Trigger Warnings

I know the people who stop by here on a regular basis are not trigger-warning type people.  We venture into the world without much of a care what other people say and we tend not to get offended by offhand comments.  If we read something that doesn't sit right with us, we close the book and move onto something else without it harshing our lives.  

I don't have trigger warnings on my books.  As a lark, before my last freebie offering, I put a warning on SLEEPING UGLY - something to the effect of WARNING: The main character of this book has a potty mouth.  Because she does and some people take issue with curse words.  I took it off there this morning.  Like I said, it was a lark and I didn't want it to stick.  I haven't yet gotten a bad review due to curse words, but should it happen, then it happens.  The book is what it is.

FERTILE GROUND centers around the hunt for a serial rapist.  It should be clear from the blurb, so if a person has issues with the subject, they should be able to suss out that this book isn't for them.  I hope they don't turn away from the book because of that.  It really does have a satisfying end.  Also, I do not go into any details in any of my scenes to show actual rapes, because I do have a problem with that.  It's more 'behind closed doors' and the after effects of said rape*.  

I'm a firm believer that we shouldn't hide from things that bother us.  Yank that shit out in the open, explore why it bothers me, find the cause, and then tuck it back away.  I mean, you don't have to invite it to sit in your living room, but you should at least know what bothers you and why.  

So, I guess you shouldn't expect any trigger warnings from me.  If you're triggered easily, my books probably aren't for you.  There's swearing and violence and ideas you may or may not be offended by (not all of these in every book... your mileage my vary).

What do you think of trigger warnings?  Do you use them?  Do you need them?  

* I have seen where people are now using asterisks in the word rape because even the word is a trigger.  I don't ascribe to that thinking.  I'm also now shying away from using asterisks in the word fuck.  Are people really less offended by f*** than the the word fuck?  Not sure what the rational is behind that.  Anyone above the age of 8-9 know what's behind the asterisks, don't they?  My friends and I were liberally using the word on the playground in fifth grade. 

Sunday Update 10/20/24

Good Morning.  I think.  The jury's still out.

I'm deep in editing right now.  Not any of my books, though.  I'm working on doing proofing for a friend.  I should finish today and then get my notes over to her.  Then I'll get back to my own stuff.

I did a lot of marketing this week.  WISH HITS THE FAN was free.  I moved 124 copies of that and sold a WISH IN ONE HAND in Australia.  It's not much, but it's better than a sharp stick in the butt.  I hope to see some residual sales and page reads in the coming weeks.  Like I did a free thing for BOAI last month and yesterday I saw where someone had read the whole thing in KU.  It's the long game here, people.  I've also earned double this year over last year.  Again, not a lot of money, but something is better than nothing.

I'm still not reading, unless you count that friend's book.  

The only thing I made this week of any note was battered tilapia fillets.  I'm all out of baked goods, so I need to rectify that soon.

On the activity front, I walked twice for 1.65 miles and I worked in the woods two days for an hour each day.  Mileage: 52.90.  I haven't weighed myself.  Unfortunately, all physical activity will be on hold for a bit.  Here's the dealie-bob: I was working in the woods and fell on my ass.  What happened was I was carrying a load of sticks from one pile to another, a longish stick fell out of the pile, hit the ground and stabbed me in the leg, so I twisted to get away from the ouchie stick. In doing that, my foot got hung up and my knee started to hyper-extend, so I jigged away from that and went down like a sack of dirt.  I did land on my ass instead of my face, so that's a win.  In the bizarre gymnastics of it all, though, I wrenched my knee pretty damn good.  It's not swollen or anything, but I probably shouldn't go hiking around with it.  Derp.  Hey, I usually fall at least once a year, and I haven't fallen in a couple years, so I should've seen this coming.  :shrug:

Right now, I look like I've undergone some type of weird abuse.  I have grease burns on my hand from the tilapia (flipped the fish and the oil splashed).  I have a bruise on my left leg from Friday when a tree limb snapped and came whipping back at me, whacking me just below the knee.  I have another bruise on that leg from the stabby stick and my right leg is both bruised and missing a layer of skin off the knee.  (I find this all amusing, so no worries.)

And that's about it.  I think I'm going to hit the coffee pot, have a smoke, and then go back to my recliner where I can put my leg up and get back to reading/editing.  Have a great day, everyone.

Trying New Things

 First off, I'm trying a new marketing image:

Pretty snazzy, eh?  Whatever I'm doing seems to be working, so there's a win for the new images, I guess.

