I was checking my readership stats recently when I saw two lines in the report that I wasn’t expecting. They were for things written under another name, but published under the same Amazon instance. Someone bought my first non-erotica novel and read one of my non-erotica short-stories.

I’d call that a pleasant surprise. I honestly haven’t thought about those in a while. Although my pinned tweet for that account (sorry, “post”, said with huge eyeroll) advertises my latest short-story collection under that name, I’ve really been focusing more on my erotica — both the fiction and the blogging. It’s just nice that sometimes people notice my other works as well.

If only I was writing more… of anything. But going back to the office has murdered my productivity. I’m there Monday through Wednesday, so Thursdays I have to spend the time I would normally spend writing catching up on everything I didn’t get accomplished the first three days of the week (writing administrivia, in other words), and then I have to make sure I have enough blog posts queued up for the next week since I won’t be able to produce any while I’m at the office. By the time I actually have any time to write fiction, I have no energy to do it.

I’m applying for full-time work-from-home jobs, but at this point I’d take one where I had to be in the office two days a week. One would be ideal.

Oh, and speaking of going back to the office — one of my employees had a “get to know you” lunch with our new SVP, and he was specifically asked about return-to-office policies, and he said he doesn’t care where you work as long as your work gets done, although you do sometimes have to come into the office for meetings. He also said he works from home most of the time (although I know he goes in on Tuesdays). What that tells me is: our VP is the one who’s forcing us back into the office, and not because of pressure from his boss. It’s because he hates telecommuting, and always has. It was a battle to get him to allow even one day of WFH pre-pandemic. He also leads people on two different floors, and the people on the floor where his office isn’t only have to come in two days per month. However, his office is moving down there, so I’m really interested to see not only if he imposes more in-office time on those folks, but also what the attrition rate is of those folks once they’re forced to give up their WFH time.

To get back to writing — y’know what would make me more likely to write more? Reviews. I know people are reading my work, but they’re not rating or reviewing it. I want to know how I’m making my readers feel, and without reviews, tweets, or feedback of some sort I’m basically on my own out here. Maybe you could help encourage me? Just saying.