Blake R. Wolfe

 Well, it looks like my big 'peak' for Alpha's Rejection is starting to ebb a bit.  Yesterday I reached full saturation on my Facebook ads for the book and it looks like things are starting to slow down a little bit. It's still really highly ranked in the amazon store, so that's awesome. Gotta love those organic sales! I've dialed back my ads a little bit and now I'm focusing more on bringing my fantasy books forward and keeping my backlist active. It's one thing to sell a lot of a single book, but I'm only going to make it to full-time author by selling all of my books all the time. I'm slowly working my way back through my blurbs and getting my ad copy updated. I think it'll make a big difference once it starts to sink in. What a wild couple of weeks this has been! Sales are still high and flowing, which is great, so I fully expect to have a great February as well, especially since I'm doing everything I can to have even more books out...

 Well, I missed yesterday's post, but man it was a busy day. I had family up for most of the day, having our Christmas dinner we missed because they all had covid. Thankfully everyone is feeling much better now, so we were able to get together and catch up. It was a good visit that ended with me and my sibling talking about D&D for over an hour, as usual. It always seems to happen. However, that part was pretty tame compared to what was happening with Alpha's Rejection over on Amazon! Saturday was a good sales day, but I was watching my rank jump higher and higher. Come Sunday morning I was in the top 100 of two major categories with tons of page reads flying in! By the time I went to bed last night, I had broken into the top 100 of Shifter Romance, one of the three most popular categories on all of Amazon! It was such an incredible feeling to have so many people reading my book and borrowing it for their kindles! Yesterday I broke every single personal record I've eve...

  These are the stats for Alpha's Rejection, my gay shifter romance that I just released two weeks ago. Let me explain how fucking insane this is: 1. As of May 2022, there were 48.5 million books on amazon. That #6349 rank means I'm selling more books than 99.9% of the rest of Amazon Authors. That is CRAZY. 2. That #113 in Gay Romance? You can't place in the top 100 unless you are a crazy high rank in the kindle store and I'm SO CLOSE. Getting on that list could mean a difference between $60 days and $200 days. It's a HUGE deal. 3. #183 in Paranormal Romance, literally THE most popular genre on Amazon (or like one of the top three) is so crazy. However, I need to be in the top 2000 of the Kindle store to place on that list, which will require a lot more sales.  And I've managed all this WITHOUT putting my book on sale or making it free. At full price, this has happened, which has just completely flabbergasted me. I've sold more books in the past 14 days than...

Well, it happened. Yesterday was my best sales day I've ever had!! Cue being ridiculously nervous for no reason. A little context. Last August was the best month I've ever had in my entire author career with my top earning day at about $80. Yesterday I hit $100 in sales in a single day on a single platform (Amazon) for the first time. For perspective, and entire year of sales like that would make me nearly $37,000, which is definitely nothing to shrug at. I think a lot of this is thanks to learning Facebook Ads. I've been able to tap into a whole new market that I was unable to reach before. Readers from all over the country have been finding my book and it's an incredible feeling. I've gotten more ratings in 12 days than I've ever gotten on a book in 2 months AND they'd been good! Like holy shit, that's amazing! And, thanks to all this traffic, I've already got preorders streaming in for book 2, which doesn't even have its official cover yet. I...

 As the title suggests, preorders for Beta's Bliss are live!  I'm still waiting on the final cover, so for the moment I have a placeholder cover. I've set it for a release date of May 1st, although honestly, it'll probably be out in March at the absolute latest. For now, I'm putting it as second priority to Cowmelot, but it's definitely getting some work put into it! I want to have it out as quickly as I can while maintaining quality because this wave of new readers is pretty amazing! In the past eleven days, I have sold over 250 copies of Alpha's Rejection via Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. This is so much more traffic than I'm used to with a new book and I think it's partially due to the genre and also the sudden influx of Facebook ads that I'm learning to run. The reviews have been great and there are people going out of their way to tell me how much they enjoyed it. I can't even begin to express how happy that makes me! All that being said...

 I said what I said. I'm working on Beta's Bliss, book #2 of my werewolf smut series, Tales of the Tellurian Pack. So far it's going pretty well. I'm trying to make sure I hit a few more tropes and expectations with this one since it seems my last one was labeled as "non-typical" for the genre. I don't mind being non-typical, but I don't want people upset that I'm missing the point of the genre completely, because that just leads to bad reviews and pissed off readers. Definitely not what I want. Either way, the story is going well so far. I'm building up the tension between these two characters and building the forbidden love angle into the story. The hope is to make this one a bit steamier than the last, but also keep it heartfelt and satisfying for myself to write. I don't like writing smut just for the sake of smut, I want these two boys to find the love they deserve in the end too. That's really what we all want deep down I think. T...

