Meredith Mansfield, Author

Well, not surprisingly, I’ve done things backwards, again. Typical.

What I’ve learned so far from my experience with FIRE AND EARTH:

I need to start planning and taking action much earlier. I planned a month in advance with FIRE AND EARTH. Most of that went into formatting and cover art, though, so I hadn’t done a lot of preparation for a launch. With BLOOD IS THICKER, I’m going to start a minimum of three months in advance.

So, I won’t know the date until I have a finished, polished manuscript in hand. Then I’ll pick a date at least three months out from that. I’ll need to go ahead and do the formatting, for Smashwords at a minimum, and then start approaching potential reviewers in the hope that some of the reviews will be up at about the launch date (or even a little earlier).

I also need to do more in the way of a blog tour, cover art reveal, etc. Introvert me has resisted this, but I’m going to have to push myself out of my comfort zone. Well, what else is new? I knew that’d be part of learning this promotion thing, didn’t I? And that was part of the point. Beyond wanting to get my stories out there, I want to start learning the other side of this business that I’ll need no matter what path my writing takes from here.

I still have to figure out how to do my two-for-one offer of BLOOD WILL TELL and BLOOD IS THICKER together. I have a couple of ideas, but nothing’s final yet. I want it to be everywhere, not just one bookseller. And I want it to be wider than just my writing communities. For that, I may have to create an omnibus edition which can temporarily be priced the same as either book separately.

Meanwhile, I have started serializing BLOOD IS THICKER over on wattpad. If you want to see how the story starts (or continues, since this is the sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL), you can check it out for free over there.