The road to success is filled with speedbumps, potholes, detours and road rage, and Fly Out Day is still on its path to success—but I think I’ve copped every red light on the way here. Haha
Here’s the ‘fortunately, unfortunately’ of the journey so far…
Fortunately, I had great interest, great reviews and amazing support for Fly Out Day straight off the bat. Unfortunately, my book (and reviews) was linked to another author profile with the same name on Goodreads.
Fortunately, Fly Out Day had a newspaper feature in the first weeks its release. In the biggest mining town in WA too—Kalgoorlie. Unfortunately, the website link at the bottom of the article led to the wrong website.
Goodbye sales spike.
Fortunately, the next week, I had an interview on a regional breakfast show on ABC radio to promote my book. Unfortunately, that presenter thought I was another Peter Hodgson—thanks to that author profile cock up. There’s some awkward listening content there.
Fortunately, I was motivated to create the Fly Out Day audiobook too, using Ai to create and voice it. Unfortunately, Ai audio slop isn’t digested nearly as well as genuine human voiced audiobooks, so, that was put on hold until I can fund doing it properly.
Fortunately, I decided to release a second edition and create an eBook version for the kindle folks. Unfortunately, that took months of learning formatting, file creation and jumping through forum hoops only to have the book be marked as ‘Mature Content’ and have restrictions placed on its marketing/ advertising.
Fortunately, I have fixed the author profile mix-ups and the tech-nerd glitches affecting visibility. Unfortunately, that took wayyy too long and was only rectified this month, Oct 2026.
Fortunately, I’ve had a busy work-life that kept a roof over my head and funded some exciting adventures that helped keep me sane. Unfortunately, that didn’t help with prioritising marketing or the completion of Torn Apart, the long-awaited squeal to Fly Out Day.
I have also temporarily removed my online store until I release the sequeal.
Fortunately…
I am very grateful for (most) of these trials and tribulations, because if my book did go viral, immediately—I’m talking April 1st, 2023, the day of launch—I would have looked like a very silly sausage. And Fly Out Day wouldn’t be what it is today.
I am currently balls-deep in typing up the manuscript for Torn Apart and it’s coming together in ways only seen in well-established swingers’ circles—it’s sweaty and exciting stuff, but it can’t come too soon…
Torn Apart is currently due mid 2027.
