Category Archives: self-publishing

Documenting America, self-publishing, The Forest Throne, Writing

Dreams of a Writer

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I had thought my children’s time travel books might spur sales, but, alas, not so.

After having taken the month of June off from writing—except you can’t fully take that long of a time off from writing—what you do is back off of new writing and pretty much maintain things like the blog and promotion—I’m now back at it, working on a new book in my Documenting America series.

It felt a little weird at first, to come down to The Dungeon in the morning and do things other than writing. But my routines, interrupted for a mere 30 days, have quickly re-established themselves. I have a goal as to where I want to be at the end of July, and I think that I’m either on pace of maybe even a little ahead of where I want to be.

I haven’t yet promoted the sequel. I know I should, but it just seems meaningless to do so.

That gets the long-suppressed dreams of a writer going in my mind. As I work on a new project, other projects come to mind. Even as I plod along toward daily goals, and book sales trickle in at Amazon (10 in June, so far 3 in July, plus one personal sale), other new projects come to mind. Specifically, things I could write and publish serially on Kindle Vella. Four non-fiction series are rolling around, taking up brain space that should be going to the new book. Well, one of those projects is related to the Documenting America book.

The other three potential Vella projects are pie-in-the-sky stuff, things that are more dreams than real projects. Things that would spur sales and generate a little income, get my name a little more wide-spread. Things that would take up time.

And that’s the problem. Do I want to hop over to Vella series from books? That makes no sense. I have no idea how well Vella series sell. Most that are there seem to be fiction, and my ideas are non-fiction. Last month I browsed the non-fiction titles there, and could draw no conclusions. Would my non-fiction series gain an audience there, or not?

In my dreams, they would, and not just a small audience, but a fantastic, large, and ever-expanding audience, waiting for the next in each series, almost begging for more. I won’t share the dreams of how many dollars those series would bring in, because if I did, someone would say it’s time for an intervention, to bring me back to earth.

Such are the dreams of the writer. Working on one project while dreaming of four others while watching anemic sales show up in the Amazon sales report while wondering how to better self-promote. I suspect I’m not alone in that.

Time to move on to the next daily task on the new book. Push the dreams into the background for a couple of hours, and see what I can get done.

Bible study, Christianity, Documenting America, Screwtape's Good Advice, self-publishing, Writing

Too Many Things To Write

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So, the day after posting my writing goals for July, I started to have second thoughts.

In that post, I said my main project would be the next Documenting America series, Run-Up To Revolution. I started working on it yesterday, creating the Table of Contents and cataloging the source items already in the Word document. I turns out I only have five more documents to either find and copy or type. That’s a good start.

But is it the right thing to write? The last couple of days I did some more looking into Kindle Vella. For those who don’t know, that’s an Amazon platform for stories/books brought out in serial form. I thought maybe I could publish my nascent memoir, Tales Of A Vagabond, there. I have five “episodes” as K-V calls them) written, and a little inspiration caused me to start planning the broader book.

But wait, because that new Bible study I mentioned in a previous post continues to pull at me. I did a little research reading for it yesterday in the second source document, and a proposed outline has started to come together in my mind. Nothing is on paper yet.

But it also occurred to me that maybe I should return to working on the eight-part Bible study A Walk Though Holy Week. I’ve written about that before. Parts 4, 5, 6, and 7 are written, and Parts 4, 5, and 6 have had one editorial pass. These four could be ready to publish in a couple of months, Parts 1, 2, and 3 are fully planned, and Part 8 partially planned. It occurred to me that maybe I should shift to writing Part 1, for I don’t know if it makes sense to begin publishing the series at Part 4. What to do, what to do?

Then, our adult Sunday School class has begun re-studying C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. We went through it around 2008, and I wrote four chapters covering four letters. I found them useful in teaching fifteen years later, and I feel the itch to work again on it again. But, that would be quite time consuming and energy sapping. What to do?

And that’s not all. A couple of months ago, finding myself at the time of our critique group and me with nothing to share, I dashed off the first four pages of the first book in my long-planned-but-never-started Alfred Cottage Mysteries. The crit group seemed to like it, as they had liked the series summary I had shared earlier. I’ve wanted to write that series for a long time but have hesitated since it would be yet another genre—something I don’t really need.

And one other thing occurred to me. Perhaps it’s time to get going transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia, as I did with the letters from our years in Kuwait. I want to get to that while I still have strength of mind and body. That’s not a commercial project; it would be only for family. But it’s important to me to see it done. I think, among all these things I’ve mentioned, it is the least likely to pop up to the surface at this time.

