The Day After Today

Better known as tomorrow there sure will be things going on that are causing me a bit of panic. First and biggest news to talk about is the storm, Sandy, that’s currently only a couple hundred miles off the shore of the northeast United States. She’s huge, evil looking and apparently going to bring so much surge with her as she makes landfall that the southern coast of Connecticut and north shore of Long Island could see eleven foot swells.

For places that are already at sea level (or below like marshes) an eleven foot sea is going to be like a nor’eastern tsunami. To all my friends and family up and down the coast, but especially those in the northeast which looks to be the hardest hit, please take care of yourselves and your loved ones. Get to higher ground if you’re right on the water. And for those who do flood it will suck but its only stuff. The most important thing is that you are safe.

For those who do stay home but experience a healthy storm with all the fixin’s there’s a few things you can do:

1. Pull out the board games (Remember those? Some of us do.)

2. Charge your electronic devices & only use when necessary (This does not include playing Angry Birds all day because some Governors declared your day off before the storm even approached your area, be smart!)

3. Cook some meals in advance (Especially if you’re Ann.)

4. Fill your bathtub - in case of water issues you can use it to flush toilets or boil to drink if things get really bad (this one is serious)

5. Be safe with candles (And only burn books if you absolutely have to in order to survive.)

6. Pull out extra blankets in case the power goes out & it gets dark/cold (Which is totally different than it is most of the time in mid-fall in the northeast of course.)

7. Stay the heck off the roads, crews already have enough going on, they don't need to deal with stupid motorists (another serious request)

8. Change your name if it’s Sandy (Who wants to be called a bitch for the next few days, weeks, months?)

9. Build an ark and get the hell out of there (But watch out for those tall waves, we all know what happened to Marky Mark and Clooney. That was a disaster!)

I joke but this shit is serious people! The most serious of all of course is #2 above. I mean, if your device isn’t charged how on earth are you going to be able to download and read my brand spanking new novella, Reckless Abandon, when it comes out tomorrow?

(Nice segue huh? Like I’ve said a million times, I’m a shameless self-promoter. This means that, yes, I will use a hurricane to promote my work. Good thing you all love me.)

Reckless Abandon, my Romantic Suspense novella, is on my website for preview. I’ve posted a synopsis and a short excerpt. What do you think? I’m so very proud of this book and I’m panicking a teensy bit over it being released (all joking aside, the hurricane has nothing to do with it other than I feel Sandy took up residence in my head and is swirling around non-stop leading up to this release!). This is my first attempt self-publishing a suspense genre of any sort. The book is short, only 30,000 words, so you can read it in a couple hours.

Or during one day curled under a blanket on your sofa by the light of your fully charged electronic device while you ride out a hurricane. Just sayin’.

I’ll be posting the link to purchase over on my Writesy Blog as well as my website tomorrow once it goes live on Amazon for Kindle. My first eBook!

For those who pre-ordered my first title, Ripple the Twine, when I released it this past April be on the lookout for an email to arrive a little later today or first thing tomorrow morning. I have a surprise for all of you!

And in all seriousness, please family and friends, if you live in the northeast stay safe and check in somewhere as soon as this thing passes by – blog, FB, twitter, email, text, phone – because we’re all crossing our fingers that you stay warm and dry and that you kick Sandy’s ass!

Insert Sound of Chirping Crickets Here, Again

It’s the obvious question, ‘where the hell have you been?’ I’ve been working like a little maniac that’s where! Yesterday I uploaded my deposit, as it’s called, to the copyright.gov website so my novella, Reckless Abandon, is officially on its way to completion. And I’m thoroughly exhausted mentally and physically after getting this thing ready for release.

Driving back from a hike with a friend yesterday I told her that I’d been working on this since August 1, that it’s been slow and steady, and she said no way, rather that I pulled it together really fast. I started wondering – was it fast? Sure didn’t seem like it on this side of the fence.

Admittedly there were days tucked in there when I felt like a slacker who did a whole bunch of nothing but sit on my lazy ass and watch cheezy cable television. But for the most part I’ve been putting in ten hour days, on average six days a week, for the past twelve weeks to get this thing hammered out.

That’s a sixty hour work week for three months straight. 720 hours of needing to become multiple other personalities as I tell their story. A distinct lack of anything on my calendar other than ‘write & edit MS’. With the obvious exception of promoting my Blog Tour for Ripple the Twine back in August, a couple critique meetings editing 10 pages for 3 people, a few Writer’s meetings, my ten year anniversary, some happy hours with friends, trips (though not many) to Tucson to visit family, and starting up a workout program again. I’d say on average I write about 25-30,000 words a week between all of the above plus blogs & emails, etc. Um, uh-huh.

I’m fucking exhausted!

Can you blame me?

But two people have now told me how fast I pulled this novella together and it got me thinking. If I need 720 hours to complete a 30,000 word novella and worked like a normal person of 45 hours, 5 days a week, it would have taken me a full month more to complete the manuscript. And if I had an Agent/Publisher that’s about right for getting the book pulled together enough to send out (and have it ripped to shreds by their editor then sent back to be re-worked for production within the following two months).

The thing is, this is my job. I write full time. I don’t go leave my house to do other things during the day and I generally don’t fuck around. There’s a laptop or keyboard attached to my person all 720 of those hours. I have a career and this is it. So I dedicate myself to it all the way.

To do this job full time without making more than $4 a month in royalties is a mental siege, believe me. I struggle every day with wondering if I’m doing the right thing. If I should be out there in the trenches. Workin’ for the weekend. Workin’ for the piece of paper everyone else gets on a Friday afternoon that says here’s what you’re worth for the hours you put in. The validation that what you’re doing is worth something through financial gain. I admit, there are times I miss that.

