You all probably know by now that I have a really hard time keeping up with goals, I just roll them over. Such is life.
This past week:
- The pool chemicals still are not balanced. (But the water is too cold yet to really worry about that.)
- The weeds are almost knee high AGAIN!
- It was raining the first few days of the week, so no paperback books got delivered, (that’s my excuse, anyway).
- The laundry got done, and the kitchen gets cleaned every day, the bathrooms got cleaned, but the furniture needs vacuuming, and the floors still need to be vacuumed and mopped. (The joys of owning shedding animals.)
- I took my first chapter of my WIP to my writers’ group. Funny thing happened. I had gotten nervous and cut out some back story feeling it was too much telling and not enough showing. Guess what they said was missing? Back story. Go figure. I am about five chapters into this and keep rewriting chapter one. This may take a while. Still, I am having fun.
- Those who follow me on Twitter know that my tweets have slowed down some. A few a day, instead of twenty or thirty. (You’re welcome.) I do think it is doing some good. I had a goal of three hundred books for the month of February with the 99 cent ENT promo for a day. I moved 151 in 2 days during that promo on the 15th and 16th, and had started with 19 sold before the promo at $3.99. (170) When the two days of the promo were over, the book remained at 99 cents pending all the other non-Amazon platforms getting the price reset, as Amazon won’t change the price back until everyone else does, and that took forever. The biggest problem was Sony dragging their feet, which got accomplished Feb 28th. I opened a Twitter account on the 18th and kept moving books at 99 cents through the 28th to reach 298 for the month. That’s 128 more books in ten days. So I was very happy, and, though I did not quite reach my 300 goal, I came pretty darn close.
- Then some magic happened today. After seeing no sales at all yesterday, and feeling like the party was definitely over now that the price is reset to $3.99 (which is what happened in December the day after the promo I had at that time), I sold two books today! Um wha! Whoever you were. It is the toughest thing in the world when KDP rolls over to the next month and you are sitting there with a big fat zero until someone invests in you. Gives you the opportunity to share your story. That first number every month is like fairy dust sprinkled on a biscuit turning it into a cupcake with rainbow frosting.
- Since my royalty on those 99 cent books is 35 cents per book, I am not making any big purchases, but with the other 19 sales at $3.99 I did break $100.00 for the month of February, and we are still sharing the story.
- Also, this past week, Red Clay and Roses was reviewed by the lovely Rosie Amber, which you can see here. And she posted a very nice interview here, which I really enjoyed because she asked me some seriously meaningful questions about the book that really got me thinking. There is also a new five star review on Amazon, which you can see here.
- Finally, I got to go to the beach. I spend too much time in the house, so a bright sunshiny day at a sleepy little seaside village was perfect. See:
This Week: (For those of you who tolerated the slide show.)
- More tweets.
- Get books delivered.
- More writing.
- I am not promising to clean the house again.
Goodreads Giveaway is over tomorrow: 3/03/2014
Two autographed copies of Red Clay and Roses and two Amazon $10.00 gift cards up for grabs.
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Red Clay and Roses
by S.K. Nicholls
Giveaway ends March 03, 2014.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
S.K. Nicholls 
Sounds very productive to me.
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Busy and productive week topped off perfectly. 😀
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I was busy and productive too. I’m just not cashing checks. Rock on.
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Me either…yet.
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It always seems to happen that you change something and then people wonder where it went.
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LOL…Nobody had seen the chapter. It was the first time I had shared….but they felt something was missing. They did not feel they had enough info to sympathize with the characters in the action scene. The action came at them too fast. They wanted to know more about the sisters background…which is what I had cut.
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Going to put the stuff back and try again?
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Tough question. I think I am going to try to rewrite with the back story put into dialog and scenes rather than me simply telling about their childhood. Haven’t quite figured how to do it though.
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Dialogue and compact scenes sound like they would help. Good luck.
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Thanks. I am going to work on it this week. I have two weeks from Wednesday before we meet up again.
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Plenty of time.
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Considering we got more snow today, these beach pictures are a welcome treat. Thank you!!
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My pleasure! The beach is still here. I envy the pretty snow scenes. Hot gets old. Today was pretty and nice. Low seventies and sunny. You don’t see many in the water though…ice cold.
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I’d settle for making sand angels…
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Book a flight. We have a guest suite 😀
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Did you hear that noise? That was the sound of an introvert’s teeth chattering in fear. 😉
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You are too funny! You would absolutely die if I took you to my family’s nudist resort, Cypress Cove, wouldn’t you?
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Oh good God, yes.
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Don’t Click on the Cypress Cove logo on my page unless you just get curious then. I promise I would not do that to you. 🙂
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Phew. Thanks for the warning. 😉
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I just started the read-through on my new book. My characters are all 60-80 years of age and one of them is the one that the others make fun of behind his back. I felt sorry for the little guy so in one scene I had it revealed that he has a past that reeks of manliness and, in fact, puts the other characters in their place. Suddenly everything changes from that point on. More re-writes on the horizon. Sometimes is best to leave well enough alone. By the way your days sounded great!!! There’s snow on my beach.
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Sounds interesting. I remember the little old men who gathered at George Teal’s grocery store in my youth. They all had bigger stories to tell than the last guy.
Rewrites are tough. You think you have it all figured out and then you don’t.
I know there are such places, but I have never seen snow on a beach. I have seen snow, and I have seen beach, but never snow on the beach.
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Like Samuel Pepys (!) you have an interesting collage of personal, professional, and travelogue elements in your Sunday post–you know I love to balance text with photos too, Susan.
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With all of my whining about every day chores, I feel I should include something pretty 🙂
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The days and weeks fly. Congratulations, SK. Hope you keep moving books. 🙂
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They do! You’ll be in China before you know it!
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Twenty-five days and counting. 🙂
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That’s what fellow workshoppers do: try to drive you crazy! 🙂
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I am going to rewrite one more time and then I am moving on 🙂
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