The Woes of an Indie Author Re: Amazon Kindle

 Many apologies, if you have recently tried to find any of my titles in ebook form at Amazon and have been directed to their infamous "Oops! Sorry about that" page. It's like getting banned—for all the wrong reasons—all over again (refer to my previous blog post—and yes, I am writing this in my car. One day, I’m going to be famous and have stories to tell, like Rowling).

I haven’t been literally banned from Amazon. But there has been a disconnect in their system that has removed many titles associated with my publisher. I have been told that they are aware of it and that they are trying to fix it. How long it's going to take is the unknown.

Again, my apologies. A big chunk of my readership finds me through Amazon. But they are not the only place to find my ebooks. In fact, I get a bigger piece of the cut from sales at any of the links below. So help an indie author out and consider your purchase through these online retailers!

Also, thank you for your support!

BOOKBABY 

BARNES AND NOBLE

KOBO

APPLE BOOKS

NaNoWriMo and Getting Banned

 

NaNoWriMo is going to be a challenge this year, and not for the reasons you might think. For those of you unfamiliar with the acronym, November has been deemed National Novel Writing Month by the internet writer powers that be, and I’m all in. It's free and an opportunity to connect with other writers, and its sole purpose is to motivate writers to write.

The rules are pretty straightforward—reach a 50,000 word count by the end of the month. That's it. And there is no one monitoring your progress except you. I'm already "cheating," because the novel I’m working on is already well past the 50,000 word count in length, but I’m using the event to add to what I have while editing and restructuring at the same time. My current count is close to 70,000 words. By the end of the month, I might be down by 30,000. Who knows? And I will be counting this blog post as words on the page. You betcha! Because writing is writing as far as I’m concerned. And the focus of NaNoWriMo is not competitive in nature.

So why, you may ask, is this year going to be challenging for me? It's a weird little story. Embarrassing even. It's because I've been banned. And this is where some of you reading this blog post may decide I’m petty. Probably. But any names from this point forward will be changed to protect the innocent. Or the guilty, depending on your point of view.

I work in a small two room office doing billing for a service oriented company. There are 6 people in the office running the business side of things on most days. It doesn’t have a lunch room or even a bathroom. Terrible, you say! But not really. The business owners are members of a private club that resides next door, and we can use the bathrooms there. The place is also literally empty throughout most of the day Monday through Friday. Our office staff takes the club's deliveries, contacts their club management if we see anything in need of attention and lets outside maintenance and cleaning crews in when no one else is there to do it. This isn’t an occasional thing. It's daily.

This is also where I, being the only hourly employee in our office, go to eat my lunch. I’ve done it for five plus years. I can’t eat at my desk and take advantage of the moment to get in some lunch time writing. Can’t do it with other office staff around. They’re like most non writers. If they see you contemplating your iPad, they see no reason why they can't flag you down to chat. This isn’t a gripe, it's just the way it is and, recognizing this, I slip away to someplace quiet—the usually vacant club next door—where I can eat and write in relative peace.

Except that I've recently been banned. That's right. Banned. Why? Because I’m not a club member. And the incoming president of the club happened to show up one day and find me eating my lunch all alone in what is apparently his club. Because he's incoming president. And there are bylaws. I know, I know. Clubs have rules, and who am I to be Karening on because I don’t agree with rules?

Let's break down the day that I got banned. I was sitting alone eating my late lunch, when a maintenance man showed up to flush the beer lines behind the bar. No one was available at the club to help them. The place is locked without a key, but I was there, and I didn’t let him in because he never rang the doorbell. He did go to our office though, and someone from our office let him in twice. But since we couldn’t help the guy, and a call to the club's office manager ended up finding out that the bar manager needed to be there to supervise, he left. Not two minutes after he was gone, the incoming club president (I didn’t know this at the time) saunters in and gives me a look. I said, "Hey there! We didn’t know anyone was here. There was a guy who showed up to flush your beer lines, and he just left. You can still catch him if you need him."

