Missouri Sales Tax and Amazon Associates and Me

Last week I received a fun little notice from Amazon.com.  It reads:

Greetings from the Amazon Associates Program.

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account will be closed and your Amazon Services LLC Associates Program Operating Agreement will be terminated effective August 27, 2013. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional Missouri state tax collection legislation passed by the state legislature and signed by Governor Nixon on July 5, 2013, with an effective date of August 28, 2013. As a result, we will no longer pay any advertising fees for customers referred to an Amazon Site after August 27 nor will we accept new applications for the Associates Program from Missouri residents.

Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to August 28, 2013 will be processed and paid in full in accordance with your regular advertising fee schedule. Based on your account closure date of August 27, 2013, any final payments will be paid by October 31, 2013.

While we oppose this unconstitutional state legislation, we strongly support the federal Marketplace Fairness Act now pending before Congress. Congressional legislation is the only way to create a simplified, constitutional framework to resolve interstate sales tax issues and it would allow us to re-open our Associates program to Missouri residents.

We thank you for being part of the Amazon Associates Program, and look forward to re-opening our program when Congress passes the Marketplace Fairness Act.


Sincerely,

The Amazon Associates Team

In case you've never noticed, or never cared, all of my book links and some of the ads that I keep on my blog (and all the booklinks I use on my author website) have my Amazon Associate id embedded in them.  It's a feature that ought to mean nothing to the few people who click on those links, but that adds up to a few cents here and there in my pocket.  Up until next week, if you click on one of my links and actually buy something, then Amazon pays me a small referral fee--a percentage of around 4%-7% (depending on what the link is and how many folks have bought stuff with my links recently)

It's not a lot. I'm not a high-traffic site.  I just don't get that many clicks or purchases.  But it's not nothing. 

So here's the deal as far as I understand it (keep in mind, I'm not a lawyer or tax expert or anything similar):  because I'm a resident of Missouri, if Amazon were to continue paying me advertising revenue on those clicks, then they would have to collect Missouri sales tax on all the items that get sold as a result of those clicks.  They don't want to do that.  Therefore they are yanking my Amazon Associates account (along with all the rest of Missouri resident accounts) and not allowing any other Show-Me's the opportunity to make a few bucks by referring folks to their site.

Joy.

I'm not really sure what to think. I'm not really mad at Amazon--they are clearly making a decision that is best for their business going forward.  I'm not entirely sure I understand all the ins and outs of sales tax calculations. I'm definitely not against sales taxes, so I'm not sure I'm mad at Missouri.  I live here and benefit from the services that all that tax money buys.

I am peeved that Missouri was already taxing my Amazon Associated referrals as income.  But since that wasn't enough, they also want to collect sales tax from Amazon because they see me as a physical presence where Amazon is doing business.  Or I was adding to their "nexus" helping bolster their bottom line.  I suppose in a very tiny way, I was helping bolster Amazon's bottom line. But moreso, I think I was addinag to my own bottom line, and helping to promote individual items that Amazon sells--aka books.  And I've long been peeved at the stupidly complex layers of sales taxes that states, municipalities, towns, taxing districts, etc apply.  Sheesh, come up with a singular number and go with it, people.  You shouldn't need degrees in math and law to understand a sales receipt.

Now the fun starts.  I'm pretty sure that my e-book of Call the Rain has a link to The Paris Affair (note how I'm not including links, LOL).  And my website and blogs are littered with my associates ID.  And Facebook. And who knows where else I've managed to post links.  I assume they'll still work with the associates account going away, but I have a few hours of cleanup to do.

Carpe Libro

I spent years thinking that some day I wanted to write a book. Some day I would have time to go do research. Some day I would carefully plot a story. Before I had children, I was frequently bored. Once or twice I did pull out a laptop or a pad of paper and start scribbling sentences. I never made it very far before I realized that I didn’t know what I was doing, or before that mean little voice in my head would remind me that I was an engineer, not an English major. Surely I lacked some critical knowledge needed to write.  Surely if I was meant to be a writer, then a novel would simply flow out of me in a shower of sparkles and wonder.

Ironically, I didn’t write my first book until after my second child was born. Not just after the second child, but after my maternity leave was over and I was back at work. I did have a shorter schedule—only three days a week down from full time—but any woman who’s tried to juggle a career and a family knows that working fewer hours does not make the day job easier. If anything, it ups the pressure because you have to prove to your 60-hour-a-week-married-to-the-job colleagues that your 24 work week is as valuable as theirs.

Oh yeah, and baby number two had some major birth defects requiring multiple surgeries.

Sometimes I wonder whether I ever would have had the courage to write without my son’s health struggles. Back in those early days I really did wonder whether he would make it, and for how long.  There were so many unknowns and wait-and-sees about his development. We didn’t know if he would walk. If he would ever achieve bladder and bowel control. If he would struggle for energy and breath.

I finished my first NaNoWriMo, writing The End on the first draft of my first ever novel, from my son’s hospital room for surgery number four. He was eight months old at the time.

I’m still writing. Have finished a total of six manuscripts, and have published two so far. Some day I may even publish that first book (it probably needs a few more edits, though I swear it isn’t all bad).  I’m not a NYT bestseller. I’m not a Kindle millionaire. I try hard to ignore reviews and to not obsessively check author rankings (hint, bigger is not always better, and I’d love to swap my rank and my sales figures). I may never achieve any of those things. But if I quit now, I definitely won’t.

