Category Archives: Commentary

Vacation from the Vacation

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I took a very long weekend from my day job. It was very relaxing for the first three days. I got a lot of editing done (as I was using it for a working holiday.)

And then the kids came home for the beginning of there mid winter break. And my boyfriend and I had to deal with the little flare ups that happen when three teenagers living in a small apartment, and stuck inside for much of the winter, start getting on each others nerves.

Vacation from the vacation. Such a common phrase, and I’ve used it a few times.

I find it odd that we complain so much about wanting our time to ourselves, to retire, and not have to listen to bosses, and yet many of us end up craving that time at work. To get away from family? To be productive? To have something to do? Probably a little bit of all of it. I know I love my family, but I can’t spend five days stuck in a house with them anymore.

So what is the point of a vacation if you then need a vacation from it?

I think its a great time for perspective. It’s a breather to step away from your every day life and just take it all in. Kind of like sleep is a break from the day where your brain resets and organizes the thoughts for the day.

And it is a great time to reaffirm to yourself that yes, this thing is the thing I want to do with my life. Not corporate america. Not the 9-5. But this creative endeavor that absolutely makes me feel like I have accomplished something wonderful.

Back to my corporate american job tomorrow. But I think it will be a great escape from my house, and give me something to do while I contemplate the next move with my novel.

Maybe I can do this

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A while ago I posted this image of my “writing list”. It was overwhelming, to say the least. But I think I tamed the beast. After going through the list, the ideas, and the half formed plots I whittled it down to those that I actually had a fair amount of progress on, a fully functional plot, and an interesting story idea. And this is what was left over:

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The ones on the left in yellow and orange are novels. Everything else is a short story, and the ones in the middle, in faded grey, are in the “to write after everything else is finished” category. Best part? See all those orange spots? Those are FINISHED! They are mostly first drafts that are complete and waiting an edit from me before I send it to an actual editor for the final edit before publishing. But… they are finished. So what does this mean?

This is me saying: I can do this. It isn’t as overwhelming as I was telling myself. And, when I am done with these, there are more stories in the well to draw from. I’m actually a little excited!

What’s in a Sale Price (An open letter to Johnny B Truant)

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In today’s Self Publishing Podcast Johnny B Truant said:

“A book is F*ing $3. As an artist I have a little bit of a problem with the idea that people would balk at that.”

I’ve been having a similar discussion with people regarding games. Specifically the idea that game makers, like Sony, want to curtail second hand game sales, like Gamestop, as they feel that used games are lost revenue.

Here the crux of the matter…. Even if you managed to stop every free/sale/used transaction for every single item in the entire world, producers of content still won’t make more money, for one really simple fact: we can’t all afford new.

Yes, you’re an artist. Your product is worth money. I get it, I’m a writer too. I want to earn a living off my writing as well. However, you are looking at it from the perspective of “this is my stuff, you’re getting my stuff, and you should pay me what I think it’s worth.”

Game developers also have the added incite of “this is how much it cost us to make this game, and this is how many we think we can sell this month.” So they slap a tag for $60 on it, and release it. They are absolutely right that the game is worth, from their perspective, $60 dollars.

Now, lets look at it from my perspective.

I’m a single mom of three. I love books and games. I am teaching my three children to also love books and games. I make less then $2k a month, and my bills alone suck up most of that money.

$60 is one bill. Or a car full of groceries  Or two pairs of shoes. Or two tanks of gas to get to work. Or three nice dates with my wonderful boyfriend.

So I wait till games are on sale, (got to love Steam!) or I wait till the price comes down. Two, three years after a AAA title has come out and grossed the company millions of dollars it might be available for $20 from the company. Maybe. If I’m lucky. Or I can hit a used bin and possibly find it for a little less. It still won’t be that cheap, but maybe I can finally play it.

It’s the same with books, only most of the time I have to go to the library. Sometimes, if i really love a book, or an author, I will splurge and buy their book. Maybe give it to a friend, or sell it back to Half Priced Books, more then likely just keep it on my shelf. Keep in mind I read about 50+ books a year. I can’t afford to buy all of those even if they are only $3.

