I’ve been pretty quiet this week, as many of you may have noticed. No posts after Being a Better Writer save this one (a few days later), etc. But … I’ve had good reason.

For starters, I’ve been in the middle of the finale for Fireteam Freelance all week. Yeah, the big ultimate showdown. So as you can imagine, if I’ve been writing at all, it’s been on that rather than anything else.

But that’s come with some other complications as well. See, Monday night I started developing a sore throat.

Sands and storms, right? By Tuesday it was especially pronounced, and well … with Covid-19 going around and a sore throat being one of the symptoms, I went into deeper self-isolation (read, I didn’t leave my place) these last few days waiting to see if any other symptoms would appear.

Thankfully, none have, and as of today, the sore throat has almost completely vanished outside of a faint occasional itch showing where it once was. Bullet. Dodged.

So I was trying to get as much sleep as possible, while fighting off a sore throat that did not become Covid-19, while writing Fireteam Freelance‘s big finale. So I’ve been pretty occupied in my writing time.

So then, you might wonder, why is this post called First to Fifty? Well … because there’s one other thing I’ve had going on. Due to Amazon advertising just sort of petering out over these last few months of quarantine, I downgraded how much I was spending on it and instead switched my focus over to Facebook advertising and have been playing with that quite a bit. However, it’s born a lot more fruit than Amazon, and faster. As a result, I’ve seen a nice swing in ratings and reviews on my work.

Which, by the way, means you can now find “Colony” ads on Facebook. They’re distributed by algorithm, but they’re there!

Again, so what does this have to do with the title of the post? Why, reviews and ratings, of course! Here’s where things currently stand. On Amazon, my two highest reviewed works are One Drink (my first work) with 47 reviews, and Colony with 28 reviews. On Goodreads, that gap is a lot closer: One Drink has 49, while Colony is right behind it with 42.

See where I’m going with this? One of them is likely going to crack fifty reviews/ratings in the coming weeks on their respective site, and then if both get there, 100 reviews and ratings overall. But with Colony picking up speed … I don’t know which one it’ll be that gets there first!

Definitely worth watching for me, though. And if you’re the type that wants to help “nudge” things one way or the other and haven’t left a review of either yet, well, you’ve got the power to nudge things now!

So yeah, while that may not be as exciting for you readers, it’s certainly exciting for me to watch and keep track of.

So, with that said, I’ve got to get back to Fireteam Freelance. Tomorrow will see another interlude piece (an interview, and the last one), and then next Saturday will see the reveal of episode 9. Me? I need to finish up episode 12 today. I think you’re all going to enjoy this.

Once I’m done with Freelance? It’ll be time for the Pre-Alpha read and edit of Axtara – Banking and Finance, which will ready it for the Alpha reading! So past Alpha Readers take note, Axtara nears? I could be working on it as soon as next week. And past that …

Starforge. Let’s finish this trilogy.

I hope you have a great weekend everyone. Don’t forget to come back for Fireteam Freelance tomorrow!