My son continues to inspire me. He learned to roll over the day after we came home from surgery number two (while he still had the glue-type stitches in his belly). He pulled himself to standing for the first time in the hospital crib while waiting for that fourth surgery. He is now six, and spending this week at soccer camp. He’s got some of the quickest feet on the field, and routinely runs circles around kids who are quite a bit taller than he is (alas, he has inherited my family’s lack of height). He is in many ways a miracle baby.  He still has health issues, though you couldn’t tell just by meeting him. He will have challenges in his life, and there is still a potential for big problems some day. His diagnosis casts a little shadow over us still. He gets a lot of hugs.

This week at the day job, a coworker passed away unexpectedly. I had just talked to him the afternoon before. He didn’t look like a man with less than twenty-four hours of life left. We weren’t close, and hadn’t even worked together very long, but he was very nice and very fair-minded and very good at his job. His sudden absence has left a hole in our work group. I can only imagine what his wife and children must be experiencing.

Life is unpredictable. You never know what is coming tomorrow, good or bad. When my son was a newborn with an uncertain future, I realized suddenly that all the reasons I’d never written a book don’t matter so much. Who cares if it sucks. Who cares if no one ever reads it. If I never write, then I will never find out.  And if I wait for “later”, “later” may not come. I’m writing because this is what I’ve always wanted to do.

Seize the day.  Write the book.

Google Reader Blues

A friend and crit partner of mine, Jeannie Lin, has been saying for a while now that blogging is dead.  Given the sheer number of posts I see in my collection of RSS feeds, I’m not so sure I believe her. Except that today, I got a message from my beloved Google Reader that they are shutting the service down as of July.

I am, obviously, disappointed.  Google Reader has been the best choice for me for a long time for catching up on local news, Woot deals, friends and authors, new releases, etc. It syncs my topics between my android phone, my tablet, and multiple computers (my work laptop, my home laptop, the family desktop).  Boo to Google for taking it away.

I cannot visit every site directly--I have no time, no way to track so many shortcuts across so many different devices, and a lot of authors’s websites are marked as 18-and-over, which results in nastygrams at work (and probably an email to some IT guy who will then believe I am surfing porn sites).

So I’m in the market for a replacement tool for reading news, and I’d love to see some suggestions, or reviews. I’d especially love to hear about any services that work fine in multiple webbrowsers AND an Android phone AND a Kindle Fire all at the same time.

 Here are a few options I’ve found that I intend to check into:

Newsblur - http://www.newsblur.com/ - There is a monthly fee if you have too many subscriptions. This might be a problem for me…

Skimr - http://skimr.co/

Fever - http://feedafever.com/ - I’d have to self-host this on kristilea.com in addition to paying a $30 fee, but at least no one will take it away from me

Feedly - http://feedly.com/ - Free and they might be able to automatically suck in my Google Reader subscriptions

The Old Reader - http://theoldreader.com/

Flipboard - http://flipboard.com/ - I had seen this “suggested” by Amazon for my Kindle, so I know that it would work there.

Tiny Tiny RSS - http://tt-rss.org/index.html - Another self-hosted option

Prismatic - http://getprismatic.com/

Google+ - http://plus.google.com/  I have set up a profile. But unlike Facebook, there were no other people on so I’ve basically given up on the service. I don’t have any circles. It does have an Android app. I have no idea what it does for RSS, just several vague online mentions that Google may consider it to be a sufficient replacement for Reader.

**

P.S. Now that Google is taking away my blog READER, I’m a little concerned that it may also take away my blog WRITER. Surely not, as I add content and also run ads which should be generating them a little income. (Ok, my blog isn’t exactly bankrolling the company, but still…) The thought worries me enough that I may look into exporting my existing blogs and doing more with my own self-hosted Wordpress site over at www.kristilea.com.

Me and my Kindle

I have owned a Sony eReader for a few years, and though I love the eInk display, my reader was pre-WiFi.  Buying books for it was a multi-step process that involved hooking up to a computer. I really like the stylus and the ability to easily load rtf documents and annotate them paperlessly (can you say "editing"). I seriously looked at simply upgrading to a newer Sony.

In the end, it was the lure of Downton Abbey that pushed me to Amazon. (Cue the collective gasp from the Amazon-fearing masses). I don't work for Amazon, but I don't hate them either. I've been a Prime member since the beginning of Prime. I've been buying books off Amazon since the late 90's. Amazon is a service that I am happy to use.

So, Merry Christmas to Me. I bought a Kindle Fire HD 8.9".

I also bought a nice (but not too expense) stand cover (in pink, since I cover all of my gadgets in pink--yes, really).

My review so far? A solid B+

Pros:
The screen is pretty. Shows and movies display beautifully. The audio is crisp (though I'm usually in headphones to keep from waking kids).

I was skeptical that I would really like it for e-books, but I'm coming around. I don't much care for reading on my phone or laptop because the screen size (and overall machine size) aren't ideal for me. I do most of my reading before I fall asleep for the night, when my eyes are tired.  With my phone, I have to set the font size big enough that I get like four lines of text at a time, and all the scrolling bugs me.

The Kindle is easy to hold, either in a chair, sitting up in bed, or sitting on the floor while supervising the kids' cleaning their rooms. It is big enough that you see an entire page or two at once--far better than the 2-3 lines I can get on my phone. My eyes aren't complaining, and I've read several full-length books.

Access to Amazon Prime material is heavenly. Seriously, I can watch TV shows again! I'm loving Downton Abbey and Falling Skies right now--Firefly and Army Wives are also in my watch list. The price is right, too.  We also have a lot of content availalbe on-demand through our cable provider, though I'm seriously considering cutting back on our channels there because we just aren't using them (and probably upping our internet connection speed to compensate for the services we are using).

