OCD VS ADHD....LOL

I have just 3 chapters to go in Toxic. This book has been a true crawl to the finish line. It's my fault, I know it is. On top of a new baby, remodling our home, work, and a plethora of other projects I give myself, I seem to fully enjoy writing myself into corners.

 

I know what I want to write before I sit down to do so....but in the heat of creation, sometimes things just go a little...lets say wild. Maybe that's why most readers agree that my books are unpredictable. Heck, I can't even predict them sometimes.

 

Every time I do something weird, because of in the moment creativity, I have to recalibrate the whole damn book to keep flow and plot in line.Deadly Encounters had three seperate endings planned, and then ended in a way I did not see coming!

 

Fatal Retribution was supposed to end after Mark's party.

Mortal Senrty was supposed to end after Raina escapes the fairies.

Grave Omen was supposed to end in a car chase and Damon's death...

Deadly Encounters was supposed to end in a snowy field, with Raina surrounded by zombies and holding onto a child necromancer....

 

None of these endings happened. None of them, or at least, with the first two, the books just kept going, because, you know, in the moment creativity. LOL

 

I "know" how Toxic is supposed to end...but I just wrote myself into a very interesting corning. Not for any good reason. The artist in me just likes to torture the writer in me sometimes. So....we'll see, and I'll tell you if that was what I'd planned.  My ADHD is so killing my OCD...lol  And don't get me started on my Bipolar Disorder and what seems to be an unwavering optimism...

WORKING IT!

My mother has encouraged me to draw again. Incidentally, I found a website that will let me upload my work and sell it, not just as pictures, but as phone cases, pillows, blankets, coffee cups and more. The Website is called RedBuddle.com

I really like the whole idea, I just wish the items weren't so expensive and had more public visibility, like Amazon.com or something.

Oh, and by the way, I'm only 4 and a half chapters away from finally being done with Toxic! Yay! 

BRAIN SHIT STORM OF WHAT THE HECK....Author Problems...

Traditionally published authors have teams of people; helping them write, helping them edit, helping them schedule, helping them format, helping them design and market and pay for things...I have almost no help...I have beta readers. I LOVE my beta readers!!!!!!

What's most frustrating about being an independent author is the EVERYTHING. From being in charge of ALL of your own marketing, editing and formatting, to the cover of the book...I never feel sure of myself. I never know if anything I do makes a difference to people. For years I've second guessed my cover designs. Finally I actually sat down and obsessed over all my data and reports, and here is what the facts show. 

Below is a break down of sales per month per book cover and total money earned per book cover, per book...this was fun... 

All those lovely ladies above are my sister. I love her. I think she is BEAUTIFUL! But, she's still a teenager, and my books are rated R for full of really raunchy shit from time to time....so I felt bad having her on my cover. Sadness...Maybe I'll take new photos of her when she is 18. 

What time is it? New covers time!

All those drawings...Eh, I just wasn't feeling the love with these drawings.

So, those covers are actually me...Well, I manipulated the photos to make me look more like Raina, but in the end, even though I clearly made WAY more money with my face than any other cover, I just couldn't. I felt too damn self conscious staring at my damn mug all the time...

So here we are. the current covers are dark, mysterious and very different from anything I've ever done. So far they are selling well enough, but we will see...

Twisted Recipes: Twisted Recipe #7 Dat Salsa

Twisted Recipes: Twisted Recipe #7 Dat Salsa: I LOVE SALSA! I am a beast when it comes to salsa. A very picky beast. That's why I've never made my own. It would destroy me as ...

More Ambition Than Time

I'm one of those people who has more ambition than time in the day. I'm an ideas man. Business ideas come to me all the time. Book ideas come to me all the time...damn it if I don't always have a pen and paper on me.
I always have balls in the air, so many balls I almost feel the testosterone... You could almost say that when something interrupts my me-time, it's kicking me in the balls. So painful.
Right now my balls include: Writing Toxic, (which means much research and marketing, oh and writing, duh) and Developing my dream business, Rainy Day Cafe, a vegetarian friendly cafe with a play area (which means I'm writing the business plan, creating the menu and doing financing research) ...You know, in between running a household and raising two small children, infant Bram and the completely insane 4 year old, Morrighan...

