Saturday, November 24, 2018

Not a Weekend Reading Post

I hope everyone is having a good weekend, and that all my American readers are having a great Thanksgiving weekend. I am. My parents are in town visiting. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving day (despite some panic about a turkey that cooked faster than expected) and are having a good time just hanging out and taking it easy. Yesterday, we went for a walk around Vacation Island in Mission Bay, and then had drinks and snacks at the Barefoot Bar (part of the Paradise Point resort). It was lovely. And I entirely forgot it was Friday and I should post some weekend reading! Oops. Weekend reading links will be back next week. I have some links saved, but I don't want to interrupt my holiday weekend good mood by posting them.

Instead, I think I'll ramble on a bit about my various projects.

I am hoping to write an Adjusted Latitudes post at some point this weekend - yesterday, I cleaned my desk so that I could find the notebook that has ideas for that site. I have set up an Instagram account that I'll use in conjunction with that site, too. I'll also post about books there, and we'll see what else. I have heard that the first social media account my now 11 year old is going to want is likely to be Instagram, so I decided I should figure it out. I am restlessrabbit42 over there. (I will come back and redact that user name in about a week....) I have posted exactly one thing and doubt I'll ever be a prolific poster, but if you have an Instagram account and want to follow me, I'll follow you back! I need to find more people to follow so I can figure out how Instagram gets used.

In other news: It was apparently Small Press Week this week, and today is Small Business Saturday. So I have a sale on at my Gumroad store: Use the promo code spweek18 and get 50% off everything you buy. You can browse the Gumroad store directly or find books on the Annorlunda site and click the Gumroad link to buy them.

I'll be working on one of my 2019 books today: I am almost done with the Kindle formatting for The Dodo Knight, a novella by Michelle Rene about Alice Liddell, the muse for Alice in Wonderland. (Check out the cover! I am so happy with how it turned out.) I also have on my list that I need to contact an artist about cover art for one of the 2019 books and an editor for another one. (You can see the post about the 2019 books here.)

I have struggled a bit with the adjustment to running Annorlunda as a side gig while having a regular 9-to-5 job, but I really, really enjoy putting books together, so I am still committed to keeping Annorlunda going. I need to figure out how to grow my "natural" audience, though. Social media only gets me so far, especially since my reach on my Annorlunda accounts is small. I still think growing my newsletter audience is my best bet. I've been reading classic short stories this weekend, looking for the perfect story to pick for January's edition of Inbox Stories. And I will be picking my November free ebook winner tomorrow morning: Subscribers to Inbox Stories and the regular Annorlunda mailing list are automatically in that drawing.

My other "big" project for the year was supposed to be to get the backyard revamping underway. I have not made much progress on that at all. I had one designer come out and give us a rough quote. We wanted to get rough quotes from two designers before picking one and getting started, but the other company I contacted has not answered my email. I need a company that can communicate via email, because my job involves a lot of time in meetings. I have to be able to at least schedule a phone call via email - I can't just have the landscaping company call me whenever they have time, because I usually won't be able to pick up that call. So I need to find another company to contact. At this point, I have accepted that this is not going to happen this year, and will try again in January.

I think that's everything - and anyway, I've finished my tea. I should get showered and then start in on my to do list for the day. Tell me about your projects or your holiday weekend or whatever you want in the comments!

4 comments:

  1. Over at Whatever, Scalzi does an annual holiday self-promotion thing in December - maybe a good way to reach more readers, at least for sci-fi/fantasy?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes - I always tell my authors about his posts. I think they can move a couple of extra copies, but not a lot. There are so many people commenting with their books, it is hard to stand out. But definitely worth doing.

      Delete
  2. I love the cover for The Dodo Knight!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I'm thrilled with it, too.

      Delete

Sorry for the CAPTCHA, folks. The spammers were stealing too much of my time.