{"id":20416,"date":"2025-10-05T21:07:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T03:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/?p=20416"},"modified":"2025-10-06T07:44:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T13:44:48","slug":"the-lows-and-the-highs-openbook-blog-hop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/?p=20416","title":{"rendered":"The Lows and the Highs #OpenBook Blog Hop"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

October 6, 2025<\/p>\n

Did you face any hiccups in your publishing this year?<\/h3>\n

How did you navigate that?<\/h4>\n

Confession: I haven’t published anything major this year – yet. Yes, I’ve posted on my blog regularly, but this year has been a mixed bag in my writing journey. I even tried taking my writing to Medium, but couldn’t get any traction there. It made me feel like writing was a chore, not a joy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The high point is that I’ve sold 90 books at festivals and book events. (And I have two craft shows scheduled before the end of the events.)<\/p>\n

The low point is that I haven’t published a new book this year. And the book I published in November 2024 has gone nowhere, despite using a alternative route for publicity. (That didn’t work.) It didn’t help that the print copies of the Rimer Files were delayed and weren’t available for the last show of last year.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On the bright side, I wrote a short story that will be part of an anthology to be released in November. The 10,000 words took me close to five months to complete. I rewrote the first 3000 words four times before I was satisfied with where the story was going. Once I finished, I was reluctant to let go of my protagonist, Amos Headley. There is so much more he could tell me.<\/p>\n

Overall, it was a rough year.<\/h4>\n

At times, I felt like giving up. But my characters wouldn’t let me. Same for my readers. When one customer bought 9 of my books all at once, it gave me a needed push. But so did the readers who bought the entire Harmony Duprie series on line, all at once. Or one at a time, across one or two weeks.<\/p>\n

But mostly, this year was a year of digging deep and staying with it.<\/p>\n

How about all of you? How has your publishing year gone? I’ll be looking forward to the answers at the links below.<\/p>\n

As always, until next time, please stay safe.<\/p>\n

October 6, 2025<\/p>\n

Did you face any hiccups in your publishing this year? How did you navigate that?<\/p>\n

\r\n

\r\n

You are invited to the Inlinkz<\/strong> link party!<\/p>\r\nClick here to enter<\/a><\/div><\/div>\r\n