Osiyo~

It’s been a while since I’ve done anything on the blog other than UnCover Monday each month, with some of those late, and I apologize for the silence. I’ve taken a sabbatical from writing for a bit to get my life and physical health back in order. After two deaths and a severe brain trauma in our families, all within a twelve month period, we’re all recovering well from those shocks. I also returned to day job work after years of being a stay-at-home wife and caregiver for FIL while raising a granddaughter.

Now I’m looking forward to my baby brother’s wedding in May! I’m hoping I’ll be in well enough condition to make it with a smile, since there’s no way I’ll miss the event. In July I injured my shoulder and have been going through Worker’s Comp rigmarole ever since. I’m sure many of you know all about this business. LOL I’m waiting for surgery right now. Let me tell ya’ll, torn rotator cuff and bicep tendons stink. 🙂

I haven’t been able to be on the PC for longer than a few minutes (like thirty at a time and usually no more than an hour in a day) before the pain boots me off. That means no productive writing or blogging, not even with guests, until I’m healed. That also means things seem to take three times longer to get done. *sigh*

BUT–they are getting done!

I decided in November to celebrate UnCover Monday’s (UCM) fourth anniversary by renovating the author-sharing feature. I’m adding a few new surprises and modifying other existing aspects. All-in-all, I’m hoping UCM will be more author friendly. I’m also hoping UCM will garner more free-will attention and become more widely known and used by authors (without my quarterly email requests for covers) to get their names out there.

You see, I came up with UCM because so many authors seem to put more into marketing books one at a time than they do marketing THEMSELVES. I’m a firm believer in author first marketing because, well to put it in basic terms, if there are no authors, there would be no books to market. Why would I put my whole marketing energies into one book that will be obsolete in three to five years (the common term of most contracts)?

Will readers remember ME after that time? Since they own some form of my book…I’m thinking that unless every book I write is outstanding, a redwood above the rest of the forest of books out there, the answer is probably NO.

What can I do to help readers remember me, the writer behind the books? After all, I want readers to buy ALL of MY books; not just this one memorable or cool title, or that one, or one of the next five books down the road. Right? I want readers to go in search of my books because they know MY name and not just one book title. Right?

Do you?

YES!

So UnCover Monday was born. To shout out the writers and, in some cases, the artists behind the books we all love, hate (in a good way, of course 😀 ) or love to hate. It’s to give credit where credit is due– TO THE AUTHOR. Yes, we’re all proud of our babies and we want to share them with the world…but we NEED the world to know who created that baby and all the babies that follow.

And that’s what UCM is for.

To help authors promote themselves through their books, no matter how many they write or how they’re published, whether it’s one or one hundred.

And for that reason alone, UCM does not, and never will, promote cover reveals. UCM promotes AUTHOR reveals! 🙂 And it’s still FREE after four years!!! Will I ever charge for UCM slots? Who knows? Who cares? Right now it’s FREE author  promotion! I invite you to check out the update page for more information, and you can ask questions over there in the comments section, too. 🙂

If you don’t think you have time right now to pop over to the UCM link, you can still submit covers during the revision process. I’m storing every submission by date like I always have, so when UCM re-opens, I’ll have a full line up to begin posting for a few months, hopefully. So, take a moment to click this link and grab your reusable application to submit your covers!

UnCover Monthly Renovation Status

Thank you for stopping by to see what’s going on with UCM!

Dodadagohvi~