For Inktober this year, I decided to make artwork for an eventual end product – a highly requested colouring book. These Inktober dragons were well received on Instagram, which in itself is encouraging. With October long gone, I finally got around to ordering and listing the print versions of the colouring book – only for them to sell out in about 8 hours! Wow! That’s an excellent result for my little shop. (Digital versions are now active here, and more printed copies are coming in in a few days, I hope)

My point here is: I would not have thought to make colouring books. Honestly, they’re just not my jam, and on a commercial side, I thought they were a little out of favour these days after that sudden surge of interest a few years back (boy, was I wrong, these things are booming! And there are some incredible fantasy designs on Etsy, in particular.)

If customers or fans are asking for a certain product – one that is actually achievable and within the scope of your business – then LISTEN to those customers! Buy 20 prints or 50 sticker sets and see how they do. You never know, they might just lead you somewhere nice.

In other news this week:

I have made moderate progress on Silver Jill. Still a little behind on my intended daily input,  but handling Etsy orders and listings is much more time consuming than you’d think. Lovely, but busy!

Joyously, I have also gotten back into The Naiad Chronicles – Guardian. Poor book four has sat untouched on my PC for a few months now, pushed back by client work. Now it flows again, creeping forward to completion, chapter by chapter. I’ve missed this weird world and its weird inhabitants, but I’ve more or less hit the Big End Scenes and the Important Climaxes, which are… very tiring to write. Where is character A? Should this guy be here yet? Whatever happened to such and such??

And I’ve made important plans regarding work for next year. Daily dragons will become (work-in-progress name) Daily Fantasy. Same principle, but with a more varied array of creatures and characters. Dragons, gryphons, mages, elves, goblins, the whole shebang, and each piece shall have an accompanying short story. And at the end of the year, I’ll assemble them all into a book ❤ Because books are good.

I haven’t decided yet if I’ll sell each original piece, but I’ve bought some nice paper in preparation, rather than continuing with my current method of “use a £1 kraft notebook.”

So mornings will be the Daily Fantasy, afternoons will be for Silver Jill, and evenings, weekends and my occasional “lazy days” shall be for writing, be it TNC or the second book for Silver Jill.

Some people hate to have set routines, but I think I do much better with them. Left to my own devices, I can be pretty unproductive and easily distracted. I just need to get my time management together.