Chris Lowry's Blog

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I like reading. I like creating. I like learning and figuring out new ways to put things together.  But the thing that makes me money as an author?

Writing books.  Specifically the Z series so far, but I haven’t tried a big launch on Shadowboxer, or Witchmas, or focusing on Sci Fi which tends to trend when I first publish it.  Z though is doing well.

It’s 2017.  Last year as I sat in the living room of my home in Florida, I planned to write one book in each series a month to build up to 13.  I had the time and space and savings to write full time and only write.

I could have done it.  10 books in the Z series would be putting around 3k a month into my pocket.  If the other series performed as well, I’d be at 9K per month.

There is a missed opportunity cost associated with waiting.

when I think about how I should spend my time this year, what I should focus on, it’s a series of course.  I may not have the time now to write one book every ten days, but I can do a book every two weeks, and still reach some goals of series length by May.

That’s 5 months.

The question you should be asking is, what can you do in five months.

I waited too long.  I skipped out on a plan. I got distracted by new stories, new shiny things.  Just last night, I had my notebook in lap just brainstorming and outlined the Fort Smith story of Judge Isaac Parker.  Wrote 8 pages.

Ridiculous, I thought to myself.  I could have put those 1000 words into BZ Blues Highway.

The point is, don’t wait. Don’t delay.  Write, when you can every day, on one series.  Build 8 – 10 books in that series.  Get good covers, get good description and put the world’s largest reading machine to work for you.

I don’t know if blogging helps. I don’t know if promoting other authors helps.  It sometimes seems to do so.  When I tweet about other people’s work, I get a lot of traction on my stuff.

Why?  Is it coincidence?  Are other authors checking me out and buying?

I don’t know.  That’s the hardest part of book sales sometimes.  You can track an ad and put more money into the ones that work.  How do you track the intangible stuff?

You can’t.  You’ll kill yourself trying to track it all, and that’s just a way for the monkey mind to distract you from your one goal.  Your main task is to write the stories.  Write them all as fast as you can, and get them up.

That’s how you find more audience. That’s how you find more traction and become a working writer.

It’s going to take time.  As much time as it takes for you to write the series and get it up.  Three might not do it for you.  Nine might not either.  But keep writing.

If you are good at it, if people like your story and like your style, you will make money.  How much depends on how much you write, how well you write, how well you connect, and how well you are discovered.

Almost all of those are out of your control except the most important of all:  how you write.

I’m not saying you have to be a great writer.  I’m not.  But I am a better writer than I was a year ago, and way better than I was ten years ago.

If you focus on one series and the goal of putting out ten 50k books in that series in a year, you will be forced to get better.  Get faster. Stop editing yourself on the first draft.  Just move the story along.  Have fun.

And keep writing.

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You know there’s a joke here.  There’s something about Mary you should check out.  Mary reached out to me after reading one of my Author Moonshot books and we connected.  Turns out we have an interest in the origin of vampire legends, specifically historical fiction and the Countess Bathory who may or may not have bathed in the blood of servant girls.

She’s also written a lot of non-fiction books, and busy growing her platform, so I wanted to ask some questions and share with you.

Check out what she had to say, then go grab a copy of Medieval Blood on Amazon and check it out

Tell me a little bit about your writing background.

“I started writing in high school and a teacher told me I write essays like Emerson. So, that was a motivator. In college I took a class called the Inner Voice and did some journaling, and started a children’s novella, The Prophecy of Enchantria, which after about 40 years I have put into a paperback and an e-book. My Amazon author page https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B006X9C9CE also has the other 16 books I’ve published myself.”

What series are you working on right now?

“I love your 2017 marketing plan book and I’m working through it. I need to change direction and start a series. It’s possibly going to be a romance series as I have a lot of material! (blushing)”

Do you write in more than one genre or series at a time?

“Sometimes. I like non-fiction and sometimes I get an idea and do a quick e-book on that topic. And sometimes I’ll be writing a piece of fiction and get stuck. So then I will switch back and forth. I also write a lot of book reviews and that is a good “wheel greaser.”

How long have you been publishing?

“3 or 4 years.”

What is the weirdest thing a reader has ever said to you or emailed to you?

“I am currently inviting creative people to say weird but clean things to me.”

Do you have a pen name? Can you share it?

“Not really, but if I write that romance series I will come up with one!”

If you could have readers share your link to a thousand people, what is it?

http://maryblowers.com

What does your writing schedule look like?

“I currently have a day job (it does provide me with a lot of material) so I can write on the weekends and evenings. And on vacation days.”

Where did you grow up? How has that impacted your writing?

“I grew up in the upper midwest near Lake Michigan. I write a lot about the lake and nature and Christianity too as this is a conservative area.”

Where can readers find you?

Amazon http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B006X9C9CE

Createspace https://www.createspace.com/5204619 and others

Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MaryBlowers

Book Blog  http://maryblowers.com/

Twitter https://twitter.com/MaryBlowers

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MaryCBlowers/

YouTube video about some of my books https://youtu.be/GI2BMjcxNow

And finally, what three things do you wish you knew when you started out as an author?

