Welcome to 2023 and What I Got Up to Over the Holidays!

Well… Hello and welcome.

Hello to you, and hello to 2023.

How was your holiday?

Mine was busy, so let’s get into it.

 

DECEMBER

Health

1 – Had a blood test, set up appointments for this year.

 

Fashion/Jewellery

1 – Did the usual December clean out, moved into the yearly clothing/jewellery/accessory audits and took a few bags to the op shop. Then turned around and bought some bags from the op shop. Oi!

2 – Also bought a few pieces of clothing from Millers, and on eBay, and some sandals from StyleTread. Overall, I didn’t buy that much last year, (if you don’t include a hundred or so t-shirts from Redbubble) and threw out not much more.

3 – Did the paperwork of my clothing/jewellery/accessories audit.

4 – I still need to repair a few bracelet stacks with floss elastic because I haven’t done it from December 2021. Yes, I’m lazy!

5 – Reorganised all of the for sale jewellery containers under the table. Threw out stuff I no longer needed.

 

Social Mafia

1 – Had a hosting issue with JDS, where the public html file was blowing past its 5gb disk space in the file manager. I rehired a company I used years ago to fix it and check out the rest of the websites. They will come in handy for migrating blog posts later in the year.

2 – I joined a social media site called Hive. It’s a mix of Instagram and Twitter, but then they went offline to fix some bugs so couldn’t post which afforded me time to do other things. At this point I don’t know if I’ll even post, or kick social mafia to the kerb, so we’ll have to see if I even use it.

3 – Made more decisions about the closure of two websites, and the updating of the last three. It will all be done by the end of 2023.

4 – Made and added a header image of me to my website. I took pics last year and managed to make some headshots out of them, and then made a banner.

5 – Reset up Twitter accounts for L.J. Diva and T.K. Wrathbone. A part of me didn’t really want to do it, but felt for redirection’s sake, which was suggested in a writers’ group I’m in on Facebook, I should have my name back on it. I still may close it at the end of the year.

6 – Finally finished off the old Blogspot blogs after years of trying to figure out how to do it. I found a way to delete the two old blogs for JDS and LJD and delete the emails at yahoo that was associated with them. The LJD google account as a whole is now deleted, but the JDS Blogger account is still active so I can still comment on blogs.

 

Business/Authorly

1 – Started my yearly publishing planner and re-jigged my old Happy Planners into the next couple of years’ worth of planner paper. I stuck pages together so I can use them differently, instead of in the actual planner. I’ve moved away from that format, but I’ll use the paper for my weekly list of things to do. It gets used and I don’t have to worry about finding a planner that suits me.

2 – Started using my new Lenovo laptop even though I’ve had it since Aug 2021, and did blog about it. It’s just taken some time here and there to add all of the apps I need, then the bookmarks and passwords, etc. I suffered it out with my old pc because of Word as the Lenovo didn’t have it without me buying and activating it, but I finally bit the bullet and started using the Lenovo for everything else. My God! Why did I wait so long?

3 – Got stuck into the usual end of year paperwork. I bought and binged the online courses Profile writing, Content writing, and Media Releases. Printed and filed all of the course papers into folders.

4 – I went over old author courses that had been updated, and ones I hadn’t even got to. Although I still need time for all of it to sink in so I’ll redo them through the year as well.

5 – I reorganised the bookshelves to accommodate all of my folders and new work books that I bought last year. I put many of my planners and some of my folios away, sorting as much as possible to get as much as possible into the shelves so I have work books at hand instead of all over the office.

6 – I reorganised all of my stationery and paper in my cupboard and containers. Packed away excess writing notebooks so I had the room in the cupboards and only left a few out in case I get back to hand writing.

7 – Updated the timelines and bios on my websites and in my Media Kit.

8 – Shortened my publishing lists that I print out when starting a new project, so I can mark off each thing when it’s done. I have one for the e-book, such as the Wrathbone stories, one for print books, which are the Wrathbone books, and a combined list for novels or non-fic books. Moving forward, I’ll be doing fewer visual edits for the sake of my sanity. I’ve made the list shorter over the years, trying to find better ways of finding last minute errors. I’m down to three edits before sending to my editor, and then I had a final print out and read through in 16pt font comix sans. It’s funny how different font makes you catch errors. But I’m changing that for a text to speech read through instead as I have it on my new laptop, or I can do it via the e-book at Google Play. I get really sick of physically reading my books, and need a way to get as many mistakes checked as possible before release. Anything For You went out with multiple errors. I caught about 20 in reading the large print version after the e-book’s release, and then found some more after updating and uploading to Google Play and listening to it. So, text to speech is going to be the way forward.

