update

Having finished two parts of a trilogy, and being almost done with the third, I am on a kind of roll with the writing, though it's been a long time coming and I feel I'm in danger of sinking again into oblivion when it's finished. The marketing is not so productive. In fact, I am using this post to wonder what the heck I'm doing.

First, the writing: on my Amazon, check out Be Our Guest and White Elephant. The Halberd is next, and the three of them together will be Beasts of Ayutthaya, part of the Global Beasts series. I'm proud of it. It's magical realism, my new genre. It may work or may not, but at least I'm producing something.

On the marketing front, there's read-marketing and machine-gun marketing. That's really all I have. Friends and family read them; others by and large haven't found them. The purpose of machine-gun marketing (put an ad on every single medium or place or platform you can. find) is to widen people's exposure. How many people even know I exist? I've been on some of these sites before but that doesn't seem to affect anything. My marketing doesn't seem be drawing many people in. Wasted energy, as far as I can tell.

On the reading front, I finished three excellent indie books and will review all three as soon as possible. Two were by good friends. I am attracted to the authors I like and just read them without prompting or exchange, and they're good for me; I enjoy them. Some are exceptionally well written. But on the review-exchange sites, my luck isn't very good. Some people leave good reviews which I don't always totally trust. Others leave bad reviews and I don't entirely trust them either. One guy reviewed my book after only reading seventeen pages. But he seemed to think it was ok to basically admit that he only skimmed it. Should we take him seriously?

This leaves me with four unfinished books, three of which are lousy to say the least. One is borderline entertaining, another is just kind of bizarre. One has to be done today. It's fair-to-ridiculous.

Such is life. Back to work.