Before I get distracted (again) by emails, promo, and my latest book, I thought I’d tell you about my new office away from home.
 
Ever since my DH lost his job, I lost my peace and quiet, not to mention time in my home office. He follows me everywhere out of boredom when he’s not actively looking for work. Needless to say, my writing has slowed to a crawl despite my ever-increasing “talks” with him about leaving me alone for a few hours.
 
Desperation began to seep into my brain. Crazy schemes like drugging him into somnolence, killing him and burying him under the vegetable garden, and booting him out of the house were hatched and discarded.
 
More viable plans like getting up early (my best bio-rhythm is for morning hours and working late at night is hopeless, trust me) failed. He’d awaken, feel the empty place next to him, and come find me!
 
I don’t know about anyone else, but my income has been affected by the sluggish economy. I have to work to pay some of the bills. I can’t just take time off. I have deadlines to make, but can’t afford a leased office space, not even a shared one. (more…)

Today we lost two people who were influential to the last of the baby boomers.  Farrah Fawcett succumbed to anal cancer today at the age of 62.  Michael Jackson presumably has passed from cardiac arrest just shy of his 51st birthday (Aug. 29th).

Farrah’s stint on Charlie’s Angels brought about the popularity of the layered, blow-dryer look, her locks fabulous.  She also brought attention to Spousal Abuse with her portrayal of a battered wife in “The Burning Bed.”

Michael’s influence on music is as important as that of Elvis.  He made music lyrical again, imbued it with energy and creativity.  His physical ability to do amazing things with dance is still emulated.

Both Farrah and Michael endured a lot of pain, physical, mental, and emotional.  Perhaps now they are enjoying the peace that only a spirit freed of its earthly trappings can have.

May they both rest in that newfound freedom.

If any of you are on Twitter, Twitter Search #RWAFAIL and/or #RWACHANGE. If you missed it, you should read RWA President Pershing’s comments about what a bunch of hacks e-published authors are:

http://espan-rwa.com/rwa-president-pershing-responds/

I’m usually one of the last to abandon ship, but I did so this year. This shows I made the right decision.

Although all of us here know what a fiasco Trisk was, it wasn’t because it was an electronic publisher. It was a publisher that made bad decisions and had a few other issues. E publishers do come and go, and guess what, so do NY Print publishers. I guess Ms. Pershing hasn’t been reading Publisher’s Weekly recently. Pubs out of business, pubs restructuring, pubs laying off, pubs “down-sizing” their editoral and promotional staffs.

I’ve never been ashamed or sad that I choose to e publish. A) it was my choice B) My conscious feels better about being kinder to our planet C) My writing buddies made here and at other e houses have been as supportive if not more so, than any of the “published” RWA recognized authors I’ve associated with.

E Publishers come in all sizes; EC being the biggest, companies like my Aspen being among the smaller. I’m pretty sure that it is also true of print publishers (ok, so I’m being sarcastic)…and if you were to compare similar tiers in big houses to indie houses you’d probably see the same slide in royalties.

The insistance of making e companies do business the print way is ludicrous. It is barely working for the print companies right now. I don’t know about anyone else, but I was taught to emulate SUCCESSFUL models not failures. Pershing wants epublishers to throw money at authors and thus use that standard as proof that a publishing company is really a publishing company and that an author is really an author.  Another business model that doesn’t apply to e-books and one that has outlived its usefulness (rather like returns).  This is truly a case of comparing apples to oranges. Okay, so both are fruits, and other than the seeds it is pretty much where the similarity ends. Why does RWA insist on comparing ebooks to print books?

They are not the same and it is about time RWA tried trying to make this square peg fit in their round hole.

Lucynda Storey
www.LucyndaStorey.com