Friday Musings #7

Happy Friday all!

I am super grateful for this week, that this week has gone so well and I'm very thankful that I get to close out February better than I started. March is going to be a good month. I'm thankful I get to start March out feeling good too.

I talked about how the beginning of February was rough. Lots of anxiety and depression and honestly near the end of January and the start of this month I kind of felt like a mess. Hence the reason I'm so glad I feel better. My third college class starts March 9th (my birthday!) and at the beginning of this month I wasn't sure if I would be able to handle it. I told myself I could and told my mom I could when she asked if I should drop the class because it might be too much, but deep down I was really worried it would push me over the edge. I'm glad I waited to make that decision though because now I feel more clear headed, more in control and like I can handle adding a third class to my schedule.

Not to say there haven't been some moments here and there the past two weeks. My anxiety's loads better, but there's always going to be ups and downs in the span of a day... a week... a month... a year. It's just getting through those down moments that are tricky. But more or less in the past two weeks or so, there have been more ups than downs and for that I'm thankful to God for helping me with that and for giving my mom and myself the tools and wisdom to know how best to help me.

Anyways! All that to say... this week has been good. One of my professors didn't post the classwork for the week till Tuesday night so I've had a bit of a late start to that. Thankfully though all we have due on Sunday is a discussion board, so I don't feel overwhelmed about starting classwork later in the week.

I've started reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for my Harry Potter class. To be honest, I sort of haven't been reading the books like we were supposed to. But this past week I realized how important it is as a writer to be reading. Reading is a necessary discipline of a writer and it really feeds my inspiration and my act of writing itself. So I figured reading Harry Potter for my class would be a good motivator to keep up reading and getting back into the habit of actually enjoying it. I realized that I was in a major reading slump through some of January and throughout this month... I didn't find a lot of joy in reading once I finished Forever by Maggie Stiefvater. And even when I was reading, it took me a long time to finish a book. But reading The Goblet of Fire has really brought me back to reading and being able to relax while I read.

I got to hang out on Tuesday with my best friend and share with him the amazingness that is the Venom movie. (Can I just say how excited I am for Venom 2 to come out later this year after watching the first one for like the third time?!) Anyways, it was the best time as it always is when we hang out haha

On Monday I started writing the sequel to Golden Touch! I decided to give myself this whole week to not think about the St. Croix Falls series. Through the weekend I was sort of stressing myself out trying to figure out the next book and plans on the series as a whole, but then I realized I don't need to rush it. I literally just sent Cursed to a few beta readers. I've got plenty of time to figure out book 3. So I decided to give myself a little writerly vacation and start writing the GT sequel. It's been a blast so far!

I also got a fifth review of Wayward! It's the fourth one on Amazon, fifth one on Goodreads. It was a real boost that I needed this week. Cursed has me feeling very self-conscious and nervous, so to hear from someone (who I didn't give a free ebook to for a review by the way!) that they loved it was super encouraging! It's been one of the best experiences in the world to see how far Wayward has come. I really appreciated that she appreciated that Wayward is a clean and fun young adult book. That's something I really strive for in all of my books: clean, fun content. And because I'm such a proud author of Wayward here's the five star review:
"Great book, I loved the characters and the friendships and the romance is very nicely done.
It's really hard to find books that don't have a reverse harem theme or sexual content even for young adult books. So this is really good to read. Can't wait to see how things will go after Mia discover who she is and can't wait to see more of her and Rhett." Although, getting all these great reviews has made me super nervous about Cursed. I just hope that it lives up to expectations and to the greatness that is Wayward. It's been such a difficult book and I'm super worried about getting bad reviews on it.

Also, just a little bit of a report and to share some marketing stuff, my Amazon ads have been working amazingly! I was putting out a newsletter every Monday with Wayward newsletter swaps and group promotions to keep up sales and Kindle Unlimited page reads since I started my newsletter. It got really tiresome and I realized I can't keep using my newsletter as a crutch. Wayward needs to learn to stand on its own two feet. I needed to learn to stand on my own two feet as a marketer. So, I took Bryan Cohen's Amazon Ad Challenge again and it's been really amazing. I've made a consistent amount of money in the past two months since putting up the ads and have been making a profit. Albeit, a small profit but a profit nonetheless.

I almost forgot to mention as well, I finished reading through Deuteronomy on Wednesday! I'm officially onto Joshua and I could not be more happy about that. I love Moses and that all his story entails but... Leviticus through Deuteronomy was pretty hard to get through. I'm hoping Joshua will be smooth sailing from here on out.

So yeah... I think that's more or less the highlights of my week.

How's your week been? Any exciting things happen or writing updates to report??