When You Give It Away, You Get Labeled

Hey, I’m finally in the category I want to be in! Thanks Amazon!

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #92,536 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

• #375 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Horror > Occult
• #878 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Women’s Fiction
• #1834 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Women’s Fiction

I consider most of what I write to be Women’s Fiction because my main characters are women and those women have STORIES that need to be told. But I get a lot of my sellers rank through other categories… like Occult which is not totally accurate. Horror is not at all accurate, unless we’re talking about the main character’s ex. He’s a little bit of a nightmare, I suppose.

Regardless, Lay Her Ghosts to Rest is getting some attention and all I have to do was, you know, give it away for free.

Get yours for free on Amazon today (and also tomorrow and the next day)!

 

GiveItAway GiveItAway Now

Time for a Promo!

Aug 29 through Sept 2, Lay Her Ghosts to Rest is Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I need some readers, you need an excuse to review a book you know you’re better than. It’s a match made in Kindle, really.

Download your copy of my paranormal, self-care, workplace drama, chicklit, speculative fiction book about a lady who talks to ghosts and then tell me how full of crap I am on the review form.

 

 

Everyone LOVES wakes and funerals, Eda. What are you even TALKING about? –Morticia McMacabre

 

I don’t understand the Bob Marley reference. –Heather Lynn Clearbottom

 

That ghost in the smart red suit sounds great. Let’s hear more about her. –Anonymous Female Politician

 

It’s wonderful, Sweetheart. I’m so proud of you! –My grandmother

 

Your turn. Whattaya got for me, reader?

Scarcity and Stickers

I have to tamp down on this urge I have to encourage my son to save stickers.

“Save” them. Because they are so valuable and they have such abundant and practical uses that we wouldn’t want to “waste” them by, you know, putting them on our clothes and our arms and our toys and other places that do no damage to anything but the stickers themselves.

I have a lot of “saving” urges. Not hoarding, mind you, but like… save the most delicious part of the meal for the end. Save the strawberries so we can still have some at the end of the week. Save the battery life on the phone so I still have plenty by the time I get home.

Pointless things. Things that make no sense. Things I’m afraid will go away too quickly but really, things that are meant to be used or enjoyed right now.

My dad said once, “I used to save the best parts of the trail mix til the end so the last part I ate was the part I liked best. But sometimes, someone comes along when you’re at the end and all that’s left is the parts you like best and scoops them all up and eats them before you get any.”

(I think my mom may have eaten the chocolate bits one day)

“I don’t do that anymore,” he said. “I eat the part I like best first because why not?”

I’m a big fan of the author, SARK, and all her wonderfully illustrated books because more so than any other self-help type book, she makes me feel like she’s holding my hand and accompanying me down the dark aisles of my brain, waiting for me to discover, process, mourn any losses, adjust my perspective, and accept the truth without judgement.

She writes about Scarcity Thinking (and I wish I remembered which book, but I don’t right now) and how coming from a perspective of Scarcity rather than Abundance limits our behaviors and encourages our fears.

Apparently, I’m scared that there aren’t enough stickers.

Or that there aren’t enough pleasurable things or experiences so I have to hold fast to the few I know are available.

It’s not true, of course. And it’s certainly not the kind of thinking I want to encourage in my son. Because even if there is a limit on battery life or strawberries or chocolate bits, there are other things out there to be enjoyed. There are other experiences to appreciate. And there are SO MANY other stickers.

So, sure, stick all the stickers, one on top of the other, all over your shirt, little dude. Even when we run out of stickers, there are plenty other wonderful things to see and do and explore and enjoy.

With Subtitles Like These, Who Needs Titles?

Post about Subtitles

How to use them and who does

I’m not gonna lie, my brand new baby novel is not super popular and hasn’t generated much more than friends and relatives sales. While I keep telling myself that I don’t write for money–I have TWO jobs, both of which issue paychecks–I’m still a little bummed that this labor of love ain’t gettin’ any from anywhence else than me.

So I’m reading, I’m researching, I’m checking out articles both helpful and not so much about ebook marketing, KDP marketing, tips and tricks and whatnots when I come across a whole separate genre of marketing articles about…. SUBTITLES!

AhPPARENTly, subtitles are the bees knees and you just can’t make honey without them. But the only subtitles I’ve ever noticed on a fiction book were, “A Novel” so I really thought all that subtitle nonsense didn’t apply to me.

I was wrong.

Subtitles of fiction books can be lots of things!

The Modern Prometheus

A Tale of Passion

The Misfortunes of Virtue

Electric Boogaloo! Wait… no, that was a movie subtitle. Still, as subtitles go, that’s a pretty memorable one.

With this shiny new information, first, I will ask all ya’ll: Do you subtitle your books? Something fancy or no? Do you think it’s helps readers find your book?

Second, I need to come up with some subtitles for my books!

The Homecoming Effect: A Tale of Smut and Love and Starting Over  

Like Two Opposite Things: She Kissed a Girl and Liked It

Lay Her Ghosts to Rest: Grassroots Ghost Removal for the Newly Self-Actualized

I mean… I would read them.

Most of the Electric Boogaloo memes were super racist or political in a way that made no sense to me.