We also recently set up an Ultraviolet account to collect the "digital copies" that come with some of our disc movies.  That plus the Flixter app means I can watch non-Prime movies that we own on my Kindle when I'm not at home.

I can easily check out books from my public library. They use Overdrive, and there are quite a few books that come through in Kindle format. The library website goes through Overdrive which then sends you to Amazon to finalize the download. It sounds more complicated than it really is on-screen. The Amazon portion of the process is really smooth, though I have a few gripes with my library's website (but its free to me and taxpayer/donation-supported, so I really can't complain too much).

I should be able to check out ePub books from my library and use a different reader app, though I haven't actually done that yet. Maybe I will report-back on that aspect later.

Cons:
The app store is not that great. After owning an Android phone for years, I'm disappointed to see how few options are in the Amazon market. Out of the box, the Kindle doesn't work with the Google Play store, which has a lot more apps. I have "side-loaded" a few APK's direct from other websites (like DropBox), so I'm not completely limited.

The newer Kindle has a front-facing camera. Great, except that there is no camera app (without doing some goofy workarounds, or buying something). A special offer I claimed shortly after Christmas did provide a few bucks of app market credit, which I used to buy a camera app. But it takes pictures in mirror-image (because it's front-facing). And it doesn't work well with bar-scanning (which I'm used to using inside GoodReads for adding books) because it reverses the image so the barscanner can't decode them (maybe there's a workaround?)

The on-screen keyboard and I don't get along well. I cannot hit the spacebar with any reliability, making it a pain to type much.  This is probably a user-problem.  And I might just go buy a bluetooth keyboard.

The Silk browser crashes on me a LOT.  Maybe it's the websites I'm surfing? I don't know. But it is really really annoying. I haven't yet tried to find a different browser (I don't know if there's one in the app store or not...I thought not). Also, I did have to configure the settings to always load the full version of websites--otherwise most sites know you're running a Kindle and/or Android and shuffle you to their mobile versions (which never look right on such a big screen).  But there are some components on full-featured sites that just don't work on the Kindle (Flash seems to be fine, but some other components, possibly ActiveX?, show up as a puzzle piece instead of content).

Magazine subscriptions are not quite "there" yet on the Kindle:

Several of my print magazines come with free tablet editions, so of course I tried those out. I have gripes about specific implementations of several of these (e.g. Better Homes and Gardens app makes me continually re-login to see new editions, even when I check the "remember me" box).  I do have one magazine that gets auto-delivered via Kindle's whispersync, and I can manage the downloads the same way I do ebooks. I vastly prefer that method to the custom apps.

Next, each issue is huge and slow to download--like 300-500 MB PER ISSUE (yes, I buy mainly magazines full of glossy color photos--but I have a tablet with a beautiful color screen).  That's almost a whole movie. Also, I can't find cut-and-paste or screen capture features.  I would love to be able to scrap-book decorating or craft ideas, or recipes, individual articles, etc. But I can't figure out how.  My only option seems to be filling my entire (non-upgradeable) drive space with whole magazines and then hunting through entire issues.  Unless this gets improved, I'm probably sticking with print magazines for the ones I really truly want to keep reading--I can take scissors to them and only save what I really want and recycle all the junk. 

BTW, Print Magazine Publishers, if you are listening:  I am also buying fewer print magazines than I did a few years ago...I don't like all the paper hanging around my house, and I can find plenty of content on a variety of interactive websites (where I can get screen captures, at least on the PC, for things I want to keep).  Unless you want to lose me as a subscriber to both print and tablet, please work on your delivery method  and options to get at the parts of your content I want.

Summary:

I love the Kindle. I do not regret the purchase. I wish there were a few more features (a rear-facing camera, more app choices, microSD card slot, etc).  I seriously debated a non-Amazon Android tablet for the features that the Kindle lacks, but Amazon doesn't allow for Prime video streaming to non-Kindle Android tablets (which is dumb as I can watch videos on my XP-based netbook, but not my husband's Galaxy Tab).  My Kindle has Special Offers, and I'm fine with seeing those--have even taken advantage of a couple of them. Usually I ignore them :) I did not get the 4G version, though I could see some definite advantages to not being tied to WiFi (I could be boob-tube-ing it anywhere, not just at home! Probably best that I can't...). We have not tried the Free Time (my kids have plenty of electronic devices of their own, so I haven't needed to share My Precious Kindle).

Ebb and Flow

The other day, my husband commented that something was wrong with my blog feed. He hadn't seen a single update in his RSS reader in nearly six months.

Oh.

No, honey. It's not your reader. It's not Blogger. Its the blogger. Its me.

Once upon a time I was full of writing advice and encouragement in the way that childless folk are full of parenting advice. I would see other writers--some multi-published authors, some just starting, like me, who complained about not getting the writing done. They blame it on the muse. On being sick. On being busy.

And I thought: Surely it's not that hard. Surely if you just keep writing, then, well, you won't ever get stuck and give it up. Surely these people are just lazy whiners.

And, like many previously childless folk who eventually have children, I did indeed discover that writing, like parenting, is not always straightforward. Writing doesn't always go "by the book".

I've got plenty of excuses. Plenty of rationales. Plenty people who regularly ask me "What are you working on?". Critique partners who ask, weekly, where my pages are. I am capable of setting measurable goals. I have a Dedicated Office Space (a very pretty one at that). And yet, I have accomplished very very little in over a year.

