Down the Rabbit Hole

Happy Wednesday!  I can't believe October is almost over! 😭 It feels like it went by so fast! And yet, I feel like this last week of October is creeping by. I'm not sure if I'm glad for the very slow end of October or would prefer to just have it over with haha I am sad to see the Halloween-Fall month go, but I'm very much looking forward to November and Thanksgiving. I'm so ready for Nanowrimo!!  October Writing: I finished the first draft of Scarlet Phoenix on October 4th, so that was awesome! It's more of a skeleton draft and definitely needs some more meat on its bones, but it was still the best feeling to have it finished! It's got so much potential and I seriously can't wait to start revising it.  The rest of October was spent revising and editing my short story Operation Revelry and editing Unearthed. I actually ended up publishing Operation Revelry just last week! So if your a fan of superheroes, explosive nanodroids and snarky characters you s...

Happy Tuesday!  Last week I talked about how to find your ideal reader. This week I want to talk about how to use what you learned to reach your ideal reader. Full disclosure, this is something I'm still learning and figuring out. I haven't implemented all of these, but I'm hoping in the next few months I'll slowly get grasp on this topic. This will be a smaller post then because I'm still learning about how to implement these things and use what I've learned about my ideal reader to reach them.   The whole reason you get to know and find your ideal reader is so you can use what you've learned to get your books in front of them. These are the readers that would absolutely love your books! But first, you need to figure out how to show them your books.  The first thing you can use your drabble or whatever you used to get to know your ideal reader is to find out where they hang out on social media. A fifteen through seventeen year old would frequent a different...

Happy Wednesday! So, last month Hannah Brencher was doing her yearly Gospel Reading Challenge where you read all four gospels in one month. As she was hyping it up and getting people to sign up she said that it would change your relationship with Jesus in the best way possible. You would get to know Him in new and more intimate ways. At the very least, you would learn something new about Jesus Himself through reading the gospels. The idea of doing the Gospel Reading Challenge isn't just to read the four gospels in one month. It's to read them with the intention of knowing Jesus. You read every line and every word written about Him and said by Him wanting to learn more about Him. I had wanted to do a post on what I learned most about Jesus while doing the challenge, but all October I couldn't figure it out. I mean I had learned a lot and it was an awesome experience and a really cool thing to do. I definitely recommend it. But I couldn't figure out the right thing to...

 Happy Tuesday!  Let's talk about one of the most confusing and controversial aspects of marketing/publishing: Ideal readers! There's tons of posts about how to find your ideal readers, but not many on how to use what you've learned about your ideal reader for marketing. I mean, the whole point in knowing who your ideal reader is, is learning how to get your books in front of them and how to make your social media presence appealing to them. That will be my post next week. How to use what you've learned about your ideal reader to market your book and get it out there in front of your ideal reader.  For now though, let's talk about how to even find your ideal reader. Just gonna be honest here, a lot of what I'm about to tell you I picked up from Jenni Sauer's live on ideal readers and branding. If you're interested in a more in depth perspective on both of those things and a whole lot of awesome and creative ways to figure out your brand and ideal reader,...

Happy Wednesday! What’s the first thing you think of when you hear about the Biblical guy Elijah? The guy from 1 Kings in the Old Testament? I have a feeling that most people think of the stories where he performed miracles or where God spoke through him. Or you know, the time where God sent down a chariot for him to be lifted up into Heaven. He’s the guy that didn’t die. The guy that found such favor in the eyes of God that he got to skip the whole death thing and go straight to Heaven.  I’ve been reading through the Old Testament very slowly throughout last year and this year and while I’m now in 2 Kings hanging out with Elijah’s friend Elisha, there’s one Elijah story in particular that’s stuck with me… It’s the story in chapter 19 of 1 Kings verses 1-9. That’s probably become one of my favorite stories of the Old Testament. Before this Elijah has done some pretty spectacular and miraculous things. Not only is he a prophet of God with a deep and personal relationship with God hi...

 Happy Tuesday everyone!  Welcome to my first Tip Tuesday where I share writing and publishing tips! Recently, I’ve felt the need to want to share more about writing and indie publishing for fellow writers. I’ve published quite a few books, so I'd say I've learned a thing or two about publishing... But I also will say, that I still have a lot to learn!  Any sort of publishing is a learning process. You never stop learning new things and getting better at that process the more books you publish. So, I hope that these Tuesday tips can be helpful to you as I share what I’ve learned, what I’m still learning and what I continue to learn as I write and publish.  I've realized lately that I have a lot of thoughts and things to share about self-publishing... some of it is going to sound a little discouraging or jaded, but I want you to know that none of it is meant to scare you or stop you from following your dreams to becoming an author. Everything I share is meant to help ...

Happy Wednesday!  To be honest, I really struggled writing this post. I got to September 13th and realized a little anxiously that I didn't have any blog posts written for October. I got through August and all of September having pre-written all the blog posts, so they were ready to go on Wednesday. This was really important to me in August going into September since I knew my classes would take up a lot of my time and my blog would fall to the wayside like it always did when a new semester of college starts. God was good, and He provided me with the words that needed to be written. I can't say I wrote any of those blog posts by myself. I can't take the credit because there's no way I could have written what I wrote without the Holy Spirit's direction and guidance. But the thing is... I got to September and was feeling pretty burnt out. I started feeling kind of apathetic and dispassionate about a lot of things going on in the world. I think I just felt and felt...