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California Screaming: Why I hate living in the Bay Area

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Categories: personal gripes, Tags: , ,

A Bay Area Million Dollar Mansion

File this one under “personal life” and “little to do with writing.” But, hey, I resolved a few months ago to be sincere and personal on this here blog, and this is what I’m currently dealing with so, here it goes…

I hate living in the Bay Area. I know. Whenever I say this, people tend to jump back in horror and disbelief, as though I’ve just said I don’t find fluffy, frolicking puppies the least bit cute and/or cuddly or that I’ve never watched TV. But that’s the truth of it, so there it is.

And it’s not that it isn’t beautiful, or that the culture doesn’t rock. I love all the quirky parts of San Francisco. I love walking the beaches of the Central Coast. I even like fact that Trick-or-Treating here has no set schedule. But, oy, what you must endure to stay here.

We moved here early in 2000, during the tech boom. I was newly graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Absolutely No Job Market For It, and my husband, an engineer several times over, was recruited by one of Silicon Valley’s Fortune 500 companies to join their new college graduate program. (An aside: Turns out if you get a PhD in something useful, people will actually want to employ you. Wish someone had told me earlier, instead of that “study whatever you want, whatever interests you. If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life” scam. Please, if you’re reading this and are either in the early stages of academic pursuit or have a child on that path, don’t feed them this bullshit. Yes, take a few classes in what interests you, but you better be sure your ass is getting a degree in Accounting or Material Science or even Education. College is not a place for you to broaden your mind, it’s a place for you to lay the foundation of a killer resumé. Don’t buy in to all that feel good “don’t worry about a major, just enjoy the experience” crap. Unless your family is wealthy or you’re truly a one-in-a-million person who will do well no matter what, you can’t squander hard earned money entertaining your intellect to earn a useless piece of paper. Books are for broadening your mind, college is for making you motherfricking employable. And don’t forget, all those student loans the government foists upon you need to be paid back. But I digress…)

I was reluctant to move to such a different part of the country. In the midst of the Tech Boom, however, Silicon Valley was a perfect place for my husband to grow his career. Back then, we said if we don’t like it, we’d just spend a year or two then move on to somewhere else. I started hating it about the third week in, when I was spending 6-8 hours a day visiting apartments in the area and couldn’t find one available. Back in those days, property managers were enjoying 95% occupancy rates and bringing in tons of money from the boomers, whose companies in turn were handing out signing bonuses like they were Kleenex. It took us six weeks of living in a hotel before we were finally able to find a two bedroom apartment we could afford with our pay. Which was twenty miles away from my job. Which, allowing for Silicon Valley traffic, meant I was spending 2-3 hours per day commuting in backups thicker than a polar bear’s fur.

Since back then, housing and weather has continued to be the bane of my existence. Yes, I actually hate Bay Area weather. Every day is so nice, natives take it for granted and don’t appreciate it. I want to slap a bagpipe when I hear audacious Californians complaining about how cold it is today (It’s only 50!) or how hard it’s “storming” (meaning there’s moderate steady rain and maybe a roll of thunder). These spoiled dolts have no idea what a real storm is, when you wake up at 3 AM to the sound of sirens and have to run outside your house through horizontal rain, throw open the doors to your storm cellar, and hope it passes before the rats and spiders get too brave to sample the freshly-laid out buffet.

Several years ago we decided to move out of our underwater home (which lost over 100,000 in value when the housing bubble burst) to a rental in a town with good public schools, “saving” us $2000/month in private school tuition. The property manager assured us she had no intentions of selling, and that we could stay in the house for four years, i.e., long enough to get our older daughter through Ultra Competitive But Highly Recognized High School. (The cheerleaders’ chants didn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but go UCBHRHS!) In exchange for her assurance (yes, which we STUPIDLY did not get in writing because, damn, we’re honest people and expect others to be as well), we agreed to do some minor repairs and upgrades in the rental house. What happened next was my fault. I know my husband; he’s not a half-ass type of guy. My plan was to repaint a few rooms and put new carpet in a small area of about 75 sq feet. Hub’s actions took three months of work and 25,000. And, yup, you can guess what happened. As soon as we had the house all fixed up and livable (because it was a piece of crap before), the owner moved overseas, put the house on the market advertising all the upgrades we did, and made a huge profit.

