Thoughts on a Thursday

 Just random shit today. Whenever I try to stick to a blog theme it all just kinda evolves into a squirrel brain free-for-all. I mean, that's how I think. It's a constant barrage of noise in my head. There has always been a constant barrage of noise in my head. Good, bad, comical, horror... music lyrics without the lyrics. Do not ask me what I mean by that. I couldn't tell you if I tried. My brain works fast. It doesn't stop. It doesn't matter what it is. It's like 1 2 3 4 skip topic 5 6 7 now that thing that happened in 3rd grade that you forgot about is here, let's change to shame and 8 1 2 oh shit we're out of dogfood.

Today has been very long. I have been up for nearly 12 hours. My brain is firing on all freak out cylinders while my body is collapsing. 

I made the mistake of going to Amazon to look for something to read in KU because right now I have a free subscription. I found a person I used to know, who sat in front of me and told me how jealous they were of my writing career while fan girling over me and said "I don't want my career I want yours". Well, I guess she got it. I mean I wasn't doing anything with it, so does it matter.

But I never could look at her again without thinking how much she scared me. She wasn't a friend. She wasn't a fan. She was, well, worse. 

And here I am comparing myself to her, and her shitty books, and yes I do think her books from back then were shitty. She just had a good marketing team. That is all. 

If I'd ever had a marketing team... where would I be now?

Probably right where I am, because most of the reason I don't write isn't about marketing. Well, it is. But it's about shit in my personal life that kicked me until something gave out. 

I don't talk about my experience with my 15 minutes. And that's what my "career" was. a very quick blink and you'll miss it 15 minutes. That I had no idea how I achieved, or how to keep it when it started slipping through my fingers. 

Do I want it back? I'd be lying if I said no. But I can't say yes either. I liked the money. I did not like the fame (as miniscule as that was). I could not handle people like that friend up there. Fawning at me to my face. Talking shit about me behind my back. Was she the only one? No. Did I ever do anything for her to help boost her career? also no. Honestly, I didn't like her. We lived in two very different worlds. I felt uncomfortable around her. And when we ghosted each other, I forgot about her. Until I saw her pen name again. 

And that's the rabbit hole I went down. The writers I've met and friended and where they are now and where it all went... and for the most part it was just mutual ghosting. People who moved into my realm and out again. But the ones I thought were friends. The ones I actively worked with and helped and thought this is my circle this is my group... who never once returned the favor and when they got theirs... well... at least they didn't tell me to my face they were jealous. If I'd figured that out then maybe I wouldn't distrust everyone now.

Ahh, so that's the thoughts for tonight. I knew it would pop up somewhere in here. The theme of this night is pity party... of one.

I think I just got de ja vu... twice.

SIGHS!

I have no circle. I have no team. I've never really had a circle. I know that now. I never had a team. What I did, for however brief a time it was, I did it without any of that. Sure there was word of mouth back then. There were people who came to me. Who left when I couldn't give them whatever they were looking for from me. Because I literally can not and do not understand how to handle the social part of it all. 

Of being trapped at a book con in the bathroom, with my back to the sink counter, by a group of people raving about my book, to each other, without looking at me... like. Okay. How do you deal with that?

I wrote this thing. I'm happy you liked it. The degree to which you like it is stunningly terrifying to me. The degree to which you hated it, well, that I understand. That makes sense. It's terrible. It's shit. I can't write for shit. I don't trust those people in the former category at all because... well... for one I was trapped in a social situation that triggered a panic attack and all there was to do was flee. But hell, yeah, I absolutely understand the hate. 

You have absolutely no idea what it's like to have someone smile at you and say pretty words of praise but you can see the absolute hate in their eyes. The "this fat bitch has this thing she does not deserve while I'm so much better and  she has what I want"... you can feel it like a slap in the face. Full force. I saw it. I recognized it. I let her go. She got her team. She's made big best seller lists that I will never get close to. 

And, for tonight. Just tonight. I'm the one sitting at that table looking at her with jealous eyes thinking you got something you didn't deserve, but hey, that's nice for you. I wish you well. Just as I wish the few who I called friends, well. 

But does that mean I'm going to get off my ass and write something new. Because I saw someone and felt the bitter feels for what I've lost, through my own faults... probably not. Because now, it's not about my ability to write a story that will ever bring me back to where I was. It's about marketing. And marketing is about socializing and playing nice with others. And I absolutely do not have that ability, or need. It's not enough to write a book now. You have to have... well, there's this guy down in Australia that got on booktok and all the booktok girlies went nuts for him so he got a three book contract without ever having written a word in his life. 

