Writing diary #7, 2026

This is my weekly writing diary: a record of the work done and the work resisted, the small wins no one applauds, the doubts that show up anyway, and the long game of building a writing life

Ghosts Among the Gumtrees promotion

As part of my release strategy for my new Seka Torlak Mystery Series I am pre-releasing on Kickstarter, then on retail platforms. Once the book is out I run a promotion offering the book for 0.99 cents by using Written Media promotions. This gives brings new readers into the series, and teaches readers that my books will only ever be available for a discounted price for a short time.

I ran a 0.99 cent promo on Ghosts Among the Gumtrees for three days with healthy sales. At the moment the retail platforms seem to be glitching so I’m not sure about how many sales this led to. I am changing my strategy in terms of tracking my sales and following the money as I find it stressful and head-churning trying to track sales. So I’ll just pay attention to how much income I get next month as an indicator to what it led to.

Here are my graphics for this sale. I use Canva Pro to create all my graphics and Mockup Shots to create the media assets that feature the book.

Facebook Ads

I re-started my Facebook ads again. I duplicated an old ad that had good clicks and added 10 images, 10 headlines, and two different ads. I do manual targeting and only use it to Facebook and turn off all other features. I send the buyers to my website page for the purchase links so I control the link and have more opportunity for readers to engage with my books. I’m running $5 ads to the US and I’m happy with the results.

I learnt how to do Facebook ads using the Learn Self Publishing Facebook course which I paid off on a weekly repayment plan. Whenever Facebook changes their interface and things are different, I go back to their course and figure it out again. I run ads to the first book in the series so that way readers enter the series and hopefully read through.

Here are some examples of my Facebook graphics.

I create graphics by getting images from DepositPhotos stock images which I get a lifetime deal from AppSumo, adding a filter to make the colour consistent, writing copy which is a mixture of quotes and copy. I use AI to help me generate copy for the ads. I inserted the images of the three ebooks, even though book #3 is in pre-order so that readers know that there is a series waiting for them.

Mad Dawn Winter

The Kickstarter is finally approved. I had some glitches with getting approval because I forgot to list that the last Kickstarter for Ghosts Among the Gumtrees was fulfilled. After some back and forth this is finally approved and I can begin promoting.

If you want to follow my Kickstarter click here. I create a forwarding page on my website that diverts to the Kickstarter. This way that link is on all media assets and will send readers to the book page after the Kickstarter concludes. You can get all of the books in the series or just follow for $1 to see how it progresses.

In order to prepare for this I recorded reels to promote the Kickstarter and will be posting daily during the 30 day campaign. I also created a Media Kit because I needed to prepare all the promotional material. This includes information like different lengths of the blur, excerpt, media release, hashtags, retail links. I upload this on my book page and also have a Word version that I can send or people can download. Some tips are to check the hashtags and have a series hashtag to use with all posts so readers can find information about all the series.

I’ll post the Media kit at the end of the message so you can see how I structure it and learn more about the book. I’d recommend all writes prepare this sort of promotional material because it helps to keep branding and marketing consistent. Also I use this over and over where I need various lengths of blurbs for different promotional aspects etc.

Work in progress

I’m revising the fourth book in the Seka Torlak Mystery Series. I wrote a draft last year and knew it wasn’t quite there, but needed time and space to go back to it. I’m re-imagining it and adding a new scenes and threads. I feel so excited about how it’s coming together and am just loving this series and the opportunity to develop Seka’s life story further.

Workshop facilitator and mentoring

I have five library events booked for this year and am so excited. I’m doing grant writing workshops, memoir writing workshop, self publishing workshop and a short story writing workshop. I love the opportunity to teach and connect with more readers.

Here’s more about my experience as a workshop facilitator on my website page.

I also mentor emerging writers and had the pleasure of a former mentee coming back for a session as he moves forward with his publication journey. You can book me through Writers Victoria or on my website.

This is my first memoir workshop of the year and the booking link is live here. You can see all news and events on my website.

Mad Dawn Winter Media Kit

Title: Mad Dawn Winter

Pub date: 1 May 2026

ISBN Print: 9781922871619

ISBN Ebook: 9781922871602

BUY LINKS:

Amazon (US): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FTZ3CWTP

Amazon (AUS): https://www.amazon.com.au/Dawn-Winter-Seka-Torlak-Mystery-ebook/dp/B0FTZ3CWTP

Universal (International Amazon ebook & Wide Print): https://www.amrapajalic.com/dawn.html

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242446018-mad-dawn-winter

Prices (in USD):

Print: $19.99

E-Book: $3.99

Length: 240 Pages

Prices: (in AUD)

Print: $24.99

E-book: $4.99

Rating: Historical Mystery

Hashtags: #MadDawnWinter #SekaTorlakSeries #AmraPajalic #AustralianCrimeFiction
#HistoricalCrime #Nashos #NationalService #PostnatalPsychosis

Tagline: In a town submerged with secrets and corruption, there are those who seek the truth…

Short: Riverwood, 1998, in a small Australian country town that is close-knit and peaceful, Seka discovers a cold case of a former Vietnam Vet and unearths the layers of secrets hiding the truth behind his murder.

Medium tagline: In 1998, journalism cadet Seka Torlak arrives in the seemingly tranquil town of Riverwood seeking a fresh start, only to uncover a cold case surrounding the murder of a former Vietnam veteran. Driven by a grieving mother’s plea for justice, she begins to expose a web of silence, corruption, and loyalties rooted in the long aftermath of war. Will she unravel the truth and deliver justice before it’s too late, or will the town’s dark secrets consume her?

Blurb:

In a town submerged with secrets and corruption, there are those who seek the truth…

Seka Torlak, now a journalism cadet, relocates to the tranquil town of Riverwood in 1998, seeking a fresh start. However, her peace is short-lived when she stumbles upon a cold case involving the murder of a former Vietnam Vet. Driven by a grieving mother’s plea for justice, Seka begins to uncover a web of secrets that this seemingly idyllic town has buried deep.

In her quest for truth, Seka befriends Dawn Winter, a fellow Bosnian woman haunted by the loss of a friend and ostracized by the townspeople for her tributes to the fallen. As Seka digs deeper, she finds herself entangled in a dangerous game of deceit and loyalty, facing ghosts of the past and present. Will she unravel the truth and deliver justice before it’s too late, or will the town’s dark secrets consume her?

Lead In Post

A Crime Novel Confronting the Aftermath of Vietnam and Australia’s Culture of Silence

A crime novel shaped by the Vietnam War, Australia’s National Service legacy, and the silenced reality of postnatal psychosis

Australian author Amra Pajalić releases Mad Dawn Winter, the third novel in her Seka Torlak mystery series—a crime novel that refuses to separate personal collapse from national history.

Set against the long afterlife of the Vietnam War, the novel draws on the legacy of Australia’s National Service scheme (Nashos), returning soldiers, and the quiet devastation carried into suburban homes long after the fighting stopped. The book interrogates what happens when war trauma is never treated, never named, and instead mutates inside families, marriages, and communities.

At the centre of the novel is Dawn Winter, a Bosnian Australian woman ostracised by her town and haunted by a death no one wants to remember. As journalist Seka Torlak investigates a decades-old murder, she uncovers a web of buried violence that stretches back to Vietnam-era Australia—where men were sent to war by lottery, returned damaged, and expected to resume “normal life” without complaint.

The novel also confronts postnatal psychosis, a condition that has historically been misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or erased from public conversation. Rather than treating maternal breakdown as a personal failing or narrative shock device, Mad Dawn Winter situates it within a broader ecosystem of untreated trauma, gendered silence, and institutional neglect.

“This book exists because certain stories are still too uncomfortable to tell neatly,” Pajalić says. “We like clean war narratives. We like motherhood framed as instinctive and redemptive. We don’t like the mess left behind when both of those myths collapse.”

Blending crime fiction with historical reckoning, Mad Dawn Winter continues the Seka Torlak series’ project of exposing how violence—whether state-sanctioned or domestic—doesn’t disappear. It embeds itself. It waits. And eventually, it demands to be confronted.

