Lesson 42

Lesson 42
Writing My Life Away
 I am glad that you are back. I hope your week was productive, and you reviewed any of my lessons from the past to help guide you in whatever phase you are at. Today is more of a thought, and may give you incite about future days to come. SOOOO, let’s jump right into it so you can get back to work.

I have never written so much before in my entire life as I do now. Writing books is the easy part, which now that I have started, I can’t find enough time to continue. I am writing ads, blogs, and letters in order to promote the first books that I have published. You need to have a blurb, an ad copy, (several in fact) a synopsis, an author bio, your back cover, a commercial ad, and so much more.
I am constantly paging through the Internet to find book sites, publishers, agents, ad space, not to mention all the social sites, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and so many others in order to help advertise for free. I write short ads to post on my site, or comment on other posts to direct people to my site which probably ticks people off after a while. I write pleas for reviews, which I don’t know why, because if Amazon doesn’t recognize it as a legit sale, then they will not post them.
Many things go into a book besides the story, and if you’re not rich and no one knows who you are, you’re just another name out of 10 million authors. And I thought showbiz was hard. At least you could be an extra in the background. An author can only rely on his work being sold and read.
Your book could be amazing, a bestseller, the next JK Rowlands, or Stephen King. But if no one can find it on the bottom in a pile of 10 million books, who is going to know? It is funny how through the years of my youth, my writings always had a sequel, or could have continued into a series, or I would think of an invention, and darn me when I saw it on the market a year or so later.
Writing used to be just an outlet for me, to convey my true thoughts. Now it has become a passion to bring joy to others by helping them to escape from life’s troubling turmoil. I remember back in my younger days when I had time to read and I wanted something to eat. I pulled out a frozen cherry pie and placed it in the oven, and sat down to read The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson. One hour later the smoke detector blared, and smoke filled the room from the burning pie. I was so engrossed in the book, I didn’t hear a thing. To get that entertained in a story is wonderful. I know my books could do the same thing for many others. I had a woman say that she couldn’t put my book down and had to finish it to the end until 4 o’clock in the morning, even though she had to get up to go to work. I thought it was rather good PR. It gives me a great feeling knowing that my books can touch people, but again, they sit at about 5 million or so in that Internet pile.
So I write, and write, and write. At least my spelling has improved, and my handwriting, well, I can read it most of the time. Also, thank goodness for Dragon Speech Recognition, even though I have to proofread the dickens out of it, because I have a Wisconsin accent. (That’s what I said.)
I want to sincerely thank you for your time, and all the likes, and shares, and the pass along comments that I have received. If you have some spare time, send me your thoughts, ask me questions, let me know how your book is doing and where you are in the process. You could also check out my site for some great books to read. They will show you the front matter in the layout that I have chosen, whether it was published by a vanity publisher, or the ones that I self-published. If you have already read some of them, I thank you, and ask that you take a moment to post your honest review on Amazon. This could help my books to move up in the pile. Also I implore you to share my pages on your social media sites, just a way to say thank you for these classes.
This lesson is short, so let me add. A lot of you have asked about using a non de plume, or pen name, or pseudonym, which is an adaptation of your name, but disguised. WHY? They said that Joanne Rowling would not sell a wizard story, because it is a woman author, so they changed it to J K Rowling. Steven King tried selling and had no bites until he put the same book out by the name of Richard Bachman. John Wayne’s name is Marion Michael Morrison. And we still don’t know why Arnold George Dorsey chose Engelbert Humperdinck, but people all know who he is, and remember the name.
My name is Richard Heinreich / too German, and too strong, RICHARD, and people can’t pronounce Heinreich. I chose my middle name, Curtis, and used a K to go with Rick, short and courteous. Google it, and it is the only one. My other pen name for my children’s books to keep the author’s genre separate is P J Richards, (Maybe). There are at least 7 of those already on Google. So, some people don’t like their names, think it too long, or too hard to pronounce, or too hard to remember. It is all up to you.
Until next time, have a wonderful week.
Bye from rickkurtisbooks.com