Welcome Time Travellers to this weeks Writers Roundup number 5
In this weeks roundup, I talk about:
– My writing week. – My debut Author Signing Event – How to prevent being scammed, Brent Spiners birthday, My Author friend does a cover reveal. and more.
My writing week
This week I listened to some more podcast episodes from Joanna Penn, she has fantastic insights on writing, and the writing industry. In this episode I listened to her Q&A session and an article about starting from zero in 2024. I know I am not starting from zero, but it’s always a great idea to refresh myself on these types of things, and give myself a chance to learn new things, as they come along.
Writing. I have done some editing this week of Time Clones Book 2, and made a fair bit of progress at the start of the week. During the middle of the week, I decided to spend some time sorting out the book cover for book 2, and have really surprised myself with the progress I am making. As usual, I use Canva, and this week I have had a look at AI tools to see if I can do better. I am pretty happy with the results, but wonder if I can do something better without AI, because I am not sure about the ethics of potentially using someone else’s work, even though the AI I used claims that I own the copyrights.
I had a bash advertising Time Clones book 1 and Our Camino Diary on Amazon using their adverts for a short time, but was later told by my writing coach that I was probably better spending my time writing, which makes sense. Once I have a few more books behind me, I intend to use the adverts again, and see what happens with that.
Newsletter News.
I have some great news. I shall be making these newsletters free for everyone, with weekly updates. There will be other posts, for example, book cover releases, title releases, some other exciting stuff like giveaways, etc, which I plan on doing in the future to members of the newsletter. So what are you waiting for? Sign up today 🙂
My First Official Author Signing Event – Coming Soon!!!
I have spoken to a few bookshops, and this week one got back to me, to let me know that they would love to host an author signing event for me. The Date is the 6th April 2024, and the Location is WHSmith Loughborough. I shall be taking some copies of Time Clones book 1 with me, so you can grab a personalised copy, and we can even have a chat together. This is my debut official signing event with WHSmith, and technically, I am selling my books in a bookshop, woohoo!
If you want further details, pop along to the website, and check out the following link.
https://brettishbooks.com/event/author-signing-event/
My Author friend released her book cover review video. Check it out here.
She’s done it, after 5 years… my Author friend @AdaraWrites (Adara Spence) has created a video with her book cover reveal, and some interesting info about her debut novel coming on 1st March
Check it out at the link below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzo5t1aKQdg
How to avoid being scammed
This is a great article I found on the web about how to make sure you stay safe on the internet as an author, which also applies to make sure your aren’t ripped off as a reader.
Happy Birthday Brent Spiner
Today marks another year around the sun for Brent Spiner. The actor from Star Trek who is famous for his role as the logical android Data, was born on Feb 2nd 1949, and celebrated his birthday this week.
Health
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I am starting the new year by reducing bread and sugar. So far, I have done pretty well.
I’ve had lots of alternative meals including savoury mince and Yorkshire puddings, Tuna Mayo in lettuce wraps, Jacket Potato, with butter and cheese, Sausage, egg and chips, and more. However… I also decided to have a drink one evening with my wife. One glass of white wine, lead to another, then a can of lemonade (which tasted awful), then I had some chocolate crunch (chocolate angel delight on a biscuit base), and half a bag of peppermints.
Needless to say, I wasn’t very well, and ended up with all the pain coming back to my left arm again… so, on the plus side, at least I know what I am doing is working, and I have gone back onto my no sugar, no bread diet and the pain has subsided again. My hopes are to keep this up for the foreseeable future, and see if the pain goes away in both arms, shoulders, and hands. This is my ultimate goal. I will keep you all posted and let you know how it goes.
We had a small visitor to stay with us.
I mentioned earlier that I was able to get some editing done earlier this week, but haven’t really had much time or energy to be able to do much later in the week. This is in part due to the fact that one of our grandchildren has been on a sleepover at our house. While it’s great having her over, she requires a lot of attention, and that means I don’t get much done during the day until she goes to bed, and by then I am too wiped out to do anything. But hey, it’s totally worth it spending these precious moments with her. She makes me laugh a lot, and that’s great, especially when she constantly calls me Grandma Brett (She can say granddad, or Brett separately, but when she says them together, out pops Grandma Brett lol).
That’s all for this week, if you have any questions, or would like to answer any of the questions above, please type here in the comments, or email me brettjackson@brettishbooks.com
Until next time, happy reading 🙂
– Brett