📋 Got the June report ready!
Busy month with events and such.
I’ve highlighted the projects that had changes in blue.
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Changing Tides: (Book 4 of the Distant Horizon series). On hold while working on The Dark Forest of Aneth. Next step is to merge the two revised drafts and start writing the missing scenes.
Deceived #3: On hold. Needs revisions. Tentatively titled Exposed.
Future steps: Input Isaac’s notes from Deceived #5 (formerly #4) into the manuscript, revise Deceived #5, and revise #6 (formerly #5) before handing it to Isaac for his feedback.
Dossiers (Deceived Spin-off): On hold. Next step is a revision round which involves incorporating notes into the manuscript.
Multiverse Chronicles (Distant Horizon Universe Spin-off): On hold, though I did start working on a character design for Trish in Daz, and started on a render but haven’t yet completed it.
Next up is adding missing scenes, doing a complete read-through to check for revision smudge, and then doing a read-aloud with Isaac to make sure the story still fits his vision. Then it’s off to beta-readers! I’m hoping to start revision work in July.
Little One (Distant Horizon Prequel): This story is back in action?! It is!
After doing some braindumping into a chat session with Claude and having it create a chapter by chapter “line edit” I could review, I decided to go ahead and do a test round of revisions. First four chapters went smoothly, so I gave Little One the green light to start sharing in the Distant Horizon Universe newsletter!
So far I’ve revised six out of a lot of chapters (this is a longer novel), but I’m really enjoying the process. Current plan is to do light revisions and ProWritingAid edits on this chapter by chapter, then send out a chapter with each regular Distant Horizon newsletter email.
TWB 4: (Book Four of The Wishing Blade series). On hold. Next step is to write the outline and reread the first three books.
The Dark Forest of Aneth (A Legends of Cirena short novel): On hold during June while finalizing Fae. Next step is to finish inputting my notes from my Kindle Paperwhite read, then review those revisions and see if it’s ready for beta-readers.
Other Goals: Revisit the book cover concept. Create a blurb. Polish the related poem/ballad so it can be included as back matter.
The Ruins of Amixthael (The Gryphon and the Mountain Bear Spin-Off): On hold. Next step is to revise the chapters of the secondary character, then merge the two drafts together.
Future goals: Polish cover. Create blurb.
Untitled LoC Short Story (Standalone – Merchant in Reveratch): On hold. Next step is revisions.
Goals: Figure out a title. Create book cover and blurb. Polish the related poem/ballad so it can be included as back matter.
Untitled LoC Novella (Standalone – Twins in Ferta): Last time I was at chapter twenty-six around 58,000 words. I hit a bit of a snag this month with writing, but I have sent out chapter twenty-seven and the draft now sits at around 60,000 words. While Claude Fable was still available, I ran a developmental edit test to pick out remaining loose threads and plot issues to keep an eye out for during later revisions.
Next step is to continue writing the rough draft.
The Wind Mage and the Wolf Spin-Off (Joran’s Story – A Legends of Cirena short story) : On hold. Needs the rest of the fight scene cross-referenced.
Goals: Edit in ProWritingAid, read-aloud, proofread. Book cover and blurb.
Fae (Huntress 3): I’ve completed the read-through on my ancient Kindle and input those notes. Afterward, I did a test of Claude Fable (before it got pulled and recently reinstated) as an “ARC Reader/Proofreader” for feedback. Got some really useful notes, especially around little typos that were super easy to miss. Got those corrected. Then I did the read-aloud with Isaac using ElevenReader (verdict… much more natural sounding that the stock computer voices, and even better than previous uses of NaturalReader, though it still occasionally missed the mark with how a sentence should be read).
Meanwhile, the base of the cover is now complete. Painterly touches have been added. Still needs retouching (and I noticed I forgot to add the series number), and there’s one more special effect I think I might add in, but it’s almost done.
The blurb is also almost finished. I reviewed my original blurb but wasn’t quite happy with it, so I had Claude run through the same questions I gave myself and create a blurb as well. Then, after a lot of back and forth where I would read Claude’s version, make suggested changes and ask the AI to make suggestions on specific spots (the whole process reminded me quite a bit of times when I was on a more active writer forum and would exchange blurb feedback, just a lot more instantaneous), we got the blurb to a point that I actually mostly liked. Mashed my version and that version together, and now it’s set aside for me to review again after a couple days away from it.