Yes, you as an artist deserve to be paid for your work. I, as an upcoming author, deserve to be paid for my work. But not everyone is in the same place that you are. Not all of us are able to go out and buy every book/game we want.

I currently own over 23 of David Write and Sean Platts books. I got a lot of them for free, and then I started buying them. I joined Seans list and got this nifty little email saying “Thanks for joining, I’d like to give you a free book.” I turned it down because I already had so many of their books. I also own several Johnny B Truant books, and I bought most of them, but I did get several for free.

I try to repay in my way by giving reviews, and sharing the podcast with other writers, and by buying a few now and then when I have some extra money. But I keep a look out for sale prices of my favorite authors.

Steam is actually an incredible example of what sale prices can do. Summer sales, and winter sales on Steam can lower game prices up to as much as 75% off games, sometimes more. And what happened? Well I bought 80+ games this year. I know I’m not the only one. Steam sales more games during these sales, and they make more for the people selling games through them then any other time of the year.

When you lower the price a lot more people see it, and buy it. You make up for lower prices through volume.

Now, Steam has an amazing platform, they have sales specifically a few times a year, and a few games on sale each day. They can afford to do this, and they do it well. While books are a bit different  you shouldn’t discount the power of “free” through KDP.

TL;DR Remember that your buyers are made up of different kinds of people. We can’t all afford things at the higher prices, so giving us intensives (sales and freebies) will get us interested, and may get you future sales, reviews, and rating to drive future business. It’s about making a brand, not just making a buck.

Easiest thing to do: Nothing

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I am quite comfortable in my little job, with my little office, helping customers and never actually doing anything very significant at all. I get paid enough to live fairly comfortably with my three children. My store is even ranked in the top 50 in the company. I drive 5 miles to work, and home each day. There are parks, museums, libraries, and a plethora of games and TV shows to keep me busy.

By all accounts, I could do this till I retire, and never really do anything (not including raising the three children.)

But that’s just it. It is so incredibly easy to do nothing. To sit passively and just allow life to happen. To let old dreams and passions fade away while life becomes a monotonous drone in the back of your mind.

There was a quote I heard that said “When you stop learning, thats when you start dieing.” I’d like to add “When you stop living, that’s when you start dieing.”

Are you sitting back, allowing life to happen? Or are you pushing forward, making new dreams, and new aspirations? Are you a “wanna be”, or are you on your path to being it?

There was a very good discussion… a young writer asked one of his favorite authors “when can I call myself an author?” The author replied “When you decide you are one.”

Titles don’t mean anything. What matters is what you place your heart, mind, and determination into. Are you doing everything you can to be “it”. Or are you letting “it” just pass you by?

Games and Writing

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gamesI now have over 90 games… just on my steam account. That’s not even counting the rack of games for the various counsels I have over there.

I love games. I love figuring out puzzles, gathering items, killing the bad guy. I love the thrill of discovering new worlds, and ransacking dungeons. The sudden adrenalin rush as the boss battle grinds you down and kills you yet again, and you pick up the control and start all over. Just die, and try again.

I love it all. I’d play games all of the time if I could.

However, of those 90+ games I have, I haven’t been able to play any of them very much. A few minutes here and there, maybe an hour. But I have yet to finish one. Why?

Because I’d rather be making my own worlds and sharing them with others. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to discover other peoples visions for worlds. That’s why I just spent every spare moment for the last week (and there hasn’t been a lot of free moments) reading “Ghost Story” by Jim Butcher, and finding out what happens to Harry Dresden.

I’d love more hours in the day to finish a game, a book, and finish writing my own novel. But we each get the same amount of time each day. We each have to work out way through it. It’s a battle of priorities.

So… what did you spend your time on today?

The Past Hurts Sometimes

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I spent much of my childhood trying to do “the right thing”. How does a child even know what the right thing is?

I knew that if I did certain things at certain times I’d get a little more attention from my parents. But they were so busy with everything in their lives that they really didn’t have all that much time for me.

It seems a silly thing to complain about sometimes. You see children who have no food, or suffer incredible abuse. My parents just didn’t have any time for me.

