My Week in Review

My God, is it only Thursday? I'm still going to sum up my week, regardless. It is a holiday in the US, so I'm calling an official end to the week. 

Speaking of holidays, I'm generally not on board with them. Thanksgiving is okay; it's the Holiday of Eating. (Why not just call it that?) I'm a pretty so-so cook, but I actually don't mind preparing the holiday meal. I use a lot of prepared things; for instance, I've never once made mashed potatoes from scratch, nor gravy. But luckily, I can just grab a jar of Heinz gravy off the grocery shelf and voila! Tastes better than I could ever do. 

Growing up, I had zero interest in learning how to cook. My mom was a great cook--she just "knew" how to make things, which is astonishing to someone like me, who second guesses herself even when following a recipe. There was a period when my kids were little that I developed an interest in learning how to cook new things. I worked second shift for years, so my days were free. If I'd had to rush home at 5:30 in the afternoon and whip something up, forget it. Pizza delivery it is! So I experimented with "exotic" Chinese dishes, along with various so-called simple things that any dolt would have already learned how to make, but were completely foreign to me. When I left home to get married, I knew how to make grilled cheese sandwiches, essentially.

My sister-in-law's sister wanted to become pen pals with me when I was in my early teens. Her first letter mentioned that she loved cooking and sewing, and I thought, WTF? Clearly, she and I are a bad match. Now, years later, I regret never learning how to sew. I think I would enjoy it. I don't regret my still-basic cooking skills, though, because really, just pick up something ready-to-eat at the store! 

I'm trying to remember what I enjoyed doing back then; I know it wasn't anything domestic in nature. I was crazy about music, for sure. I sang along with my records, and even learned how to sing harmony by doing so. The key to self-confidence was playing the record loud enough to drown out my voice, which made me confident that I was doing a great job. That was also around the time I began learning guitar; another opportunity to sing, if no one was around. Music actually consumed me for approximately four decades, so much so that I eventually became a songwriter and learned not to cringe hearing myself on record. Now I never listen to music at all. Weird how things change. Maybe music filled a hole for me. My family life was pretty bad, and I realized, not normal. My best friend didn't have a dysfunctional family. Sure, all adults drank back then; it was the thing to do on a weekend night. Except my dad drank all the time--the weekly calendar was irrelevant. And my mom was in a perpetual rage, rightly so. This wasn't the life she'd bargained for. Except she didn't just vent her rage on him; she lashed out at whichever child happened to be handy, and guess who was the handiest? I'm not relaying this in self-pity. I long ago came to terms with all that, and I see things now from a clearer perspective.

On the plus side, my childhood situation has likely imbued my writing with an understanding of damaged characters. I find my characters personally relatable. 😊

What was I talking about? Oh, Thanksgiving. Anyway, I'm gearing up for the cooking (and microwaving) marathon. When the entree is roasted turkey, the morning involves a lot of waiting around, followed by a rush of juggling multiple dishes at once, so that everything is ready at approximately the same time. And I'd be lost without my handwritten list of cooking times and what serving dishes to use for which side. (I label those, too. A too-old to be amateur cook has to come prepared.)

Regarding my publishing efforts this week, only a few things stand out:

1. I finally unboxed my proof copies of my two-book anthology. I knew I had to do it sometime so I could see what was wrong and fix it, but I dreaded the prospect. As it turns out, my books are perfectly formatted! Now I wish I'd just ordered author copies instead. I'm not displaying books with a "Not For Sale" stripe around the middle. 

And those suckers are really fat! At 600+ pages each, they naturally would be. I don't regret having all eight of my novellas published in physical form. They need to be memorialized, dammit! (even if just for me.)

2. I'm taking it slow with The Novel Formerly Known as The Apple. If you've been reading along, you know it was my third novel and the best of the three. (I unpublished the second one; it was that bad.) I still don't know how far I want to go with turning it into a paperback, and being my normally impulsive self is not prudent. I still haven't decided how much editing I want to do, and whether to just slap a homemade cover on it or pay for one. I wouldn't balk at going with $35.00 for a GetCovers design if I could find a decent stock photo, but $290.00 for a Miblart cover would be a mistake. I certainly don't regret paying that much for Running From Herself's cover, but I sure haven't recouped that expenditure. Not even close. 

3. A dumb, but still annoying thing: I was contacted a while back about an interview with Reader's House (still just one reader!) Magazine, which is a "real" magazine, but I suppose what one would call a vanity publication. It's sold in a few chain bookstores, but it's price is prohibitive. What the company does is lure authors with the offer of an interview (free of charge), then hits them up for a paid feature article. So, it's not a scam, per se, but a pay to play thing. Writer Beware wrote about it, and I was about to delete the email until I read the comments. As one person mentioned, an interview would still provide website and social media content.

Well, either my interview responses were really, truly bad, or they're just ghosting me for some reason. I remembered to follow up with them this week, recalling that one WB commenter had written that her interview showed up online after a month. "Zosia" sincerely apologized for the delay and noted that it was an oversight. My interview was "with the editor" now. Fine, except the site has a few interviews that were published yesterday, and mine's not among them. I'm not heartbroken about it, but what I hate is being lied to.

I'm not going to check again. It's just one of those pesky things that a self-published author is forced to deal with constantly, and it gets really tiresome.

And there you have it--nothing much. Certainly nothing worth writing home about, but I still did (considering that this blog is my home).

I still have a couple of hours before I need to get the turkey out of the fridge and ready for roasting. Time to kick back and do what I do best--zone out. 

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate.