Well, that time has come. The age where it all comes together… Right?
I’ve finally hit that golden nerd age of 42: the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Yesterday was my birthday, and overall, it was a pretty decent day. Did I get cake? Nope. Did I get lots of presents? Also no. But did I enjoy my day? Y’know what? I kinda did.
I slept like shit. I had my quarterly psychiatrist appointment. I worked. Had dinner with the family. Watched some TV with my husband, then went to bed early. Overall, though, it was a good day. I think I liked it more than some of the birthdays of the past when I’ve partied the night away.
I don’t have huge plans for 42. I mean, I’ll continue writing. I’ll try to up my marketing game. Get my name out there. I think I’m going to relax this year, though. Take it easy. Not stress so much.
Do I think this is the year I’ll make it big in the indie publishing world? Nope. To be honest, I don’t expect to get much further than I’ve already gone in that respect, shy of just producing more material. I’m just going to keep writing at my own pace, with the hope that I’ll eventually find my niche. If not, oh well. I can’t let my lack of comparative success eat at me too much. So what if I haven’t gotten the most sales? So what if I haven’t earned a solo bestseller title? It’s all relative. If I have even a few followers who enjoy my work, that should be enough for me. Yeah, I can’t quit my day job with only a few followers, but that doesn’t have to mean I give up.
Is this the answer–this kind of detached peace, this calm serenity? Maybe. Maybe this is the time in life where I come to the sensible conclusion, rather than the defeatist one.
Patriotism. It used to be a thing of pride. A good thing to have.
So why, just days after my country celebrated its independence–arguably the most patriotic day of the year–am I terrified when I see someone sporting our flag with pride?
Perhaps my perception of patriotism has changed since good ol’ Orange-Face was in office. I mean, during his tenure the people most proud of my country were the ones who supported that idjit, who threw themselves blindly at his ignorance and intolerance. Those people waved the flag with pride. They wore flag hats and shirts and plastered their cars and trucks with flag stickers. Now, to me at least, flag = hate. No longer is “patriot” associated with “mom” or “soldier” or “veteran.” Now, I associate “patriot” with “bigot” and “racist” and “hateful, spiteful person.” Weird, right?
I bet the people who stormed the Capitol earlier this year thought they were patriots. I bet those people sporting MAGA hats and Trumper bumpers think they’re patriots. Me? I’m kind of an anti-patriot now.
And I’m kind of mortified to be an American.
Now, I’m not planning on leaving the good ol’ U.S. I’m not jumping a plane to Europe or Canada or somewhere to escape the fear I feel. I’ll deal with it. But am I a patriot? Hell no.
How did it get so bad? It’s like living in a twisted dystopia, only it’s real. I can blame Orange-Face all I want, but he’s only a symbol, a rallying point. There had to be supporters for him to get elected, to have the pull he did. There had to be supporters for a whole slew of people to take guns to our capitol and be assholes. The thing that sickens me, that sets my nerves on end and raises my hackles, is that there are people out there, THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE, who ACTUALLY THINK IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO VOTE FOR HIM. There are HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS who said “You know what? Let’s vote for regression. Let’s vote for sadism and bigotry and elitism.” Millions, even. People who voted not once, but TWICE for that symbol, that rallying point.
I thank the Gods that the twice-voted didn’t get their way this last election.
Now, you might be a “patriot.” You might be offended at reading this. If you are, then you’re following the wrong blog. My books aren’t for you, and my viewpoints certainly are not for you. Go off to your NRA meeting and, I don’t know, espouse your privilege to someone who cares.
Am I privileged? To an extent, yeah, I am. I’m a white woman. I don’t know what it’s like to be marginalized to the extent that most minorities are. I have that small bit of privilege that my skin tone gives me. Does it mean I support those in power who want to rise above everyone “else” because of that privilege? Nope. I’m for the little guy. The underdog. The minorities. Those are my people. If that, combined with my disgust in how the “patriots” in my country have been acting in recent years, negates my privilege in some way, then so be it. I don’t need to be privileged. I don’t need to be better than anyone else. I’m cool with not being part of the “in” crowd.
