Gosh, where does time go?

Life is busy. It is for everyone. What I have I been up to?

Enjoying my family. Spending time with friends. Reading non-fiction while struggling to find novels that keep my interest. (It’s me, not the books!) Planning for an upcoming high school graduation. (Eek!) Re-evaluating my career. 

I guess the last one is most prevalent to this blog. I think it’s important every so often to revisit the direction our writing takes. Revisit our goals. I’m still in the process of doing that. I will say that a lot of “stuff” triggered this period of re-evaluation, and I won’t share most of it. The one aspect I will share with you is that I grew tired of the rat race. If you write and self publish you might know what I mean. The keeping-up with the new marketing strategies before they’re no longer effective, the continual push and realization that the best way to make a profit is to write popular genres and put out a gazillion books a year.

I found myself putting my most exciting ideas on the back burner either because they were middle grade or outside of my established genre or would require more time. I didn’t want to write ten books a year. I completely understand that to keep books visible it helps to release books continuously, in the same genre, in a series, over and over and over.

That’s not why I started writing.
That’s not why I love writing.

But…I do want to make a profit. I run a small business. So I’m figuring out what that will look like for me. I’m striving to find a balance between writing what I love and what will sell.

(It also grew discouraging to see the top 100 on Amazon filled with Amazon imprints and KU books.  Some in categories they clearly should not be in. Amazon is a business, so I don’t fault them for pushing their own books.)

I decided to write two more books in my original series, Circle of Spies. I follow the main characters but years later. The cover reveal is below.

And a favor, if some strange pharma links show up at the bottom of this post, please email or tweet me and let me know. I can’t see them, and I can’t get ads while they’re still on my blog. Thank you!!!!

Let me know how you’ve been doing in the comments!