By "very little", I don't actually mean that I haven't written words. I have actually mostly finished a romantic suspense (The big bad guy has my hero and heroine at gunpoint right now...so the end is in sight!). I have written a short story to tie into The Paris Affair (with no conflict, apparently, according to my critique partners). I have a fantasy novella that I am hemming and hawing over (do I try subbing it to one of many publishers and hope that an odd-length, sweet-romance, traditional fantasy story will intrigue someone, or make it my self-publishing trial run?).  I have ten pages of a sci-fi I've been kicking around for like five years, and a fairly fleshed-out plotline (well, fairly fleshed-out compared to my usual Dora-The-Explorer pantser plotting) for yet another sci-fi that I've also been kicking around forever.

I have written.

But I haven't really accomplished much. And I'm not writing regularly.

It's that last part that's the problem. I'm "writing" for about twenty minutes a week. If that. And sometimes "writing" means reading emails related to my writing, or, like I did this week, updating my website to add a buy link for Kobo. 

I know what happened. I had a few years of being absolutely driven to write. I won two NaNoWriMo's in a year, and got about halfway through two more.  I am sitting on two completed full-lenght manuscripts, my 95% one, my novella, and my short.  I queried, did the RWA contest thing, went to RWA nationals twice and pitched and subbed. I have a critique group. We met in person weekly for like two years and now meet weekly by Skype.

But at the same time, I have two kids and a full-time day job (a career-type job, not something to occupy lonely hours while the kids are at school--and its been a stressful few years at work). We moved, and subsequently owned and paid for two houses at the same time for fifteen months (more stress).

And I sold a book! (Well, sold the manuscript, and then sold, ahem, some number of e- and print-books). There were facebook ads and Google ads and a few blog posts. Social networking and Goodreads giveaways.

In short, I drove myself crazy and then needed a break.  Something had to give, and since I can't ship the kids away for a few months (LOL, tempting though it seems somedays...), and since I can't/won't give up the day job, then writing is what gives.

Am I done writing? Giving up? No.

Am I going to promise, here and now, to write every day? To write three manuscripts a year? To do something else huge and magnificent and inspiring? No.

I am not a balance kind of gal. I don't peanut-butter spread my activities. I can't sign up for writing 100 words, or 500 words, or even 50 every day. For me, the "balance" is more of an ebb and flow. At some points, I will get driven to write and pump out 25 or 50k in a month or two, with one or more stories running through my head as I drive in the car and as I fall asleep every night.  And at some points I will be driven at work and find the day job running through my head as I fall asleep. At some points I just need to tune out, read some books, watch some TV, play games with the kids, laugh with my husband, and accomplish very little. Eventually, all that mind-numbing will quit actually numbing my  mind and I will feel like I have to do something different.

The ebb will flow again. It always does.

Ode to Breakfast

(To the tune of Do-Re-Me from Sound of Music)

Do, a treat, a breakfast treat
Nut, the word to follow Do
Coffee, a drink, I feed myself
Cream, to put in my coffee
So, I think I need caffeine
La, I'm starting to feel buzzed,
Tea, to drink with my donut,
And that will bring us back to Do, Do, Do, Do..

Like Chocolate Pudding Scraped Across Too Much Ham*

There was a time last year where I was totally driven. I was actively running a food blog, drafting a new novella, submitting work to publishers, spit-polishing my house in preparation to sell, exercising regularly (and purchasing a new bikini to celebrate my efforts!).

Now? Not so much. Granted, I’ve had a busy year. I sold a book and got massively distracted by attempts at promotion and bookkeeping.  I moved and got massively distracted by packing and unpacking our junk. The day job has been getting busier—instead of working four days a week and leading a team of 2-4 people (of which I was one), I’ve been averaging five days a week (frequently more than 40 hours) and leading a team of ten people.

We have a house still on the market, which saps my energy just thinking about the mortgage payments, the constant pressure to make sure it is perfect, the constant feedback detailing all of the house’s flaws. We have a new house that is not completely set up the way I want it—mostly because we are spending every spare dimes (and a few that shouldn’t be spared) to pay the mortgage on the old one. That leaves nothing left for landscaping or a few pieces of badly needed furniture (oh how I miss having actual dressers in the master bedroom), or even for contemplating use of the basement.

I think the biggest culprit in the whole litany is that extra day of work. Yes, I know that many people work over forty hours per week, every week. I think the pool of them that do that with two school-age children (who get way too many days off school, IMHO) might be smaller—especially as I have no close-by family to help out in a pinch. The number who work that much, with children, without near family support, and with a second whole job (i.e. writing)—I think I’m in a minority. My particular combination of jobs doesn’t help—engineering and writing are both very cerebral involving lots of logic, scheduling, problem solving, recall of facts, etc. You know, all the same skills I also have to employ at home to help solve the financial puzzle, scheduling nightmare that children-with-extra-curriculars create, help with homework and answer my youngest’s endless stream of  why’s. Some days I wish I were a janitor or a gardener instead.

It is amazing how much saner I used to feel having a dedicated day per week, without people around to distract me (i.e. no husband or kids), where I can run errands or do complex tasks in peace, where I have no one’s schedule but my own to meet. I have given up way too much time--time I used to be able to count on for making phone calls (away from the giant, open cube farm at work where my coworkers can hear every last word), time I used to be able to use for house cleaning, or squeezing in a Zumba class, or pounding out a thousand words on a manuscript, or just staring numbly at the TV to give my brain a break from the constant stress and problem solving of the day job + the mom job + the writing job.

