More Life Changes, Upcoming Book and 'A Little Surprise'
Sep 05, 2024 3:01 pm
Hey there!
The season of change in our family started a month ago with the birth of our seventh child. Then it was the birth of the calf and consequential milking. Now, it has hopefully reached the end with me starting a new job. Would I recommend all those changes at once? Not really, but sometimes things just happen. Switching companies for my full-time job feels like a lot combined with everything, but hopefully I'll settle in quickly.
No, no, I realize you are shocked that I'm not a full time author. Honestly, I would love to be. The idea of writing clean fantasy and sci-fi books for you and your families alike over and over, every day sounds incredible! But that journey, well, it depends a lot on you. They say it takes a tight reader base to be successful as an author. Your support of me, my books, and all that I do is very important to my success. Thanks to all of you who have purchased, read, reviewed, and shared my books. And thanks to those who support my podcast Patreon and Ream Community.
Alright, sappy stuff aside, lets be real here for a second. Six gallons a day of milk is no joke. Granted, my amazing wife takes the brunt of it all. While I help milk one side of the cow every time, she deals with the making of the food.
Here is just a couple day's worth of milk. XD
Yes, yes, most of those are gallon jars. So with the flood of the delicious, creamy substance, my lovely wife has been diving into cheese making head long. With a few 'cheese' days a week, we're setting up a nice stock for the future (after it sits for a bit to settle into the flavors). We've also been enjoying some incredible fresh cream products such as butter, sour cream and home made ice cream.
There's so much more we do to keep up with the milk, and for awhile we wondered if a cow was a bad decision, but now that things are settling, we'll ride it out for a bit longer to see how it goes.
My Progress This Week
The biggest update this week is that I took a step back once again from writing to hit editing hard for Dragon Blooded. I got the copy edits back from the editor and spent a few days intensively working through them. And, I'm thrilled to say, ARCs were sent out for the book a few days ago! Now that I have the team of advanced readers engaged, I'm excited to see some reviews trickle in on Amazon and Goodreads to see what people think about the book. If you missed the chance to sign up for an ARC and still want one, just let me know HERE.
I have still made some progress on Dwarfblooded, adding a few thousands words, but I need to get things rolling a bit faster to keep up with a publishing schedule. I'm hoping moving forward to publish two books per year. That should get me to 20 published works within the next five or so years. A bit rigorous considering my life but I think I can do it.
As a reminder, you can still pre-order Dragon Blooded on Amazon. Though, if you prefer to support me directly, I have a little surprise for you in the next week or so. I may *hint hint, *wink wink, be making the book available for purchase directly from my sight two weeks before it hits the other retailers.
If you like Amazon, go ahead, click the link. If you want it from me direct (and earlier and cheaper) then don't click this one yet.
New Episodes of The Casual Author!
Your writing process is unique to you and should remain that way. As we navigate the throng of advice for writing and the 'best way to do it', more often then not you'll find plotting and organization helps. What about discovery writing? Join me and KimBoo as we discuss the skill and strategy around discovery writing, the pros, the cons, the goods and the challenges.
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Connecting with your readers, wherever they are around the world, is essential to not only make a living as an author, but build a community and an audience to sustain it for the future. With increasing costs of living and the challenging economy, many turn to social media, which is, aside from time, free marketing. But what if you don't know what to do there? What if showing your face or books is outside of your comfort zone? Join me and N.D. as we talk about social media, escapism, and how we can find our readers through social media interaction and community.
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An Interesting Book to Check Out!
warm regards,
Dan