With all that, I actually have one or two other ideas floating around in my head, things that have come to me recently that haven’t gelled sufficiently to think of a title, an outline, or a purpose and scope. But they are there, consuming brain cells, and interrupting my reading on more immediately pressing projects.

Ah, the life of the writer with Genre Focus Disorder, too much immediate time, and too few years left in an already fruitful life to write everything that sits a while in my mind, never mind those ideas that flit through.

self-publishing, The Forest Throne

New Book Published: The Key To Time Travel

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The e-book cover.

So here I was on a Monday morning, minding my own business, proofreading one of the volumes of a Bible study I’ve written, watching the stock market out of the corner of my eye, when I realize I forgot to write my blog post for today.

So I guess what I’ll do is a simple notice about my newest book, The Key To Time Travel. This is Book 2 in The Forest Throne series. It’s the story of Eddie Wagner, second child of four in the family. His older brother had an adventure in time travel in Book 1. Now Eddie wants to have a bigger adventure.

He finds the forest throne and knows how to use it. Alas, the adventure doesn’t turn out quite the way he had in mind.

Yesterday, I received the covers from the cover designer. The e-book cover worked just fine, so I went ahead and published it. The print book cover, per Amazon, needs one minor tweak. Otherwise, the print book is ready to go. I tried making that tweak myself and couldn’t do it. I just don’t have the graphics skills needed. I’m hoping the print book can be available in a couple or a few days.

home improvements, letters, self-publishing, Writing

Thinking About Letters

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I made this presentation on Tuesday, but still haven’t put the stuff for it away.

When I came to The Dungeon this morning, mug of coffee in one hand and laptop computer in the other, I was greeted by a mess. Lots of writing related stuff strewn on my near worktable. A few stray income tax forms on the printer table (making me wonder if I forgot to put one in the packet I mailed to the IRS).

And also on my worktable, some things about letters. Three are notebooks that contain just a few letters, the ones I’ve been digitizing then discarding the originals. I need to consolidate them into one notebook and complete the process. Three notebooks to go to a thrift store, a little more free shelf space.

Somewhere, either on the worktable or possibly upstairs still, are the things needed for the presentation I did on Tuesday to the Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers Society. The topic was “Letter Collections: A Window on History in the Making”. The presentation went well, and we had a good number of people there. Now I need to get a number of books back on shelves and my notes somehow stored so that I can find them again should I ever need them.

Gary is gone, but the letters between us live on. A few edits to this are possible this month. Hang on, folks. It will soon be done and available.

Then, there was the book Letters Between Friends. I thought I had written about this before, but a look back on my posts indicates I haven’t. I guess that was because I wasn’t quite ready to announce this project to the world. And, actually, I’m still not. I finally have permissions from all copyright holders to publish the book, but I had a few redactions to do then reformat as needed. I also felt I should add an e-book, which takes some more formatting.

But I found my copy of it, before redactions, on my worktable. I need to find two hours of time for completing this project, then let people know it’s available. It will be of interest only to family members and classmates of the people involved. Perhaps 20 copies will be sold. I would consider that a success.

But when will I get to it? The two Bible studies I’m working on have consumed all my available writing time. And they will do so today. Somehow I have to carve out those two hours to complete that project.

And another two hours to complete what’s needed to get rid of those three notebooks. That may not take that much time. I should get to it. Right after supervising two workmen at the house today, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Right after the weekly grocery run. Right after finishing a letter to my oldest grandson. Right after…

…oh, where is my to-do list?

Oh, yes, I’m still reading that scholarly magazine article about letter collections. I should finish that today and dump the pixels back into the ether.

Bible study, goals, letters, self-publishing, The Gutter Chronicles

Monthly Progress and Goals

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The sequel is done, and close to publishing ready. Hang in there, folks.

And, for the second month in a row, I forgot all about publishing my progress against my goals as the first post for the month and setting new goals. I should have done that Friday. What was I thinking? Well, a couple of days late, here they are. The progress first.

  • Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday. Yes, I did this. I liked the series I thought of, posting library memories.
  • I won’t be attending writers meetings this month. There was nothing to do about this goal.
  • Edit and complete A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 6. … Part of this goal is to, at the end of February, have a publication-ready book. I completed this! I was able to knuckle down, finish all chapters and sections, add the Introduction, and declare the book publication ready. I even figured out a cover scheme for the series.
  • Begin work writing AWTHW Part 7, simultaneously to when I teach it. I have been doing this. Fairly successfully I think. My co-teacher and I have now taught two lessons in the series. Chapter 1 corresponding to Lesson 1 is complete. Chapter 2 corresponding to Lesson 2 is close to complete. Last night, after doing other things and watching some Miss Marple movies, I spent a very productive hour on it. I think I shall be able to finish Ch 2 today, putting me ahead of where I usually am for this simultaneous teaching and writing.
  • Get TKTTT to beta readers and receive their feedback back. I did this. One of two grandchildren read it and gave me feedback. I also sent it to an elementary school teacher to give to students who will be beta readers. No feedback from them yet, but it will be coming soon.
  • Work with the cover designer of TKTTT. Yes, I got with the cover designer. I gave her my ideas, and she will work with it. Hopefully she is working on it now.
Gary is gone, but the letters between us live on. A few edits to this are possible this month.

So, here are some goals for March.

  • As always, blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday.
  • Attend four writers meetings this month. I already attended the first one, held last Thursday.
  • Keep up with A Walk Through Holy Week writing simultaneously with teaching. You never know what curve balls life will throw at you, but, based on how this is starting, I think it is doable. By the end of March, I should be through Chapter 5 and have started on Chapter 6.
  • Finish either Part 4 or Part 5 of AWTHW. I actually worked on this a little last month. Or maybe that was Thursday-Friday, which would be this month. I spent time reading where I was when I pulled of this last year, split and organized files in the new part designations, and put a few words down. Part 5 is farther along than Part 4, but I feel like I want to get Part 4 done first. We’ll see.
  • Organize some writing ideas files. I began this last Thursday and presented them to the Scribblers & Scribes critique group. They liked one idea a lot, but not the other. A new idea came to me on Saturday and fleshed out a bit with brainstorming yesterday. I plan to document that on Monday—today—the put it out of my head until the time is right.
  • Get any needed edits done to TKTTT according to feedback from beta readers.
  • Make a handful of edits to Letters Between Friends, and republish it. This is based on feedback from copyright holders. This is not really urgent, and I may put this off until AWTHW and TKTTT are further down the road.

That’s enough. If I get all that done this will truly have been a productive month. Also, my business partnership taxes are due this month, which will cut into my writing time.

self-publishing

Book Sales

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I had a good day at the Holiday Book Festival on Nov. 19, probably selling more than the other authors there.

We are now a little over 10 1/2 months into 2022. I thought it might be a good time to report on my book sales.  At this moment, my book sales this year have already the highest of any year that I’ve been publishing. I have 275 sales.

I know, I know, shockingly low, isn’t it? Especially considering I have 38 separate titles for sale. But, that is the life of the self-published author. Getting sales is difficult.

The numbers are skewed to the high side by sales of our church’s Centennial history book. It was hard to get an accurate count of those sales vs. copies given away. As best as I can tell, we sold 67. I suspect it’s a little higher than this, but that’s all I’ll claim. If you subtract the 67 from the 275, that leaves 208 sales of my main body of work. That would be behind my previous best year, 223 books in 2021.

I feel okay claiming those Centennial book sales as mine. So 2022 is already my best year. Three late-in-the-year author events helped quite a bit toward that. I don’t know how many more I’ll sell in November and December, since on-line sales have dried up almost to nothing.

But I will keep plugging away, selling some here, some there, waiting for the breakthrough every author hopes for.

self-publishing, The Forest Throne, Writing

Henry, Izzy, and Me

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Henry and Izzy knew they were going to meet me that day, but not that I was giving them copies of the book.

In my last post, I talked about the author events I had last week. I mentioned that on Wednesday, I went to John Tyson Elementary School in Springdale, Arkansas. The purpose of the trip was for me to meet and give copies of my book There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel (Book 1 in The Forest Throne series) to my two beta readers, Henry and Izzy, and their E.A.S.T. facilitator, Mrs. Jennifer Boogaart. I wanted to write about that more in my last post, but I was waiting on photos. I didn’t take any myself, so I had to wait until they were posted on the school’s site. Those finally were posted, so I’ll say a little more about that event.

I think Henry and Izzy’s EAST facilitator, Jennifer Boogaart, was as happy to receive a copy of the book as they were.

In Nov. 2021, Mrs. Boogaart reached out to a Facebook group I’m a member of, Arkansas Authors. This is a group for the purpose of putting writers and educators together. Mrs. Boogaart said she had two students in her E.A.S.T. class who were writing a book about JTE’s school recycling program. She was hoping to find an author who would discuss the writing and publishing process with them. I volunteered, and last year we had two or three Zoom meetings (the pandemic still keeping us apart). One of these meetings I suggested, since I was about to publish a short story and I thought they could watch the process as I shared my screen with them.

