Year of an Indie Writer: Week 3

Of course there’d be weeks like this.

It’s been rather quiet this week at the home offices of Quadrant Fiction Studio. The biggest news was the approval of the paperback version of EMPTY COFFINS. It is now available for all y’all who like to feel paper under your fingers when you read a story.

DAY JOB BENEFITING THE WRITING JOB

I’ve been a technical writer/marketing writer for my entire career. I now work in the marketing department for an oil and gas firm here in Houston. The types of deliverables we generate constantly give me ideas on how to promote my fiction writing. SEO was the big lightbulb moment this week. A co-worker of mine gave me some instructions on how to best utilize proper metadata, tags, and keywords to promote effective SEO. I thought I knew what I was doing. Turns out, I was a little off base. As soon as I learned what she taught me, I started working it into the deliverables at work.

And also began working on it on my author website.

Every day is learning experience in life. It’s only how we apply it in our lives that makes each day a step better than the previous one.

WRITING LESSON LEARNED THIS WEEK

I wake around 4:30 to 4:45am and exercise then write until 5:50am. Sometimes, I get distracted in the morning or do some sort of busy work. I did that on Thursday morning, but figured I’d get in the words come lunch.

Until I got to the office, logged into email, and discovered I had to attend a meeting from 11:00am to 1:00pm. Well, there went the lunch writing time, leaving Thursday’s word count very low.

Think I’ll blow off the morning writing session again anytime soon? Nope.

AUDIOBOOK OF THE WEEK

Let me be frank: Scott Brick is my favorite narrator. I might even pay to have him read the phonebook. I have listened to many books he’s narrated, but two authors stand atop my list of great writers + great narrator = awesome experience. One is Clive Cussler, specifically the Isaac Bell adventures. The other is Brad Meltzer. I am listening to Meltzer’s THE FIRST CONSPIRACY: THE PLOT TO KILL GEORGE WASHINGTON. I hold two degrees in history and even I barely knew this story. Seltzer tells an utter engrossing story so well, you forget you know the end of the story. Seltzer’s words as spoken by Brick is magical. I’ll provide a full review when I’m done, but this is already the book to beat for Best Book of 2019.

BLOGPOST OF THE WEEK

“Second-Hand Sales” was posted on Tuesday by Dean Wesley Smith on his blog. He discusses how it’s a good thing to have our books in print and available at used bookstores. Ultimately, if you have a decent back catalog and you earn a fan via a used copy of your book, it’ll give your writing career a boost.

Give it a read. Comment if you want. He moderates all comments but lets almost all of them through.

That’s it for this week. I’m already starting on the publication process of the next Calvin Carter book, HELL DRAGON. It’ll hit stores on 1 March. Ditto for my next standalone western, THE LAW ALWAYS WINS.