“W” is for “Writer” – An A-to-Z Blogging Challenge Post

For the A-to-Z Challenge 2017 I’m writing all about myself. Every post will be some random fact or bit of information about me that you may or may not have already known. Maybe you’ll learn something! Feel free to let me know! ^_^

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This fact should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone, unless you’re just showing up here today for the first time, so I won’t take up too much of your time with this particular post.

I am a writer. I’ve loved writing since I first started coming up with stories in around the third grade. The first time I ever remember writing fiction was for a class project, and I remember it clear as day: I wrote a story called “The Mystery of the Emerald-Eyed Cat”, and signed it “Tracey Lynn Marie Clarke”, even though “Marie” is not part of my name, because I was going through a weird phase. I drew emerald eyes for the cover and pasted it to green paper, and bound it together with green yarn. I was extremely proud of it, and my teacher gave me perfect marks for it.

After that I loved writing stories, and I used to come up with tons of them involving myself and my friends. Eventually I started writing fan fiction, and after that I began coming up with original characters and more intricate plots. I didn’t always write, growing up, but I always came back to writing, one way or another. I always knew that, no matter what else I did with my life, I would also be a writer. That all came together and felt real on the day I self-published my first novel, “Nowhere to Hide“, and recently I published my second novel, the first part in a series, “The Other World: Book One“.

That’s all that really needs to be said about that. It’s a key component of my self, my personality, and my past and future. I’m a writer. Period.

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Did you know that I was a writer? Do you even care? 😀 Feel free to leave a comment!

“N” is for “Nowhere to Hide” – An A-to-Z Blogging Challenge Post

For the A-to-Z Challenge 2017 I’m writing all about myself. Every post will be some random fact or bit of information about me that you may or may not have already known. Maybe you’ll learn something! Feel free to let me know! ^_^

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Time for some self-promotion! 😀

“Nowhere to Hide” is the first book that I completed fully, revised, edited, and published. In those early days I even designed my own cover for it, although I later hired a professional cover artist to create a more attractive one. It’s the story of a girl named Nancy and the people she encounters as the world falls apart during a zombie outbreak. But the zombies aren’t the only monsters in this world…dum dum duuuuuuuuuuum. 🙂

This zombie apocalypse story began life after I read Stephen King’s “Cell”, which I loved. After reading it – and having recently watched several zombie-related movies as well – I thought to myself, “I could do this”, and since National Novel Writing Month was just around the corner, I planned to write my first ever zombie story. It was tons of fun, but also posed it’s challenges as well. I struggled with deciding how to handle gore (too much, too little, too graphic), what kind of endgame I wanted the story to progress toward, and for the first time I really had to pay attention to things like the timeline so that I wouldn’t lose track of basic logic (for instance, a broken bone couldn’t heal in a 2-day time-span). By the time I had a completed first draft I also had a brain filled to the brim with doubts. As many authors before me have done, I tossed the story aside, confident that it was complete and utter drivel.

Luckily, I did convince myself to go back to it, and with the help of my beta-reader I was able to fix up the manuscript and convince myself that it was, in fact, actually a good story . It went through several rounds of edits and revisions, but eventually I actually managed to sit back, look at it, and think, “This is good! People will like this!” And so it was off to CreateSpace.com I went.

Some people have asked me why I didn’t attempt to traditionally publish, and believe me, I did think about it. However, in the end I decided that I was better off going the indie route. By the time my manuscript was ready interest in zombies had begun to wane, and querying traditional publishers can be a very long and arduous journey. I didn’t want to risk the time it would require, because by the time a publisher was willing to take a chance on me, it would be entirely possible that zombies had gone completely out of the limelight and no one would be interested in the book.

Was that choice for the best? I don’t know. Selling books as an indie author is extremely difficult, so maybe I would have been better off going traditional after all. Then again, if I’d attempted the traditional route I might still be querying, with no acceptance letter in sight.

In the end, I’m glad that I did things the way that I did because what’s most important to me is that the book is out there, ready and available for people to read. Of course, it would also be nice if people were actually buying and reading it, so here’s my puppy-dog-eyed plea: check it out! You never know, you might absolutely love it!

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Have you checked out “Nowhere to Hide” yet? Let me know in the comments below!

New Year, Same Insecurities – An IWSG Post

So it’s the first Wednesday of the year, and hmm…seems like I’m still pretty insecure, so I guess I’ll keep making Insecure Writers Support Group posts.

I already wrote a Goals and Aspirations for 2017 post the other day, so I won’t repeat everything that I’ve said about my writing goals, but given what kind of post this is I will tell you how insecure I’m feeling about the whole thing.

