I seem to have vanished down a dark hole towards the end of last week. I didn’t, honest. But I was ravingly mad busy.
Of course, I had this massive learning curve, moving from Windows PC to Mac, but it didn’t take me long to get into the actual swing of work. I just struggled finding the right key on the keyboard a couple of times or spent time searching for a command that’s in one place on Windows and in a completely different place for Mac.
So that wasn’t really what kept me hidden away, although I think it had something to do with it.
No, the big thing was WORDS WORTH READING ISSUE ONE. Once I decided to go without a full-length novella, it all happened very quickly. I chose the stories I wanted to publish. I already had most of the covers for when they’re published as standalones, but for a couple I had to create the covers. Then I put all of the assets into one folder so I could find them easily.
My power spreadsheet has all of my work on it, from pipe dreams to publication history. I created a section for this month’s bookazine, and ticked each one off as I did it. First I went to collect it, then I placed it in the master file for the bookazine, then I checked formatting, then I proof-read it, I uploaded the picture (the cover), and then I ticked it off on the power sheet and moved it to a DONE folder within the ASSETS folder. And I moved on to the next one.
When they were all done, I downloaded Vellum to have a play around with layout there. I’m tempted to buy the full version, but I was really impressed that you can download it and use it without giving your payment details. Then, if you decide to publish a book with it, you pay for it. I liked that.
There were some things I couldn’t do, though. And while I’m sure it’s in there somewhere, I didn’t have the time to find out. So I created my single Word file of the bookazine and uploaded it to Draft2Digital, as I usually do. I downloaded the epub files they made for me, the mobi files, and the pdf files.
I set it to publish everywhere on 9 September except for Kindle, as there are stories in it that have been published elsewhere before and the Kindle bots have flagged these before when it’s via D2D. I uploaded it to Google Books, along with the previous issue as well. And I uploaded it to Kindle Direct Publishing.
As ever, Apple Books were first off the blocks to list the bookazine in their online book store. Google Books was quick too. But No. 3 was KDP… but they published it immediately. I’d forgotten that if you upload the full file then you can’t pre-publish. Or you can but I haven’t found it yet.
So then I had to go around and change the publication dates everywhere, but D2D wouldn’t let me change the date to last Friday as it was already up as a pre-publication. They did, however, let me publish it within 3 days of the original date.
August wrap-up
And that was last week. As for the rest of August…
I was talked into bumping CATCH THE RAINBOW to the top of the to-do pile, because the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham pub bombings in on 24 November of this year. If I can avoid missing another anniversary, and such a big anniversary at that, I will. Although I’m still torn about appearing to profit from such a major incident in Birmingham history.
This means that THE HAUNTED HOUSE HOTEL was moved down the pecking order. In any case, if I want to publish the magazine again in January or February next year, then a Halloween themed story won’t work. It’s been replaced with THE SECRET OF WHITEHORSE FARM, the first of my Nettie Campbell novellas, which was the original target novella for the magazine if it was published in January this year.
Working on the magazine meant that PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR WRITERS: GATE 3 was bumped down as well. But I do need to crack on with this one as it’s my biggest selling series so far. The writealong for this is THE BEAST WITHIN, my second Marcie Craig novel, but I won’t be working on that until CATCH THE RAINBOW is hopefully finished.
Here’s how the rest of August went:
- new month wordcount & progress spreadsheets for August ✔️
- Halloween cosy mystery novella (deferred)
- PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR WRITERS: GATE 3 (deferred)
- 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS: Cheers ✔️
- Newsletter ✔️
- 5 stories over 5 weeks (inc. 12 STORIES) ❌
- client edit: Taliban book ✔️
- (week) daily blog post ✔️
- weekly tech scan ✔️
- weekly backup ✔️
- weekly diary work ✔️
- Monkey Dust admin ✔️
- Diane’s gig list admin every Thursday ✔️
- dental appointment ✔️
- service my car ✔️
- service campervan ✔️
- Monkey Dust gig #1 ✔️
- Monkey Dust gig #2 ✔️
- monthly schedule planning for September (deferred to today)
- advance finances for September ✔️
- trip to Ireland ✔️
- bank holiday ✔️
How was your August?
You had a massively productive August.
Mine felt like wading through molasses.
And I forgot to include the magazine!
September will be better.