I am writing this in the most writerly way: Sleep deprived and hype from caffeine, waiting to crash. But it’s a good productive hype too, so it’s fine! (EDIT: I had to stop and go sleep halfway through this post because SO TIRED!)

The last time I was this buzzed on energy and lack of sleep was a little over a year ago when I revamped my blog and started serializing my work…

This might be on a similar level.

So almost two weeks ago I joined TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com/@vmjaskiernia

I’d heard it was a great place for writers and that #Booktok is huge, and you can use it to get to a new/different market. I joined, made a video, and was surprised that it got 300+views. I did a little research and found someone telling you to post 3-5 times a day, for at least a month, to gain a ridiculous amount of followers.

At this point, day 2, I had 3 followers. So I made another video. I was trying to just do one or two a day, mostly because I was worried about not knowing what to post. Book stuff, cover reveals, showing off my new paperback versions… it seemed to be doing well. I was worried about bad video quality, assuming you had to have high level sketches. But nope, the homemade silly stuff did just as well, and my videos kept getting at least 300 views, and my follower count started to go up.

Then a video of me just pointing my phone at my computer, asking what program people used to write, exploded. It didn’t ‘go viral’ or anything, but I’m at 10K views! I also basically added every author and writer and reader I could find, not as a means of hoping for follow-backs, but because I genuinely want to know what everyone thinks and does.

And this morning I got over 1000 subs!! I am unironically having a lot of fun on TikTok.

Here’s the second part of the great news: My map-making side hustle is taking off! I posted about my maps in a facebook group on makmaking, and no one really commented. It’s been there a few weeks, I sort of gave up on the idea. And then I get a PM! They want the premade map, and a custom map! YAY! AND THEN a friend saw that I was making maps,and wants one after I finish the others, so somehow I got two commissions for three maps IN ONE HOUR!!

So I’ll be making maps and writing and making tiktok vids all week, and it’s going to be fun! 🙂