“I am still learning so much so I will decline to answer with 3 things. But 1 is that you have to read a lot, and read prize winning books. I ordered copies of several Pulitzer winners in preparation for writing my next book, for inspiration.”

More Books by Mary

Medieval Blood: Historical Fiction on the Life of Countess Bathory

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I’ve never written two books at the same time before, but in my effort to keep experimenting and learning about being an author entrepreneur that’s what I did in the month of December. I wrote Sweet Home Zombie, the third book in the Battlefield Z series at the same time I wrote Zombie Blues Highway, which is book four.

It was pretty neat the way I divided up the day. I made sure I put in 3,000 words in one story in the morning and 3,000 words into the other in the afternoon. That meant each book was written in twenty days or so, and it also meant I could keep some consistency in the details without having to go back and read or remembered what happened in the series bible or a prior book.

Sweet Home Z is out in eBook today, and paperback available tomorrow, both on Amazon. I’m doing a special promotion this week where you can download Sweet Home Z for free, grab Battlefield Z for .99 and Children’s Brigade for 2.99 in ebook format.

If you’ve already read one of the first two, send me an email to Chrislowrybooks@gmail.com and I’ll send you a pdf of Z Blues Highway for free as an advanced reader.

Would you do me a favor? If you liked any of the stories, would you go leave a quick 30 word review on Amazon.

Z Blues is going to be out in a week or so.

I have a grand design for this year, but am planning some additional work and travel that may prevent me from getting two other projects completed and out there. Time as always goes by too fast.

I’m having a ton of fun with my 10 ideas a day project. I’ve talked about that before where I get up early each morning to journal new ideas over a couple of cups of coffee. I must admit it’s working gangbusters. I’m also practicing the art of focus. This is much harder.

I’ve fallen victim to shiny thing syndrome in the past, where a new idea would capture my attention and I’d drop what I’m doing to chase it down, get it done or halfway done and get excited about a new project. Since Nov 1 and the success of Battlefield Z in the post apocalyptic Science fiction genre I’ve focused on working on the series to the tune of 90,000 words in six weeks, plus outlines for the next two books. I’ve also worked on getting the paperbacks out on each of the versions, and am working on the audio books versions, which I just learned there are more than just one rights to, so it requires some careful navigation and negotiation.

After Z Blues Highway comes out, I’ll finish BIG EASY Z, and BLUEGRASS Z in January and release them. That would mean in sixteen months, I’ll have published 100 projects on Amazon, including 12 fiction novels, 4 short story collections, 2 dozen Author Moonshot guides and the rest one off titles in books and screenplays.

I’ve talked about this before, but it helps that I’ve written for years and stuffed things in drawers. I have a huge back catalog of items to polish and publish.

But I have found my greatest success with newly written and published work. I think I know why that is happening. First, I found a niche with a story I wanted to tell and it connected with people. Maybe because the specter of what would a parent do in a disaster to find their children haunts anyone with kids.

Maybe they recognize that when it comes to their children, they could easily become a monster, much like the ease with which the dad does dark deeds to find his kids. Plus I’m doing something in these books that I haven’t done before. I’m telling the truth. Who knew being one hundred percent raw and honest could help you in your writing?!

Plus the new work has a couple of decades of experience behind it. It’s not a script I wrote in my twenties, a wide eyed youth off the farm and in the big city of Angels, being converted into a book. It’s the words and scars of having lived a little bit, and not trying to hide it behind a higher education.

I guess if you’ve read this far, I really just want to say thank you. I have shared so much of my soul in the Z series, and instead of calling me a freak, or rejecting me, the opposite has happened. I’m so grateful if you’ve read it. Thank you for sticking by me. I promise we’re going to have an even more incredible 2017.

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I think about this sometimes.  Sharing.  What to share. How much.

Sometimes I write in the electronic post it notes on my computer instead of Word or another word processing programming.

I don’t remember how I got started on that habit.

I would click open a note and write a little reminder, I suppose.  A precursor to my 10 ideas a day journal.  A thought would happen, and instead of hunting for one program, I’d just click and type it out.

Then one of the ideas turned into a scene for a story, and that evolved to writing in a giant post it note, which I would then copy and paste over to Word.

Weird, I know.

On some days I would have 20 or 30 notes open at the same time. You can adjust size and dimensions, so something like a daily task list would be small.

Something I had learned in a seminar or training would be a little bigger.  And sense of course would always be over a thousand words.

A lot of them were lists.

Lists of titles for stories.  Lists of characters.

When the windows got too distracting, too many, I would copy and paste them all into a word doc and title it notes from post it with the date.  Or Big Giant To Do List.

I just noticed two of the notes look like books or at least the beginnings of books. 10 k random words strung together.  Some pages with just a sentence, like Gnome goes on a Raid.

I wondered if I published the journal, if anyone would read it and care?

The notes don’t tell a story, but they tell bits of the story, or bits of a story.  And they’re all interconnected by a theme.

How to write more.

How to be a better writer.

How to sell more books, reach more readers.