For one thing, when I was going through all my numbers for 2016, I realized that despite actually putting forth some real, major effort (at least in the first half of the year), I actually wrote over 25,000 words fewer than I wrote in 2015. And this is in addition to the fact that I all but quite blogging in the second half of the year specifically so that I’d have more time and energy to focus on writing fiction. That is a worrying trend for me and it makes me wonder if – at this point in my life – I’m even capable of turning it around and moving in the other direction. Or will I just keep dwindling and dwindling until I’m basically writing nothing at all? It’s a thought that definitely troubles me.

Additionally we’ve got the whole self-promotion thing. I’ve never been good at it, but I seem to be getting worse, not to mention running out of methods to try. Changing the cover to “Nowhere to Hide” seemed to help a bit, for a short while, but that influx has long since died off and we’re back to being lucky to sell a book a month. I’ve tried giveaways, I’ve tried contacting reviewers, I’ve tried ads…none of them really did much of anything except for an extremely tiny boost during the actual event and then nothing afterwards. I’ve even sent books off to fellow YouTubers (which was more of a present thing than a self-promo thing, if I’m honest), but while their unboxing videos gave us a spike in subs to the YouTube channel, they did nothing for book sales.

I get that zombies aren’t for everyone, so you’re definitely going to get a lot of people who might look at the book and then just go, “Nah, not my bag,” but I have to be honest, I truly believed that I’d sell at least a few books a month instead of having stretches of months at a time of absolutely nothing, and it’s getting really old. I put a lot of effort into that book, I genuinely believe that it’s good, and I’ve had numerous people who don’t even like horror and zombies tell me that they enjoyed it.

But I just can’t get people to buy it. And it’s infuriating. And, justifiably, makes me pretty damn insecure.

I’ve considered sending it off for the Self-Published Book Awards (by Writer’s Digest) again, but I don’t think I want to waste the money. The last time my $75 entry fee got me a pathetic, four-sentence “feedback” e-mail that basically told me that my cover and summary were crap and didn’t really say a damn thing about the book itself at all. I’ve changed both the cover and summary since then, but the overall lameness of what they consider to be “feedback” doesn’t really put me in a mind to waste more money on them.

And so I sit here, thinking and frowning to myself and wondering what else there is I can try that’s not going to cost me money, because so far almost everything I’ve done has cost me money and I haven’t seen a return on it at all.

Also, just as a final note, I don’t know if this has even occurred to anyone who is reading this post, but if my thought process seems horribly disjointed, half-complete, and generally unfocused, I can confirm that it is, in fact, all of those things, because nothing has changed from 2016 and I’m still always doing fifteen things at once. While writing this post I’m also eating breakfast and trying to slam a bunch of coffee into me since I didn’t sleep well last night, chatting online with a friend who lives on the other side of the country so there’s only a few hours a day we can really catch each other, sending messages back and forth with a fellow YouTuber asking his advice on some things, and obsessing over the fact that I haven’t put away any of the Christmas stuff or cleaned up the basement to make way for all the videos we’re super behind on.

And people wonder why I’m insecure. 😛

“Nowhere to Hide” E-book on Sale!

We’re getting ever closer to the witching hour, my dear friends, and I thought that perhaps some of you might be looking for something creepy to read as we approach the spookiest of holidays. Until Halloween has passed us by,  the “Nowhere to Hide” e-book is on sale for $0.99! You can’t beat a novel for a buck, right? Right. So be sure to pick it up before October ends!

September 2016 Goals in Review

Okay, I’m gonna go ahead and warn you guys in advance that September was simply not a great month for any of my goals. Part of that is because of being busy with various life stuff, and getting totally stressed out because of my job, but if I’m honest I have to say that I’m not even really quite sure what happened in September. The month just seemed to completely fall apart on me in numerous ways. So let’s just go ahead and get this ‘Month in Review’ over with, shall we?

Goal #1. Take good care of myself, specifically by walking 10,000 steps per day and taking at least 15 minutes per day to do something fun/relaxing.

Goal #1 is probably the most epic fail of the month because I didn’t even manage to accomplish a part of it. For one thing, out of the entire month, there was only one day on which I managed to hit 10k steps. One day. That’s ridiculous even for me. And to add to that, my average steps were only 6550, which is the second lowest average I’ve had all year. That number should actually be slightly higher, because there was one day during which I’d forgotten to charge my FitBit and it died on me, but the extra steps would probably only boost the average buy a couple dozen. Totally pathetic.

