Publishing My Second Book: July In Review

July Posts

1. Black and Blue Cover Reveal and Preorder Link
2. Black and Blue Chapter 1
3. Top Books of Spring 2019
4. Quarterly Goals: Summer 2019
5. Black and Blue Chapter 2
6. Red and Black is on sale!
7. Black and Blue Goes on Tour
8. Black and Blue is Out Today

Black and Blue Blog Tour Posts

1. My Favorite Things at Speculative Chic
2. The Love Interest Trap at RachelSandell.com
3. Author Interview at Off the TBR
4. Guest Post by Nancy O’Toole Meservier at KristenBrand.com
5. A Chat with Nancy O’Toole Meservier – #IndieSuperheroSummer at JennGott.com
6. Author Interview with Nancy O’Toole Meservier at JLGribble.com
7. Red and Black, Black and Blue Giveaway at suzannejohnsonauthor.com

Speculative Chic Posts

1. Sound Off! Spider-Man: Far From Home
2. Roundtable: Speculative Pride
3. Reading the Hugos: Best Graphic Story: 2019 Edition

Phew. What a month.

July was, to be frank, BANANAS. I ran a 99 cent sale for my first novel, Red and Black. I published my second novel, Black and Blue. I produced a shit ton of blog content, from regular updates, to guest posts/interviews for my blog tour (all which are listed above, even if some technically came out in August). I also contributed to three columns for SpeculativeChic, including a very demanding post that needed to be posted before the Hugo Awards. In addition, I took part in Camp NaNoWriMo, where I completed work on two separate projects. On top of that, I had a birthday, and had it not been for the nice cards and gifts from loved ones, I probably would have completely forgotten about it. Oh, and it was hellishly hot all month, which temperatures reaching 100 degrees, which NEVER happens in the state of Maine.

So how did all of that go? While I will be writing a more detailed post about my book launch at a later date, we’ll go over the basics here.

First up, the 99 cent sale. With a new book up for preoder, I wanted to draw attention to the series as a whole. I hoped this would result in some new readers for Red and Black who would eventually go on to read Black and Blue. Thanks to goodreads, I knew that this at least happened on a small scale, which was nice. But running this sale has made me realize how these things are ultimately becoming less and less profitable. As a result, I don’t see myself running nearly as many sales in the upcoming year.

Next up, Camp NaNoWriMo! I came into July wanting to put into 30 hours of editing time into two project. One was for Riley’s Story: A Red and Black One Shot. This is a side story that I hope to submit to my newsletter readers around the new year. And the revisions on this went pretty well overall! Unfortunately, my second project was less successful. I wanted to make significant progress on my first round of revisions for Red and Black 4, which I started up during May. And while I put in a decent chunk of time, I ultimately fell short of my goal due to being so crazy/busy with Black and Blue’s launch. And you know what? That’s fine. Sure, as writers our main goal should be writing books, but as authors, sometimes you need to switch focus to the business side of things.

Which brings me to the publication of Black and Blue.

And let me tell you, I am so pleased that I prewrote a bunch of the blog content back in June because (as mentioned above) it was pretty crazy. I’ll get more into the blog tour on my book launch post, but I ultimately had a lot of fun writing everything, and am so grateful to my fellow authors/bloggers for lending me their platforms for the day.

It’s hard to call the launch of Black and Blue a success or not, as I feel like we’re still in the thick of it (even in early August). But more people preodered Black and Blue then Red and Black, and my kindle unlimited page reads (for both books) have been nice and steady since the book’s publication. So while I continue to be a small fish in a small pond, more and more people are reading my books, which is kinda wild.

Moving forward, August is going to be a bit of a recovery month, so the blog will be a little quieter than usual. Sure, I’ll be posting something once a week, but probably not much more than that, and the posts (excludingthis one) will likely be shorter. I feel like I fried my brain a little over the last two months, and I need to spend a little time un-frying it if I’m to save my remaining brain cells.

After all, I have a bunch of exciting things that I want to do this fall. And for that, I need to be well rested.