All of the work built around one goal.

There are goals mixed in the to do too.

Run.

Push ups.

Plank.

Squat.

Written down so I could scratch them off.

Right under Write 2k words in Battlefield Z series.

That’s how you create a focused task list.

Do the most important things first.  If you want to be a writer, write first.

If you want to be a runner, run after you write.

If you want to be a concert Cellist who can scrape out Thunderstruck on the bow, practice.  Do it first every morning.

It reminds me of the man who said make your bed as soon as you get up, and no matter what you will have accomplished one thing that day.

A win.

If you write a little bit each day, the words pile up into a story.  If you get stuck, work on two stories at the same time.  I don’t know what stuck is or what it means.  I have a lot of stories to tell.

One day I might share notes.

Or I might just write more.

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There is more than one way to skin a cat.  But why on earth would you want to skin a cat?  Does their fur make a great coat or hat?  Wouldn’t it be more impressive to shirt a cat?  Dogs will mostly sit in loyal placid wonder as they give in to the whims of owners who want to dress them.  For Halloween. For Christmas.  For spring and summer walks.  A cat will often just flip over and freeze when put into a shirt.

The cat won’t have it.

Is that a sign of superiority to our doggy pals?  Or sheer stubbornness on the feline’s part?

The origin of the expression has to do with either finding a way or making one.

I like that expression better, I think.  Less wasting of the time trying to dress our pets.

Find a way to chase your dreams.

If you can’t find a way, make one.

Find time or make time.

I want to make time with a housekeeper so I don’t have to sweep.  Maybe I’ll get a Roomba, a tiny sweeping robot.  Or an Alexa.

I saw on the news that a little girl in Texas ordered a giant doll house and four pounds of cookies from Alexa.  That story was designed to make you afraid.  People won’t use the technology because they are afraid of small accidents like that, an overcharge from a company that has an excellent return policy.

They won’t let an automatic car drive them because they don’t want to give up control.  We had the same debate when seat belts became mandatory on all drivers in the 80’s.  Automakers installed technology to make it second nature.  You didn’t even have to think about putting on the belt because it automatically rolled across the door when you closed it.

One day, Alexa will talk to my fridge.  Together, they will make a grocery list from items I buy often, and send it to Amazon, or to another grocer.  My card will be charged and groceries will be delivered.

Making time for me to do more.

What I do with the saved time is up to me.

My focus is on writing and building a business.  I want to complete a series I’m writing for television, all ten episodes, then work to get it financed and produced.  I’d like to do four in the state of Arkansas. Then go make more.

I’d like more time to run, more time to play.  I don’t get to see as many movies as I like, and there should always be more time to read outside.  I don’t get enough of that.

It’s mostly my fault.

I spend time trying to get the writing done.  Plus work to make some cash until the biz catches up with the lifestyle I want.  And time with the kids. And planning travel, writing seminars.

Just life, you know.

Find a way.  Or make a way.

It’s pretty much what most people do day in and day out.

They find a way to make money with a job they hate.

The make a way to live with the excuses they tell themselves for putting up with a crappy job, crappy relationship, a crappy life.

My soul cries for adventure, my feet were made for long trails and sunsets on a beach.  My fingers were made for a keyboard and my mind was made through rigorous application of training, reading and practicing.

I’ve read stories about anglers who were late for work every day of the week because they hated it, but would get up at four in the morning and hit a fishing hole before sunrise.  They found a way to make excuses for the job, but made a way to chase the thing they loved to do.

What are you chasing?

What are you making?

What are you finding when you do?

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Memorize this formula. Traffic + Offer = conversions

It’s the only thing you need to know to make money in any business.

Traffic, no matter where it comes from to look at your offer and determine if they want to buy.

Your digital marketing strategy can include multiple offers from multiple traffic sources, and it should.

Ideally, you’re building a list of people who:

Want to read what you write in your blog or book

Who want to buy what you sell

Who want to grow personally and professionally

Who like your product, your brand, your mission

So let’s start with that.

What is your mission?

It should be a simple 30 second elevator pitch that lets you capture someone’s imagination as they see your vision.

My mission is to help 1000 new authors earn $100,000 this year selling fiction on Amazon.

That’s a pretty cool mission, huh?

Why 1000?

I can hear “real” writers gnashing their teeth and complaining about a tsunami of crap washing over the literary landscape.

Well fuck you Jack.

Here’s my take on it.  I’ve been writing since 1978.  Not professionally, since I didn’t get paid for it.  But I drew cartoons and words onto blank blue pieces of paper to tell action stories.

I loved Star Wars and Smokey and the Bandit, Six Million Dollar Man and Fall Guy.  I was a kid, but I knew what I wanted to do.  I wanted to write stories that made other people feel like they were having fun.

So I did.

Starting then.  All through high school too.  I didn’t tell anyone at the time, but I wrote novel in high school and submitted it to a teen novelist contest.

That was my first official rejection letter.  It sucked.

I wasn’t much good at being critiqued or failing then.  I don’t blame my mom or my dad, but I was told all the time growing up that I wouldn’t be much.  Expect to fail, keep expectations low, don’t try, don’t strive.

