First is marketing. She stinks at that, and isn’t consistent. She’s planning a big promotion blitz when she completes The Sentience Series and A Christmas Proposal later this year, but marketing has to be a consistent effort. Priority number one is to research marketing opportunities and decide what to try and implement as part of her regular writing routine.
Second is short stories. She’s making progress with articles and getting comfortable with nonfiction, but the short stories and flash fiction continues to be an inconsistent thing. Sometimes she’s full of inspiration, and sometimes she falls flat. She needs to find a consistent “groove” to write and submit the shorter works.
Third is publishing Zack’s Backyard Adventure. This is a children’s book she wrote in 2008 after she and daddy built and moved in our home. (It was formerly titled Hanging Out With Zack.) She’s submitted it to every small and mid-list publisher she can find. One agreed to publish it if she’d find and pay for an illustrator, but we can’t afford it at that level (that starts at $2,500-$3,000). The problem is that mommy is primarily a scifi writer, so publishers don’t want to take a chance on a one-off project from a genre-jumping author (even though genre-jumping is happening more frequently now). Our next adventure will be looking into self-publishing and seeing if there’s a way to do it well, and within our budget.
Writing really is a business, and it takes a lot to get it going. Who knew that novels were just the start of the process? It’s a process to get your head around all of the parts of it, but it’s still fun. Here’s hoping we can keep inspiring and helping mommy to get her writing established as a successful retirement career.
That’s all today. Have a Happy Friday and a wonderful weekend.
Luv,
Bubbles