One of the interesting things I’ve noticed recently is the fact that there’s no rhyme or reason to what gets lots of views and what doesn’t. Are views even beneficial? I try to post a story, reel, or some other video type of post at least twice a week. I have over a thousand followers on Instagram, (thank you guys), I have somewhere over eight hundred followers on Facebook, over three hundred friends, and around one hundred and thirty members in my group, Enchanting Reads. I average around five hundred views a video on TikTok and have just over a hundred followers. I have no idea how I got any of my followers. I invited my three hundred plus friends to join my group, so I know why they showed up for my group. But I don’t know where the rest came from, or why they stick around, or how to capitalize on it. I’ve decided it’s a new goal of mine to figure all of this out. You’ll be the first to know when I do. So far, I can’t even figure out who's reading this blog. One week I'll have fifty views here and the next will be over two hundred. I’d love to hear from you, dearest reader! Please comment and tell me how you ended up here, have pity on me. As much as I love a good mystery, I’m no Sherlock Holmes, it may take me years to figure this out without you.
Another extremely interesting thing that happened recently, is that I found my one and only fan, who isn’t a relative or a friend. I was chatting with a fellow author about music on some post or other when another person joined our conversation. After we compared our taste in music, we were laughing about our favorites when the woman suddenly said, “Wait! Are you THEE E.N. Chanting? Author of Haunted Hunting Camp? Author of Force of Corruption? I’m reading your books right now!” (or something close to that) I don’t know if she was pulling my leg or completely serious, but it made my day. It was quite a coincidence if she was being sincere, but even if she quickly looked at my profile to interact with me, I took it as a huge compliment. Who knows, maybe she told her husband she met me, and I made her day too. Wouldn’t that be something? When one of my favorite authors liked my post and followed me, I was on cloud nine for days, my husband heard all about it, and again every time I relayed the story to everyone I know! She’s sold thousands upon thousands of books, so I think it was a much bigger deal, but if that woman really was reading my books, I hope she was excited to chat with me. I’m going to assume the best, and believe I have a fan.
As you may have read in a previous blog, I finally finished with my second book in the Forces of Nature Series, Force Majeure. I did my own first read through and fixed a lot of obvious things. It’s now with my editor to do her first pass. I’m excited to get it edited and out to readers. I like it, it’s extremely long compared to the first book, but I think it works. I’m really happy with the story and I love some of the characters.
I took a new step with it and gave it to three Beta Readers. I didn’t have any beta readers on my first book, so this is a new experience. Two of them read and loved my first book as ARC readers and asked to be beta readers for the next one. The third is a reader who has my first book, though I’m not sure if she read it yet. She also expressed interest to be involved in my future books, so I decided to include her. If she hasn’t read FOC, she'll be coming in blind, and she can tell me if it works as a standalone from that perspective. It was nerve wracking to hand my new book baby to three strangers to tell me if they love it or hate it. Who wants to hear their baby is ugly? Nobody!
I wrote up an NDA (nondisclosure agreement). My lawyer looked it over and said if it makes me feel more secure it’s doing its job. The copyright really protects my work from the beta readers distributing it or discussing it with anyone. The NDA does make me feel better because I had them sign these agreements and it says they can’t discuss anything we talk about or share my emails about the book. I feel like them signing their name will keep it in their minds that they can’t share or talk about any of it, including my questionnaire. It gave me the security I needed. Which let me relax just enough to hit send, when I sent my book file to my beta readers.
I hope they like it as much as I do. I sent them a questionnaire to fill out when they’re finished. I decided it might be helpful for them to know what questions are coming, to have them in mind while they read. I gave them six weeks to read it since FM is one-hundred-and-fifty-three-thousand words. FOC is seventy-five thousand, so FM is roughly double. I never imagined when I started writing how difficult it would be to let people read my work. I love it when they love it, but when they hate it, I feel bad, like I wasted their time. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.
My author friend, Louise Glass, thinks I’m crazy letting strangers give me input on my writing. I understand her point, how do you make changes based on what a few strangers have to say. My thought is this, if they point out some things, I had concerns about, they’ll reinforce my feelings and I’ll discuss that section more carefully with my editor. If they want me to tell them more about an event or character, I may add more description on that part. If they get confused about something, I’ll make sure it’s clearer. I won’t actually change my story; I'll just try to make it the best it can be. If they have good input, they’re the readers, I should at least think about what they have to say. Plus, some of my ARC readers were spot on with their comments for FOC. They even found typos my proofreader missed; I can’t ignore that!
I love my friend Louise, she’s an awesome author and she’s very proud of her books (Dream Lover and the second book, Arianna’s Story, is her work in progress WIP) and believes in herself and her writing without a doubt. I admire her so much. I aspire to be so sure of myself someday. I continue to struggle with imposter syndrome and self-doubt, I’m really not sure what will fix it. Initially I thought when I got a good review it would improve. But once I meet one goal, I set ten more. I'll never live up to all of my goals, but I’m having fun trying. As long as it continues to be fun, I’ll continue to do it. I have so many ideas as it is I’ll probably never finish writing everything I want to write.
I’m going at a pretty good pace with my horror standalone. VioleNt is at thirty-five-thousand words so far. I’m very connected to the story, I cry every time I read certain parts. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, but I figure if it brings out emotions it’s got to be okay.
I also entered another twenty-four-hour writing competition. I had forgotten all about it and got an email reminder the week before. Of course, that ended up being the weekend we had planned to have company from out of town. I had a reminder set on my phone for when the email was supposed to arrive with the topic and word count. When it came through, I quickly looked over the topic, then spent the afternoon thinking about it for an idea. When I went to bed, exhausted from a long day with our visitors, I had to stay up and write my submission. Thankfully it was only eight-hundred-eighty-words, for perspective, most of my blogs are around twelve to fifteen hundred. I spell checked it, had my phone read it out loud to me, fixed the errors I found that way, and sent it off. I won’t know for around eight weeks if I won anything. They only accept five-hundred entries. They usually award three stories, and they win prizes and get published in their publication. Then they decide if more stories deserve an honorable mention. Last time I did this competition, in the fall, I got an honorable mention. I wrote a fantasy story last time which is generally outside my capabilities. This time I wrote a horror story. I'll be very interested to see what the judges think.
Currently, I’m writing a short story, fifteen to twenty thousand words. It’s for an anthology of stories that is going to be offered by one of the groups I’m a member of on Facebook. The requirements are that it must have a character who's sixty-five or older. It also has to be a romance story because it’s a romance group. I’m writing this story instead of my WIP this week, with the goal of finishing before the week is over. See, always more goals!
I’m excited to jump back into my WIP after I get the short story finished. It seems like I always have so much going on. I’m basically retired, you'd think I’d have much more time on my hands. I wish you a wonderful week filled with much success and quality time with your loved ones. As always, thanks so much for reading!