As we lean into the weekend (are we still marking weekends?) I’m celebrating an upswing in writing productivity! This week I managed to show up to my novel four out of five weekdays, and on those four days I got a respectable amount of writing done, including outlining the rest of the book and finishing a chapter I started weeks ago.

For those keeping track and keeping me accountable, that brings the total manuscript word count so far to 49,003. Now here’s hoping I can keep this new momentum going next week.

I hope you enjoy this week’s mini-cast. Here’s a quick peek at what’s covered:

* Hard is hard. If you’re struggling, don’t compare your hard to other people’s.

* A more detailed word count update

* I also redid my author website and revived my Facebook page

* Why it’s a terrible time to be a traditionally published author, but a good time to be indie

* My plan to dip my toe into paid advertising

* Book deals!

And here are links to the deals I mention in the podcast:

* Evolution is still 99 cents/pence on Amazon and Amazon UK, until Tuesday.

* The Brave New Worlds Sci-Fi and Fantasy Ebook Giveaway is running the entire month of May on MyBookCave! Choose from over 50 free speculative fiction, urban fantasy, fantasy and horror books, and while you’re there enter to win a $20 gift card to your favorite e-book retailer.

My novel-writing goal for next week is to just keep the momentum going. Not setting word count goals or quotas seems to be working for now to keep me showing up, so I’m going to keep running with that.

Do you have any plans to celebrate Cinco de Mayo this week? We usually mix a batch of margaritas, make a big plate of nachos and watch Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but we’ll be playing it by ear this week since it’s on a weeknight. But in case you want to celebrate at home, here’s our favorite margarita recipe:

1 half-pint of tequila

1 can of 7-up or Sprite

1 can or bottle of Mexican beer (i.e. Corona or Modelo)

1 can frozen lime juice or lime-aid

Pour everything into a large pitcher and stir. Salt is optional

If you mix up a batch and enjoy it, be sure to let me know!

Until next week,Jean ♥

Weekend Distractions

This twitter thread about cat breeds is the truest thing ever (click through for the whole thread and responses. Warning: contains language that’s not safe for Jean’s mom). For the record, ours spent a week casing our house before flirting her way inside, and her breed is Sassy Back-talker.

This Natalie Grant cover of Never Enough from Greatest Showman has revealed that I’m still nowhere near being tired of this song.

I hope it’s a happy one for you, at any rate. I know a lot of people out there aren’t really having a happy time of it right now.

Apologies for not showing up last week. It was my birthday week, things were slow, and I seized the opportunity to take the week off and give myself a real spring break.

This week was supposed to be back to business as usual, but of course it wasn’t because there simply is no such thing as business as usual in this present season we’re all in. I expand more on that in the podcast, in which I also talk about:

* Mindset in general, how it affects our productivity, and my mindset in particular

* Conspiracy theory rabbit holes, how it relates to my faith, and how it’s all inspiring my next planned series

* All the reasons why I HAVEN’T been writing my novel, and what I’m planning to do to get off the struggle bus and back into a daily writing habit

* How we’re doing generally, what we’ve been up to and how my paying work is going

I also mentioned my goals for next week, which are to show up to my novel for at least 15 minutes a day, and to get pre-orders set up for Dominion of the Damned Book Three: Revolution. Which, if all goes well, means you can watch for an announcement and cover reveal coming very soon.

One thing I failed to mention in the podcast is that I ended up not doing a free run on Desolation (formerly known as Dominion of the Damned) last week like I’d said I was planning to do, and I’m sorry to anyone who had their hopes up about that. I realized I only get one promo per quarter and I wanted to take more time to think about how I want to use it. I’m planning to start experimenting with paid ads soon and I need to come up with a strategy an be smart about coordinating everything. Of course, if you’re enrolled in Kindle Unlimited you can read the series as part of your subscription plan, and if you’re in Prime you can borrow both books via Prime Lending (you can also request them from your local library).

But you should know that I’m going to be temporarily pulling Desolation from KU around mid-May. This is because, for the month of June, I’m going to include it in a month-long free book giveaway that will be held at My Book Cave — so if you’ve got your heart (and book budget) set on getting to read it free, come June you’ll be able to grab it in the e-book format of your choosing. I’ll have more details as we get closer to the giveaway date.

