I’ve got one book with an editor, I’m 10k into my next book, and I’m editing my post-apocalyptic series so I can get it into audio next year (fingers crossed).
How do I do it?
Great question. Sometimes things go well, and other times things fall to pieces around me like a blizzard.
The one constant, besides my spiritual beliefs, is humor.
My grandma made these silly jokes for her elementary students way back in the day. I’ve really enjoyed going through these and realizing my grandma had an awesome sense of humor!
This journey keeps
taking twists and turns. I find it both scary and exciting.
Three years ago I
quit my day job so I could go full-time with my writing.
Last year I barely
squeaked into the black. I actually made money after all of my expenses.
Granted it was only about $100, but I’ll take it!
I had grand plans for
this past year. You know, 2020?
Yeah, things didn’t
go exactly to plan.
First
I released the last
two of my Decker Family Romances in the spring. They did okay. Not as well as I
would have liked, but okay.
Second
The plan was to write
my YA military sci-fi series.
I started the first
book four times, wrote a total of 130k words, and had to scrap them all. Twice.
Pure frustration drove me to writing something more soft and fluffy.
Third
I wrote these three
sweet and clean romantic comedies for the summer. By this point in the year everyone
needed a good laugh, so I obliged. These were not on my radar at the beginning
of the year, but they have ended up being my most successful series so far!
I also enjoyed
writing my first curvy girl romance. I’m a plus-sized woman, and it was fun to
write about a bigger girl.
Fourth
Among all of this
romance craziness, I released another Academy story in this anthology. Writing
this Snow White retelling was so fun!
Fifth
Christmas is always a good time to release romances, and this year I jumped on the bandwagon. These four books gave me my best months ever on Amazon in November and December! Her Christmas Middle Blocker (another curvy girl romance) is in a collection with eight other books at the moment, but will likely be out soon.
Other milestones
I hit one million
page reads in 2020! After I hit one million, I managed to get almost 350k in a
month, so that was amazing!
These are some of the
highlights of 2020.
Marketing is getting
easier, but there are still days that I take a nap instead.
I’ve learned a lot
about fulfilling readers expectations, which has really helped my sales.
Thank you to everyone
who has supported me through this endeavor.
I’m glad 2020 is
over.
The hubby and I spent
the first two weeks of 2021 in a Covid-induced haze, so I’m starting the year a
bit late.
It all started Friday at noon. I lured my nephew and his big
truck down to our house, then to Home Depot where we picked up a LOT of
concrete mix.
Like, this much concrete mix.
The truck wasn’t quite that big, so we had to take it in two
loads.
I say we, but honestly the hubby, his brother and dad, and
my nephew did all of the heavy lifting. I’m a supervisor. If no one says, “be
careful,” who knows what would happen?
While at the Home Depot, I went to reserve a concrete mixer.
Because mixing that many bags of concrete by hand would be…silly.
Even my super-helpless, blonde, girl, exterior couldn’t get
them to hold a mixer for me for the next day. Apparently it’s policy or
something. Whatever. I didn’t like them anyway.
My nephew suggested Diamond Rental, which is literally
across the highway. As we waited for the forklift to get to the front of the
store to load the first pallet of concrete bags, I got on my phone and reserved
a mixer from Diamond Rental for the next day. That was me earning my supervisor
position. 🙂
On a side note, they should have had me talk to customer service,
because it took almost an hour for a fork lift to get to the front of the store
to help us. The hubby looked too competent. His helpless look is ineffective.
After loading up the truck and one SUV with stuff, we drove
back and the boys made the pile in the garage.
The next morning dawned bright and early. My brother-in-law
and I went to get the concrete mixer. I didn’t have to use my helpless face or
anything. They were quick, professional, and polite. Gold star for Diamond
Rental.
We did have to take down one side of our fence so we could
get the thing in the back yard. It’s okay, I hate the chain link anyway. I did
help push it. Sort of. I mean, until the hubby hogged the good holding spots
and I left him on his own.
