@7b682b86 similarities are handy to see, 'readers of x may like my', but I'm finding even those tricky at this stage! 

 @68a44c70 so many things that bloody virus has taken. 

 @68a44c70 I hope you get there! Its such a struggle finding the balance and actually getting the energy to write.

I'm on a path to diagnosis (leaning heavily towards fibromyalgia), am cutting exercise right back and carefully balancing work, rest and a little exercise. Even on a terrible day, it seems 30 mins dawdling round the block is what helps with my fatigue, though more sleep than I currently manage with work is needed to keep the pain levels down. 

 @9f1caa36 that all sounds very realistic to me, though my financial goal for about the next decade is for the books to pay the cost of their editing and cover design and advertising... which feels a little ambitious at the minute 😉 (not that I've so much as dipped my toes in the advertising waters yet). 

 @a3976b27 @7b682b86 I enjoyed my time casually teaching teens in England, but I enjoy working with younger kids just as much. (My ADHD seems to keep my energy levels and enthusiasm for life at pace with younger kids.) And its nice spending a full day with the same class, and getting to know them well. 

 @7b682b86 no, I'm much more inclined to laugh with teenagers for saying inappropriate things than to tell them off, so I'm not a good fit for teaching teens (they shatter my poker face 😉 ). Though I hope to work with kids just under that age group (last two years of primary school) next year, which will help. 

 @5a43dd67 are you a writer if your brain doesn't turn out book ideas/ entire series faster than you can write them? 😉 

 @7b682b86 I suppose making you think is part of the point of these prompts, though maybe not quite blowing up our own minds 😉 

 @7b682b86 and then I remembered Ruarnon has to give multiple very formal pep talks as regent 😆 (and with Omah's influence they're good at it 😉 ) . 

This another of those things my upbringing is biased against, so I can't easily make connections with it. 

 @a3976b27 I've been lucky with what I could recover. I once fired up a dying desktop computer to rescue a ground zero draft of my first ever 'book' (entirely for sentimental reasons 😉 ), by floppy disk 😆 . 

Your system sounds well organised. My back up system is more chaotic, and every now and then I think I should fix it, but my ADHD disagrees 😆 . 

 @a3976b27 I used to do the same. Nowadays I tend to create a new copy of the document for each editing pass, because I know I'll change a lot. I re-write with whatever changes I want then. (Something changing a few pov chapters, then realising I actually need to change them back, as may happen this week 😅 ). 

 @7b682b86 @a3976b27 I'd do the same if I wrote series, but with trilogies I'm inclined to not discount book 1, or not much, and just put it on sale now and then –especially when I'm counting down to launch the next book. 

 @a3976b27 @1abd43c1 absolutely. I met two fellow Aussie authors who said their slice of the marketing pie was so tiny that they got of their contracts and published indie so they could control and get more marketing. They made more money that way, but this was via 20booksto50k FB group who know their stuff, and throw money at it to make money. 

 @7b682b86 soft promo seems to be the go, especially on social media. I see a few people have mentioned prompts like this one as part of their marketing approach. I find this more enjoyable and have bought 2 books via prompts this month (prompts with 4 questions on the same tag in an hour so someone would say something that hooked me twice and the second time I knew I had to buy it), so it can work. 

 @2433bcdf definitely agree with you on the latter! I forgot to mention BookFunnel -that's given my newsletter quite a boost too. 

I tried Fussy twice and the people who run it are lovely but I got too few sales for it to be worth it again (for this book anyway). 

 @c09f86d3 I feel the same way about having my own website, though I should get better at SEO with my pages and posts. Social media can be hit and miss at the best of times anyway. 

 @7b682b86 I've always liked an element of mystery, and one surrounding the antagonist's identity and motives (when he presents initially as garden variety meglomaniac) was a lot of fun. 

 @7b682b86 I bet that's fun to write though! I don't have anyone do that too deliberately -for mine its more precious few people know of his deeply personal demons, he presents a certain way to his followers (and home continent) and comes across drastically differently to my characters (overseas). 

 @7b682b86 love all the different perspectives here! 

 @b5820e93 I loved Matilda too. It was an influence on the only MG book I've written. And I've enjoyed reading The Witches to my students. 

 @7b682b86 its still great to get to write what you couldn't read. I'm even more recent on that frontier, writing the nonbinary lead even I wouldn't/ couldn't yet have identified as even a decade ago. 

 @7b682b86 ah no! You missed so much 😆 .
If I was born 10 years later I'd have had a lot more fantasy and heroine leads in books as a teen. I'm that generation writing what they were a generation too early to get themselves. 

 @7b682b86 I loved the Wizard of Oz as a kid. I think my first proper exposure on screen to other worlds was Star Wars. I could tell it wasn't quite my jam, but it definitely broadened my horizons. Then a spate of fantasy films and now tv series came out and I haven't looked back since. 

 @7b682b86 my renaissance began when the movies came out -similar deal 😄 

 @b5820e93 OMG Roald Dahl! That's an author I enjoyed! (I could only name one in my post 😂 ). 

 @7b682b86 yes, and one of many siblings and the only introvert in her close friendship group of 4. The combination predisposes her to let everyone else have all the limelight and to undervalue and underestimate herself.