The Missing Link

I’m well into the first Act of The Missing Link. In fact, I’ll probably have the rough draft of Act I done by the end of the weekend. I’m bringing in a few characters from previous stories into this book (besides Detective Ramsey, who was mentioned at the end of Dust Bargain). The story doesn’t really tie up any loose ends from earlier books, but it does draw story elements from them. And that is all I’m going to say about the next story.

The Daphne Series and Where It’s Headed

I ordered the cover for the next book called To End The Silence. That will be book 10. Will there be a book 11? Well, there will be another Daphne book, and definitely a lot more Daphne books. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I have 20 Daphne story ideas on my hard drive (8 are published, two are in progress). It would take little effort to think up additional stories. I could probably come up with a hundred of these things. So, if you’re sad that the fun might someday end, you can rest assured that there is more fun on the horizon.

And why do I continue to write these things? Other than the fact that they make money, I really like the characters, and the writing itself is addictive. Writing a novel is a whole lot easier when the characters are already fleshed out and established. I don’t have to keep reminding myself about who these characters are and how they behave. All I have to do is focus on the extra characters and what is happening in the story.

Don’t forget about the free stuff that comes with the Newsletter. Oh, and if you don’t want to get hammered with emails, just sign up, grab the free stuff, and unsubscribe. Don’t worry, my feelings won’t be hurt.

Speaking of the free stuff…

I simplified the description of what is available for Newsletter subscribers down to “free stories” instead of listing all the free stuff that is available. There are mentions of what is in the Newsletter inside the “Books” subject. There are two Daphne stories in that collection. The Neutron Star and The Ghost Cargo. Both are short stories. I’ve been thinking about combining all of my free short stories into one large book and providing it as one freebie. It would also simplify the cover situation…

Ah, I hear you asking what “The Cover Situation” is all about. Well, it’s like this. When I create a new short story, I have to make my own cover for it, because custom covers cost $200 a piece. That’s a bit much for a short story and gets really pricey when one is talking about multiple short stories. However, I could eat the cost for a large book that could contain multiple short stories. Especially since I could add new stories to the book in the future. Would that attract people to sign up for the Newsletter? Maybe.

The Newsletter

The newsletter is something that all authors do to collect a list of emails of their fan base. The idea is to be able to communicate with fans and notify them when there are releases or when something is changing, etc. I started my newsletter right after I published my first book. Then I added freebies to it to apply to each of the series that I wrote. In other words, there’s one newsletter for everything instead of a different newsletter for each series.

For years, this newsletter hasn’t really attracted too many people. I didn’t pay much attention to it because I have this blog and Facebook (where this blog post will autopost). There are 166 followers on my Author page on Amazon, so that’s another method of fans receiving information about a newly published book.

Last year, I attempted to draw interest to the newsletter by setting up a dozen articles that I published to those who subscribed, but there was no interaction with the monthly email, so I didn’t create a dozen more. I still need to think about what I should send out on a monthly basis. So, at the moment, if you subscribe, there will be no monthly emails (I’m sure you’re heartbroken about not receiving extra junk in your inbox). I’ll think of something interesting to put into the future newsletters. But, for now, you can sign up and grab the free stuff, then unsubscribe, or just hang onto your subscription until I send out messages. If you don’t like them, then hit the unsubscribe button. I use Mailerlite for my newsletter tasks, so everything is secure and guarantees you can unsubscribe at any time. Oh, and there’s no fancy “You must choose what to unsubscribe from,” or one of those crazy “Enter your email to unsubscribe” things associated with the newsletter. If you’re using Outlook or another standard email program, there’s an unsubscribe button or link. You hit that, and it’s done (I know because I’ve tested it many times).