D.S. Johnson's Blog

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REALMS OF EDENOCHT DESCENDANTS AND HEIRS was a very amazing read that I ended up finishing during just one reading session because once I began I did not want to stop reading. The overall feel of the book reminded me of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, bit the story itself was unique! I really hope the author decides to continue to write in the fantasy genre!

https://booksforbookz.blogspot.com/

Hey there! I’m so excited to be being featured on several blogs and websites for the next month! Here’s the link, I hope you check out the interviews and leave me a comment or two!

http://www.pumpupyourbook.com/2019/06/11/%f0%9f%9a-pump-up-your-book-presents-realms-of-edenocht-descendants-and-heirs-virtual-book-publicity-tour-fantasy-vbt/

Well like the title says, another year has come and gone, and I am still nowhere I wanted to be. I have made great progress on book two but stalled out when some personal tragedies took its toll this last year. I wish I could say that writing is all consuming, but I have found it very hard to wrap my brain around it.  I feel like I have let my readers down and my characters, but most of all, I have let myself down. I know it won’t do any good to beat myself up, so instead, I am going to set myself some small but achievable goals to help kick-start my resolve to get book two done.

Goal one:

Spend several minutes daily talking to my characters. I know that sounds a little wonky, but after having spent so much time away, I feel like I need to reconnect with them inside myself and allow our friendship to rekindle.

Goal two:

Write down our conversations, even if it’s not related to the overall story. I think that they will have grown as I have this last year and we need to organize our thoughts.

Goal three:

Stop stressing over what is supposed to come next. As a character-driven writer, I often find myself not sure on what the next event in the plot is or how to get there. I fear I’m not going to be effective in descriptions or the why’s and or how’s that then I just don’t do anything.

Goal four:

Let the story flow as it feels natural. As stated in goal three, this last year, I have especially fretted over making sure the plot is going a certain way and I’m getting the feeling that the characters are asking for it to be something else, and I’m not listening, which brings me back to goal number one.

So wish me luck and hopefully, I will be able to release book two officially named Realms of Edenocht Descendants and Heirs, out for Black Friday!

Well here it is the middle of October and I haven’t written anything for such a long time. I regret to say it’s because I have been distracted with other things. And as every October, Halloween is around the corner and I am knee deep in costumes. I’ll post pics of the process soon but for now I am going to write a little about something I don’t know anything about.

Marketing! Yep, I have come to think of this as a four letter word. However, I really want to change that and figure out how to use the dynamic versatility of the internet to build my author platform. I don’t just want to sell books to people who got sucked into my fabulous advertising, I want to create super fans. People I can inspire and send on a little escape from reality from time to time. I want to connect with them, I want to hear what they have to say, and what they want from an author. I want to know that the hours I spend on my computer researching and writing is going to give people, granted a lot of people, an experience like none other.

So, what I have figured out is this, all of the gurus that promise to teach you how to build your email list are full of crap. Yes, I said it. I have spent more than I want to admit only to find that email lists don’t do jack. If, and that’s a big fat IF, a person has to sign up for your ‘free’ what ever, 8 out of 10 times they are going to give a fake email, or rather the one they use for all the junk crap emails they get from signing up just to get the little bit of free what ever, take their little piece of free and never see you gain. I have also found that even if they do actually sign up, and then buy your book, you would have to have some kind of product that they have to re-buy every month to make the kind of money these people talk about. Or finagle them into thinking that the six month payment plan for their $1500-$5000 program is worth it.

Now, I do understand how it works. Make something sound so amazing and use the same key words a million times in your little podcast or webinar or what ever, to trick the person into buying your perfectly awesome product. That’s just not good business to me. I know call me old fashioned but it really makes me crazy. I don’t want to be lied to, tricked into buying things just so that someone else can make a ton of money. I didn’t know that I would love to write when I was in high school, or maybe I would have gone to college to learn all about this stuff. In fact, like I have said before, I graduated with a 2.9GPA and that was working my but off. I didn’t know that after I found that I loved to write and spent six years learning on my own through trial and error and using websites like FanStory to get peer reviews and such, that I would then have to know about marketing, author platforms, book covers, online publishing, websites, blogging, self promoting etc.