Any attempt to make or work at a better life was met with swift reprisal.  I was asked a lot, “Who do you think you are?”

Trust me, getting that kind of feedback makes a mess of the inner voice in your head.

I stopped trying to get published until I was in college.  But I never stopped writing.  I wrote all the time, all sorts of stories.  I read.

Like Stephen King. Or Terry Brooks.  Or Mark Twain.  I read a book a week or more.  I wrote almost every day.

I sucked.  I know it, but I created habits and practiced.

Then I tried to be a professional writer.  I got a ton of rejections.  It didn’t hurt, didn’t bother me as much.  I was the first guy in my family to go to college.  Ever.

That took balls.  I skipped the Paper mill and went for a degree in English.  I started in broadcast journalism, and a professor told me I wasn’t handsome enough to be a reporter.  I shouldn’t have listened to him.

I think all professors are probably idiots.  I learned later that most of us live in bubbles.  Bubbles of community, bubbles of job and family.

Every now and then I peeked out of the bubble and got a glimpse of a bigger world.  I try not to live in a bubble now.  Warning: Society wants you in a bubble.  We admire everyone who is brave enough to be different, and then do everything we can to normalize them and bring them into the bubble.

I’ve seen this described in a ton of ways, in business, in music, and art and writing.

Be different to stand out. But get a cover that looks like a thousand other covers on Amazon.  It’s the only way readers will buy you. (that’s true.)

Write different.  But be close enough to someone else’s style that readers will recognize and respond to it, so you can sell books.  (true again)

Get in a community of other authors, each telling you how to make it.  There are a thousand ways to make it.

Pick one.

I think you should pick my way.

I’ve been writing and publishing on Amazon since 2015.  I missed the big eBook explosion that started in 2012.

I’m sad about it.  I had enough books, product and fiction that I could have been publishing that whole time even as I climbed a corporate ladder.

I kept writing through it.  I write 5k words a day most days.  I have a hundred stories I want to tell.

But I like training.  I like helping.  I miss helping people learn.

So I created a way to help new authors.

I don’t know if 1000 will take a chance.  Fiction is funny.  You either can write well, or you can learn to write well, but you have to find readers who respond to you.

It’s tough to do with just one book.

It’s tough to do with just two books.

Three is a good start.

Then it’s about marketing.  Getting traffic to come to your landing page on a website, writing copy to get the person to either buy your book or sign up on your list.

That’s the offer.

You use math to get your conversion rate.  8% is a good one.  Higher means you’re doing it right.  Lower than 5% means you need a new offer.

Or new words for the same offer.

It’s part art, part science, kind of like writing fiction.

Traffic + Offer = Conversions.

I’ve seen people play with the numbers to show you how to reach $100k.

That’s all made up projections.

The real test comes when you hit publish on your book.

And then the next one.  Followed by the next one.

I wish I would have started in 2012.  But 2015 was a good time to start too.  2016 was good to me.

2017 is even better.  When are you going to start?

Can I help you get more traffic?  Can I help you find ten or more ways to create income streams from your books?

From each of your books?

Sometimes you just need an outside eye to consult with, someone to identify where in your platform you could make a tweak to take you to the level you want to be.

Impact adjustments that can have a dramatic impact on your bottom line.

How much does it cost?  $197

How long does it last?  Until you start realizing sales from the tweaks, meaning I’m with you on the path to make six figures in 2017.

Click here if you’d like to know more.

If not, no worries.  Just memorize the formula:

Traffic + Offer = Conversions.

Then go buy this book for less than a cup of coffee to help an author out.

And write.  Daily.  In a series.

That’s worth the price of a cup of coffee too.

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I took some advice last Quarter that I’m really proud of following.  James Altucher suggested I sit quietly each morning, drink coffee and write down ten ideas each day.  They could be about business, about books, about improving the community or building a better mousetrap.  He said that by practicing creating ideas I would become an idea machine.

It worked.  I was the most productive, the most creative I’ve been in a long time and my income through Amazon almost doubled.

Funny how that works.  As an author entrepreneur, the more you write, the better you get.  The better you get and the more work you publish, the more money you make.

Plus, as you become a better writer, you find more readers.  Readers love books that give them pleasure.  Readers like to have fun.

So do writers, and if you can create 10 ideas a day, you’re going to have a blast.

Unless you get frustrated like I do.  I have so many ideas, it’s hard to focus on just one at a time.  It’s tough to think some are going to have to go on a backburner, and some may have to get outsourced, and some may never get told at all.

Frustrating and sad.  This is my first call for help.  If you are an author and you want to double your output next year and you like my writing style, let’s partner up.  You write 20k words, I’ll write 20k words and we’ll co-author a series.  Email me for the deets.

Instead of waiting for other authors to realize that indie publishing is a great way to start building your career as an author though, I decided to train to become a faster writer.