Speaking of free (and cheap) books, the Smashwords Authors Give Back sale has been extended to the end of May, and I’m keeping all of my indie short stories and collections free for the duration of the sale.

That’s all for this week! Here’s hoping for a more productive week ahead for all of us.

Until next time,Jean ♥

Weekly Distractions

* The other day I bought two jumbo skeins of this yarn with this poncho pattern in mind. Except now I’m not sure whether I’m in more of a mood to crochet or to knit, so I still haven’t settled on a pattern.

* Berkely Breathed’s been posting classic Bloom County strips from the very beginning, and I’ve been enjoying the ride on the nostalgia train. Here’s the very first ever appearance of Opus. My how he’s changed.

* Covidclassics is four roommates who love art and are indefinitely quarantined. This is the most creative use of free time I’ve seen yet.

* We’ve been enjoying The Chosen series on Youtube. We’re watching the replays of the livestream, including all the interviews and extras, so it’s taking us a while to get through each episode. It’s definitely a fresh take on presenting the Gospels. If you can’t handle made-up backstories for each of the disciples, additional scenes being added, or anachronistic speech, then this series probably isn’t for you.

* Finally, speaking of conspiracy theories, I’ve downloaded a few eps of these podcasts to listen to over the weekend. Note that I have not listened to these podcasts yet so this is not an endorsement. But they look fun, if you’re into that sort of thing:

Supernatural with Ashley Flowers (Episode: The Exorcism of Anna Ecklund)

Conspiracy Theories (The episodes on Bohemian Grove and the Phantom Dark Age)

Apologies for coming at you a day late. Thank the combo of rain and satellite internet.

So here I am, fresh off my announcement that my monthly letter, Echoes in the Dark, is cancelled, with a change in title for my weekly update.

I hope this isn’t too many changes coming at you all at once. I’m talking about the whys and wherefores of all these changes in this week’s mini-podcast.

For those who’d rather skip the audio, I actually worked on my novel this week! I managed close to 2,000 words over the course of two days. Which, after two solid weeks of not being able to get my head in the right space for this book, I consider a major victory.

The other thing that kept me busy this week (besides spring cleaning and yard work) is overhauling the Dominion series and rethinking everything I thought I knew about book marketing.

Your responses to my question this week about how you perceive this series were extremely enlightening and helpful. It turns out that what I have been marketing this whole time as a zombie apocalypse is in fact a vampire thriller. This is why feedback is so important— we authors are too close to our work to see it clearly for what it is.

So, back to the drawing board. The series is getting a total re-branding, with new covers, new titles, new blurbs, a new target audience — everything is changing except the books themselves. And here, for your eyes only, is the first look at the new covers with their new titles:

I’m holding onto Book Three to reveal when it’s ready for pre-order, which will be happening soon.

And yes, astute readers might have noticed that the working title for my current WIP is now serving as the actual title for Book One, and Dominion of the Damned is now the series title. Book Three’s new title is mentioned in the pocast. These new titles are a better fit for the story arc than what I had before.

I’ll be rolling out these changes on Amazon next week, and will be running a promotion on Book One to give it a visibility boost and establish it in its new categories. So if you’ve been holding out on reading that because zombies aren’t really your thing, next week’s a great time to give it a second look.

And I just realized that my birthday is Monday and I have a tradition of making a book free for my birthday, so that timing works out pretty great.

Until next week, I hope you stay healthy and safe and that you don’t have to celebrate your birthday in the midst of a weird pandemic.

xox,Jean ♥

Friday Distractions

Drew and Ellie Holcombe have been doing nightly concerts in their kitchen, and this Johnny & June cover is the cutest thing they’ve ever done:

I haven’t yet watched this indie-produced miniseries dramatizing the ministry of Christ (I’ll probably binge it over the weekend), but if this trailer’s anything to go by, it looks really well done, and might be something you’d enjoy in the lead-up to Easter Sunday.

