The last post I mentioned that I wasn’t at home when First Time Out released, but I obsessively checked the internet, and you all made this the best release I’ve ever had. So awesome anniversary present everyone, thank you so much! 🙂

Lessons I’ve learned from this release that will hopefully make the next ones better.

I really, really, need to make a checklist of things to do before a release. I’m fairly certain I remembered everything, but the anxiety and constantly thinking I’d forgotten something was annoying. A list will help that.

As tempting as it is to do, I shouldn’t check my sales and reviews as frequently as I was doing. It was incredibly exciting watching bars and numbers grow, but if they didn’t, I took an emotional hit. Not every release is going to be this good, and I don’t need to put myself through that emotional roller coaster.

Taking a vacation during a release might not be the best way to handle things lol. I don’t know, maybe it was. I was distracted a fair amount of the time, but I had people emailing and texting, and I might not have been as attentive to my family as I should have been. Since my husband was just as excited, he didn’t seem to mind, but it wasn’t fair. Maybe one day I’ll get to a point where release day is no big deal? Probably not lol

Pre-orders are awesome. So much of the usual work was already done by doing things this way, and I really loved that. It made it possible for me to actually leave things be on the day, so release day was not as stressful as it could have been.

I’m so excited to finally be back writing and releasing books. I’m also incredibly happy with the momentum that First Time Out has had, I hope it continues that way, but if it doesn’t I feel like I’ll emotionally be able to handle it. Which is progress!

Anyway, I’m waiting to get the final edited copy of Love on Strike, and I’ve been working on Course for Adventure book 3 in the meantime. I’m starting to wonder if each successive book in the series is going to get longer and longer. We’ll see lol!

For all of my readers not on Amazon, the final book in my Fringes of the Universe series is out of Kindle Unlimited, and I’m working on getting the entire series on other retailers. Before I do that I’m going to get them edited again. I haven’t had any complaints from readers with them, but I’ve never been happy with their level of edits. I don’t believe another pass through will hurt things at the very least and it won’t change the story, just make it a better read. There will be commas.

Update on the erotica dungeon, unfortunately, Amazon did not rule in my favor and Abducted is stuck there. I don’t have any kind of appeal that I can make so there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m watching my other books, and so far there haven’t been any other changes, but if it does happen, I might re-think writing romance. Apart from the release date of First Time Out, there has been a noticeable drop in the downloads of Abducted, which has led to an overall decline in income. It’s already difficult to get your books in front of readers eyes, but then to be put somewhere that lowers your visibility further is very frustrating.

In other news! I’ve started a quilting project. Recently while playing Minecraft and trying to decorate a boring room, I started making a design and then next thing I know I was thinking, “This would make a cool quilt.”

I’ve never quilted, but I’ve wanted to for a few years now. On our vacation, I found myself in a quilting shop, and then there was a fabric called Bedrock that was perfect and then BOOM fabric bought. So I kind of have to make it now. I’ve been able to cut up all the fabric into 5-inch squares, but I get the feeling that was the easy part. I’ve been posting updates on Twitter so if anyone wants to follow that lovely process just follow me over there.