Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Creating a schedule

Happy Holidays to all, and a Bountiful New Year!

After reading on the forums that many indie authors are aiming to release a book every 3-4 months to keep the interest of their readership, I thought I would make a New Year's resolution to do the same. As of now, Serpent's Bite is due to be out in January/February, and this will be followed by books 4 and 5 in April/May and July/August.

After receiving emails from some of you regarding the "next book" in the Waldgrave series, I am happy to announce that I have also added 3 more books featuring Lena Collins to my writing schedule in 2015, and I plan to release the first of those new books in October/November of 2015.  To clarify, these new books won't be a part of the now completed Waldgrave series, but will be a continuation in that same universe.  This new series will follow Lena in the years after Waldgrave, and I have added a few books to follow Brandon for 2016.

I'm hoping to get a little ahead of myself with writing, so my schedule has me pretty crammed in the early parts of 2015--writing 4 books before May, and 9 books total in 2015.  But if I keep to that schedule (check back here for updates), then I will be sufficiently ahead in my writing to start giving firm release dates for the books.

In other news, I got a shiny new food strainer for Christmas, and I've been using it to puree the remaining pumpkins in my food cellar (read: "corner of the unfinished basement") before the new year.  All advice and recipes are appreciated.  ;)

See y'all in 2015,
Al


Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Ah, December

It's my favorite month of the year, shortly followed by November, October, and August.  (Sorry September, but you aren't home to my birthday or any holidays involving great food...call again when you're ready to party.)

Where I live, December is the month that I can be sure we're done with the heat.  It's when I finish eating or storing the last little bits of harvest from my garden, and I get to do some cutting back on all the shrubs and trees that went a little wild over the summer.  I have an excuse to spend more time indoors, huddled with my laptop next to the fire, a cat on either side and a warm mug of tea steaming a safe 3 feet away.  I put up the holiday decorations, burn a pine scented candle, do some holiday shopping--online, none of those store stampede shenanigans--and then blissfully tap tap tap away on my keyboard.

I bought several boxes of lights on post holiday sale last year, so after decking the halls, I'll be decking the trees and shrubs as well.  I don't know why, but the lights and the smell of frost never fail to recharge my batteries.

I've been hanging around some forums for writers lately, trying to figure out how to increase my readership, and general consensus is to publish often, write books in series, and make the first book free.  I'm already writing series with a free first book, so I figure that last piece is my next step.  To that end, I am hoping to release a new book about every three months over the next year.  Other writers keep talking about Amazon's sales algorithms, and how getting a new book on the virtual shelves at least every 90 days keeps you from falling off the visibility cliff.  I have no idea how the algorithms work, but I figure 4 books in a year is a good goal regardless.

The Redemption series has at least 4 more books before we get to The End, so those outlines are high on my list, and so is the manuscript that I just finished for NaNoWriMo, which I intend to be a stand alone novel.  So I guess we'll see how it goes from here.  :)

Happy Holidays,
Al