We made it through another week. Let’s all give ourselves a high-five for that (but don’t high-five anyone else because we’re all still keeping our distance). I hope this week’s update finds you and yours healthy and virus-free.

I got zero words written on Desolation of the Damned this week, although I did get some freelance writing done. I’m back to podcasting this week, in which I elaborate on how I spent my week, how badly I need sunshine in my life to function as a person, and how finally getting some has shifted my outlook and ability to cope with all of this for the better.

I also talk about what I was working on before this quarantine took over our lives and my plans to get back to it, as well as the state of my writing career and what I have planned for the future.

I hope you enjoy this update. Hopefully, next Friday I’ll have some actual word counts to report.

Wishing you all health and safety,

Jean♥

Friday Distractions

First, a podcast rec: if you write fiction, or if you enjoy hearing writers talk about how the sausage gets made, you’ll love How Story Works: Conversations with Lani Diane Rich and Dr. Kelly Jones.

In case you missed it, all my indie novellas and short story collections are currently free on Smashwords.

And now, the best of my Instagram from this week:

It me:

This gal’s voice is like butter.

Lastly, this thread has a lot of inspiration and tips for living in more frugal times.

Here’s this week’s writing productivity breakdown for Desolation of the Damned:

Monday: Session 1: Revision; 114 wordsSession 2: 457Total: 571

Tuesday: Session 1 (25 minutes): 722Session 2 (15 minutes): 408Session 3(15 minutes): 329Total: 1,459

Wednesday: 340 words of pre-writing 223 words of story

Thursday: 5 15 to 25 min sprints throughout the day:1 - 454, 15 minutes2 - 569, 23 minutes3 - 518, 20 minutes4 - 259, 13 minutes5 - 527, 18 minutesTotal - 2,327

Friday: 503 words, finished Ch. 15

New fiction written this week: 5,083 words

Manuscript total: 42,264 words

Listen to the audio for details of how my week went. Here’s a quick summary of what’s covered in the podcast:

* My best wrting days, and the method that led to my best day yet

* How close I am to finishing this novel

* Realizing I’ve piled too many things on my plate, and how I decided what to clear off

* How my new novel-writing method is going and how exactly it works

I hope you’ve all had a great week, and that your weekend is restful and full of good books.

Until next week,Jean ♥

Friday Funsies

If you enjoy writing podcasts, this Twitter thread has plenty of recommedations:

And also, this dog:

The guy was weird, but I’d seen weirder.

I couldn’t put my finger on it. There was nothing overt about the vibe he gave off. Average height, average looks, conservatively dressed, no visible piercings or tattoos, which in the mid-nineties weren’t yet as mainstream as nowadays.

I was your stereotypical Gen-X slacker, a journalism school drop-out working retail. I’d worked up in my illustrious career from the service desk at Walmart to the accessories department at a high-end department store. So yeah, I’d definitely seen weirder.

He’d wandered over from the shoe department, next door to where I was stocking and selling purses that cost almost as much as my college tuition. He had a question about shoes. I craned my neck to see where the shoe sales guy had gotten to, and when I couldn’t see him, offered to track him down.

“That’s okay,” he said. “I’d like your help.”

That’s probably where the weird vibe started.

Despite my protestations that shoes weren’t my department, he insisted. He was shopping for his niece, he said. He liked the shoes I was wearing, and knew she would like them, too. Since my tastes ran similar to hers, maybe I could help him pick out a pair.

That sounded reasonable. I offered to go with him to the shoe department. But he had more questions about my own shoes. Where did I get them? Were they comfortable? How much did they cost? How well were they made?

Reader, they were from Payless. That store did not pay me enough to actually buy my shoes there.

I patiently explained all of this to him and tried to direct him back to the shoe department, but he didn’t want to go. He stood firmly planted, staring hard at my feet while he grilled me about my $15 faux-leather mary janes. Did I need to wear hosiery with them? What kind? Did we sell that here?

And then he asked me to take off my shoes so he could see how my hose were designed.

“Oh look,” I said, “there’s the shoe salesman. He can take it from here. I need to help this lady at the purse counter.”

