I will no longer be focusing on The Lord’s Tale: Part Three as completely as I was before. Here’s why.
When I first began posting updates of the raw draft in PDF form, I noticed something that, at first, didn’t seem like a big deal, but began to cause me a little concern. Each time I posted an update, every PDF I had on my site was downloaded. Sometimes, without anyone even visiting the page where the PDF was located.
I deleted every PDF on my site except for the one I was updating. And still there were attempts to download these nonexistent PDFs.
Now, this could have been a person very interested in my work because they liked it, or it could have been something less wholesome. So, I decided to test it by changing the medium of exchange. After all, if it was a fan, then they would gladly sign up for a free subscription, right? So I set up a subscription on Gumroad, updated part three with a new scene, and announced it both here on my blog and on Twitter.
No one signed up.
Now, there are a lot of ways I could take this. First off, it shows me that, unless you have a following, sharing stories on a blog isn’t the way to go, even if it’s an established story. (Action item: build a following.)
Wattpad would be better, but I didn’t choose it this time because this is the final part of three, and it’s the final part of the second volume in the series, at that. If I had written the other stories on Wattpad, I might have tried, but I’m not going to have strangers jump in right in the middle of the story. And at the midpoint of the series, too.
So, yeah, no Wattpad.
Because I don’t know if this means the story isn’t sellable or not, I’m temporarily calling this a Book of the Heart. It will get finished, and I will update again starting sometime in January. Updates will occur once a month and, again, go through the subscription at Gumroad. For those who want to sign up, I will, in early January, put a link in the sidebar, as well as a progress meter so you see at a glance if any new words have been added.
My main focus, though, is a project that might have a bigger audience than a former baker’s wife who has a complicated romance with a mysterious minstrel.
I’m going to write a fantasy romance featuring Puck, a.k.a. Robin Goodfellow.
And this one, though sweet, will follow the romance beats a lot more closely than Trial of the Ornic does/did.
I’ll still post snippets here and there if I have a really good day, but otherwise, this blog is going to be full of fairies for a while. Hope you don’t mind. And I think I might also post this rough draft on Wattpad, given it’s the beginning of a new series. We’ll see.
In the meantime, I hope all is well in your household and that the holidays are very happy for all of you.
Amy Keeley 