Exciting New Beginning

My Books

Morning,

I haven't in written in years. In 2018 i wrote the last book in the Raina Kirkland series and almost finished the second Zombie Book. Just three chapters away from the ending. Then I got into a relationship in 2019 that completely broke me. It stole my identity and myself worth, and I just couldn't function after that. I still had to be a mom and I still had to be a social worker, but I couldn't bring myself to write anymore. 

Now i'm in a healthier place, not perfect. I'm in the middle of a cancer scare, and a lot of other crap... but I think i'm ready to believe in myself again. I'm scared as hell to put myself out there, but yesterday I created a new Twitter account after deleting my own one and so far I have been met by a huge amount of extremely caring and supportive authors. 

My goal is to raise up as many artists and authors as I can, because I believe that healing yourself involves helping others. I hope by supporting their dreams, I will gain self-confidence that I need to write again. And maybe I'll be able to finish the second zombie book this year and yeah, that ....that would be just wonderful. 

Burns Towing is Gouging crime victims of stolen cars!

Three months ago my husband drove my car to the store and when he came out of the store the car was gone. Several weeks later the police found the car and had it towed by Burns Towing. I called Burns Towing and was told I had to pay $300+ to get my car back. I couldn't afford it...so they kept my car and sold it at a profit. 

Now they've sent me another bill for $753.77...which I still can't afford. Burns has already made $500+ profit from the sale of my stolen car, and now they're threatening to take me to collections.

So let me get this straight....Burns Towing took MY car for FREE and sold it for $506.92!!! But they feel I Owe them????????? They feel like TAKING someone else's car means they deserve $1,260.69!!!!! 

Burns Towing is Crime Profiteering and Gouging crime victims of stolen cars!

This company is EVIL...Here's just some of their reviews:

😡These guys are total scumbags, and they will rip you off and take you for as much as they possibly can. I don't even see how they get away with charging the outrageous fees they do. Someone bought my daughter's car and then abandoned it without putting it in their names, so now she's on the hook for thousands of dollars in fees for a car that's worth no more than $250. Shame on Burns Towing! My next call is to the AG's office.

😡They are a horrible tow company! No customer service at all, they are dishonest honest and cheats! No one should ever use them, they don't care about the victim of the accident or situation.

😡Most dishonest towing company in Washington state,

The people that own this company & work there are dishonest & thieves & liars The way this company makes money is by manipulating technical details of addresses,
& by sending threatening letters in the mail to their victims claiming they owe Burns towing company money,
If you want a perfect example of why our financial system is so messed up in America take a look at Burns towing they are the exact reason,
Furthermore: my own personal experience with Burns towing involves a vehicle which I did not own anymore and had released all interest to the department of licensing the day I sold the car, including the new owners full name and address,
However Burns towing found a flaw in that address stating that the address was not complete and therefore I am still the legal owner of the vehicle a 94 Honda Delsol,
This is completely illegal as they have sold the vehicle at auction,
"You can't sell something that's not yours" so that fact alone makes them thieves that they sold the vehicle but the Vin number was not registered in their name!,
Next fact they are liars because they originally told me that they did not have any information on the person I sold the vehicle to nearly 2 years ago,
But when I spoke with them today they did have information including his address,
It's very clear that Burns towing Company is manipulating the system to extract peoples money,
I would suspect this company has been doing this every single day for many years so the entire company's history is built on theft!
My suggestion to anyone reading this review stay as far away from Burns towing Company as possible they are crooks, liars, thieves, manipulators, and very dishonest people.

😡Your driver who has a shaved and or bald head with white beard wears black rimmed glasses, really needs to learn how to drive. He also needs to pay attention to which lanes are turning and which are not. You nearly caused an accident with THREE vehicles for not paying attention to what lane you were on!
By coincidence, we happened to have headed towards the same side of town. You cut more people off in the same manner you cut me and the three other cars off!
You're an a-hole!

😡😡😡Selling impounded cars illegally while a sailor is deployed even after two notices from two separate entities informing you of the status of the car and its owner?  Tell me it isn't so

😡Old Caucasian guy at the front with glasses is on a complete power trip. We parked our car for sale for only 4 hours in front of a store were we asked permission to do so. I kindly asked why it would be $329 for a 1/2 mile tow pick up and he was a complete jerk. We even had the store owner call to let them know it was a mistake on his part. Instead this guy gave me scenarios of why and where I should be parking our car.. so I got pissed and kindly told him they are running a s*%tty business. He kicked me out of the office because he knew he was in the wrong. (And looked stupid in front of his scared employees). I will be posting and sharing my horrible experience with all of my business friends and family. Tacoma's a pretty friendly place for the most part, but Burns puts a horrible name on both the city and customer service.

