Preparations

I'm spending today shuttling Sam back and forth from work (Budley has the truck) and getting ready to head to Atlanta tomorrow. Deciding what to take shouldn't be too hard, since my collection of "Conference Clothes" is fairly small. I haven't done any major shopping for these events since the first one to Washington, DC in 2009. I keep wearing the same stuff over and over again, a different shirt here, different jacket there. You get the idea. Hey, it's only been five years. Styles haven't changed that much. Amazingly enough, neither has my weight.

Yesterday was "Get the yard in shape so I don't come home to a jungle" day. I had better luck missing the rain than I have all summer, and for once, everything was actually dry enough to mow. I'm hoping the deer don't eat all of my plants while I'm gone. I think they're beginning to enjoy the nasty smell of the stuff I've been spraying around the yard to keep them away. It's certainly keeping me away. It smells a bit like a festering wound.

I'm not going to have Unrivaled ready to publish on the 22nd as I had hoped. Just not enough hours in the day and too much other stuff going on between now and then. I'm going to keep working on it and put it up as soon as it's ready. I put Unbridled on sale for 99 cents yesterday, (Kindle and Nook only) and I've seen a slight upswing in sales--the operative word there being "slight." Guess I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and put it on Kindle Select for 90 days so I can put it up for free for a few days. Right now, I'm sticking with the lower price, but I may do the Kindle Select thing when Unrivaled goes up. The problem with the Select program is that I have to unpublish it everywhere else, but I figure those of you with Nooks who were planning to get Unbridled have already done so. If not, better get it while it's cheap!

We had a great IRWA meeting on Saturday. I was on a self-pub panel discussion with Aleatha Romig and Valley Brown. Aleatha is probably the one we should all be listening to. She's had great success with her books Truth and Consequences. I haven't read them--I have a feeling they're too dark for me--but she certainly has some rabid fans, and she's a helluva lot better at self-promotion than I am. She's willing to spend money to make money. I guess I'm just too cheap. Valley's book, Speeding Tickets was indie book of the day yesterday. http://indiebookoftheday.com/speeding-tickets-by-valley-brown/

As always, I'll be blogging from the conference. Who knows? Maybe I'll actually see some hunky guys and take pictures of them!