Derek Murphy introduced me to Chris Fox in a podcast.  Fox wrote a series of Sci-fi novels, and a couple of non-fiction works, much like I did.  He’s got a bigger audience than me (he’s been hard at it since 2010), so he’s ahead of the curve.  He also made 100k last year, and expects to almost double it this year.  Not bad for an indie.

He’s the 10th or 11th fiction author I’ve found doing those numbers.  I study them all.

What’s their secret?  They write.  A lot.  They publish.  A lot.

Since I have a lot of ideas, outlines and books on the tarmac in various stages of completion, I needed to figure out a way to join the ranks of Uberproducers.  Or Megaproducers.  Which do you like best?

Fox wrote a book called 5,000 WORDS AN HOUR.  I grabbed it and devoured it.

Turns out, writing fast is a lot like getting fit, or training to run a marathon.  You practice.  He called them writing sprints where you track your words.  I started practicing.  Turns out I naturally write around 2k words an hour.  I just have to work up to doubling it, then work 2 – 4 hours each day.

I’m training to write faster.  Which is good because I just discovered and researched audio rights for indie authors.  Did you know there are at least 7 ways to make money from audio on your books, and that audio books are in a growth phase in 2017?

I ask the question because besides Derek Murphy, and Joanna Penn, I read Seth Godin daily.

He suggested we start asking more questions.  Better questions.

That’s a common theme among people who want to pioneer any industry, or who want to rise to the top.

Start with “How can I?” to create your goal, then ask everyone who has done it before, “How did you?” and “What would you do different?”

If you were starting out as an indie author in 2010, you would write a series of books.  By now you would have 8 or more in the series, and be making a decent living as an author, if your writing was good, if you connected with an audience and if you had discover-ability.  (Those facts must always be present in your work, and the more you write, the better you will be.)

Now it’s 2017.  The ebook tsunami washed up and down.  A lot of stuff was published.  Some of it stuck.  Some people failed.  Other’s succeeded.  The questions you need to ask are what did those who succeeded do, that those who failed did not.

Sometimes it’s about writing to market.  Pick a niche.  Write 8 books in the niche.  Then repeat.

Sometimes it’s about better covers, better format, better professionalism.  Good writing trumps all.  Fun writing trumps all.  But try different covers, better covers if you want to increase sales.

Some gurus will tell you ADS are where it’s at.  In 2016, it was FB ads.  In 2017, they’re trying to sell you on how to use Amazon ads.  Practice and experiment to see what works.  Be prepared for what comes next.

Write a 100 Day plan for your author business.  Add at least one marketing idea per day and at the end of Q1 you will have done 100 things to market your books.

Add one marketing promotion for another author to your to do list.  At the end of 100 days you will have done 100 things to promote another author.  If you partner with me to write a series, I’ll do one thing each day for a year to market us.

Ask a lot of questions.  I have a series in development about Gnomes.  Why gnomes?  I was obsessed with them a decade ago.  I found my garden gnome in a box and put him in my office.  I found a notebook with two dozen ideas about gnomes in it.  It made me need to launch a Kickstarter.  It made me need to find an illustrator.  It made me write four query letters to production companies to pitch.

I’m not waiting for someone to give me permission to move forward with them though.  I’m asking questions about tax incentive financing for film production in the state.

It seems like a lot.  It’s just one question a day.  One action a day.

And I write.  Every morning, after my ten ideas are done, I sit at the computer, open a word doc and put in 2k words at least.  Then I practice 2k more, going for speed.  Soon, I’ll reach 3k, then 4, then 5.

Training.  The question is, how can you get better?  At marketing.  At writing.  At connecting.  At entertaining.

Find your questions, then ask them.

When you get your answers, go do.  Go do now.

I can’t wait to see what you’ve done.  Tell me what you’re working on in the comments.

BTW’s, this post is 1100 words.  I wrote it in 15 minutes.  That’s what practice can do for you.

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Have you made your reading list for 2017?

I’m doing something new in 2017.  Technically, it’s not really new, but maybe a new system or new way of doing some old stuff is a better way to describe it.

My goals and ambitions have always been a little larger than life, but sometimes slow to start out of the gate.  I published my first novel written in my 20’s on KDP in 2012, then promptly focused on climbing the corporate ladder and left it alone to languish in obscurity.  I sold a couple of downloads a month.

Crappy cover.  Bad blurb.  But some folks liked it enough that I earned a couple of bucks from Amazon every month and I kept my eyes on a Directorship instead of an author life.

Fast forward to May 2015 and that same corporate job I dedicated time and energy to for a decade decided to fire me.  I was left in a lurch, out in the cold and heart broken.  Nobody likes getting fired, and nobody likes failing.  At the same time, I was moving into a new house, and dating a woman in my home state of Arkansas while I lived in Florida.

What I wasn’t doing was publishing on Amazon KDP.

I took some time off to adventure, and gather my thoughts on the next step in my career, and settled down in September 2015 to write full time.

I’ve spoken often about the backlist of material I have uncompleted, but I wanted to do two things:

First, I wanted to build a fiction library and begin to earn money from it as an author entrepreneur.  Second, I wanted to document all the marketing efforts I used to grow so I could teach and train what I learned with other writers.