I want to set a deadline for myself. To sign up to finish my current work in progress, to edit last year’s novella, to submit more work to publishers, to do more marketing and attend more meetings and generally feel human again. I also kinda want to crawl under the covers and sleep for another month or two, then spend a couple of months watching dozens of movies, then start running five days a week until I feel physically fit again. But I hate to set goals that I know I can’t meet.

Instead, I think I need a break from goals.

* My title is a quote is from Lord of the Beans, one of our family’s favorite Veggie Tales movies. It’s a hilarious spoof of the first Lord of the Rings and full of literary gems like the appetizing image I have borrowed to describe my current state of mind.

The Business of Writing

Learning to run a writing business is fun in a totally geeky sort of way. Since getting The Call last September, I've dealt with contracts, promotion, taxes, accounting, graphic design, web design, networking....and a little writing also. Each new challenge is scary. Fun-scary. And I have no idea whether I'm doing anything right.

This is the second year that I have claimed writing expenses on our tax return, with no income to go with it :) My first royalty check from The Paris Affair is coming sometime later this winter or early spring. So, I got a nice little warning from TurboTax (our accountant of choice until taxes get too complicated) saying that our audit risk is high. Oops :)

One of my resolutions for this year is to be better organized about tracking income and expenses, so I bought a copy of Peachtree Accounting software. Before you jump on the bandwagon, I will warn you: for my purposes, so far I think it's like hiring a master carpenter to hang some pictures on the wall. Totally overkill as a spreadsheet would be sufficient. But, I found a 2010 version for under $5 on clearance, so the worst I've done is waste my time. And it has a ton of online help that walks you through accounting principles, so I think I"m actually getting a bit of an education. Not bad for the money :)

On the promotion front, I've been trying a variety of approaches while trying to stay in line with my projected income (aka: promoting on the cheap).  I've done a handful of blogs (here, on the Soul Mate Authors group, and a couple of guest blogs elsewhere). I've given away a couple of copies of my book. (I have a giveaway running this week over on the SMP Authors site). I've tried to be on twitter and facebook, but my playtime there has been limited by the day job (where I've been working longer hours than normal) and the night job (where my munchkins deserve better than to see me over the top of my phone or laptop screen).

Also for promotion, I am playing with online ads.  My web hosting service had a bunch of ad credits that I could use, so I've been playing with Facebook and Google ads. I might have Yahoo credit I could claim as well.  It's a bit difficult to see how useful the advertising really is. Authors get a small amount of visibility into Amazon rankings of their books, and my publisher can share stats if I ask. But though I am attempting a few tricks to track which clicks result in sales, I don't know if the ads are helping much. So far, I would bet that if I were paying the ad money out of my own pocket instead of a free promotional credit, that I would probably spend more than I am earning from it. I am treating this as on-the-job-training :)

For online ads, you can either use ugly-looking text-only ads, or come up with fancy-looking graphics. Hiring a graphic designer's not in the budget (though I know a couple of them who would be awesome), so I'm polishing up my Photoshop skills.  And contemplating making Romance Trading Cards.  A lot of authors I know also print bookmarks, and though I'd love to do that (I can never get enough bookmarks), they seem like a strange kind of promo item for a digital release. I might do them anyway, as time permits (maybe with a QR code with the digital buy link?) Hmmm...

The only bad part about all this is that I'm not spending a lot of time writing. My "season" is coming up, though. I typically pump out  a lot of words in November, and then again during Lent. No religious association here, but for some reason the mid Feb-mid April timeframe has worked well for me to really get writing. Late spring and summer have been good times for me to revise.

Bits and Bytes

Today I'm blogging with my fellow Soul Mate authors over at our blog. Stop by and share your thoughts about what writing sounds like to you:
http://smpauthors.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/what-does-writing-sound-like/

Also today, over on my website I'm encouraging all readers to come over to Goodreads. Its a great place to share what you're reading and see recommendations from others. Send me a friend request! I love getting a peek into everyone else's bookshelves. 

Or join the Goodreads 2012 writing challenge.  I'm attempting to read 25 books this year. Shameful admission: Last year I said I'd read 50. I didn't claim half that many, although I think I forgot to mark a bunch. But I also packed and purged during the great house move, so I cannot prove my claim. This year, I pledge to do better. (And I installed their android app on my phone--scanning book bar codes can keep me amused for a good long time...)

Decisions, Decisions

I have been a tad overwhelmed lately. New house. Old house still on the market. Big deadline at work. Overtime. Working weekends. Helping judge my RWA chapter's annual contest. Attempting to find time to write (and failing).

I've also got a lot of things going on blog-wise.  In addition to this blog, I started a food-focused one this year, and I have maintained one for almost 6 years related to all things motherhood. Plus I had a brilliant idea about a photo blog. And I have my author website. Oh yeah, and a bunch of authors from my publisher started a blog. And facebook (there are now two of me on there...one author-me, one just me). And twitter. And google+.

And about a million emails a day from various RWA loops. And kid stuff.

And I'm getting kinda overwhelmed. :(

So now I get to decide which of my darlings to give up (which of my writing darlings...the living, breathing ones come before all else). *sigh* 

No, I haven't decided yet which things will fall by the wayside. Do I ditch this blog and send ya'll to my website? Maybe. Do I smash together motherhood and baking? Maybe. Do I just archive the whole mess, maybe pay some service to print me a copy for my keeper shelf and take them all down? Maybe.

Maybe I should quit my day job and be a professional blogger. Just kidding :) I'm thinking the tiny amount of advertising that I've earned this year (not yet enough for them to cut me a check...) is not exactly going to pay the mortgage.