But to make matters worse, I didn’t even manage to pull off the 15 minutes of “me time”…not by a long shot. I counted 19 days where I managed to do something – usually just lounging on 9Gag on my phone or playing that silly Sailor Drops game. That means there were 11 days in September during which I couldn’t even manage to find myself 15 minutes. Not 15 minutes. And that is just depressing.

Goal #2. Build more readership/viewership by putting more focus and energy into my blog posts, shooting more fun YouTube videos, and putting more effort into self-promotion.

The second goal isn’t a complete fail, but I’m not really feeling a huge level of success here either. I’ve definitely been trying to put more time and effort into things like the YouTube channel’s social media, interacting with other channels and the like, and that’s definitely a good thing but it doesn’t seem like it’s doing a whole lot of good, really. We’ve stagnated a bit in terms of new subscribers and followers, and while that’s not necessarily our fault (it could be any number of things, really), you also can’t help but feel a little like you’re climbing uphill with no shoes.

Meanwhile, a little bit of good news is that the new cover for Nowhere to Hide does, in fact, seem to be making a difference. I still wouldn’t call my sales anything worth talking about, but at least there’s the occasional e-book sale, the occasional number of Kindle Normalized Pages Read popping up, instead of months of a completely dead graph. So cheers for that! I definitely need to put more effort into promoting the book though, because I’ve really been neglecting that aspect of being an author lately. Bad Tracey.

Goal #3. Write as much as I can, including writing an entire novel from start to finish.

And then there’s this. I wrote a grand total of 6689 words this month which, like my step average above, is the second worst number I’ve come up with all year so far. It’s better than nothing, there’s no doubt about that, but I’m consistently depressed with my apparent inability to commit myself to the thing that I actually love doing the most.

To accentuate this personal failure, I’ve been getting reminders in my email about how National Novel Writing Month is less than a month away, and I just don’t know what to do with that info. I want to participate, because I’ve participated every year since I discovered the challenge, but I know I’ll fail. I haven’t written 50k words over the course of the last five months, so what are the chances I’ll be able to write that many in one month? Pretty slim I’d say, and I just don’t know if I feel like setting myself up for that failure right now.

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So that’s that, I guess. I didn’t intend for this post to be so moody and depressing, but those are the facts, I guess. And it doesn’t help that I’ve been feeling tired, stressed, and pretty much just burnt out in general. Tomorrow is another day, right? I promise I’ll try to keep telling myself that, if you guys promise to believe it.

How was your month?

Small Changes = Small Victories (an IWSG Post on the Proper Day)

So, in the drunken-stupor-like haze that has apparently become my life, I actually posted my IWSG post last week on what my brain was telling me was Wed, Sept 1st, but was actually Wed, Aug 31st. I posted it early in the morning and went to work fully certain that it was Sept 1st, and didn’t really figure it out until late in the evening, by which time I’d gotten a few comments on the post, making me not want to reschedule it. So…yeah. If you want to read the post that was meant for today, here it is:

https://nopageleftblank.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/small-changes-small-victories-an-iwsg-post/

And someone, for the love of god, please figure out how I can get an extra 4-5 hours of sleep per night without completely destroying what little productivity I have. @_@

August Goals in Review

We are into September, ladies and gentlemen, and although I do have a few good things to mention, I’m going to go ahead right now and admit that it has been a stressful, headachy month, so let’s just jump right into it, shall we?

Goal #1. Take good care of myself, specifically by walking 10,000 steps per day and taking at least 15 minutes per day to do something fun/relaxing.

This, right here…just no. This was a really, really bad month for this goal.

Okay, I’ll admit that the steps part wasn’t all that bad. I did manage to have nine 10k step days and about a dozen other days that were extremely close to 10k but just didn’t quite make it. On the average I walked 8509 steps per day, although that number isn’t exact because my FitBit actually crapped out on me and I ended up losing two days, so I had to estimate based on what I remembered seeing those days. (Sidenote: after a long and arduous troubleshooting session with FitBit they did, in fact, send me a replacement tracker).

The other stuff though? Man…I did not take care of myself this month, and to be honest, I was a ball of stress most of the month. I only managed 21 days with “me” time, and most of that was just watching Sailor Moon at the end of the night at camp while half falling asleep. And it wasn’t actually for lack of trying so much as it was completely forgetting to even try. I’ve been so busy, so tired, and so supremely stressed out (have I mentioned that yet?) that on several days I just flat-out forgot to try to have a few minutes to myself. It’s been absolutely ridiculous.

One thing that I’m trying for September is just to write a few paragraphs in a journal every day. It’s not going to be a useful journal with anything that will ever be shared; the whole point is basically just going to be to get stuff off my chest, even if it’s just to my computer, so I can hopefully breath a little afterwards.

