For the past 2 days I’ve been so drugged up overnight that I’ve really struggled to wake up, let alone get out of bed. The pills we have last about 8 hours, and it’s as though they have little clocks inside them, because as soon as that 8th hour ticks over, I’m wide awake again and much less groggy. It does, however, mean late starts to the day. So kind of the poet to give me his man flu.
Yesterday, Wednesday, the poet was up and off to site after a bad night as far as his asthma is concerned. He did better than me, though. I just padded around the house doing whatever I felt like, which wasn’t actually very much.
I fed the dog. I fed the birds and changed their water. I didn’t do any washing, and I didn’t empty the dishwasher. I read a chapter of the current book and mind-hive here was off on another one, on a mission.
Because I’m leaning towards the writing again once the current client jobs are cleared, my brain is thinking ahead. I have 2 cosy mystery series I want to rapid release, but one will be towards the end of this year, the other will be towards the end of next year. I say towards the end because both series will include a Halloween story and a Christmas story. So those stories have to be released approximately 3 months before Halloween or Christmas and the others have to fit in the schedule and calendar in between.
I don’t want to rapid release 2 series at the same time as I think that will be counter-productive, and that’s why one will go out this year and the other will go out next year. But as there are going to be 5 of each, plus a collection of 5 short stories for the Stevie Beck series, I can’t rapid release them one a month as that means I need to be publishing the first one in May. But May is almost over and neither are ready to start now.
I have to do it over a period of weeks instead, maybe one every 2 weeks will work. And that means starting in the second half of July and finishing in early October for the short stories collection. Which means any marketing needs fine tuning before the middle of July…and, of course, the first 2 books need to be in a finished state by then too.
But the rabbit hole I fell down was best selling cosy mysteries in the charts now. I already have 3 that appear in the charts. I wanted to choose another 7 so I have 10. And that’s what took the time. Finding 7 more books that I’d like to read over the coming weeks. I did choose a few, and I saved the covers so I could examine those, and I saved the blurbs, to help me with my blurbs.
I showed the poet the covers as 9 of the 10 all look like they’ve sprouted from the same colour palette, the same design technique. And we prefer my working covers, but with the dilemma that I want them to look right and attract readers who will enjoy them.
So then I had a play in Affinity to see if I could come up with the same basic look and feel of those covers but with my branding on them. I wasn’t over keen on the result but I made a start.
I saved the covers and blurbs in a file and returned to the client edit I’m currently proofreading, as we need that back in production sooner rather than later, and I want it off my desk by the time I’m ready to start packing.
I had a good couple of hours on that before taking the dog for his walk. It was much cooler with a bit of a breeze, but no rain. We had fish for tea and tinned pears and ice cream for pudding. Then while I half-watched something on the telly, I opened up the documents our conveyancing solicitor sent us last week. I got as far as the first pdf, the property report, and it was 156 pages long! But I persevered on my little tablet and at least got to the end by the end of the evening.
Today I’ll be looking at the other documents he sent us before sending him an email with some queries in. I have to leave the cosy mysteries where they are. And I want to have more time with that proofreading job.
I hope you’re feeling much, much better. It’s so hard to get anything done when you’re sick.
Yeah, cover trends are headache inducing. You want to draw in the reader most likely to enjoy the book, but the sameness of too many covers annoys me sometimes, as a reader as much as a writer.
I hope you continue to feel better.
Ian thinks all the covers look a bit cluttered. I think they all look a bit same.
Thank you!