June in Review

Health/Fitness
Much the same as the last five months. I still exercise regularly, and I still eat too much.

Writing

I did ten LJ entries, a couple of Flight Rising bios, and some trace amounts of fiction. I've written up some notes about ideas I'd like to work on next. Birthright is stalled in the "everything I write for this is terrible" mode. -_- I am hoping that I can work on something new at the same time that I work on Birthright, by way of giving me a project that's fresh and gives me enthusiasm instead of sapping it. We'll see if that works at all.

I have a mostly-finished novelette (probably 50 or so pages typeset), "His Angel", that's a prequel story about Nikola Striker and Justin Comfrey from A Rational Arrangement. I hope to write a few other short stories and then make a collection of it. I am reluctant to release it as a standalone for $0.99, partly because I've heard the $0.99 shorts do not sell as well as book-length ebooks, and partly because I don't want readers thinking "this comes first chronologically, so I should read it first." In my opinion, it's better read afterwards, for a few reasons.

The Business of Writing

I PUBLISHED A BOOK.

Whew.

It's accumulated 5 reviews so far! Zero of which were written by me or my mother! By the way -- if you've read it and not yet written a review, reviews are much appreciated and highly useful. Assorted promotional opportunities (like asking review sites to review it) are only available once the book has 20+ reviews.

Wow, I actually did all of that business-of-writing stuff that I've been postponing forever.

I am allllmost ready to declare the publishing process complete. I am just waiting for Amazon to link the print edition to the ebook edition, so that Amazon shows them as different versions of the same book. Amazon does have the print book listed, but the print version doesn't show up on Amazon's search as of this writing, and the "show other formats" link doesn't show both formats on either page.

I have been trying not to check A Rational Arrangement's sales obsessively, and mostly failing. I am down to only checking two or three times a day now! Probably when sales peter off (which I expect to happen on Tuesday, after the sale ends and it goes up to the list price of $6.99) I will stop checking frequently.

Art/Other
I did 12 headers for RA, drew and colored six pictures from Twitter prompts, and colored one page from haikujaguar's The Jokka Coloring Book.

...

I am so much more diligent about doing art this year than I am about writing. It's kind of depressing.

Socializing
I went to visit terrycloth, for the first time in ages. I failed at contacting any of my other Seattle-area friends because I've had massive organizational failure surrounding trips for like the last year. chipuni noticed me tweeting about being in Seattle, though, and so I got to see him and misseli. \o/ I also went to the local maker's fair with Corwyn and Kat last Saturday. And Lut and I both went to visit him and Kat and watch a movie on Friday night. Other than that and Lut, it's all been virtual.

Happiness
I had a great week in Seattle. <3 Other than that, though, I spent most of June feeling rather wrung out, probably because I was trying to get all the publishing bits done. Also, I am more aggravated by my day hobby than ever. Hopefully, July will go better overall. Having my first book out for sale, and people actually buying it and saying nice things about it, is certainly a good start. <3