A summary for you on what to expect in this edition in case you want to scroll down to the interesting bits: my month ahead; BookBub featured deal results; and the progress report with an update on my week-on-week sales and writing progress.
I’m Cracking On
This month is all about finishing off the Crowhill Kitchen series, at long last.
The last book, Cooking on Gas, comes out at the end of this month, so I’m knuckling down on working on it until it’s done. I have a pretty packed schedule for the whole month to make sure it gets finished on time along with any other existing obligations, and that means a couple of things.
a) If I get sick again, well, I’m screwed hahahaha (please universe don’t let me get sick again)
b) I am not going to be starting any new client work until September (though I am open for conversations and for setting up contracts to start then)
c) I will not be publishing any Saturday essays for the month of August
I will be saving up the allocation of working time for those Saturdays, however, so you will still get the same amount of posts overall across the year. They will just be published in September onwards, not in August. I don’t know if I will do two extra posts in Sept/Oct to make up for it, or if I will just do a couple of posts that take four hours to work on instead of two hours - we’ll see how the winds take me. Just rest assured, the work will be done, a little later than scheduled.
I’m excited to get this one finished. It’s been hanging around, haunting me, for way too long. I’m feeling a bit more energised about life in general, actually - I’ve started going for walks in the evening again, I’m painting up the bookcases for my office so I can finish off my refurb, and I bought a steam cleaner off the TikTok Shop (along with what seems to be the entire adult population of TikTok) so my bathroom looks amazing.
Let’s hope it lasts - I’ve got a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head that I would like to grab some time to explore, and doing that requires some free time back in my schedule, which I can only gain by clearing the backlog. I’m 77 hours behind today. It was 86 last week. We’re getting there.
Upcoming planned topics for this newsletter include: a deep dive into The Green Knight; something about Love, Simon’s structure; war memorials and what they mean to us; how I wrote a narrative non-fiction novel that attempted to be faithful to history; thoughts on pens; and some ecocriticism/historicism around Haweswater.
Bloodless was free last week, and I had a beautiful BookBub Featured Deal to promote it! The results were great. So far, I haven’t earned out the ad spend, but the great thing about promoting a series is that people will be likely to read on past book 1 into books 2, 3, 4, and so on. With 12 main books and 2 spin-off novellas in the Serial Investigations series, that means this kind of promotion can have a long tail.
Results were good in terms of statistics, too - here are some screenshots from the UK site:
Canada:
USA:
and Australia:
Not bad at all! I cracked the top 65 of all free Kindle books on all stores (except Canada, which doesn’t show a ranking - super annoying), and even top 40 in Australia. I’m taking that as a win.
Books
Okay, you've read the Substack posts (and maybe you're a little bit confused if that's where you started). Wondering who all of these characters are? Thinking you need a refresher on past books?
Each week, I share the one TikTok video that performed best out of the last seven days.
All of these videos are available on TikTok for free, but if you’re a) not a TikTok user or b) just want the best highlights, this is a convenient place to see it.
This week’s best is below, and it’s this what I read in July:
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My monthly updates don’t usually do this well, so I’m pleased.
Note: Changes are in bold, comments in italics.
TOTAL SALES:
Crowhill Cove series (Don’t Move Out, Don’t Go Outside, Don’t Fly Home, Don’t Leave Town, Don’t Check Out, the 1-5 boxset, and Don’t Move Your Desk): ebook - 1,171, paperback/hardback - 48, KU pages read - 836,847, free downloads - 6,304
Kiss The Cook - ebook - 22, paperback - 1, KU pages read - 11,847
Cook Up A Storm - ebook - 20, paperback - 1, KU pages read - 8,416 - No movement this week
Too Many Cooks: ebook - 8, paperback - 1, KU pages read - 3,724 - No movement this week
What’s Cooking, Good Looking?: ebook - 12, paperback - 1, KU pages read - 4,931 - No movement this week
Serial Investigations full series (Pre-Substack releases: books 1-12, 2 bonus novellas, 2 boxsets): ebook - 524, paperback/hardback - 117, KU pages read - 409,972, free downloads - 4,825 - some BIG increases this week!
WRITING:
Cooking on Gas: preorder up, 15k words written, writing due to resume this week
Crowhill Club: all covers, themes, and titles done, characters created and romances/interpersonal relationships between books set up
Mystery project: cover design bought!!!, initial ideas on characters, plot, themes
Hydropower: Mid-season break/hiatus
Client status: One book in final edits, two books in pitch phase
SUBSTACK:
Subscribers: free - 83, paid - 1
Followers: 468
CONSUMING:
Read: Don’t Talk About Politics by Sarah Stein Lubrano (PR copy), Roommates by Ola Tundun (PR copy)
Reading: A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee, Until August by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (PR copy)
Watched and watching: F Marry Kill, Survivor Australia S3, Charmed S1, Bad and Crazy, Supernatural S13
By the way, please like this post if you enjoyed it and would like to see more! This helps me decide what to do for future content.
XO Rhiannon