The Problem with Conviction

(Conviction being the name of Razia Book 3)

Now, nobody panic. It's not like I'm giving up or anything like that. But I wanted to be blog a little about the frustration with this damned book, more so I maybe can find a nugget of wisdom to keep me going.

First, some background:

On Being a Carnie Huckster

I was in a Facebook group discussion recently, and the topic turned to the idea of advertising e-books. The gentlemen in question lamented that he wasn't getting noticed because the market was saturated, or something along those lines. I offered my commentary (shocking, I know) that in the Science Fiction and Fantasy marketplace, the best way to sell books is to get out from behind the computer and meet fans at conventions.

His response was that he shouldn't have to be a "carnie huckster" to sell books. He's an introvert, and it's "too hard" for him to look strangers in the eye and talk to them.

Firstly, is this the face of a Carnie Huckster, y'all?

 

(In all honesty, I know he was speaking out of frustration, so I'm not super chuffed at the name-calling)

And secondly - this may come as a surprise to some of you, but I am an Introvert.

That's right kids, I'm an INFJ. I love staying at home, I love sweatpants (#campaignfornopants). I don't make friends easily, and the ones I do have, I keep for life. I hate crowds, I hate parties, and I hate being social.

But you know what I do love?

Eating. Internet. Not filing for bankruptcy.

Also - Not having to work in a job that I hate.

Which is why I get over whatever fears and hatreds that I have about going to conventions, and get out there and sell my damned books. As with most fears in life, the thing we are afraid if is usually not as bad as we made it out to be (hello lessons of Empath). 100% of the people I have met at conventions have been nothing but friendly and nice. Even the ones who don't even take a card are pleasant.

And yes - sometimes it doesn't work out (hello Book Signing). Sometimes I take a hit. But I always learn something, and I keep pressing on.

It can definitely be hard to stand in front of a table and talk to strangers. You are putting yourself out there and there's the very VERY real chance that you will fail - you won't sell any books, you won't sell enough books to break even.

But the fear of failure shouldn't prevent you from trying. Hence my favorite quote lately:

What I've learned is success is 99% hard work and 1% luck - and to get lucky, you have to put yourself in the right place to get lucky. I didn't get to where I am today professionally because of serendipity - I'm the one who put myself in the speech writing class, resulting in my selection as the GMU commencement speaker, resulting in my first job. In my second and current jobs, I invested in the right relationships and volunteered for the right projects that put me in a position to be successful. To some people, that may seem like luck - but it was all hard work, long hours, and calculated steps.

Really, then, Success is 99% hard work, 0.99% putting yourself in the right place, and 0.01% luck.

See, doesn't that seem much more doable?

Now, get out there and sell some damned books. You know I'm rooting for you!

But not if you put on a clown costume. Keep that mess to yourself, you damned carnie huckster.

#FallfortheIndieBook2014

You've seen me talking a LOT about #FallfortheIndieBook (or maybe you haven't, but that's okay too). But you might not know what it is, or how you can join up!

Fall for the Indie Book is a fifteen week challenge/blogstravaganza that highlights independent and small press authors.

The challenge premise is simple: Read fifteen independent/small press/self-published authors between 1 September and 14 December. That's fifteen weeks to read fifteen books. But you can't just read them, either - you have to write a review. At least 200 words (does not have to be a positive review, but it has to be constructive).

If you're in, join us on the Goodreads group with the same name here. On 1 September, we'll have a place for each of our challenge participants to post links to their reviews. Once you hit fifteen, you're automatically entered to win some prize packs.

 
I'm still working on assembling said prize packs, but I know that Sun's Golden Ray Publishing is gonna offer an awesome book, a personalized "mug" shot cup, and an SGR-Pub t-shirt from their new CafePress store. Working on getting 2 or 3 more prize packs from other publishers/self-pubbed folks as well. The more people that join, the more prizes we can offer.

Even if you can't read fifteen books this fall, I challenge you to pick up and read one indie book (does not have to be mine, hah) and leave a review. As I've said many times, reviews are how other readers decide to take a chance on an indie's book, so be a friend - leave a review.

---

"You also mentioned something about a blogstravaganza?" You say, knowing that I totally made up that word.

I have ensnared asked fifteen indie authors with whom I know, admire, stalk follow, to provide me a week's worth of content for me to blaze across all of my social media, blog, etc. It's everything from an author interview to guest posts to 2 book promotion tweets a day. Basically, I'm letting them pilot Sun's Golden Ray Publishing's Gold Level Marketing Service use me as their conduit to grow their audience base.

The schedule of events here on the blog will go a little like this:

Mondays: #MondayBlogs Author interview - from the serious to the silly, authors answer my questions about themselves
Tuesday: SocialMediaTuesday - Take a minute to like and follow the author's various social medias!
Wednesday: Guest blog, and a couple of #1LineWed on the twitters
Thursday: #TBT - They're throwing it back with old writing, or even baby photos.
Friday: #FridayReads - I'll be posting my review of the book

Then we start it all over again the next week with a new author!

I'm really excited that I don't have to blog for the next three months to give these guys a new platform and a new audience to connect with, and to dive into reading their books. There's a mixture of genres - New Adult Contemporary, Romance, and some others, so it'll pull me out of my comfort zone into reading something I'm not used to.

The fun starts with my ABFF, Renee Meland, on Monday!

To Win At Life

I've been thinking a lot about winning at life.

