As you can see, I haven’t blogged in years, in part because I’d decided to switch to a newsletter. Some authors and other professionals manage to create successful newsletters, but factors including the monthly cost (compared to my minimal book sales) while endeavoring to add subscribers, ever-changing privacy compliance rules and not releasing more new books helped me decide to return to blogging to communicate with anyone interested.
My dream when I quit my corporate America day job at the end of 2005 was to be an author and actor (mostly on-camera and voiceover). After many years, hundreds of requested submissions, a bunch of revision letters on a handful of manuscripts, having two name agents, and a couple of close calls but not getting “the call” that I’d sold to a mainstream publisher, I self-published 6 books, voiced an audiobook of one of my novels along with a male actor, and had 3 novellas with a small press (the rights have since been returned). Despite having 4 college degrees, I couldn’t seem to figure out the ever-changing techniques for Facebook and Amazon ads. The constant need to promote was daunting. Writing is more time-consuming than acting, and I earned more via acting, so I spent less time writing new books and chose not to self-publish my other completed manuscripts.
I’m proud that I
‘ve completed many novels and published some, won a couple of national contests (My Life as a Star is still in the on the Red List and in the Top 10% of discoverable projects on Coverfly) and placed second in another (the winner got a publishing contract). Thanks to a BookBub feature, my Wars of the Roses Brides trilogy reached #1 Amazon historical romance in the US, Canada and Australia. Yet I failed to develop successful release strategies and build a readership while quite a few writer friends seemed to succeed (some are bestsellers and a few have had their novels made into films).
Writing worked its way back into my life when I was chosen as head writer for a comedic web series now on YouTube, What Did Clyde Hide? Completing 6 episodes and incidental content during the pandemic over Zoom with 17 actors recording from home is definitely a success, though I wish we had more views. And last year, producer/actor friends asked me to write the screenplay for their next dramatic feature based on main characters and a story outline they developed. They agreed to buy it. I hope to have updates on that this year. Stay tuned….