And that's the world of publishing that we live in. Ability need not apply, there's an AI app for that somewhere. 

Peace,

Mercy

Between Hurricanes and Halloween

 Ah, mid August... it kinda slipped up on me. I had intended to write a week or so ago. I had intended to start writing again at least once a week. Stuff happened. Stuff always happens. Family stuff. Financial stuff. Weather stuff. Just stuff. And it all rolls into one big ball and days slip past and here we are in the middle of August and the youngest is getting ready to go back to school on Tuesday. And...

SIGHS! I'd wish for more hours in the day but I'd mismanage those too, so why bother.

So, what's going on now?

Nothing. Watching that storm, still way out in the Atlantic even though it should not impact me even a little bit. Because, where there's one this time of year, there's sure to be others. The twenty year anniversary of another hurricane that was way out there about this time that wasn't supposed to impact me either is coming up. Let's just say Katrina was the worst hurricane I ever went through, before or since. And leave it at that.

Hurricanes happen here a lot. The Mobile Bay seems to attract them like flies. It's not something I take lightly, even one still way out in the Atlantic. We watch. We plan. We prepare. With Ivan the year before Katrina, I learned that evacuating isn't feasable. I'm forty to fifty miles inland so ocean surge will not ever be a problem here, just wind. And I'd much rather just stay and ride it out than risk the chance of getting caught in the path in a car that's going nowhere. Or try to get back after one hits hard. Again, another lesson learned from Ivan 21 years ago.

We did evacuate for Ivan. We took the dogs, the new cat, the kids and drove both cars to my dad's house in Sneads, Florida. At the time Mobile was projected to get an almost direct hit and be on the bad side of the eye. We made the decision to go the morning before it hit. And we drove in rain squalls the two hundred miles over I-10 with little to no company on those roads. We were going east, not north, it seemed stupid to others. But that area of Florida was not supposed to be impacted. The key words were NOT SUPPOSED TO BE.

Tornadoes spun up in a town just to the west of where we went and we lost TV and at times power. But we didn't lose all power at Daddy's. Just off and on. The cable would take another week or two to come back on, but that wasn't our problem.

What was our problem was we didn't know that all of our routes back to Mobile were gone. All of the bridges over Escambia Bay at Pensacola had been wiped out. A bridge we'd just been on a few hours earlier just gone, but it was worse than that. A semi-truck dangled from one of the sections, the driver lost.

That could have been us. To get home we had to go north into Alabama and take a long route past the damage to I-65 then south again. In bumper to bumper traffic. We almost didn't make it home. We put our last money into the gas tanks hoping it was enough to make it. After spending an hour in line to get said gas.

Mobile was hit by Ivan. But not the way it was forecast. We got the west side of the eye wall instead of the east. Pensacola got the worst. 

We had no power for nearly two weeks. We had no food or air conditioning. Gas was hard to find. It was horrible. But we survived.

For Katrina, we went from it hitting Florida Friday night to sitting in the house Sunday watching a tree in the backyard be twisted around like it was a washcloth. That tree lived. It was deformed but it lived. The house wasn't as lucky. Insurance didn't cover anything. FEMA didn't cover anything because we had insurance. Eventually we stopped paying the mortgage and let the house go to foreclosure because it was rotting around us and there was nothing we could do to stop it. The one two punch of Ivan and Katrina did that.

I think about that time often. PTSD I guess. The price of living in paradise they say. But, I still watch them and worry about them. And know that there's nothing really to do but start filling jugs with water and charging solar lights and getting batteries and charcoal and hoping for the best.

So that's what I'm doing. Watching the tropics. Getting the kid ready to go back at the literal ass crack of dawn Tuesday, and wanting to put up the Halloween decorations early. Because we are living in the absolute worst of times and I know if we get hit this year, it will not be an easy recovery. But we don't talk about the orangeshitstain here... 

And now to the topic of books and what's going on... if you're still here and still give a shit... that is.

As I stated in a post or two back, I can't remember which, I said I'd pulled everything from Apple and Barnes and Noble for several reasons. I thought about that for a while and decided to go ahead and use Draft 2 Digital to relist everything again. I prefer to go straight to the book sellers that allow indies to use their service because I make more money. But Apple and B&N were not making things easier. Apple's European compliance issue was a problem for me personally. But that problem isn't there for D2D, I'm sure. At least I hope. And the issue of hidden books at B&N does not seem to be an issue now, sooo... I don't know. 