Nope, I’m no patriot. If I ever was one to begin with, which I’m not sure I was, I sure as hell am not now.
As per usual, my post has gone sideways in that I’ve begun to ramble and repeat myself. I think that means I’m done for now.
I’m sure thing will eventually get better. I’ll find pride in my country … someday. For now, though, I’ll sit in the back of the class and daydream of days when we can all see a flag and not flinch at the ingrained implications.
Blank pages. Blank screens. They sit there, mocking me.
After rapid-fire churning out four novellas and six novels in the past year or so, I’m once again stuck in the “you’re not allowed to think” phase of writing. I try to think, to get the words to leave the recesses of my brain and venture onto the page, but that’s a hard “no” these days. Even though I have a pretty decent chapter-by-chapter outline, when it comes to getting the prose down I just can’t.
I go through these phases a lot, but even though I’ve been able to get through each of them so far, while I’m in this state it’s always hard to imagine getting out of it. It’s like I’m stuck at the bottom of a deep, black pit, and the only way to find words again is to climb out. Too bad I suck at climbing.
I think part of my problem is genre-hopping. I was hardcore in the zone with the paranormal romance reverse harem books, but then I slowed down and wrote a M/F paranormal romance with low-to-medium steam. I thought maybe that would help me switch gears to dystopian sci-fi, which is the setting/genre for my next project, but sadly that’s not the case. I have all of next month to finish this prequel novella for the Abnormalverse books, but each day that I go without writing–or with writing very little–is another several hundred words that I have to make up the next time I get to writing. Might not seem like a lot when my usual daily word count goal is one or two thousand words, but those missed words add up.
Even this blog post is taking a lot out of me, metaphorically speaking. It should be easy to write, but I’m dragging the words out of my thick skull and jamming them onto the screen in a vain attempt to feel like a writer.
The words will come–eventually. In the meantime, I’ll have to keep forcing them out until I get back in the flow of things. I can always fix crap if that’s what it turns out to be, but I can’t fix nothing. Nothing takes a lot more to repair than crap.
After the breakneck writing pace of the last year or so, I find I’ve gotten stuck on powering through my drafts, even though it’s not necessary with my current schedule. This has made me woefully neglectful of other projects, like this website. I don’t know why I’m so hyperfocused on finishing each draft as quickly as possible; perhaps it’s just a knee-jerk reaction to spending a year giving myself short deadlines.
Latest on the docket: a prequel novella for Abnormal. Titled Gifts Divided, it chronicles the life of a young Sniper who is selected to join the Gene Scan Units after a devastating war and concurrent virus decimate the US. I’m excited to get back into the Abnormalverse and have more to show for that world, and maybe once I get this novella done I’ll be able to dip back into the fourth Abnormal book, Dead Cities Rising. My previous attempts at starting ABN4 have been met with frustration and dissatisfaction with the direction it was taking. Maybe now I’ll be in a better mindset.
I also am struggling with keeping up the marketing aspects of the writing biz. I was doing okay for a while, but now I’ve started slipping again. As with other things in my life, the pace of my writing has caused me to neglect other things. I used to be fanatical about making up graphics for quotes and snippets of my work, as well as other promotional things, but now I find myself struggling to grasp the attention span needed to do these.
Call it ADHD hyperfocus. Call it obsession. Call it what you will; the point is, I need to break out of whatever it is.
First thing’s first: Stop writing like I’ll die if I don’t make my word count today. Granted, I made my word count already today, but that’s only because I’m giving myself two months to write 20k words…so my word goal is laughingly low at the moment. Still, I need to allow myself to do other things. I have to snap out of it.
With my reverse harem trilogies done (for the time being), I don’t have the pressure that I did before to finish ASAP. The box sets that I’m still participating in are spaced out enough that I have plenty of time to take a more leisurely pace to my work-outside-of-work.
