Indie April
Writing Update and Personal Reading Goals for the Month!
Updates
It is now 6 MONTHS until The Necromancer’s Apprentice is released! It feels both like a huge number and also a deceptively small one. It also means that I’m 3 months away from the Big Hurrah that will be July-September. Newsletter folks will get a sneak peek of those shenanigans in June!
I don’t particularly have a specific update to share beyond the usual song and dance of Pre-Orders! Request at your library! Plus the little teaser of keep an eye on your calendars for June.
March was a wash in terms of productivity with chronic pain, illness that lingered, and general fatigue. It’s very frustrating but I’m hopeful with the arrival of April and Spring that I’ll get back on my feet again.
Next Steps
It’s months like March that I’m grateful that the biggest way to sell books is through word of mouth of dedicated fans and readers. I can do all the tiktok dances, post the prettiest photos, and be on every social media, but the power is truly in your hands!
While you’re here, twiddling your thumbs until The Necromancer’s Apprentice can be yours, please consider writing a review or hyping up your own personal favorite books! I can guarantee it will make the author’s day.
This brings me to my Personal Goal for April - Indie April! I am woefully behind on my Indie book reading which is not a great place for someone who is releasing her own indie novel. I’ve got a number of friends in the Indie space, my own author co-op, and even more connections that I’m excited to make. Hence the #IndieApril initiative is spreading across Bluesky!
This Bingo Card was made by Tessa Hastjarjanto (@endalia.bsky.social) and I’m very excited to use it. Look at all the opportunities to buy books!
I’m not sure how many of these little squares I’ll be able to check off, but you’ll hopefully see more of these on various socials. I’ll be sure to update my progress in the next newsletter in two weeks. In the meantime, what are some of the indie books you love?
Writing Updates
Do you hear that? It’s crickets.
Well, not totally crickets but there were a lot of cobwebs I had to dust off of my keyboard after Miserable March. I’m always a little apprehensive about approaching a project after so much time away. But with 6 months left until The Necromancer’s Apprentice, I really need to get into gear and write #TheForestBook.
Thankfully, with some more rest, and quite a few pep talks about letting the book be what it needs to be, I’ve made some progress. I’m still in the very, very early stages of writing a coherent First Draft.
I know some people LOVE to draft, but I am not one of them. Let me world build. Let me revise and weave together threads! But face a blank page? I would rather not.
This looks like very messy outlines. Beat by beat lines that say, “So and so boards the train and sees the various passengers around them” or [Add cool plot relevant newspaper headline here]. For some reason that tricks my brain out of its panic and to focus in on solving a specific problem. It means writing is slower. At the moment, I can do about 1k in my morning time and even that feels like a stretch on some days.
I’m very thankful for the support of my various writing groups, and friends for cheering me on. They’ve shown me that books can be built with small word counts and consistency. Plus, it helps that I want to write things to show them and thus earn their praise, haha!
Social Media Scoop
This is a sound bite that I’ve been wanting to use for over a year now. In true social media fashion, the videos that I spend maybe ten minutes making are the best ones. Enjoy!
The Cats
Did y’all see the Boop-O-Meter on Tumblr?! It was the April Fools gag and it was the most fun I’ve had on the internet in ages. It’s like Facebook’s ‘poking’ but infinitely superior because you could Opt Out and it was entirely focused on Cat Paws. Here is Harley, showing off his own little white paw Boop