I haven’t written a blog in months, since April in fact. I think I was getting burned out or maybe depressed. I struggled after losing my FIL, but I seem to have come out the other side. I don’t even know where to start or where I left off. I decided not to go back and read my last few blogs to see what I spoke about before. I’m just starting new and we’ll see how it goes.
Did you ever see that movie where the actor, maybe Ben Stiller or Vince Vaughn, I don’t recall. Anyway, they go to a self help seminar and the guru tells him to “SAY YES” to everything. So he does and his life improves a thousand percent. He has all kinds of new experiences and adventures and is much happier because of it. Well, that’s been my motto lately, I’m saying YES! I’ve been doing lots of new things because of it.
My books are in two indie book stores on consignment and I’ve done two Book Events in the past two months. The first one was Feel the Heat in Tampa, it was fantastic, well run and attended. The next was Flirty in Tampa, it wasn’t as successful for me personally but it was a smaller event and a smaller crowd for a shorter time span, so not surprising.
From the first event I learned a few interesting things, the first being that not everyone planning to be in a crowded space feels the need to shower properly. A nearby author who I won’t name, was stinky. We weren’t even next to them, we had another author between us, but both of us suffered the odor. The author next to me had a portable fan and aimed it in that direction. We had perfume and hand sanitizer that we sprayed and rubbed everywhere to make it bearable. We survived but now we have portable fans and carry plenty of air freshening aids.
The next was, the odor warrior next door had some packages of their books done up in little “Blind Date with a Book” packages. They’re adorable and she does a lot of sports romance so she was marketing them as Blind Dates with a Book Boyfriend. I’m not sure how many she had when she started but I’d guess at least 10, she only had two left at the end of the day. My daughter bought one of them, so she only went home with one left. Because of her success and because I know they’ve been popular for a while, I made three for the next event.
Two of the three blind dates I made sold, so 66% of my inventory sold. I'm not much of a CFO, but that’s a great return, or to use another accounting acronym, ROI. Which of course means Return On Investment, in Economics 101. My book bundles are with horror stories so I called them Blind Date with a Scary Book. I included coffin bookmarks, bloody knife air fresheners, markers, pens, sexy masquerade masks, and other reading list and annotation supplies. I wrapped the books in solid black paper and then decorated them with everything else. Making them was so fun and everyone was interested in them at the event. I included one of my horror stories in each and they were priced from $15-$25.
The next thing I learned by doing book events is that it’s a ton of work packing up, then unloading and setting up, then packing up again to go home. Books are heavy and all the peripheral items take up room and weigh down the boxes. The first event was my first ever and I brought 10 copies of each book and everything was packed in awkward boxes. The second event I streamlined a bit and got plastic bins to transport everything. It was much easier with only 5 copies of the books and only four plastic bins, vs a dozen boxes at the previous event. I’ve since streamlined further and plan to have fewer items on my table next time around.
My next event is a book festival in a mall where we have to bring our own table and chairs in addition to everything else. I’m excited about it, but not sure what to expect. There will be all genres and kids around so I need to be aware of who’s looking at my horror books and all of the spiciness. Plus there’s going to be panels and presentations, I don’t recall what I agreed to do because I signed up almost a year ago. Hopefully whatever I agreed to do is easy to throw together. I’d love to read from one of my books, but again, I’ll need to be watchful of kids present. I would most likely read from Haunted Hunting Camp or Deadly-Go-Round, neither of them are spicy but Chapter 5 of HHC has SA but I wouldn’t likely read that much.
Next year I’m signed up for Feel the Heat again and Nugget Con. I don’t remember if I signed up for more than those two, but I want to try a few outdoor festivals in my local towns and they don’t accept people that far in advance. Fingers crossed I find some events that make sense for selling romantic suspense and horror. Maybe you’ll find out in a future blog.
Besides the book events and indie book stores I’ve been trying to do more podcasts. My next one is Heathen’s Hangout to air on Instagram on August 22, this Friday. It was a fun interview with an energetic host who asked some fun questions. Podcasts are all over looking for people to interview according to everyone I talk with but it’s much harder than you’d think to find one. The other one I’m scheduled for was cancelled, the host is having some health issues, I hope she’s well soon and perhaps we can reschedule in the future.
I’ve also been featured a few times on MommaD’s BookTok, I met her randomly and fell in love with her spunky southern style. She's a sweet and fun lady who has tons of energy and does everything she can to support indie authors and her community. She’s been reading my books and she gave them good reviews which she then posted in a video. She has more than 30k followers so it’s a huge boost for a little ol’ nobody like me.
