Category: The Non-Writing Life

It might get dusty around here…

Hey, there! It’s nice to start feeling normal again. I am looking forward to a wonderful spring and summer, thinking back that a year ago we shaved my head.

This year, I bought an eBike and am trying to get used to it. I haven’t ridden a bike in years!

I’m also taking a course on building a website with a specific WordPress for Writers theme. I love my site, but it’s an old HTML site and not suitable for viewing on a phone. Before I get back to writing, my plan is to build the new WordPress site and get all my books over there. If I can’t do it myself, I’ll hire out, but I enjoying building websites!

I’m enrolling my books in KU!

Hey there, if you’ve been with me for awhile, you’re probably wondering where I went.

I’ll be honest and say I nearly gave up writing during a time when I felt like I should have been celebrating my recovery from chemo and radiation for Triple Negative Breast Cancer. It just didn’t go that way.

Chemo and radiation took a lot more out of me than I realized. THEN my husband and I contracted COVID for the first time.

THEN I got depressed. So much so that my mood affected my sleep to the point where I needed to be hospitalized.

I hope you haven’t suffered from a long depression. I’ve had highs and lows before, but never like what I experienced this winter. I’ve never needed to take depression meds.

Now, I am on a couple of medications but hope to whittle those down as I continue to heal.

Long story short, I haven’t written since BEFORE BRADY came out.

***AND NOW COMES THE BIG CHANGE!!***

After several years of marketing my books Wide (on all retailers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, and Apple Books), I’ve made the decision to go exclusive to Amazon, which might delight you or tick you off.

Yes, I’m moving my books into Kindle Unlimited!!

I’m excited about this. It will make it easier to schedule promotions. Plus, it gives access to a readership I didn’t have before.

Keeping my books wide might look simple. On the back end, life will be less stressful only dealing with one retailer.

If I find being in KU isn’t working, then I’ll put my books wide again but with a more streamlined process behind the scenes.

As of this typing, my books are in the process of being removed from Google Play, Apple, Kobo, BN, and Draft2Digital, but places like D2D aggregate to third-party retailers and I need to make sure all the books are gone from those retailers before I enroll them in KU.

I’ll let you know when the process is complete. For now, my books are available for sale on Amazon as per normal.

I hope I don’t lose you as a reader by making this move, but it’s something I need to try.

Now, here’s a picture of my hair 8 months post-chemo. It’s at a weird mullet/shag point of growing out, and I dinna like it very much. I can rock a pixie, but my hair grows fast so short would require Too Many Haircuts. I can’t wait until it’s the length it was before, between my chin and shoulders. But at least I ain’t bald anymore.

Talk soon!


Before Brady reviews!

I’m 6 weeks out from my surgery and still have a long way to go on my journey, but I’m keeping my toes in the writing world when I can.

I’m busy updating DMARC records (gobbledegook for email deliverability rules that are coming into place on February 1st.)

I’ve done a light edit on PICTURE IMPERFECT to update some word choices and tech. Happy to report that I only found one typo!

I’m about to upload the new editions of the book and will let you know when it’s ready. Same cover, no big changes. Just minor edits.

And…

My books can always use more reviews, and because I had a medical challenge in 2023 that will be continuing into this year, I didn’t do a great job getting ARCs out for BEFORE BRADY. But some fab reviews have come in from readers around the world!

5 Stars! “Every girl wants to meet Mr. Right, but sometimes it takes a long time to figure out that Mr. Right might not check all the boxes.” CA Cindy on Amazon (not me, I promise)

5 Stars! “I loved Alicia and Brady’s story . . .great characters, sparky interaction and a little steam . . . plus terrific humor.” Laura on Amazon Canada

5 Stars! “Alicia is missing her chance with Brady. This was a really good story where Alicia needed to figure out how to “multi-task”. This was a fun and enjoyable story with some great steam.” Deb on Amazon Canada

Thank you, readers!

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It’s been nearly 4 years…

Since we went to Africa.

Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa.

I remember seeing signs about Ebola and Malaria in the airports. Going through temperature scanners. In Rwanda, the entire Jeep had to go through an x-ray machine!

And this was all before the pandemic. We had no idea what was coming.

We were so fortunate and privileged to be able to visit the Mountain Gorillas of Rwanda. The price had doubled from the previous year, and I could see that it was only going to continue getting more expensive.

I took a ton of photos, but for previously stated reasons (car accident recovery), I stopped blogging about our travels.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t share a photo every now and then.

Silverback
Baby!

We hiked two different days to see the Mountain Gorillas, and both days were equally amazing. Plus, an earlier hike to see the Golden Monkeys.

I often wonder how they are doing.

If you are fortunate enough to ever get the chance to go, it is once in a lifetime.

Back to writing!

I thought you might like a picture of an elephant

I took this photo from a mokoro (canoe) in Botswana at Linyanti Bush Camp in Chobe National Park, Botswana, in late November 2019. Isn’t the elephant magnicient?

I used to to blog about my travels but haven’t done so in quite some time. It was a lot of work, and I need to reserve my computer time for writing and business of writing now that my noggin has been koko-bonked (IFYKYK).

But from time to time I’ll share some of my fave photos.

We visited Rwanda, then traveled via Kenya to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe (where I bought some seemingly indestructible sunglasses to replace a pair forgotten at the Victoria Falls Hotel during high tea), three camps in Botswana, and then Cape Town in South Africa.

I adored the Mountain Gorillas of Rwanda, but in Botswana the elephants were my fave. They are so graceful. They are loving. They persevere.

And so do I.

I am a turtle writer. I am slow. And a lot of that is because I’ve been in 3 car accidents that, accumulatively, have greatly impacted me physically. But I am determined. I am attending various body therapies. And I do not know how to give up, a trait I inherited from my grandfather.

This elephant reminds me of Duke. Steadfast. Resolute. Thirsty for life.

Just a note that if you visit the Duke page, it is from my original website and most of the links to articles about my grandfather on the web no longer work. But his Wikipedia page stands.

I’m updating my website, and I’m not sure how it’s going….

When I say I need to redesign my website, I mean I have to start over with completely new software. This current site is built with an ancient copy of Dreamweaver and the Fireworks software that no longer loads on the ancient PC that sits in my office ONLY to update the website. I used to have an old copy of Photoshop on there, too, and no idea where it went. This makes creating new graphics a challenge.

Here’s the thing. I’m not allowed (by C’est Moi) to rebuild the website hopefully using the How to Build a Website on WordPress course on a special template/theme/whatever they’re called I bought, oh, 2 years ago before I realized just how long my 2018 car accident was going to affect my ability to write actual books. What I am allowed to do is update this current site because I still believe in websites.

So I’m trying. My software no longer connects to my server, so I need to update and build the books without worrying that they might look horrible in Internet Explorer (which thankfully no longer exists) and then go in through the back end and upload via FTP.

So, seeing as I can’t completely start over on the website until all 5 books in Love & Other Calamities are on preorder, I’m bumbling about doing the best I can with my ancient software, and cross your fingers that when I load those pages, they’ll look reasonably okay.

I’ll post on the blog when I’ve uploaded the pages. There are a lot of pages to upload. First, I need to resize some current graphics on the iMac, zip them to the PC, and finish building the durn pages.

Meanwhile, my imagination is itching to come up with a new series but I still have to revise and edit the last two books in Calamities. But the covers and blurbs are done like a lizard burning in the Galapagos sun!

Yippee-ki-yay, mudderfugger.