It’s been a year already since I lost my mum and it has gone by incredibly fast. The old adage os ‘time flies when you’re having fun’ doesn’t really apply here because learning to live without her has been hard to say the least. I didn’t see her as often as I should, I suppose but I always knew she was there if I wanted to and knowing that not to be the case has been hard to deal with.

I have been lucky in one respect that this year has been busy in more ways than I thought possible. It has also been challenging but the only way to deal with life is to keep going forward. My dream goal for the past two decades or more has been to earn enough from writing so I could finish work and write full time. At first it was nothing more than that, a dream. As I perfected my craft it became more of a goal. I’m still learning and I suspect I will continue to do so throughout whatever time I have left but at some point I hope to reach that goal.

The hardest part of being an author, in my opinion is the marketing, I know that this has nothing to do with writing per se but it is an extremely important part of being an author. Self promotion is a by-word for authors nowadays as publishers expect their clients to have a marketing strategy in place as part of the deal, or at least a presence on social media they can harness and utilise. To this effect I have begun to market in earnest, ot rather I have sought guidance in this field from experts.

Building a readership is nothing short of a marathon, it is extremely hard work and no one expects it to happen overnight, it just does notwork that way. I remember Morgan Freeman once saying it took him twenty odd years to become an overnight success. I hope it doesn’t take that long for me or I could be too old to enjoy it. I have made serious inroads toward that goal though, my partner and I appeared in our local paper, The Sentinel,this week as local authors. Our story was featured as the cover story in a segment called ‘Sentinel People’ which features all the local news. It may be small potatoes to some but to me this was huge as it was something I never expected. Also because of other marketing tactics my rankings on Amazon have been boosted up to top twenty status in at least three categories for Ronin, the first book in my Col Sec series,and the book that started my writing career off.

Momentum is beginning to build and I hope to sustain it until my goal is reached and I can truly say to people that I am a writer. Even though they are no longer with me I know mum and dad will be just as proud then as they were when they were alive

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