THE UNOFFICIAL START OF SUMMER!

Hidey Ho Campers!

I hope you had a great Memorial Day Weekend. We packed up the camper for our annual Memorial Day Weekend beach camping trip with family. This year, we selected Fort Desto in St. Petersburg, Florida. It was easy for us as it is only an hour away from my home. It was hot as hell, though. I typically prefer to take my trips out of the State of Florida, since I live here, to get out of the heat.

Just in case you missed it, my third book, Demeter-9 in the Humanity Shattered Series, released on Memorial Day. I can’t believe I have written three books now. I read somewhere that you were not really an author until you had written three books. Well, here I am… I have to be honest, I don’t feel any different….

I can say I feel like I have learned a lot about writing over the course of three books. Not that it all translates into great prose, but I do feel like I have a lot more confidence than I did two years ago, when I was banging away at the keyboard writing Dead Station. I have been on a journey of development since then. I look back on Dead Station and almost cringe at some of my writing. Okay, I do cringe at some of it…

I have intense moments when I want to go back to that story and rewrite it so it's better. I am very proud of all my writing, but I think it shows how little I knew back then. When I have talked to a few people about going back and updating that story, I am surprised by the response. Almost every time I have had a conversation with someone about doing that, people have told me not to. They actually like to see their authors develop and improve their storytelling over time.

So, what have I been up to lately? Well, I have been working on updating some of the translations of all three stories into other languages. It’s a pain in the ass, but I do want to do it. That has taken up a lot of my time lately. I have been working with Tony on getting the Audiobook for Demeter-9 ready. I have heard some of it, and I think it is going to be awesome. I have a solid outline worked out for the next installment of the Humanity Shattered Series, but I have not started the first draft yet. I plan to start it shortly after I get through some other admin work on the author side of my business that I have been working on lately.

Writing, I have learned, is actually the easy part of all of this. In order to sell books, people have to see your books. The main way that happens is with some sort of ads. There is a constant struggle with adjusting Facebook ads in all the markets you are selling your books in. Facebook never seems to stop adjusting its Meta Ads platform, so every time you touch it, things are different. It is a constant game of hide-and-seek, along with testing new ads.

I have also been unsuccessfully trying to figure out Amazon Ads. One would think that Amazon Ads would work great for a product sold on Amazon, but apparently, I don’t know shit. Fighting with Amazon Ads has driven me mad lately. I feel like it is just a black hole for money to be thrown into with very little return.

All of this has been taking up too much of my time, and I just want to get back to writing. So, that is what I am going to do. I will be focusing on writing over the next couple of months to complete my first draft of book 4. I want to have it done and in editing by the end of the summer. I can literally see the whole thing like a movie in my head, so I just need to get it out.

I hope the start of your Summer is awesome! If you are looking for a fun Zombie series between now and my next book, I recommend Eoin Brady's Weep series. He has a few stories on Amazon that are set in this universe, and I enjoyed them all.

Shamon