Okay, so its three months in since Irrelevant Experience came out, and coincidentally the date coincides with my initial target of selling 207 copies (that’s on Amazon Kindle store, and not counting the handful bought on Smashwords/Apple/Kobo). While it may not sound like a huge amount, I am impressed its got that far this quickly. It’s also accrued 14 reviews on Amazon, all at 3 star or above which has probably been the greatest reward. I also had the first royalty check come through, which wasn’t a kings ransom but covered the money paid for editing the book. I think when the next few come in, over the following months I think I would have broken even on it. While there are many pleasures of writing a novel, I can attest to the fact that money isn’t one of them. I think I will be fortunate to earn in a year, what I make in a week at my day job (and I am not extravagantly paid by any stretch of the imagination).

Still, I can’t wait to see that tweed jacketed arsehole that put me on this particular journey to tell him the news. I realise that may make me sound incredibly petty, but there is something about irresistible about delivering justice like a biblical deity. No doubt there will be some caveat he will come up with, along the lines that you cannot really compare trashy chick lit to his highbrow obscure musings, but I don’t really care.

Still some things remain outstanding. The work for the paperback and final minor amendments had to take a back seat in the last month (for obvious reasons), so maybe I can get the last of the feedback and move that forward. I am still at the pre-planning stage for the next part of the story, and am trying to figure out a few things. Truth be told, I still need to bring myself back to the level where I was before all the stuff happened in October, but I am noticing that things are slowly getting better and I am taking it a day at a time. My next target for the 6 month mark would be to have finally done all the amendments and got the paperback version out, and maybe get to 300?

I am also curious to see what happens next. If I was to put a bet on it I think the numbers will die down as the ClinPsy hardcore have all bought it, and we move away from application season. Maybe some word of mouth may get out and there may be a spike around interview time, but I am not sure if people are going to be in the reading frame of mind then. Perhaps it may pick up as a fresh batch of applicants come in next year, but we will see. If I really had a wish, it would be that the book reaches beyond the clinical psychology hardcore, and gets out to the mainstream and the idea of Clinical Psych lit becomes a “thing”. I was heartened to read John Marzillier’s Book, The Gossamer Thread (which is ace and far more clever than mine), and would really love if more of us got what we do out there.