Wello, hello again. I seem to have found my way back after an absence of several months. There was some travel involved. We dodged some tornadoes in Arkansas, some tandem Semi rigs in OK City, then made it home intact.
March surprised us by throwing sunshine and warm temperatures for a couple of weeks, but now we’re back to the same old tiresome month we know and love.
I’ve been working on the sequel novel to the Red Gate as well as writing a few short stories to keep my hands active. I entered The Red Gate into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards contest and was encouraged when it made the first cut, but…it didn’t make the second. Possibly because I entered it into YA to see if it would fly there. I’d had some encouraging feedback from younger readers, but the conditions for YA are pretty specific regarding the age of the MC. 15-19 years old is the target age. My MC was 26.
I’ve also given a lot of thought to new ways to market my writing. One of the ideas I had, has to do with pulling a chapter out of a novel, re-writing it into a stand-alone short story, then entering it into short fiction contests to get a little notice for the book. I’ve also entered three other contests with other short stories I worked on during my hiatus. If any of this comes to fruition, I’ll pass it along in a future Curmudgeon installment.
Meanwhile, I’ll go check up to see if any of my bookstores need inventory and get myself in the mood for Spring.