Little Things That Don't Mean Much of Anything

As promised, I brought my original book covers back. They no longer conform to my genre's standard, but what's the difference? No one was buying them anyway, and I'd rather have something attractive to look at, at least. Two of them still have the new covers, but that's mostly because I never liked the originals much to begin with. As things stand right now, I really need to clear all my unwanted covers and possible covers from my hard drive. There are too many variations, which requires me to wade through a bunch of useless downloads to get to the one I need. Going back to when I published my first novel in 2016, I'm guessing that one has had at least ten iterations of its cover. I'm not indecisive; just demanding.

Because I wanted to be done with this task, I canceled my free promo for Bad Blood. It had one day remaining, and it never got a single bite. Taking it off promo also allowed me to rewrite the blurb. Now I hope I've made it clear that the protagonist's brother isn't just a "mean guy":

Can a person be born bad? Vanessa’s brother was. His life’s mission was to con and steal, and he didn’t care how he accomplished it or who got hurt. He set fire to his late mother’s house for the insurance money, and the fact that Vanessa was surely inside was simply a minor detail. Except she wasn’t, and he was the one who perished instead.

At least she was sure he did. Even the fire marshal was sure. Propriety dictated that she mourn him, but she couldn’t. She was relieved to finally move on with her life, resume the career that he’d shattered. She found work with an attorney who only represented the worst of the worst; then one day, sitting behind her boss in the courtroom, she noticed that the defendant beside him looked too familiar.

It wasn’t possible. Was it?

I personally dislike the length of the new blurb, even though as far as blurbs are concerned, most authors seem to think the longer, the better. I heartily disagree. Mine's not even long by their standards. And true, I didn't spend hours trying to word it just right. You know, at some point a person just stops caring. The only reason I cared even a little bit was because the original blurb gave the wrong impression of the story.

 

I did go ahead and add new content to my author website for testing purposes. That only resulted in two views yesterday, and those were probably bots or hungry scam artists. Unlike with the blog you're reading now, I don't like sharing my private life on my author site ~ I write under a pen name for a reason, but I figured if I was going to tie my new novel to my music experiences, I needed to divulge them. I even linked to our band's Spotify page.* It's iffy if that link will remain. Doing that makes me queasy.

*Now I'll probably get an email informing me that my music has been chosen for a new movie...if only I'll pay a zillion dollars to have a "professional video" made.

I can't imagine what other new content I could possibly add, and my "news" section tends to get unwieldy with too much of that.

A book trailer would probably draw the most interest ("most" being relative). I'm just not ready to devote time to making one.

 

Yes, little tiny things. But at least they're things.