My dear friends!

June has not been what I hoped. As per usual, everything takes longer than I think it will, especially when hospitalized for viral gastroenteritis. My deadline for Love and Murder final draft is coming up August 14th and I am still in the research stage. I am hoping it’ll be like when I wrote my MA dissertation on Hadrian’s Wall, and that once all the research is in my noggin, the tippy-tapping will flow easily. We’ll just have to see, shall we!

Part of my goals this month are to streamline this here website. I’ve already taken it from stream-of-consciousness style blog posts and over-cluttered tabs to hopefully something that feels easier to navigate for you, my lovely reader. My goal of bringing love and peace would hardly be successful if my website itself causes chaos! I am still open to making changes, so please let me know if there’s anything you want to see that’s missing, or anything that’s there that feels erroneous.

In streamlining my website, I’ve been collating my previously published (and unpublished) blogs into downloadable white papers. They’re all free. Maybe one day when I am coveted for my sick writing skills I will charge for my previously written works, but for now, please enjoy my wanderlust rambles without dipping into your account.

That said, self-publishing is expensive! I’m hoping to figure out how to connect my donate button to my website to help pay for publishing costs. And before you ask why I’m self-publishing instead of going through a traditional publisher, let me answer with another question; would you rather control 100% of the ideas and 100% of the profits while also doing 100% of the marketing, or control 80% of the ideas with 15% of the profits while also doing 100% of the marketing? I’m hoping with future books that I will be able to go through a traditional publishing house, but publishing has changed since the days of leather elbow pads and in-house publicity. Traditional publishers expect, nay require, that an author already has a platform with which to market. Blame social media, 50 Shades of Gray, and/or the pandemic, but authors are now expected to be the editors and marketers of their own stories, regardless of how they publish.

Traditional publishers also routinely change stories once the story is legally theirs: characters ages, arcs, and even themes. Quinnie Greene is my protagonist, and she’s 31 years old. I could easily see a publishing house deciding to age her 10 years younger in order to reach the teen and young adult audiences. But that wouldn’t be the story I’m telling. There’s a reason Quinnie is 31. It’s crucial to her character arc and the relationship she forms with Fred, aged 35. If she were 21 and Fred were 35 her arc wouldn’t work, nor would his arc make sense if she was 21 and he 25. By going through self-publishing, I can maintain the story I want to tell, and I can put it on Kindle Unlimited for readers to read for free, thereby building that platform trad pub demands. I am very grateful to my mentor Christina Braver for helping me with this decision and process.

Breaking them down, my goals for June are:

• Reading my research books, taking notes, and applying new knowledge to new revisions.

• Cleaning up my website to make it more user friendly.

• Collating previous stories into easily downloadable white papers.

• Hooking up my Donate and Share buttons on my website (can you tell I’m not that tech savvy?).

• Create photo galleries of my travels for my website.

• Posting social content updates weekly.

I’m hoping by July, I’ll be just novel focused because everything else will already be clear, concise, and attractive. Here’s hoping!!