Consolidating and Synergising

 Every month these days, I think, 'wow, this is the worst month of the year' but when I sit back and really think about it, I been struggling for a while now. 

A combination of things are responsible. The election of the worst government ever to government is one. My body failing me is another. A drop in the quality of available clients on upwork is a huge third. 

What this combination has conspired to do to me is that my work output has steadily reduced with nothing to replace it. As I sit here, I'm definitely in a hole that I'm trying to dig myself out of.

The upside to that is that I've been meaning to build up my own 'commercial' works - that means writing stories that sell commercially to publishers such as Harlequin and other novel sites. Now I have been forced to take that more seriously and actually work on the pieces of work that I have.

That's going okay but it's hampered by the continuous screaming in the back of my head that insists I should focus more on finding money now before I can choose to complete the work in the hope of future income. I'm trying everything, trust but so far, there's been a lot of scams, a lot of interviews that didn't go anywhere and a lot of borrowing.

Its harrowing for the soul. Capitalism is harrowing for the soul.

So I decided to try consolidating and synergizing all my content in one place - and so I put everything on ko-fi - the books I'm writing, the books I've written, the podcasts, etc. Everything that I've done, and a humble request for cuppa coffee.

I don't know if it'll work. I hope it does if only because it really returns the power of earning back into my own hands. I know you see the link on this blog, that's been there a while so let's call this a relaunch.

I'm not going to sit back and wait for y'all to come to me though. 

I intend to be in your face about it. 

I intend to remind you daily. 

I intend to find new and all ways to get the word out. 

Because if this works, it could be a game changer for me.

I could maybe start living like Ismatu Gwendolyn - making art while supporters help me to live. Now wouldn't that be great? I wish we could all live like that. The ancient Greeks might have been onto something with that finding a sponsor shit. 

Idea!

Anyway, so come to my ko-fi. For the small small price of $3, you win access to member only stories, and other goodies. I intend to be very active on there. You will feel like you're getting your money's worth.

One small step for me and who knows, we could make it a trend. 

Some of the gems that are going to be on there include this little text conversation between Ben and Anders. Just cute little things to make you smile, or whole codas or excerpts. I'm going to enjoy myself and I want you to too.

Book Marketing - We Hate It, But It Has To Be Done

Hi guys. 

As you know, I started this blog to share my experiences in writing, the good, the bad and the ugly. 

I was thinking the other day, that in light of the pandemic, that while I've had a really good season of paid work, my own books have suffered from lack of attention. So today, instead of finishing my allotted word count, I hopped over to Canva and made some videos.

Here is one, reintroducing my books and my writing to you. 

Enjoy.

 

Also, feel free to visit my author page and browse.

Kisses.

May I Read Your Palm?

Yes yes, where have I been, blah blah? I get it. I have been AWOL. Life is sometimes a bitch.
And then you die.

However, I didn't die so here I am, bringing you some new, exciting, scintillating, amusing, educational, inspirational content.
Or am I?
We'll see. How about we get started?
So, yesterday on Twitter, there was this post doing the rounds about how men describe women in literature. That led to another writer asking people to describe themselves as a character in their stories. The answers to that post made me write a mini post about it on Tumblr because wow.
I don't know if you guys know that the narratives that you tell yourselves about yourselves are projected outward for the world to see.
So if you tell me that for example: "She's thirty-five years old, is quite pretty with makeup and doesn't give a fuck' what I hear is, she's self-conscious about getting older and insecure about her looks. She also tries to protect herself from criticism by pretending she doesn't care.
You give a fuck honey.
People who have no fucks to give also have no time to tell you about the fucks they don't have to give. It's simply apparent by how unmoved they are by your attacks/trolling/opinions. See: Chrissy Teigen.
Besides the whole "IDGAF" thing is very 2012. Rihanna moved on and so should you.

Much worse than that, there were some women who COULD NOT describe themselves because of "societal mores". I don't know what that means. What I do know is that how you view YOURSELF should be a very personal thing coming from your own inner sense of self. Let other people think that you're TOO fat, or TOO dark or TOO skinny or TOO ugly. That's their business and their perspective. You should have yours. You should know who you are and what you like about yourself. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, drop everything you're doing and find out because this is the single most important thing you will ever do. If you don't know who you are, you basically don't know anything. You can't have an opinion if you don't know who you are, you can't get to know somebody because you rely on other people's perceptions to tell you what you should think. You've basically erased yourself.                                                                                                                                            I don't know how one grows up without any knowledge of who they are, so I don't know how you fix it. I suspect it comes down to paying attention to yourself, finding out what you like, and what you don't. Trusting your gut. And loving yourself. I think. I'm no expert on emotional intelligence. 

