Writing has been slow again this week, with other tasks taking up my time.

Fortunately, I’ve made some progress in other areas.

All told, I wrote about 900 words in WoEL this week for a total of 2,400, still far below my weekly goals to this point. I’m still rewriting a pre-existing section, and I’m finding myself caught in a familiar dilemma.

As the potential opening chapter of my novel, I want to provide a certain level of context for the reader. However, I also do not want to overburden the reader with multiple paragraphs of exposition.

I’ve tried to work around this by including more dialogue and letting exposition flow naturally through whatever action was happening in the scene, such as describing the city and its people as my character walks towards the next destination.

This all means that I’m off to a slow start. My open weekend should help me catch up a bit, but unless I have a couple of supper-writing days, my 20,000-word goal for the month appears to be a tall order.

Happier Goals

I’ve started promoting The Warden of Everfeld: Memento in earnest over the last week.

On Friday, I posted my cover to my personal Facebook. It now has well over 100 likes and several comments. Over the last week, I’ve had 6 pre-orders for my book on Kindle, which I am loosely attributing to Facebook.

And how much attention did my post through the RSPC Facebook page bring? Basically none. I’m shutting that thing down at some point.

I also hung out with friends last weekend and sold 5 print copies. It’s really amazing to have that kind of support form the people around me. I’ve received some messages about selling more copies as well to friends and family, so I already need to order more books!

The trick will be to find a good budget for ordering books directly from CreateSpace. I can make slightly more money by selling books directly, but I want to maximize how much I’m paying per book, plus, taxes, plus shipping them to my house. I’m still trying to strike that balance, but it’s exciting to see people excited about my book, even if it’s just people I know so far.

My PPC campaigns have also finally gotten off the ground. It took 10 days, but Taboola has finally started to generate some clicks for me. (Their support team hasn’t even responded to my email from last week yet.)

I have 133 clicks on my website so far through two days. I’m spending a bit more money than I’d prefer right now, but I’ll continue to tweak my campaigns.

I’m also preparing a post to actually talk about Taboola as a platform and managing PPC campaigns in more depth.

That’s about it for now. There have been a lot of moving pieces this week, so I’m glad to still be on track overall.

Goals for 7/20:

1. Officially release WoEM on 7/18!
2. Monitor and tweak PPC campaigns
3. Write 5,000 words in WoEL

Steve D