When I woke up this morning, I thought something had happened. I had quite a number of alerts on my phone. That only happens if something has gone horribly wrong at work.

Nothing went wrong at work.

The notifications were people liking my blog posts that I’d written quite some time ago. A series of posts about how I write so quickly. I picked up several new followers of this blog (Hello! I’m so glad you decided to join the madness that rattles around my brain.).

Of course, there had to be a reason. I mean, my posts see 1-5 hits over the course of a week. Why did I suddenly have 25 on some old posts?

Oh! Oh yeah. I’d mentioned another author where you could find some good writing resources. He reciprocated. Because Harvey is swell like that.

Now, first off, that was never my intention. Yes, I’m working on building my author platform and part of that is linking to sites I read and authors I follow. It is NOT requesting them to link back to me. Don’t get me wrong. I greatly appreciate the link back. As of now, I’ve had over 50 new hits to the site today. I’m over the moon with new eyes coming over.

I know this will be a flash in the pan. I’ve been on this roller coaster long enough to know that the bump is nice, but most will glace in and that’s all the further they’ll make it. For those that do stick around to see what I’m doing, Hello, I’m J.R. Murdock. I’m so happy you’re here.

This is one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle I’ve never been able to figure out. How to grow my audience. Yes, I’ve read books and I was already doing all the steps in the books. Yes, I would review things and link to authors who would link back to me. Yes, I would put out books, and books, and more books. At best, I’d get a few sales, sell a short story, and a couple of times, be included in a book bundle.

The onus is on me, of course. I haven’t been the most consistent author when it comes to releasing books. I get going with doing this blog and fall off the map. I’ll get working on a project and stop in the middle. 100% my fault.

My goal since I got back to this was to keep going. Even in the face of hopeless failure at every turn, I wanted to keep pressing forward and document how I’m doing, what I’m feeling, and hopefully, pick up a new reader or two along the way. I stopped worrying about how many people are here reading my site and started doing this for myself and my own piece of mind. It’s like the books I write. I’m writing the stories for me. I want to know how they end. I want to see my heroes succeed. It’s for me. Should someone else read what I’m writing and enjoy it. Wonderful! But that is no longer my measure of success.

Enough on that topic for today.

Another author resource you’ll want to follow is Sandra Wickham. She is awesome and quite helpful. She has some free resources and also paid, guided resources for authors at all levels. Check her out at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/writerswhowantenergytowrite and https://sandrawickham.com/.

Until Next Time!

Stay Awesome!