But does it make me more valid to have a job that has a guaranteed number of hours with a guaranteed commute and a guaranteed paycheck? Does it matter that people don’t understand that I do work? That I work hard. Every day. Because see the real trick is dedicating myself to doing it. That’s where the real work comes in.

Most people would have trouble working the way I do - from home with no boss, no schedule, no set plan of what they’re supposed to do every day. Most people need the routine. And don’t get me wrong, “some money would be nice” but above and beyond that, this job feeds my soul. And not too many people can say that. I hate even admitting it out loud but I know for a fact my husband can’t say it about what he does for a living. But he has graciously given me the flexibility to do this job full time by going to a job he’s flipping amazing at but has no personal connection to doing other than the number of years he’s been doing it. And he does it partly to allow me to work my career with no promise, no guarantee that it will ever produce financial gain. And I couldn’t begin to thank him enough for that gift.

But of course we’re both secretly (okay, not so secretly) hoping that I will become the bread and butter maker in this household. I’d love to make more money than he does. He’d also love me to make more money than he does. And it isn’t exactly like we’re rolling in the dough over here. Quite to the contrary there are more times than not when our budget doesn’t allow for us to do the things we want to do.

Knowing that if I was making a paycheck we’d be able to do them, but that if I was making a paycheck I wouldn’t be writing books, is a constant battle I have to rise above in my mind. Because if I let that spin I’d go insane. Not to say it hasn’t happened. At least twice a year I have a nervous breakdown over what I’m doing. That conversation tends to go like this:

“At least when I was running Chucka Stone I was making some semi steady income.”

“Yeah and your writing took a back seat.”

“I know but…”

“But nothing. Shut your pie hole and keep writing damn it.”

And that’s not the conversation I have with Matt (though those usually end in a similar fashion) this is the one I have with myself. Yeah writers do tend to not only talk to but answer themselves. We have too many characters floating around in that brain of ours not to.

Anyway.

One of my very favorite Authors, Jen Lancaster, came to read in Phoenix recently and announced that she’s on a two book per year schedule. It isn’t unheard of in the industry these days. In fact I imagine the ability and dedication to pumping out two books a year keeps you pretty active on the internet. And we all know the internet is the way to market these days right? Wait, it is, isn’t it? Because I keep hearing these rumors…

I’m doing NaNo in November so this week I’m using to my advantage in catching up with some people, blogs, guest posts and completing the formatting of Reckless Abandon for Amazon. It probably sounds like a lot but to me, well let’s just say I’m looking forward to what will surely be a slow week in comparison to the usual.

Apparently I Must Have Vision

Because about 3 days after I wrote my post called If The Voice Existed for Writers what would we call it? I discovered that a brand new contest akin to The Voice (or American Idol as the case may be) is on, and geared toward Writers of fiction.

How much more can fate intervene before I finally take it seriously? A real reality contest for Writers? I mean, I have a story within the word requirements (2500-5000) that’s fiction. I’m ready to rock and roll! Holy crap, sign me up!

Well…hold on just a second Miss Quick-on-the-Draw; maybe read the rules first?

So I did. And here’s something I’m not very sure about:

“…You also grant us the right to edit the formatting and display of your Entry, and to create literary or any other types of effects in respect to your Entry without compensation or approval…”

 

Formatting and display edits I can certainly understand. The entries should all have similar structure and style in order to remain vanilla enough for the voting public to not adopt any sort of bias toward one story or another. But that bit about creating literary effects without approval? Yeah, what does that even mean?

Literary by definition means: pertaining to or of the nature of books and writings, especially those classed as literature

Now perhaps I’m just being paranoid here but to me this reads like the content could be altered without my prior approval. That’s not okay. Anyone in law care to weigh in on this?

I kept reading and couldn’t seem to find the words ‘Author will retain all rights to their work’ anywhere in the first three-quarters of the lengthy rules. Another thing that’s a bit unsettling to say the least. But I kept reading anyway. And then I came across this:

“13. GOVERNING LAW/DISPUTES. This Contest is governed by the laws of Curaçao. As a condition of participating in this Contest, you agree, to the extent permitted by law, that any and all disputes which cannot be resolved between the parties, and causes of action arising out of or in connection with this Contest, will be resolved individually, without resort to any form of class action, exclusively before a court located in Curaçao.”

 

Wait, what? Curaçao? Where the hell is that?

So I did a little digging and it turns out it is an island located off the coast of Venezuela and is a Netherland/Dutch nation. And Hofstra Law School has an entire course dedicated to the study of International Law in this nation.

Impressive. But equally unsettling.

I’m not entirely sure how comfortable I am entering a contest where the governing law over the subsequent use of my intellectual property is located in International waters. I would have a leg to stand on if the contest originated out of the United States because that’s where I’m from and where my copyright is held. But I know nothing about anything related to the laws in Curaçao and frankly I don’t want to have to earn a degree from Hofstra just to find out if I’d be protected should someone steal my work and make millions of dollars or defame my name, etc.

It does make me a little sad because I felt as if I almost dreamed this contest into life after pretty much asking for it to be hand delivered to my door. But you know how they say to be careful what you wish for? I never understood just why you should protect yourself from those wishes or why it's important to clarify the specifics of the wish in question until this very moment.

Hopefully this shows I’m smarter than I look and not that I blew a golden opportunity at fame and fortune ($5000 grand prize). But like I always say, I live with no regrets so unless my lawyer type friends weigh in and tell me I shouldn’t be afraid, I think this is one contest I’m letting pass by after all.