Image: Pixabay

In one day, I saw three negative opinions about indie “authors”. (I use quotes here as these opinions implied indies are not actually authors.) One was a blog post and the other two were strings of tweets on Twitter.

They were of the mind that all writers who self publish completely, utterly, and in all other ways suck. They gave “proof”. (I use quotes here as my opinion implies that what they offered was not actually proof.)

Their “proof” (there are those pesky, sarcastic quotes again) is as follows…in a nutty, nutty nutshell:

• If indie authors could write a decent book, they would be picked up by a traditional publisher. Period. Full stop. End of story.
• “Real” authors (who are traditionally published) think indie authors suck, too. So there!
• Indie authors are mucking up the world! Pigs are flying! Hell is freezing over!
• Indie authors are so bad…

The temperatures dropped and a little bit of rain fell. Mist-waith, or dragons-breath, as it’s known in the West of Ireland, (and probably other lands where dragons are known to frequent) tangled itself within the sides of our little mountain.

What cute little dragon arms you have

The last of the strawberries, having survived the smoke and heat, then the slug onslaught when the rain did finally start falling, tasted divine.

All by myself, don’t wanna be … wait a minute …

The strawberry plants are in the same bed as Hardcore Parsley and they weren’t going to be outdone by a mere parsley plant …

Hardcore Strawb says … “Autumn? What Autumn! … it ain’t over ‘til we tell you it’s over!”

And finally, the garden underneath the Summer Tree in the front yard managed to produce this little jewel…

Hanging with the bread … (a ring-in…

Ciao, amici! If you’re like most writers, the actual writing process is fun(ish) for you. The launch, on the other hand, is probably a soul-sucking, frenetic nightmare. There’s nothing worse than feeling like the people in the graphic, standing on your soapbox announcing to everyone in earshot that you have a new book for sale.

Yeah, that’s a horrible feeling, especially when no one cares.

I’ve been releasing a lot of titles lately, one under the Staci Troilo brand and a few as Keira Beck. So when I tell you I’ve been in launch-mode for months, that’s no lie. While it’s foremost on my mind, I figured I’d share my checklist for before, during, and after the nerve-wracking publication process. Much of what I’m going to share won’t cost you anything but time. But remember, time and money (when you’re talking promo) tend to have an inverse relationship. The more…

I’m a fairly regular blogger. People come here to learn something interesting, have a laugh, and hang out. There are times when there just isn’t anything all that fun to post about.

Part of being a writer involves a lot of things that don’t aren’t research, or drafting new material. It still has to get done, and that’s what this weekend was all about for me. It isn’t all robot girls and talking yaks around here.

I wrote one more micro-fiction for my Macabre Macaroni event, then assembled and scheduled all five of them. To top it all off, I did an intro post for these stories and scheduled it too. (Six posts.)

I updated this site Friday night, and then there is this post. (Seven posts.)

I also wrote, assembled, and scheduled something for Story Empire on October 1st. (Eight posts.)

I already mentioned scheduling the interview for Thursday…

Do you feel entitled?

” . . .believing oneself to be inherently deserving

of privileges or special treatment.”

There are so many things that we have that we take for granted but do we deserve them? Short answer yes and no. There are things written in law that if we attain ‘ this’ we are entitled to ‘that’. That’s a good thing for a community, a society. But there are those who believe that they are entitled to more simply because they are alive. And that is both sad and annoying.

There will always be those who believe they deserve more than anyone else. There will always be those who don’t take what they deserve simply because they don’t want to be greedy. I think most of us are in between those two. But what are we entitled to?

It would be easy to say fresh air and clean water…