Author’s Notes

For way more than a month now, a black-whiskered vireo has perched outside the house, whistling for a mate. He’s a small bird, a warbler, grey upper body, with a slight green tinge, white belly, dark lines around his beak, (the whiskers,) and he whistles a lot. I’ve spent so long describing him because he’s proven very hard to photograph. (Pretty zippy.) And I’m describing him to you because his whistles are pretty incessant. Several hours a day in the morning, and again in the last hours before sunset.

This is the best picture I could get of him. It’s a screen grab from a video, he was .25 sec from darting out of screen

I’m not a birder. Justin Case and his sister, characters in my books, are birders but I’m a bigger fan of the great-great ancestors of birds. So, my guess that he’s whistling for a mate is only an assumption. It’s the right season, (Cardinals a building nests all around the house, key deer are having key fawns, etc. , ) and that’s one of the reasons a lot of birds sing/whistle.

He’s persistent. Everyday he’s out there, somewhere just out of camera shot in the mahogany. Sometimes he’s within camera shot too, but away by the time I have a camera in hand. He’s consistent. His song remains the same. I’m able to recognize it by now, even apart from the other chirps and whistles of birds nearby. He’s very, very, unsuccessful.

It’s been almost two months, and he’s still whistling. If he’s looking for a mate, he hasn’t found one. Perhaps he’s not a good singer. Maybe he started singing too early. Perhaps his song is drowned out by the other noises, chirps, tweets, car engines, planes, helicopters, etc that resound throughout the neighborhood. Perhaps other black-whiskered vireos in the area have better songs. Perhaps there are no mates around. Maybe he’s chosen the wrong area, maybe there are no female black-whiskered vireo in range of his persistant call. Who knows? I’m rooting for him.

Anyway

I’ve started advertising the Junior Rangers Investigative Club books for the first time. Facebook ads. Amazon ads. Making visual advertisements for one, for the other: wrangling keywords to drive impressions, extend reach, and get link clicks. Ad Campaigns, Ad Sets, individual ads, target audiences. My instructors have been authors online. Or Author adjacent people online. (Mostly youtube.) There are a lot of get-rich quick channels full of advices with single digit views. There are a few people who seem to know what they are doing and are gracious enough to share things that seem actually helpful.

I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m learning. Marketing 101 seems far too flattering for the type of learning I’ve been doing. (Some of the online tutorials are great, but this is way outside of my wheelhouse, comfort zone, area of expertise, and other similar phrases used repetitively to get the point across.)

This isn’t the first time that self-publishing has pulled my in directions I’d never, (before deciding to self publish,) planned to go. Ideas. Those are the easy part. I have enough ideas to fuel my writing for the rest of my life. Writing. That’s not too bad, although it takes effort to push through and get a full manuscript. (and mental fortitude to write the manuscript without rewriting each chapter before moving on to the next.) Editing. (not the spelling grammar kind, but more rough editing to catch, fix, improve ideas.) That’s a bit harder, but also fun in it’s own way. Some of the best lines come from my post 1st draft edits, when I realize what the characters would say/do in certain situations.

That’s writing. That’s, for me, being an author.

But then I got greedy.

I like the Junior Rangers Investigative Club too much. I didn’t want to share the rights to these stories, or risk loosing them. I wanted other people to read them as soon as possible. I wanted everyone to get to know the different members of the Junior Rangers as soon as possible, (within limits, some characters have to wait for their introduction, or time to shine,) and I wanted to make certain one of the target locations for the books were the parks featured in them. Thus: Self Publishing.

Fortunately. It’s the 2020’s. That’s feasible. here are more ways to publish a book than ever. There are ways to connect with professionals around the world, and there’s a lot of information out there. There are online tutorials, forums full of helpful people. Other people going through all of the same, or similar, things.

Unfortunately, the choice to self-publish also comes with a lot more steps, and a lot more skills to learn. Amazon publishing. Ingram Spark Publishing. Editing my already edited work so that it is good enough to put in front of a professional editor. (I still use professional editing.) Finding an illustrator. (Fortunately for me, Bailey made that one incredibly easy!. Check out her work on her website.) Website design. Marketing. Getting books into parks. Talking to rangers. Doing more research. Dodging scams. Attempting to do book signings, applying for awards and events. Planning every step of a book launch. Seeking out reviews. Designing ads. A never ending series of things to do after the book.

While making ads, I came across this old version of the Treasure off the Coast Cover. It’s not the one we went with. The final cover is amazing! But I’m still a bit nostalgic about the sunset colors in this one. And Justin holding Rudy back from the heights!

I’m not doing any of it terribly well, but it is a terrible lot to do. I wanted, want to, write. Everything else is ancillary to that goal. Except that I want people to read the stories I write too. So all of it is important. I guess.

And I guess this is just a short blog justifying the fact that I’m making advertisements now, and some of you may end up seeing them in the wild. If you do, sorry, I guess. (I’m not a big fan of advertising in general, but…) I, personally, think that the Junior Rangers Investigative Club books are a lot of fun! I thoroughly enjoy writing about Justin, Lucy, Rudy and the rest of the team’s adventures, and I want more people to read them, and to learn about parks too, and to do that, I need to market them. And so, I am. Added a new step along my self-publishing journey, let’s see if it helps.

Oh! Also, there’s a new review out for Treasure of Biscayne Bay!

I’ll be putting it on the reviews page, and probably sharing it on social media multiple times and ways, but I thought it would be fitting to ad a link here if anyone wants to check it out.

Read it: here

or watch the video review on youtube with this link.