And now, here we are. We’re at the end of our lease on a house that’s already slighted us. Again, we must find another rental so that my kids can finish out in their current schools. (Turns out UCBHRHS is very touchy about kids living in the district, to the point where they have several full time detectives on staff to follow up on tips saying people aren’t.) With the new wave of cash croppers bringing in their fortunes from Asia, Google, Facebook, and a handful of other companies you never heard of, it’s gotten to a point where people aren’t only bidding to buy a house, they’re bidding to rent, all with seamlessly endless supplies of cash. We’ve been looking for a new rental for months, and are out of time. Add to this that we have a small dog. Telling landlords in our area you have a dog is like telling an Ancient Phoenician innkeeper that you’re a leper.

We have finally been offered a house. Our rent is going up 50%. My mom’s annual total mortgage payment back in Michigan runs about $4000. My monthly rent will be more than my Mom’s annual mortgage by half. You do the math.

So, yes, I hate living in the Bay Area and I hate the Life Californian. But I feel for the stability of my children I’m obligated to stay here until they finish their high school educations. The day after my younger child finishes high school, I will be packing a moving truck and getting the hell out of here. Me and the dog. Four years, 9 months, and counting….

 

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Hey, promo! Promo Italiano!

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Categories: events, Tags: ,

I don’t speak Italian. Oh, that will be painfully clear when you watch this. I can read it and understand it with some mid-level ability, but I wanted to apologize to people who do speak this language. This promo is made in the spirit of hilarity and fun.

SFINE is just 16 days away. While registration is full, there is a very small wait list. If you add your name soon, you’ll very likely get admitted, so do. It’s a great line up of authors, and sure to be a Jim Dandy of a time.

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Just because you’re screaming in a vacuum doesn’t mean you’ve lost your voice.

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Categories: advice, opinions, self-publishing how to

This post goes out to all my thinking-about-it or struggling-to-make-it-happen writers out there.

No one will write your story but you.

Oh my goddess in tights, there are a lot of books coming out right now. And that’s probably because everyone and their sister’s half-cousin’s neighbor’s babysitter is suddenly an author. And that’s…. great. Really, I mean that. Language is what separates us from the beasties, my poppets, and the written form of it, the ability to export and make static that which would otherwise be just a passing thought and existent solely unto itself, is a superb gift and opportunity I wish more people would embrace.

And yet, writing is more than an artistic expression for me; it’s also a source of income.  So the steep, steep, STEEP increase over the last year of competition in the marketplace is more than a little alarming. More frustrating still, is looking at some of the titles that are coming out of nowhere and shooting up the charts. Don’t get me wrong, I know myself well enough to know I’m a contrary sort. What I like isn’t usually what everyone is going gaga over. Still, I can usually look at these titles with large followings and at least understand what the appeal may be. But lately? Lately I see a cascade of books with cookie cutter plots and more typos than a bad English translation on a box of Chinese shampoo, and I just have to stare and shrug and wonder what the hell I’m doing by not following the trend.

I’m not Tolstoy or Hugo. I think we can all agree on that. I don’t want to be a literary giant. (Cue the heckler shouting, “Then you have nothing to worry about!”) But in the genres in which I write – primarily romance and speculative fiction – I do long for respect and enough visibility for readers to see and form a fair opinion of my work. In the current environment, however, I question how one does that while still holding themselves to a higher standard.  You see, I refuse to cheapen my stories, characters, or the quality of my writing just to fit the mold of what is the hot plot du jour.

But I remind myself, I am doing this as a business. If this is what the market expects, it seems a really bad business decision to ignore that, doesn’t it?

Well, yes, and no. See, there’s something that cannot be forgotten in all this. No one can write your story but you. And likewise, you can’t write someone else’s story. I can’t write the type of stories that are burning up the book world these days. So, my only options are quit, or persevere doing what I know I can do, writing what I know I can (and love to) write. So, yes, even though my sales are small and the type of success so many out-of-the-blue authors are experiencing is beyond me, I’ll keep yelling into that vacuum and hoping. There’s one thing I know for certain: nature hates a vacuum. And maybe, just maybe, someday I’ll be the one who fills it.

