September??

The last few weeks have been SO stressful and I've done a not so great job of keeping up with my social media, and that includes my Patreon. So consider this post a newsletter / Q&A opportunity / apology for not posting anything exciting on here recently. 

I've started freelance editing and WOW is it a lot of work. I'm loving it, but I also took on a bit too much too quickly and learned the hard way what my timeframe should be for editing a 150k word book. 

Editing is great, and a much better source of income than selling a handful of books or a painting every month, but it's also hard because it takes time away from my own creative projects. I'm hoping that over the next few months I can find a good balance of editing work, my own writing, and painting. And also just reading other books that I enjoy. Oh no, am I going to have to stop watching so much TV? 

I also had a dog sitting gig this past week that ended up being a bit of a nightmare when the house I was staying at kept giving me a headache. Every morning I would wake up with a headache and if I left the house it would go away. I'm pretty sure the culprit was the woman's laundry detergent (I was sleeping in her bed on her freshly washed and super scented sheets) but it's hard to say for sure what the issue was. Whatever it was, I'm glad to be done and back to sleeping in my own non-scented bed. 

I'll be honest with you, I'm a little bummed because so far this month I have sold... zero books. 

It's been a while since I've had a month of no book sales, and I'm hoping that I'll still get a few before the month ends. Sometimes it can feel like you're just shouting into the void when marketing your book, especially when it seems like all of your own friends and family and people you interact with on Twitter have already bought a copy. I guess I could always try to get into BookTok but that sounds exhausting and difficult and honestly not very enjoyable at all. Supposedly it can be a great way to market your book, but I feel like it doesn't necessarily work for all genres. 

Next month, I'll be doing a little bit of traveling to visit friends because... it's my birthday month!! I can't believe my birthday is so soon, the year is slipping away far too quickly. 

I just want to say thank you SO SO much for being here and supporting me. Any time I get a new subscriber on here I do a little happy dance that someone enjoys the work I do and believes in me enough to join this (still very small) community. 

I'm going to make it a goal to post at least one more time before the end of the month and provide you with something fun!

I hope you're having a great September. It's still in the 80s here, but I personally cannot wait for it to finally start getting chilly so I can break out the fall jackets and boots.

Please comment below with any questions, comments, content requests, life updates, funny stories. I want to hear from you! Even if it's just to tell me what you ate for lunch today. 

Happy Saturday! :)

— Emily