Camy's Writing Diary

I actually got distracted after breakfast!!! Argh! Well, it wasn’t non-work related. I have a blog promotion I’ll be doing with the other authors in the multi-author anthology (which the next book I’m working on, The Wedding Kimono , will be in), and so I spent about 1.5 hours doing that. I also don’t feel so bad doing this because I had given myself a week after finishing book 3 to get other marketing stuff done (which this is), and I still have 3 more days. After lunch, I (deliberately this time) did more blogging and marketing for the anthology (mostly writing and scheduling blog posts in advance), which took another 2 hours. I also got the newsletter translation back from my translator, and so I did the final edits and scheduled for my two newsletters (Camy and Camille) to go out in March. And then my graphic designer got the interior of the Japanese Sushi for One back to me today, so I was able to upload it to Lightning Source. I also was surprised when my proofreader got ...

On Tuesday, I spent about 4.5 hours doing marketing and self-publishing work that needed to be done for the book I'm releasing this month--I had to create the .epub file as well as the interior .pdf file for the paperback, and then set up the books in KDP so I'll be ready for them to go live. I also wrote the text for newsletters for my mailing list to announce the release, as well as emails for my Street Team. Some emails I scheduled to send, but others I left as drafts since I'll need to update them with links once the books are either live or in preorder. However, on Wednesday I started reading and didn't want to stop, so I didn't get any work done yesterday. I still had some IBS issues, but I should have been able to get work done. However I think I was either lazy or stressed out from all the self-publishing I had done the day before and still have to do this weekend. I love self-publishing, but I've realized that it can be really stressful for me since...

I think I can start writing today! Yay! I’m super excited to be trying out my Freewrite Traveler for the first time! *** I got some writing done today, but I have to admit I’m a bit disappointed in the amount of lag time between typing and having the words appear on the screen. Since it’s eInk, I was expecting a lag, but the lag seems awfully long to me. Is that the price to pay for a type of screen that gives a longer battery life? Although I suppose that if I’m truly doing no-edit writing, the lag time shouldn’t matter. The lag is annoying to me mostly because it takes a second before I see any typos I’ve done and then I have to backspace to correct them. Theoretically, I shouldn’t correct them and just keep going. Also sometimes, I write a sentence but then I want to reword it because it’s not quite clear. The typos and fixing sentences would bother me more if I hadn’t already been experimenting with dictation for the past few months. With dictation, you get used to seeing ...

After I posted my blog post yesterday, I got a bit of a headache (my neck was rather stiff) so I didn’t work as much as I wanted. But I still got a fair amount of blocking done before I went to bed. However, I took medication for my headache, which made me sleep extra long, so I lost a lot of time today. I also had some house chores to do, so that took a little time. I had some work to do for the launch of my new book. My graphic designer gave me the updated ebook covers for volume 1 and for The Gentleman Thief , and also the paperback covers. I had to send back minor corrections to the paperback covers, but the cover especially for the Gentleman Thief is AMAZING. I then compiled the Gentleman Thief .epub files and again had to fiddle with the .docx compile settings in Scrivener so I could create a .pdf file for the paperback interior. I then created a .pdf copy for BookFunnel, and uploaded both files to BookFunnel for my newsletter drip sequence. Updated the drip sequence in ...

Another day of no editing! Ugh! To be honest, I did a lot of work today. I had to catch up on messages from one of the box sets I’m in, as well as check email, all of which took about an hour. Then I had to text back and forth with my cover designer about buying the licenses for the stock photos for the covers in my Lady Wynwood’s Spies series. I wanted to make sure we were getting the right photos, plus I ended up changing one photo last minute. Then I realized I should create my drip sequence because I have a BookFunnel promo starting tomorrow. (If you don’t know what a drip sequence is, check out this podcast by Thomas Umstattd at Author Media.) I know, it’s really last minute and to be honest, I had not been intending to update my welcome email at all since it’s adequate , and it’s a lot of work to create a drip sequence. But I’ve been reading Elana Johnson’s book, Writing and Marketing Systems (Indie Inspiration for Self-Publishers Book 3) , and decided to do my drip sequ...

WOW today has been busy and I didn't get any editing or writing done! I had a phone call with my cover designer first thing and we talked about the covers for my Hawaii Christian Contemporary Romance series, as well as my Hawaii Christian Romantic Suspense series, and then we also segued into my Christian Regency series. I had forgotten about the cover for my Reader Magnet , The Gentleman Thief , so I talked to her about that a bit. She needed the stock photo image for The Gentleman Thief , so after we got off the phone, I decided to spend a little time to look for one. Except that I ran into the problem of what model to choose, since several would have worked. I also realized I hadn't picked the covers (or the models) for the other books in the series, and I didn't want to choose a cover model for The Gentleman Thief that I would later wish I could have used for a book in the series. I had always planned to have a single model on the cover who would be the dominant ...

I had an appointment to chat with my cover designer today, and we had a great talk about the visual author branding for both my Regency and my contemporary romantic suspense series. I wanted a consistent look across all the books in each series that would be appropriate for my genres, but would also help my series be recognizable even when the covers were only small thumbnails. The cover she had designed for my first Lady Wynwood’s Spies volume is absolutely beautiful, but after we discussed my author branding, we decided to tweak it a little bit and she’ll also eventually change the cover for The Spinster’s Christmas to match the adjusted look. We also discussed the cover for my Regency serial novel, which will be a side novel for the main series. I wasn’t certain yet how long it was going to be and if it ended up being as long as I fear, it might be two or three volumes. So we talked about how to make the three (or however many) volumes for that novel to be different from the ma...

I had to write an email to my graphic designer who’s doing the repackaging for my romantic suspense novellas. After listening to some podcasts yesterday, I have a different idea of what I want my covers to look like, so I emailed her with more detail about what I wanted and asking for some suggestions and ideas from her. I feel bad because she had emailed me this morning with a cover mock up which now won’t work well, but I at least was able to more clearly tell her what I wanted the covers to accomplish. I’ll trust in her design sense to come up with some things that might work. As for writing, I think today is another wash. I’ve been feeling sick since I woke up, and now that it’s later in the day, I just don’t think I’ll be able to do much. I did fiddle around with my scene spreadsheet for volume 2, and I figured out how to reorganize the scene—which, quite frankly, was all over the place. That’s what I get for writing a scene without plotting it out better. But my IBS is both...