Monday 6 January 2020

New Year - New Me?

I'm a bit late wishing you all a happy New Year, but the days merge one into the other when you have to spend five days a week visiting a care home. I always return after spending an entire morning there feeling quite exhausted. Heaven knows how the wonderful staff stay focused and caring with so much going on.
I hope you had a good Christmas – I did – although my husband was very poorly and needed consecutive lots of antibiotics in order to get rid of very unpleasant chest infection. It's his birthday tomorrow and I've baked two cakes to take in.
My son bought me a box of Hotel du Chocolat chocolates the size of a cartwheel – thank goodness my brother took a tub of them home with him. They are quite delicious and absolutely irresistible. It doesn't matter how many heavy boxes I put on top of the chocolate box I still know that they are there and go and get some when I want them. They are now on top of a bookshelf which requires me to stand on a step to get them down.
Now – to return to my title. New Year – New Me – I wasn't just referring to trying to get fitter, thinner and stop colouring my hair, but also to changes I intend to make in my writing life.
My sales of my indie books on Amazon are a third of what they used to be – too many indie writers writing too many good Regency romances. As I now write two long books for Aria – Head of Zeus a year I don't really have time to produce six of my own titles which I have to sell at a ridiculously low price in order to satisfy demand.
My PC is giving me problems. Dragon won't connect to a mic - have spent hours trying to get tech people to sort it. This has slowed my writing down almost to a standstill.
I've come to a decision. In future I'm not going to check sales, reviews, author and book rankings – I'm just going to write what I want to write and publish it when it suits me. Fortunately, sales with Aria are going up and I'm hoping that once I've got a dozen books with them it won't really matter about royalties from the others. Also the Regency Romantics is no more. We've called it a day and this is the very last box set.
I moved last September into a lovely modern bungalow with a garden three times the size of the one I had before. I intend to spend more time out there and less sitting here.
One would have thought that since my husband no longer lives with me, but is in care, that I would have more time but the reverse is true. I only have two days a week when I don't visit and one of them is family day when my son, daughter-in-law and six year old grandson come for lunch and the other has to be for hair, doctor and osteopath appointments. This leaves me little time for socialising, which is a shame.
I'm involved with an exciting collaborative WW2 project but can't tell you about this yet.
2019 was pants - hoping 2020 will be better for all of us.
best wishes
Fenella J Miller

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