Thursday 22 January 2015

5 Years of Story Writing, 4 Years of Blogging, 3 (free) Giveaways, 2 Novellas, 1 Continually Epic Journey.

It always amazes me how quickly time can go by. We’re into the year 2015 and my mammoth sized goal to become a successful author is still moving forward.

In my last update I talked about Goodreads and this is still going well. I had a second giveaway for the twelfth days of Christmas and had 767 people enter. All awareness is important so I hope in time I’ll see some feedback and reviews. There have been a couple and both are very positive so it’s a start. I’ve joined in on some discussion boards but I’m finding it difficult to find topics I feel I worth discussing or commenting on.

From the second Goodreads Giveway start date until mid January there was also a free giveaway of the ebook and we had about 1000 downloads over this time. I’m very happy with this and once again I hope so good feedbacks appears. The main reason I hope there is good feedback is because with a certain amount of feedback the publishing company can access certain marketing sights that will give The Book of Prophecy more exposure.

I have also been busy trying to finish my Frankenstein novella. I’m happy to report this is now done! This means I have two novellas finished and I’m glad to have them done. It also means the only outstanding piece of work at this point in time is the follow up to The Book of Prophecy. This is a daunting task as its 150,000 words of editing, and with so much else going on in my life I don’t know if I want to start going through it yet. I’ll update this in the future.
   As for the novellas I decided to send them to, Susan Armstrong, who is an agent at Conville and Walsh Literary Agency. She’s one of only two agents who spent time to communicate with me beyond the formal correspondence of rejection that most agents give, so I thought, ‘why not send them to her and see what she thinks.’
   I’m still very adverse to the agent side of things in the publishing industry as they have far too much power and subjectivity, and at times are clueless of the market and what is quality literature and not just going to make them a quick buck. I guess that’s balanced out with how successful self-publishing/other-ways can be. That said, the benefit of a good agent who is able to present my work to perhaps bigger publishers and a broader market would obviously be ideal, hence sending my work to an agent who I feel is worth contacting.   

My main writing priority right now is a new blog about Mental and Physical Health and my experiences. I’m really enjoying the topics I’ve been writing about and discussing them in a way that may one day be of benefit to others. I do want to get back to the story writing but this new blog has taken priority, maybe I’ll be able to balance it if I’m more organised.  


That’s about everything I’ve been doing in relation to writing and although not very exciting I’m learning to take on the ideology of the tortoise and not the hare.