Since I have no Idea what I told you last I’m going to give you some other updates, I’m being included in a Halloween Charity Anthology with 18 other authors which I’m very excited to read. It comes out October 31st and is called Monsters, Masks, and Mayhem. I wrote a Goosebumps style witch story which I hope goes over well. It wasn’t my usual slash and gore or even steamy. I’m also going to be in a female slasher anthology for Valentine’s Day which is right up my alley, and that one will have all the blood and guts. Because of the first one I got an opportunity to be included in one that comes out next August as well. That one is about a “Kinky Cruise,” it’s a shared world. So regardless of the author or story all of our submissions will be on the same cruise with the same captain. I’m very intrigued by this and excited to write my story and read everyone else’s. Do yourself a favor and don’t come up with a story idea on the fly as you fill out an application to participate in an anthology. I just hope I can easily write the story now that I wrote myself into a box!
My book Force of Attraction and the third book in the Forces of Nature Series will be released on November 14th. It’s with beta readers now and I’m nervous as always about how the readers will like it. Being an author is such a strange occupation, you invent words on a page that are supposed to take others on a magical journey or inform and delight them. Then you hand it off to be judged by people who only have those written words to interpret, they can’t see what you saw when you wrote it. Did you describe things properly? Did you bring the characters to life? Did you resolve all of the turmoil well? Did your characters grow and change? When you blindly hand it off to strangers to decide if you did a good enough job it’s a high anxiety situation. You have to wait in silence, often for weeks, wondering if you did your job well enough to get a good response.
Hopefully, they’ll find Force of Attraction redeemable at the very least and I can fix any issues they discover. The last time I used beta readers they were very kind and answered my questionnaire with enough feedback to make the book much better. My editor was kind but brutally honest, she hated my ending and asked me to rework it. After a discussion about what was wrong I agreed with her opinion and I rewrote the entire ending which I think made a huge difference and I was very happy with the new ending. So, if FOA has only a few issues I’ll be thrilled, but if there’s something big…I’ll rewrite until it’s up to par but that will suck. Wish me luck!
I had originally planned two more books for this year, Violent Night which is a Christmas addition to Violet’s Tales, the spicy why choose romantic horror trilogy. Arguably my favorite characters and stories. I just had to add a Christmas Tale to the series it was eating at me. It’s what I’m planning to write next, maybe starting tonight. Then The Profit will be after that, I don’t know if it will be a novella or a full book, I’ll figure it out when I write it. But it’s a tale about a cult leader who claims to be a new messiah, he's just a delusional creep who takes advantage of others. Scheduled after that is Beautiful Badass, a youngish girl with a rough life turns her world on its ear.
Beautiful Badass will probably end up being a 2026 book and then my plan is to start the MC series, Southern Suns MC–Book One will be about Ax and Book Two Orlando. After that it will depend on who else is in the stories. Now I have to work around all of my other commitments to write. Not sure how any of it will affect my blog writing but I'm going to try to write one monthly at least. If I get too busy I’m sorry, but I’ll still be around. You can always join my FB group or follow me on Social Media. I’ll include links below.
Since I haven’t done this in months, here’s an update of my followers:
FB ENChanting Reads Group members -708
FB E.N. Chanting Author Profile followers -2,439
Instagram followers @e.n.chanting_author -1,915 (closing in on 2k!! I’ll do a giveaway!)
TikTok followers/same handle^as above -1,477 (maybe a giveaway at 1500?)
No idea if my growth is slow or fast, normal or not, but it’s steady so I’ll take it and I spend most of my time on FB, I’m terrible at remembering to post on every SM site. In hopes of improving my social media presence I’m starting a “Street Team.” If you’re not familiar, this is a group of readers who enjoy an author’s work, they’re unpaid volunteers who just want to support their favorites. I’ll be opening a FB group for them to find information and I’m accepting applications on my website and I’ll post asking for volunteers. With no clue if anyone will want to sign up I’m hopeful a few good talkers or tokkers will join and help get my books seen by more readers.
There was more I wanted to share but of course it’s fallen right out of my head now that I’m here. Before, when I was blogging weekly I kept a running list of topics so I wouldn't forget, I may need to start doing that again so I can write everything I want. Like I tell my 82 year old mother when she calls and can’t recall what she needed to tell me, “Text me later if you remember.” In this case I’ll make a note for next time.
As always, thanks for reading!
Links-
Heathens Hangout Podcast- https://www.instagram.com/heathen_hangout_podcast?igsh=MW1nbHR1MG1oN3Y4eg==
FB E.N. Chanting- https://www.facebook.com/me/
Find all my SM Here- https://linktr.ee/enchantingauthor
Most things are on my website: www.enchantingauthor.com
MommaD’s TikTok- https://www.tiktok.com/@mommaD1452?t=ZP-8x9rA7vpdtO&r=1