😡NEVER DO BUSINESS WITH THEM. I had my car tow to this shitty business and when I went to get my car releases there were damages on my car. When I went and got it release I noticed that my car was dirty and the guy told me that it was dirty because of the ashes fall from the fire from Oregon so I am like, okay, I'll go get a car wash and that's when I notice the scraps and scratches on the side of my car. I called them up to tell them what happen and the receptionist told me that I need to speak to the manager so I decided to drive to their shop and when I got there the manager gave me attitude and told me that I have to talk to the owner who at that time wasn't there. Next day, I called to speak to the owner and told her what happen to my car and she gave me a bitch ass attitude by saying "how do we know that the damage didn't exist before we went to tow your car?" I then told her that my car was in a perfect condition before it got tow and she told me that she will not be responsible for the damage so I told her that I am going to seek legal action which taking her to civil court. FYI: I will never do business with them ever again and no one should not do business with them. I wouldn't even give them one star if it wasn't required by Yelp to write this review. This place is a piece of shit and so is their manager/owner. I hope karma fucking bite them in the ass rather in health or financially just for the greed of ripping people off and not taking the full responsibility of their wrong doing

And the list goes on and on...This company is scumbag bottom feeders!!! 

Complicated Creatures

I'm a complicated creature, like you I suspect. We all have our stories. Sometimes our stories are full of mini drama's that are insignificant in the big picture. Sometimes events of greater magnitude take hold of our lives for a time and you might wonder what god is laughing at you. You want to scream at the sky, "Are you not entertained!?!" That's been very much my life for the past year. You might take note that I have not written blog nor book since 2019. I barely post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or any other sort of online media...The reasoning is twofold... On one hand my career has changed greatly and on the other hand my mind is a flurry of thoughts that overwhelm me....

When I wrote all my books and blogs, I worked nights at a hotel. I had hours to myself and just little stressors in my life. My only drama was that of naughty customers and a rocky marriage. I could almost taste the vanilla of my life as I wrote that sentence. In what I now refer to as the before times, I rarely cried. I would sometimes imagine my loved ones passing away just to force the tears, because I needed the release of a good cry but had no reason to do so. Now, my world is full of tears being held back at every moment...How can I write when I can barely think? How can a weave a plot, when every story of my imagination is dwarfed by the very real emotions wrecking havoc on my soul? The greater details of my struggles should likely be kept to myself at this moment, but simply said I am a woman without: without love, without certainty, without her children. And worst of all, I did it to myself and would do it again.

Last year, 2019, was a year of change for me and my family. For years I lived with my husband, not in love with him, but in friendship with him. That seemed enough at times, though I admit, I often asked him for divorce just because it feels wrong to be tied to someone you're not in love with. He never granted it and I'd move on... But, last year I met a man who I fell in love with the moment our eyes met. It seemed like magic, like something from a cheap romance novel or badly written melodrama.  We instantly began courting each other and my husband and I made the painful transition from monogamy to an open marriage, because just like before, he refused divorce as an option. My husband became my co-parent. He dated men and women and I fell more deeply ensnared by the man I'd met...

Our relationship was pure Heaven at first. He was everything I'd ever wanted in a man; ambitious, strong, handsome, smart and so funny... This man took me on amazing adventures! We made love in the grass while trains roared above us, we climbed mountains and found secret waterfalls in the forest. We drove hundreds of miles just to see something new. We sang to each other. We held each other up. We cried in each other's arms. We counselled each other as equals. For the first time in my life, I felt physically beautiful. I'd never known that feeling.  We made love every chance we had and I'd never known sex to be so pleasurable.

But the goodness of this man was equal to the badness. Gradually, very gradually what seemed like mutual obsession and deep passionate love became toxic and full of tantrums, self hate, yelling, pain, and suffering. Many times I tried to leave this man. But he embodied both Heaven and Hell for me, and if I let him speak to me, even for an instant, I was his again...I could not deny him.  We were stuck in a cycle of pain, lust, heaven, hell, friendship, hate and empathy... But eventually the badness stole him away from me. Even now he clings to me, calls me 6-20 times a day, hoping with all his heart that I will take him back, but how can I? Who would trust him after all the badness he's done? Should I? My love for him has never wavered. It feels like something close to unconditional, or maybe I'm suffering from some brain deficiency. Hell if I know. What I do know is that no matter his heart and intentions, his mind is criminal, his thoughts are criminal. There is no future there... And so, I'm without love.

