It’s that time of year! June means we check in on the resolutions and see where our progress is. This year I’ve got some fun things to report!
Rejections Stories
If you’ve been following me on my Instagram, you can see that I’ve reached 12 rejections out of our goal of 50 (or one acceptance)! I’ve also been offering some side commentary on my thoughts and experiences in this process on the app, all threaded in my highlights.
I continued pursuing rejections despite getting published in Luna Station Quarterly this March, in large part because LSQ is not an SFWA qualifying market and because I had submitted the story originally last year. Mostly I have only submitted short stories so far. I’ve got a lot more submissions to make if I’m going to meet that 50 rejection goal! Which means a lot more editing and getting things ship-shape so they will have their best chance.
Patreon progress
Patreon! It’s a thing! I’m still experimenting with that platform, and earlier this year successfully launched my first serial novella, Veridian. For those who aren’t interested in subscribing, it’s going to be available next spring from most retailers. It’s a dark contemporary fantasy with strong horror elements – not so much my usual fare, but it has the positive of being a fairytale retelling. I kind of love it, and I hope my readers do, too.
If you follow Instagram, you’ve seen some of the excerpts from installments. Please check them out if a Bluebeard retelling sounds like your thing!
Z-book edits
This is the place where I’ve probably been the most lax this year. I’m only about 130 pages into edits on this book, which is over 300 pages long, so you can see I have some hoofing it to do. I pretty much lost the months of April and May for edits due to some dayjob deadlines, so I’m still hoping to finish these edits this year! They are becoming a bit easier as I get deeper into the book, since the front of it was the sloppiest, but it will definitely be a challenge.
I’ve posted some excerpts from this story, including some of the early chapters which are now cut or heavily revised, on my Patreon. You can read them here for only $1 a month.
Business research
One of the things I promised myself at the beginning of this year was to be intentional in my steps to tackle writing as a professional career and not just a hobby. I feel that I have fluttered around a lot with ideas but am not always solid on plans and implementation. Accordingly, I’ve been pouring resources into research. How do other writers do it? If they self-publish, how do they balance the creative life and the publishing life? How do they lock in sales? If they don’t, why did they make that choice? What different hats do they wear?
I don’t think it’s a secret that my sales numbers are not super great. I don’t have the reach some indie authors have, and I have a lot of ideas about why that is. My feeling is that the readers who do read my work either love it or hate it, which is probably as good as it gets for any creative, so I don’t think that is where the problem is per se. But the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing you’ve been doing and expecting different results. Which means I need to change up my game. Looking at how successful indie authors have managed is a valuable first step in figuring out what changes to make. Then it’s all execution.
I am sure that the next few months are going to bring some fun announcements as I wrap up my research and begin firming up plans for next year. Please stay tuned!
Amanda J. McGee, Author 