Never have I been happier to see a fussy-looking customer walk up to my counter. After a solid half-hour of showing her different handbags, the purported shoe shopper had gone. I shrugged him off as a weird customer, got busy, and forgot all about him.

***

Fast-forward a couple of weeks. I had rotated from the purse counter to the jewelry counter. I was covering it alone that night, which meant when the phone rang, I answered it.

He said he was a student from the local community college, majoring in fashion design. He was doing a survey on workplace fashion. Did I have time to answer some questions?

It was a slow night. I was bored. I said sure.

He proceeded to ask about my outfit. Not in a creepy, “What are you wearing” kind of way, but questions along the lines of, what’s your style? What brands do you wear? Where do you shop? Nothing that raised alarms. Not even when he asked me to describe my outfit.

That is, until we got to my footwear. Which he spent a lot of time on and had a lot of questions about. Questions that sounded vaguely familiar.

It was only when he asked me to slip off my shoes and describe how my feet looked in my hose that I recognized the voice. I promptly ended the call, and spent the rest of the night thoroughly weirded out.

***

He called again a week later. Same ruse. I told him I couldn’t help him and asked him not to call me again. He asked if we could meet so he could see my work clothes. I said absolutely not and hung up.

***

More time passed. There were no more calls. I was back in the purse department.

And there he was.

Same story, except this time it was his grandma he was shopping for. I’d been so helpful last time, maybe I could help him again.

No, I said, I couldn’t. I had customers in my own department who needed help, and the shoe associates were right over there and would be happy to help him out. I walked away.

He did not go to the shoe department. Instead, he left the store.

***

Weeks passed. I had told my co-workers about the guy. None of them had had similar encounters, and they all thought it was weird but funny enough to give them all a good laugh. “These things only happen to you, Jean,” they said, smiling and shaking their heads.

There had been no more phone calls, and he hadn’t shown up again in the store. I figured he’d moved on.

Things got busy, and I forgot about the guy.

Until, that is, one of my co-workers came up to me with a knowing smile. “Your boyfriend’s here.”

I blinked at her. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Well, that guy sure must want to be your boyfriend, because he hasn’t taken his eyes off of you since he walked in.”

I turned to see where she was pointing.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you who she was pointing at.

He saw me see him, ducked his head, and ran to the escalator, disappearing up to the second floor.

“That’s the guy,” I told my co-worker.

“What guy?”

“The weird guy who keeps coming in and calling me and asking me to take my shoes off.”

“Really? That’s him?”

Her gaze wandered to the escalator. Just then, the phone rang. She went to answer it. A moment later, she held the phone out. “It’s for you.”

“Who is it?”

“Someone with a hosiery question. They say you’ve helped them before.”

I got on the phone. “May I help you?”

“I need some pantyhose, but I have some questions,” said the caller, in a voice that sounded exactly like a young man doing a bad impression of an old woman.

“Just a moment,” I said. Placing him on hold, I told my co-worker, “It’s him!”

“Are you serious?”

“Go upstairs and see if he’s using the payphone.”

She went. I picked up the phone and kept “her” talking. The questions were the same as before, escalating quickly to asking me to describe in detail what my feet looked like in hosiery. And then the caller abruptly hung up. A moment later, the guy ran down the escalators and out of the store.

My co-worker came right behind him. “It was him! He was on the phone upstairs! He hung up when he saw me.”

It was she who called security, because though I was creeped out, I was too young and naive to be as frightened as I probably should have been, and didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

The security guard was an off-duty cop. He took me in a back room and sat me down and had me tell him everything. He absolutely thought it was a big deal. He ordered me not to leave the store at the end of my shift without calling him to walk me to my car, and told me to call security immediately if the guy showed up or called again.

And as he walked me to my car that evening, he gave me detailed instructions for what to do if I was being followed.

By the time the cop saw me safely off, he had me thoroughly scared. All of this happened not long after the X-Files episode “Irresistible” had aired, the one with Donnie Pfaster. You know, the ultra-creepy serial killer who kept the hair and nails of his victims as trophies. As I drove home that night, fast as I dared, constantly checking my rear-view mirror, visions of my dismembered feet displayed on a trophy shelf swam through my head.

