Short month. Short recap. Let’s get to it!

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Monthly Stats:

• 14,671 words drafted
• 5,637 words / 0 pages revised
• 1 project submitted

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First order of business: The Romantic Agenda ebook is on sale for $2.99! Today (March 2nd) is unfortunately the last day so hopefully you’ll read this in time if you’d like to get my debut adult romance for such a low price.

It’s hard to gauge how much of an impact anything has when you’re barely a midlist author, but this morning I spotted a Bestseller banner on the B&N website. That’s never happened to me before so thank you thank you thank you!

To support the sale, I made a video ad that I also boosted on Instagram. I don’t think it was worth the money when compared to the impressions received, but I’d never tried it before. Lesson learned, i guess

(lol I should’ve used that money to commission art for the conventions I’m attending later this year lol)

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I failed all my February goals! Woo!

Working with social media continues to have mixed results because I keep on not posting. I managed to get Good Enough Guide #2 and a This or That post up. Made a couple of videos as well–one for a book I read and an ad for THE ROMANTIC AGENDA’S three-day sale. While that’s not nothing, it’s still not what I’d hoped to accomplish.

My downfall began when I couldn’t decide on the topic for the next Behind the Scenes post, which then derailed all my other plans. I was also quite moody this month. Like two quick skips away from backsliding into depression kind of moody.

Towards the end of the month, the very thing I never wanted to happen ended up happening. I was in a silly goofy nostalgic mood, made a throwaway post on Threads, and it went a little viral. My literal nightmare during waking hours! Over 20k views, discourse (some of it pointed AT me), and for what?? I’m too anxious for this and I really do not like the fact that I can’t mute the damn post. There was/is no way for me to disengage other than deleting or not checking my notifications. Meta actually makes notifications incredibly hard to avoid because it will REMIND you they exist while using Instagram.

Needless to say, lesson learned. I will be deleting Threads soon. If they implement better controls for creators, I might give it a go in the future, but that’s highly unlikely.

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Trade reviews for LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE HAUNTED PLACES have begun rolling in… and that’s that on that.

February marked four months until publication and I received my publicity and marketing plan with a meeting attached. TRA had one too, but I never met my Berkley team so this was a brand new experience for me.

Shortly before that, though, I attended a Zoom meet-up with other Black romance authors. An attendee (name redacted for privacy) spoke about their upcoming release, saying, “I’m just trying to get out of that ‘happy to be here’ mindset,” and that really resonated with me. I think a lot of authors feel like we’re not allowed to ask questions about the business side of publishing because we should just be grateful for getting published at all. That’s just simply not true. We should be able to ask for details, clarification, and about things we’d like to see happen.

Going into the pub team meeting, I made a list of all the questions I wanted to ask, requests, and suggestions for changes. I felt ready–I did affirmations while putting on my makeup, wore a cute top and jewelry which always improves my mood, read and re-read my list to the point of memorization, joined the meeting early and everything. And then, within five minutes, anxiety shoved its way to front of my mind.

My voice got croaky and warbled. I stuttered through my sentences. And I couldn’t bring myself to go over the list I painstakingly created. I ended up feeling so disappointed in myself.

I don’t know why I can host and attend author events with zero issues. Handselling my books is basically my superpower, but important team meetings are my undoing? Make it make sense, brain!

Luckily, my team was really kind, professional, and have already gotten started on their side of things. Publicity has been pitching the book (it’s even been accepted at a few publications) and I’m secured for a handful of virtual events and guests that I’m pretty excited for.

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Suitehearts: DRAMA & DESTINY pass pages finally landed in my inbox. I have a pretty tight turnaround–only a week to work on them instead of the usual two. Deadlines like that do happen occasionally (frequently for meeee), but it’s not an issue this time. This will be the final final readthrough before the book goes to print!

In April, there’ll be a blog post dedicated to D&D where I’ll go into detail about the book and reveal the full jacket.

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March 2024 Goals

• Finish MBD: first draft as soon as feasible. Currently, I’m in Act 2!
• Continue DOING MY BEST with social media
• Begin writing YouTube video outlines (the issue has been resolved)
• Start transferring the Welcome Home Project to the the website
• Continue reading more–I’d like to finish three books and sample at least five more

Until next time,

Claire ❤