My head about exploded when I thought about all the time it was going to take. Then I found a website that promised they would do all those things for me, yep, for another $1500-$5000. Well crap! Now what, because you know, I just have that much money sitting around waiting for just this purpose. Maybe if I check my couch a hundred times it might show up. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t pay someone for their time and expertise, I just don’t have that kind of money to dedicate to this. So now what?

I don’t know! I don’t, I really don’t know what to do next. I keep hearing about Google Analytics, and Adwords and all this stuff but you have to pay for that too. If I knew how to use it, I might consider it. Along with Mailmunch, Sumome, Mailchimp and every other service out there. Not saying they are good or bad, just after you add it all up….well you know. I don’t even know how to blog, but there is a class for that somewhere I am sure, but only if you pay $$$. I know this is sounding like its all about money and I don’t have any. I am not broke by any means, but I don’t think that getting gouged is going to get me anywhere I want to go any faster.

I guess my next move is to spend a little and take a few more classes. Yep, you guessed it, on MARKETING! On online marketing, preferably with an emphasis on IndieAuthor publishing. I will also attend the IndiCon this month and focus on getting my little class I am doing for my local author and you event I have been invited to ready. It’s on Writers Block. I’ll post again as I start working on that too.

Until then, happy writing and creating and all things good!

DS Johnson

Here’s were you can tell others what you thought about The Barrier. Good, bad or indifferent, please share your thoughts. After all you, the reader, is what its all about.

This is not anything I normally do, but when you find out your good friend is an author, it’s kind of a big deal~ and I want to share it with you

So this past few months has been a roller coaster of crazy! I have learned a great deal on this journey and these last few months is nothing shy of consistent. So, since the release of, The Barrier, in November I have watched with enthusiasm, the success and the apparent not success. I have searched the internet for information on what I may or may not be doing right. I must say it’s not easy to sift through the stuff and find what will work for me. The thing I don’t like is the guessing game, try this and try that. Well in the madness a sudden realization came that I didn’t meet one of my own deadlines, to get the Queen Ambrosia story finished by Jan. Well here it is March when the Minca’s story was supposed to be done and wow, its not even conceived in my brain. In fact I haven’t even ordered my Plot Whisperer work book for it.

BUT…… I did start writing a few chapters on book 2. YAY! I am soo happy getting back to what I actually love to do. I don’t want to not do the business side of life as an author but I can’t be away from writing for that long either. And I have ordered my work book so as soon as it gets here I will start getting my act together again! (IF that’s actually possible haha)

So a little update, I have two new chapters and a few scenes for book 2 and I have read through all my notes and current scenes waiting to get put into the story. Shaz and Serin are currently traveling to the Bair Mountains and have to find the portal that opens to the ancient underground city. What they don’t know is where the portal is and what the mountains have in store for them. They have also had the pleasure of meeting the Jaduuk now in person.

I can’t wait to read the rest of book two and start organizing scenes and plots. So far I think I am about half way done with the construction phase!

It’s interesting to me how life goes sometimes. Like I said in my bio, as I was pondering how I could contribute to the world and my family after my youngest was older and having to take care of my disabled mother, I was prompted to write a book. And like I said I had no idea how to do that. Well these are some things that I have learned in the six years or so since that day.

