are you ready to take a break?

Here’s how this week’s goals panned out:

1) Contact the media person and then three more places for book signings and / or readings. Emailed the media person. Twice. I think I am going to just relax and not worry about it until I get my own supply of books to sell. All the experts will say that is the wrong approach, that you and your book have to hit the ground running. But  - bleah – I’m just going to take a break anyway.  

2) Email everyone (within reason) on my contact list, reminding them about my new novel, “Where the Sky Meets the Sand”, and asking them to write a review for it on Amazon if they’ve had a chance to read it. And offering to email them a free copy of it if they would write that review. Have emailed 32 people, only up to the K’s. Have gotten two responses. Only one review yet on Amazon, but someone did praise it on Faceebook and she got two responses to that.  

3) Write 1,000 words on the new novel. Wrote 1,495 words!

4) There are three places I’d like to submit to in the next few months, so I should work on those. Nope, didn’t write any of them.  

5) Non-writing things to do:

a. Scan a dozen of my mom’s old pictures into the computer. Scanned sixteen.  

b. Wash five of my house’s windows. Washed two, but they were the biggest ones! (The attached pictures of those windows are from years ago.)

c. Finish reading “On Writing” by Stephen King. I am going to count this as done. I couldn’t sleep last night, so got up and read the last real chapter. I had already read Furthermore #2 and Furthermore #1 is too technical to rush through.  

d. Repack all our Kenya merchandise. Done.   

This coming week, as already mentioned, I am going to take a break. It’ll have been a month since “Where the Sky Meets the Sand” has been available on-line. Perhaps I could be doing more here at home to promote it at this point, but I think it may be time to let it rest, wait until I get my copies in my hot little hands. Give this whole marketing thing a fresh start by the end of the month.

So what will I do this week: 

1)    Continue monitoring the situation on “Where the Sky Meets the Sand” – returning emails and Facebook messages from interested parties and naturally jumping if I hear from a venue which I have already contacted.

2)    Stop checking the book’s ranking on Amazon several times a day. Stop beating myself up if it continues to slip. It will jump back up once the paper version is out.

3)    Write three thousand words on the new novel.

4)    Pick a better working title for the new novel. I have waffled between “The Novitiate” and “The Abbey” and “The Big House”, but none of them does anything for me. In my head, sometimes I call it “Where the River Runs Red”, but not only has that already been done, it’s almost too close to my first novel. I will think on it.

5) There are three places I’d like to submit to in the next few months, so I should        work on those things:          

a) poem using book titles, Aug 15 deadline, which I need to write today if I’m going to

b) reflection for work calendar, Sept 15 deadline

                         c) poem on aging, Oct 20 deadline

6) Non-writing things to do:

a. Scan a dozen of my mom’s old pictures into the computer.

b. Wash four more of my house’s windows. Have washed only two of them and have a total of nine left by the end of the month. Physically, I can’t wash more than a few a day.  

c. Find a relaxing book to read and read it!

How are your goals coming along? Swimmingly? Or is it time for you to take a break too?

Have a great last few weeks of summer.