Legends of Windemere

So here we are with the last post before this blog takes its first silent day.  At least an official one because there’s always the chance that I had to delete an old post that was the only one on a day, but that’s splitting hairs.  Also, I might still be reblogging on the off days.  Still working on the format, but I think today is the right day to talk about the future here.  I do hope people read all of this though.

I’ll have been a full-time, self-published author for 2 years this February and it’s been a wild ride.  I’ve made amazing friends, gotten further than I expected in this short bit of time, been part of some fun projects, and had a few Internet scrapes.  Yet, it’s all come down to a question that a friend asked me:

WHERE DO I WANT TO GO?

Contrary to the above video, I do want to be taken seriously as an author and reach that next level.  I want to keep doing what I love to do.  I want to make enough money to support my family.  I want to see paperback versions of my book in a store.  I want to be accepted as a professional outside of the indie author circles, which seems to be a goal that angers others.  Not that I don’t love interacting with everyone, but I do want to reach that next level.  It’s always been my desire to get there and I need to start looking into how it can be accomplished.

I’ve always said that I think a great use for the self-publishing circuit is for traditional publishers to view it as a talent pool.  This is our ‘Open Mic Night’, ‘Demo Tape’, ‘Open Audition’, and whatever else the other artistic avenues have.  As far as I know, novelists have never had a true arena to reveal their work to an audience and prove they have something.  Even short stories in magazines needed to get through editors or some kind of review boards, so the public didn’t always see it.  We’ve had to depend on query letters with excerpts, which has become increasingly more difficult to hit the mark with.  Through the self-publishing world, an author can gather an audience and reveal that they have something.  I’d like to think I’ve done that part and now I have to figure out how to move to the next level.

After all, it isn’t just my books that I have to market.  It’s me and that’s where I tend to fall short . . . height pun not intentional.  I need to bring this blog back to its roots of focusing on my books and my writing.  I need to enhance my professional reach and prove that I’m ready to take on the next level of this business.  Yes, I would love nothing more than to write my books and leave the marketing to someone else.  I’d occasionally crawl out of my cave to say hello to fans and prove that I’m still working.  Things don’t seem to work this way any more if this was ever reality in the first place.

So where do I go from here?  Forward and backward in some ways.  I’m pushing for the next rung while pulling back on the personal stuff here.  I’ll still post responses to any questions that people ask on here.  I’ll still talk about my books, my characters, and writing in general.  The weekly goals will be the extent of my personal life unless a big event is going on that I feel is worth sharing.  We’ll see what happens and if I can figure out my way.  I’m sure I don’t want to be 100% indie author for the rest of my life, but it’s just figuring out how to get there.

You can also check out the new page on this blog where you can pose questions that I answer in a later post.