It saddens me that so many people don't know how to love themselves. Like if I had time I would probably sit here angsting about it for a bit. But I can't because I have a test page to write for a new client and a fanfic to begin for a Big Bang.                                                                                                        

   On the book front, it's been a pretty demoralizing March. Amazon continues to be the douche bag we all know and love, making it difficult for authors to price books, making it difficult for those books to be found, making it difficult to know if they even tell you about every sale. So my new thing is promoting my author page where there are other vendors that books can be bought from. It's also a place where you can compare prices and get my free books for free. You might have noticed, or maybe not, that my free books are not free on Amazon. That's their shit, not mine. Every other vendor has them priced for free. So that's one advantage. Another is that I'm gonna host a giveaway for my mailing list. Whoever buys a book from a vendor OTHER THAN Amazon can post me the link to their email and I will reward them with another book of their choosing. Isn't that A-MAZ-ING? Of course, it is and you're excited. I can tell.

  Other than that, I'd like to give you a bit of homework in the comments. Please describe yourself as you would your heroine in a novel. Give me 100 words. Nothing negative.

We're gonna have a good April. I can feel it.                                                                                            

Customer Reviews

Finally they took down the old version of my book. Which means customer reviews are lost. I thought I'd put them here....

ZeeBee
A well written prequel that definately piques your interest for what's to come. Easy to follow, entertaining - will certainly have you wondering what could be in store for you after death. Money well spent

JB

My 3 star rating of this book is a comment on the price. $7.99 for a 95 page book which turned out to be the prequel to some other book is a rather hefty price to pay for a book.
Second, maybe it's naive, but I was kind of hoping that the book would be set in Kenya. I suppose the writer is going for a wider, more international audience (thus, make the characters western, and the setting American), but I don't think the book would have suffered if the characters were in Nairobi. It's exactly the kind of book I'd like with Kenyan characters. A fantasy tale not weighed down with political complaining.
That said; this is probably one of the better written, light reading books I've read this year. The book opens like chapter 9 in a "Mills and Boon", and then totally shift direction with the death of the two main characters, Phil and Lil.
And then things get weird. We're introduced to a whole bunch of very intriguing, very strange characters. Phil and Lil go on a quest, and then the book ends.
The book is very easy to read, and actually quite unputdownable, however, there is too little payback for the effort. The secondary characters remain a little too vague, no mystery is resolved, and there is the kind of feeling that we're still reading chapter 5 of a larger story.
I believe that although books are part of a series, each book should be able to stand alone as part of complete tale. This doesn't quite come through.
Would I read Annemarie Musawale again, yes.
Would I recommend this book? Maybe if it is sold as a package with the next book. (Which I have not read).

Eileen Wainaina
Now I definitely hope that there is a book two coming up. If you want a book that will challenge your way of thinking and raise a lot of questions about life after death...this is it. 

Its A Marathon, Not A Sprint: Note To Self

So I've just re-launched Between Death and Heaven on smashwords. I had a contract with a publisher  and they had my book in their hands for a year and a half; no reports, no information, no promotion that I could see, an allergy to being asked questions...it was frustrating to say the least.

So I decided to take my power (and my books) back. After all Type A personality like me; ain't no way I'm going to believe anyone can do the job better than me. Of course, who knew how frustrating it was just to get the publisher to return my fucking book! I'm still waiting for their version to come down from some of the major sites; including Amazon. Instead of progress, I see they've lowered the price...Not as low as the one on my relaunched page but...anyway, so I'm wondering, who is keeping this money that's still coming in. My publisher is acting like she has no clue...

So anyway, my trials and tribulations aside, its a new start, a new day. The book has been relaunched and now comes the hard part. The part where there is marketing and waiting and hoping; all as a side hustle of course because bills still have to be paid and the day job still exists. Don't get me wrong, love the day job which is the same as the night job but for other people. Still, it doesn' t leave much time for anything else. So I'm living in a cycle of guilt, insomnia and muscle pains trying to fit in everything that needs to be done.

But the crux of the matter is that there is a goal to this, and its not a short term one. Its about the long game, the big picture, immortality. Sure I want to sell a million copies, have a best seller and have my book made into a movie. Don't we all? I want my grandchildren to live off my spoils like Bob Marley's do. I want people born in the year 3000 to have heard of my work; to still be reading my book. I want this not just for the money (although that's a nice side effect or whatever) but because I think its a really good story and I want people to read it.

Diana Gabaldon told this story about how she began selling her book by sitting outside the bookshop and challenging people to pick up the book, open it to any passage and read. If they didn't want to know what happened next, she'd give them ten dollars. I thought that was a brilliant strategy even though I'm pretty sure these days people would say they didn't want to know what happened next just to get the ten dollars. I get it, times are hard. 

Twenty years later, there is a hit TV series based on her books. TWENTY years. Seems like eternity seen from the bottom end, but from the top end, 1995 feels like it was just the other day. So I think I could slog, and hustle and try for twenty years. The challenging thing though, is patience. Its something I'm still learning. Some days are harder than others. Oh well. Eyes on the prize.