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#rt13 (romantic times event) wrap up

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Categories: events

I first went to RT two years ago, in 2011 when it was held in Los Angeles. (I wrote a post about it back then, if you’re interested.) Of the various writer workshops/events I’ve attended through the years, it was the most helpful. Hence, when everything worked out for me to attend again this year, I leaped at the opportunity. Since two years ago, self-publishing has grown to be on par with traditional publishing, and I’ve had quite a bit of experience in the interim and was hoping to sit in on some panels that had more focus in craft than those geared towards the “aspiring writer” I was more or less back then.

This concludes the professional part of my post.

RT13, not going to lie, rocked my ever-starched socks off. The food, the friends, the frolicking…. I went in with the best of intentions, wanting to earn every penny of my tax write-off. Arriving on Tuesday afternoon, I was already finding rationales by Wednesday morning about why hanging out with my friends networking was just as legit a use of my time as sitting in craft or marketing sessions.

Let’s get one thing clear: I have respect for any person who takes the time and effort to write a novel, and the courage to put it out for public consumption. But beyond that, I *LOVE* some of my fellow writers who’ve become as close to family for me, despite the fact that our in-person meetings have been brief or heretofore non-existent. Abbi Glines, Colleen Hoover-> two mouths of the south with hearts as big as boulders and side-splitting wit. Lani Wendt Young could make a statue double over laughing. (Please go read about what happens when a Samoan Girl meets an unseasonable snowfall in May at her blog.) Tine Reber takes loyalty among friends to another level. (And was able to find a party bus for 10+ hungry writers with just a few hours notice.)  El James demonstrated how being one of the most famous people in the world doesn’t destroy your sense of whimsy and your humility, but may gift you with hugging superpowers. Jamie McGuire and Nicole Williams are automatic confidants, the type of people you feel as if you’ve known forever, and hope that you always will. Elizabeth Hunter is my sister in UF, and an inspiration on many other fronts. Tammara Webber’s grace rivals her beauty.  And I’m positive now Angie Stanton and I are going to grow old together.

I also crossed paths with a few other sweethearts in an all-too-brief capacity. Dina Silver, Rebecca Donovan, Steph Campbell, Jillian Dodd, Elizabeth Reyes, Michelle Manikin, Cora Cormac, Lisa (sorry, Lisa, I’ve forgotten your last name :( ): I treasure meeting all of you and hope it’s not for the last time. (Actually, some of y’all are signed up for SFINE, so yay!)

And of course, I’m also a reader, and had some uber fan moments, including meeting FINALLY the incomparable Alice Clayton and Saranna DeWylde. And I may have had a mini-stroke when Delilah Marvelle recognized me.

And yes, I *did* end up going to some useful sessions, so I’ll be implementing those lessons here in the next few months. I promise. Well, I promise to try.

And perhaps one of the BIGGEST thrills for me was getting to meet, hug, and thank in person Melissa Perea. In a particularly dark period early last year, I had decided to renounce writing and pull all my works. By chance, or perhaps by fate, that day I was to pull, Melissa posted her review of A Love by Any Measure. Her inspired and complimentary words convinced me to give it another go. She truly saved my writing career.

I’m still in my post-RT haze, but all I can add to all this is, I can’t wait for NOLA in 2014. 

 

 

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Fit to print?: My take on Createspace vs. Lightning Source

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Categories: process, self-publishing how to, Writing Tips and Resources, Tags: ,

In my new goal to help share what I’ve learned about self-publishing over the last few years, I thought this should be the first subject I address. It’s the question that I get referrals from other authors on the most consistently.

Firstly, as a self-publishing author, you might be wondering if it’s necessary to have a paperback at all. Well, it’s up to you. It’s not necessary, per se, but there’s still a not-so-insignificant community of readers who are die-hard lovers of paper. For them, ebooks just hold no appeal, either because they enjoy the tactile experience, because they like to interact with the book on a physical level (EW! I don’t mean that way. I mean, like highlighting or making margin notes.), or because they simply don’t care for technology or don’t have disposable income enough to invest in an ereader.

