Well I am surprised. Handprints is releasing November 18th. I have been writing in Thoughtcicles and I have found it is flowing. It is already at 50 out of the 70 poems. Doing the PAD challenge should have it ready for release by the end of November but I am covered up in book release stuff until after the first of the year. So I am likely to release it in January sometime.
Let me preface this by saying that I don’t know what I am changing yet…if anything. I am entering a little bit of a restructuring of my own life and social media. I still plan on being here. I am still me. However, I recently broke ties to a friend of over a decade. This has been coming for the past year. It should surprise no one.
I don’t know if I have anything to change, however a decade of shared speces and shared faces means that I at the very least have to consider the change… and the backlash it will have on the people around me. Though I share easily my life here, I don’t feel like I should be pointing fingers at others and writing their sins. What is toxic to me may not be to them. We can each only tell our own truth… whatever that may be.
I do post on social media vague rants and those who are close to me can figure it out…but I don’t point fingers. I don’t feel like it is my place to call someone out. It is my place to try and work through my own emotions and my reaction to the situation. Hence why I vague post. They are my way to work through the issue. Comments end up helping me to see if I am way out in left field or missing something.
Right now I am feeling grief. I am processing it. I am pulling myself away from the shared spaces. I am also refusing to allow my grief to stop the forward motion of Fae Corps. She requested that her books be pulled. She has decided to cut the ties completely. I think that is probably the best idea, as I will continue to get hurt otherwise. She left me feeling like I am hard to love, and hard to get along with. That is my responsibility to deal with.
I am back to dealing with this blog and the Fae Corps blog. I spent all day Sunday getting it dealt with, and I am determined to keep my blog from falling behind. Maybe I will have an easier time doing so with my mind not distracted by the issues I was facing.
Preorder link coming soon!
So I have been busy working on publishing tasks yesterday, Well that for me included dealing with the dreaded Goodreads Now admittedly I don’t do everything I need to with it, because every time I go there it is the same thing. I can’t claim all of my books on there. Not even the ones all written as me. The reason – My name is too common. I should be able to give the information about the book and claim it…but no. It is based on the name of the author. I am debating doing a rebranding. Adding my grandmother’s maiden name in as my middle name (I tried my middle name to start with…it is even more common.) Still I wonder how much I should rebrand? Should I just start from here? or go back and rebrand from the beginning? There is a lot involved. I just don’t know if Goodreads is worth the effort. I have my amazon author page. I have my books2read reading list. Does anyone other than authors even really use Goodreads?
Though I have to say that I am annoyed by how common my name is. Names have always been a fun thing for me. I wanted to write as Susan Ann Andrews when I was a girl. I really thought it was the prettiest name out there. I chose to write my poetry and my kid’s books under my name because I wanted to love my name again. I wanted it to be mine again. It was part of healing the abuse I had been through. I chose to do the pen name of Serena Mossgraves for my horror and darker stuff so that my kid’s books would not be tainted by those writings. So I am struggling now. Do I really want to rebrand simply because of how common my name is? Or do I stick with who I am? This really feels like I am facing an existential crisis. Do I change my persona for the idea that I am not fitting in? Or am I fitting in too well? Oh crud. I really don’t know what to do here.
Yesterday I was sure that I needed to change the branding. Today, I wake up and find in my email in response to my help request…OK we merged this and this….I look on goodreads…now one of Serena’s books is listed as Patricia. And still not even half of my books are listed as me. I still can’t claim them. Changing my brand will mean I have to go and fight them for the right to the listing all over again. In order to change it I need to go into KDP and D2D and Google Play and Barnes and Noble. Change The Details on each. I need to upload a changed cover for each. Then I need to hope that I have not screwed something up. For one or two books it is not that difficult…but I have a catalogue of around 30+ It is a hugely daunting task. OK… I can change my branding from here on out…but the whole reason I wanted to do it was because of Goodreads not letting me accept my books…if I change my brand it will throw them into a worse fit.
I think I need to think on this. I am going to do nothing about it until after the first of the year at the least. That way I can be sure I am still needing to adjust and I don’t feel like I rushed in for stupid reasons.
come back in a week to see Danny.
I have always loved the written word. So much of my childhood was spent in the idea that I would be a writer. I had a best friend, Lucretia Fisher. (only one of a handful of friends I had) She lived near my grandmother. She and I would talk about being famous writers some day. We would argue about which of us would be published first.
When I was not writing I was devouring books. I read at a college level in 4th grade…And now I find that I am having trouble finding the time…last year right about this time I decided that I missed it…between October and December I read nearly 60 books…
I think I will likely do it again…but I am trying to get a habit with my writing. And I find that I am having trouble getting motivated. I always have 500 million other things that I have on my to do list. I wonder if Lucretia managed to get her books published. She was such an amazing writer.
The to-do list never goes away. I am fighting to help authors get heard. I am fighting my own demons to see what I write as being worthy of the world. And sometimes I am just hurting my own feelings. So, if I seem to be a little bit more in self-doubt please realize that I am still fighting.
Handprints on my soul is 10 poems away from being done. I am hoping that I can get it done in time to publish by the beginning of November. However, I don’t want to promise that or start the promotion of it until I get the last poem written. Because I somedays lose that fight.
Oh! And I will be releasing a new kids’ book in December. Not Another Danny is going to be released December 2nd during Fae Corps Kid’s Week ! I will try to get the cover reveal up later this week .