I hope to do some writing on the sequel to this this week.

In one of the Zoom meetings, we discussed if they would want to be beta readers for TNSTATT. I explained what this was, and they both answered yes. I sent it to them in January of this year. I did all this mostly e-mailing their teacher, who I asked to get permission of their parents first. They were the first people other than members of my family who read the book. As a result, I mentioned Henry, Izzy, and Mrs. Boogaart in the acknowledgment section of the book—again, with their parent’s approval.

So Wednesday I arrived at 9:00 a.m. The school district communication department was there, as was Izzy’s mom. Mrs. Boogaart took me down to the E.A.S.T. classroom. Henry and Izzy came in soon thereafter, and we sat and talked. I gave them signed copies and showed them where their names were in it. I talked with them about how the idea for the book came to me, and how my oldest grandson helped with the ideas and the plot. I also asked them more about their book, including where they stand in the writing process.

The communications people got some of this on video. They then asked each of us for a statement about how the work on this book felt to us. Meanwhile, others were also taking photos, including the teacher, the mom, and the assistant principal. The whole thing has been posted on the JTE E.A.S.T. Facebook page. It’s at the top of the page now; later you might have to scroll down.

This is not the typical author event. I didn’t sell any books. I didn’t bring any to sell. But it was a joy to work with the kids, and to be able to meet them and give them the book. My life was enriched, and I hope they and their teacher’s lives were as well.

Oh, wait, I figured out how to get the link to the E.A.S.T. post itself. Here it is.

Bible study, Christianity, goals, self-publishing, The Forest Throne, Writing

July Progress, August Goals

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First of the month. Time to review progress last month and set some goals for August. That means return to my environmental series will be delayed one more post.

First, the goals I set at the beginning of the month. They were not ambitious goals.

  • Get back on the two Bible studies I’ve set aside to complete other things. I’d love to set a goal of finishing them by the end of the month, but I think that’s too ambitious. Let me instead say to work on them in at least 10 writing sessions. I believe I worked on the Bible studies only one day. Life circumstances and changed writing interests resulted in my not being able to focus on this.
  • Attend three writers meetings, all in-person. Did this. They were three good meetings.
  • Blog twice a week on Monday and Friday. Might be a challenge with the grandkids here. Did this. Maybe a couple of posts weren’t the best.
  • Work on the programming of the next Bible study. I’ll post about it at some point. I did manage to have a couple of good sessions on this. I’m not as far along as I wanted to be, but at least I made progress.
  • Not originally a goal, but something I worked on was the next book in The Forest Throne series, tentatively titled The Key To Time Travel. I did this because the grandkids were here, and they were interested in getting started on it.

What about this month? I’m still dealing with some health issue for me and my wife. We were going to take a long road trip this month, but that’s up in the air right now due to health. I will decide on that sometime this week. I’m going to establish goals as if we won’t be making the trip.

  • Attend three writing group meetings in person. This includes making the presentation at one on Aug 9.
  • Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday.
  • Write at least two more chapters in The Key To Time Travel. I hope to work on that some today.
  • Write at least two more episodes of Tales Of A Vagabond. I still don’t know what I will do with this. I need to get a little more into it before I can assess if this is a viable item for Kindle Vella.
  • Continue to program the next Bible study. The tentative title is Death Kindly Stopped For Me.
  • Do some marketing of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. Also need to close a couple of sales of this.

I’ll leave it at that. This is really a tough month to plan anything, given uncertain health issues.

letters, miscellaneous, self-publishing, Writing

Unfinished Projects

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Dateline: Thursday, 23 June 2022

At the moment, I feel like I’m running between different projects. Projects started but not finished. Projects wanting to get started. Projects developing in my mind. Rather than list all of them, I’ll just mention what today’s work on projects is shaping up to be.

First thing this morning, I sent in the order for a proof copy of a new paperback book. I won’t say what it is right now. It’s not a book for sale, but rather one for private purposes. The proof will arrive June 29; I’ll show it to one intended recipient on July 8; and I’ll make a presentation about it to a club I’m a member of on August 13.

Next, I transcribed two letters from 2008. That was after going through a notebook of letters from that year and culling all those already in electronic format. This is part of a decluttering project. It’s totally unnecessary to spend time on this at this stage of my writing career, but it’s something I feel I must do if we are ever going to downsize.