I spent a great deal of time alone. To clarify, I have two sisters. We didn’t get along very well. I found it easier to just spend my time outside, away from them, and avoid arguments.

I spent so much time trying to make my parents happy, and proud of me that even the small things hurt. Once I made dinner for my family. I usually did because both of my parents worked. I think I was 14 at the time. Steak, mashed potatoes, and some sort of vegetable.

My dad took one bight of it and got very unhappy. You could see the disapproval oozing off him. He was mad at me because I didn’t put any spices on the food. I forgot. I never ate spices on food, and I forgot. And he told me how bad dinner was, how horrible it was.

I learned a long time ago that I was never going to be able to please the people around me. And then I got married.

New mother, new baby, new home, and I cleaned the entire house. Even got on my knees and hands to scrub the kitchen floor because we didn’t have a mop. My husband came home. I thought he’d be so happy with me… No, there were things up on top of the computer case stashed out of the way that I hadn’t gotten too. The rest of the two bedroom apartment was clean, but there was paper up on top of that case. He was so disappointed in me, and I was that little girl trying to get approval. Trying so hard to earn someone’s love.

It took me a long time to learn that you can’t, and shouldn’t EARN someone’s love. Love is a gift you give. Love is free. Love is beautiful. It is full of hope and joy, and all those wonderful things of acceptance.

And even now, at 35 and trying to start something brand new I feel myself shutting down. Hurting. Afraid to try and earn someone’s love and attention. Will they like my books? Will they care? Will it affect anyone?

Who knows. And I shouldn’t care. I should be doing this because I love the writing, not because I’m trying to find that illusive acceptance somewhere.

My parents will never be proud of me. I accepted that years ago. And my life is saner now without them in it.

My husband would never be satisfied with anything I did. So I divorced him. And I have been happier without him.

But you can’t close yourself off from the world. You can’t satisfy the world. You have to satisfy yourself before you can do anything else.

That’s my struggle every day. Somewhere inside I am just that little girl still trying to find approval. And I suppose I always will be.

The Leftover Pieces

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I don’t have much from my past. I had three life changing moments where I was left with only a box of things, and everything else had to be donated, trashed or sold, so only the few things that meant a great deal to me managed to make it to my home now.

 

But I’ve always thought those things, those precious memoires you choose to keep even when the world is collapsing down around you, those are what define you. They are what show what really matters to you.

Of all the “things” that survived the upheaval in my life, being homeless, a failed marriage, moving to four different states, and crossing thousands of miles of land with just a little suitcase to my name, the only thing that truly survived all of that was my writing.

I have the paper I stole from school, stapled together, and wrote in bright orange marker about a nymph in a forest. I have the poems I typed up on an old typewriter, stapled together, and marked with “1cent” up in the corner. I have the first school assignment that asked for a story about a picture. Some of these are 20+ years old, and I have them all.

In fact, over the last 30 years of writing I have lost only one thing (that I know of). Half of the very first novel I ever completed. Called “Deaths Gate”, it was about a girl who was unable to ever get close to anyone because Death marked her as his bride and would kill anyone who tried to claim her as his.

The novel took five years to put together. I started it in my Junior year of high school, and continued on through the first few years of my marriage. We moved around a lot. Had children. Got our first PC. Had to put all the hand written notes into the PC for the first time.

It took five years of a sentence here and there to get through the 200 page manuscript. It had elves, hunters, battles, nymphs, magic, and one lost young woman who simply wanted to claim her life as her own. It was terrible. Poorly written, and full of Mary Sue’s. But I finished it.

Then my computer crashed and took it with it. All of my hard work just gone. Lost. Unrecoverable.

I did find half of it in a drawer somewhere, the last half, and I still have it. No one else will ever read it, but it will follow me to every home I move to from here on out.

When I took some college classes I tried figuring out “what do you want to be when you grow up?” for the first time since my divorce and having my life in my own hands. I looked back n those leftover pieces and started to think about what was important. What made me “ME”.

What do you have as leftover pieces?

Wool by Huge Howey

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I just finished reading “Wool: Omnibus” by Hugh Howey.

This was an amazing read. A post apocalyptic look at a world trapped inside of a silo.