In the mean time, I hope ya'll are patient. Or that you hunt me down elsewhere

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You...

My life has been hectic lately. Moving between houses is a pain worse than childbirth. At least in childbirth you have the option of meds to help you zone out. Somehow I don't think drugs would have been beneficial.

Hooray, I have a beautiful new home.
Hooray, I have my own office.
Hooray, I have been without internet service for a month.

Wait, what?

Yeah, well, you'd think it would be easy for the cable company to flip a switch and click a few keys and change the billing address. But no. A month, people. The kids have learned to live without Mythbusters and iCarly. Thank goodness for fancy smartphones that can check email.

In the middle of the boxes (we shall be unpacking for years), the chaos (did I mention 2 kids, 2 cats, a birthday party and an out-of-town funeral), I have some good news.

Nope, haven't been writing. That would be really good news. I've been plotting and dreaming, though, which might just be close enough to actual writing to count.

My news is better. But  you'll have to check back later to find out what it is...

When the Past Catches Up With You

I have been uncharacteristically quiet on my blog lately. I'm not saying that for your benefit, but for my own. I keep sensing that I should be writing, but other things are coming first in my life. Unfortunately, that goes for my fiction as well as my ramblings.

Our home life is upside down lately as we prepare to move to a new house in the metro area. Buying a house, selling a house, boxing and sorting and organizing our mountain of junk, and preparing for a new school year have taken over my creative energy. And, in typical Kristi fashion, no matter how much planning I do ahead of time, timelines change drastically. In this case we are closing on the new house the same week we originally had set as the target for getting the old one on the market, and doing it without a buyer on our current house. So there is also a rush job to get our existing house spit-shined and tuned up for buyers. We hadn't planned on stumbling across the new house, complete with 99% of our wish list and at a price we couldn't argue with, when we did.

Note: this is why I'm not a plotter. I never know when that perfect plot point is going to surface from the blackhole of my brain and I just frustrate myself by wasting time creating detailed plans that I know will change.

In the middle of this chaos, we made a trip to my mom's house. She is in the middle of a similar clean-out/re-org process as she and her fiancé prepare to combine two households. She presented me with a box of mementos that I had left when I went away to college. Sifting through that box was quite the memory trip. It was full of photos and scrap books and cards and school papers.
I learned a few things about myself that I had forgotten, things that directly relate to how I write and how I feel about my writing. The first thing I noticed was how many certificates I had. I kept everything--every perfect attendance award, every science fair medal, every English department award. And there are a lot in that box. I'm not saying that to show off my pre-college mental prowess. But all of the official, foil-embossed recognition was clearly important to me. So important that I have a whole scrapbook full of little besides merit awards.

When I contrast that to my college days, my daytime career, and my writing work, there is a marked contrast. Not that I'm a slouch or lazy or an underachiever. But I used to get more awards in a single year of high school than I've probably gotten in the seventeen years since I graduated. That has been an eye opener. It also might help explain how my views of myself changed in college and beyond (Did I ever mention I was once pre-med? Note I'm not a doctor. Amazing how humbling getting a few C's can be for the ol' ego...)
It has also been a struggle in my writing because I did not just breeze into in and start collecting awards. I have had to come to grips with the fact that my writing wasn't perfect. Some of what I have written might actually suck. Badly. I also have to learn to handle the subjectivity of the field. On one hand, contest results and feedback is colored by personal preferences of the judge, agent, or editor. On the other hand, sometimes their feedback isn't just personal preference but a reflection of a weakness in my skillset.
It's not them, it's me.

It kills part of me to admit that--the part of me with that filled that scrapbook full of tangible evidence of someone's approval. But the (slightly) more grown-up part knows that I should not quit writing because I don't win contests. My writing has improved and continues to improve. And I will be much prouder of my eventual accomplishments for having worked so hard to achieve them (thinking optimistically here).
The other thing that I learned (or rather, re-learned) about myself was a lot more fun and a lot less self-reflective. I have been plotting romance novels in my head for years. Decades actually. Plotting as I try to fall asleep. Plotting while I drive. But I didn't think that I'd ever written any of the ideas down until NaNoWriMo of 2007.

I was wrong.

Tucked away in my treasure box was a spiral notebook with half a dozen plot ideas. I had character notes, settings, even the beginnings of scenes. Amusingly, the style of those notes is virtually identical to my more recent idea notebooks. And every one of them is a romance. I guess I really was one of those writers who started young. But somehow life and college and jobs and a million other excuses got in the way. Excuses like moving to new houses.

#Rapture If the world is going to end today, why is everyone having a party?

Today is one of those scheduling nightmares where everyone has something going on that I want and/or need to attend.

A wedding. In Texas.
A first birthday party
A graduation party
A writer's workshop
Uniform fitting/ordering day for the kids' school
A special performance by my kids' gymnastics class

I think there was more but I have stopped opening emails that mention May and 21.

Sheesh.

I'm on the plane now (safely on the ground and happily using my phone's internet connection). I chose the wedding in Texas. My husband and kids are knocking out several other items on the list, and there were a couple that we just couldn't do. I am hoping to use some of my travel time to write. Note I am already in the middle of the travelling and have not written a word yet. Of fiction. Blogging is, for me, procrastination.

I am also suffering a bad case of the crazies, with deadlines at the day job looming on the horizon and prepping myself for the travel and driving myself crazy with what-ifs on the house front (Do we move now or next year? Do we build? Buy historic? A fixer-uppper? Pull the kids from their private school and head a completely different direction? Will our even house sell?)

