memes or videos in author communities on social media, what you’ll see is a lot of “I can write a 100k word novel, but don’t ask me to tell you what it’s about” moments. It’s an accurate reflection of my performance. I babbled my way through the first half, found my stride in the second, and completely dropped the ball in the 30 second pitch section.
Great experience and good practice, which I obviously need. We’ll see if I get any more opportunities like that one or if my performance sealed the casket on livestreaming events.
I hope not. But likely.
To read more of my weekly whine fests and writing journal journey posts, click here.