How are you keeping?

Three months has passed since I moved into my new unit. I love it here, but miss my husband, Reg. I will visit him soon, and take Tess our puppy, to his aged care home room to celebrate our 53rd wedding anniversary. I am keeping my head down writing cozy mysteries, which helps me handle my not being able to care for him at home. Writing and art are wonderfully therapeutic. My main character, Angela, in my cozy mysteries, takes up journaling to help her deal with stress. I’m hoping I will share her journey to greater creative awareness with my readers.

Excitement, for me, I have the prequel ready to release for you. It is FREE download, exclusive to my Rural Lit Newsletter subscribers.

Take care everyone.
Turn off the news, go outside, breathe. You were never meant to carry the burden of the entire world.
Love Ryn.

I am happy to hear your advice about my vlog targeting. It isn't towards people wanting or expecting art tutorials. 

I'll be striving to steer the content towards people seeking to read a serialised cozy mystery where tho amateur sleuth just happens to be an artist. I'll be hoping to find people interested in either following the progress of the serialised novel via subscription membership or buying the episodes as I publish the book.  

I am not planning on doing any full art tutorials here on YouTube—isn't all about the author artist creative coach mix with a focus on the serialsied releases of my "View From The Balcony" cozy mystery series. There will be art information in the stories I write.

So easy to get side tracked, and I hope not to be led there. Also, I would love any advice in steering toward the direction I'm heading a it is now ground for me, and even new ground within the Cozy Mystery genre.

I am writing and painting full time in two studios created for that purpose. A lifetime goal of mine is to be actively creating and doing my finest artworks well into my eighties.  I've ordered a ten-year diary, journal to record my journey combining art and writing in my books and other publications.

What have you done this week that you have enjoyed.  

Working on my cosy mystery series.

Freedom from stress is of major importance for fitness. Be positive. 

Fountain pen sales are buoyant amongst collectors and enthusiasts today, as people like myself discover the joy of working with fountain pen and ink.  Perhaps the baby boomer generation holds some nostalgia for the pens of our youth and can now slow down and strive to learn to write beautifully with a pen.
The art of penmanship is in revival.

I'm happy.
Today, I'm thirty-one-thousand words into book one, "What the Caged Bird Knows," in a new cosy, soft-boiled "A View From The Balcony Mystery" series, I started on November 1st.
Given the interruptions associated with the community living environment I am in, I didn't know if I'd be able to do this. Everyday is a battle to find a quiet minute to myself. Mostly I write in the middle of the night behind my locked door.
I'm plotting the other three books in the series as I write book one. The release is preset for 1st August 2022.
I hope there will be fountain pen illustrations as chapter headings, but it's really too early to see that far ahead.

Day nine, and it's been a day of amazing progress. I have been reminded of the generosity of spirit of authors, and how many network and assist each other.

Today I made contact with other ethical authors and bloggers.

I chose a launch date for my cozy mystery novel series of the 1st of August and booked that date with a fellow blogger for an interview and online book launch tour. I'll reciprocate and assist in promoting her books as I can see that people who would enjoy my work will also love her writing. That's cross-promotion, and it is how people can succeed by helping each other in an ethical non-spam manner.

My second venture into assisting fellow authors who will in turn assist me is by becoming a beta reader. That is, I am about to read someone's 75,000-word cozy mystery manuscript and comment constructively on it in a way that I hope will assist the work be as successful as possible at the book launch. She will reciprocate when I have my manuscript ready. That's an ideal way to work in business, assisting each other. I love that. Meeting these people was more important to me today than my word count. 

If this cozy mystery novel hoomumma is writing works, you know it will be 100% because of my critical eye on the whole process.
Tess.

736 words completed today. Some is better than none. A total of 14,058 words written by the end of Day 6 NaNoWriMo 2021.