Then last night, I tried making battered fish fillets.  I mean, I'm an old hand at breading stuff, but this is the first time I tried battering.  And I didn't use a recipe, so you can imagine.  All in all, it was pretty good for a first try.  They were pretty damn tasty, even if the breading turned out more like pancake batter and the pan was too hot, so the batter was done waaaay before the fish was cooked through.  I nuked them to get the fish done, which un-crispied the batter.  :shrug:  And tilapia probably wasn't the best fish for this experiment.  Like I said, they were tasty.  And there are leftovers, so lunch is taken care of today. 

A while back, I tried putting raspberry jam on a chocolate cake.  First I tried spreading the jam when it was cold.  That did not work.  I heated it in the microwave and then spread it.  That worked fine.  Once it all cooled, I put vanilla frosting over the jam layer.  It was super nummy.

The point here, I think, is that trying new things is good for you.  Sometimes they work.  Sometimes they don't.  But you've gotta keep trying.  And no, I'm not advocating getting rid of the old things.  Old things and old ways are good, too.  Sometimes the old ways can get boring, though.  Shoot off the beaten path and explore new horizons.  You never know what you'll find.  Jus' sayin'.

Thursday This n That

 I've been a bad blogger this week.  I blame it on marketing.  By the time I get done marketing and calling Mom, I just plain forget that I was supposed to blog.  Oh, sure, I could do a blog post at night,  but I'm busy doing other things at night.  And yes, I would like some cheese with that whine.

Last night, Sawyer decided to sleep with us.  Awesome.  Not so awesome was the fact that he wanted to sleep against my legs.  18-20 pounds of cat pressed up against my lower legs did not do me any good and I woke up with my right leg all ouchy.  More whine?  Yes, please.

On a happier note, I'm reading a friend's new book and loving it.  It's not available for sale yet, and I'm supposed to be proofreading it, but it's so good I keep forgetting that I'm supposed to be looking for flaws, so I have to go back and re-read a lot.  Yay for good fiction. And I get to read it first, so neener neener boo boo. =op

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I've been into crossword puzzles lately.  I was doing the ones in the back of our local electric company's monthly magazine, but I've gone through all of my back issues.  I broke down and bought a book of crossword puzzles.  They're marketed as fun and easy.  Easy?  Yes.  And kinda fun.  I'd have more fun if they were more challenging, but I'll take what I can get.  They're mostly just to exercise the brain and entertain me while I'm smoking, so they're doing their job.  Yay.

Finn is circling my desk wanting attention... and there he is... jumped up on my desk and down into my lap.  Typing with a cat in your lap is not the easily thing to do.  And he is getting in my face because I'm not paying attention to him.  Cat doesn't understand that I have typing to do.  LOL

On that note, I'll call this good and shower my kitty with the attention he so richly deserves.  Have a great day, everyone.  Peace out.

Monday Marketing, Etc.

It's morning and I've already been hard at Marketing.  It's the first of the freebie days for WISH HITS THE FAN, and I'm actually up early, so there you are.  I posted to 20 different Facebook Groups and to my three pages.  Now, we wait and see if any of this garnered any interest.  (The post verbiage is below the image down there.)

It's probably not the best way to market, but it's free.  All it takes is my time.  This morning, I spent about a half hour posting.  If I sell one book, that would mean I made about $2 an hour. 

But writers can't look at our time to earnings that way.  I mean, if we did, we'd drive ourselves crazy.  If any writer goes into this thinking their time is worth way more than that, they would have to price their books so high no one would buy one.  Think about it...

When I'm in my stride, a first draft takes me about 6 weeks to write.  If it's a clean copy, another 6 weeks to edit and polish.  (At about 2-3 hours a day, 6-7 days a week.  If I edit more hours than that a day, I start to froth at the mouth and twitch a lot.  If I write more, my hands fall off.)  Add another week for formatting, etc. and you're looking at 13 weeks from the start to publication.  

A conservative estimate for my time is 156 hours.  At the federal minimum wage of $7.25 a hour, I'm due $1131.00 when the book hits the store. At the cost of the below ebook ($3.99), I would need to sell about 283 books to pay for my time.  (Not including what that cover cost me or any marketing I do - or my 'wage' for the time spent marketing.)  

Since 2020, I've sold 233 copies of ALL my books. See?  That's crazy making.  Sure, our time is valuable, but we aren't normal workers.  We work for ourselves.  Sure, some writers are making enough to recoup the time/money thing.  Most aren't.  We writes the books, we publishes the books, we get paid what we get paid when we get paid, and we're damn happy.  (Or we're whiny.  Your mileage may vary.  Sometimes it depends on the day.)