In normal construction fashion, we started an hour late. By
the time we got the rebar bent and in place (again, “we” indicates pretty much
everyone but me) we’d had the mixer for almost two hours.
I should note that the hubby’s family are all very solid
guys. Big. Broad. Basically walls of brick. My nephew is a light weight, and
watching him try to help bend rebar against someone 100lbs bigger was super
entertaining. I’m sad I didn’t get any pictures. Or better yet, a video.
Notice I didn’t put any fake skeletons in the foundation…
When we fired up the mixer, the first thing I thought was, “How
long is this thing going to be on? Our neighbors are going to hate us.” It
sounded like, well, a dying machine.
Then after we put a bag of concrete mix and the water in,
the drum stopped turning and it sounded worse.
That’s when Diamond Rental lost their gold star, and we
found that the gears were stripped. These are deep gears. I’m wondering how the
last person who used it did.
I left the boys to meander back and forth while I called to
get a replacement. They didn’t have a truck to deliver, so the brother-in-law
and I had to drop off the dead one and get another one. Diamond Rental got half
of their star back, because they were super fast and once again quite helpful.
By the time we got back, Jon’s dad had spearheaded at least
four wheelbarrow loads of concrete mixed with water and poured.
They were happy to see a working machine.
Pouring went pretty smoothly. Nothing interesting happened
until they decided we were going to run out.
Supervisor to the rescue!
I took a picture of the bag we needed, jumped in another
brother-in-law’s truck, and headed back to Home Depot.
I should note, I drive cars, not trucks. Not big, diesel,
rumbling, trucks.
It was nice to be tall, and I feel okay about my
barely-in-the-lines parking job.
The cashier at Home Depot was very nice. I held up my
picture and said, “I need ten of these as fast as you can get them in my truck.”
I smiled—not that you could tell under the mask. She smiled, charged me, called
someone up, and the guy was waiting when I pulled in.
One look at me and all of his hopes and dreams of this being
a “helping the customer” job shattered into a “I’m lifting these 80lb bags
myself, aren’t I?” job.
Sorry, buddy, I can barely reach the bed of the truck.
So he loaded them for me, and as I was pulling away got a
call from the hubby.
My first thought was that they were going to want more bags,
and I was pretty sure the loader guy wasn’t going to help me this time. Lucky
for me, they were just wondering what my ETA was.
After throwing a few rocks in to make up for the three more
bags we could have used, we managed to finish!
Last week was our anniversary. Another year has gone by and neither one of us has killed the other, and we still kind of like each other.
To celebrate, we decided to go up to Jackson, Wyoming. The hubby had never been, and it’s been a while for me.
We decided to do this last moment, and when we got there, we figured out why there were no hotel rooms left.
Us and our 40,000 new best friends had decided to come to Jackson the same week! I was lucky to get this horrible picture of me and the antler arch without anyone else in it.
We found 44 out of 50 United States licence plates, if that tells you anything.
Needless to say we kept our distance, wore masks (which are not the most fun for my asthma at high elevation), and were grateful we got a room in a nearby town.
We started at Jenny’s lake and hiked to Hidden Falls. The ferry operator said it was an “easy” hike to the falls. False. I’m pretty out of shape, but going uphill (steep for most of it) for a half a mile is not easy.
Still, it made for some spectacular views!
The next day we explored the other side of the Tetons. This time we rode a chair lift up to the top of the mountain 🙂 However, the chair lift operators didn’t tell us that we were in charge of putting the safety bar down in front of us, so we rode up without it…
I’m not afraid of heights, but even I was nervous. I almost bit the guy’s head off at the top after he yelled at me for not having my mast up…because my hands were sort of fused with anything I could get a hold of. When that got resolved I asked him about the safety bar and he looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “You’re in charge of that, not us.”
Honestly, those guys were the rudest people we met. Good thing the view was worth it! I mean, look at those mountains!
All in all we had a great time! The crowds were annoying, but what can you do?
