I finally got down to focusing on the newsletters. Those were spotty before, but now I’m on a schedule to send a newsletter per month. Each newsletter will have a subject about a book I’ve read that was interesting or absolutely nuts. I’m not going to mention anything about the subjects of the newsletters on this blog, so they will have exclusive content. So far, I’ve sent one today, and I’ve written four more that will go out over the next four months.

Website Changes

Of course, if you found your way to this blog post, you’re either on Facebook, where this gets copied, or you found your way around the website and discovered a few changes. I moved the blog posts themselves into a blog subdirectory and made the main page into a landing page with my latest books, which are available on Amazon.

I watch the stats on this website, which only tell me how many people visit and maybe something trivial like what country they are located in. Not that I care. Anybody in the world can visit my website, I welcome all. Of course, with this knowledge, I know that there are not a lot of visitors. Some probably stumbled onto my site from a search engine. If you’re a person that just randomly stumbles into my list of blog posts, you probably don’t realize (not right away) that I’m an author that publishes Sci-Fi books. So, I wanted to change the landing page to make that obvious.

I also wanted to keep the blog posts to those who are interested in that information. Most of it is just an update on what I’m doing and what’s planned for the future. That information is only relevant to those that are reading a partially completed series of mine and want to know when the next book will be ready. At the moment, only the Daphne series has a future book planned, and that’s a Chronicle. Not many are waiting on the edge of their seat for the next Daphne book, except for those that like that series and would like to read a new one. I did leave a massive cliff-hanger at the end of RUSTY’s Memories. I apologize for that. But, it was fun, and I intend to write the next book.

Book Progress…

OK, so this is what I normally write about in my blog posts. I’m still working through the five-book Q-Mystery series. That’s under my Pen Name, Elliot Droit. Those are cozy mysteries, with a robot dog that nobody realizes is a robot, except the sleuth and his best friend. Therefore, it has a bit of technology. Sort of a Sci-Fi slant to it. I’m currently editing the first three quarters of the fourth book (Ghost Falls Killings). Once I have that done, which will probably be in a few days. Then next Saturday my wife and I will do the Read-Out-Loud editing for that book and decide how it will end. Who will be the killer of the four or five suspects, and what was their motive? Then I’ll wrap up the story and do a final edit. Then it goes off to my editor, my sister, while I work on my next Q-Mystery book—the fifth and final one.

Ah, and as I’ve mentioned in many previous posts, I’ll be switching back to Daphne. Shadows in the Bloodline. The progress bar is on the right, which will begin to creep up as I write the rough draft. That book will probably take me two months to complete. By the time I reach the end of that book, I’m sure I’ll have new plans in place. Right now, I’m uncertain which path I’ll be taking. It all depends on how the sales go for the Q-Mysteries. If they go crazy, I’ll be doing five more Q-Mystery books to expand that set to a 10-book set. Those are short books so they only take me a month to write. During that time, I’d have to play it by ear as to what comes next.

If the Q-Mystery does OK, but not fabulous, then I could dive deeper into my Sci-Fi writing. I’ve toyed with the idea of rewriting some books. The Daphne series seems to be hot, at least for the last book. I have to admit that I was a bit stunned by the performance of the sales of RUSTY’s Memories. If the other five books were written to that level of skill, I’m pretty sure the series would be a hot commodity. Just from my back of the envelope calculations, that series would be a money maker.

But, I don’t want to get too far ahead of my abilities. Especially, since I have limited time to write and I want to make the most of that time. Right now I’m limited to 2,000 to 3,000 words per day of productivity. Which translates into almost two months for a Daphne book of 70,000 words, or one month for a Q-Mystery book of 45,000 to 50,000 words.

Promotions

By the way, there is a free book promo going on right now until the 10th of March (2025). I stuck The Patrol Ships on promo and I’ll probably do that every 90 days just for the heck of it. So, if you miss this one, it’ll come around again. You can run out to Amazon by clicking here and download a free Kindle version of the book that you can read any time in the future. That series is old and doesn’t get much love, so I just give a little freebie boost once in a while. The first two books of that series contain collections of 10 short stories I wrote way back in 2021 or so. The final three books are novels that carry the story to its conclusion. I left a possible story continuation opening at the end of the final book, but I doubt if I’ll ever get back to that series. If I did, I would be tempted to rewrite all of those books, and nobody has that kind of time!