It's been a busy month. Top news: my oldest daughter got her driver's license!

Ironically, one of our cars is in the shop, so she's got nothing to drive. Torture.

My mom came for a visit from Colorado... somehow I didn't end up with any pics! She got the "week in the life of a family with three teenagers while they're still in school" experience. It wasn't exactly a Disney dream vacation, but we loved spending time with her, and hope she had fun despite the pace.

My oldest is kicking @ss on Varsity basketball - her team hasn't lost an in-season game. Middle girl fights us every day about having to go to school, but she does fine. She's my most fixed-mindset girl, but I think we're starting to see that change. I think. My youngest is still a hoot, but she hasn't crocheted in a while, nor drawn, nor painted. She's a teenager now, so I worry she's started to develop that I-care-what-other-ppl-think mentality. I'll miss all of her creative fun... though I'm sure I'll see it again some day.

Lots to talk about!

Foremost, I've set a release date for Mother of Trees: Feb 3. The pre-order is up on kindle. I've sent out ARCs (both ebooks and kindle), and I'm trying to broaden my outreach. I'm learning a lot that will help with the next go-around, so I have high hopes for the future. Plus, I think the series will be good and well-received, and the connections to The Guardian League will make it fun for people who have read my other stuff. I would absolutely love any help in gearing up for this book launch. I want to get the ARC reviews up on GR before the release, get the reviews up quickly on Amazon when the book goes live (Amazon doesn't (usually) let reviews go out pre-release), create noise on social media, and grow my audience.

Newsletters. First, frequency: for those of you who have been around a while, you know I was doing a weekly newsletter for a long time. I've done monthly's the last few months. That feels like a better pace for me, but I want to try bi-weekly (every two week) and see how that goes. I'm open to feedback. I'd also begun to include mentions of other books, and I am going to try to add that back in. I've taken out my very specific writing goal updates--that was helpful to me, but I doubt it drew much interest (unless you are also a writer).

The Guardian League. The series has been done for a year, but I didn't make much effort to learn marketing while I wrote it. I learned some over the course of releasing that series--mostly what not to do--but I've learned more since then. Something finally clicked and Amazon put Book 1 on an Amazon Prime deal. That felt like a huge success for me in terms of potential audience growth. And I have seen some growth, though not the explosive growth I'd fantasized about. (haha)

I know most of you won't care about these details, but I did an unsustainable push in August, that got Book 1 temporarily onto the Amazon bestseller list. Then in October, I finally latched onto some ads that worked. I changed very little in November, and saw continued growth. Then in December, I got the Amazon Prime deal, and my stats dropped. Here's the cool thing about that - Amazon doesn't tell me about the books people grab off of Prime. In other words, the December stats are all folks who BOUGHT the book; they didn't take the freebie. So yes, the stats look lower in December, but they still might beat October, and in the background, I HOPE there's sales of Book 1 going on. (I think there is, because the ranking stats jump up occasionally when my sales do not--I think that is from folks grabbing the Amazon Prime feebie). Do lots of ppl grab feebies and stash them on their phones, never to be read? Sure. But I will remain hopeful. Ideally, I would see more sales of books 2-4 in December than November, which is not the trend, but it might be too early to judge.

My ratings and reviews have not moved very much during the same time. I don't understand why not. Maybe I am doing something wrong, or maybe the results reflects how few people actually leave ratings/reviews. I don't know yet.

Anyway, I'm getting close to a tipping point where I'm making more than I'm spending. In the spirit of positive thinking -- next year will be the year.

Oh, I did a book signing at our local Barnes and Nobles. I don't know that it went great, but it didn't go badly. They'd ordered 10 copies of Book 1, 5 of Book 2, 5 of Book 3, and 20 (yes 20) of Book 4. I sold all of Book 1 and nothing else. But the manager said that it isn't unusual--they're expectation is that folks will come back and buy the others. After I sold the first 10 copies, the manager went and found two more copies they had on their shelves and we sold those. I also collected a couple more ARC readers from the adventure. I'm really trying to get all the pieces lined up for a win in audience growth. Nothing ventured, right?

I hope you all have a great holiday season, filled with books and worlds you love.

Previous Newsletters

• ​Newsletter - November 19, 2023​
• ​Newsletter - October 25, 2023​
• ​Newsletter - September 13, 2023​
• ​Newsletter - August 28, 2023​

​​May you get lost this week in another world.

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