Over the past year, I’ve uploaded 80 projects to Amazon, 26 of them in non-fiction for the Author Moonshot series, and 20 fiction projects, novels, short novels and anthologies in various genres.

I’ve learned a lot.  I’ve made a lot of mistakes.  And I’ve made a little money from it.  My couple bucks a month has steadily grown each month, with December being my best month so far out of fifteen.

What does that mean for 2017?

Reading and Writing.

What are the two best ways to reach your goals as an author?

Reading good work.  Writing more work.

It really is that simple.  That’s the slow and steady way to build an audience and build a readership.  I know a lot of people don’t want to hear that because they think there’s a shortcut.

So, like me, they read all the semi-famous or infamous indie authors, and marvel at how they pull down six figures.  Yet in my extensive reading, do you know when most of those authors got their start?

2010.

Do you know how many books they have published with professional covers, and good editing?

At least 15 or more.

This wasn’t a random sample.  Trust me, I’ve been digging in and following authors all year long, trying to find what works best, what magic pill they’re taking, who is coaching them, what tactics are they using to catapult to success.

Turns out, it’s writing.

Yep, they’ve been at this for a couple of years (6 by the calendar) and they keep publishing good books.

Case in point, I just saw a post by Derek Murphy with Chris Fox.  I’d never heard of Chris Fox before, but he was a six-figure earner and maybe had some tips to share.  I read the post and wondered, “How have I not heard of this guy before?!”

He’s got some great points and tips to share and I went from the post to download two of his books, a non-fiction piece on 5,000 words an hour, and a fiction science fiction piece called EXILED.  I’ll read and review both for this blog, but it pointed out something that even a six-figure author has problems with.  Discover ability.

I’d never heard of this guy. I don’t know if I’ll like his books, or if he’s any good.  And he made over 100,000 last year writing.

What does that mean for you?

Keep at it.  If you haven’t started yet, what should you do?  Write.

Write more.

I highly recommend my formula in 2017 Marketing Plan which is to write one 50k word book per month for six months and make a series.  Don’t try to market them except through KDP free days, and once you have a body of work, then invest in marketing.

I cover a lot of topics on book marketing and increasing your discover-ability in my Author Moonshot series of books, which you can pick up for .99 each or grab a paperback for the price of a Venti Frappuccino.

But if you just want one action item you can do today, it’s WRITE a book.

Then write another.  Publish on KDP.  Offer 5 Free Days to reach more readers and increase visibility.

It really is the simple stuff or the basics that are going to help you succeed.  The more you write, the better your craft.

Plus, the more you write, the faster you can write.  I suggest spending an hour or two to create a highly-detailed outline for your novel, with 20 or 30 chapters.

Then go fill in the chapters during your writing time.  That novel will fly by.  Of course, it will be a first draft, so you need extra eyes on it, then edit it.

Run it through spell check and Grammarly.  That’s going to catch a lot of your mistakes.

Have someone read it for you.

Then hire an editor.

Get a good cover from a pre-made selection for $30-$40 bucks or find someone you like off Fiverr to do the job.

Then publish on KDP.

After that, go write another and repeat.

Then another and repeat again.

The more you write in a series, the better your work becomes.

Think you can’t?

When you’re writing your outline for book one, go ahead and create four more outlines with one question:  What happens next?

If you write steps one through 30 on a page, then put in 1500 words per step, and keep moving through 4 books like that, you’ll have a series created with an overarching storyline, and plot points you can cover in one session so you don’t have to go back and wonder what you said or made happen in book one by the time you reach book three.

I had some luck writing the first part of Battlefield Z – Sweet Home Zombie while I outlined BZ – Zombie Blues Highway.

It made both works go faster.

I’m trying it again in January with a challenge to myself.  I’m going to write a novel per week for four weeks.  That’s between 5,000 – 8,000 words per day.

You can help me out at PATREON if you like.

BZ – Zombie Blues Highway

BZ – Mardi Gras Zombie

BZ – Renegade Zombie

BZ – Bluegrass Zombie

One Dad hunts for his lost children after the Zombie apocalypse.

One of the things I did with BZ was show how the Dad descended into a darker personality type through each book. From a light hearted comedic tone that got progressively negative and dangerous the closer he came to learning the truth about his kids.  Did they live?  Did they go Z?

By using an outline of the series, each book can focus on growing and building the characters.

I’ve done the same with two more series I want to work on, WITCHMAS which I’m planning to publish soon, and SHADOWBOXER, about the world’s luckiest hitman.  Next up I want to do something with THE ODIN RULE, another series I outlined journaling one morning and I’ve been playing with some more light hearted stuff about GNOMES, a trilogy that I’m almost done with.

With so many ideas popping, you can see I had to find and take training on how to write 5k words an hour, and then do it 2 or 3 hours each day.

I’ve been doing some reading on it, and there’s science behind how it happens.  It’s called FLOW STATE and you may have read about it, or listened to a podcast.  You may have even experienced it yourself, but it’s basically when you are in the zone and everything is going right.  From an author’s perspective, it means being able to sit down and produce creative work on demand, and then cranking out a first draft in ten days or so.