First, that writing has nothing to do with reading. Yeah, that sounds wrong, but it’s true. It has little to do with imagination, creativity, or especial grammar (that’s what editors are for). What it does have to do with is desire, persistence, passion, and endurance. The last has been the hardest. After I started learning how to write and what all that entailed I felt like the milestones I was reaching ie word count, peer review, understanding craft and technique, etc. were leading me to somewhere. I felt like I was going to finally get somewhere. Then I learned that I had to have it edited. Ok, so in order to really compete with the traditionally published authors I needed it to be edited professionally, not just by my sister who reads a lot (even though she was always a big part of the process) but by someone who charged an arm and a leg. Well, shoot, I need the ones I have, so I found Blue Squares Editing and was able to save for a bit and sneak some from the budget and got it edited. Now I have to say, that was the best money I had spent! I learned so much from Christopher that it really took my writing to a whole new level.

Then I learned that I had to have the write kind of cover, blurb, and synopsis. Ok, what does that mean. I turned to IndieRecon and found a plethora of great info, but how do I start to apply it all. I am still working on that. But now I was totally confused. I kept seeing, if you think your going to be a overnight sensation and make it big and quite your full time job then don’t do this, and you need to so this and you need to do that. I paid again for more training where I learned a great deal about Amazon and how that works.

Then I learned that I had to have a successful launch and what that entailed. Still checking the list to see if I missed anything. By this time I think I grew a new patch of gray hair, in which I color and will always do so. Then I put my book into the universe on Amazon and watched it soar. No, not really, I did feel that I had done quite well because I held a great position on the Amazon rankings and was on the first page in my niche genre and things. I was on cloud nine, then about three weeks later the air had slipped from my balloon and I sank to the bottom.

The numbers weren’t good, in fact I think I cried. I started to doubt what I was doing. I had spent over $1000 now on this book and six years of my time. I moped around and didn’t shower for days. Ok well about two days, but it felt like way longer. I figured it had to be my cover was wrong, maybe my blurb. It must be my synopsis. I changed my cover, re worked my blurb, became obsessed with checking Amazon everyday and watched it sink clear down to the millions place. My heart sunk.

Then I read a Facebook post from another Indi Author who was confiding her struggles with much of the same things and she had decided to take all her stuff down from the online markets and put them all on a free site. Her desire for writing for those who love to read had been stifled by the need to meet the requirements and politics of publishing, that she had forgotten to love to write. It really made me think, and before I spent any more time wasting away in Amazon ranking hell, I needed to figure out why it was that I started this in the first place.

I took myself back to that moment when a small voice in my head told me to write a book. It didn’t tell me to choose YA fiction, it didn’t say anything. I could have chosen to write on how to deal with adult children-because I have some- I could have chosen to write about how all the different ways I have tried to keep my house clean when it really comes down to ,because I just didn’t do it, but I chose YA Fiction. So I started to think, why? Well it was because my son had a hard time finding something to read that he was interested in that wasn’t ‘how to build an engine’. An actual story, fiction, fantasy that he wanted to enjoy. Plus, he and the rest of my house, are a house of Geeks. Yes, we do Geek at our house and everyone plays some kind of online game or console gaming. Even the 4 year old plays abya.com. I know, what about good old fashion make believe. Are you kidding! You really have to have an imagination to play online games. Anyway tangent for another day. Then it came to me. That is what I was going to do, bridge the gap between online role playing games (MMORPG’s) and books.

Yes I said it MMORPG’s and BOOKS in the same sentence. It is possible to do both, to love both. So that is what I learned, what my journey has taught me. That it’s ok to love both, and to have them both. How to work hard and that you still have to spend money. How the most important thing is that there will be a million ways to do something and a million things you have to do and all the should’s and should not’s. But what ever you do do, NEVER forget the reason you started! If that’s to leave a legacy for your loved ones, never forget it. If it’s to offer your years of expertise to others, never for get it. If its to make a million bucks, never forget it.

I have learned, to have a great love for something that used to be so hard for me. And to overcome the challenges and hurdles has felt to stinking awesome. If I never make a dime, the one thing I will cherish is being able to bridge the gap between reading and video gaming. And to enjoy the journey, even through the hard parts and the slow parts.