Now, I will work on the memoir I started earlier this month. I want to present a few pages of it to my critique group, the Scribblers & Scribes, tonight. It’s now 15 typed pages long. I don’t know that I’ll actually write a full memoir at this time. It’s a fill-in project of sorts, to be able to have something to share with the group, as I don’t figure they’ll want to see my Bible studies. That’s not really the type of stuff critique groups were made for. Concerning the memoir, I don’t have a lot to do to be ready for this evening.

The amount I plan to do on these projects today won’t take much time, so I will likely shift to another project. This is another letters collection. Letters between me and a friend who died a couple of years ago. I have pulled them into a book and done the majority of the formatting. All that remains is to insert some photos, figure out the book size, and go through the publishing process. This is another unnecessary project; it’s something I want to do, something I can give to his wife and daughter that they might want to read.

Also today, I hope to find 30 minutes to an hour to make those last changes to my website. It would be nice to check that one thing off the list.

Oh yes, one last small project was to write this blog post and schedule it for posting tomorrow. That one is done!

So, that’s the life of a distracted, unfocused writer—at least this one. I’m anxious to get these loose ends finished so I can get on with my next book.

Bible study, Christianity, self-publishing

Juggling Writing Two Bible Studies

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This is my first Bible study. It’s done fairly well but is by no means cracking a bestseller list.

In my progress and goals posts, I have mentioned that I was working on writing two Bible studies. They are actually part of a longer study having six parts. Let me explain.

Some years ago, when my co-teacher and I were discussing the curriculum for our Life Group, he said it would be nice to go through the events of Holy Week as a study, ending up on Easter Sunday. I took a look at it, and discovered there were almost 70 separate events during Holy Week. It would take us over a year to go through it all without combining some of the smaller events. Actually, more like two years when you consider the occasional Sunday when we don’t have Life Groups and the interruptions for all-church studies.

I decided instead that we would break this up into six parts and do some every year leading up to Easter, and going beyond Easter when necessary. I planned it all out, and I guess it was in 2019 that we did Part 1, on the Triumphal Entry and the events over Sunday-Monday-Tuesday of Holy Week. That was a bit long; I should have broken it up into two parts. Then there was the Olivet Discourse during the pandemic interrupted 2020. Last year was the Last Supper, and this year is Gethsemane, Arrest, and Jewish Trial. Next year will be the Roman trial, execution and burial. And the year after next will be Easter Sunday.

All has gone well. We get through this seven to fifteen lessons per year. The class seems happy. The pace is good.

At some point between last year’s series and this year’s series, I decided that, if I were going to write and publish another Bible study, maybe this series was what I should write. In January, when I finished two other writing projects and decided I’d do a Bible study next, I went to work on the Last Supper study.

I immediately ran into a problem, however. I had my teaching notes from when I taught the classes, but they were months old. They were suitable for teaching when the material was fresh but not for writing when the material was stale. I found I had to re-study a lesson again in order to write a chapter in the book. As a result, I made very little progress in January and February.

The first Sunday in March, we began the new part of the study, Gethsemane, etc. The day after I taught the first lesson I set down to write it in book form. The chapter came out very easily. In three days I had it written. At that point I switched back to last year’s study, and struggled along.

The next week, I decided to make that the pattern. Here’s what I’m trying to do.

  • Study on Saturday for the current lesson.
  • Teach the lesson on Sunday; come home and begin to write the current lesson into a chapter.
  • Work on and complete the current lesson chapter Monday-Tuesday.
  • Work on last year’s study Wed-Thus-Fri, hoping to complete one full chapter, but being satisfied with whatever I can do.

Since I started that at week 2 in the current study, it has worked well. I have all chapters in the current study complete through Chapter 5 and am working on Chapter 6. On last year’s study, some weeks I’ve been able to do a full chapter; other weeks I’m a little short of a full chapter.

As of April 10, I have written approximately 31,000 words in last year’s study, and 29,000 words in this year’s study. That’s substantial progress.

Yesterday, I went to The Dungeon after church and began writing, and found myself completely out of gas. Problems sleeping Saturday night had left me tired. I wrote maybe 300 words on the current lesson, and decided to pack it in. I’m not sure how much I’ll get done today and tomorrow, due to the need to finish my income taxes. But there’s no law saying I can’t take the entire week to write that chapter, and save work on last year’s study till next week or the week after.

I’m enjoying this writing. I don’t know how this will proceed. I know I’ll finish these two, publish them, then see if I’ll write more of them over the next couple of years.