So that was that.

Goal #2. Build more readership/viewership by putting more focus and energy into my blog posts, shooting more fun YouTube videos, and putting more effort into self-promotion.

Strangely this was probably the best goal of the month. Jason and I did lots of fun videos, including a Facebook-only live event that we called “Pops & Shots” (spoiler alert: I got really, really drunk). I also began contacting possible sponsors/partners in an attempt to make the YouTube channel more viable and have new content, and I’ve already managed to hook three subscription box companies into sending me a free box to review. One of them is even running a giveaway along with the video, so hopefully that’ll bring me some new views and subscribers.

On the book side of things, I finally got the new cover and summary up for “Nowhere to Hide“. If you’re looking at this blog from the actual blog and not the WordPress Reader, you’ll see that I’ve updated the theme to reflect this fact. I’m not sure I like it, but I wanted to have my one published book be a defining feature of the blog, so feel free to tell me what you think. And, of course, check out the book! I’ve been sharing it on different social media, and several of my lovely Basement Geeks have already picked it up, so that’s pretty awesome, although it looks like sales are stagnating again. I’ve set up my first ever ad campaign through Kindle, so fingers crossed that that goes somewhere.

Goal #3. Write as much as I can, including writing an entire novel from start to finish.

And finally, there’s this goal, which is almost never where I want it to be, but on this particular month it was just absolutely pitiful. There was just no time! I couldn’t find moments to write, never mind genuine chunks of time. All in all I managed to write a grand total of 3279 words this month, which – I’m not absolutely positive, but I think – is my worst month so far this year. That in itself is extremely depressing, and is definitely one of the subjects of my stress. At least most of the words I did write were fiction, but still, that’s so pitiful. Most serious writers have that kind of word count in a DAY, never mind an entire month. Gah. I don’t even want to talk about it anymore.

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So yeah, long story short, that was my month. It wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, although I’ll definitely admit that the marketing side of things isn’t going half bad. But seriously, if anyone has any ideas as to how I can get 2-3 fewer hours of sleep each night without turning into a howling, emotional wreck, that would be extremely helpful because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day.

And with that said, I’m off to try to relax for 15 minutes. 😛 What was your month like?

Small Changes = Small Victories (an IWSG Post)

Has it really been a month already? I must be getting old, because lately it seems like I blink and it’s the next month. Ah well, I’ve got a few things to mention today!

First off, last month I mentioned that I was extremely frustrated with the release of my first erotic fairy tale because public domain issues made it practically impossible to promote it in any way, shape, or form. It turns out that I was very wrong about this – not about the impossibility of promoting something that’s public domain, but about labeling my story as public domain in the first place.

It seems that when I saw the option for “Is this book public domain?” I completely misunderstood the concept. In my mind I was thinking, “I’ve written a story based on a pre-existing public domain story, so therefore my story is public domain,” but that’s not true. Your story is only public domain if the majority of the story is actually the original story; if the majority of your story is original, written by you, then it is not pubic domain. There are exact numbers, but the long and short of it is that if you write your own, original story that’s only based on a pre-existing one, it’s not public domain. By choosing to say that my story is public domain I was actually saying “I do not own the copyright for this story”, and that is why you’re not allowed to use the promotional tools or choose to earn the higher royalty option.

So I got that all straightened away and, yay! A few sales rolled in! And then stopped… ^_^; Okay, they haven’t stopped completely. One pops up here and there, and I see people reading pages on Kindle Unlimited as well, so that’s something. I haven’t worked out the exact numbers, but I’d say I earned about…$4 or so on this story in the past month. Which is more than I earned on “Nowhere to Hide” for about six months in a row, so there’s that.

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Speaking of “Nowhere to Hide“, it got its makeover! After a minor bit of quibbling over the finer details, a major change to the back cover summary, and the addition of an author photo and mini-bio, we are live with the new look! And honestly, I could scarcely be happier. I love the new, more dynamic cover, I love the new summary, and I love the fact that my picture is now on the back. Unfortunately I haven’t actually seen a physical copy of the book myself yet (god, shipping between the US and Canada just gets slower and slower…), but one of my lovely YouTube buddies picked it up and told me it looks great, so I’m going to take his word for it. ^_^ 

So far the changes haven’t really translated into sales, except for the few that I got from a couple of my YouTube subscribers and friends, but that’s also partially because I’m having a hard time with the promotional side of things agan. I don’t want to just spam my Twitter and Facebook accounts over and over again, but I haven’t found many better options since most promo sites are paid and I’m not looking to spend any more money on this project at the moment. Any ideas, fellow writers?