The novel will appeal to readers of literary crime, historical fiction, and Australian stories that interrogate national myths rather than celebrate them.

Excerpt

1-Exiled

1998

I eased into my Toyota and turned onto River Road, the main road that ran parallel to the Guru River that hugged the town of Riverwood, the sun winking off the murky surface of the water as I drove. I passed by the Welcome to Riverwood sign, population 2,985, when I saw a woman walking with red roses in her arms. She turned down the path by the river. I stopped the car on the shoulder of the road, took the camera from the passenger seat beside me, and followed.

I’d walked down by the river yesterday with Ninu. I’d been told there was a beautiful gorge for swimming and we’d found it walking from my house, reaching the clifftop overlooking it. We’d had to climb down a winding path among the brush, but now as I followed the woman, I realised this was the other path to get to the gorge that most people from town used.

When Ninu and I had reached the gorge, we’d found a tree with flowers tied to it, a tribute to someone who had passed, probably drowned. I’d thought then it might make a good story about tributes and the people who left them, but to do that I’d need to track down the person leaving the tribute and now she’d landed in my lap, so to speak.

The woman walked to the tree and took down the dry and old flowers, tying the new bouquet with a red ribbon. I lifted the camera to my eye, framing a shot of her standing there, holding her hands up as if she were praying, the clifftop in the background behind her. The woman rubbed her hand over her face in a familiar gesture. I lifted my eye from the camera viewfinder and looked at her. Almost like how Muslims pray.

I let the camera hang around my neck and approached her.

‘Excuse me,’ I called, not wanting to startle her.

The woman glanced at me, but didn’t respond.

‘I work at the Riverwood Times and wanted to talk to you about your tribute.’

The woman walked toward me. I waited, a smile on my face. She brushed past me, continued walking without staying a word. I turned to look, bewildered by her cold shoulder. When she’d vanished from sight back up the road, I turned back around and walked to the tribute. I framed the shot of the red roses tied with the red ribbon to the pole, the yellow grassland on the banks swishing in the wind, the river murky and undulating in the current. I made a note to ask for drowning statistics at the police station. The breeze fluttered over me, raising goose pimples on my arms. I rubbed my arms, feeling as if someone had walked over my grave.

I dawdled at the gorge, giving the woman time to leave so I wouldn’t bump into her, feeling slightly embarrassed like I’d committed a faux pas. Who was she? While the townspeople I’d met so far viewed me as an exotic species with my ethnic name, Seka Torlak, the cause of much curiosity in this mostly Anglo town, everyone had been friendly and hospitable. This was the first time someone had been rude, and I didn’t know what I had done to cause this kind of reaction. Was she one of those who hated refugees and saw me as an interloper because of my migrant background? While no residents had been outwardly rude, I had overheard some conversations in the street and the way some townsfolk viewed migrants.

Author Bio:

Amra Pajalic is an award-winning Australian author, educator, and indie publisher known for crafting compelling stories that blend heart, humour, and heritage. Her work explores themes of identity, belonging, and resilience, often drawing from her Bosnian background.

She won the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Civic Choice Award for her debut novel The Good Daughter, re-released as Sabiha’s Dilemma (Pishukin Press, 2022). The anthology she co-edited, Growing up Muslim in Australia (Allen and Unwin, 2014), was shortlisted for the 2015 Children’s Book Council of the year awards and her memoir Things Nobody Knows But Me (Transit Lounge, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 National Biography Award.

She is the author of the Sassy Saints series and the Seka Torlak historical-mystery series, beginning with Time Kneels Between Mountains, and the second book Ghosts Among the Gumtrees, and companion essay collection that examine the legacy of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide

When she’s not writing, Amra is podcasting on Amra’s Armchair Anecdotes, mentoring emerging writers, and delivering workshops across Australia on self-publishing, writing craft, and creative resilience.

Social media handles

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Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/amra-pajalic

Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3310015.Amra_Pajalic

Author Central: https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B005C8AIDY

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