Turns out, it’s easier than you may think.

I want to share with you how to prime your pump so you can hit flow state every time you sit down at a keyboard.  First, pick the same time each day to write.  Drink the same drink. (coffee, tea or smoky flavored whiskey) Put on the same music style. (I use classical, or Disco, or Classic Rock depending on the genre.)

Sit at the same desk, or same spot.  Get comfortable so you won’t have any distractions for the next four hours, or your allotted writing time.

Open your doc and write down your beginning word count in an excel file.

Then write.

When your allotted writing time ends, write down your end word count in another column in the file.

Track your words daily.

I was doing this visually, but not recording them, and I really liked watching my word total in the doc climb, but tracking it in a spreadsheet makes sense.  You can determine which days are more productive, and identify what led to the flow state.

But it’s about training your brain to get into that state when you sit down to write.

One secret that I’ve used this past year is working on a laptop that I can’t connect to the internet.  This keeps me from going off the rail on “research” which I like to do, and keeps me from chasing all the other “To-do’s” that pop into my head and all serve as distractions to my overall goal.

If you work on a computer, think about downloading a program that keeps you off the internet to help with your discipline.  Or grab an old laptop, work in Word or Scrivener on it, and then use a gig stick to transfer the file to your main computer when it’s time to share.

2017 is about sharing.

Sharing my reviews, sharing the love for other indie authors on #Helpanauthorout day where I tweet a .99 cent book all day and encourage others to share and retweet in the hopes of putting a couple thousand sales on the sheets for a good author I’ve enjoyed.  (Part of my indie author focus.)

Sharing my work style on Patreon to gain additional support for myself and eliminate distractions to focus on what you should be focused on.

Write. Publish. Write. Publish. Write. Publish.

I can’t wait to see what you do in 2017.

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2016 Sucked…Or Did it?

We lost a Princess this week and the world mourned Christmas Day as Heaven claimed a singing angel, the fifth or sixth one this year.

The long list of celebrity deaths made 2016 seem like an endless parade of tragedies and we all fueled it with Facebook.

When someone we admire dies, we post it on our Wall.  A tribute, a memorial or just thoughts like these.  FB takes notes on our words and LIKES and the little robots go into hyper drive to find stories and people who feel like us, think like us, and then we’re connected to share our collective grief.

2016 Sucked.

If you were a celebrity over fifty.

But if you were the ozone layer over Antarctica, turns out it was a good year.  Thanks to all of our efforts the protective layer over earth is healing and the hole in the ozone is shrinking.

For the first time in one hundred years, the tiger population is growing instead of shrinking and pandas were removed from the endangered species list.

People in India not only fought to save tigers, they worked to save the planet by planting 50 Million Trees in a 24-hour period.  Our lungs appreciate that.

Michael Phelps became the most decorated Olympian of all time.

Infant mortality rates fell around the world.  That means more babies lived in countries where they normally don’t.

Every day a million tiny little victories across every continent can’t get lost because they don’t get enough LIKES and shares.

Tesla announced it’s going to change the solar energy industry the same why it disrupted cars.  Imagine being able to pick who and how you buy your electricity from in the next year or two.

Amazon and Google introduced home AI’s that will revolutionize the way people live.

Why do we care about all the great things that happened in 2016 when so many Crap things dominated the headlines?

Because if you really think about it, the world is a pretty amazing place.  People can solve problems when they don’t spend all of their time bitching about them.

Or maybe bitching is part of the solution.  If enough people complain about the plastic floating island in the Pacific vortex, someone will do something about it. (Someone is, a teen in the Netherlands built a prototype trash sucker thing that’s going to scoop all the plastic and microparticles out of the water using currents.)

Is it okay to be sad when a celeb dies?  I am.  I don’t really care if it’s okay or not.

I grew up with these people as part of my life, my music, my movies.  I “feel” like I know them, so it’s okay to grieve their loss, even if they weren’t a part of my daily life.  Except a few were.

I listened to WHAM a lot as a teen.  It made me happy daily.

I watched STAR WARS at least a hundred times.  I know Princess Leia.  I can mourn that.

I grew up with Mike Seaver’s Dad, Alan Thicke.  I can sing the theme song to FACTS OF LIFE and two bars of DIFFERENT STROKES.  I can miss him too.

My takeaway is different than yours.  That’s okay.

What I want you to focus on though is their hearts.

Each of them was killed by their heart.  Heart Disease. Heart Attack. Burst Aorta.

My mom died of heart disease when she was forty-two.  That’s too young to die, I think.

I’m older than she was.  I feel twinges in my heart sometimes and wonder, even though I run and have a resting heart rate that would make most people jealous.  I even got tested after some stress related pain.  The doctor told me I had nothing to worry about, and to maybe not run such long distances.

I’m lucky.  I don’t have alcohol or drug addictions to hurt my heart muscle.  I eat a decent diet.  I exercise.

A lot of people don’t.

When you think about 2016 and long for 2017 so we don’t lose any more people we love, it’s a pipe dream.  People are going to die every day.

