Month: August 2024

EDIT: Within seconds of posting this, the book went live on Amazon! Here’s the link, please read the content warnings in this post!

Hey everybody! First of all, I just want to thank everyone who has reached out to me with kind words and encouragement in light of my recent announcement on the main blog. Please pardon me for cross-posting/self-plagiarizing a bit between here and the Patreon.

As always, I’m so grateful for your support. The donations to the Ko-Fi have been incredibly generous, and I appreciate each one. The road ahead seems a little less hopeless. And again, I appreciate the tireless cheerleading so many of you do when I’m down.

That said, I’m calling into work for this next week.

Because of the stress of the past few months (which has eased up considerably with your generosity on Patreon and Ko-Fi), my mental health isn’t great. I’m safe and supported, but doing a lot of sleeping, not showering, and not eating. Mr. Jen had a ton of PTO banked up, so I’ll be at my cousin’s cabin in the woods for a week, no internet just chilling, and generally just unplugging from life to get my feet back underneath me.

Shitting in an outhouse and bathing in a lake are weirdly good for a reset. And also why my kids did not take us up on the offer of coming with us. Which is fine; they don’t appreciate why it’s cool to see a woodpecker up close yet. One day, they will be middle aged, and then they will know what they have taken for granted re: birds.

I’ll probably also crochet and make friendship bracelets the whole time.

I will be checking in on social media now and again when I have signal (i.e., when I sneak up to the Holiday ten miles away to put our trash in their dumpster), mostly to promote A Kingdom of Pleasure and Torment. Oh… did I not mention?

In the interest of experimentation, I’m soft-launching A Kingdom of Pleasure and Torment this weekend. Wanna see the cover?

That’s right. A Noun of Noun and Noun, friends. Because I want people to know EXACTLY what they’re getting when they buy this book. Is it a literary masterpiece? Not at all. It’s a thinly veiled excuse to write nasty, fucked-up sex scenes and pretty costumes, 100%, no apologies. Check out the blurb:

How far would you go to have your revenge?

Shattered by the murder of her faery mother, Cenere knows that she, a lowly human, is powerless to avenge her, until her faery guardian, Luthian of Mithrax, offers her a deal… and a crown. As a queen, Cenere will have the power to bring her mother’s killer to justice, but the fae give nothing freely. The price Luthian asks is total surrender to his every passionate whim. 

Exiled from the Court of Pleasure and Torment, Luthian seeks to return to his life of hedonism and perversion. Cenere will become his way back into the graces of the sadistic King Arcus. She need only pledge her body and will to Luthian. Under his tutelage, she’ll be able to infatuate the court—and the King’s rakish second son, Prince Cassan. Her guardian will do the rest, and place Cassan on his father’s throne with Cenere beside him.

But when the doomed king  sets his sights on the human woman who will be his undoing, her guardian can no longer keep her safe. Cenere finds herself protected by Prince Kathras, the heir to Arcus’s throne and a faery far more dangerous than his father. Torn between her guardian, a cruel prince, and a kind one, Cenere knows her fate is out of her hands. And Luthian has his own secrets. When his true motivation is revealed, it will change the course of Cenere’s life forever…

A Kingdom of Pleasure and Torment is a Dark Romantasy with strong themes and graphic imagery that may disturb some readers. Please consult the extensive content warnings inside.

What are these content warnings?

• Non-con/Dub-con/Consensual Non-con
• Violence/Gore
• Death
• Suicidal ideation
• Pairings and groups of multiple genders
• Piercing
• Sadism
• Foot torture
• Exhibitionism/Voyeurism
• Fluid play
• Humiliation
• Domination/Submission
• Sex with mythical creatures
• Sex with tentacles and vines
• Knotting

This may, in fact, be the most fucked-up book I’ve ever written. Which makes it perfect for what I wanted to try out. This book is debuting…any time now, actually, as it’s in “publishing” status on KDP as we speak. No prior advertising, no ARC (although, if you are on my ARC team, keep an eye out for an email when I return), and it’s not distributing wide on day one. I’m trying out a soft-launch, making it available exclusively on Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited for a period of time before taking the e-book to other retailers. There will be a paperback version available on other platforms soon, but my much needed mental health hiatus has pushed it back just a bit.

Why am I releasing it this way? Because I’m trying to figure out what will work best for my books as I go forward, in terms of maximizing their potential, finding new readers, and cementing a publishing process that will work while I’m also working a day job. And you know why I’m able to experiment like this? Because I fully believe that I will have a day job soon. Yes, it has been months. Yes, I haven’t received any responses to my resume or follow-ups. Yes, it is demoralizing that one of those ignored applications was for a Subway sandwich store that felt their ideal applicant for “sandwich artist” would have an MBA. But I continue, in the face of “Nobody wants to work!” and weird postings for minimum wage retail jobs that want you to have advanced degrees for $11/h. But my optimism continues. I will get an outside-the-house job, and therefore my entire life doesn’t ride on doing just the right thing to make this book successful, so I can try a new publishing model and see what happens. Because I have the safety net of the job I know is going to happen. It’s gonna, damnit!

