WHEW! It's always kind of nice to sit down to write this and have too much to say. In the past two weeks, I have made some decisions.

 

To be completely honest, I have made some decisions in just the last few days.

 

I mentioned last time that I had started a new passion project, Soundtrack of a Voluntary Misfit, a blog about music and all the things I love about it. That is going well, so far. We'll see how it progresses as I start to run out of things to talk about. The Buy Me a Coffee platform has podcast hosting on their list of things to do so hopefully I will soon have that to add some value beyond just more text-based rambling.

 

As is the case with most authors, I have a second (or, I guess, more accurately, first) blog that I have struggled to maintain due to lack of ideas. I'm not a book reviewer, even when I have the time to devote to voracious reading. I've never found the balance between saying enough to be enticing and justify my opinions while not saying too much and spoiling the story for others. I'll tell you, "I loved this book, you should read it," all day long but don't ask me to give you a journalistic quality review.

 

And I feel like every author with a blog wants to share their tips for writing which are the same tips they picked up from some other writer who picked them up somewhere else, resulting in a neverending cycle of regurgitation. Not to mention, I think writing tips alienates half of my potential reader base; the half that doesn't write.

 

So, what's a girl to do with a blog when she wants to do something different with her blog?

 

There is a lot of scandal and drama among the TiketyTok book folk. I don't really want to include my own account in the melee but in a lot of cases, I do have opinions on the topics so I have elected, instead of inviting drama to an otherwise happy place for me, I'll address those hot button topics in blog form. Topics like should authors give away free books in an attempt to combat piracy, should writers follow readers, should writers read reviews . . . The first of these posts will be going up this week on my newly scrubbed author blog.

 

And last but not least on the list of hard fast concrete decisions I've made this week, I am changing my series, yet again. When I scribbled out Price of Fame in a four hour flurry of last minute words, my plan was to build from it. Use it as a jumping off point, the catalyst for everything else to follow. But then I got about halfway through what was supposed to be book one of this series and I wasn't liking some of what I had set up in that first story.

 

I decided to expand that story to novel length, turning ten thousand words into seventy, and making that book one, book one would become book two, etc.

 

But now, I think there is more story to tell before so the expanded version of Price of Fame will be book two. I am trying something with this series, as well, which is part of the reason I'm having so much trouble getting started. I am outlining! QUEL SURPRISE! I am a committed pantser and realistically, I'll still pants the books on their own. But I am attempting to plot out the major plot points of the backstory, the story arc that will carry through from one to two to three and on.

 

Pro, I now have plot ideas for four books instead of twoish. Con, I wanted to have the first three books to 90% publication ready before putting out the first one so I could rapid release the beginning of the series. Which means I've got a lot of writing to do if I want to get this thing off the ground this year.

 

Which means . . . k gotta go bye! <3