The incoming president knew nothing about it and didn’t seem to care. Instead, he homed in on me. "Are you a member?"

Having eaten there on and off for five years with the knowledge of several club staff, I answered honestly. "I work next door. I'm just on my lunch break."

That's when he broke the news, and rather bluntly. I could no longer eat there. Only club members could be there. And when I tried to explain in shock that it hasn't been a problem for over five years, that my bosses were members of the club and that we did a lot for the club when no one was around to take their deliveries, etc., he looked at me flatly and shrugged. "Those are the rules. That's just what I was told."

When I asked who he was, I found out he was the incoming pres, and when I asked him to talk to the office manager, and to my bosses who were members, he said he would. He never did. But I did, and my employer was incensed when I told them, considering all that we do.  Meetings were held, and the acting committee of the club held firm. "You can do all the good things you do for our club when we aren’t there to do it. You can continue to use our bathrooms, but we shouldn’t even allow you that. And thank you for being such pleasant neighbors." I'm paraphrasing. I wasn’t part of the meeting. It was above my pay grade.

So in a nutshell, be quiet, be helpful, get banned. One more point for the decline of humanity. I will be spending my lunches at work sitting in a cramped car trying to write while trying to balance my cup o noodles on my knee and hoping it doesn’t spill. But I will get to claim a NaNoWriMo badge. The one you award yourself with when you're guilty of writing in unlikely or unusual places.

If you're a writer and don’t know about NaNoWriMo, check them out here. And join in!

Halloween Reading

Some might read the title above and say to themselves, when is this blog not about Halloween appropriate reading? A fair enough dig, and also, how dare I post a Halloween book review only days before Halloween! Again, you're right. And I'm sorry. But since the majority of books that I review are horror themed, I guess it doesn't really matter.

I was going to post a review for Demonic Indemnity by Craig McLay, a fun read if you prefer your horror with fantasy elements and a dose of humor. There is an entire series about supernatural insurance investigator Tim Lovecraft, and I'm betting they are all fun reads. But while I was at work (yes, indie authors usually have to make a living from things other than writing), my boss asked for book recommendations for her grandson, and I had to suggest Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman, illustrated by S. D. Schindler. 

My kids loved Big Pumpkin, about a witch who plants a pumpkin seed that grows into a pumpkin so big that she can't get it off the vine in time to make pumpkin pie for Halloween. Drat! Literally! Others who are bigger and stronger than her offer to try, including a vampire and a mummy, and a little bat who gets laughed at for suggesting it is big enough and strong enough to get it done. But the bat has a plan. A very good one. This is a great read to introduce your kids to Halloween monsters that aren't really that scary, and it teaches a great and simple lesson about what happens with a little bit of teamwork.

Check out this link to find Big Pumpkin. BIG PUMPKIN 

Check out this one for Demonic Indemnity. DEMONIC INDEMNITY

FX's Reservation Dogs is well worth your time

 

Photo courtesy of FX and Hulu

Reservation Dogs on FX and Hulu

I'm going to change things up and give you my review of a TV series instead of a book, because I'm really enjoying this one. I seem to be hitting on a lot of content with Native American themes lately. This isn't by design. Creative content crosses my path, and I latch onto what sounds interesting, and modern stories from a Native American perspective are long overdue. Maybe you think this white girl with a 94% Northern/Western European core of DNA has no business sharing her opinions on books and TV shows about the Native American experience, but that 1% Indigenous thread inside of her is itching to be heard.

That thread came from my grandmother who came to this country at the age of 2 and was quickly abandoned by her American father while the system deemed her Puerto Rican mother fit for a sanitarium. That thread of Spanish and Indigenous culture was lost for my grandmother who was adopted and raised by New York farmers with a German surname. As is the case for many Native Americans living today. Their culture, their history, is constantly being eroded, ignored, left behind. And that sucks.

