My year started yesterday. It’s been good, but having my son home on leave meant I was far more focused on precious time with him than on writing, marketing, or the myriad of other things I need to do for work. Effectively, I took a vacation to be with him. He headed back to base, and likely we won’t see him again for a year, with the tempo of his duties this coming year. Also, there will come a day when a young lady comes into his life and I know we will see less and less of him which is just and fair and how life goes on. It’s bittersweet, but I hope for that for him in due time. He went on Thursday, I indulged myself by shopping in the city and coming home with fountain pens and a whole box of books from the good used bookstore (and resisted the $170 Ghibli Studios Art book from the store with the pens). Friday, I cleaned up the studio, which doubles as a guest room, set all my workspaces back up, and… was tired.
Monday, I’ll go back to work. I’d developed a routine, which the holidays, my father’s passing, and my son’s arrival disrupted completely. If I hold myself to it for a week or so, I should find my groove again. At six, I ‘commute’ to the studio, shut myself in, and write for no less than four hours. After that, marketing and graphic design work until I get ‘off work’ around mid-afternoon, which in theory allows me time for housework, gardening, and exercise. Reality tends to be looser than that, on a given day I may work for fourteen hours depending on what needs to be done on the design end of my jobs. I’m trying to avoid burnout by setting up a routine which doesn’t allow for me to work 24/7 with no rest time built in.
My question for you, Gentle Readers, is what I can write about here which will help you. I write for MGC as a way to give back to the community, and lately I’ve been feeling like I don’t have much that is useful to say to you all. This coming week I can write about what I’m attempting to do to increase the marketing reach, as I try to find new readers for my work. It’s going to be theoretical at best initially. I know last year I paid someone who maintained TikTok for me, putting up little animations of my books, as well as Raconteur Press books, to keep up the flow of content. At the end of the year my account had 120 followers, and no single video with more than 1100 views. I discontinued the service. I’d been paying $80 monthly and was not seeing a return on investment. I suspect that has to do with the content, as I’ve seen better results on YouTube where my short videos are a range of stuff from my chickens, to pollinators, to some self-promo book trailers I’ve created. For now I will abandon TikTok, even though I know there is actually a reader pool there. Just not, it seems, for my books.
I do plan to do more with YouTube, and had planned to start at least weekly uploads at the first of the year… which turned out to be yesterday. I’ll do a video on the fountain pens this weekend. I’ll also try to record my reading a story aloud and uploading that to see how that works for me, with the idea of recording myself reading a full book soonish. I have plans. Time will tell which, if any, will bear fruit.
Please do let me know what it is that you need, be it writing, publishing, or marketing related. I want to be of service here, to the readers.
Mad Genius Club 
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