Balance: a follow-up

Last week I talked about the importance of finding your balance. I wanted to talk about that a little more today, and also move into some more thorough updates for where I’m at with writer stuff.

My dad got me this book for my birthday this month, pictured and linked below. The first chapter talks about the importance of the blog. Apparently it’s a good idea for a new blogger to start with a weekly post, so I’ve been doing things right! My apologies for bouncing around recently on the posting dates, as I was trying to decide for sure if I wanted to keep a Friday post date. If you have any opinions on that please feel free to chime in.

The book is really about marketing and building your platform, which any writer will tell you can be a huge suck on time and energy. Between marketing, writing, publishing, and living, I definitely find myself juggling a lot. The thing that most often slides for me is marketing. Publishing hoops can also get a little hard to jump through, sometimes becoming more like moving targets. This can be a really dangerous habit to get into as a writer, and it’s something I’m working on. One of the best ways to handle this, I think, is to set achievable goals instead of optimistic ones. If you think you could finish the book in April and get it out there, consider scheduling your release in June. Life happens, all too often. It’s better to be twiddling your thumbs than crying because you missed your deadline.

The other thing that is just as likely to slide is the cleanliness of my house and feeding myself. To help with this, my long-suffering S.O. has instituted the Chore Board. To be fair, while I get points for meal prep, the Chore Board doesn’t really incentivize feeding myself. Happily (unhappily?) the physical repercussions of not feeding myself consistently are pretty intense – I get migraines and other fun stuff.

All of this is to say that while I may talk a good game at times, I find balance is a moving target. Sometimes you hit it, sometimes you don’t.

With that in mind, the audiobook has been delayed again. I’m working with the producer to figure out exactly how long that delay will be, as it is not entirely on my end. That said, I’ve definitely contributed. Given the delay and my desire to do a marketing push around the release, I’m going to release the book on October 1st. I should have a cover reveal soon as part of that, possibly accompanied by a sale! Currently the paperback of Mother of Creation is $10.99 but I will probably be dropping that price along with the ebook price for the week of the audiobook release. If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, you may want to wait for the first week of October.

Work on the WIP continues apace. The current wordcount is around 73k. Prepare for a celebratory 3/4 post soon!

Oh, and if I haven’t mentioned it before, I’ll be part of Roanoke Author Invasion in April 2017. You can always find information about my appearances here.

Lots going on, all-in-all. With that I’m off to adult some more. Good luck, all!