 
Not in the "I win at life" standpoint, but that inner competitive urge that rears its ugly head whenever someone has a major life event, like getting married, having babies, etc. Or when I find out that certain people might have new girlfriends.

I've talked a lot about how I'm purposefully "out of the game" as it were dating-wise. Besides the fact that I'm planning a cross-country move in the next 4-12 months (and a cross-country book tour!), I don't want to be with someone because I'm desperate to be with anyone. That usually results in bad coupling decisions.

So I'm consciously uncoupled, but that doesn't mean I'm perfectly okay with that decision. Sometimes, especially when everyone else seems to be "moving on" with their lives, I wonder, "Should I be moving on with my life, too?" (read: Should I reinstall Tinder and get back out in the dating world?).

The healthy, non-desperate path-to-happiness is to be okay in my own skin without needing anyone else to make me happy. If I happen upon a person that shares my life goals and supports me, then that's great. The knocked-into-my-head path to happiness is to find me a man to take care of me and pump a couple babies into me. 

Path A is completely within my control: I can choose to write and be happy with whatever life comes my way.

Path B puts my happiness in the hands of someone else - and turns me into a man-hunting psycho-bitch who goes through men like tissues.

I really want to be the first person.

I still wrestle with changing my own perceptions about what "winning" at life is. For twenty-seven years, "winning" was one thing: Get married and have babies. That was the way to hit the life-jackpot, and I was sprinting as fast as I could to it. Because I had to do it before everyone else, because that was the only way to "win" at life.

The problem with that is that life is never that simple. Millions of people get married and then get divorced. Fertility isn't always a certainty either - and once it comes there's a million different things that could go wrong. Even if I were to "win" at life, life isn't a single moment - it's a collection of millions of moments. There's no one goal - and we all die in the end.

That's why it's so important to live in the moment, to find happiness in the every day and in the life that I have at this moment. And instead of waiting for someone else to "deliver" that happiness, it's much more satisfying to create it myself.

And that, my friends, is how you win at life.

Self-Publishing

Forgive me, but I'm all fired up with freedom in my belly.

I know it's not 4th of July anymore, but I'm talking about the freedom to self-publish.

It's still amazing to me how many writers aren't even putting themselves out there. They sit behind their computers and wait for rejection letters from agents. Or they say, "This genre won't sell so I'm not going to query an agent!"

So, I put on my self-pub cheer-leading outfit this morning and said "What the hell are you waiting for? Upload your shit to Smashwords and start making money!"

Apparently I offended some people.

I got into an argument (I thought it was a nice, civil disagreement, but after a nasty gram from the admin, I was told there were complaints) about the idea that "Agents won't take self-published work and self-publishing severely diminishes your chances of getting traditionally published."

My response:

Obvs, I was much nicer.

But I still pulled myself out of the group, since it was clear that this particular town wasn't buying my snake oil.

But here's my full response in hilarious .gif form:

Is it true that some agents won't take self-published work?

 
Is it true that some big-name publishers won't take self-published work?

Is it true that your entire publication life will be ruined and you'll never work in this town again?

It makes me sad that too many good writers are waiting on the sidelines because they're waiting for that "stamp" of approval from somebody who simply gets a paycheck from a company that says "Agency" or "Publishing."

(To be clear: Agents are some of the most hard-working and incredible people. But they are just... people. Just because you have an agent doesn't mean you'll make any money. Editors too - hard working, good people who do an amazing job. But they are...again...just people - and you can choose to take or leave their opinions)

I see people asking questions like, "Do I need to change my book in order to have an agent like me?" or "Agents don't like prologues, I should turn mine into chapter one."

And I'm over here like:

There's a lot in life I'm not clear about. Don't ask me how to put together a car engine, don't ask me how to perform quality assurance on a missile. Don't ask me about limits in calculus, either - the one concept I never understood.

But Double Life? I feel that shit in my soul.

It is exactly as I intended it to be (albeit with a few typos which I shall fix in the next version I upload).

It's the same level of confidence I feel about myself when I go out on dates. You think I'm too fat, too loud, too goofy, too intense?

Likewise, if an agent isn't getting my vision, or they don't want to take me on because I've self-published - who cares? You ain't for me, son.

I feel like in this business you have to have to know when to take criticism and when to smile and thank someone for their input (that's the consultant way of saying "Yeah, I'm not going to listen to you"). People will always have an opinion about your work, and you have to decide where it's legitimate and where it's just noise. If you're doing things with intention, then you should know what the difference is.

So yeah, I'm still querying agents, but I'm starting to wonder why. After all, the S. Usher Evans Train is full steam ahead towards comic-book conventions, book signings, the whole enchilada. So really, I'm actually wondering what an agent would provide that I'm not already doing for myself.

At the end of the day, even if I am rejected by every single agent, I'm the one laughing all the way to the bank. I'm the one with a series published (in 3 years) and five more on the way. I'm the one who has full control over the design and marketing of my work. I'm the one with the power to sell my book directly to readers, and keep 100% of my profits (minus sales tax). I don't need an agent to set up a library book reading or to buy a booth at a comic-book convention. I can do that - and am doing that - all by myself.

To each their own, I suppose. I guess I've just been drinking the self-published kool-aid for so long that I forgot other people are still sober. And it's just shocking to me to see how many people put their dreams and their happiness in the hands of others, just to be let down. I just want people to understand that they can make their own dreams come true.

So that, dear friends, was where I was coming from. But still - kicked out of a group before 9AM on a Sunday? I think that's a record.

Don't worry, I won't.