 I'm so close to finishing up the last chapters of The Quest for Cowmelot! Obviously there's still more writing to do, but that will be much easier now that I've cleaned up the story a bit and have a better direction for where I'm headed. I fully plan to be writing chapters by the end of the this week if not sooner.  I also finished up the first chapter for the Atlaran book and passed it off last night. That one will probably take us the better part of the year to write, but I think it'll be another great one like the last. I'm very tempted to write a companion book to the series about one of my characters, or maybe just start throwing in standalone books about other characters in the same world, but I'll have to talk to Taiylor about that since it is their world. Not to mention, they'll have to edit it so that it remains consistent with the rest of the world lore. However, that will have to wait a bit because I'm a little too swamped for more projec...

Work has been burning me out... But I guess it doesn't really matter. Gotta keep going I suppose. Not much other choice. Editing is going alright. Trying to get a couple chapters done each night before I try to write another. It's hard to keep my eyes open after 6pm, so I'm definitely struggling. But I'll get it done either way. I really don't have a choice and this author thing is my dream. That is absolutely the LAST thing I'm going to give up on.  Sales are still going decently thanks to the FB ads. I'm testing out more images over the next couple of days and hoping some of them have a better click-through than the others. There is one last series that I haven't started advertising because it's not complete, but I will probably start putting up ads for it soon. Once I have book 4 up for preorder, I think I'll be ready for the ads.  Tomorrow I think I'm going to order the cover for Romance #2 (Beta's Bliss) and finally get that started....

 Not a lot to report today.  I woke up far too early this morning for no reason, so I ended up being groggy until I finally took a nap, then woke up from that and spent a long time groggy as well. Had dinner with the parents and came back home before I actually started working on stuff. I've started work on Atlaran #2, the series I'm co-writing with my Dungeons and Dragons campaign over at Atlaran Adventuring Company. The first chapter in book 2 is mine to write, so I'm working my way through that. I think I've got about 2/3rds of it done so far, so I should be able to finish that up tomorrow. We published book 1, The Wayward and the Wanderer , last year and I have to admit, it's one of my favorite books I've been a part of. Astrid is an excellent writer and Taiylor does an amazing job not only building the world, but editing our writing so that it's cohesive, well researched, and brings a lot of the characters to life via linguistic choices. I really love t...

 Alright, I'm gonna geek out for a moment. Vox Machina Season 2 came out yesterday and tonight I finally got a chance to watch the first three episodes with the boys. And all I have to say is WOW. Seriously, I loved the first season of this show, it was absolutely amazing, but this second season is off to an amazing start! For those of you that don't know, Vox Machina is on Amazon, an animated show about a group of adventurers in the world of Exandria, overcoming odds and fighting dragons with magic, swords, axes, daggers, and illusion. It's based on the super popular online series, Critical Role, and therefore a D&D campaign come to life. The cast are all professional voice actors, so they put on a very entertaining show and the animated series is no different.  Anyway, I find their work SUPER inspiring. I actually listen to Critical Role to fall asleep each night, letting their adventures carry me off into dreams of my own. I pull a lot of inspiration from their crew ...

 Woof, work has been busy this week. And not in the good way. This is easily the longest 4-day week I've ever had. I can really tell the holidays are over now that business is picking back up again. Everyone has those New Year goals they wanted to hit RIGHT NOW and everything that comes across my desk is a "rush". Funny thing is, if everything is a "rush", then nothing gets rushed. I do what I can to get through everything, but I'm only one person, so that's all I've got. But enough about work. I'm just glad it's over for a couple of days. Editing is going well on The Quest for Cowmelot . I'm finishing the ballroom scene up tonight and getting closer to the "group breakup" that's coming. I've only got about nine more chapters to edit before I move into writing the final act of the book. I'm excited to get moving on my word count for the year. Being in back-to-back edits for two novels really put a dent in my writing ...