As an indie/self-published author, the monster’s share of your sales are going to be in ebook format. However, if you don’t have your novel-sized books available for sale in paperback, you’re missing on a market of dedicated readers. And like ebooks, getting your work into print is relatively simple. Whereas only a few years ago, self-publishing a paperback would have required an investment of thousands of dollars from an author, the process now can be done for almost nothing, using Print-On-Demand (POD) vendors. There are many POD operations including LuLu or Blurb.com, but if you’re really looking for full-scale production and distribution, your best bets are either Createspace (an Amazon company, hereafter referred to as CS) or Lightning Source, Inc. (hereafter referred to as LSI). The question then comes to, which one should you use?

Well, firstly, you should know it isn’t necessarily an either/or question. Both CS and LSI are non-exclusive, meaning if you wanted to, you could release the same book through both vendors. Based on my experience, however, LSI holds the clear advantage and suits best most (but not all) situations.

  • They are part of the Ingram Content Group.

And that means awesome distribution. In fact, Ingram is one of the primary distributors of paperbacks in the world; almost any book site or bookseller can obtain stock through them. (CS offers customers the option of listing a book in the Ingram catalog, but it costs you extra and takes a huge chunk out of each sale.)

  • You have (almost) total control over your wholesale discount.

Traditionally to be stocked by a bookstore or retail outlet, a 40-50% discount off of retail is required. i.e. If your book has a cover price of $10, they’ll buy the copy from you for $5-$6. Your royalty is the difference between this wholesale price and print cost. For this reason, until POD, self and small publishers had to inflate the cover price of a paperback in order to achieve any profit. CS’s standard wholesale rate is 40% when vended through Amazon. (It’s lower if the reader purchases through the CS store, but believe me, hardly any one does and Amazon doesn’t like to compete with itself so they make the CS not so attractive.) LSI lets you set the rate, as low as 20%. This INCLUDES sales made through Amazon. Mind you, at 20%, a bookstore will not be stocking your book. However, if your marketplace for paperback sales is primarily online, what the hell do you care? This lower wholesale discount allows you to lower the price of your paperback without cutting into your royalties. You can also change your wholesale rate and retail price, so if your book goes viral and you do want to make it practical for bookstores to order, you can adjust your rate and price accordingly.

  • Quality is king.

This isn’t to say the CS-printed books are bad quality. I’m only saying that in my opinion and experience, LSI prints are better.

  • It’s all about the options baby.

Both CS and LSI offer customers most size formats common in the market today. LSI offers more. LSI also offers hardback printing and matte finishes on paperbacks. (FYI: I know that CS is also trying to bring this option online.)

  • Show me the money!

Bottom line: you’re going to make better royalties using LSI, and that’s mostly because of the control you have over your wholesale discount. Here’s an example: using CS’s royalty calculator, a sale of a copy of my historical romance, A Love by Any Measure, currently priced at $11.50 would net me about $1.92/copy when sold through Amazon, and about a loss of .38/copy if sold through expanded distribution (a non-Amazon site via Amazon). (There is a higher profit on the CS store, but as mentioned, hardly anyone buys there.) Selecting at 20% wholesale discount, my profit per copy via LSI is around $3.83, regardless of where that book sells.

  • Okay, so why isn’t LSI always the better option?

As I said, I’ve used both CS and LSI, and the reason isn’t merely because of all these advantages. There are times when CS is a better option. There are a few disadvantages to going with LSI, namely:

  1. Although author copies are cheaper than with CS, the shipping tends to be more and takes longer to deliver.
  2. With LSI, you must provide your own ISBNs. (CS lets you buy them cheap, keeping in mind they’re really leasing them to you, not selling it to you outright.) ISBNs in small numbers aren’t cheap. A pack of 10 will cost you around $250.
  3. Format standards with LSI are more complex. You’ll either need a bit of computer knowledge or have a professional formatter properly create a file that meets LSI’s guidelines.
  4. There’s more upfront cost and wait with LSI. Your first publication with LSI will take at least 4 if not 6 weeks before going live. (Subsequent works barring problems generally process in 5 business days.) They charge $75 for the initial publishing ($37.50 for the interior, $37.50 for the cover), plus $12/year/title to list the book in the Ingrams catalog. If you discover a mistake or want to change your cover, there’s a $40 fee each time you do so.

