I fell off my once-a-week publication schedule after the last post, for a number of reasons:
- My Bluehost web site began to experience horrific downtime, which made it seem rather pointless not to mention tricky to add content to it. It has settled down now, but I’m not too confident that this will last. (And I put dealing with web host providers right up there with waiting on hold with insurance companies as a way I’d choose to spend my limited time on this planet.)
- Some nasty bug got me. Presumably not the flu, since I got the flu shot this year, but it might as well have been. This coincided with the end of my semester, trying to wrap up four comp courses. As an adjunct professor I could only miss one day of class without having to write a check to reimburse the college, even after five years of not missing a single day. (I’m not betraying any rage here, right?) I could barely drag myself out of bed, but I got to class. Oh, and there was an emergency root canal in there, too. So the blog was the least of my worries.
- A lovely interview with Hazel Dawkins on Greenfield (MA) local cable station GCTV came online in December. You may find this surprising since I obviously have this blog and a social media presence in various places, but I suffer from an occasionally crippling horror of self-promotion and that hit in a big way. Or maybe I was just horrified at how dowdy and middle-aged I look. It’s a great interview that I really enjoyed, but it’s also a full half hour long.
(If you’re a Franklin County reader, you may also be interested in my appearance at World Eye Bookshop in Greenfield Saturday, January 23 from 1:30-3.) - Although I did improve my web site traffic significantly this year, I have been unable to establish any significant connection between that and any book sales. No doubt a lot of that can be related to my lack of brilliance at SEO, Google Analytics, email sign-ups, newsletters, and so on. But while I’m still game to learn that stuff, the most important thing I can do for my writing career right now is to finish the next novel. So I’m going to pull back on the blog to no more than once or twice a month until I’ve got a rough draft finished.
Sometimes I start playing with covers just to help psyche myself into believing the book really does have a deadline looming (since I run Sheer Hubris Press, I have only self-imposed deadlines). So I came up with this new thumbnail for Bardwell’s Folly a while back. Like the manuscript, it’s still a work in progress.
Finishing this book is my most significant resolution for the new year. Have you ever had one single important resolution for a new year? I’m not sure I ever have before. Whatever your resolutions may be, I wish you a happy and successful New Year!
Cheers, Sandra Hutchison