A Belated Anniversary

I realized the other day that it’s June of 2021. Yes, it’s been June for a solid week and half now, I should have known this already, and I did, but time is a bit meaningless and it took me until now to understand the significance. It’s been over a year since everything shut down for “just a few weeks,” and now, on the eve of California’s full reopening, life seems to finally be getting “back to normal.”

But also, this means that I am truly awful at marketing. You see, back in March, when it was the one year anniversary of getting shut down and losing all my work and whatever, I made a note of it and thought to myself, “Oh, I need to remember to do something for the one year anniversary of the publication of Glass Domes, that book you wrote a millennia ago about a make belief pandemic that didn’t end nearly as well as this one is shaping to be.”

And then I promptly forgot until now, almost the middle of June, which makes me a month and a half late on the anniversary of my first published book, which you think would be a much bigger deal and something I would have remembered. Because I’m normally pretty good with dates. Perhaps I should add it to my friends and family birthday calendar to keep track. After all, birthdays are worth of anniversaries too, right?

In all honesty, this is pretty typical of my very poor marketing attempts throughout this entire past year. I’ve done actually very little, mostly because I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t know what the proper publicity channels are, and if I really thought about it, I haven’t really put enough effort into it. I’ve kind of just hoped that it would market itself eventually, you know? The lazy, easy way.

And it’s kind of worked. Some vague marketing attempts later, we’re at 34 reviews/ratings on Amazon, mostly from people I don’t know and didn’t have to force to write a review! And it’s got a 4 star rating, which, honestly, is the best that I could’ve hoped for so far for my debut novel. And it’s 4.3 on Goodreads (which does have fewer ratings at 21, but who’s counting) which is even better!

So all in all, I’m feeling pretty good about my second or third or fourth career path, whatever we’re on now (again, who’s counting?). And happy belated anniversary to me!