When I checked my email this morning, my inbox had been inundated with “Happy Father’s Day” emails. Most of them tried to sell me something, but a particular one caught my eye and made me want to write this post.
Father’s day. The day always brought inner conflict during my childhood. You see, my father passed away when I was two and I barely remember him. My pseudo-memories come from many stories my mother relentlessly told me over the years. She kept him alive for me. My own memories of him come from observation of the world he left behind.
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Last week we came across a post by a fellow author that stroke a chord with both of us. She was talking about how, once she had published her books, her days were spent more in promotion and interaction on social media than writing. She also mentioned that she had less pleasure from writing than before publication.
When we started writing together, we wrote solely for the joy of writing and for pleasure. Creating stories on the fly was effortless and natural. We wrote Countermeasure and To Russia with Love in 3-4 months each and they are 110K and 140K, not serial-length books.
After publication, our output decreased drastically. We have a LOT more on our plates now. We also care a lot about our friends and readers. We worry that disappearing from social media for months can potentially hurt our still fragile relationship with new readers, yet being present is not doing us, our stories, or our readers and friends any good.
We know many people are tapping their feet, waiting anxiously for a few (if not many) of our already announced books to be released and we do want to deliver them sooner rather than later.
Knowing more readers (and friends) are enjoying our books and wanting more of our stories is thrilling, but we won’t make that happen if we’re not writing as much as we can, all day, every day.
For that reason, we have made the decision to reduce our presence on social media to a minimum. Starting now, we will be frugal with the time spent online. The goal is to focus on the characters and stories and worry less about rankings, likes or views. Those numbers have lost their meaning.
We’re also taking a brand new step (and some major pressure) to force ourselves to tackle writing with the old vigor. We’ve placed Alternate Connection up for pre-order on iTunes, Kobo, ARe and Google Play. We set a date and we will make sure the book is finished, if not long before, at least by that date.
The above means we’ll be hiding in our writing caves for the new few months. With that said, we may pop in once in a while or post once or twice a day so the pages don’t slip into nothingness, but that should be all for a while.
We hope you’ll all appreciate the outcome.
Sláinte!
Chris
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