Enter Reservation Dogs. A half hour dramedy about a group of Res kids in their teens, on the verge of adulthood, who are trying to escape the dead end prison that reservation life means to them. Their goal is California. But can they do it. Can they get there without losing the value that is unique to their culture, their heritage. This is a show about the struggle with identity that a Native American kid faces--where do we fit in, and how much of our ancestral history should define us.

Taika Waititi and Sterlin Harjo are the heads of this creative effort labeled as a comedy, but don't expect Waititi's signature brand of comedy here. The laughs are often bittersweet. There is a deeper melancholy to it all, one that is connected to an event that happened a year prior to where the four main characters are at the start of the show. The event is the reason why these four kids, Elora, Bear, Cheese and Willie Jack want to escape reservation life, and that event is tragic. It's a reflection of how much living on the reservation feels like a dead end for them.

Not to worry, because the adults surrounding these kids may seem like complete and utter losers--until they're not. And that's when the sweet of these bittersweet episodes kicks in. Guest and recurring performances by some familiar faces are stellar. Season 1 episode 5, Come And Get Your Love, is the standout for me after viewing the first 7 episodes. Harjo, who has been the predominant writer of the series to this point, pairs the young character Cheese (Lane Factor) with Big (Zahn McClarnon), a reservation patrolman who isn't taken seriously by the "real cops" of Eastern Oklahoma, or even the residents of the reservation for that matter. But Big takes himself seriously, and it's all because of a special spirit whose presence shaped his seemingly meager destiny when he was a child. Cheese isn't initially thrilled about the opportunity to skip school to join Big on a ride along. He doesn't have much respect for Big. But that changes as nuggets of his backstory unfold.

These kids, who are the main characters, are at a serious cultural crossroad in their lives, and Harjo navigates us through their individual journies with honesty, sadness and humor. So check it out! I’m glad I did.

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones—Review

 

What can I say about My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones. It's a mess. Why give it 5 stars then, you say? Because it's a mess as seen through the lens of a very messed up main character, Jade Daniels, and that messed up, hyperactive, suicidal point of view rings true. Jade's character has some major issues, and a mind that is all over the place as she tries to navigate the hell that is her life. There’s a good chance that you won’t like her from the start, but cut her some slack. She really deserves it.

Jade isn’t even her real name, but it suits her because she’s become so jaded by the people in her life, that her only outlet for pleasure is horror movies. Slashers in particular. And this is where Jade proves that she has a brilliant mind, something to offer the world, if the world wasn’t so cruel. She buries herself so deep in slasher movie lore that, when things start to go awry in her small and picturesque Idaho town, she’s the only one who sees it coming. Because she knows how slashers work. And does that scare her? No. That excites her because she has nothing to really live for, except in terms of a slasher movie, and what a way for her to go out. For her, it’s ending on a high note.

Jade will come to that end with a shocking revelation, something that she refuses to admit to herself from the start. She can never be the final girl in this nightmare come true for a very specific reason. But she can play her part, and she struggles with that.

Of course, if you’re a true horror movie aficionado, you’re in for a treat. I consider myself a mid level horror aficionado—I remember writing a paper in my college days about the importance of horror films as social commentary, so when Jade writes extra credit homework for her history teacher doing essentially the same, I could really relate. Also, Jaws and The Shining are two iconic movies that shaped my own movie viewing tastes in a big way. What I’m getting to is that it doesn’t hurt to be a horror movie fan on some level. Or even an 80’s movie fan. I felt like there were a few nods to movies like The Breakfast Club and Heathers too.

I highly recommend this book. The only dissatisfaction I have is with its symbolic end that I wish had more closure regarding Jade and the mother who essentially abandoned her. The metaphor is clearly apparent but it doesn’t quite reflect how it turned out for Jade.

Thank you, NetGalley and Gallery Books for the opportunity to read this ARC.

You can find My Heart is a Chainsaw wherever books and ebooks are sold.