 Work was not great today. Like, to begin with it was fine, then everyone decided that I needed to be tested and I ended the day pretty fucking irritated if I do say so myself. But enough of that, it's not important anyway. Been working through more edits on The Quest for Cowmelot and it's going well. There are definitely a few details I missed along the way, so I'm spending most of my editing time correcting those. I knew one of the characters hadn't been fleshed out as well as I'd like her to be, so she's getting an overhaul as I go.  I'm coming up on the Cow in a Wig scene for editing tonight and that is definitely my favorite part of the entire book. If you want, here is a quick little snippet of it! For context, this is literally a cow in a magical wig that makes everyone think he's a beautiful lady in a ballgown. I stood there, frozen in place with excitement and fear as I looked out at the swaying bodies around me. Everyone seemed so natural, like...

 Well, today didn't start that great to be honest. I logged into work this morning to a frustrating message from manager. We had a meeting and talked through it, but I feel like we both left the meeting feeling "heard" but still disagreeing with one another. Basically it boiled down to this: the business wants me to stay late when workload demands it and I replied with "the workload demands it almost every single day, we're understaffed, and I'm doing my best". I don't know if anything will come of it, but having a candid conversation helped us both understand what's going on a little better I think. We're in that weird space right now where everyone is laying workers off and people aren't buying things, so that means we're not hiring new people either even though I'm drowning in work most days. At this point, it just is what it is. I can only do so much and once I reach that limit, that's it. There's no more effort to dra...

 I didn't realize it until just now, at 7pm the next day, that I forgot to write a blog post yesterday. I was so excited with Facebook ads and book sales that I completely forgot, so let's catch up. Yesterday was the second day of my book Alpha's Rejection being out. I'm happy to say that it's done much better than I expected! Right now I've got 5 ratings with a 4.6-star average, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. Not only is that a higher average than most, but it's also a lot more ratings than I've ever gotten on a release. Typically I want to have 20 ratings in the first month or two, but I think I'll make that a lot faster with this one!  The book also broke even almost immediately. Now I don't spend a ton of money on covers and I do the editing myself, but I typically don't expect a book to break even its first day, much less make three times that amount in the first two days alone :) Those are all good signs in my book and I...

 I forgot to write this last night. Totally got caught up in the nonsense that has been my Facebook ad experience (it's a whole thing, but it's fixed now) and watching a bunch of gardening videos. Yesterday was one of those days where I didn't feel "depressed" but was feeling rather joyless for a better part of the day. I have no idea why it happened either. The boys were great, it was a beautiful day, and my books were selling... I just felt less than great for no reason. Weirdly, putting myself in the kitchen and baking, then making a big dinner for us all really turned me around. I really love cooking and it always helps me perk up when I'm feeling less than perfect. Anyway, onto the dream. So, Alpha's Rejection came out and for its first day, it did pretty well. I've been really excited about this book and so last night it infiltrated my dreams. I dreamed that I woke up the following day with 745,000 ratings on my book and that it had nearly a 5-st...

 Today was a day full of D&D, chaotic choices, and watching Muppet movies. I play D&D with my group, the Atlaran Adventuring Company on Twitch each weekend and we always have a great time. Today my character Noah, made a lot of chaotic choices and is currently one hit away from being killed by an actual god. However, we had to stop mid-battle due to others needing to get on the road for other plans, so we'll get back to it next week and see what kind of insanity we can get into! I can't wait to write a book about Noah Borago someday. He is really an amazing character! I've had so much fun playing him for the last year. The boys and I ordered out tonight, burgers from a local place, and hung out before one of them went out to the theatre. There was a show playing with a lot of historical and cultural experience (I was supposed to go) but it was kind of a huge downer of a show and I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm still burnt out from the holidays. T...

 Well, this morning, much to my abject pleasure, I woke up with a migraine. This, of course, is thanks to me trying to take care of myself. About four days ago I started doing yoga again because I was so tense that I hurt all the time. I was careful not to hurt myself or overdo it, but I was feeling much better. Then, this morning, my body started to revolt because this always happens. However, I didn't expect it to be so intense. By noon, I nearly passed out standing at my desk, to the point where I immediately came up stairs and sat down so that if I did pass out, the boys would know. The last thing I wanted to do was go down and nobody know while I crack my head on the desk or something. Flash forward 7 hours and one very hot, very long bath later and I'm feeling a bit more like myself. All my senses are still a bit on overload, but I don't think I'll have a day #2 to worry about. I'm still gonna do all my yoga tonight and keep stretching out this tension. I have...

