Confessions of an Unsuccessful Author

I am bitter. Yes. I admit it. But the truth is I just can't compete.

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I knew my blog would roll over in the past 24 hours. And it did. If even ten percent actually read it, I would be thrilled, but it is not a blog many people comment on.  I think that I use it to make statements, and should try harder to engage readers.

I would like to go back and see where it changed, but I probably won't. Anyway, thanks to all of you for stopping by and y'all drop by and say hi again.

Now Back to Life

I shall continue with my art experiment. Bore you all to tears.  Go read. Preferably my book.

First Day

I know it will drop like a stone, but it is fun to see.  #43 in Contemporary Fiction. (Amazon's free promotion)

Sacred Sin

Free download of my first book, Sacred Sin, from Amazon, for Kindle and Kindle apps,  from June 01, through June 5, 2012.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005H3EW3Q

Have a look, won't you?

Barnes and Noble said, "crazy good read".

Katherine Owen said, ". . .a great read. Evocative, intimate and sexy".

Stephanie James said it was the worst book she ever read.

Snarky Trolls

Or trolling snarks.  I don't get it.  There is one area where I kind of got into conversation with a person who self-pubs and frequents a lot of the sites I visit, and it kind of deteriorated, so I just steer clear of it now.  But some comment was up on Goodreads which is a huge, rambling, sometimes confusing, site that is supposed to be a good hangout for readers and would be authors. (For instance, in one place it says my book is down for rewrite and in another place it is up with the new cover.) Anyway, of course, after I made my TINY remark some asshole had to come back with gee, congratulations, you must be so popular to look at stuff that way.  I so bad wanted to reply right there on the site with "Fuck you asshole.  Why does this site attract so many assholes?"  Except that wouldn't be speaking well for my very own presence would it?  The thing is, the blog moderator seems like a nice guy, although if I was a professional diagnostician, which I am not,  I would say, definitely Asperger's.  Gives out way too much personal, way too personal information, and has a couple of other strange characteristics  that leave me wondering.  Not my place to judge.  But this, FineWhine, is my place to vent, and who ever you are, you know damn well what I am talking about.

I will practice self control and try even harder to stay away.  But, even at my age, (considerable) it never ceases to amaze me that there are so many people out there lurking, waiting for the chance to pounce.  Always trying to cut someone off at the ankles.  Like they don't have enough of their own ground to stand firm on?  I'm crowding their fucking stage?   Always snarky, cloaked, unnecessary.  And they cannot go to sleep at night  unless they've lobbed a particular amount of their shit at people.  I would say it is tiny dick syndrome, except sometimes it is a female.  Although, come to think of it, it usually is a guy.

What is wrong with me that I cannot learn that lesson?  Good thing God didn't make me a hanging judge.

Bird cages

I really just wanted to see how this looked on my site.  Pretty nice, I'll say.

Sorry about the border drift. For the sake of art. It will correct next blog which may be any minute now.

Another Fabulous Freebie

I cannot say enough good things about Smashwords.  My book, THE MAZE,  is already in the Premium catalog.  The cover wouldn't take and I didn't like it anyway, so I did one in Powerpoint in about ten minutes and, though it is not my favorite, it is in keeping with several of the book's themes and doesn't look bad.  I wanted that little red head on there from the get go, but couldn't get her to fit.  She is a joyous me, someone I don't see too often.

A person was sorry they couldn't download cuz they had a Nook.  Anymore was in Select and will be for a few more weeks, so that is Amazon exclusive, a mixed bag, but  it will go on Smashwords too pretty soon.

Smashwords puts you in the Apple, Nook, Kobo, and all other devices format so you can even download to some off brand e reader you bought on vacation in Thailand.  I have always had my best sales from Barnes and Noble, so I hope this works out.  Hundreds have already been downloaded for free, and this book, which I love so much, I am doing the sequel, is in the cellar at Amazon.  So I hope y'all enjoy it.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/158247

THE MAZE

The Maze will be free the rest of May on Smashwords.  They are pouting about a few things, so it's not in premium, but you can use most readers.  I'll have to find the link tomorrow, I am so tired,but since you are champing at the bit, do a name search.  It walks a narrow line. It is the least read so far, but that is inexplicable since it's so much fun. 

Excerpt from Sacred Sin

Of course, it was only a matter of days until Barney knew she was back in town.  One morning, Sarah brought the mail in, including this week’s “US” magazine.  On the cover were two side by side photos, one of Daniel getting off the plane in England and one of Jenny and the kids, getting off the plane at O’Hare.  The caption read, “Trouble in Paradise?” and, within, a long article with photos of Daniel with his split lip and Jenny crying.  Barney was on his way out the door to go to work and took a minute to glance at it.  “I’ll drive by and see if she’s okay.”  And he dashed out the door.

The kids were on the lawn and Jenny was sitting in the side yard writing on her computer.  When the huge red truck pulled up and the huge guy got out, she hit ‘save’ and started across the lawn.  As he ran toward her he thought, “If the house was on fire, she would remember to hit ‘save.’”

The kids were terrified, especially little Maisie who began to cry and run to her mommy just as Jenny literally jumped into Barney’s arms.  “Oh my God.  You look so wonderful.  The glasses.  You’ve put on weight.  You look wonderful.  Oh my God.  I’m so glad to see you!”

