My writing life continues to move any many directions, all hopefully toward fame and fortune. Okay, you know I’m kidding. My goal is to sell a hundred copies of my books and someday secure an agent.
In the past thirty days, I’ve focused on promoting my book, Do It for Daisy. I’ve signed up for Bouchercon 2021, a national conference for mystery writers and more fervent fans. It’s in New Orleans, and I’ll be there from August 26th through the 29th. In addition to learning from the multiple author panels, I’ll be hanging out with as many as a dozen of my fellow Level Best Book authors. It should be fun socializing and talking about the craft and our common frustrations.
My publisher, Level Best Books, is sending down ten free copies that I can hand out on Saturday when I’m part of a new author book signing event. I also signed up for a speed dating event, where authors have one or two minutes to pitch their books to multiple tables of readers.
Before attending Bouchercon, I’m working to secure reviews for my book, Do It for Daisy. I’m considering using a service called BookSirens. If they approve your book, it costs ten bucks, and they announce it to the supposedly huge list of eager book readers. For each review generated, it costs me $2.00. Hopefully, I’d have twenty reviews by late August, so when a prospective reader goes to my Amazon site to make a purchase, they’ll see the novel has been read by more than the two people reading my blog.
Erica, my Beta Reader, returned her comment on my Work-In-Progress, The Man Who Fixed Things. I’ve been revising and polishing with the goal of completing my last revision by the end of July. I’ll use August to identify potential agents and refine my summary and query letter. I intend to start the query process in September.
I want to take advantage of my relationship with Level Best Books by creating a series that they might be interested in publishing. I know I’ve talked about finding a way to use my favorite private eye, Nic Knuckles. I have a new approach I’m writing. I want to parody those true-crime series that are everywhere on Netflix, 20/20, and Dateline. It’s a genre that is ripe for ridicule. I’ll see what I have next month.