Once the cover is finished I’ll finalize the backmatter in Huntress and Changeling and get those ebooks updated.
Horse Shifter Romantasy 🐎: On hold. Next step is to start drafting from the outline.
Dark Romantasy Idea: On hold. I need to finish writing the synopsis (currently 4,000 words).
Writers of Warrensburg Anthology – Edits based on the meeting feedback have been input, and the revised version was submitted! Next step will be to edit four of the other anthology short stories by the end of July.
Other Stories: The YA Alien Invasion/Dystopian short story is on hold.
Poetry (?!): Nothing new this month
Game Design: Still doing bits and pieces of game design.
Phalanx: I finally updated the Infinitas Publishing Phalanx landing page to reflect the current offerings. I still need to get a photo showing all of the pieces for the mousepad edition.
The beta version of the digital Phalanx game is ready to go, so I’ll be making a post about that soon! Once that’s live I’ll include a link to that on the Phalanx page (and possibly the “Extras” page).
Elemental Card Game: Been a while since I touched this one, but I grabbed the rules for the game (the ones I could find in our older files, anyway), and had Claude create a digital version for playtesting. This one is still in alpha testing and nowhere near ready for release (somewhere I have the notes Isaac and I made while beta-testing), but I’m starting to remember the basic mechanics and get a functional testing version going.
Legends of Cirena Tabletop Game: On something of a whim I gathered all the files we had for this game (since it had a finished, printable prototype but was still technically in beta-testing) and handed those to Claude to create a digital edition. Still very early in the conversion phase, but I’ve got a version ready to start testing for playability. (Needs help with the user interface conversion, though).
Battle Decks: Digital version on hold. I need to playtest this to find the remaining quirks, then see if we can’t get a mobile version functioning properly.
Anchor: Physical edition complete, but I need to get a landing page for it on the Infinitas Publishing website.
Fantasy RPG Productivity App: On hold until Isaac has a chance to review it.
Cozy Fantasy Pet Sim– Not a huge amount of adjustments here, but I did have Claude set up the game so it can now play properly in mobile. Haven’t had much chance to test it yet. Adult creature lineart still needs cleaned up and added to game, and juvenile creature art needs adjustments. I still need to add my own flavor text as well.
AI Usage and Policy: No new updates. Most of what I’ve been doing with AI is mentioned in this report. Been reading more books on the topic, and still have the idea for a presentation on AI Literacy.
Marketing/Admin:
- Continued with BookFunnel group promos. I’ve scheduled monthly promos through August! One change I made here is to test Claude CoWork, and I’ve structured an automation which allows Claude to go through my BookFunnel Dashboard and select all potentially relevant promos in a set time period for me to look at. I then review the picks and discard any I’m definitely not interested in. Then Claude pulls any extra details and the links to the banner (because I do review the banner for whether it’s a good fit). Once I’ve narrowed those options, Claude creates a basic submission email for me from a template I provided, which I can then quickly edit if additional details are needed, and then submit! I also had Claude create a list of the chosen banners and their respective tracking links to make those easy to upload to both my blog and newsletters, and Claude creates a basic paragraph for me with promos linked that’s easy for me to tweak and test the links. (You’ll be seeing that in the July and August posts–shouldn’t look any different from what I’ve had previously). Basically saves me from wading through a ton of promo lists that mostly aren’t good fits for the books I’m currently promoting, and automates the really repetitive tasks. Real test will come at the end of July when I go to set up the September promos (provided I’m still on the Claude Pro plan), but so far, it’s looking promising.
- I tried running a few all-new Amazon ads, but didn’t see any traction with sales, so I ended up pausing those. Next step is to review them and see if *anything* was working about them to pull for future tests.
- Continued using Claude to update my weekly/bi-weekly priorities list to help me stay on track with projects. I’ve also been doing a post-event review where I drop in all my thoughts of what worked and what didn’t… mostly so I’ll have a record for myself, but also to see what patterns the AI could spot.
- One issue I’ve had with permafree books is Amazon not keeping the prices free in all territories, and the process of checking all the links and composing a message to send them requesting specific territory fixes can take a while. I set up an automation in Claude CoWork to check the prices for me, and then create the message to send based on a pre-written template. It also reminds me twice a month to do a check. So far, this has been working to help me keep both Whispers in the Code and The Wind Mage of Maijev available for free!