After I slow my roll, I’ll get this site back on track. I plan on scheduling a minor overhaul, where some old works will be free (with newsletter signup) and others will be back in a different format. Then, once that’s done, I’ll get graphics for promotions back in production, and I’ll probably rework my Facebook reader group while I’m at it. Maybe pick a day during the week to feature other authors in a mini-takeover. Pay it forward.
Now that I’ve broken away from the writing cave long enough to write this post, I think I’ll start on this right away. Close the Word doc, open some stock photo images, and get to work on other, non-writing stuff.
Keep on the lookout for updates to this site! I really do intend to make it pretty and what have you soon. 😉
…maybe it’s because I’ve been drowning in my writing work!
Let me clarify: For the past several months, I’ve basically been “chain writing.” What’s that? Well, it’s like chain smoking, only writing. As soon as I finish one project, I’ve got another ready to go. Back to back to back to back to…you get the idea. Good for productivity, bad for the psyche. I haven’t even had the opportunity to really promote my work because I’m so busy working! It’s terrible, but what can I do? Until/unless I can magically afford a personal assistant, I’m doing it all myself. The writing, the graphics, the promotions, the takeovers–all of it. And magic isn’t happening for a long, long time at this rate.
The writing is good. It’s solid. But the marketing? I’m floundering. I just can’t manage both at once, and it’s killing my writing career.
Now, some may argue that it’s not much of a career anyway, but I had a good thing for a while. Until recently, I had moderate indie success–or at least, what I considered to be success. Things were being read and reviewed and bought. That’s tanking hard now, though, and I have to fess up and say it’s all due to my own marketing shortcomings. Even if I knew the best way to promote myself, I just don’t have the time and energy with my current workload.
The lack of energy to promote myself is crippling. I know I shouldbe gathering other authors to do a takeover in my reader group, but I can’t bring myself to format a Google spreadsheet to even start. This is only a week before release, too!! EEK!
I’ll get back out from under water someday. Today? Today I have to pick my ass up off the ground and force myself to take this “day off” from writing to get in gear. I have to format and upload my paperback for Tuesday’s release. I have to create graphics promoting the book, then post them in a few book groups to garner interest. I have to create that damn spreadsheet and see who I might conscript to sign up. I have to, because there’s no one else.
I’ll try to remember to work on this blog more. To update my site, to step up my marketing game.
I may be drowning now, but if I just learn how to swim, I might survive this.
Every author wants 5-star reviews, right? I mean, that’s the goal, isn’t it? Well, not like this it’s not.
Let me back it up a bit. As an author, I try to get my books into a select group of readers’ hands ahead of release, so they can read and review it. The process is called ARC (Advanced Review Copy) reading, and when it works, it works well. When it doesn’t work, however, the whole thing comes crashing down.
From my mood, you’d think I got a one-star review, but that’s not the case. I got that coveted 5-star from an ARC reader. Yeah. But at what price?
This reviewer posted the entire plot, including spoilers and twists, in her review. That’s right. No “Spoiler Alert,” no warning, just straight-up posted the plot. Posted MAJOR spoilers. Right out in the open on Amazon. And I have no recourse, no action I can take at this time. The only option I’m given is “Report Abuse,” and though I feel violated by this “review,” there was no actual abuse in it. Maybe literary abuse??
I’m beyond livid. I’m so pissed I could scream. I won’t, but I could.
My trust in the ARC process, in the review process as a whole, is broken. I wanted to believe I could trust the ARC readers to review with some modicum of intelligence, but this–this has shaken me.
What happens if another reviewer slips through who doesn’t understand how fundamentally harmful it is to the author to post spoilers like this? What if it’s someone I can’t conveniently message on Facebook to request an edit? What if a random reader, not an ARC reader but just a well-meaning reader, reviews something like this? I shudder at the thought.
I have to step back from this. Maybe today’s work day will distract me enough, or maybe I can occupy my mind in other ways until I’m less raw. Regardless, until this reviewer sees the message I sent, there’s nothing I can do. Even then, she could get angry at me for complaining about the spoilers and leave it up there. Or she could change it to one star out of spite.