For now, everything is either relisted, in the process of relisting, or waiting until they fall out of KU to relist on both Apple and B&N. So, if you shop at those two bookshops, or Smashwords, or the European sites D2D lists to, you're good to go. I still have books directly available through Amazon and Kobo, the last two books in KU will fall out Wednesday morning and be relisted elsewhere. And all but River's Edge are available in Kobo Plus to read free. RE is too short and does not register page reads so there's no point in that. Yes, I know this for sure. I read it through Plus. It has never once shown up in their accounting. So, yeah. Sorry. But it's cheap.

And before I go, it's weird to accidentally glance at the reviews for my books and notice that the one book that I credit with the end of my writing career and see that it has more than double the reviews of any other book, even my biggest sellers, of which it is one, and see that the majority of the reviews are positive... after all of the early negative and backhanded honorable mention that year that completely demoralized me... so... I don't know what happened there, but the last few years of positive kinda made up for the early shit stomping I got with that book. Maybe, there is some hope now that the people who seemed to hate my guts just for existing have forgotten I exist. 

Be careful what you wish for... you just might get it!

BUAHAHAHAHAHA!

boy did I get it.

As always,

Peace,

Mercy

I Have The Weirdest Urge to Buy School Supplies

 First... I know you're thinking the cheese done slid right off Mercy's cracker with that title.

Second... that is entirely beside the point.

Thirdly... and it has nothing to do with the title... stay focused please.

But yeah. Youngest kiddo is getting ready for back to college in less than a month. We bought one text book to save them about a hundred bucks over on the campus bookstore. It came in today. They don't need anything else.

And I'm struggling with that.

I shouldn't be. This will be the second year I don't have any kids in public school. Not a single one. My oldest started school in 1996. I had done the back to school thing for 28 years. TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS!

Last year we did need a few things. They're an art major, so it was mostly art supplies and some basic odds and ends. But this year... nothing. Maybe a notebook. 

And it's freaking me right the hell out.

I know. I know. It's a habit that will fade as we get closer to them flying the nest and adulting for real. 

But the urge to go buy crayons and glue sticks is still very strong.

Or maybe it's not the urge to buy the damn things so much as a kind of grief for not buying them. My oldest three kids are all in their 30s now. This was my late life baby. I would have been done 12 years ago if not for them. I know my time with them is coming to an end. And... well... we grieve what we grieve. No more school uniforms which we all hated. No more character backpacks. No more lunch boxes. No more pencil boxes. No more planners that never get used. No more bus schedules. No more little kid coming in hot and smelling of sunshine.

I could buy myself some new fountain pens and get a new planner for next year. But it's not the same. Not the same at all.

S-I-G-H-S!!!!!!

So, while we're all roasting in a corn sweat heat wave I have book news of a sort.

Mostly it involves where you can and can't get books right now. Not new books. I keep trying to write. It all comes out shitty. But that's okay, I can't write for the current market so what is the actual point?

Due to changes to the world economies and (apparently) the emerging censorship issues in the US, I've pulled all books from Barnes & Noble and Apple. 

B&N had hidden half of my books from search completely. I couldn't find them at all except through the direct link they gave me. Books that didn't have any real erotic content among the titles. So, yeah, they just randomly disappeared, so, I decided I didn't want to play that game. 

With Apple I noticed that all of my books were pulled from half of their worldwide stores. I checked to see why, apparently there was a memo I missed about complying with new EU rules regarding the sales of stuff. Stuff that I expect the book dealer to do on my behalf. In short, if I'm reading that correctly, I was supposed to register as a trader with my phone number and website. I don't have an LLC for my pen name. I don't feel comfortable putting my real name and phone number out in public anywhere. And I'm actually confused about the "trader" part... so, I rarely ever make more than 30 bucks there a month so, I pulled everything. 

I've never sold many books on either site but it does bother me that the WIDE world of book sales seems to be shrinking.

Right now that leaves me with Amazon and Kobo. And my payhip store. I might go back to Draft 2 Digital for Smashwords and the EU stores they have. MIGHT! I am making a decent bit from Kobo Plus now. Nothing like back in the day with KU. I've had ten titles in KU for two and a half months with very little to show for it. 

I mean, I have about half my backlist that never sells a single copy, or the equivalent in page reads. So, honestly, I don't know what to do anymore. 

So, until August this is how I'll stay. With just Amazon and Kobo. I do need to drop prices in my Payhip store. The ten titles will fall out of KU between August 15 and 25th. If I put anything back into KU it will be Beyond Complicated and the four Scrimmage books. I don't know. We'll see.

Or I might disappear those five books completely. Pretend they never happened. We shall truly see.

Will talk at you later.

Peace

Mercy

July So Far

 Not going to lie, July has been kind of rough. Health wise at least. The heat and humidity are not helping anything. And it has been hot. If it's not hot it's storming. The deep south in summer is, as I've always described it, Hell's Sauna. So that's about it as far as updates are concerned.

