I’m back from vacation and for the first time that I can remember I got absolutely no writing done. I always vacation in the Florida Keys and I always spend many hours sitting by the water creating, but this time I didn’t. Why?

I used to be obsessed with hitting the big-time with my books. I dreamed that I’d be that one percent of one percent of writers who actually earn a living from their craft. I spent years sitting inside writing when the weather was beautiful outside. I’ve sacrificed and sacrificed to achieve my dream… but at what cost?

Now that I am older and far wiser than my younger days, I’m beginning to believe that enjoying our limited time on this celestial realm may be more important that the sacrifice needed to achieve fame. I explore this concept deeply in my best-selling book DROP OUT, but hadn’t applied my own ideals to my real life until this vacation. Did I feel guilty not writing? Yes, but that guilt was assuaged by the happiness I felt walking along the beach among dunes and palm trees. Happiness that no amount of money can buy.

Of course, now that I’m back the writing will commence at a feverish pace. I’m hoping to finish my dystopian novel before the long lazy days of summer tempt and drag me away from my craft. I’d also like to report my results with BookGorilla. The promotion did make a profit and did give me good exposure, however, I heard they recently raised the price and may not be as selective with the titles as before. I have another promotion with them for SILENT INVASION on April 22. We’ll see how that goes.

I’m also experimenting with the sales power of Twitter and signed up for a promotion from Booksandauthors.com. They Tweet DROP OUT’s blurb three times a day on their account. They have over 170,000 followers. After two weeks, I’ve seen no real results from this promotion as sales of DROP OUT remained steady until the BookGorilla promotion gave sales a boost and got the book down into the 4,000 range on Amazon’s best seller list. It has since returned to . the 150,000 range even though the Twitter promotion is still running. I’ll post my final analysis of these promotions soon.

My blog ALWAYS WRITING: http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com