I mean, I have run across writers who think readers should pay them what they think they're entitled to.  :shrug:  Umm... sorry... it don't work that way.  The market tells you what you're worth, not the other way around.  Years ago, I tried jacking the price of my books up.  I got zero sales.  I dropped the price, and the books started selling again.  I don't make much, but not much is better than nothing.  That's the load we self-published fools must bear. :shrug:

Anyway... Here's the marketing I did this morning:

For the first time ever, get the final book in the Once Upon a Djinn series - WISH HITS THE FAN - absolutely FREE. (The whole series is always free with a KU subscription.)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075C7FCXG

You’d think life as a genie would be easy-peasy. But when you’re Jo Mayweather, ain’t nothing so simple.

If you're interested, snag yourself a copy.  I know there are a bunch of people out there who read books 1-3 but not this one, so now's your chance to see how the whole story ends.  

Have a great day out there, folks.

Sunday Update 10/13/24

What a week, eh?

Let's see... I didn't do any writing again.  I did work on edits.  I'm up to like 60% of the books that now has edit notes.  I also did some marketing.  Unequal was free Sunday - Thursday but I only moved 18 books. Not sure what the dealy-bob was there.  Perhaps Sunday is not the best day to start these marketing blasts.  Maybe I'm reaching saturation.  I guess we'll find out.  I have Wish Hits the Fan set up to go free tomorrow.  None of the other books are on sale.  Well, Wish in One Hand is set at 99c, so there's that.  Get the whole 4-book series for less than $9.  It's a pretty good deal, if I do say so myself.

Once again, I didn't do any reading.

In baking news, I made a chocolate oil cake.  This time I used corn oil rather than vegetable oil.  I'm not sure if that made a difference.  Maybe it was a little more moist.  I also made a pizza.

On the activity front, it was a wild week of cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning.  The house looks lovely.  I also did one walk.  Mileage for the year: 51.25. Weight: 173.8

The reason for the cleaning... I mean, other than it needed to be done?  We had visitors yesterday.  Just low impact, casual chatting.  We had pizza for lunch and ate cake.  It was all good.  Well, except for the cats.  We never have visitors, so they were both totally freaked out and hid under the bed.  After a while of them not coming out, we transferred their food and water, and their litter box, into the bedroom and closed the door.  Poor things.  They finally got back to normal last night.  Little xenophobes.

Today should be back to normal all the way around.  The plan is to not do anything active and just veg.  I'll probably work on the editing notes.  Maybe I'll take a little walk.  Tomorrow, I'll be back to marketing so I should probably spend some time today working on marketing materials.  We'll see.  

How are things in your world?

It's Not Saturday

For some reason this morning, I keep thinking it's Saturday.  It's so not Saturday.  Which is good.  I have company coming on Saturday and I haven't finished cleaning the house yet.

Not working a day job really messes up one's schedule.  I'm sure this happens to everyone who doesn't work outside the home, but being a writer means working 7 days a week, so that makes it worse.  Each day slides into the next.  There is no two-day-off weekend.  It's just work every day. 

Sometimes it's writing.  Sometimes it's editing.  Sometimes it's marketing.  Often it's all three on the same day.  Occasionally, marketing will tell me what day it is because I have a sale going on.  Unfortunately, the sales are always scheduled for the same days of the week.  Often, I do a Monday - Friday sale.  This last sale ran Sunday - Thursday, which kind of messed me up because I thought I had one more day to market - Friday.  Nope.  

If it weren't for scheduled TV programs, I'd be totally lost. Unfortunately, the only scheduled TV programs I watch are on Sunday night.  After that, I'm screwed.  

I also need to remember which day is Wednesday because I still do work for the family business and I need to get my timesheet to them Wednesday night so they can cut my check Thursday morning.  But I don't get paid every week, so I can't count on that to tell me what day it is.  This past week was one of those weeks where I didn't have anything to get paid for, so no timesheet to send.  I'm all messed up now.

And even as I was typing this, it popped into my head again that it was Saturday.  Derp.  

My calendar doesn't even help because the one I'm using is a page-a-day calendar with lovely pictures of birds on each day.  I love it so much, I would buy one every year, but the last year they printed one was 2017.  The one I'm using this year is from 2016 (I switch back and forth between the two I have) and October 11, 2016 was a Tuesday.  I had a wall calendar, but The Boyz wouldn't leave it alone, so I didn't bother putting one up this year.  

So, I'm stuck in this time hole where I can't figure out what day it is.  In the whole scheme of things, it doesn't really matter what day it is.  Every day is like the day before.  I don't have any real schedule that depends on the day of the week.  Rarely does it even come up.  Except for weeks like this where I am actually doing something on a specific day.  

Ah, well.  I'll keep thinking it's Saturday and then reminding myself it isn't.  What does today feel like to you?  Are you one of those people who can keep track of the days or are you like me and adrift on the time currents?