Look at Bram's face...He already knows his sissy is crazy. :-P 

Writing With Dyslexia

My mom told me when I was very young that I was a suborn student. I refused to grasp the concept of THE...How on Earth does T + H make the TH sound? And since when does E sound like U? How does this word make a lick of sense? I mean, I got bat, cat, hat, sat, fat, rat, log, frog, dog...these words just make sense. I remember actively arguing with my teacher about the spelling of the word, been...as in; I've been there before. If it's pronounced bin, they should spell it that way, not been...Beans should be spelled beens. LOL ....Be-Ans doesn't make sense to me... For years and years I couldn't wrap my mind around these words and others like them. I got very poor marks in school...having ADHD and manic depression didn't help either. 

So...I couldn't read and write well, which just added to my already haywire emotions, but that's okay because, LOOK something shiny!    hehehe, I mask my pain with humor. 

I realized my ambitions to become a writer in my senior year of high school. I had this teacher who for some blessed reason, looked beyond my abysmal spelling and sentence structure. He looked at my voice and deemed it applaud worthy. All my life I had been failing or mostly failing in school, but he gave me high marks and encouraged me. He was the first teacher to do so. 

I wrote for 10 years before I finally published something I thought was worthy enough for others to read. Right now it has 41 great reviews on Amazon.com; Fatal Retribution. 

Writing with dyslexia isn't easy. Sometimes it means that what sounds bad-ass to you, sounds silly to me. In my head, Raina didn't subtlety suggest they make love. She suB-tleTy suGGested that thE-y make lOve. Hehehe, my brain works funny. I can't just associate words with nonsensical spelling, I have to sound it out in my head the way it is spelled, or it looks like this: She sutly sujjested that thay make luv. Thank the lOrd for spell check. 

And can we just take a moment to appreciate the spelling of Dyslexia? I mean, WTF? Seriously. That craziness is like if you called Arachnophobia, SPIDER! SPIDER! LOOK BEHIND YOU! THERE'S A SPIDER!

TOXIC MAY NEED A NEW TITLE

I like formulas. I like them in math and I like them in writing...not exactly as a plot device, but structurally, I like them. For instance, in the Raina Kirkland series every book is 40 chapters. Some have prologues and some have epilogues, but they all have a solid 40 chapters. All Raina Kirkland novels take place in exactly 7 days. And, all Raina Kirkland novels have two word titles, word one means death or mortality, and word two describes Raina in some way; what she's doing or what's happening to her.
Fatal  Retribution (Raina is getting revenge...and so is Adia in a way)
Mortal Sentry (Raina is guarding Katie, Nick and many others)
Grave Omen (Raina is overwhelmed by drama and tragedy, so much so that she's missing the obvious and ominous)
Deadly Encounters (Raina is literally encountering tons of death! Living dead, millions of people die, her loved ones die and she is also technically dead)

Then we have the last book in the 5 book series, Toxic...one word? I've been having such a hard time writing this book. Party because it's the last of the Raina Kirkland novels and finishing it is saying goodbye. Having been sickly pregnant most of last year put a damper on things as well...and now, I have a new born and toddler to look after, a house to refinance and then hopefully sell in order to get my daughter into a better school before she turns 5 years old...but maybe it's the title of the book too.

When I get writer's block it's always because I'm doing something wrong. I just have to figure it out. Maybe the title is distracting me...IDK. Sometimes I feel like writers are as superstitious as baseball players. We wear certain clothes, listen to certain music, drink certain drinks, because we're sure as heck that these things help our creativity. For me it's having a certain formula to things. I aim for 40 chapters, I make sure the book has 7 days in it, and the title...up until now, always had two words... It was Toxic Bliss at first, but I've never been a great fan of the word Bliss...sounds too much like Piss or Miss...And now Toxic is starting to sound off. The final book is about war, war between mankind and war between gods, and war between mankind and gods...it's about compassion and hate, death and rebirth, and Raina is in the middle of all that. She's trying to find herself, because knowing herself, is knowing how to defeat her enemy.
Eternal War...
Hostile Host...
Corporal Combat...
Impious Purpose...
...The struggle continues...