And while I admit that half the reason to continue reading the story is trying to piece together how the world got into this state (nuclear war? Meteor? Disease?) the true story is the examination of how people would react to being stuck in such a small space together, underground, for generations.

Imagine having only a few thousand people stuck inside the empire state building. Not just for a few years, but for generations. Then put the whole thing underground with no sunlight, no fields  no room to grow or expand. What would you have to do to keep them from overpopulating? From killing one another? From over eating or escaping?

And the how of it all… how did the silo start? Now that answer was quite revealing after all…

“Wool” began as one self published short story that took off. Since then Hugh has written several installments and is on “Wool 9” at the moment. He continues to self publish each of his books, though he now goes through a traditional publisher for his over seas sales.

It was a shocker not long ago when Ridley Scott nabbed wool for a movie option. But as Hugh says, just because someone has the option doesn’t mean the movie will be made.

Creating in a Vacuum

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I was listening to the last Self Publishing Podcast again and something Sean said at the begining stuck out.

While talking about giving a speaking presentation in front of 500 people he said it had been difficult for the first couple of minutes, but when you have that many people laughing at your jokes together its hard to be nervous.

Most creative people, be they writers, artists, or even some game designers, tend to work in a vacuum. We don’t have someone reading our copy as it comes off the press. We don’t have someone pointing out that the color is off, or the grammar is bad, or the game is amazing and “Can I play it please?”

The same thing that makes it appealing (no boss, no scheduled  no deadlines) also makes it sometimes frustrating, and can even help that age old “writers block” come on us. Don’t let it.

As NaNoWriMo approaches I find myself gravitating to some of the forums in order to make that vacuum of space around my writing just that little bit fuller. There I can talk to other writers, tell them my struggles, and get inspiration, or tell them my successes and inspire someone else.

There are other ways to fill the vacuum. Joining writers groups, or discussion boards. Going to writer Meetups. Just making friends who are in the same situation helps a lot.

Enjoy NaNo. Keep sane. And WRITE! WRITE! WRITE!

The Importance of Leaving Reviews

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I support a lot of indie industry. Indie game designers, indie music, even indie companies.

There are a lot of platforms to get these things out. Games are the easiest with Steam, Xbox, PSN, iOS and Android market places. Companies and product makers have Kickstarter, Etsy and Ebay. Musicians have iTunes, and other platforms. Even indie film makers have a wonderful platform on You Tube.

You can tell quickly if you enjoyed one of these products, and their platforms make it incredibly easy not only to get the new games, music, or film, but to rate them as well.

The rating system is front and center with most of the platforms, and many games have pop ups reminding you to review. Several have emailed reminders to review, or account information that includes a “awaiting feedback” page.

Books, on the other hand, do not. It may be weeks or months from the time you buy a book to the time you finish it. If you have a hard copy you may not even remember to review it later when you’re near a computer again, and leaving a review via your phone is clunky and awkward.

Amazon sometimes sends out reminder emails, but they are usually right after purchase, and getting to the “items you’ve purchased” page isn’t always easy, especially on phone or tablet.

The easiest way I have found to write a review is just to search for the title I want to review and go to the reviews from there. This is sometimes a problem since there are several versions of different books.

Amazon needs to add an “awaiting review” page, and it would be amazing if they’d send out a reminder email a month after I buy it with “did you like this?” Until they do, let me just say this: Your reviews matter.

Writers, especially unheard of indie authors, really make it or break it because of reviews. Good, honest reviews are incredibly important for them, and sometimes hard to come by.

If you read a book or ebook and you loved it, or even if you kind of liked it, let other people know. Tell them why. Write a review so others can find the little gem you enjoyed.

Don’t be afraid to email authors and let them know specifics either. We authors love to hear why you liked something, or why it didn’t work for you. In this ebook era I, personally, like to know when somethings off so I can quickly fix it. (It’s so easy to get a name mixed up.)

Many authors can be reached through Twitter, Facebook, and personal blogs, too. Many of them have very interesting and insightful (non book/writing related) things to say.

For more information on how you can support and help your favorite new authors get noticed check out this article.