October has been somewhat of a disaster as far as writing is concerned. The only original writing I’ve done is:

• Write about 200 words in the next Danny Tompkins story, while waiting for meetings to start. I haven’t typed them yet.
• Write 1,400 words yesterday in a scene for Headshots, the sequel to In Front Of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I typed those during breaks at work and e-mailed them to my personal e-mail address. Then last night I merged them into the Headshots document and updated my diary. The problem is it’s been so long since I looked at this book in progress that I don’t know if this scene is the next one in sequence or not.

As far as other writing/publishing tasks, I’ve managed to get a few done.

• Have reformatted Doctor Luke’s Assistant with a smaller font, which will allow me to republish it as a slightly less expensive book. I will have at least one sale of this cheaper book, to a man at work. The cover designer redid the cover, so that’s ready to go. I was working on this Tuesday when I discovered a potential glitch concerning the ISBN number. Since then I’ve found out that I’m probably worrying about nothing, and hopefully tonight I’ll complete the publishing tasks on this.
• A man read a book review I made at Amazon, which led him to my blog and my books. We interacted by e-mail, and he bought a copy of Documenting America. He also wanted a copy of the instructor’s notes, which I gave him. Hopefully he’s a new reader and, dare I say, fan.
• Somehow (don’t remember exactly) I found a sports book blogger, contacted him, and he agreed to read and review In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. That is complete. He posted the review on Goodreads, Smashwords, Amazon, as well as on his blog. In addition, he’s going to interview me this weekend, which I presume will go up on his blog. I’ll link to it once it’s up.

My October sales stand at 5 so far, with 13 hours to go, Amazon time. Two of those sales came from my direct contacts; the other three are unknowns, though could be from earlier marketing efforts. I’ll report final sales numbers soon. That’s an increase from September, and any increase is gratifying even when the result isn’t bestseller status.

One other thing I did was speak to three different people about my books at an American Society of Civil Engineers state convention in Little Rock two weeks ago. I don’t believe any sales have come of that so far, but I have good hopes for at least one in the future.

All this tells me my writing “career” is still in early infancy. Sales are still one at a time. I need to finish more projects and publish them. I need to find a way to work writing into a work and home schedule have has become more busy of late.

All this I will do. As Emerson said, “There is time enough for all that I must do.”