Thank you both. We all had complicated relationships with my husband as he had mental health issues. However my sons and I have grown closer to his sister and her family since he became ill so that is quite a big silver lining.

That's a coincidence - I saw it for the first time last night and was really taken with how writerly it was. I loved the way they did the characters, and all the hassle with his family.

I've taken part in a promotion on Smashwords store - you can reduce your prices there or make them free with a coupon that's valid for the dates of the promotion and shouldn't result in price- matching by Amazon. I've found in the past that this kind of thing is worth doing in terms of follow-up sales (I think it works for me mostly because I have a 19 book series).

Yes, as Jena said, it can appear quite natural. I have an ensemble cast in my mystery series (just working on book 20!) and I tend to rotate the POV characters round with each book, so after one character had been really annoying for the first three I gave her the chance to be a POV character in the fourth one, and it was really interesting for me, quite apart from the readers, to see things the way she saw them.

Sales on Smashwords itself go straight into your balance (or whatever it's called on the Smashwords site) and should be sent to Paypal on the next pay date, but sales on Kobo etc take longer to filter through.

I have a part time day job as a database manager, and 3 pensions (one very tiny). I've been the sole supporter of the family for about 25 years but I will be giving up the day job some time this year. I hope to maintain my writing income and use it to pay for treats and holidays.

One of my readers suggested I should make a later book in the series free (as a reward for getting that far?) but my series now runs to 19 books so it may not be relevant to your case. I now have the 1st, 5th and 12th books on permafree. When I set the 12th book free there was a slight increase in sales of the whole series. I suppose it was just because it became a little more visible.

I'm gradually working my way through my 19 book mystery series creating print versions, but I find I hardly sell any. I mostly want to do it so that I can take printed books to events and (possibly) offer some for sale at the little gift shop round the corner from us.

I can share ebooks with my son, who shares my Prime account - I don't do this very often because our reading tastes could hardly be more different (except that we both love Terry Pratchett).

I seem to be always trailing behind you, Erica - have reached just over 35,000 words today. I hit a very sticky patch last week but hoping now I've got through it I can get to the end a little ahead of schedule. Fingers crossed!

I'm at just over 19,000 words now but may get to 20,000 by this evening. I got stuck in a sailing scene in the middle of last week - what I know about sailing could be engraved on a pin-head - but once I got the characters back on dry land I got into my groove again.

I am not exactly a successful author but I do have a (small) number of readers who seem to read anything I write. My main genre is mystery and I now have 19 books out in one series. However I have fallen into a pattern over the last couple of years of writing 2 (occasionally 3) books in the mystery series and 1 other novel every year. The other novels are either 1950s thrillers or Regency historical. I like the challenge of writing something historical and at least the dedicated readers follow me around wherever I go! Actually I think this is partly because I tend to have the same sort of parameters whatever I write - very little visible violence or sex, and hardly any swearing. This is not for any religious or moral reason but because I feel more comfortable writing like this - I taught myself not to swear when my kids were small and I have never really gone back to it! Except when driving on my own, that is.