I'm still alive and being pensive.

I've been quiet on this blog lately.

It's not really something I wanted to do. But I've been working very hard on the guest house I mentioned before and a variety of books I'm writing.

Which is actually an interesting dilemma for me. My publisher seems to expect me to devote a significant proportion of my time to marketing. So they want me on social media to drum up new sales.

Thing is... It doesn't really seem to work. I have a significant platform elsewhere, adding up to about ten thousand people in my entire network. But no amount of posting, tweeting etc. about my book actually added up to sales.

Sales have happened, yes. But on days I did nothing related to the series.

Which means, the way I see it, that actually spending time devising and posting tweets, g+ postings etc. adds up to nothing. What has sold, however, was me building relationships through blogging. That I know, because most of you on my to-read list, I recognize from my blogging activities.

Ideally, then, I want to create the same type of society here. But it's difficult to create a society around something when most people out there haven't read my book.

It's a chicken and egg situation, really.

Hopefully I can figure this one out, though. I just need to put some more thought into how exactly I'm going to do it...

Who I am and what I'm working on right now.

Hi again!

Sorry for being so sporadic in my postings. I'm still busy finding my stride with blogging (both profiles and all four blogs), writing and... well, living a life.

Good news is that at least I'm getting into the writing swing again. After I put up my previous posts, I had some issues with getting back into the groove.

Now, though, it's getting better. I'm just giving myself a bit of a break, reading as much as I can while still writing here and there. Slowly but surely, I'll shift my priorities back into their normal order, where writing is higher up than most of my other activities.

So what, you might be wondering, am I working on at the moment?

Not the sequel, just yet, although I'm expecting edits to start quite soon. The sequel to that's drafted already as well, so please please please tell your friends to buy The Vanished Knight! If sales are good, I'm pretty dang sure I'll get a contract extension to cover the rest of The War of Six Crowns. 

Right now, though, I'm pretty much working on getting a slew of different stories, ranging a variety of genres. I decided to put priority on a spy school story, which I'm enjoying as well. Then there's a YA Pirate story (a bit like Pirates of the Caribbean, but without the supernatural aspects), a Time Travel Sci Fi which I might just end up publishing under my current pseudonym and what might become a YA urban fantasy that would definitely be published under it.

Incidentally, in case you were wondering, my name's Misha, and yes, that's what the M. in my pseudonym stands for. You'll probably be able to find my real identity profile with a bit of smart googling. Or, if you're a writing blogger, odds are, you found this blog through my other one.

I basically picked a pseudonym as a branding strategy, so that readers could figure out which of my books are in the same vein and which ones aren't.

Now I'll be stopping, but before I go, what sort of stories do you like to read? What are your favorite books? Feel free to list ten, if you can't pick one. ;-)

Getting back to writing...

It's an odd thing, being published.

After years of work on The Vanished Knight, I thought that finally publishing would be a great buzz.

Honestly, it's not.

The buzz came from actually finishing it. From knowing I had an editor who understood me. And now, from getting great reviews from people who read my books. Some from supportive friends (These give me the warm and fuzzies, by the way), others from people I never met before.

At the moment, I constantly feel like I should be checking my Amazon sales rankings. As if that would make any difference whatsoever. I can't really. It's not healthy. And it's stealing time.

So starting today, I'm going to get back to writing. Yes, I'll still visit blogs and I'll still respond to comments on guest posts etc, but I need to focus on my first love.

Creating stories is it. I still hope that The Vanished Knight will do well. Part of me believes it will. But I can't get transfixed by the scent of money.

Getting enthralled by a new story... Now that's another thing altogether...