One of the things I hope will happen will be that the people who read the book will either love it or loathe it. I wanna see people so passionately divided on this book that it’s all five stars and one stars on GoodReads. Well, in theory. I’m not gonna go look at GoodReads. That way lies (more) madness.

I plan to be fully functional and back with another Fourth Wing recap on the 26th. Thank you all for your patience, support, and understanding. I’m so happy and proud to have attracted a community of readers and jealous haters who “get it” when it comes to mental health.

So, bye-bye for now, grab my dirty book from Amazon if you book shop there, and here’s hoping I return to tons of messages about potential employment! [Extreme Sally Bowles voice] It’s gonna happen! Happen sometime! Maybe this time!

As I type this, I have -$267 in my checking account.

Yup, it’s me again. Asking for financial support. But this time, it’s not the same kind of appeal. This one comes with the reality of being a working writer.

Within the span of a few months, it is no longer viable for me to be a full-time writer. My sales have plummeted. I was unable to recover a large amount of money from the Facebook hack. We were already reeling from the money we lost in our failed move. And while the Patreon support continues to be incredible, with rent, utilities, car payment, gas, food for a family of four plus pets, a thousand dollars a month isn’t going to make it, even with my husband’s pay (which is over $15/h, but still not a living wage). I’ve applied for jobs, but until I hear back from anyone, we’re faced with having to get through August, September, and realistically into mid-October, when quarterly royalties will start trickling in.

For the first time, I’m not viewing going back to working retail or food service as a failure. I’ll be frustrated at how a day job will cut into my publishing speed, both for books and content here, on Patreon, and YouTube, but I won’t be going to sleep sick to my stomach anymore. I’m not asking the universe for a seven-figure bestseller or a fat traditional publishing advance. What I want more than anything at this moment is for one of these many jobs I’ve applied for to contact me and say, “Yes, we will give you money to work here.” I want to be able to know that my paycheck is going to arrive, instead of being the nebulous “maybe?” that it has been for the past twenty years.

Instead, I’m looking at a negative bank balance and no certainty that I’ll be able to secure employment. There are other ways to make money. I can sell my books, for example. I have an event in September that I committed to months before Facebook hackers stole thousands of dollars from my business, but I can’t afford to buy books to sell there. If I don’t go to the event and sell the books, I can’t make much needed income, let along make back the money I spent on the nonrefundable hotel room. If I could afford to sue PayPal in small claims court, I could get back the rest of what the hackers stole, but I don’t have the money to file or a way to appear in court in California. Everything that could make money at the moment costs money. Soon, I’ll have a Shopify store up and running to sell signed books, but not in time to deal with the immediate problems that I have. Like the negative bank balance and over a thousand dollars worth of bills still due to come out of it.

It’s so frustrating to come here for the second time in a year and shake the tin cup at you. But if you feel like you have the resources and/or spoons to lend a hand, here are some things that I would very much appreciate:

Direction donations via KoFi. When someone likes my work and wants to toss a tip my way, it’s always appreciated, no matter the size of the donation.

Patreon subscriptions. If you’ve been meaning to check out my Patreon, this would be a great time! There is so much content over there, from recaps to videos to weekly chapters of the Fablemere series. Plus, sometimes there is real life drama that is too juicy or wild to share with no paywall. Like my trip to the opera.

Word of mouth. Telling people about my books and my Patreon is so much more effective when it’s not coming from me. If you enjoy my books or my content and want to tell people about it, that’s rad.

Job-getting Witchcraft. Manifest me actually getting a call back from some of these places I’m applying. I’m not going into some highly competitive field here; it’s just sandwich shops, dispensaries, and grocery stores. Nobody wants to work anymore, is what I’m told. From my experience over the past couple of months, that means hiring managers, too.

Patience. Things are going to slow down in Trout Nation when I get a job. Please, I’m begging everyone: don’t forget me. I don’t want to give all of this up. I just need to be able to eat and put gas in my car and have electricity and feel like I can breathe without stress-vomiting. Unfortunately, I’m still disabled. I don’t know how much energy I’ll have to dedicate to writing. My hope is that absence will make the heart grow fonder. Just don’t forget I exist.

Things have picked up before. They might pick up again. I might go back to being a full-time author and blogger someday. I might have to work until the day I die. Who knows? But I’m proud of myself for separating my self-worth from my monetary worth for the very first time since the beginning of my career. Granted, that’s an easier mindset to get into when the catastrophic career and financial downturn is just a natural consequence of an election year, plus the nature of publishing, rather than someone actively sabotaging you. The first time I had to stop being a “full time writer,” I thought I was a failure who was letting someone else “win.” Now, I just think I’m a writer and this is how it goes sometimes.

I care about being able to live comfortably more than I care about my ego.

I wanted to make a much different post, though. A post where I would come on here and wax poetic about my new job and this new era in my life with positivity, probably with some asshole words like “transformation” or “freedom” or whatever. I really wanted to not have to ask for any help at all.

But on the other hand, asking for help is what ultimately got The Boss published and saved my ass the first time. Maybe asking for help will generate the energy to get the job I need. Maybe humbling myself like this will shift some kind of vibe in the universe for me.

I’m beaten down, but I’m not beaten. I’m still going to be a writer until the day I die. I’m not quitting. I’m taking care of business.

Keep on rocking in the free world.