So, in the end, CS does make sense if you’re new and want to limit your financial exposure, or if you believe there will be a very limited market for your books in paperback. I used CS when I released a novella that I was certain would generally have small sales (it was a ‘just for fun’ type of book) and knowing I’d never sell enough copies to make back the printing costs.

Comments, questions, experience to share?

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ONCE YOU GO DEMON now L*I*V*E!

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Categories: new release, once you go demon, pure souls

Demon_Cover

WOO-HOO!!! Have you been eagerly awaiting the sequel to Pure & Sinful, dying to know what trouble and temptations Jerry Romani will stir up for Riona Dade? Well, the wait is over! ONCE YOU GO DEMON is now live and available from the below retailers:

EBOOK: Amazon, BN.com, Smashwords, iBookstore, Kobo, and the Sony eReader Store

PRINT: Amazon, BN.com (coming soon), Book Depository, and the Tulipe Noire Press store*

*signed copies available for order from TNP

 

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In which Killian says, “F it!”

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Categories: Uncategorized, Tags: , ,

I’ve been debating for a while shifting my blog’s focus a bit. I’ve always been told by sage guru marketers practicing their mystic voodoo that a writer’s website is a marketing vehicle only, and not to post things which deviate from that agenda. “The point is selling yourself, and selling your book.”

Selling myself, huh?

Mmmmmyyyyeeaah, I haven’t really done that. Why? Well, because I’m sort of a snarky/sarcastic/semi-annoying sort of person in real life. Believe you me, you’d get sick of me real quick. Like, within hours. Because the real me, when I’m not being snarky/sarcastic/semi-annoying, is  manic in the socializing department. I’m either full swing “Hey, you be Gale and I’ll be Oprah,” or “Well in the hell are you talking to me? Do I owe you money? No? Then leave me alone!”

But selling my books… Yeah, I’ve been trying. Because really, I do think my books are pretty damned awesome. And diverse. Diverse like the casting of an ABC teen drama. Seriously, if you read one of my romances, you’re going to swoon. You read one of my humor pieces, you’ll chuckle up a narwhal. But I somehow ended up a humble person, bordering on self-deprecating. I wasn’t raised Catholic, but I think I must have picked up guilt by osmosis along the way. I always feel like a scammer trying to convince people to feel about my books the way I do. So, I back down, I throw out a piece of news like a release or a review or an event, trying to sound excited and seductive, but what my post is really saying is, “Love me, please? Please, I think I might be worthy. No? That’s okay, I understand.”

And this blog… Yeah, it’s been pretty dry and lacking a personality before now. In the past with rare exception, I’ve only blogged about a new book coming out or some promotion or some other thing to do with sales. And frankly, that shit’s got to stop, because if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s lacking a personality. My husband in fact claims I have several. Surely I can wrestle at least one up to be upfront and sincere.

So, yes, you’ll notice over the next few weeks I’ll be posting some things that aren’t my traditional spiel, particularly some stuff about self-publishing and the state of the industry. It’s an open forum here. If one of my techie posts leaves you wanting more insight into a process, let me know. If one of my opinions rubs you the wrong way, call me out. Welcome to this playground, everyone get ready to run.

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DEMON release/PURE SOULS giveaway!

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Categories: book giveaway, new release, once you go demon, pns, pure souls, pure_n_sinful

To celebrate the release of ONCE YOU GO DEMON, the second installment in the Pure Souls Trilogy, I’ll be giving out a free copy of Book #1, PURE & SINFUL, to 90 lucky winners. Each day in April, I’ll choose three winners, and the end of the month, five winners will receive a signed paperback copy of ONCE YOU GO DEMON. Entry is easy: just click the image on the right (if you’re reading this post on Goodreads or Facebook, visit my blog to enter). Already have a copy of PURE & SINFUL? No problem! I’ll send you ONCE YOU GO DEMON instead as soon as it goes live.

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