It's Been An Exciting Year!

Author Sarah Scheele saying hello again.

A lot happened to my writing platform this year, including a new private email domain for my business; a restructured website; a second mailing list specifically for reviewers; more printed promotional materials than I've ever had in my life before; improved book descriptions; and new author photos to display random places online.

Then I saw a wallpaper template and thought one day—”If I wanted an image for my phone screen, what would I feel inclined to download?”—and it really grew from there. My youngest sister and I worked together to design over 230 wallpapers. (It's great to have 2 sets of eyes to catch all the details.) It's creative work, in a way, as you're telling a tiny story about your book with an image, but it helped me explore different angles of my books in ways I hadn't thought about. Some were super-simple, just a basic template and some large text. Some were elaborate, with many layers and blended elements to get right. Some had to be downloaded, tested, and then redone because words went off the screen in an annoying way--but sometimes words bleeding off the edge looked stylistically perfect. 

I will be releasing these gradually during next year, but I'm still deciding how to do so. I am currently working on desktop wallpapers to match them. Meanwhile, I followed through on a years-old plan to dabble in video--short animation slideshows set to music. Click below to see one such tiny animation about the first series listed on my website—The Americana Trilogy. This video is So Severely Short that it is barely there at all, but it's just to introduce audiovisual as an element in my author toolkit. Watch a Short Animated Video on My YouTube Channel

I plan to post frequently but not too much and, hopefully, strike a balance--right now, that means aiming for a new update about every 6 weeks. I used to vary between So Frequent People Got Bored or So Rarely People Forgot Me. So I am really grateful to all of you who are still here after that. Reply to this email if you want to catch me up on how you've been, or you can comment on the blog. 

And there will be more updates.