Take 4 – Answers to Your Questions

Today I’m answering more questions I received.

How do you balance your family life and writing life?

Well, I am very fortunate that I now write full time.  It makes it a lot easier to balance my family life and my writing life.  I write when my kids are at school or practice and my husband is at work.  It also helps that my kids are teenagers.

When I worked a full time job, it was really hard for me to focus on writing.  My family comes first.  Then I was working full time.  Then I was writing.  I wrote mostly in the early mornings or in the evenings.  And I will be honest with you, it was hard to balance.  I would be writing in the evenings instead of spending a lot of time with my kids.  However, they understood.  I think there’s phases where if you are building something, no matter what kind of business, you have to put the work in.  And sometimes that takes away from family life.  However, I made a point that if I was spending time with my kids, I was 100% committed to it.  No phones, no emails.  I just hung out with them.  I think if you want something, there has to be a little give and take.

I noticed several of your books from early 2018 are in Erotica. Were they always? Do you think that helped your visibility? Most authors complain about the ‘Erotica dungeon’, but you catapulted to success so quickly, it seems contrary to what everyone else says.

Yes. The books that are still in erotica have always been there.  They are there because of keywords I used or words I used in the title.  I am going to tell you my thoughts on my ‘erotica’ books and my opinions on it, but please remember it may not be the same for everyone.

I’m going to use my book, Mine: Alpha Male, Virgin Female Steamy Sweet Romance, as an example.  It is in the erotica category.  It is in the erotica category because of the subtitle of the book.  Which I could probably fix, I just haven’t yet.  However, it is also one of my lowest performing books.

So here’s where we get to my opinion.  I believe this book does not perform as well because it is in the erotica category but does not have erotica content.  There are some sex scenes in the story, but primarily it is a love story.  I’m sure if people are looking for an erotic book, they would be disappointed with this book.

So, in my opinion I do not feel that it helped catapult my writing.  However, that’s just me though.  It may be different for someone else.

Is having a blog or a Facebook page really needed for authors? Doesn’t it kind of cut into writing time?

I do not keep up with my author blog.  It’s a goal of mine.  But I haven’t done really well with it.

I do recommend a Facebook Page, or even better a Facebook Group.  I wrote more on this last week – Check it out here:  Answers to your questions Take 3

So, you have two options really.

1- If you have time to write (first priority), then start a FB page or Group and post when you can.

2 – If you don’t have time to write and it stresses you out to add a FB Page or Group, then wait on it.  Writing is the most important aspect of all this.

If you were not making any money at all, would you still write and publish your stories?

Good question.  I wish I could say ‘absolutely.’ But that’s not realistic.  I love to write, share my stories, and get to know my readers.  If I was not making money, then I assume I would not have any readers either.  They are sort of what keeps me going. They motivate me like nothing else. 🙂  So even though I want to say yes, I would still write.  I can’t.

What is the biggest mistake you have made since you started your publishing journey?

Probably my biggest mistake is putting my book up with the wrong title.  I put a second book in a series up with the first books title.  You want to talk about stressed out.  I worried myself to death about it.  Since it was in review, Amazon couldn’t help.  They told me I would have to wait to fix it until it was either Live or not approved to publish and put back in draft.  I hoped they would just not approve it, but they did.  It was pretty anticlimactic though.  It went live.  I immediately fixed it and then didn’t promote it until it was live again.

At the time, this was a huge deal to me and I was so upset.  Now, I realize it really wasn’t.  I’ve learned to pay better attention when posting a book and also to not stress the small stuff.

Have you ever considered writing in a different genre besides Romance? What would it be?

I have considered writing some more nonfiction.

However, for fiction, I will probably only write romance.  That’s all I read, so it makes sense I would stick with that.

Thank you for all the questions.  If you have one you would like to ask, please click HERE and enter it.