After a bit of much-needed mental recovery time, I’m back at my desk a bit more this week. Although NaNoWriMo has imploded to some extent for me, the intense writing months of April, July, and November are very much ingrained for me at this point, so I’m tackling another unfinished manuscript to see if I can revive it. I think I’ll keep the specifics quiet until I have a better idea of how it’s going to go, but I might be able to see a path through the murk of half-forgotten plotlines. I’ll update later in the month.
The gardens have been taking up a lot of my attention…to the point where I think I re-activated an old carpal tunnel issue. So it’s back to wrist braces and trying not to overdo it for a couple of weeks. However, the results are worth it, as you can see if you follow me on Instagram! (where I post a lot of garden pics!)
I caught a cool video of a great blue heron fishing the other day, which you can see over on my Facebook page. He’s very patient and persistent, just like writers have to be. ;)
And The Fifth Force is out in the wild in both ebook and print formats. If you love any of the things mentioned below, you should check it out!
Yes, it’s been that kind of a week–okay, more like a couple of weeks. I see it’s been a while since I even offered a Friday Report!
And I should say that so far, I really like what I’ve done with those two side quests. One of them is a project I’m kind of excited about, so despite my guilt, I’m having fun working on it.
I was going to start this post with a pithy quotation about selling books, but all the ones I read were starting to make me depressed, so I changed my mind. Yes, this week I’ve been largely focusing on marketing, promotion, and how to help readers find my books (and want to read them). While I did make many pretty pictures, and learned many new things, I also came to realize that I need to get all of this stuff organized on my computer, in one easily-accessible place. Everything probably took me twice as long as it should have as I searched for cover images, blurbs, links…it’s definitely time for some computer housecleaning. *gulp*
I’ve also switched up the newsletter signup freebie, which has been the same for a while. As of today it’s a newly-compiled and packaged collection of five of my short stories, all about alien encounters. They’re a nice mix of serious, funny, heartwarming and thought-provoking. If you haven’t signed up before, or haven’t read these stories, [intlink id=”2779″ type=”page”]click over and take a look![/intlink] The cover image is a beauty by by 
Whew! It’s not hard to tell it’s the beginning of the year. I got some writing done, worked on promotional stuff, made a new short story available on a bundling site, set up a new bundle I’d like to curate, and poked around on Patreon for a while.
So, this has been my first week back at my desk since the holidays ended. I intended to get back here sooner, but this year I found I needed a break AFTER the break, to recover some mental energy. The first couple of days in my office, I spent re-setting and organizing, as usual. My yearly process usually looks something like this:
