Progress on the new mystery

I've made some great progress on my new mystery novel. I'm probably 60% of the way through, writing every day, and I'm just launched on what I'm thinking of as the second act. My main character, Amy Galanis, is a public library librarian whose life has been upended by a deadbeat roommate who disappeared, leaving a corpse in her house. As the story unfolds, it turns out there are a lot of people with an interest in what's going on, and many of them are trying to get to Amy for reasons she doesn't yet understand. Here's my word count trajectory:

At this pace, I should finish the first draft some time in January, which probably means a February or March release date. I'm excited about sharing it with you!

My editing process

I'm getting more and more emails from readers, which is awesome - I love hearing from people. One reader of Kenai wrote last week asking about my editing process - he's a writer, and wanted to compare notes. I put together a reply which I then turned into a blog post. If you're interested in how I write, you can read a quick summary here.

Six years of page counts

Another thing I did recently is a comparison of my page reads on Kindle Unlimited. I have been at this since the middle of 2019, so I have five and a half years to draw on. I put together a progression of 60 days of my page reads in Kindle Unlimited showing good growth from 2019-2024. I stuck with the same date range each year, Sept 1 to Nov 29. Pretty happy with what I found. Here's the baseline year, and I have the next five after this.

There's an animated version of all six years plus a brief discussion here.

The Biz

If you're interested in how the financial end of being an indie author is, I've started doing monthly reports on how it's going. Lots of long-winded analysis here.

Some stories to try

I'm part of several author collectives, and we share each other's work to try to help all of us reach more readers. In many cases, the books we share are are free or discounted. Sometimes, they ask that you sign up for a newsletter like this one. Here are some new books I have to share this month:

First, I have a set of 55 indie mysteries, thrillers, and suspense novels. There is a huge variety of these, some of them available via Kindle Unlimited. There's certain to be something you like here.

Next, I have Perilous Quest, a free space opera short story by Adrian Murphy. This has alien relics, a salty captain, and a ragtag crew, all wonderful elements. It's a prequel to Adian's sci-fi action series, Galaxy Flux.

Next, I have Loss of the Unbound by Luna Fox and F. Lowberry, the first in a new fantasy series by this team. The series is about dracomancers, which is an awesome word and must be related to dragons and magic, two mainstays of fantasy.

Finally, I have The Survivors by Richard Rimington. This is a free book, a prelude to Richard's space opera series about people struggling to save humanity against long odds.

Thanks

Thanks so much for signing up for my newsletter. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for upcoming books! I love hearing from people. If you've read one of my books and wouldn't mind leaving a review anywhere (Amazon, Goodreads, Bookbub, LibraryThing) I'd really appreciate it! Each review helps me reach more readers. 

I hope you and your friends and family are having a safe and rewarding wrap-up to 2024!

May the Bloodmother watch over you - 

Dave