On this page I’m going to keep an updated time-line of what I’m working on.
That will give you an idea of what kind of stuff to expect from me. I don’t always stick to my own schedules (sometimes life gets in the way). But at least it helps me organize my plans and goals.
Summer 2016
I thought I’d be in Europe, but had the chance to finish my PhD in Literature – if I finished my thesis in under a month… I’ve just done that. I’m exhausted and way behind on everything else, but sometimes all you can do is focus on one thing and hang on until it’s done. In a couple weeks I have my thesis review board, and if that goes well you can call me Dr. Murphy.
July – September 2016
In July I’ll catch up on all cover design work and streamline my online stuff, big projects include:
-Fixing diybookcovers.com and diybookformats.com with ClickFunnels; right now I get a lot of traffic and signups, but not that many sales. I can be doing much better. The new plan will be, a 15 minute flash deal on signup ($29 instead of $87), followed by an optional upsell of a course on book marketing. That should work pretty well, I’m shooting for 100 buys a month… for $2900 a month my wife and I can live just about anywhere.
-Launching my first course, which I’ve been working on for over a year. It’s not perfect, but I’ll follow it up with a few more this year. I’d like to make $25K with this launch… we’ll see how close I get (or don’t). If nothing else I’ll learn a lot about launching courses.
Just decided to be at the London Comic Con at the end of the month, so preparing some fun ideas and print materials for that (to promote my fiction platform and books).
Then we’ll head to Eastern Europe… last year we made it to Transylvania but I’d like to get further south and see Bucharest and Plovdiv Bulgaria, and maybe more of the Baltic region. One of my books is about Orpheus and Thracian history, so we’ll spend time looking at ancient sites in the region – and I really want to stay at this amazing mountainous apartment for awhile. In the future I might do some writing retreats in Romania or Bulgaria because the environment is so beautiful.
September – November 2016
In September we’ll be in Ireland; I’ll be finishing my novel Shearwater which is set there, maybe living in a castle. I plan to also start doing giveaways for writing retreats – we plan to live in castles from Airbnb (there are lots) and sometimes will rent out a whole place and split them with other authors. I might sell slots, but I might just invite friends and special guests and then give away free writing retreats… that will make it more fun and more interesting; I’d use the writing retreat giveaways and writing contests to build more traffic to my sites and network with other bestselling authors.
We’ll end up in Dublin for the Claddagh Author Event … there are a few authors I’d like to meet.
In November we’re meeting 10 bestselling authors and some of the top YA booktubers to spend a month in a castle and it’s going to be epic. We’ll be posting lots of fun stuff on social media, and do some contests and things. This is the place we rented (in France).
Although I’ve run camps and large events before, so I’m familiar with managing and organizing experiences, this will be the first of its kind and I want to go big. I plan to do at least one major “writing retreat in a castle” per year from now on, maybe more often.
Mostly however, I need to focus on finishing more complete books and then building them up into series… I’m shooting for 100 books in the next 5 years.
I plan to launch Shearwater just before November, and then finish 4 other novels by the end of the year. If all goes well by 2017 I’ll be earning some money from my fiction and other resources, and can stop client work and focus 100% on my writing (I can actually do this if I just moved somewhere cheap or stayed in Taiwan, but we also want to travel and live in castles…)
In December we might stay in Europe, or maybe go to Malta where I got my BA degree 15 years ago.
2017 plans
Things are still sketchy, but we’ll probably spend early 2017 in Mexico, possibly make it down as far as Argentina, then spend the summer in Oregon. We’re helping to organize a young adult authors cruise in July… and from there we might head back to Europe (maybe a longer cross Atlantic cruise?) From there, I’d like to do maybe 3 months of castle-retreats in different locations, or at least a big one in November for Nanowrimo so it’s an annual thing and not just a one-off event.
I’d really like to find more events to participate in or speak at, so feel free to invite me. I also want to focus more on meeting people and building an offline and online community (my wife and I are super isolated, because we travel and our lifestyle is so weird, it’s not easy to make friends).
