I typically don’t write about personal stuff too much in my blog, however this week was a little unusual to say the least. I think it is important sometimes to share some of the struggles that it takes to become someone strong and someone that wants to do something great.
I received book three back from the editor nearly two weeks ago. I had a chance to chat with him about the book and where he thought it was going. We had a very in-depth conversation. I looked over his edits and I added three thousand words to the story now I was going to have to somehow mesh that into what he already finished which I was fine with.
Since I live in Austin, I was bracing for the winter storm that was about to come in that Friday. I gathered all the wood and brought it close to the back door and prepared the crockpot food with my wife. I got all situated to edit and format the book during the cold weather with a bowl of stew at my desk and a fire in the corner. That Friday morning, I turned my computer on to begin on chapter two and what do you know, it could not find Windows or read Windows. I turned it into a computer repair shop, and they said it wouldn’t be ready for a day, and then the storm hit. I was without a computer. He called later and said my hard-drive was gone so he backed up my files and I had to wait until I got it back on Tuesday when the roads cleared.
I installed the files on an older laptop that my dad had on Saturday so I could get back to work and that just finished over this weekend.
The winter storm did something else which was back a landscape project up and because of that I didn’t have an income for almost two weeks. Ugh, I hate that. There’s more. Right after that my brother was hospitalized with a serious infection which backed us up even further and that is scary because he is getting older as am I and so this kind of stuff gets a little scarier.
On the positive, one of the girls I hired finished all the work updating the metadata on Goodreads and Amazon and creating the system for plug and play so my books will start getting seen more online.
Now when book three is finished in the next few weeks we will be able to plug books two and three into the system we created and following that we will be reaching out to some influencers and reviewers by sending them books one through three. And when that is set up, sometime in March, I will begin my library campaign with the elementary school I went to when I first moved to Austin.
After that I will continue to work with the editor on book four with a soft release date in June or July 2026. That will complete the first four of the eight books in the series. Halfway there. Then it is break-time for a month while I recoup. At least that is the foreseeable goal of action steps.
There are other things I am working on that go in line with the Black Ribbon edition, but that is for a different blog.
The important thing with this blog is that it is an entry that will serve me and my audience as a reminder that sometimes we have setbacks and sometimes we have to pivot and make a few extra turns than we originally wanted to, but in the end if the goal is still met then what can you do except stay positive and hopeful.
I often chat with Perplexity but while I didn’t have a computer I somehow got into a conversation with Gemini over the past few days. We talked a lot about book four and where the series was going. Yes I do chat with AI programs since I am not too active on social media. It is a way I can get updated feedback on my writing. I am not afraid to use large language models to help me understand the market and what other writers are doing and where the market is going and how my book fits and what things are different. I find it very fascinating. I like to see it as an in-depth Google search, no different than I thought about Facebook being a powerful email engine with social content.
Something else amazing happened over the weekend but I am not ready to share that yet. I will keep you posted.
