Month in Review – February

I’m back for another month in review post. What did I get up to in February?

Well, I wrote the first draft of the first book in my new series, Eternal Mates. It took me 11 writing days in total to complete the 95000 words in the book. That’s pretty good going even for me! I really enjoyed playing in this world and I have so many more books I want to write for it. The further I got into the book, the more I began debating whether I wanted to use this book to approach NYC for a book contract, and whether I wanted a big publisher at all. I had concerns about non-competition clauses and whether it would negatively impact my indie books, and personally, I have such fantastic fans that I’m making enough money to be a full time writer. The only thing NYC can offer me is better distribution and maybe a little kudos. Not enough to make me risk that non-competition problem though!

Eternal Mates book one is now going to sit around for a while until I’ve been able to edit Unleash, and write the next Her Angel book, and possibly the next Vampires Realm book too. I’m yet to decide the release schedule for 2014, but expect to see the series then, and hopefully it will be a few books in the series too. Ideally, I’d love to release the first three Guardians of Hades books and the first two Eternal Mates books in 2014.

I printed out the first draft of Unleash in preparation for entering the second draft and then read the book over. It’s better than I had expected. Reader anticipation and expectation for this book is really high and I admit I’m feeling the pressure. That’s why writing the Eternal Mates series was so great and refreshing. Absolutely no expectations about that one! I know people are waiting for this one, and have been since January 2012 when Covet came out. I need to make Unleash the best it can be though and that means it will hit shelves when I feel it’s ready, and not before. I’ll be working on the second draft in March. The plan right now is that the book will come out in May 2013.

I also announced that while Unleash will be the final book in the Vampire Erotic Theatre romance series, it won’t be our last visit to the theatre. This is because I’m no longer going to use Eternal Mates to get myself an NYC book contract. I debated the pros and cons of getting a contract with a big publisher, and right now there are more cons than pros. Because I decided to indie publish Eternal Mates, it means I can go ahead with the original plan for the series, which is it being based in the Vampire Erotic Theatre romance series world. I couldn’t have done that if I had decided to approach NYC with the book because they wouldn’t be interested in a series tied to one of my indie series.

I also spent a week trying to get my marketing plan together and all my marketing information into order. I have so much research on this subject and most of it was scribbled on pieces of paper. I had to type it all up and then use that to construct a really solid book marketing plan, as well as a general marketing plan for myself as an author, aka my brand.

As for my time keeping. Even with writing the first draft of the Eternal Mates book, I only managed to get a 55% against writing in Toggl. I seem to spend most of my time dealing with emails and book tours, and blogging. I thought it would be social networking eating up my time, but alas, it’s not. It’s all the admin sort of things I have to do. There has to be a way to get more writing time!

All for now. I’ll be back next month to look back at my progress in March.