 Woof. Today was a crazy day at work. The first half was totally normal and not bad at all, but 3pm rolled around and every single person east of the Mississippi had a fucking emergency that they waited ALL DAY before telling anyone about it. So, as usual, I logged off at 5pm and called it done. Other people's irresponsibility is not my concern. If they can wait until the last minute to submit, then they can wait until tomorrow for an answer. Gotta keep that work/life balance in check. So I got a new wok today, a carbon steel one that is supposed to be super nice. I love it, made dinner with it tonight. However, it came with a wooden lid and the lid had a mummified lizard stuck to it...  At first, I thought it was a logo, but when I poked it I realized it was, in fact, a real lizard. The boys and I had a good laugh about it and I reached out to the product team for the wok. I'm sure they'll probably replace the lid, but I'm not too worried. It's such a small thing a...

 Well, it's finally done. I just finished up my formatting and uploaded Alpha's Rejection to Amazon. And, thanks to getting it done early, I can release it on 1/15! I'm glad to be getting it out early so I can move on to the next project. Now that this is completely off my plate I can put my full attention on The Quest for Cowmelot and getting that done well in time for my 3/2/23 release. My hope is to have it completely done by the end of January so I can forget about that one too, but we'll see. I'm not going to kill myself getting it done that fast and then burn out again. Currently, I'm taking a 5 day class from Mal Cooper to learn how to do facebook ads. I'm hoping it will open up a new market for me and help me build my mailing list. In the past I really had no idea where to even start with facebook ads and when I did try, I almost always ended up spending money for zero results. However, this class dives into a lot more detailed explanation about how ...

 Yay! Today I finally finished all the edits and final writing for Alpha's Rejection! Tomorrow I will get through the formatting and upload the book itself to Amazon. After that, it's just a waiting game until it officially comes out. That will be book #15 for me and the first of 2023! Off to a great start for this year already :) Next on the list is The Quest for Cowmelot, which is sitting at about 95k words. I'll need to re-read it so I know what the heck is going on, then finish act three. My plan is to have it done well before it's due in early March. Hopefully there won't be any issues. I'll probably start reading it again tomorrow and make my edits as I go, that way I don't have to do it twice. As a side note, my new fantasy series, Eadronem, has had a bit of a breakthrough in the brainstorming department. I suddenly had an idea of what I want to do the other night while I was watching some videos about DMing D&D games. I think they're really i...

 Do you ever find yourself having one of those days where your brain is just constantly dredging up old memories that you don't want to think about? Lately, I've been dreaming about my dead mother quite a bit. I'm sure it's because of the holidays and celebrating them in such a vastly different way now that she's gone, but remembering her also brings in a lot of bad stuff that I don't really want to remember. It's hard to feel good about what I have now when the past is constantly haunting me.  I'm not going into details because I think trauma dumping is toxic as shit, but I just don't want to think about that stuff.  I did manage to get a bit of editing done and I'm on the final chapter of Alpha's Rejection now. I had to add in one last sex scene/happily ever after chapter and then the book will be complete. I'm hoping to have it finished today so I can start sending out a couple of ARC copies. I don't really have an ARC team at this...

 This morning I woke up refreshed and ready to face the world. So I overthought myself in a death spiral that convinced me that everyone in my life hates me and I'm a terrible person. No idea why it happened, it just did. I wonder if it had something to do with waking up at 9am and not eating or drinking anything until 1pm. Not sure, but we're all good now. Instead of writing today, I went out with one of the boys and bought a round hay bale that is partially rotted. I'm going to be using it for the garden pathways to kill the grass/keep the weeds down. I also sorted through all my seeds (I need to start things soon) and cataloged everything I have. I'll be working on the garden plans tomorrow during my free time. I need to have an idea of what I'm going to plant so I can get all those little guys going in time. I'm really excited to have more plants in the house. Gardening is one of those things that brings a lot of joy to my life. There's just something ab...

 I took a nap TWICE today! Talk about a fucking miracle. I definitely fell asleep taking a bath after playing D&D (I'm glad I didn't drown) and once again after I came upstairs and sat down with the boys. That was less comfortable but definitely safer. I've been working on editing Alpha's Rejection today and I'm glad to say I'm nearly done. I've only got a couple more chapters to go and a single chapter to finish writing. After that, I can do the final formatting and get it set up to be published. I'm still hoping to drop it early. If I get it done this weekend, I'll probably have it out on 1/15, just so it's off my to-do list. After that, I'll start writing Romance #2 and working my way through the Cowmelot story. That one needs that final 1/3rd of the book written, so I definitely need to get that done. It'll be the longest book I've ever written, probably 120k words or so, and it'll eat up some time to fully edit before I r...