It's hot. It's miserable. I don't get around well in the heat. Rinse repeat for eight months of the year.

But other than that Mrs. Lincoln... 

Meh. It's been meh. 

I'm just waiting for fall and spooky season. And thinking about writing a Christmas story. But all of my Christmas stories end up spooky. Because, I believe, as the Victorians did, that Christmas is the spookiest of seasons. Take A Christmas Carol for instance. Ever wonder why the most famous enduring Christmas story of all time is a ghost story? Because the Victorians and times before treated the Christmas season as we, here in the USA, treat modern Halloween. It was the time to gather, feast, stay warm, and tell ghost stories. To me, that's the entire last quarter of the year. Or, rather, all the BER months. 

It doesn't get cold in the BER months where I live. At best the humidity goes away and the leaves get crispy. At worst we sweat until January. Autumn is a concept here. Or, upon occasion, Fall is our coldest months of the year and we have spring as early as January.

It is what it is. I'd love to travel north and see actual fall foliage and feel the crispy weather just once. Best I can do is experience that on TV. Sighs... dreamily.

I'm ready for Summer to be done and we can pretend it's cooler and not just brown. I'm ready for a change of decor. Stuff. 

Just stuff.

I can't do Hallmark Christmas story telling no matter how much I'd like to. Everything from September to Epiphany will be spooky if you leave it to me.

Have you noticed that I only have a couple of books set in the summer?

I thought I was an equal seasonal writer. Turns out, I am not. I am anti-summer in my writing. And did you notice that I have more books set in winter with snow than a person who's rarely ever seen snow should?

I know... it's weird. I don't get it.

Why just this past January, one week before my 56th birthday I got to experience my first major snow storm right along with my youngest two children (29 and 18). I came away with two things from that. Snow is gorgeous. Snow is absolutely stunningly beautiful... and I would not like to live in that months on end. Nope. I can't handle extreme cold. I don't want to clean that up daily. I would never be able to drive in winter if I had to drive in that. Nope. Can't do it. But it was lovely. I'd like to do it again. Maybe same time next year. Just for one day. We can set a date. Rent a sled or something. Dunno.

Anyway... 

Writing updates... or lack there-of. 

I'm playing with ideas. Nothing is sticking. I don't know what else to say. Too many years of not writing and maybe the ability goes away. I know that what I have written is stilted and clunky and just does not flow like it used too. I've forgotten how to craft my craft. That old saying, use it or lose it... guess I lost it.

I think it has more to do with lack of enthusiasm for the genres in which I've written. And having no idea which genre to branch into.

I currently have a 90 day free subscription to KU (the only way I'm going to have KU, not giving the zon a penny but I will at least scan to give authors the pennies (( because that's all authors get in KU)).) Looking for something good to read. I tried one of my old favorite women's fiction authors whose older works are available in KU, and honestly, I think she hates women the way she tortures them.

Why is that? Why are all the women in women's fiction so badly treated? I don't get that. Do the women writers love torturing their heroines? And why are they always stupid? Like big business woman does well, but something happens, and she's left destitute and on the run from some stupid man (usually) when if she'd been as smart as she's made out to be, she'd have taken stupid man for at least her rightful share of whatever he is kicking her out of... marriage, business, whatever, both. Why do they always run with the clothes on their backs, to some small town refuge, and beg and plead for slave wages until they get back on their feet... usually from some dude who will eventually defend them from the big bad man in the beginning... I hate that. And why do those writers have big contracts for tons of books with the exact same plot? over and over and over.

UGH! or the heroine is too fucking stupid to live and just bunny hops around getting her way because her tits and lack of brain are somehow the only plot needed...

BANGS HEAD ON TABLE! FLINGS E-READER THROUGH WALL!

Or, the mass produced, badly written, plot resistant TikTok books... but we won't discuss that because I can't get through the freeviews of those to talk clearly about them. Just... what's it's called when women hate women? Misandry? Misogyny? We won't discuss the violence women write against themselves... because I don't have the spoons today, or ever.

Just... UGH!

I need a story to reach out of the book and grab me by the throat and haul me in. I haven't found one of those in years. If I can find books I want to read... hell, maybe I can find stories I want to tell again.

I don't know. I just miss falling into a different world and escaping in the prose and plot. Call me old-fashioned.

Anyway... I guess that's all for today. I'm bored and looking for something to whine about. Same thing I do every day Pinky!

You can read ten of my books free in Kindle Unlimited, the rest you can read free in Kobo Plus. Or just page through if you don't want to do the reading. That would be appreciated too.