I’ll take the one star if it means the spoilers go away.
Look at the pretty new covers! Yeah, yeah, I’m behind on Hell’s Rejects, but look! Shiny and new!
Why the new covers when the trilogy isn’t even done yet, you ask? Well, it’s about marketing…and my severe lack of skill at such. You see, I didn’t do any market research about cover design when I made the original covers for the Hell on Earth trilogy. No, I just made “pretty” covers to match with the covers for the Bargains Struck trilogy–which also got no research. In other words, though I made unique and beautiful covers, I did not make unique and beautiful paranormal romance covers. Nope. I made … well, I’m not sure what genre of covers I made. Something that didn’t fit, I guess.
What does that mean for Bargains Struck and every shared-world cover I’ve made in that universe? You guessed it: new covers.
I got the Bargains Struck covers down, but next up is a slew of novella covers for shared-world books that are going into box sets in the coming years. Yep. I got some work ahead of me.
I’ll get back to Hell’s Rejects in a few minutes. Really. I will. I just had to type up a quick blog post as my “cover reveal” post. Handy, dandy, and efficient. This will post to Twitter and Facebook, after which I can easily share elsewhere. Yay, automation!
Here’s a quick look at the six covers as they are now:
Are they perfect? They are perfect for my skill level, I’ll say that. But they’re not $200 covers. They’re more like $20 covers. And that’s okay. Because they’re mine, and they make me happy. I can’t wait to order the four that have paperbacks out for my “Shelf of Narcissism” behind me in the living room. 😉
Now that that’s been said, it’s time to get back to work on Hell’s Rejects before I have to kick my own ass for slacking off.
Why is there a miniature squishy peen on my laptop keyboard? Funny story…
The thing is, I have been floundering with my writing lately. I try, and I’ll have bursts of inspiration, but overall, I’m stuck. I can eke out about 1300-1600 words in one day each week, but if I’m to make my goal deadline and word count, I’ll have to step it up to make that my daily amount–and that’s not coming to me right now.
My WIP is currently in the hands of a fellow author who’s going to read it for critique and helpful hints. I hope I won’t have too much to go back and fix, but I also hope to get some good pointers for the flow and direction of the story after she’s done with it.
The good news? My early twist to the story caught her off-guard, so that’s a plus. It had the desired emotional response/impact, so score one for me. Now let’s hope the rest of the story holds up as well.
Could I still be writing while she reads? Yes, but that poses its own problems. If she has helpful hints or good plot ideas, I might have to undo everything new I write. Is that just an excuse, though? Eh, probably. I need to get off my butt and get inspired. Hence the peen.
Yes, I have a squishy penis jiggling on my laptop as I type. Since I’m writing high-heat reverse harem romance, I figure a little inspo couldn’t hurt. Besides, it’s kinda funny to watch it wiggle with each letter.
I’m going to get back on track. I’m going to push for the finale of this book. I’m going to finish. On time, at the desired minimum word count, so help me Gods.
It’s time to kick my own ass into gear and get my tail typing.
My books aren’t going to sell themselves. I have to write them to get them to sell. I have to write them, edit them, revise them, format them, and publish them. I have to get shit moving. If I need Percy the Peen sitting out in the open for that to happen, then so be it. Is Percy a good Peen name? I don’t know, but it’s what came to me. Might as well use it.
Percy the Peen. Inspiring and motivating since 2021.
Some days you’re the pigeon, and some days you’re the statue. Today? Today I feel more like the statue.
I woke up, as usual, super early. I spent a couple of hours putzing around, then I started to get super sleepy. Kept dozing off on the couch, so I took my Adderall and made some coffee…and promptly zonked out again. I tried to force myself to drink the stuff to hopefully wake up, but yet again, I kept falling asleep.
Why does any of this matter? Because I had planned on getting some serious writing in this morning, and this drowsiness is word-blocking me something fierce.
