I am a business, apparently

It's been a while to say the least. Why I even mention that anymore as it's always a while between blog posts, I don't know – but, as per, it's certainly not because I haven't done anything. I don't think I've ever done more. 

My update starts off on a little bit of a downer because literally straight after posting my last blog, I had a rather awful three months with my skin, which resulted in losing time where I couldn't do anything but recover. There was a lot to it, aside from my skin, and it's only now that I'm really dealing with the emotional fallout of it all, with a little bit of PTSD, but I know in time it will sort itself out. It's sad that the first real time off I've allowed myself in years, I had to focus on my skin, but I feel lucky I was still furloughed so I didn't have to work through it. It took me a long time to want to do anything book wise, but slowly but surely, I felt that old spark return and after a couple of months in recovery, I started getting this deluge of ideas for short stories. In early May, I tentatively dipped my toes into the murky writing waters and wrote 1,418 words of a new short story, but stopped after that because I don't think at that point I was completely ready to start writing again. 

During my time off, I also did a lot of thinking about about everything, and it really solidified in my mind that I want to write and the idea of it being my job one day just filled me with pure joy. This lead me to the dire conclusion that I needed to finally start treating my books like a business, no matter how upsetting I find that notion. I have resisted it for many years as the idea of marketing, and anything that isn't writing tbh, fills me with horror, but if I want to make a proper go of it, I need to think of myself as a business and make decisions based on that mindset, and not my nonchalant bohemian ones. I am going back to my day job soon after eighteen months of being furloughed (I know, crazy), but working a full-time job and trying to write on the side is not viable for much longer because I don't think I have it in me to balance the two for much longer and have no life outside it. I'm exhausted by the thought of it honestly. For the last four years, as I've built up a little backlist and worked on TSW activism stuff, I've basically worn myself into the ground and need to actually pull my socks up and make proper money from my books and not shy away from selling so I can live a normal life with real time off. 

And so, few months ago, I wrote a business plan, and the the world's largest to do list, separating it by book/series, which really helped me not feel so overwhelmed. I will throw in some bullet points of some of the things I have done/am planning to do:

• I have taken down entire my Weighting to Live series whilst I work on giving the books a bit of a makeover. In May, I did a thorough edit of each book, which I will go through again once more in a few months. If you have been following my blog for a while, you will be well acquainted with the saga that is the covers for this series, as I have never got it right, but this time I have decided to actually invest in professional covers and I am completely in love with the designer I have chosen to work with as her designs are exactly the kind of vibe I want for my own. She started work on the first cover this week and I can't wait to see what she comes up with. When all the books are ready to sell, I will be marketing them. I am in no rush to get them out there because, for the first time, I want to do things when they are ready and not a second before. I've spent years rushing to get stuff done, which ends up costing me even more time in the long run. Slow and steady basically.
• In late July, I invested in a piece of software called Vellum. Vellum essentially has a selection of built-in designs that transform the interiors of your ebooks and paperbacks. Vellum is something I'd known about for a few years, with authors always talking about how amazing it is, but I held off as it's pretty pricey (around £230) until now, and I am just gutted I waited so long as it has been a total game changer. It is also a one time payment, so now I have the program to use on infinite books. I'd say that's a pretty solid investment.
• Using Vellum, I have given my backlist books, Curing my Incurable Eczema, Stuff I'll Tell You To Do That I Won't Do Myself and Just Julia a bit of a glow up, too, and I am currently at the final stages of publishing new and improved interiors for all three. 

Onto other book-related news, on Sunday 18th July 2021, I started writing a new short story, focussing on a subject matter I've experienced first-hand recently, and wrote 2,289 words of it and found it so cathartic. The following day, I wrote a further 2,477 words which went very well even though I was distracted, then on Tuesday 20th July, I wrote 2,738 words and ended up finishing the short story. I then read through it quickly, making little changes, which brought the total word count for the first draft to 7,504. After finishing that short story, I felt well and truly ready to start writing again, but had to put it on hold because of some really exciting news...

With the help of my long suffering mother, on the weekend of 24th/25th July, I edited my short stories which I was going to try and go the traditional route with (see my submission process blog posts recently), but because of a lack of interest, and my own personal reasons, I decided to do it myself. I was also very keen to self-publish the book after I found out about the Kinde Storyteller Awards (you can read more about the competition *here*), with entries closing on 31st August, so it's all been very crazy trying to get everything done in time. Because of my lack of marketing knowledge, and it being so last minute, it's very unlikely my book will even be considered, but I'm going to try anyway as it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. After the edit with Mum on 24th/25th July, I then moved onto the cover, and even though I was happy to pay a designer to work on it, I ended up doing it myself, using a photo I'd taken recently before designing it on Canva. Then, after using Vellum for the interior, and getting it all set up, I received the paperback proof of my book and fell completely in love with it! Suddenly, it felt very real and exciting. I wasn't planning on reading through the book again, and was just going to publish straight away, but after opening a page of the proof at random, I saw something instantly that I wanted to change and so I decided to read the book again and got loads of last minute edits. I then bought another proof and read through it one more time. It's amazing when you're editing from a physical book how easy it is to pick up on things you didn't see before, no matter how many times you've read through it. I suppose it's because you're more in the mindset of the reader, seeing it exactly as they will see it. Using proofs to do final edits is something I will now be implementing for all future books. So anyway, after one final edit by my mum, I was finally happy to publish and today, I can happily share that Thirty-Minute Tales, my first full-length collection of short stories, is now available as an eBook and paperback on Amazon (more details on my Books page *here*)! There is so much more I could write about what's happened with this book - and I am not even covering the weeks of stress trying to set up an author website (which can be found here: www.cararward.com), a mailing list, a lead magnet (something you give away free when you sign up to the mailing list - in my case, a free ebook) - but I will leave it there ... so yeah, all in all it's been madness, but now that it's all nearly done, I'm over the moon. 

My last piece of exciting news is that my book about my experience with trichotillomania, which was previously published with Trigger (where, if I'm being 100% honest, I wasn't happy with my experience at all), is going to be republished with Welbeck in 2022. Welbeck is a publishing house I know very well and respect, and I can't wait for my book to have a home with them. I will start working on that book the week after next, but first, I need to desperately unwind and catch up on some sleep because I feel so exhausted I am certain I could lead the zombie apocalypse...

God, I knew it was busy recently, but seeing it all written down like this, it's even crazier than I thought. I am trying my best to get up to date on anything outstanding before I can get back to writing new things, and so as soon as humanly possible, I am going to be continuing to work on some short stories for my second collection and concurrently work on another non-fiction book. I am also going to be using any time around that to learn about marketing and ads and all that stuff. It's going to be busy, but I'm ready for the challenge (well, that's debatable).

Until next time,

Cara x