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

Changes in Attitudes Changes in Latitudes

 Welp, I could have titled this post Never Say Never but eh, I'm a bigger Jimmy Buffett fan than James Bond. 

So, it's been about a week, SURPRISE! For the ten or so of you who still read this blog I thought I'd let you know that I'm in the middle of making a change to 12 to 14 titles. Like, uh, going back to KU... don't hit me!

SIGHS! Only 10 titles are going back to KU. I went through the last 4 months of book sales, if you can call those sales, and decided to go ahead and return 10 titles to KU. I mean no sales or page reads anywhere off the zon or even on the zon, so I guess it doesn't matter where those are posted, and maybe, just maybe I can get some eyes on those titles. All of the newer non-series books. Every single one. Okay except Into the Gloaming, it seems to have found a small footing in wide release and I'm not going to stop it now. I mean, it's not doing double digit sales a month but at least it's getting close each month now, and that's better than it has done, maybe ever. I know it's long, really long, it was meant to kick off a series. I did the world building... and nothing. just crickets.

I decided to pull one series and add those two books in for flavor. I'll list the titles at the end of the post. 

But that's just 10 titles, didn't you say 12 to 14 titles?

I did. None of those titles are going to KU, 2 of those titles are only affected on Barnes & Noble, and 2 are getting archived permanently.

Double SIGHS! Barnes & Noble now appears to censor books. They hide them. I can't even find them by searching the title and author name. I can only find them through the link in the listing page. So why the hell bother keeping them there, so I pulled one to send to KU. One I can't send to KU. And the last does well on Kobo so it's just leaving B&N. 

And the other 2? My first two published books. The pre-Mercy pen name books. Through the Ghost published with Ellora's Cave imprint Cerridwen Press 20 years ago this August. It was the 13th published title with them, ever. I guess it was doomed from the get-go, if you believe in such things. And Sunny with a Chance was a short story I published with Ellora's Cave in early 2010. Neither did well. When I finally got my fights back to them I republished them, but they never were accepted, so, I'm done trying. I should have archived them years ago, but... shrugs. Doesn't matter.

But going back to Barnes & Noble, I still haven't listed the main Scrimmage books there, so really there's only about half of my backlist available there right now. I pulled Under a Crescent Moon, Beyond Complicated, and Double Coverage, because they were hidden from search. DC is going into KU, Moon can't, And BC is doing well in Kobo Plus, so right now I'm leaving it in.

So after going around the roundabout about six times, the books currently delisting from everywhere but Zon and Payhip are:

Behind Iron Lace

Behind Frosted Lace

Courting Sin

Double Coverage

Falling Back

Light from the Dark

Need You Now

One True Pair

River's Edge

and

Wicked Game

As soon as they finish delisting from all wide locations I'll enroll them. If you'd like to buy them directly from me until that time, you can click the covers >>>>> and follow the link. Just remember, I can't keep the Payhip links live while the books are in KU but you can email me for a direct link if you ever want something.

But now that I've gotten this far into the post, I realize that I might have lied about the change in attitude part, I'm still bitter about KU... but... needs must.

SIGHS!!!!

Thanks for hanging around to the end.

Peace,

Mercy

May and Other Oddities

 Hello.

How are we all doing this fine, almost summer but not quite summer but really is summer where I am, month?

Good, good, happy to hear that things are going as well as can be expected considering... waves vaguely at everything.

Lots of nothing going on here right now. Youngest kid just finished up their first year of college and is now recovering. Second oldest still living at home, is working on building their Twitch (I don't know what twitch is but they seem to put a lot of work into for nothing) hoping for monetization but that mile marker keeps moving on them. 

The grandson is growing. He's walking now. Talking a little. Loves Miss Rachel. I was happy not knowing who Miss Rachel was. But he's a sweetie. I have to baby proof my office now. It's dog proof but not baby proof. Dogs don't have hands and can't reach table tops.

What else is going on? Not much. No book sales to speak of. Of course, I no longer try to get the word out. There's only so much you can share before you feel like you're just spamming and have been put on ignore, if you know what I mean. 

Honestly, I don't have much of a social media presence at all lately. I no longer have Twitter and Instagram for reasons that have been hashed and rehashed. I still have FB. I will keep FB despite the... waves vaguely at things again. I have Bluesky, but like with Twitter, I don't like constantly sharing stuff and not knowing if I'm being seen or just annoying people. 

I know, you have to share it so people know it's there. But FB blocks all that, and Bluesky just feels like thousands of people flinging shit into the wind, at least to me. I did try in the beginning. I shared other people's stuff when I saw it. I interacted. Then I muted the sites with nothing but political postings. I do not want to be constantly bombarded with political rantings from any side of the shit show we are living in.

So, meh, it's done. I have moments of delusion that I want to write again, but I have 33 published works out there already that may as well just disappear. What little I am making right now does seem to be coming from Kobo Plus. March reads there came out to 136 bucks. I made less than a hundred on Amazon, and less than fifty combined on Apple, B&N, and D2D. I don't even bother keeping up with sales anymore. Beyond Complicated still sells regularly, the rest, not so much. No, I can't write anything like that again. By can't I mean won't. 

But sometimes I have ideas. Then they slip away. 

Right now, I'm focused on Ebay and resale. I'm trying to clean out my house to pay the bills. I had to choose between resale, crafts, and writing, and lord knows I hate going back to resale, but, can't pay the bills with crafts or writing anymore, so that's where I'm at. I chose. I didn't want to make the choice, but here we are.

I had considered a Kick*Start*Er campaign (done that way so as not to attract the spam bots) to fund the entire Scrimmage series print covers. I've always wanted to get the whole series out in matching covers. I was almost there twice but the cover artists just... waves vaguely again. I love the covers I have now, those are absolutely gorgeous and they all match but I would like to do new discreet covers that mimic those covers. Like maybe just a football as the main focus and keep the font and colors of the current covers. Something like that. I figured that would run around two thousand for all seven books.

But, if I can't reach anyone to buy my actual e-books then how am I going to reach people to fund a KSer? And then, the interest I've had with previous attempts at print has been very limited... sooo.

SIGHS

ANYWAYS!

Yeah, I'm a defeatist. I am defeated. Yet still I harp on it instead of taking action.

I think I'm going to write cozy paranormal mid-life women's murder fiction... but... I don't know how.

So here we are.

All of my books can be found in the sidebar >>>> 

Click the cover to find the buy links. If you really want to help me out, click the payhip link. You get a discount. I get the money immediately. Or you can find my linktree on the about me page located in the menu. I have my ko-fi and other funding sources listed there. I need two thousand to fund the covers, and two thousand a month to pay bills and buy food. It is what it is.

Happy May, 

Peace,

Mercy