- On a semi-backburner project, I gave Claude my series briefs for Distant Horizon and Glitch and had it recommend a to-market, genre-based book cover. Then, in a rare case of using ChatGPT image generation, I had it create a mockup based on the brief. (Note: The generated images will NOT be used as the actual covers. They’re visualization for my purposes only.) Though a couple of the mockups were definite misses, one stood out, so I returned with that image to Claude to discuss what I thought was working, what I thought wasn’t working, and what I liked/didn’t like compared to my current covers. I’ve gotten some pretty good ideas I want to test in a future cover, and I started toying with the perspectives on one of my Daz setups to see if I could mimic the parts I liked about the mockup image. What I found especially interesting about this process was that it reminded me of one of the assignments in my photography classes where we intentionally modeled another image we liked, so we could better learn the techniques.
- Continued sending out Distant Horizon Universe and Wishing Blade Universe newsletters.
- I’ve been keeping up with accounting!
Next up: Review and update book prices; watch Book Blurb Magic course on books with multiple POVs, review a social media and newsletter email PDF I bought. Continue updating the design of individual Infinitas Publishing book pages and adding metadata. Continue adding books to the Stripe store for direct sales (alternately, review new BookFunnel feature offering Square sales?). Overhaul book categories, keywords, and blurbs.
Crafting Your Fictional World: On Hold.
Repurposing Old Newsletter Content:
I did get the June posts scheduled ahead of time, but still need to schedule the ones for July. I recently pulled a bunch more content from my Wishing Blade Universe newsletter and need to do the same for the Distant Horizon Universe newsletter.
Events: This month is one of our bigger months for events, and we had both UP Rainbow Pride in Marquette and Hancock Pride Market. One thing I found useful, is that last month, before the Flower Moon Spring Market, I had Claude create an HTML event prep checklist based on the things I knew still needed done. That helped, so I updated it to be more generic but overall useful, and both times that helped keep me from forgetting anything while organizing everything to take to each event.
A Crafting Your Fictional World presentation is still planned for later in the year.
UP Rainbow Pride – Marquette MI (June 13th)
So much wind! Thankfully we had both stakes and cinderblocks to keep the tent in place, while I did spend quite a bit of time holding the back of the tent to make sure it didn’t suddenly pitch and knock over our displays. Made a great conversation starter, though.
UP Rainbow Pride was a couple hours out, but we still had everything mostly gathered from the Flower Moon Spring Market, which meant it was fairly easy to make a few adjustments to our inventory and have everything ready to pick up from the storage unit the night before, then leave first thing in the morning without trying to pack. We split the booth with a friend, so that also helped.
The event went well, and we made about the same as last year (including almost exactly the same from stickers and totes. O.o ). Aside from the wind, the weather was nice, and we had a fun time.
Hancock Pride Market – Hancock MI (June 28th)
This one is closer, and since we still had everything organized from UP Rainbow Pride, it didn’t take long to prep for at all. (Definite bonus part of having three events with a few weeks of each other). Got set up real quick, which gave us more time to chat with the other vendors. We didn’t make as much as expected on this show, but it might have been too close to other shows. Not enough data to say for sure on that outside of speculation. Overall, though, it was an enjoyable event.
SBibb’s Photographic Illustration: Just about done with formatting the ebook for an indie press! Need to help set up categories/keywords, and then it’s ready to upload.
Future Goals: Update the SBibbPhoto website to incorporate Daz work and fix the SEO information. Finish designing cute mascot for a local store. Finish editing photos for a local Aikido group.
SIFlint Art: Stickers ordered! I got the proofs and asked for a couple small corrections. Bag hoarding dragon stickers, coming soon! (Plus restock of plant hoarding dragon and Not-a-Ghoost).
Also, had fun making a mermaid render in Daz – “Reaching for the Light.” I used Affinity for the basic touchups. (Still need to learn how to use it for more complex touch-ups, though, so for now I mostly still use Photoshop CS6 on my older laptop).
Daz PA: Not quite as strong sales as last month, but still an improvements, so I plan to continue submitting products for the Quick Grab and Outlet Store slots.
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Happy writing and reading (Or 3D rendering if you’re into Daz)! 🙂
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 