June – A Month of Firsts 

It’s been quite a while since I blogged. This year has been filled with changes on so many levels that it’s taken me time to make adjustments physically, emotionally, and spiritually. When June arrived and I wasn’t expecting too much, but it ended up being a month of firsts.

This is the first month I have felt settled in my new environment and open to whatever God has for me here. That includes using me to speak into the lives of others around me. I yielded and He has begun to open doorways, though I can’t see where any of them lead at this point. That’s not important. I am learning to find joy in the journey.

Living in a small city on the prairies, I have access to ammenities for the first time in six years. Prior to this, it took a minimum of two hours to get somewhere to access a few of the things that are now only a short bus ride away. There are so many new things to discover, and I intend to do some of that this summer.

The biggest first was meeting three other authors from my city, and two authors from the big city of Regina, which is a 45 minute drive away. The surprise came when I realized one of the Regina authors was a member of my Canadian Christian Writers group on Facebook. It was wonderful to gather and share our books, our current projects, and our challenges. Yes, there was some networking of course, and a little brainstorming but it was the easy banter and laughter that filled my heart and spirit.

All of us have such keen senses of humour. An hour and a half passed by in a blink, because there was so much laughter, encouragement, and support even though we all write different genres. There was zero competition which was refreshing. Instead, there was a very tangible sense of community. We will definitely meet again after the summer is over. I am blessed to have free access to a very private meeting space which doubles as a private dining room.

I started to post on my social media sites again, though not in the kind of consistent way I need to. I will work on that over the summer. I also don’t look at my KDP and Kindle/KU sales more than once a week. Today, being the last day of the month, it seemed like a good time to open my reports up and I was shocked.

Now, I have to preface this with the reality that my sales remain low. There are many weeks and months that there are zeros everywhere on my reports. Not this month. I knew about the two ebooks that sold earlier in the month, but I was stunned to see that three paperbacks sold yesterday! That makes a total of five sales in June which is the highest in many months. Being an indie author is not for the faint of heart, that is for certain.

So, tomorrow I begin July with hope and even a low-level excitement to see what lies ahead. I want to thank all of you, my readers, for your support. It means the world to me and I am trying to figure out a few ways that I can interact more personally with you, other than through this blog.

Stay tuned!