Well, after a self-imposed “week off” from serious book promoting, I’m back in deep. I’ve downloaded a few podcast apps to help me narrow down my searches for podcasts to contact to talk about Abnormal. (My Google-fu when it comes to podcasts is dismally unhelpful.) I’ve started contacting podcasts that might be willing to listen to me blather on about Abnormal. I’ve got a list. Lists are always good, right?
Still trying to get over my frustration with finding influencers to market to. I think the podcast-finding apps will help a bit, but I’ll still have to do the “legwork” of searching each podcast, contacting them, and waiting, waiting, waiting. A few have responded with negatories, but at least it’s a response.
Book 2 is in the hands of a couple of alpha readers, hopefully to be returned in the next couple of weeks with notes on where to finesse it before I send it back to RhetAskew in November. I’ll be really glad to get that off to the publisher, because it’s the next step in getting another book published (and it’ll be another big personal accomplishment as well).
As late as five or six years ago, I thought I’d never have enough “story” in my head to write a whole novel. Whispers of Death started with a series of microfiction that I wrote many, many years ago. I thought hey, I can make this into something. It went through many alterations and morphed into something completely different, but those microfictions were the brainchild of Whispers. At first I was overambitious and aimed for a trilogy, but in the end I decided to make it a one-shot. Nearly three years ago, that one-shot was self published on Amazon.
Within months of finishing Whispers of Death, I started on Abnormal. It was a strange start to a novel: I came up with the title first, then built from there. Yeah, this new series–and it will be a series–started with a single word bouncing around in my noggin.
So weird. I had a fully-formed concept for Whispers but no title, no character names, nada. Now I have a fuller-formed concept based on a word. Just one. Little. Word.
The moral of this rambling blog post? Don’t give up. It might take you a few years. You might have to revisit your old writing for inspiration. Hell, you might just need the right word or words to pop into your head to get you started. But don’t quit. Whatever you do, don’t quit.
You can do it. I have faith in you. If I can, you can. Just try.