I'm not sure I have the focus right now to write anything but my own angst, but now that I've powered the netbook on, I feel like I should try. Maybe. After I have to turn it back off again for takeoff...

Procrastination

Jean M Auel signing at the St. Louis County Public Library

I haven't written a word in 3 weeks. One might think that having 6 work days off in a row would equal mega word counts or at least some serious slash-and-burn editing. One might not be counting on the dual time-sucks that are parenting and home ownership.

In the mean time, I haven't been altogether useless in my writing-related endeavors. I have added to the slush piles of an undisclosed number of agents and/or editors. I have pondered whether, when, and how delicately to nudge other long-standing slush-pile owners about the fate of my mulch fodder. I have done a bit of critiquing for friends. I have finished a couple of books, and started a couple more.

Also, I attended a book signing tonight by Jean M Auel (in the photo) and hauled along my spiffy new hardcover of The Land of Painted Caves and two crummy paperbacks (Clan of the Cave Bear and Valley of the Horses). She is fascinating to listen to and very pleasant, even to tongue-tied fangirls at the end of the line with three mis-matched books. Hey, she's a writer, and she talked about writing. That counts as writing, right?

On the reading front, I have finished:
Impulsive by Helen Kay Dimon. I've seen her name sprinkled through the blogosphere for the past few years, and finally, impulsively, picked up a copy of this contemporary romance from Brava at my local library. It was a fast read (a good thing given my recent history with late fines) and I would definitely read more from her.

Holiday Bound by Beth Kerry. I picked this up as a free read on Amazon and read it entirely on the Kindle app on my Evo. It was...not exactly my style. It was well written, but I think I would have enjoyed it more as a normal contemporary romance without the bondage. But I need to read more shorter pieces to get a feel for the pacing and level of conflict, since I feel like I don't quite "get" how novellas are structured yet.

A book on Wordpress from a Borders that is going out of business, purchased at a hefty discount along with: a book on Flash, a couple of magazines that I typically wouldn't shell out for, and some new CD's of music to write by-- Enigma greatest hits and the sound track to Lord of the Rings. The Wordpress book was eh. Would have been more helpful a year ago, but at least it's a reference that I can flip through fast (yes, all the info is probably online but I skim paper much faster than search engine results...)

And I'm about halfway through the latest Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson. Given how thick the book is, halfway almost counts as a book completion, doesn't it? Not that its difficult reading. The book flows wonderfully and is tying up plot threads left and right in ways that are making me very happy and keeping me reading for more. The end is in sight, though it's not here yet.

Plus, I'm reading a Sci Fi Romance novella for a RWA chapter mate for review (and loving it...will probably post the review here as well as in our newsletter, etc), and have Jean M Auel's latest book recently arrived and sitting at the top of my TBR pile.

Congratulations to all the Golden Heart and Rita finalists!

Especially to Pat Rice, from my home chapter of MORWA for her nomination for The Wicked Wyckerly.

It is also cool to see that not just one but two sci fi romances are up for the GH in paranormal. Maybe it's because I pay more attention, now that I have a completed one that I'm shopping, but I am hearing more and more buzz about sci fi romances the last year or so. Maybe aliens, or at least starship captains, are the next vampires.  No, I didn't submit my aliens to the GH this year, so there was no competition.

For myself, it's back to writing. And editing. And submitting. And yes, I did end up baking a cake this morning to help calm my nerves...

#RitaGH

Today's the day. Are you nervous? I totally am.

I don't think I have much chance of getting the call. I'd love to, but all the various contest feedback on my entry was so mixed last year, that I'm not holding my breath. (And trying hard not to hyperventilate either).

I do, however, have high hopes for a couple of dear friends and crit partners. Two of them are out of town or I'd suggest a little Happy Hour tonight to drown our cheers & sorrows.

Silly, silly Kristi. I tell myself that I'm not worried, or interested, and that I'll just wait till 2 and scan the final list looking for names I know. But all morning long I've had my cell phone in my hand or in my pocket.

See, this is why I've mostly sworn off contests for the year. Here I am on spring break with the kids, and I haven't managed to write two words all week. I did a little bit of querying, but that's like scouring an open would with rubbing alcohol and salt. The waiting is a total motivation killer, and the letdown afterwards is almost worse.

I'd love to settle my nerves with chocolate, but I gave it up for Lent. Or wine, but it's not even 9AM and I have two small children in the house. I'd go for a brisk walk, but it's snowing outside. (Yes, snow. Giant softball sized hunks falling from the sky. In late March. Grr). Maybe I should go bake something.  And have a cup of tea. I think I have a box of Tazo Calm around here somewhere...

Attention Romance Writer-Bloggers:

Quit apologizing in your blogs for being "late".

I don't care if you have a set schedule. I don't care if you're in a lineup with 30 NYT bestsellers and you're the newbie and you feel you owe 150% of your debut release success to the group blog and Holy Smokes you forgot to post your latest witty-little-slice-of-a-writers-life for FOUR WHOLE HOURS!

Don't tell me about it. No excuses. Just blog like there's nothing amiss.

I read a lot of blogs. If I leave Google Reader unattended for an entire weekend, my unread pile grows to over 400 posts. That's a LOT of posts. Honestly, I have no flipping clue whose day it is to post or by what time (and timezone) you've all agreed to post your Call Story/Recipe/Editor Interview. And besides, the beauty of blog posts and RSS and reader apps is that I, the reader, see your content on MY schedule. I don't sit around my inbox waiting for the magic "ding". I'm not tuning in on the TV at the time printed in the Sunday paper.

