Hey everyone!
Well, it's been a few months since I mentioned posting an update for book 8, so I'm finally getting around to doing that.
Essentially, I was hoping to publish #8 this year, but considering we're a week into December already, it's obviously not going to happen. This is due to 1) not being done the book, and 2) no longer having the money for its cover.
Thanks to my freelancing work, I had enough funds to get the cover, but then my cat, Nyra, needed to go to the vet a few times. My sweet girl was diagnosed with renal lymphoma. It's an aggressive form of cancer, so it progressed quickly despite my best efforts. Within a couple of months, I decided it was kinder to say goodbye. She was my lady for about thirteen years, since birth. The apartment feels far too quiet and empty without her here.
Caring for Nye Nye, then saying goodbye, wiped out the vet fund I have set aside for my cats. My cats take priority over my books, so that money I made from freelancing will go straight into refilling the vet fund.
With having to start saving for a cover from scratch, it will take quite some time, which means unless I get more freelancing work, I'm not even sure if I will be able to publish an 8th book next year. I will of course try my best, but we will see how life goes.
With all that being said, I know which book will be #8, which takes a big book-related load off my shoulders. For the longest time, I was struggling to decide between Emergent #3 or The Ascension #3, because both had plot things that I had to figure out in my head before getting started on writing them. I figured out the issue for The Ascension #3, which means that will be the 8th book.
My goal the past couple of years has been to finally start wrapping up all the series I have ongoing instead of always putting out new, unrelated books like I was doing previously. My first step in doing that was publishing Vigil, and then came Insurgent. As it turns out, the plot fix that I thought of for The Ascension #3 will make #3 the last book in the series, making it a trilogy. Which is a bit amusing, because originally it was going to be a duology, then it turned into a tetralogy. Now, it's going to be a trilogy. Whether it will stay that way, who knows! Either way, the plot issue being figured out means I can start working on that book again, which is great.
In a bit of positive news, November was a bit of surprise in terms of pages and sales read. It was the most I've made in a single month. Obviously in comparison to a regular job, it was pennies, but it was pretty sweet. It also netted me a small handful of ratings as well, but only on Goodreads (except for one). I have a list of author goals for this year, and my review/rating goal was for Amazon, so none of those GR ones counted towards that.
During this time, I also got my first (legitimate) negative review. I say "legitimate" because as I've mentioned on some of my socials, someone left a negative, fraudulent review on the two Ascension books quite a while ago that are still there to this day lol. Anyway, so this first legitimate one was scathing. Like honest-to-heck like a metaphorical just ripping the book in half. It sucked at the time. But it didn't take me long to get over it. Even the most popular, bestselling books have scathing reviews. Not only that, but 1) this was my first ever book, 2) I wrote it at age 16, and 3) relating to the prior points, it was written as a teenager, for teenagers. Of course it's not going to be an adult hit. And I know that even if that particular person hated it, that's okay, because it doesn't mean my writing is bad, and it doesn't mean that other people (adults included!) haven't and won't enjoy it in the future.
I like that I'm in a place finally where I can shrug off, laugh off, or find the silver lining in bad reviews. It means I'm growing as an author and as a person.
Lastly, I'm also on Threads now. I haven't added it to my Linktree yet, so feel free to follow me @cjembers.
Anyway, I believe that's all the updates! I will post another when there is more news to share.
Happy reading, and ciao for now!