It’s Close Enough To Done That I Can See It From Here

Here’s where I am-

• I have written nearly 130,000 words of novel. It comes out to about 298 pages in Word in 12 point Arial font.
  
  Which means that The Winter Solist is done. What’s next?
• Editing and a clean-up pass. This is done by myself (I can’t afford an editor on taco money), by going through the whole book…in reverse. And it’s scary what you catch when you’re looking at your book that way…
• Then, I get everything ready for publication. Fire up Kindle Create and put the book together. Get it up on Amazon.
• I’m going to tempt people into reading Solist At Large by dropping the price to $0.99 for a month after I release The Winter Solist. We’ll see if that does anything.
• I’m seriously thinking about actually doing some paid marketing for the book. Not much, but enough to maybe see if I get any returns on it (i.e. I get back at least $1.50 for ever $1 I spend in marketing). Probably Facebook marketing.
• And, I’ve gotten the Amazon blurb written for The Winter Solist. What does the blurb look like?

Adelaide Taylor has survived her first semester at school and as a Dawn Empire Solist. She’s found her first Companion, Sayuri Suisha. Sayuri’s grandfather wants to meet his only grand-daughter’s new friend. In Japan, just before New Years. Along with that, she’s gotten a warning-one of the High Fae is hunting her and is planning to ensnare Adelaide in her schemes. 

There’s a girl in her school that has been set up as a tethered goat for Solists.

Her local and very Catholic high school is putting her into places that shouldn’t happen at a Catholic high school.

And there’s a monster eating prostitutes in Queens.

Nobody ever said being a Solist would be easy…

The Winter Solist

• Then, I’m looking for a new job. Writing A Roman Solist and a new series.
• My goal is to get more reviews-and more sales-on my novels. Why? Because the more reviews and sales the novels have, the better the chances that Amazon’s algorithm will catch your book and get people’s attention. And that moves your book higher in their marketing queue.
  
  The more people that pay attention to your book, the more sales you get and around and around the mulberry bush we go.
• I’m allowed to worry about AI writing programs, because the last few “writing jobs” that I’ve applied for have been “we want you to six other jobs and write as well.” Most of the jobs are front-facing customer support and service jobs, and that is not my exact wheelhouse.
  And I’ve tried some of these programs and I’ve gotten…wallpaper paste. Not even good wallpaper paste. Completely lacking in creativity or even any real spark of innovation.
  Might be a blog post in there, because I have this idea for a movie script and I want to get it out of my head..

Hopefully more news-and more good news-in the near future.