Oh, and of course, if you’d like to check out for yourself, here it is!

https://www.amazon.com/Nowhere-Hide-Tracey-Lynn-Tobin/dp/1477527923/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472642952&sr=8-1&keywords=Tracey+tobin
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Well, that’s it for me this month. Unfortunately I’m so ridiculously busy that I’m actually typing this up on my phone on the bus to work and it’s starting to burn my eyes, so I’m going to give them a break now. Cheers, fellow insecure writers!

A to Z Challenge 2016: My Thoughts and Feelings

Well, my friends, another A-to-Z Challenge has come and gone. I spent the month of April revealing little tidbits of information about my current work-in-progress, a four-part series called The Other World. So how did the challenge go? Stand by for my thoughts and feelings on the process.

First of all, as far as the challenge part of the challenge, it was definitely a success. I managed to not miss a single day, which is something I wasn’t able to pull off in the previous years, and I didn’t have much trouble at all thinking up topics to match each of the 26 letters. So that all went very well.

Secondly, I did have fun with the theme that I chose. It was interesting coming up with stuff to talk about without sharing too much. The people who dropped by to read my posts seemed genuinely amused by the topics, and I even actually found myself coming up with some new ideas for the series based on stuff I came up with on the spot just for the challenge posts. So that worked out rather nicely as well!

Third, as far as the success of the challenge as pertaining to the blog itself…meh. It wasn’t all that great. I did pick up a few new followers, which is awesome, but overall the individual posts didn’t get many views at all, especially compared to previous challenges. I attribute this mostly to the fact that I personally didn’t visit as many other blogs as I should have. This challenge is a social thing – people visit the blogs of participants who visit theirs – and on that aspect I failed miserably. I just couldn’t seem to find the time this year, and it really bit me in the ass as far as the success of the challenge in bringing new people to my blog.

Lastly, though I had fun with my theme, I realized about halfway through the challenge that I was pretty dumb for choosing it. Why did I share tidbits from a story that might be available by Christmas, when I could have been sharing info on my currently available book, Nowhere to Hide? I’m foolish, that’s why. I should have spent the month hyping up the book that I’m actually actively trying to get out there, rather than a book that is not even close to being released yet. Here I am always complaining that I don’t know how to go about marketing myself, and I completely screw up an awesome opportunity to do it. What the heck, Tracey? What the heck?

So, basically, I feel like the challenge was pretty much equal parts success and failure. It was fun and amusing, and people seemed to like it, but I didn’t really achieve what I hoped to, and gave up an opportunity to do something that might have been better. Do I regret doing the challenge with The Other World as a theme? No, definitely not. I just wish I had thought to market Nowhere to Hide instead.

And that’s that! Another A-to-Z Challenge is over and done. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to read my posts throughout the month of April, and I really hope you enjoyed participating in the challenge as well! Cheers!

A Bookish Choice

Today’s post comes courtesy of The Daily Post’s “A Bookish Choice” prompt, which asks us, “A literary-minded witch gives you a choice: with a flick of the wand, you can become either an obscure novelist whose work will be admired and studied by a select few for decades, or a popular paperback author whose books give pleasure to millions. Which do you choose?”

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There is no doubt at all in my mind that I would rather be a popular paperback author than an admired, obscure novelist, and there are a couple of reasons for that. One reason, speaking from a purely logical standpoint, is that popular paperback novelists are able to earn a living from their trade, whereas obscure novelists have often been known to die penniless. Of course, when it comes to an art-form like writing it’s not all about the money, but being able to pay the bills is definitely preferable to living on the streets or working multiple day jobs just to get by.

The other main reason for my choice can be summed up into the fact that I’m an atheist. Or, in other words, I don’t believe in an afterlife. Or, in further other words: what the heck do I care if people admire my work after I’m dead? Now, don’t get me wrong…it would be awesome if something that I wrote persisted into the future and was admired and studied…but I won’t be around to see it so it’s not exactly a top priority of mine. I would much prefer if my work was enjoyed right now, while I’m here, even if that work is something of a lesser quality.

Part of being a writer is definitely trying to create something amazing, something that will far surpass your lifespan, but in my opinion a bigger part of being a writer is just desperately wanting people to read and enjoy your work. So if I had the choice between getting to see people enjoy my work, or being long dead while it’s happening, I definitely choose the former.

And on that note, please click on the image below to check out my novel, “Nowhere to Hide”. You can read the first chapter-and-a-bit right on Amazon for free to see if you think you might like it! Don’t be shy now…give it a go! ^_^