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Today's blog entry is more for me to complain, to keep track of what I'm doing, and to shake my ra-ra's around and perform the ~ please pre-order my amazing book! ~ dance. 😊

https://mybook.to/kaelci

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I'm so rubbish at the whole self-marketing thing. This is one of the reasons why at first I really wanted to throw my book at a traditional publishing house; so I didn't have to deal with it. But then, with the advent of social media, traditional publishing houses still expect the author to do their own self-promotion too.

My issue is while I want my book to be a success, while I want people to fall in love with my characters and story, I, personally, don't want to be known. I don't want to go on a breakfast morning TV programme and shout about my story. I don't want to be interviewed on the radio or on podcasts. I don't want to be written about in a magazine or newspaper.

All I want is to write, let my words speak for themselves, have people read said words and enjoy them, and be a faceless, voiceless author behind it all.

It's impossible to be an introvert these days.

So... every so often I shout about my wares on Twitter, advertising mostly to other writers because no readers follow me, andddd hope for the best.

I was rather stoked actually, last week. An other-author bought Half Past the Moonfall with intent to review. I WAS HAPPY, AND THEN I WAS TERRIFIED. For what was probably the first time someone who didn't know me, who has never read anything I've done, someone not on Hive, was about to read my obnoxious, crass, profanity-ridden, tongue-in-cheek Australian fantasy novel.

I was on edge for three-to-four days, waiting for the inevitable one-star review that would stab me in the gut and ruin me forevermore. I know, as an author myself, we can be a damned nit-picky bunch, and I had read another review he had left for someone else and was preparing myself for the absolute worst.

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Four stars! Well written! Captivating! Quality writing!

And then I laughed at myself for being so afraid.

https://mybook.to/HalfPastMoonfall

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I may have laughed at myself for being so afraid, but I still don't want to self promote. I also don't want to waste money on advertising that will very likely go ~ nowhere ~

It's so expensive to advertise on Amazon. And obviously I hate Facebook, just like everyone else, I barely use the thing except to talk to my partner, but Facebook advertising is so damned expensive as well.

There are paid promotional services around like Booktasters, Bookbub, NetGalley, etc, but they cost an arm and a leg as well! I'm an indie author, not a bloody millionaire!

I even pulled myself out of my shell a little bit the other day on Twitter, asking other authors to show me their books that currently have less than five reviews so I could buy, read, leave a review for them, be helpful, make my name a little more known. Yes. I'm selfish like that. And no-one bit. There are things called Writers Lifts. People descend upon them in their hundreds, throwing their book at the person who initiated it, a person who only wants more followers and could care less about the comments they're getting. Yet when I SPECIFICALLY STATE that, "Hi! I'm going to buy books. I AM GOING TO SPEND MONEY ON YOUR BOOKS!" only three people respond. And only one of them had less than five reviews.

Ludicrous. 🙄

So. I'm at a loss.

I've poured over half my life into this book series. I started when I was eleven; I'm now 33. I've finally finished Book One and am pouring myself into editing it as much as I possibly can until it's released on September 12th. I've outlined and have done half of Book Two. Book Three is half done as well. Book Four is still being pieced together.

I've always written for myself first. I need to write this whole series. FOR ME. That little eleven-year-old girl demands it. But it's damned disappointing to know that hardly anyone else will ever see it.

Anyway...

I'm editing, and I'm proud of what I've done so far. I'm going through it, chapter by chapter, and I'm still waiting on some beta-reader feedback but I feel fairly confident for the most part.

As I'm editing at the moment, I'm mostly focusing on:

• removing excessive adjectives
• removing superfluous words
• tidying a few sentence structures (actually did a lot of that yesterday, Chapter Eight is so much neater now!)

One of my beta readers who finished a couple of weeks ago suggested adding just one more chapter, to add a tiny bit of extra relationship-building. But I can't, for the life of me, work out where and how to add another chapter. I've cut all the fat from this story and only relevant chapters remain, and I don't want to just throw in some padding. So as I'm going through current chapters, I'm trying to expand upon a certain relationship within each existing chapter instead.

Other than that, it's been suggested I make a certain chapter near the end a bit longer and fill it out a bit. I agree entirely and will do it when I get there. 😊 If you were following my Maynia Babblings -- it's one of the chapters that near kills me and breaks my own heart. And it was given to my beta readers in it's only existing form. So basically a first draft just flung into this book, haha. It was mostly polished!! I'm good at polishing -while- writing.

Just. Yes. It definitely needs a bit of expansion. And once again I'm going to cry. Yay.

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So, while you're here 😉 ...

If you'd like to pre-order your own copy of Vengeance, you can do so on Amazon. It will be Amazon Exclusive for the first couple of months, so if you are signed up to Kindle Unlimited you'll be able to read it when it's released. It's released on September 12th.

While it will be on Amazon Exclusive, it won't be on there forever. I'm looking forward to putting it on Smashwords, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and everywhere else after it (hopefully) gets some Amazon and/or Goodreads reviews.

It's also not on Amazon Exclusive yet! Which meeeeans if you'd like to be one of the first to read it before it's released, I can give you an advanced copy in exchange for a review. 🥳 I'm hoping to have finalised all edits by mid-August at which point advanced copies will be available.

Let me know? ❤️

I usually finish off these giant rambles with a photo...

... but I've been so engrossed with my work that I haven't taken any new ones lately. 🙁

So here's an old one of Charlie Cat...

 

Until next time...

Thank you for reading

Thank you for stopping by!🤗

 

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_{All images in this post are courtesy of myself.}