Ducks in a Row

Yes, this past month has been quite busy. Two conferences are done and processed, and one more to go in a couple of days. It’s taken quite a while to read through notes and condense them down to meaningful tasks. Some of the notes will just sit until they become useful.

I took a couple of Zoom webinars from Writer’s Digest University, one about author platforms and the other about social media videos. The second one was quite interesting, and I learned a lot. Consequently, videos for Instagram, or #Bookstagram, will be coming soon.

Plans Going Forward

After everything above, I have a laundry list of changes for Jones House Creative to do on the website. I have an equally long list of changes I need to make for the website. A lot of it has to do with the images used for the Cast of Characters sections. I’m hoping to complete them all over the next six months while I have a maintenance package with Jones House.

I contracted with a few graphic artists on Fiverr (not a typo) to create new art for Eric and Michelle. While the art was nice, I really didn’t like them. I have one more possibility with the site Fondly Framed. They do art for D&D-type characters. I liked the samples on the site and decided to give them a try. Of course, they are the most expensive option so far. Chances are, I’ll end up recanting my desire to have real artists do the character profile art and go with Midjourney instead. At least, for now.

Author Platform and Gaining Readers

I’ve learned from the conferences that I need to have an “author platform” and engage on social media to garner people to my site. I’ve decided my platform will revolve around book reviews of Christian books (mostly sci-fi/fantasy), posting videos (mostly about the characters and worlds, only a couple with me actually in it) and psionics.

My plan is to post two book reviews a month. The stack of books I purchased from the conferences and others I planned on reading for comparative value to my own writing will last me most of a year.

Videos will also come at a rate of two a month. I’m hoping to keep up with that rate. Videos are a bit harder, but I’m hoping they will become easier the more I do them. I’m thinking I’ll post on Tuesdays, alternating between a review and a video. All of this is to hopefully gain the attention of potential readers to my site.

There will still be a monthly newsletter/blog post on the first of the month. The psionics piece of this will be a bit trickier. The Psionicist class will be evolving as I add more to it based on my writing and filling in between the character abilities already shown. I’m setting aside some time each week toward this overall goal, but I haven’t quite decided how often I want to broadcast it. I don’t want to pepper you with a ton of emails when new content is posted. Between this newsletter and the upcoming videos and book reviews, that’s five posts a month. I think the psionics will add two more posts a month. Seven seems like a good number (it’s one of God’s numbers, by the way).

So, when will this all start? I’m thinking the regular book reviews will start on September 9^th. This will mean the first video will drop on September 16^th. I’d rather they start on September 2^nd, but that will be right before the ACFW conference, so I’ll hold off until the 9^th. The next review on the 23^rd and video on the 30^th. If there is a fifth Tuesday in a month (like September would have been), I won’t post anything that Tuesday.

The Accident Progress Report

The Accident has been professionally edited for developmental content and line by line grammar issues. Now I need to take the suggestions and comments under advisement and make changes. Once this is done, I can theoretically create the ebook version and offer it up to everyone. I still have a book cover to make (or have it made) and ISBNs to buy to make this an official book. I plan on printing copies of The Accident and put them for sale on my site (and Amazon). This will take a couple months, at least, to do.

God Bless you all!