For a while now, I’ve maintained two Twitter handles: @JediSoth and @hccummings. I started @hccummings with the idea that I should keep my writing separate from my gaming and personal life tweets. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The only problem was, keeping them separate meant I mostly tweeted from @hccummings when I was trying to drive sales. It was difficult to engage with my audience because to get everyone, I had to tweet from both accounts. People who followed both saw a lot of duplicate tweets.
So, this week I made the decision to go back to one Twitter handle. @JediSoth would seem to be the logical choice, since I had tens of thousands of tweets with that handle, but I chose to migrate who I followed from that handle to @hccummings, instead (a high-tech process of manually following everyone I wanted to migrate, a process that’s still on-going with some of the less-frequent Tweeters I follow).
I had a very practical reason for that decision: the new business cards I ordered have the @hccummings handle on them. As do my bookmarks. Also, I felt that if I want to be taken seriously as a writer, I should treat it seriously. My books are written by Hans Cummings, not JediSoth, so @hccummings is more recognizable as far as that goes. Fortunately, most of the people with whom I engaged on @JediSoth followed me over, for which I am very grateful. I’ve picked up some additional followers, as well, which is nice.
In other news, sales of Malediction have been relatively strong, and it already has two 5-star reviews on Amazon. I’ve been trying to finish up the new first chapter of book 2, Lament, a move necessitated when I changed the ending of Malediction. I’m finding it difficult to get back into the headspace of these characters at that point in their development. I was halfway through the manuscript for book 3, Salvation, when I stopped to publish the final version of Malediction. A lot has happened to Kale, Delilah, Pancras, and Edric in that time. My goal is to have the first draft of Lament finished by the end of the month and have it published by the end of Q1 2016. I also have a goal of finishing up the first draft of Salvation by the end of the year so I can get it published by Gen Con 2016.
Once I finish up Scars of the Sundering, I will work on Zack Jackson & the Secret of Venus. It’s been a long break since Zack Jackson & The Hives of Valtra, but I think the series will be better for it. I’ve not been idle, and I do have plans. You’ll just have to be patient!