Have a happy middle of July. Will talk again when the whim strikes.

Peace,

Mercy

June End

 And we're at the halfway mark of this year. How'd that happen? I'm pretty sure I've gone completely gray this year from the stress of... waves vaguely at everything.

Anyway, I just wanted to pop in to say that I've dropped the prices of nearly all of my books on every site they are available on to 2.99 or 3.99, US, and the equivalent outside the US. Except for the one series. You'll figure it out if you're looking. I have books on Amazon, Apple, Kobo, and Smashwords, click the covers >>>> for details and buy links.

But since I have you here, maybe I'll talk about writing and that I'm maybe actually doing that again. Slowly. Angrily. Okay, not angrily, just... I make myself sit and type words every day or so. Mostly I'm trying to jumpstart whatever used to make me want to write. Mostly I'm hate writing what I'm writing. 

What I'm writing is a story I started four years ago. I abandoned it. I've abandoned everything I've started in the last five or so years. I don't know. I lost the love of writing. I lost the reasons I wrote. The awful parts of publishing killed what I had left. And that's where I still am. PTSD! I write until I hit the panic attack part of it all. And that kicks the overly critical part of my brain into overdrive. It's bad. So bad. I suck. If I finish this it will be just for me because no one cares. Or worse. People will read it and tear it to shreds. If I don't finish it it can't be torn to shreds. Does it matter, until I finish that fucking football series nothing will sell. Good bad... doesn't matter. I hate that fucking football series with a fire I can't even begin to explain to anyone. I wish I'd never written it.

Does that sound bitter and angry? Sorry. It isn't. It's sad. I hate feeling that way. I hate the reason I wrote the first one. I hate the way the second one was torn to shreds. I loathe the third one. The rest don't matter. Don't even bother with them. The only reason you can still find those four is due to piracy. If I don't offer it, the pirates will. And that leads to the other part of why I don't write. Piracy killed me financially. As a 100% self-funded indie author I depended on the sales from legitimate book sellers to survive. And I didn't survive. 

But I'm trying to figure out who I am as a writer. If I'm even a writer anymore. Yes, I write about this quite often. It's what I struggle with. I wanted to be a writer since the 9th grade when I read The Outsiders just before the movie came out. (yes I'm that old) But I have no stories to tell anymore. And if I do the trauma of the middle years of my career destroyed my confidence. Of which I've never had much of.

If I do ever publish again, it won't be MM. Sorry. Most likely it won't be romance. I don't know what it will be. I don't know what the book I'm working on is. And I've written 71 thousand words so far of whatever it is.

But I digressed too far.

If you haven't grabbed one of my books, go grab it now while it's on sale. Or go get a free trial month of Kobo Plus to read most of them free. Try something other than the football books. I have 24 other options. 

Hope you are... waves vaguely again... doing as well as can be expected.

Peace 

Mercy

Mid-June Check-In

 Hey, how is everyone this fine Monday night?

I would say I can't complain, but we all know that's what I do best, so let's just say, it's a Monday and be done with it.

So, what's been happening since I last posted?

Not much. Just living in a sub-tropical sauna and trying to stay cool. That's about it.

I could talk about so many things like birthdays and finances and health. I'm not going to. I just don't feel like sharing that anymore. I could talk about writing and books. But I don't write or read anymore. Not really. I was working on a story I abandoned a couple years ago, but I'm at 70k words and it's just running in circles without knowing what it is or if there's an ending in sight. Not a clue, so I'm letting it go. I just don't have the mental capacity to write anything anymore. I could run it through AI and let it finish it, but hell, I'd rather never write another word than do that. I could just write a whole bunch of short sex scenes and call them books and be done with it. But I can't not plot. Everyone must have tragic backstories. You get a trauma and you get a trauma. 

I don't want to write about trauma anymore. My trauma won't let me write happy shit because it does not know what that is... if that makes sense.

And honestly, my oldest kid is approaching middle-age, I feel so weird writing about young people hooking up. No, 56 is not middle-aged. I'm old. I do not expect to make it 70 much less 112. I can move into a seniors only community. I can get AARP. I can't apparently get senior discounts without showing my ID, so I guess I still have that going for me.

So, there we have it, I'm old and out of touch. Maybe if I can settle the finances down a bit so I'm not constantly stressed, I'll start writing Golden Girl type stuff. Gen-X retirement home shenanigans set to Motley Crue and Milli Vanilli. That would be hilarious. Metallica and Madonna?

Anyway, that's what's going on. Hoping you're having a decent summer (or winter if you're in the other hemisphere), I'll chat at you later.

Peace,

Mercy