 

Other

1 – Redid my book list notebook. I was using a reading journal, but had made such a mess of it I knew I needed an ordinary notebook. It took hours to rewrite all of the books I’ve read in the last few years. Imagine if I remembered every book I’d ever written and had to write them down… Oi! I read about 50 novels in the last year, and a few non-fictions. This year it’s time for writing, not reading.

2 – Found out about the Goodreads challenge in the last week of December, and thought, hey I’ve read fifty novels, let me add those. I rated them instead of leaving reviews which are on my blog.

3 – Redid some Nancy containers and packed away the bits and pieces I bought this year and updated the paperwork with the new stuff. And then bought more stuff and did the whole thing over.

4 – Read a couple of non-fiction books about writing, as I do. One I just flicked through after a while as she was just whining about how she has trouble writing. For most of the book. Oi!

 

JANUARY

Health

1 – Had an appointment, and made mum one.

 

Social Mafia

1 – Did my yearly blogging planner.

2 – Took photos as my goodies rolled in, and scheduled blog posts.

3 – Did my yearly to-do list and laid it all out in my usual quarterly paperwork.

4 – Joined TikTok as Royal Star Publishing and posted all of last year’s videos. RSP also joined Hive but is yet to post. I’m not sure if I will, or if I’ll even stay at this point. It’s just another site to waste time on.

5 – Started getting this year’s videos ready to go out across TT, H, IG, FB, TW, PIN, YT. That’s a lot of social sites!

6 – Thought more about the closure of my two author websites. Found a new blog theme for JDS which will change at the end of the year.

 

Business/Authorly

1 – Bought Office Professional 2021 and installed it on the Lenovo and then had problems with the formatting I’d already done in my books using Word 2010. I had to google to find the issue and managed to fix it. Hopefully! I really don’t want to ruin my formatting. It took hours per book and there are 81 print formats. Imagine the time spent having to redo all of those….. JUST.NO!

2 – Bought an Opinion Writing course from the Australian Writer’s Centre and did that through the month, I also went back over the other online courses of Profile, Content, and Media Releases. I’m hoping it will help improve my blog posts, and I want to get my opinions published as a string to my bow, feather in my cap, and any other cliché one can think of.

3 – Bought the “Screenwriting with the creator of Bluey” online event that will happen in February, and an online “Inside Publicity” event which will be in March, from the SA Writers’ Centre.

4 – Dealt with some business issues concerning email addresses.

5 – Updated the timelines and bios on my websites and in my Media Kit again as I had more courses to add.

6 – Set up and released #teenblogger as an AI narrated audio book at Google Play. Then uploaded it to Kobo.

7 – Uploaded the AI audio book of Anything for You to Kobo.

8 – Made audio covers for all 24 Wrathbone stories and uploaded the first four to Google Play to make AI narrated audio books. Then uploaded them to Kobo. They are yet to go live due to issues with the recordings.

9 –  Uploaded all of the above audio books to PublishDrive, but there were issues with the way they wanted the files to be named and done, so I’m not sure what to do with PD at this stage. My books would have only gone through to three stores in Romania, China and Poland because I have the free subscription on PD.

10 – Started listening to the AI audio for the four stand-alone novels so I can get them out next.

11 – Bought copies of Anything for You, One Bone, Six Bone, #Teenblogger, plus a lolly covered gift box. Wrote and printed a letter over the faded cover of Anything for You to send to Jason Sudeikis, the actor who inspired Anything for You.

 

Other

1 – Did my yearly spending diaries, where I keep lists of what I buy and spend in a year. It’s a weird thing, looking back at all of the crap you’ve bought over the years. I started one of them in 1987 for my Nancy Drew books, but that soon led to eBay and other stores as everything went online.

2 – Read a couple of fiction and non-fiction books that had been on the TBR list.

 

Soooo….what did you guys get up to over the last couple of months?

 

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2 Comments

    1. Jewel Divas Style March 8, 2023 at 10:13 pm

      I’ve had a lot of energy in the last few months.

      Reply

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