Well, July came and went without me establishing any writing goals. Yes, you astute observers will have noticed that I didn’t post goals at the beginning of July nor give a recap of how I did with my June goals. When July started we were busy heading to Chicago for a family event. I prepared a few posts ahead of time and scheduled them to post while we were away. Writing progress and new goals wasn’t something I could write early.

But here are my June goals and how I did on them over a two month period. You can get through them then see my August goals after that.

1. Finish the church anniversary book. I think I’m doing well on this, and should be able to add the final portions and declare it done by the end of the month. …I have some more interviews to conduct, which may hold it up, and some contributions by some others. I won’t say that I’ll have those contributions, but without these interviews the book won’t be done. The book is DONE! I’m at the point where I am so far ahead of schedule with it that, if I had to go to press today I would be satisfied with it. However, since I still have time available, I will continue to tweak it. Maybe do a few more interviews, work on some more photos, etc. It will still be an August goal, and probably every month going forward until it goes to print.
2. Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. With this post I’m well on my way toward achieving that. I achieved this goal.
3. Explore a little more the linking of a series together on Amazon. I have four series among my Amazon publications, none currently linked.  This was on my list of things to do last month but didn’t get done. Not only did I explore this, but I managed to get two series created, linking existing publications with their related publications. That was the Danny Tompkins short stories and the Sharon Williams Fonseca short stories. No, wait, it was three series. I also linked my Documenting American non-fiction books into a series.
4. Work on this website, creating a new landing page and updating some content. I did not do this, technophobia taking over I suppose. I don’t think this is a difficult thing to do, but I put it off and allowed other things to fill the time.
5. Work with the cover designer concerning new covers for the Church History Novels series. This is somewhat out of my control, based on her schedule. I haven’t checked with her in a couple of weeks. I stayed in touch with the cover creator. She has had a very busy summer, interning somewhere. She contacted me last week to say she is just about ready to get back to them and wanted the print book dimensions. So this is good news, and a goal sort of met.
6. Watch some Amazon videos on how to better do Amazon ads. They keep sending me e-mails about available webinars, several of which look beneficial. I’d like to watch at least one a week. Goal partially met. I watched two Amazon advertising webinars. They weren’t very helpful. I also re-took the 5-day Amazon Ad Profit Challenge in July, the fourth time I’ve gone through it. I created six ads for Acts Of Faith, bringing me up to 16 ads running. Are they profitable? I’ll cover that in a future post.
7. Continue work on the next volume of Documenting America. I’m still mainly in the reading for research phase, though I also did some of the book planning and created the book file. I want to at least complete the basic reading (40 more pages) and move on to some other sources. I think that is very do-able. I did finish reading the source materials. I also add somethings to the book file and even began the process of editing down the source documents. But, I would have to say I did not complete this goal.

So all in all, June and July, while not stellar with accomplishments, did have their moments. Lack of July goals has reflected in that lack of accomplishment.

Now, time to set some goals for August.

1. Continue to tweak the church anniversary book. I can think of only two more interviews to do. I may add in photos this month. I have a bunch in the file now, but have more I could add. As I do this, I will first format the book for print dimensions. That will let me bring in photos at the right size.
2. Finish a short story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series, tentatively titled “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”. I wrote four pages in July to share with the Scribblers & Scribes critique group when we met that month. With just under 2,000 words written, I believe it’s 2/3 done.
3. Work on the middle grade novel I started in July. The Forest Throne is technically to be co-authored by my oldest grandson, though I’ll do most of the writing and he will edit it, helping me to understand what 10-13 year old boys like. I wrote the first chapter of this in July and sent it to him for comments, receiving his approbation of the sample. I’d like to add another 5,000 words to it this month to go with the 1350 written so far. I’ve brainstormed out most of the plot but not specific scenes.
4. Blog twice a week, as always.
5. Do some work on my website. I’m not sure what, but I have to overcome this technophobia and improve it.
6. Attend meetings of my three writing groups, assuming they don’t get cancelled because of local corona virus outbreaks.
7. If the cover artist gets the covers re-done, re-publish the three older church history novels, updating them for new copyright info and list of works, as well as link them in a series.

That’s it. See you in September with a progress update.