That really was the outcome. Seriously.
No matter how low my opinion of Trump may go (and it can’t go much lower), I prefer fictional asteroids to real ones. With that in mind, my novel Final Hours is now free, at least for a few days. Get it before a real one shows up and the coming solar eclipse casts darkness upon the United States (and it can’t get much darker here)!
Just a week ago, I was contemplating my retirement. I had dropped the ball with regard to marketing my books (I hadn’t even checked my Amazon pages in a while—I just discovered I have some new reviews! Yay!). I hadn’t written anything in weeks. I wasn’t sure I could write anything. I wanted to…it just wasn’t there, and I didn’t know how to fix the problem.
I did know the source of the problem: this old gray mare ain’t what she used to be. My focus is nowhere near what it once was. Just a year ago, my characters were living their lives inside my head 24/7. It was crowded in there, but I didn’t mind. Now, nobody’s home. Not even me, most of the time. Not only was I not writing, I wasn’t doing much of anything else, either…the housework, laundry and cooking weren’t always getting done. More than once, I’d end up scrambling to get Collin something to eat or wash his clothes before he had to leave for work.
Why?
Because I was online—sometimes five or six hours a day. By the time I got offline, I would be so drained mentally, I was no good for anything but sleeping or sitting in front of the TV. It should have been a no-brainer, right? Just cut back on the online time. I’m no internet junkie. I’m perfectly happy with a couple of hours online a day. But in my own defense, this has been discussed among my friends and fellow authors at Facebook on more than one occasion. Too much time spent social networking is cutting into a number of authors’ writing time. It’s an epidemic! Nobody intends to do it. It just happens. You start chatting with friends and the time gets away on you.
I’ve cut back because I have to, if I want to ever publish another book. No more email, Facebook, etc. after lunch.
But that’s only half the problem. Now to decide the direction I want to take. Do I still want to write fiction? Yes. But I’m not sure it’s in the cards. The projects currently in the works have been in limbo for a while. The nonfiction project, on the other hand, is flying along.
I’m not sure I want to bother with print editions in the future. They’re a pain to create and earn very little. In my opinion, they’re too expensive, anyway. I might sell half a dozen copies (total) of each novel—and those are usually to my friend Carolyn, who brings them to me for signing as soon as she receives them. My friend Shelly Arkon does well with paperbacks. I don’t. Ebooks are where I make my profits…so doesn’t it make sense to put all of my focus there?
I had a brief discussion with fellow author Rosanne Dingli on Facebook the other day. Amazon doesn’t allow us to separate our own books from used copies of our backlist books being sold from third-party vendors—for which we get no royalties. I’ve considered switching to a pseudonym so when anyone clicks on the page for my current books, those third-party offerings aren’t there to usurp my profits!
Before I close…The Unicorn’s Daughter is still available for free at Smashwords today and tomorrow. Just use coupon code SP26W!
Norma Beishir/Collin Beishir 