(shoutout)

I am nervous / excited for the sale and promo tomorrow — since Cozy the Day Away was happening, I also lined up a newsletter promo on the same day. (BookBarbarian readers, hi!) Simultaneously, I’m also braced for nothing to happen and for all of this to pass without a ripple. I set all of this up before my last round of “Hey, let’s learn more about strategy and The Business,” and while I don’t regret it, I am more in a “why not” mode than a “this is an exciting new step” mode.

I asked some (much) more experienced self-publishers for advice, and the overwhelming consensus was that my first-in-series is too old. You know, the one I am set to promote tomorrow. Uh, oops. Nobody reads old books, they said. If it wasn’t published less than 6 months ago, it’s irrelevant. Some said I could still write on the same pen name if I REALLY wanted to, but I still ought to abandon my useless back catalog. So having learned that, I’m tempering my hopes for these promos I set up several months ago.

And between that and readers calling Healers “a finished trilogy”, I am trying to pivot to another story in that universe instead of writing Healers 4 right now. For a while it was The Strangers’ Crossroads, which is about a pair of Academy graduates tasked with reopening an abandoned shrine. But that one has some even heavier psychological lifting than Healers. Not a great choice if I want to bring new people into this universe. Someday, I do want to finish that book. But I’m not sure it’s the right one now.

Until then? It’s not the done thing, but I still stand by my first in series. There are things I’d change about it now, but I still like it. And I still think it’s not impossible that a few more people might like it too. Maybe I’m being overly optimistic. But I can’t make it any newer than it is, so we’ll just have to work with what we have until I can figure out what to write next.

This all sounds gloomy, but I promise it isn’t. I want to keep developing my skills, figuring out what makes a story “mine,” and bringing that out. It’s a growth process. Y’know, a growth process that starts with grumbling and ends in optimism hey look, it’s my brand again. There’s a reason for that. ; )