Welcome to Swimming Upstream

I've been asked on more than one occasion: "Why are your chapters so short?"

This is the view as I finally start typing this late blog post—a view I’ve earned after a rough week. For those who follow me, you know I’m heavily involved with my local roller hockey club. Today was our first EC1 (Eastern Counties Division 1) seniors game day, but the season has delivered some tough hits.

This is my second blog this week! I normally post every Wednesday, but I thought an end of the week update was necessary. Since transferring to my website, Swimming Upstream feels like it's becoming more of a personal diary that now and again, a few curious people open and read.

In a past blog post, I admitted that I am a Pantser—someone who does not outline anything and simply writes, taking the story chapter by chapter to see where it leads. Yes, that's me! I have a vision in my head, and I go with it. It's my way of "painting by numbers."

​I look at a lot of other blogs, and they all have titles like How I Increased My Viewers in 3 Weeks or How to Make $10,000 a Month with a Small Blog. I’ve never wanted my blogs to sound like that. If it were that easy to write a blog, make lots of money, and give up your day job, everybody would be doing it! I'm not saying it's impossible, but it takes an incredible amount of work, know-how, and even a little dash of luck.

This might be the first week where I’ve seriously wanted to quit. It’s been a frustrating week, or let’s be honest, a frustrating month. Some of it is probably my own fault—I thought moving my book onto more sites would be a simple process, but it has been anything but. I still haven’t managed to get my book on any new sites, and Draft2Digital has been constantly stuck on "PUBLISHING."

​I posted my blog last Wednesday and for the first time, I didn't really know what to write. If you read it, you know I mentioned using Pinterest to help drive traffic. While on the platform, I came across a few other blog posts giving tips on how to do exactly what I wanted: get people to read my posts.

There hasn’t been much movement with An Irish Mystery this week. Draft2Digital still lists my book as “publishing” (I suspect the delay is due to updating my blurb). And with a new cover design in the works, it’s left me hesitant to advertise or join BookFunnel promos.

Another week has passed, and while my ebook An Irish Mystery is still waiting to go live on Draft2Digital’s retail and library partners, plenty of exciting things have been happening — both in writing and in life!

Here we are again – another week, another blog post. Wednesdays seem to come around so fast!

Blog Updated 5th October 2025 at 12:46

By now, some of you will know that the title for Book 2 of "A Newman Adventure" is An American Treasure. It's out there, and there is no going back! Unless, of course, some massive company wants to sign me on and decides to change everything... but don't worry, I don't think that's going to happen.