Can you believe it’s October? I can’t. I also can’t believe it’s already almost a week into October.

I spent most of this week switching my newsletter provider. While I liked the one I was using, it was expensive and I’m trying to cut costs. My writing business has been in the red for a few months, mostly because I haven’t been working toward publishing another book this fall, so I’ve been actively trying to figure out how to not spend as much.

It took me about six hours to switch over, because it wasn’t just taking my list and importing it to the new provider. It was also creating the automations and the test campaign to see how the sending rates are, and creating new sign up forms to switch out for the old ones. Thankfully, I did host my own sign up forms on my own website, so I managed to keep the URLs the same and just needed to switch out the embedded forms. It’s likely no one will notice the difference. That’s how it should be. But I like talking about these behind-the-scenes things because you guys have told me that it’s helpful when I do.

Stepping back and allowing myself to not publish a book has alleviated a big HUGE stress off my back. But I also won’t have that income this fall, which I would have gotten in time for Christmas. And I’m sorta okay with that. This is why I have a full-time job still. BUT… it means I need to find another secondary income for a bit while I’m setting up my business for next year.

I’m spending the fall months writing new words. I pretty much do this every year. I don’t know how but I’ve managed to time writing new words with NaNoWriMo every year since 2008. It was never really on purpose, but it always happened that way.

My first goal is to write more on Bloodlines, enough to get me through the year. Enough to finish out this first story arc and get started on the second. And I need to get that done during October. Because November is a whole new book. That’s goal two. I haven’t talked a lot about that book yet, because I’m still figuring things out with it. So while I’m writing Bloodlines in October, I’ll be brainstorming this new book and trying to flesh it out in time for November.

I know I’ve been sort of absent here on the blog. This is the main reason why. I’ve been trying to figure out my life. LOL. I relaunched my YouTube channel and that’s been taking a lot of my time. I’ve been focused on writing new words and plotting out new books and keeping Bloodlines running regularly over on Patreon. These are all Important Things. And that’s why I tend to forget that the blog is here. You guys usually happily remind me to update here though. Apparently going a month without posting any updates is too long.

I’m going to do better. Time management isn’t really my strong suit, but I can’t get better at it if I don’t try. So, all through October, I’ll be working on improving my time management, which I’m going to need to do if I want to get through NaNoWriMo in one piece.

I can do it. I’ve done it before. And I’ll do it again.