Ugh.

The real trouble with overnight accommodations is the shit you're willing to put up with for "just one night". The pillow's understuffed for me, but it's just one night. The bed's too hard for me, but it's just one night. The air con has no middle ground between freezing cold and stuffy warmth, but it's just one night...

And on it goes. Little minor annoyances that mount up to sleeping tense, sleeping really lightly, and not getting in a good sleep at all. I gave up at what should have been a weekday awakening time [5:30] and headed for my lappy to do this noise.

After a diversion to check out my fandom crap, of course.

Because nothing says "workaholic writer" like procrastinating for an hour by looking up fanfics and fanart of someone else's hard work.

...lord knows, I don't have much from my own creations.

I'm pretty certain that I may have bit myself in the buttocks with this Agent Hunt of mine, but I need an agent to get wider word out and get better notice to actually have a career at what I'm good at...

On the plus side, I still have my Instants, so it's not like I suddenly vanished off the map for this long. I still have output. I talk about what I'm doing on the pro scene, but like... four people read this blog at all, so... Yeah. I'm missing out on doing something important. Something that could get me Noticed. And just... writing nonstop for ten years [and more] isn't it.

I've seen all of those "Ten things a writer needs to do to get popular" lists and... I'm doing them. Or most of them. All of them that don't cost me money.

1. Twitter feed
2. Facebook page
3. Medium
4. Wordpress blog (that I really need to contribute to regularly)
5. Pro-looking homepage with my penname all over it (that I need to learn how to update)
6. Patreon
7. Ko-fi
8. A regular blog in social media where I'm gathering followers (some of whom are real people! And not porn-bots!)
9. advertising regularly on said social media platform (I need to get back on to that)
10. Knowing my audience -- My audience is the people who are sick of the same ol' same ol'. And I do NOT know where they are wont to hang out.

(eight out of ten is still a pass, right?)

Finding people to love my stuff involves throwing the Instants out there on the interwebs like bread upon the waters, and waiting for it to return a thousandfold, as the scripture would say.

Starting next week, I shall be investigating means of getting the word out. Advertising. Anything under my self-imposed budget of $50 a week gets my attention. So for assorted platforms, I'll be working on that. Paying for one dose if possible, measuring the results afterwards in the form of sales ticks on Smashwords and Lulu. Scientific. Figuring out the best bang for my bucks.

And really hoping that'll actually work.

Fingers crossed that it does.