Excellent Adventure as it Stands

On the creative front, I started writing some scenes that may be a part of the steampunk series, but I am not entirely sure where they fit. I think I found the dark man character that makes a mysterious entrance and remains a shadowy vision for a bit. Again, none of this is clear to me. I do not want to force it because that just never works, but he is not fully formed. I don’t know how he figures in the story, but he insists he belongs…

I seem to be stuck for the last recipe for the cookbook. Originally there was going to be a coconut recipe, but I am not happy with anything I look at and there needs to be a better story to lead it.

The current government standoff regarding the debt ceiling seems to be applying external pressure for me to finish the other project – because in it the US cedes some territory to China to pay its debts but it won’t work if that fact can no longer be called “fiction.”

At the start of summer, I sat back to watch how my titles would do after the Smashwords sale began. The action in the last 2 weeks has been again dominated by the Kindle Store with over 400 copies of the cookbook sold. There is absolutely no action at Barnes & Noble’s Nook Store. It’s almost as if the books are invisible there!

Downloads have increased at Smashwords as well – 1518 for the cookbook, 63 for the novel and 30 for the short.

It’s not enough to retire, but that is with no new marketing. Interesting.

On other news, I lucked out and got in on the Google+ beta. I still believe it has great potential and hope that when we are done tweaking it we’ll have an extraordinary social media tool. I love the circles and the potential for people who want to maintain a private persona but still need a public one…I especially like the potential for video chats (hangouts) for the ebooks.

I edited a first person account of a concert that I wanted to release a short (cover attached) and do an event to launch it. The response was underwhelming (though those who responded were enthusiastic). Perhaps I will not do it for this project, but I think that it puts a lot more tools in the hands of epublishers and ebook writers to take charge of their marketing activities online.

As with everything, details as it all develops in my excellent adventure.