I know some of my friends are seeing that title and giggling, that’s okay, I meant it in a slightly pervy way, (you know that I, of all people, would), and what I am talking about is working to make a living as an Indie author/single mom/disabled person/nobody with a few crazy friends who believe in you as your only support team. When I first got encouraged to put my work out there for people to look at and read, I was skeptical, after all, these days, you have to kinda already be somebody to get into any kind of entertainment business or you have to have a bunch of money and I have neither of those things in my court. Most months we dont even have enough money to pay all the bills on time, so I was worried about costs and actually getting the actual books put together, but I had time on my hands because when you dont have money, you dont go places or do things so I researched and got all the information and I started small with Drifts. It was my sacrificial lamb so to speak, and I figured if it got ripped to pieces, I would just pull it off the market and go back into my cave.
Drifts didn’t get ripped to pieces though, and as I write this, its hit over 450 sales on its own. That, I have been told, is kinda a huge freaking deal for an Indie author with no agent who self-published and is self-advertising with the aide of their friends on social media only. I was sent an article that said most books never sell over 99 copies in a year, and I have made that in a month. Now,I wish that meant I was getting rich and raking it in, but with most of those being e-sales or digital downloads of which I get a small percentage, I have yet to see a dime, in fact, I have seen nothing from the e-sale version as of yet and wont until 60 days after I actually break $100 bucks and with that still quite a ways off, I am still very much in the red. My print books have been what have been amazingly making me the most money. People, especially those who are around my age, like to get something for their money, and I dont mind doing the leg work of actually walking my ass to the post office with my kids to mail out the books to all kinds of far-flung places, and once it was realized I am a hell of a lot cheaper than the big companies, people have been just ordering from me, I sign or inscribe the book and then mail it out to them, but still, in the red. Its crazy expensive to do all this stuff and even being smart about it,(which I wasnt in the beginning), it still takes awhile to get the books in, and then make sure I have everybody handled and then I have to wait for a day when its not pouring down rain like we should be watching for Noah to start rounding up critters, which is a bit of a thing in Portland, so I can walk to the post office with the kids since I still cant afford a car.
I published another book that I wrote over the course of a year and its very close to my heart and its very personal. There are a lot of things in it that are symbolic and there is a lot of gallows humor to go along with the Texas humor that comes with growing up back in East Texas in a time when things and people were different. That book has been great for reconnecting me to a lot of people that I would have never reconnected with, and it also helped force me to deal with a lot of things I would have never had the courage to face on my own. Its been a tricky path talking about that book. People want to know more about the characters and I really cant tell to much about some of them because it would spoil the story for the readers. There are a few people who know who is who and what is what and that’s all that matters, maybe after I am gone they will tell tales out of school and put those rumors to rest, but for now, im not going to talk about somethings, including Beau. I will tell you that the monkey is real, if you have seen my videos or my summer avatar, thats him sitting on the counter next to me. Fergus was real. Those kids? Oh hell yeah, if you follow me on twitter of FB or any of those places, you know all about my little girl and her obsession with THAT BOY. #fml (yeah, im not too thrilled), but I guess it could be worse.
My daughter is my “manager”, she runs the show around my little writing world and tries to force me to get people to pay attention and buy my book, but with my Southern thing I have struggled with the whole insecurity thing and with waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was on the phone with Puerto Rico last night trying to track down cops to get a kid some help and speaking very bad Spanish in the process while she was harassing a fella who was one of the few I dedicated my pride and joy novel to. See, I had sent him and a couple of the other boys copies of the book as a way of saying,”Thanks” for inspiring me and saving me, and while I was glad to know they got them,(that alone gave me a near heart failure moment), she had been wanting to know if they LIKED it because I had been mopey due to my reviews being low in number,(I thought), and she is a driven lil thing. Shes like a terrier with a bone and will worry it to death,(I am a prime example of that), so she had my computer because hers was dead, she was logged into her account as I paced in the kitchen speaking my combination of “Bad Spanish” Arabic, and French, trying to not obsess over the fact someone else was on my computer, or that my Spanish was really bad and that I had been called crazy and probably a few other things as she and some of my friends harassed that poor boy like he was a cat cornered against a fence. When he said my book was “Cool” she shrieked. Jumped up, ran around the room like 3 or 4 times, rolled around on the floor and then hugged me and beat on my back until I coughed. Honestly? I kinda felt like doing the same.
I’ve got quite a few reviews now, and another book about to come out in the next couple of weeks. I don’t know if I’m ever going to make a profit at this, but its a blast to connect with people and see the reactions to my writing , and honestly, I have enjoyed getting all the artists and photographers connected and working together and we are building a little network of people who are trying to keep the memory of something that was amazing, alive. Its not easy and we may never get rich and famous doing it, but we are united by the 100th Monkey effect and that is rich in many, many ways.
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