I guess I'm annoyed because I must have read a dozen posts this week alone that started out with "I apologize for being late to blog but...". If you're feeling ashamed of your tardiness, send a private email to your fellow blog partners asking for their forgiveness. But I am willing to bet a soda (the kind that comes in a can, shipping not included) that 99% of your loyal blog readers won't bat an eye. The other 1% are probably scary stalker-types who will have a detailed log of every euphemism for the male genetalia you've ever written in a love scene and clippings of your fingernails, and really, do you want to enable that sort of obsessive behavior?

More Books, and experiments in blogland

For your reading pleasure, two posts in one.

First off, two more books to move to my ABR (Already Been Read) pile from my TBR pile:

Deep Breath
by Alison Kent. I didn't discover Alison Kent until a couple of years ago when I started hunting down writers' blogs. I won a copy of one of her SG-5 (At Risk) books on her blog, and was quickly hooked, despite the fact that neither contemporary romances nor romantic suspense were at the top of my favorite genres at the time. I think I've read 4 or 5 of the books in the series so far.  Deep Breath brings yet another of her hunky spy guys, and was just as good as all the rest. I am beginning to worry that I'm going to run out of hot spy heroes soon...

Make Mine Midnight by Annmarie McKenna. This one is an erotica (M/M/F) novella by one of the talented writers I met through MORWA. I am somewhat embarassed to admit that its the first of her's I've read so far, and I can see why so many people rave about her writing.

***

On a completely different note, I've been experimenting with writing things in addition to romance. For years I've maintained a blog about myself as a working mom where I jabber about cooking and housekeeping and work and school and my kids. I've recently added another blog just for the cooking. It's called Year of the Pancake in honor of the hundreds of pancakes I make every year. I'm using that space to document my recipes and adventures in the kitchen.

On that blog, I'm also playing with adding some basic paid ads (going super-basic with Google Adsense and Amazon). I'm not exactly expecting to get rich (I wonder if I'll make enough for an extra mocha by the end of the year). But the cooking blog provides a nice contained little space for me to play around with different options. If you're interested at all in cooking and baking, feel free to wander over, say hi, maybe leave a comment. :)

2011 Books: In Too Deep

Ok, so I thought I would be reading books from my TBR pile (which is more of a tower than a pile, and a leaning tower at that). Except last Friday my youngest begged to go to the library. I cannot turn down a 3-year old with big blue eyes and a fondness for books.

That same 3-year old with the baby blues did not spend the entire time running in circles and pulling random books off of random shelves. I was able to mostly contain him to the children's section. This time.

And the children's section is right next to the large shelf full of new releases. And there, staring straight at me from the new releases was Jayne Krentz's other newest book.

So, I read another one. In print (sorry little Sony). But it was free this time. Well, technically I spend a lot on late fees (especially for kids books that get mixed up in the wrong shelf at home....)

In Too Deep is a contemporary in her multi-pen-name, multi-time-line, multi-planet Arcane series of novels. This one is Fallon's story, the eternally grumpy head of J&J. Like all of Krentz/Castle/Quick's other Arcane books, this one is half paranormal mystery half romance. I liked it quite a bit better than Midnight Crystal. I think that her characters, especially the hero, Fallon, were better developed in this one. And Fallon has appeared in several of the previous Krentz Arcane novels, either on the page or by cell phone. And he is a dark, brooding type of hero. My favorite type :)

Whatever the reason, this book had all of the usual Krentz/Quick/Castle magic.  I was incredibly happy that my kids actually played quietly today without direct parental supervision, and on day 2 of the great non-blizzard-of-2011-whose-paltry-3-inches-of-snow-still-left-us-housebound.  I could barely put it down.

Option: Failure

I have declared failure on NaNoWriMo for this year. I didn't even get close, By not even close, I mean I've written less than 16,000 words.

Life in November sucked. Instead of putting in extra hours writing, I had to put in extra hours at the day job. So many hours that I actually bumped into my upper limit (crazy timekeeping system won't let a "part-time" person record more than 40 hours in a week). Funny, but the only "extra" time I got to myself to write was on the days where I came to work late so that I wouldn't accidentally work too long and end up volunteering my time. The job is important for a variety of reasons, but I won't do it for free. There were a couple of other issues around the house that sapped all the creative energy right out of me during much of the time I wasn't at work.

By the time Thanksgiving came around, I was at about 13,000 words. I was off work all week because my oldest gets an entire week off from school every Thanksgiving. I could have made the decision to plop her in front of the computer, the TV, the Wii, or sent her to play Barbies for several hours each day so I could write. Instead, I let my mom-guilt decide for me and not only had a 6-year old home with me, but her (very active and tricksy) 3-year old brother too. We had a great time going to the St. Louis Science Center, and I got the kids to help clean house (honestly, I did...Grandma's visits makes for great motivation). We hosted T-day dinner at our house and I got to spend a day in the kitchen happily cooking with my Mom and baby sister for company (and for extra hands with either the food or the kiddos). The week was really quite nice, as long as I ignored the whining from my characters about why I wasn't spending any quality time with *them*.
 
I haven't yet put my two manuscript pieces together (my NaNo work was in a separate file for record-keeping), but I think I am at around 30-40,000 words total on that book (out of a projected 90-120k words...yep, it's a long one, by design). Not bad for a yearly total, especially as I wrote 25,000 of my contemporary manuscript this year and did a massive editing job on my sci fi. And I have fragments of other stuff in progress (including a "short" story that might end up as a full manuscript at the rate it's going).
2010 won't have been a total failure as far as writing goes. Not by a long shot. It was just November that kicked my butt.