I still theoretically could finish my draft on time, but not if I can’t pick it up soon. With my current word count goal and deadline, I have to write 1100+ words per day, on average, to finish on time. Sounds like a small amount, but when I’ve been averaging 0-300 words most mornings, it’s problematic. This draft is fighting me, and though I’m 77% done and on track story-wise, I worry.
I’ll get past this narcoleptic block, but I have to focus. If I want to be a full-time author, I need to be able to break past things like this. If a book gets delayed, that’s less income, right? Just like I can’t be falling asleep at the day job, I have to try to stay awake for this “job”–regardless of whether or not I currently am full-time at it. I have to take this as seriously as I want to be taken.
I can do this. I just have to focus. Stay awake. Get ahead.
Eleven days left to finish my draft. 1134 words per day to meet my ideal minimum word count goal.
I don’t think I’ve ever been this terrified in my short author career.
I have a deadline coming up. Now, theoretically, I have given myself until the end of February to finish. It’s just the fourth, and I’m 62% through my draft. But I have been stuck for longer than I have been in a long time, and it’s scary to think I might let myself down.
Things were going great. I was on a fucking roll during my month of quarantine for my husband’s COVID and my subsequent infection. I thought for sure I was set. I was so far ahead, there was no way I’d get behind again. Tricksy manic brain. Tricksy little bitch indeed.
It’s gotten to the point of panic and avoidance. I panic because I fear I won’t finish by the date I need to upload the preorder file. I avoid because I don’t know what the next words are. I’d rather scroll Facebook endlessly in misery than open that file and stare at the words that are already there, mocking me because they refuse to reveal their secrets. What’s going to happen next? I sure as fuck don’t know.
Let me amend: I know what’s going to happen in the next chapter. But only because I took someone’s advice to write out of order. Now I have the start of a chapter staring back at me, wondering how the characters got there because I haven’t written that part yet.
So I go back to the “current” chapter. And stare at that last, haunting paragraph. The one where the words stopped.
It doesn’t help me that my sales of my previous books have all tapered off. No new reviews, no new sales, just the occasional person who reads one of my books on Kindle Unlimited and then goes off to other things, never to read the rest of the trilogy–or anything else I’ve written.
What’s the fucking point? Am I writing only for myself at this point? Is there anyone who gives a flying fuck if I finish? Is there anyone who would even notice if I didn’t release book two or three of Hell on Earth?
I don’t even know anymore. I have a handful of people who I know like my writing, but otherwise? I’m flying blind. I can’t seem to wrangle reviews out of ARC readers, I can’t get friends and family to review–outside of the few known “fans” in my friend circle–and it’s all getting to be a bit much. I don’t know how other authors do it. How the fuck do they get so many people to read, review, recommend, repeat?? I don’t understand it!
My Impostor Syndrome game is strong right now. I feel like a fake, a pretender, a phony-ass nobody.
Who is “AJ Mullican, USA Today Best-selling Author,” anyway? Why should anyone care?
I can’t answer that. I mean, she’s a certified ophthalmic assistant. She’s a wife. She’s a daughter, sister. She’s a cat mom. She’s a so-so artist. And as a writer? Who the fuck is she?
I don’t know anymore. I’ve lost my fucking mojo, and it’s driving me mad.
This is what Coronapocalypse has done to me. It raised me up to unrealistic heights, and now that I’ve returned to the reality of my day job life, I’ve fallen farther than ever before. I can’t write anymore. I can’t think. I just go through the motions, hoping I’ll eventually break past this stupid block but fearing that I never will.
My life has been reduced to an Austin Powers meme.
The really sad part? The truly inhumane part of all this?
I can’t even cry about it. My mind is so fucking broken that I can’t cry out of frustration, out of fear, out of sadness, not for anything. Am I even fucking human anymore? Is this some fucked-up side effect of COVID? Or am I just so fucking beyond saving that I can’t even wallow in self pity properly?