There are many picture programs where you can do photo editing. My favourites are Pixer and Canva.  Today I spent a satisfying morning revamping all my website banners to reflect the importance of my cozy mystery series and art journaling and caricature art more in my future creative life and the fine art and historical fiction set in Australia more reflecting my past than my future. I do enjoy manipulating images in these programs, and I loved the resulting banners I created for my Patreon, YouTube and the pages in this website.  No writing was done though. We cannot do everything.  Then, life happened, and no writing was done in the afternoon and early evening. It looks as if a writing sprint, just before midnight is on the cards for tonight.

I, Tess the therapy puppy, had a wonderful morning. I went to Daylesford Lake, with Robyn from the kitchen staff, played ball on the bowling lawn at the aged care home with the physiotherapist, and napped while hoomumma, Ryn, wrote the murderer reveal scene reaching 9,564 words by day 5 #NaNoWriMo21

How important it is for the reader to read in order, or would the book still be a good read if read randomly out of order? I have numbered each book in a series, on the front cover, with my historical fiction. written as Ryn Shell
I won't do it for my cozy mysteries written under a the Kathryn Shell pen name.

wrote until 3AM to reach my word count target for NaNoWriMo day 4, so it's proving to be difficult, writing novels from within an aged care setting—with all its interruptions, but I'm still keen to try to do this. Your encouragement is greatly appreciated.

Today I bought four book covers for the new series I've begun. I'll do an early cover reveal for my Patreon's. 

Tess reports she got two walks, ball play, and afternoon tea in the garden. That's more impawtant than Ryn being slightly behind schedule with the #NaNoWriMo novel.
Ryn simplified her Patreon to one tier at one low price and added more rewards.
Have a pawfect evening furends.

Hoomumma has been going into a trance all morning and needs to be spoken to (or barked at) twice before she noticed others. She made an excuse about it being day one of writing a new novel.

I've exceeded my word target today. 2,645 words done/50,000 #NaNoWriMo goal.

The difficulty is, the amount of people who enter Reg's room. I am in the corner writing.

I don't know how practical it is to write a novel with endless interruptions, but I will keep trying.

​My answer is yes, if you are knowledgeable about the subject you write about, or engage expert guest writers, and if you love blogging; no, if you are in it or the money. I am reviving my blogs following a hiatus while I relocated to my new home and studio.

Checking the latest blogging advice before beginning.
These appear to still be popular topics to blog about that fit the definition of these blogs. I have made a list of those that suit various blogs and will ask the blog owners niche topics they find to draw the most reader interest. Market research before beginning any writing project will save wasted time.

Mainstream fiction is harder to market than genre fiction, and that is why I'm interested in helping the ethical mainstream fiction author find readers. I share this same dilemma of having written a story worthy of writing, rather that having forced a story into the confines of genre fiction. 

​Mainstream fiction is original fiction. Whereas authors who write to genre strive the write a novel that is different to another, while the same in basic structure to a known successful formula, us mainstream authors break ground. I could not tell you of a book like my own. The authors I love most do not write genre fiction. 

​The author's name usually sells mainstream fiction. So, how does a new author gain name recognition? We get there through promotions such as those I run from this and other websites where readers are good enough to sign up to enjoy a few introductory free reads. 

As readers discover good mainstream authors, they love them. Most books found in the general fiction section of bookstores are mainstream novels.

Readers, you can help our mainstream authors by recommending them, and by leaving a review on every book that you read and love. 
Cheers, Ryn Shell 

Back when I ran as a part of my fitness training, it caused some concern in sleapy seaside villages in far north Queensland. I had anxious strangers turning up at our caravan last night inquiring about the perceived emergency.

People knew that my husband had gone fishing and they saw me running along the road doing one of my sprints (after I had already run several kilometres on the sand, which they had not seen), and they assumption in this lay back town was that the only reason an old plump lady would be running would be that her husband had been taken by a crocodile.

It isn’t the first time I have been greeted by blank stares when I said, ‘there was nothing wrong, I just run’.