And now, as a global epidemic falls on all our doorsteps I find myself an essential worker, a Residential Youth Specialist Lead...which basically means I'm the head counselor at a behavior therapy facility for foster children with behavior problems. Think Extreme Babysitter, or living in a house full of the most difficult teenagers. Between the cost of babysitters for my own children and the fear that I might bring something home to my babies, I was afraid these trying times would at best, leave us in financial ruin and at worst, cost me one or both of my children....So, with a heavy heart I sent my children to my mother's house, many hundreds of miles away. Every moment of every day is agony. My eyes are deep lakes of tears at all times and the waters are only held back by my will to be strong. These past months I've lost lovers and friends and now my children. My co-parent and I are working hard to get to the position we need to be in in order to bring our babies home...There is nothing more we can do.

MENTORING ME

A few weeks ago the man I love most in the world contacted a mentoring service on my behalf. 💞 He found just one among dozens or more mentors that help indie authors, such as myself. An appointment was made and I waited, not really knowing what to expect or how she could help. I thought I knew everything already. 🤓 I thought I was failing because I wasn't outgoing enough, and maybe my meekish manner marginalizes me and that's something I must work on, but my new mentor blew my mind! 😮

Lately I've been suffering from deep depression. It comes in bouts that last a couple of days or a couple of hours depending on who I'm with and what's going on. in the middle of one of my depressive episodes I get a call from my mentor, Toby. I completely forgot about the appointment. What she did was reach me through my depression (not easy) and teach me some stuff about being an author that I didn't know ( I thought impossible)

She talked about groups on LinkedIn where authors help authors. she says there's newsletters and advice from authors such as Sandra Beckwith, Joan Stewart and Dana Lynn Smith.

She mentioned picking the category or genre when publishing my books is extremely important. I knew that, but what I didn't know was that I should be aiming for more obscure categories rather than mainstream categories, no matter how applicable, because that helps my book stand out. 📖 If I call my book paranormal fantasy then I'm right up there against hundreds of well-known authors. If I call my books supernatural women sleuths then I don't have as much competition. Not that I see other authors as competition. People read more than one book in their lifetime and I love helping my fellow ❤️ authors.  I'm referring to pages on Amazon's search engine... Mainstream genre might put me on page 145,678 of anyone's search for paranormal fantasy. Supernatural women's sleuth might put me on page 150....

Toby went on to say that it's best to publish your book at the beginning of the year that way you get a full year of being a new book. Whereas if you publish a book in November you only get 2 months of being at a new 2019 book vs being a new 2020 book for 12 months.

She also mentioned my books being what she called evergreen books. Meaning that the books don't age and that they're just as good to read now as they were back in 2011 when I first started published them.

my homework assignment for the next few weeks:
*Get to know KDP sponsored products
*Look up those of authors I mentioned earlier
*Find the characteristics of my typical reader
*Go to LinkedIn and join some marketing groups.
*Look up some more obscure genres and see what my books could fit in rather than the mainstream paranormal thrillers or urban fantasy which is what they are now.

I HATE ME MORE THAN ANYONE COULD

I haven't written a word in 5 months! I've been stuck in a deep depressive state. Every time I feel myself getting better, I get sucked back down... I can't read, I can't write, I can't draw...I've painted once. 

I feel like I'm drowning in self hate, self doubt and self destruction. 

I was laid off from my job in December. I've never felt so rejected in my life. Since then I feel no pride, no self love and no ambition. I feel like a garbage person. I'm worthless and easily discarded. I'm an emotional writer and I cannot write when I'm like this and nothing seems to help. I have wonderful kids, a new job and supportive friends, but nothing helps me look past this rejection, and every criticism I receives reinforces it 10 fold. Every cruel word and disparaging tone, every time someone's mean to me, especially if its someone I love, it destroys me inside.

I hate me and everything about me...I feel like the world would be better without me in it. 

I GOT THIS COVERED!

I'm just in awe of how many times I've created new covers for the Raina Kirkland Series! I mean, seriously!

2011

2012

  

  

2013

2014

  

2015

2016

2017

 

2018

What a wild ride AND, and there are covers I created but never used, too.

 

 

And, there are still others...

BUY THE RAINA KIRKLAND SERIES HERE!