Update July 3, 2018

So I know that I haven’t been posting in a while. I am sorry for that. I published my first book, then my posting fell off. So far this year, I have written 200k words. I have two full novels published and two smaller kids books that I did with my kids.

Plus being a dad has taken up much of my time. My son is in piano, and my daughter is a ballerina.

I know. I am creating excuses for why I haven’t been posting. The suns in my eyes… the curling game is on…

No more lame excuses.

I will be moving to post once a week for now, and maybe posting more later.

In other news, my day job was going fine. Until they laid me off. It sucks, but I have written 25k words in the last 2 weeks, and I have published one book. I have another in the editing process and a short story in editing as well. I am not letting the depressiveness get to me. I am getting things done.

I also have an outstanding cover artist. His work is fantastic and has upped the game to my novels. His cover is the image for this post.

His site can be found here: Josh Thornbrugh

So now that you know that I am unemployed and working on my novels full-time cause that is the cards that have been dealt, what’s my future?

Well, the plan is to go back to school. Learn more about the writing and publishing process. It is a scary prospect, but I will make a go of it.

I will close off here, but if you all want to support my family and me, the easiest way will be to buy a book or three. Right not they are only available on Amazon and as e-books. They will be released sometime in the near future.

The full list of my published book can be found here.

My published work. 

Until next time.

Stay Shiny.

 

Future plans

I seem to write a lot about my future. I have plans. I am going places. Well…  Not physically going places, but my career is.

My plan is to become a full-time author and I do have a plan.

The plan is simple on paper.

I could almost explain it in steps.

Step One.

Write a novel. Status: Done.

Step Two.

Write a second novel. Status: Done.

Okay. I’ll stop being funny and I’ll be serious.

The real plan, simply put, is to write and publish enough novels to earn a living from the sale of the books. I plan on publishing my books on Amazon as an indie publisher.

To break it down, it means that in order to generate enough sales is to write and publish a book every two to three months.

That is a tall order. Most people write a single book a year and I must write between 6 to 10 books each year.

To do that I am lowering down the length that I call a book. Most people consider a book 75k words and up. Just look at one of Sanderson’s bricks.

I disagree. I am of opinion that a book is 50k words or higher. And as an indie, I have little choice in the matter.

The reason is that the way Amazon works is that you need to keep a presence up on the new releases. You must keep a title there for as long as possible. Or you won’t get any traction and your books won’t sell. The constant release of titles is what will work.

So once I start getting to that level of production, I will be able to actually fulfill my goals. My goals are to make enough money to pay for my monthly expenses, plus I need to have enough money in the bank to be able to live for 6 to 12 months with no income.

Until that point, I am not able to go full time. I must keep my day job.

Are there more details in getting that goal? The answer is yes. And there are whole books written on the subject.  I will get into that in later posts.

Until next time.

Ramblings: Writing for a living, Debt management, and You

So I have been thinking a lot about becoming a full time author and the things that I need to accomplish to get to that point.

At the moment I make all of my money from my day job. That is what pays the bills. I spent 40 plus hours there working to be able to keep my roof over my head and food on my table.

In the future I want to be able to make all of my money from my writing. That means that I am going to have to sell a lot of books to be able to do that. The problem is debt load.

Everyone has some sort of debt. If you are lucky that you don’t have any debt, then you are a lucky one, and not the norm. Me, I have lots. Credit cards, mortgage, car payments. I also have bills that come with owning my own home. House insurance, utility payments, property taxes. Throw life insurance, cell phone bills and internet payments and my expenses are quiet high.

And the home owner stuff isn’t that bad. It is the debt part that throws me off. I have a plan to get rid of my bad debt, but it’ll take the sale of my house to do it. Don’t worry, I bought a fixer upper and I have been fixing it up. The sale should be good enough to not only get rid of my debt load, but to be able to have a down-payment for another house as well.

As someone that is seeking to become self employed, I believe that it is imperative that getting rid of the bad debt and unwanted expenses is necessary. Imagine how many books that you must sell to cover the credit card payments of $500. That is a lot of units per month. Easiest way is to get rid of the payments.

So, to all of those that seek to become self-employed like me. Get a financial planner. Get a plan. Get your expenses down. The less units of books that you must sell to be able to live off of your creative outlets the better.

Figure out a way to spend less with still having the same standard of living. I am not advocating you to live in a cardboard box to be able to be self-employed. But I am sure that your family will think that you are when you tell them that you are self-employed.