Greetings and Salutations –

I have reached a milestone! I have just published the last of my ten medieval novels. Debi’s gorgeous designs grace the cover of each one, and they are all now live and complete!

http://www.lisashea.com/medievalromance/

You all were invaluable in providing support, encouragement, and cheerleading throughout my project. I have wanted to do this for decades and I am just so pleased and thrilled that the project is “done”. There were many times that I thought this day would never come! And here it is!

It is my nature to say “Yes well that is done but now I have to work on the revisions of the three Weddings & Courtships novels, and then I have five more medieval novels that are now in the formulation stage”. I have to learn to resist doing that :). Yes, there will always be more projects! That is great. Even so, I should celebrate THIS project, that THIS project is done, and that with the sales I am helping battered women’s shelters. I need to learn to do a better job of stopping and appreciating what I have. I can review what went well and what I learned, so that future projects can go even more smoothly.

One thing I learned has to do with deadlines. When I decided to self-publish last October, I set out hard deadlines for each of the first nine books. I decided the exact dates that each one would release. As each date approached, I arranged my schedule around that date and made sure the final version was in to the Amazon systems by that date. Everything worked smoothly.

However, for book #10, Trusting in Faith, I left the date open. The previous one, Believing Your Eyes, was released on July 31st, so I had a vague notion that Trusting in Faith would release on August 30th. However I didn’t set it in stone. I figured I could relax a bit with the last one. And then, the next thing I knew, it was mid-October and the project was still dragging on. I realized it simply would never get done unless I stepped in and set a new deadline. So I did, and it got done!

So I highly recommend setting hard deadlines for stages of a project, with something measurable that should be done by that date. Even if it’s just a small step, it still helps to make that forward progress!

I’ve currently sold 2,094 copies of my books. Including my free giveaways, I’ve distributed 13,209 copies of my books. That’s a great start! Now that the full series is available, I can ramp up my marketing efforts to draw people into reading them. Any suggestions and ideas are warmly welcome!

And again, thank you so much for all your help!


Lisa Shea, owner
BellaOnline.com

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