STATUS REPORT # 124

Soon after I’d written my previous status on January 25^th, which I’d forgotten to post until today I started to hear rumors about CreateSpace shutting down ALL of its support services: Editing, Cover Design, Interior Design, etc.  This caused me to slow down my writing endeavors even more than I’ve already had, as well as causing me to become somewhat depressed. Now that the news about CreateSpace is official, I’ve become TOTALLY DEPRESSED.

This depression only involves my being a romance author with several endeavors in various stages of being worked on. I’m not going to stop working on these four endeavors, but my writing might only be about 3-4 pages at most on each of them. Being a General Member of RWA [Romance Writers of America] I can self-publish my books; however, I can’t use any of the multiple vanity presses which can easily be found to have a romance genre book I’ve written to be accepted by them. In the hopes remedying this situation I’d sent RWA a message, asking them to tell me which other self-publishing entities to they accept books from.

This depression has caused me to miss my Haiku prompts, posting my marketing/promotional ideas, etc.  In order to feel as if I’m doing something I went into HIGH GEAR regarding writing my book reviews. Since January 25^th I’ve posted 23 reviews on Amazon US/UK, GoodReads, and LibraryThing. I’ve now got 744 reviews posted on Amazon.com and 487 posted on Amazon.co.uk. As far as this year’s GoodReads Reading Challenge, I’ve already posted 49 reviews [24.5%] out of my original goal of 200 reviews, which according to their site puts me at 26 books ahead of schedule.

Being an Amazon-US TOP CONTRIBUTOR for True Crime Books I’ve just reviewed Jack Smith’s “The Most Devious Killers of All Time,” and the next book on my TBReviewed pile is “Sex Criminals” by Hannah Clarkson. I hope those of you who love to read romances have gotten to check my reading suggestion list for Valentine’s Day which I’d posted yesterday.