Tag Archives: new job

Business Unusual

Last summer, I parted ways with another manager with whom I was extremely dissatisfied. On one side, I have worked for some wonderful leaders in my career. On the other, I also worked for and under people with zero interest in the business or the employees. Their concern was how to look good on paper quickly for their next role or promotion. The latter frustrated me endlessly, and after this latest parting, I found myself entirely disillusioned with the corporate world I had loved after graduation.

I also enjoyed being a manager and often said “I could do this better.” The last four months have been about me putting my time, money, and effort where my mouth is as I have worked toward buying and executing a new franchise business. Everything comes together over the next six weeks as I attend training, hire employees, and start serving customers.

If I fail, I set myself back five to ten years of savings and will have to spend double that working longer before I have enough to retire. If I succeed, I will make less annually than before from a salary perspective, but there are other benefits. I can still hate my boss (myself), but I will be able to change the things that frustrate me about her. I will be able to create an environment of employee development and culture I’m excited about. I will focus on the things that matter to the employees and business rather than making someone else look good without consideration for the broader implications.

I don’t think it will all go horribly wrong, but wish me luck anyway!

On the Writing Front

My goal is to get the book 100% revised/edited to send to my beta readers before I head to the training class, but I don’t think I will make that timeframe. It will be close though, so I might be able to finish it after class in the evenings of the training week. Either way, I’m still within the buffer timeframe to hit the release date for Hidden Promise in June.

The greatest challenge will be if my betas come back with broad revision recommendations. I’m working through the grander adjustments from my alphas now, so it all depends on if we all missed something big. Don’t worry, though. I gave myself enough time to get through this in addition to working a full-time job.

I will probably place the release date for Hidden Strength, the series finale, another year out to be safe again. I can always move it up, but pushing a preorder date out has penalties I want to avoid.

If you haven’t started the series yet, or if you want to leave a review, you can find the first book at this link: Hidden Memory. The first two are free to read in KU, and the third will go into KU a month after release. Hidden Promise is also on a preorder discount. You can pick it up for $3.99 until after it releases. It will then go up to $4.99, the same price as the second, Hidden Sanctuary.

As always, thanks for all your support, and you can find more by signing up for my newsletter on the home page or following my social media accounts. Have a great weekend!

Mid-Year Changes

Happy 4th of July, everyone! I hope you are all able to have some fun today. We hosted my family for grilling burgers and dogs. S’mores fixings were brought, so we also dusted off the propane fire pit to toast some marshmallows. The weather turned out a perfect mild, sunny day after that heatwave we had last week.

The long weekend is a great way to start the second half of 2021 and head into some changes. I will be starting a new job in the middle of this month. A big driver for me looking so soon after a job change last year is the commute factor. You may have heard some horror stories about Seattle traffic. After working from home for nearly eighteen months, I did not think I could personally handle a ninety-minute commute in each direction when we go back to the office, so I decided to look around.

It worked out for me and happened faster than I ever thought it would. The new job is at a company that sounds like it has a great culture that I will enjoy, it is part-time remote even after we go back to the office, and the office is only about a ten to fifteen-minute drive away. Maybe this one will take me to my career as an author!

That is the other change as we head into the second half of the year. My goal of publishing before year-end means several key steps pick up over the coming months. I recently shifted this site over to my domain. In July and August, I’m looking into working on some of the business requirements for publication, finishing the book description and frontmatter/backmatter, and looking into the ISBN purchases. September will be looking into the Amazon account and publication requirements and process.

As for editing, I worked through another chapter and a half after work this week. I am targeting another chapter or two tomorrow. If I can keep up the pace, I’m looking at sending it out to beta readers in August, the final edit in September, the copy editor in October, and a final check in November for uploading. That is my rough schedule, and I hope to run a bit ahead of it for all of the stumbles I’m sure to run into along the way. For now, back to editing!