***

I’m happy to report that my feet are still attached to my ankles, and I never saw or heard from my foot stalker again. I left that job soon after all this happened. That wasn’t the primary reason, but it was certainly a factor.

I have no idea why this guy singled me out, and I don’t want to know. I also have no idea what became of him, or what he got up to after all of that. There was never anything in the news about bodies turning up without their feet, so hopefully he never escalated to anything creepier than attempting to con unsuspecting women into taking their shoes off for him.

As far as I know, at least, he didn’t end up like this guy, who actually did keep the foot of at least one of his victims (language warning; disturbing crimes against women warning):

My Favorite Murder - Episode 79

More info on the shoe fetish killer. (Not a pleasant read.)

And at least I didn’t end up in this kind of situation:

March Happenings:

* So I guess I’m making inroads into podcasting, after kicking ideas around for well over a year. Besides narrating the above anecdote, last Friday I delivered an audio version of my weekly writing report. Here it is if you missed it.

* My Working Writer newsletter is off to a good start. So far we’ve covered ways to monetize your online writing, how to start building your freelance portfolio, and a roadmap to a sustainable writing career. This week we’re going to start a deep dive into pitching and querying to find work that pays well. And speaking of podcasts, I’m getting ready to add a more official podcast to that publication—where the newsletter covers the practical how-to side of building a writing business, the podcast will focus more on the things that hold us back, make us feel stuck, and keep us from pursuing our writing dreams—or from simply getting started.

* If you’re not reading my Friday updates, you might be happy to learn that Desolation of the Damned is at the half-way point, and I’m on track to finish it by the end of March. If all goes well, it should hit stores in early July.

* By the way, Deliverance of the Damned has not yet had a single review. I don’t have to tell you guys how crucial reviews are to a book’s discoverability. If you’ve read it, could you please take a minute to at least leave a star rating? And if you haven’t reviewed it because you didn’t like it, that’s also helpful information for me to know. Here’s the link for Amazon, and here it is on Goodreads. Thanks for your help!

Link Roundup

Here’s a quick round-up of all the Friday links I shared last month:

* This bookmark alignment chart tweet

* This introvert anthem sung by a friend’s incredibly talented daughter

* This podcast about the Satanic Panic

* BONUS! Here’s an old dog video that never gets old:

February’s Soundtrack

* Trilogy of the Damned playlist

* Muse - The Resistance

* Karen O

* Riley Q

* Deep Focus

#AmReading

Current read: Stone of Fire by J.F. Penn

Prior reads: Seize the Night by Dean Koontz and Pretty Dead Girls by Monica Murphy

Welp, that’s all for the March issue, folks! With Daylight Savings Time starting next weekend and the official start of spring only weeks away, I hope you get all the sleep you need and all the sunshine you crave.

Until next time,Jean ♥

(Image credit: Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash)

I’ve decided to try something a little different this week — you have the not so dulcet and awkward tones of my voice delivering this week’s progress report to you in podcast form.

For those who prefer reading with their eyes over listening with their ears, here’s a quick look at this week’s stats:

Monday: Editing. No writing. Felt bleah.

Tuesday: 4 writing sessions, 1,807 words total.

Wednesday: 3 writing sprints, 1,474 words total

Thursday: edited Tuesday and Wednesday’s output, then a quick sprint to add 332 words.

Today: added 215 words before having to switch to a freelance article, pushing the total word count to 37,180.

Friday Funsies

Not sure how “fun” this will be, but here’s the podcast I mentioned: Uncover: Satanic Panic

Leave a comment to let me know your thoughts and opinions on this new format and whether this is something you’d like to see more of. Also, I’d really appreciate it if you could take a sec to click the little heart and like this newsletter to give it a favorable vote and help boost the signal. Comments and likes both help with that and are a super easy way to help new readers find me and my books.

Watch for the March issue of Echoes of Accountability to go out this Monday, wherein you’ll get to learn what I’ve got in common with Peggy Hill.

Until then, I hope you have a great weekend!Jean ♥