“Jenny.  What did you do to your hair?  Are you alright?  You weigh nothing.  What’s going on with you?”

“Just a sec,” she said, as she stepped away to pick up sobbing little Maisie.  She turned away from Barney and put her cheek against the baby’s and whispered to her, Maisie’s tears wetting Jenny’s face and their copper curls comingling.  The baby’s crying ceased the moment she felt the safety of her mother’s embrace.  The sight of them--each end of the spectrum of all that was true in his life,  Maisie, the perfect replica of the nemesis of the kindergarten Barney, and Jenny, the only image he carried in his soul--stabbed into him, love spiraling into itself, redoubling and ripping a hole in his chest where his heart had been.

He felt full of some ancient knowledge, but as though his life was renewed.  “Not my kid.  Not my kid. . .” his brain kept trying to remind him.  But he knew that this icon before him was his only truth.  He knew he was seeing Jenny’s reality, if only for a second, her truest person, and he knew he would never be anything more to her than her soldier, her bastion, her anchor.  But he realized that was all he was meant to be and she needed that.  And her need for him, born when she took her first steps and reached for his hand, drawing her to him in the troubled nights of her adolescence, and now her child reflecting the intensity of her love, brought him a sense of purpose he had never known.  He knew that he was the part of her that finally let her be unafraid to give her love.  And he knew he would be rooted to this spot in time, in his life, in his soul, forever.  He chuckled slightly, “And was this one cloned in a Petri dish?”

(This is one of my favorite parts.  It ties all my books together. Sacred Sin will be free to download on May first and May second, 2012.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005H3EW3Q

Seriously

I keep saying Barnes and Noble bring me the most sales, but I promise not to let it go to my head.

Mixed feelings

This is the plan. I am going to rotate the four books through Select and rewrite each one, heavily editing the sex out of the first, at several people's suggestions, and doing new covers at least for the third. I feel like I am done being a writer. I wanted to do the four and they are done. And they pretty much are tanking. I average a sale a day. I realize that is sixty times better than no sales for months at a time, but the word of mouth thing is not working for me. I blame my personality and lifestyle for that.

But I'd like to say a few things about the "business" end of this business. I get lots of email and even phone calls that they want to tell me about this publishing deal and that. Okay. Leave me alone. I'm published. Unless you have some promo ideas, I have nothing to say to you and I don't want to listen to you. Word of mouth is the ONLY thing missing from my equation and you cannot sell me a program for that. Don't ask me to send you copies of my work. It is all out there in many different forms or places. If you can't do anything else, you can name search for me. As far as I know there is one other Virginia Llorca and she is a 23 year old girl in North Carolina.

Thanks to everyone who read my stories and double triple thanks to those who said nice things about them, and think about the Karma, especially you family members who pretend it doesn't exist or it's a whim. Read any Lora Leigh and then get back to me about MY work.

The only thing that is bothering me now is that I am toying with ideas. It is just because I am bored and am so very unused to dealing with a sense of relief. I'm trying to talk myself out of it.

Today's CTA: Do you get angry with yourself when you break promises to yourself or do you just shake it off? What do you learn from the experience? Share.

Inexplicable.

Philippa Gregory says she has to fall in love with her characters. The book about Margaret Beaufort was not easy to read. She pissed you off most of the time. But she willed stuff to happen and at, what I consider, great personal sacrifice. "What I did for love" etc. She could love and did love but had this other agenda. Couldn't do it. I'd carry the growler to the bar to get a refill for grampa. So she admitted she found it hard to love her and you knew it when you read the book THE RED QUEEN. It was one of her least enjoyable works.

So this last book I wrote, I couldn't fall in love. There really was not a character for that. But now I am finished and I am in love with them and don't want to put it up, want to keep living their lives for them, controlling the weather and what color to paint the porch.

Amazon goofed up the listing and the royalties and Smashwords has yet to cough up a cent. And the promoting is so whorish. Either you like it or you don't but why the fuck don't they even want to look? I spend hours every day just reading blurbs cuz I am so afraid I am going to miss something. And my Kindle has at least twenty books I am dying to get to. So I sit and play Spider Solitaire on the iPhone. I am so sick of it. I don't think I am going to do it anymore. I just read this John Steinbeck quote where he says you have to not stop and think and plan otherwise you lose your association with the words that are making these people live and that is in direct opposition to all this MFA stuff and outlining and little index cards with plot points. And how I write. Just sit down and wish the fucking crippled fingers would not keep hitting the wrong keys I want to go so fast.

And I am half in tears over it. Like they said my baby was funny looking and kind of dumb, and that is when I get these ridiculous blog spikes and I do not even know where they came from. Some one read a post from about six years ago. It tells you that, so I looked at it and I was talking to Louie about it being when Lisa had that little house and Billy lived with her and it was like a lull in our lives. So strange. Why did someone go and read that out of a clear blue sky? And what could it mean to them? What do anyone else's words mean to someone else? I don't know, but sometimes I am crying over it and laughing and hoping for a certain thing to happen to imaginary people. Cuz I couldn't make it happen for my real people. I guess.

Tomorrow: back to the big white Welbies, for sure.

Today's CTA: Do you put stuff in your fiction that you really wish did happen to you? Or do you want it nothing like your real life?


Image Attribution:  thecollaboratory.wikidot.com