One Hot Mess

First of all, a massive thank you to everyone who Tweeted, blogged about, or bought a book for mine and others' efforts to raise money for Japan. I made enough money to make a small but significant donation to World Vision for the relief effort, so yay! I'll be donating my money on Friday when I get paid, because right now I'm pretty much a charity case in my own right.

Anyway! How was everyone's weekend? I rewarded myself for getting Wild off my plate by writing 6k on a short story. I've got the ending to write still, then I'm going to submit it to Static Movement's OBE anthology. My God. I was totally obsessed with out-of-body experiences when I was younger. It saddens me still that I never managed to have one, despite reading many, many books on the subject. I suppose there's still time.

I was also guest blogging at Splash of our Worlds about why it took me two years to write NIGHT AND CHAOS (which seems pretty speedy compared to some books we won't even mention). And I noticed a review for UNGRATEFUL DEAD at Tez Says which is cool since, given this is just a freebie for promotional purposes, I haven't been soliciting or expecting reviews for it.

In other news, dwg  directed my attention to this, which is relevant to my interests:



If you hang out at JA Konrath's blog for any amount of time, you'll see all of these arguments appear with almost clockwork regularity. Incidentally, it is worth hanging out at Konrath's blog for his insight and information on self-publishing, but you have to wade through a ton of attitude in the comment threads, which dulls the experience somewhat. I've said before that I don't think of myself as an "indie author," just as an author. I'm exploring all the options open to me a writer hoping to make this my full-time career, and that covers epublishing, self-publishing, small presses, and traditional publishing. So I get a bit peeved when I see the Us and Them division between indies and traditionally published writers, because, come on! We should all be on the same side, right? I get equally peeved whenever I see talk about agents and publishers as "gatekeepers" and how there's some big mafia-esque conspiracy holding the talented down and elevating the unworthy.

Look, it's really easy to get bitter and cynical in this business. It's really easy to look at the people around you, be they indie or traditional, and wonder what they're doing that you're not to be so successful. But the assumption I see over and over - that good writers are being shut out for arcane reasons - is ridiculous. I believe there's a lot of validity in self-publishing right now that didn't exist a few years ago, or I wouldn't be doing it. But I also believe that if my dream literary agent came a-knocking saying she adored my work and wanted to sign me up immediately, I'd go for it.

Because really, what I want as a writer is readers who will love my work. Whatever method works best to get my books into readers hands is the method I'm going to go with.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. Here's a picture of some leopard geckos!*


*I am working very hard to bring leopard geckos into my life right now.

A couple of other authors are doing the same as me and donating all the money made from their books sales this week to help Japan. Awesome! Here are some details: 

JH Sked, author of WolfSong is talking about what she and others are doing here. I really need to credit her with introducing me to this idea, as she was tweeting about it on Sunday and it inspired me to join in. WolfSong is available at Amazon, Smashwords, Diesel, and Sony. You can follow her on Twitter at @JHSked. I've bought my copy of WolfSong! ^_^

Lynda Horner, author of Darlin' Druid, has joined in too, and is talking about it at her blog here. You can buy her book here at Amazon or here from Barnes and Noble.

Laurie over at Laurie's Thoughts is helping spread the word about this, and I'm very grateful to her for that! And I'm also really thankful to anyone who's already bought a book, Tweeted, or blogged about this. It's not often I get a chance to do something that will genuinely make a difference in the world, and I'm delighted to see so many other people pitching in, getting the word out, and giving their time to a cause. I'm sure there are plenty of other people out there in the blogosphere doing their bit to help too, so if you know of anything or anyone, please give me a shout so I can mention it here.