 I bet that title got your attention. Last night I made homemade ice cream, dairy free of course because my body hates me, and it was amazing. I got an amazon gift card for Christmas, so of course I spent it on kitchen gadgets. I love cooking, so I definitely appreciated the chance to get this appliance. Plus, have you seen the prices of dairy free ice cream? Absolutely insane considering the ingredients cost almost nothing. As for the werewolf dick, I've been spending the day editing Alpha's Rejection. I'm working through the sex scene still and finishing up the book. I'm hoping to be close to done by the end of this weekend at the latest, but today was a bit busier than I anticipated. Work is always super slow in the morning, but then people freak out that they've done nothing all week and suddenly it's an emergency at 4pm on a Friday. I hate them. Pure and simple. But the book is going well and I'll definitely have it out on time. I've already drafted...

 As iterated in the title, tension is a bitch. For one glorious day this past weekend I spent time tension free, taking a nice nap on a soft couch, hanging out with the boys, feeling safe and secure in my life with no stress coming my way. Then I came back home, to my 9-5 and the worries of everyday life, and I feel like I'm about to fall apart at the seams. This is truly the worst. But enough of that. There is some relief as I'm finally back to writing. I've been working through the edits on Alpha's Rejection and I'm well over halfway at this point. I'm currently finishing up the big sex scene in the middle of the book and it's going really well. The characters seem to be enjoying themselves and I think the readers will really like it too. There's only three sex scenes in the entire book and this is the big one, so I'm spending extra time on it to make sure it hits all the buttons. I'm hoping to have the editing all finished up by the end of thi...

 Well, today was my first day back from my "vacation" of being off for two weekdays in a row. Talk about living the American dream. Work every single day, get 10 days off a year. But whatever, let's not talk about that. I don't even want to think about work. I managed to spend a little time on lunch today editing Alpha's Rejection, my gay wolf shifter romance, and it's coming along really well! After sneaking in a small nap after work, I was able to bust out a few more chapters. I'm feeling pretty excited about it so far. The plot is intriguing, the romance is adorable, and there's a slow burn all the way to chapter fifteen where we finally see some adult stuff ;) After that, it gets even hotter as Chance and Kael run into more issues, including each other's genitals. Plus the little bit of murder mystery keeps everything on edge. I feel like I'm starting to perfect the 'cliffhanger chapter' that almost forces you to keep reading. Even ...

 After nearly five hours in the car today, we finally made it home. It took everything I had to unpack, clean up after the cats, take a bath, and fall into bed. Back to work tomorrow and I can't think of anything I want to do less. Hopefully tomorrow night I can find some time to edit. I'm officially behind now and more burnt out (thanks to work) than I can comprehend.

 Another day visiting up north with the boys and their parents. We had a great breakfast with everyone and I finally got to meet the whole family before exchanging gifts for the holidays. I was very happy and surprised to feel so welcomed by everyone. Being gay has its challenges, but also being in a throuple can be even more challenging. However, everyone has been super nice to me and it's been a nice surprise. After the big breakfast, we all took a nap and then headed out to the casino, something I've never done in my life. I was anticipating flashing lights and lots of excitement, but what I ended up with was kind of a headache and boredom. You would think gambling would be so much fun, especially after the way they show it in movies, but it's really not. You push a button, you lose, and that's it. Not really much to report. On the way home, after we stopped for dinner, I started looking into the 20booksto50k conference since their tickets just went on sale. I've...

 Today I piled into the car with the boys to head to northern Michigan to meet up with family. It was a four-hour trip in the car and you'd think I'd get something done, but being packed in there for so long just made me antsy. I'm sorry to say that my first day of the year isn't really starting out on the greatest foot, but I was able to get some planning done for my next romance novel. Romance #2, the next book in the world of the Tellurian Pack, follows the werewolf pack beta, Leo, as he comes face to face with two strange creatures he's never seen before. One of them, a hot music professor who likes to play music in the woods, and the other a mythical beast that's taken refuge in the pack preserve. Both will require his full attention and both will send him on an adventure he's not soon to forget. Not to mention, he'll find love along the way of course :) I'm excited to write this next book and if it's anything like the last, it will flow pre...