The first month in the year I hope to go full-time as an author has passed. It was not the launch I was hoping for. Despite my preparation, things just didn’t pop the way I’d hoped.

You’ll remember a couple of weeks ago I posted a list of things I wanted to accomplish in January. Let’s see how I did…

Subscribe to and set up a BookFunnel account and upload some content, then join at least one promotion event.

Success! I paid the $100 for BookFunnel and have been offering the first chapter of First Born to newsletter subscribers. I also have joined two promotion events, one of which kicked off today (the other on March 1).

Establish a Patreon with a few layers of support.

Done! It was rather tedious, but it’s finished and you can sign up at the link above.

Set up my Amazon Ads dashboard and run at least one ad for at least 14 days, then learn how to analyze the data from that campaign.

I’ll call this one done, though I didn’t get the first ad up until Jan. 18. I put up an ad for Shara and watched it … do nothing. I was so nervous about these ads, afraid I’d run up a huge bill quickly. But, no. The ad for Shara wasn’t being seen much, so I put up an ad for Paddles Wet. That one did get a ton of impressions quickly, but no clicks and no buys. I followed it up with ads for If You Want the A and The Teacher. Four genres, three pen names. At the moment, I have 10, 536 impressions, with three clicks and no sales. Amazon ads has not been the sales engine I was led to believe it would be.

Get to 350 followers on TikTok and upload at least one video every day.

I am at 385 TikTok followers, but I have not posted every day. That’s harder than I expected it to be. My last three videos have featured Bear (as my Bearapist), Sweet Pea as a nag, and Cleo the Calico Cat as a bitchy woman put out by my lack of income. I’ll have to do better about posting regularly.

Finish the first draft of First Born, the fourth book in The Werewolf Saga.

Finished! It came in at 87,701 words. It needs editing. Maybe a lot of editing, but I have a finished draft.

Finish copyediting The War Lord and make a decent cover, then publish it. This is the first novella in my Tarod the Nine-Fingered sword-and-sorcery fantasy series.

Total fail. There’s only a chapter left to edit, but I cannot for the life of me make a cover I’m happy with. If I have to pay for a cover, I’d rather publish the finished four novellas as one book. It’s a dilemma.

Write Dust In the Wind and do pre-orders for a Valentine’s Day publication. Make the cover. This is the third volume in Adri Amanti’s First-Kiss Romance series.

Done! I finished the book a few days ago and it’s been up for pre-order for a while. I have to admit I’m kind of proud of this one. It’s the longest of the First Kiss series, and the best. It’ll go out on Valentine’s Day. You can preorder it here.

Another round of edits on Sleeper, the young adult paranormal novel with Carrie Jones, a sequel to In the Woods.

Yeah … no. Carrie sent it back, said it’s minor stuff, but I haven’t even looked yet. It is next on my agenda, though. Her daughter Em has made a kick-ass cover for it!

Record at least one episode of The Werewolf Saga Podcast. (I want to have three recorded before I launch; microphone issues are holding me back.)

Another total fail. The microphone issue is ongoing, and I haven’t written the scripts. I did absolutely nothing on this one.

Set up GumRoad and start making pages to sell books directly to readers, with delivery through BookFunnel.

Kind of yes. GumRoad is set up and I have a couple of titles uploaded there, and I have run a test. Yes, the books that are there can be purchased through GumRoad and delivered by BookFunnel. But to get all 36 book-length works plus the solo short stories uploaded will take a while, mostly because I have to make a little square version of every cover, then fill out info on both GumRoad and BookFunnel to make it all work. I’ll get there, but direct sales isn’t the highest priority right now.

I sold nine books in January. Nine. Last year I earned $511 total in book sales. That’s not gonna pay the bills. I still have a long way to go to meet my criteria for success. January was discouraging, but I’m not giving up.

I’ll post February goals later this week.