I recently joined a few writing discord channels. There was an article shared. It spoke about Vanity presses, small presses, and indie presses. It advised the author to avoid all three. I will link to the article…as it was an interesting read. It gave me a bit of an issue, however…as I run a small press. It spoke in the article about checking the education of those running the press…I am not classically educated. I could not afford college. I learned via free classes and reading everything I could get my hands on.
Soooo this article made me wonder when the writers in that discord would call me out for the imposter I know myself to be. I have been publishing for a decade…and I am still learning. I don’t do everything perfectly. No human does. I, personally, advise you to use common sense. Does the small press expect you to do everything? Are they asking for money upfront? If you have to pay to get your book published then yeah they are likely not legit.
However, not everyone can afford to go to college. Those who go do not always know what they are doing, and those who cannot sometimes do have knowledge. Sometimes you have to ask questions and make choices that are not based on how many degrees are hanging on someone’s wall.
The next few months are going to be busy for me. (Yes I seem to do that to myself a lot) So, as I am sitting here trying to get all my weekend work caught up, I realize that my poor blog is AGAIN neglected. Friday we are releasing Andrew McDowell‘s second edition of Mystical Greenwood. That means I am trying to gather images and activities for the release day on our Facebook Party Room group. I have things I am trying to put together for the Fae Corps Blog…again to get everyone possible to see his book.
That is just the first thing I am doing. Then, I have our Halloween Anthology. This year it is called Darkness Screams. It received so many outstanding submissions that I split it to accommodate the quality of stories. (I have done this before with other anthologies)
So I am neck-deep in editing, Marketing image creation, and formatting for these two. I give myself two months to do this with each anthology because I have a routine. Once approved I invite the author/artist to join the company discord. I have each anthology set up in a private room within the channel. This allows Files to be shared and questions answered easier. I ask everyone to sign a contract (So I can legally publish their story/art/ poetry and they have protections of their copyright) I ask for a bio written in 3rd person and an image to represent them. (I say an image because I have had a few who gave me photoshopped images, due to personal reasons. ) Then I sit down and put together a rough draft of the anthology. I don’t worry in the first rough about perfect formatting or having it be edited and polished. After I get a feel for how the anthology will flow, I feel like I am more capable to suggest edits. Yeah, that seems so silly…the grammar will not change based on how it fits in the book, right? Actually, it might. It will help me to see the story on its own instead of trying to place it mentally in an imaginary book. I send the suggestions to the author and give them a deadline for when I need to see the finished copy.
Then I start while waiting for the stories to come back…to make images to catch the interest of possible readers. I do (For most of the anthologies) a cover reveal, A author/artist list for each anthology, A image to represent each story, and a meet the author/artist graphic. That can be quite the undertaking. In Darkness screams that is 3 graphics just to list the author/artist in each one. I, as you can see above, combined the cover reveals. I have already today done the story graphics for each book.
I still have more to do just for the anthologies… Then I have another book we are releasing in October. The third book in Ashira Dayta’s Magick Saga. (The cover reveal should be happening soon on Fae corps Blog. I am quite proud of that cover) It releases on October 31st. I have to do some images for marketing it as well.
Then I have other projects that are ongoing and need my attention. (For example Formatting for a Poetry book by NK – Titled Valley of Thoughts. We are supposed to be releasing that next year. Editing for Ruan Bradford Wright’s Novel Toe-Rag which is expected to release in February. Writing my own poetry and prose books. And just being a mom and person who has housework that is not getting done more often than not.)
I honestly intend to do this blog every week..but I end up overwhelmed. I think I will just post some of my poetry this week. I thank you for your patience. I swear I am not forgetting y’all.
So those who follow me know that Fae Corps is just about to have a busy season. August 26th we are releasing the second edition of Andrew McDowell’s book Mystical Greenwood. And the submissions are in for Darkness Screams. I am busier than a one armed paper hanger…I wrote the above poem to put in the front of both volumes of Darkness Screams.
I will be able to return to posting here next week. thank you for your patience. (ps. Check the Fae Corps Blog tomorrow to see the covers for the next anthology!)
Ok, it’s really Monday morning when I am scheduling this because I was late in getting stuff done this week. But I don’t wanna. So instead I figured I would try to wax philosophical Or something like that.
I have been making Tiktok videos of me reading my poetry…Then I had a conversation with a poetry coach. She said that I read my poetry like I was reading a book. She is not wrong. I do so due to crippling social anxiety. I need to figure out how to read it in such a way that I forget I am on video. Each step in the publishing progress has required me to overcome some plateau of anxiety. I remember when I was publishing my first poetry book, and then my first kid’s book, and then each major step along the path.
I know I seem to have so much going for me. I have so much baggage and mental health issues. I am overly endowed with creativity. I can create in multiple mediums. I am skilled in areas surrounding those creation areas. (for example, I do well at formatting, cover design, and such as that)
Skill, in my opinion, is something we gain from doing. I have talent and skill with words. It comes naturally but I have studied to improve my writing much as any other writer does. I have skill with art. It does not come naturally. I have had to practice and learn to improve. I struggle with seeing what I do as worthwhile because it does not come naturally.
Do you ever know that you are capable of something, attempt it, do it as best as you can, and then look at what you did and see trash? well, that is how most creative people are.
Tomorrow will be a rest day for me. Thank you for understanding.
Pattimouse 