My blog tour is over! (Almost.) The posts have all been published, the comments are all in, the winner will be announced soon, and I've written the recap post already, but I still need to draw the winner and add the post to my website. So, nearly, but not quite finished. I had a lot of fun with this thing! Was it worth the money? I'd say I got what I paid for. If I had been able to afford more, I might have gotten more out of it, but for what I spent, I'd say it was about right.
I'd say the biggest issue I had was time. Putting together 10 posts and recording an audio interview in a span of two months, on top of everything else I'm working on, is a lot of work! I also wish I'd had a better mix of interviews and guest posts. Guest posts are much harder, but if I can have some time to work on them, I can really turn out some good writing, which is partly what I was hoping for. I wanted people to get a feel for my writing more than for me as a person, thinking maybe if they liked my writing style, they'd like the book, too. Doing the interviews was fun, but I think three or four probably could have covered everything. I think I ended up with 7 (out of 11 posts total).
Still, I had fun and it was really great to hear some feedback about the book, the excerpts, the blurb, etc. I would still do things differently the next time around, but why do we fall? So we can learn how to pick ourselves up. I even got a 5-star review from one of the tour hosts, so that was awesome! It came near the end of the tour, and since none of the other hosts had decided to read the book and do a review, I hadn't expected it. It was a wonderful surprise to wake up to that morning!
Aside from the tour, I've been working my butt off trying to catch up on my health blog project. Since I just converted it a couple months ago, it's going to take me some time to rebrand the site to the world and to my existing followers, but I am getting a little traffic to site, which wasn't happening when it was just a product-based site. A lot of the visits are probably me as I develop the site and add new posts, but there are a few unique visitors, so that's good. I've got about a week and a half's worth of posts scheduled out as of this evening, so I can have a little time to redistribute my efforts elsewhere, but not much.
I'm still working on the story I worked on for April's Camp Nano, and I'm REALLY hoping I can finish it by the end of the month. Ambitious? Of course. But, if I can do 50k words in November alone, I certainly should be able to do another 20-30k in the 22 days left in June! I know I'm on the right track with it, but with all these other projects to work, and especially catch up, on, I haven't had the time to crank it out. If I sat down and worked on this only for a week, even with work, I could make some serious progress.
I have every damn intention of getting back to Always Happy to Entertain You soon, but I've got so much to catch up on and I want to restructure how I do the posts that it's going to take some real motivation and maybe a kick in the pants to get me back into it. Unfortunately, it's easy to break from right now since so many of the shows are on break for the summer. I'm considering moving the site to self-hosted WordPress soon (not the other WordPress I was bitching about last week), but that won't be for another few weeks.
Aside from that, I'm really financially frustrated at the moment. I was expecting to have a little more money coming in starting this month, and it turns out that's not going to happen now, so now I'm trying to figure something else out, and find the time to do so. I'm getting close to my savings goal for a new (used) car, but it's the little expenditures that are becoming a problem.
A lot of them are "luxury" expenses, like going to the movies and getting small things for myself like books or jewelry (all under $15 or $20, I assure you), so technically I shouldn't be complaining about not being able to buy that X Files memorabilia I want or that new book that comes out next week. I've been on a budget for a long time, and I don't have a problem budgeting or taking my time and saving up for things I want but don't necessarily need. I just really was expecting to have more money to budget by now, and knowing I don't means I have to adjust things and it's going to take a little time for me to come to terms with that.
In any case, even with the tour over, I've got plenty to keep me busy during the weeks and months to come!
Everybody's working for the weekend!
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