Better to focus on the good those people can do while they’re here.  Singing. Acting. Writing.  Planting trees.  Saving the ozone layer.  Saving the planet.

Think about someone you love.  What can you do in 2017 to make their life better?

Can you introduce them to walking to fight obesity and heart disease?

Can you share good news so they aren’t surrounded by so much bad?

Can you help relieve stress in their life by being a positive buoyant role model?

These are just thoughts.  I’m sure you know what to do.

We all learned the rules early on.  Be kind to each other.  Or in my world it was Be Excellent to Each Other.  Those guys will die someday too.  I hope it’s a long time from now.

Be kind.

Be nice.

To people and the world.

If you did that every day in 2017, can you imagine what we could celebrate next December?

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I have the worst case of monkey mind you can imagine.  I am distracted by shiny things.  I see something that is working well, and instead of focusing on it and doubling down, my brain instantly starts to wonder about the one hundred other ideas it had that day, ready to chase down the story, the line, the new and fun thing.

It’s difficult to zero in on work and get it done.

I can literally open a desk drawer and pull out eight uncompleted novels with 10k – 20k words each.  I can open a file on my desktop and find twenty more, all begging to be finished and up on Amazon.

I have a little black notebook I journal in each morning, practicing my ten ideas a day, which usually generates one story that I can plot out, add some dialogue, and wonder when I’m going to have time to work on it.

This weekend was particularly bad for the monkey.

As we close out the year, the competitive goal setting side of me felt like we were coming up short on the income side.  We could be doing better.

So I examined page reads, and noticed that the series I’ve been working on as an area of focus is doing great.  But some other series aren’t getting noticed as much.  They were being neglected while I built the series up, and other commitments are going to command my time and attention once we roll into 2017.

Monkey mind off to the races.  Why bother focusing on the thing that works when you have 20 stories just crying to be told and oh so close to finishing!

Nevermind that the audience you’ve built for Battlefield Z is hungry to find out what happens, why not work on the brand new series you created this weekend during coffee time, or the Grail project that popped up again, or oh I know, the spy thriller series tied in to the Russian ambassador being shot in Turkey!

Don’t stick with what’s working, race off to something new.

Except who do I have to prove anything to?

I’ve got the stories.

I’ve got 57 more years or so to tell them.

Do I want them all out today?  It would be nice, but instead of rushing along, I’m going to clear my head with a run and get back to what’s important.

Battlefield Z Zombie Blues Highway, book 4 in the series.

Then I’m going to finish BZ Big Easy Zombie, book 5.

After that, it’s BZ Blue Grass Zombie, BZ Ship’s Graveyard Zombies, and then BZ Key West Zombies.

That means I’m committed until March.

Even though I want to finish the two television series I need to pitch.

Even though I want to bang out three novelizations of scripts I’ve written for the House Rules series (Jack’s Wild).

It’s about controlling the monkey mind.

And I know why it’s rebelling.  It’s Christmas, the weather outside turned frightful and I haven’t been on a hike or run in over a week.  I shot six holes in my freezer, I think I’ve got cabin fever.

I’m not sure which list Santa has me on, and oh yeah, there’s a great idea from two weekends ago about Kris Kringle meeting Odin to hunt the Krampus on Yule.

Alright monkey, stop the madness.

If you are working, you can write 2,000 words a day before anyone else gets up, or after everyone goes to bed.  Make it a part time job.  2k words a day means in 20 days, you have a 40k word draft.  In 60 days, math says you’ll have 3 drafts.  Come on Monkey, can you stick with me that long?  Winter is over in April, that’s three short months and two weeks away.

How much can you get done in a Quarter?

Can you hold your focus that long?

I’ve been focused on writing this past year, enough to have published 12 novels, and 23 non-fiction pieces, plus a short story collection or two.  I’ve written a couple dozen blog posts, couple dozen facebook posts, a metric megaton of Tweets.  This year has been about the words.

In 2017, it still will be.

But the shift will be on maintaining focus and not chasing down ideas.  When I was doing some research into what I’ve done this year, I found four more novels (50k each) of words scattered into new projects I’d start and discard.

I’m not disappointed, because I pride myself on being a creation machine, and that level of output in a year is good.  But had I started on the BZ series a year ago, and pushed out 16 books in it, I’d be much further along in my career.

I would have a bigger audience, a bigger reach and be making more money.

Hindsight being what it is, no wonder the monkey is rattling the cage and calling for more work published.  It notices what is has missed, as opposed to what we have done.

I’m asking you to celebrate your accomplishments this year.  If you didn’t reach your goals, take time to evaluate why, then make a new plan, break it up into little steps and get cracking.

2017 is going to be my best year as a writer.

I’m going to get the BZ series up to the eight mark, put out eight more novels in another series, and get the television shows done.

There will be merchandising, and conferences, and best of all, getting to meet and talk to hundreds of readers who take the time to email me.

Thank you for making 2016 incredible.  I hope you stick with me for a whole lot more.  Let’s share some adventures and stories.