Those Fickle Writers

Aaaaand PIVOT! I’m writing something else.

I like the teen angsty WIP I started last week but I’ve also got this food-obsessed, self-care, CEN* WIP started that might be easier to write because it’s more grown-up, real life, I JUST saw the chaotic result of educated, professional adults sharing a kitchenette type piece that speaks to me as a person who likes to complain about stuff fictionally. Seriously with the dirty mugs, people? And the OPEN containers of leftovers sitting on the window sil for the entire weekend? I just can’t with you people.

It has come to my attention–AGAIN–that I write for my own sanity, not for the pleasure of my readers and really, I need to be writing what I need to be working on in my own brain. Between being too pregnant to function physically in the ways I am accustomed to functioning (I have been benched by my OBGYN and cannot exercise in the ways that make me feel like life is enjoyable) and my inability to distinguish when I am hungry and when I am not so I’m bored and I eat regardless, this new WIP speaks to me. Much more so than some teenage throwback life lesson I should have learned at 16 but didn’t so I force the lesson on fictional characters instead.

My hashtag game tweets may be a bit disjointed for a while as I submit from two WIPS with wildly different themes.

*Childhood Emotional Neglect, which I suspect MANY MANY people suffer from based on just the number of a-holes I’ve encountered this week. “Your parents didn’t love you, did they?” I scream out my car window as a motorcyclist swerves to a stop behind me, cursing ME out, because I stopped for a pedestrian in a crosswalk with blinky yellow lights anyone who was paying attention would have seen from a safe enough stopping distance.

Anyway, take the quiz to find out if you’re one of them! And then use your freaking blinker, jackhole**!

**Totally joking. CEN seems pretty legit and really could be at the root of much of the dysfunction of … most of the people I’ve ever encountered, actually.

Who Hasn’t Been Kissed by a Rose on the Gray?

I started writing something new a few days ago–another coming of age type story that uses Batman Forever as a turning point in a young woman’s understanding of sexuality– but I’m still… you know, pregnant and not having much luck in not sitting on the couch ignoring my discomfort and pain with endless article-reading and Buzzfeed quizzes.

I just think that there are times when you need to let time pass rather than spending it wisely and late pregnancy is one of those times.

But I assume there will come a time when I can write again, perhaps with an infant strapped to my chest, perhaps about all the things I won’t be doing because… I have an infant strapped to my chest.

Although… I do have a WIP that involves a woman with an infant strapped to her chest who walks out of Target only to meet up with a mythical creature spouting nonsense rhymes at her as a call to action. She complains a lot about her husband not helping enough and not understanding how difficult it is to constantly be with your child with very little outlet other than weekly trips to Target. And if that’s not “write what you know” then there’s no such thing.

Disengage

Sometimes the internet is a wonderful place full of resources and opportunities and sometimes it’s full of bullcrap and terrible people and even some not so terrible people who just don’t get what you’re saying.

Either way, I think it’s healthy to disengage sometimes. When a conversation isn’t working, when two (or more) people are talking about different things, circling around each other but never meeting in the middle, it’s time to call it quits.

While I’ve seen some wonderful acts of bravery, of support, of community on Twitter, I just don’t think it’s a productive place–for me, at least–to have serious conversations about real events or strong feelings. It’s just too easy to misinterpret. Or interpret correctly but respond like a jackhole. I have no energy for that kind of nonsense.

No more politics for me on Twitter. And perhaps I should extend that to Facebook as well. I’ll stick to fun and work on social media and keep my politics where they belong: in the real world with real people who have to look me in the face to spew their idiocy and I, in turn, can respond appropriately.*

* See Figure 1A above

With Which Weapon?

Legit question:

How do you “fight hate”?

With love? That’s metaphor. What do you actually DO other than send more and more and more money to organizations already “fighting hate”?

What do you DO?

What can I do?

It’s Heeeee-errrrrre (GHOSTS!)

Coworker drama! Institusluts! Moms who can’t let go even after they die! 

Lay Her Ghosts to Rest is available TODAY on Amazon!

 

What started as a totally pantsed (that being “by the seat of my”) NaNoWriMo and CampNaNo project has become… A Real Book that you can buy and read and then also review if you’re a responsible reader.

Go get it and read the crap out of it!

“Ohhh, not a player slayer at all, are ya? Just a covert convert.”

“Not quite. I think. I’m not sure what that means. But no, I did not fall for his game. We dated. We… lived together, actually. For quite a while. But it didn’t work out and we broke up and he’s not pleased with how things ended.”

“You dumped him.”

“I ended the relationship, yes.”

“Why? And are you the reason he’s become the Instituslut?”

“The what? Institu–? That’s not even clever.”

“I didn’t come up with it.”

All the Younger Bolder Types

Raise your hand if you’d be all about a Younger/The Bold Type crossover event.

Is it SO CRAZY to think a bunch of 20-somethings (and a faker) all living and working in NYC in the publishing industry wouldn’t run into each other for something or other and then have a wacky feminist adventure in work and life and love and taxis?

I mean… I’ll write a spec script. In my spare time. For my own amusement. You don’t even have to read it as long as someone brings these wonderful people together on my TV screen.