Today is exactly one year since High Clowder Cats was published. I did not have any social media accounts, or reviews, and no marketing plan – however, I promised myself that I would do “one book job” every day.

I excitedly took myself off to Werribee Park Mansion with my new book to take photos and two days later set up a Facebook account. My first post was an available now” graphic supplied by my publishing company, Indiemosh.

On the 15th July with the help of the wonderful Ally Mosher the Clowder Cats website was live.

It wasn’t until the third of September that I finally got my first editorial review – I was so relieved that they liked it! I rang the local newspaper and to my amazement they sent a photographer out and ran a story on 4th September. More editorial reviews started rolling in – all five stars – Bookviral, Literary Titan, The Book Commentary, Reedsy Discovery, and Online Book Club. I couldn’t believe it!

The real highlight was on the 25th of September when Collins Booksellers in Sunbury put High Clowder Cats in their window. Seeing my book on the shelf in an actual store and knowing the people actually bought it from a bookstore was incredible! Thanks Michelle!

On October 1st High Clowder Cats won a Literary Titan Gold Book award! I was an award-winning author!

On the 3rd of November I published the first Clowder Cats newsletter.

On 28th November I was thrilled to get a review that I hadn’t asked for by Aamna.

On 15th February 2023 I finally got my first reader review on Amazon! Who knew getting readers reviews could be so hard? Reviews kept rolling in over March April with the rating consistently between 5 and 4.2.

On March 3rd I finally discovered booktok. On 25th March a Facebook post gets 2.8K reactions.

On April 13th 2023, as part of an Onlinebookclub promotion, High Clowder Cats reached number one in the young adult category in the US, the UK and Australia! Onlinebookclub provides a First Ten Report.

17th of April High Clowder Cats was posted by Books You Must Read on You Tube. On 25th April High Clowder Cats is featured in a Australian Book Lovers Podcast.

The Facebook Clowder Cats page now had 200 likes and 296 followers. Intsagram Clowder Cats has 217 posts and 627 followers. Tiktok High Clowder Cats has 1013 followers. Not bad given that I had no idea about social media one year ago!

High Clowder Cats has an average rating of 4.04 on Goodreads, and 4.2 on Amazon US. It has an average 4.4 rating in the UK and an average 4.5 rating in Australia.

I think I did mange to do something book related every day for a year – well – at least almost every day.

So what next?

Book two, Dark Clowder Cats, has been edited and has had typesetting and cover design and is now going to proofreading, (another step I didn’t know about a year ago – I thought it was part of editing – I only fixed the typos in the first book a few months ago!) This time around I hope to work smarter and be more organised. I planned to release it a year after High Clowder Cats but I am delaying the release in order to make sure I launch book two the right way this time! I am expecting to release it early November, 2023.

I am also busy entering competitions. Although it has been an amazingly successful year it would be good to get the Clowder Cats to a wider audience. Cross your fingers!

Thanks to everyone for your support. It’s all your wonderful feedback that keeps me going.

High Clowder Cats is FREE on Smashwords today.