An Unexpected Push

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

ThinkingMy floorset days have come to an end.

The store I work for is closing for good on January 7th.

I’ve been there over four years. Sometimes the gig was a real hassle. I questioned whether or not it was worth the commute, the minimum wage, the sleep deprivation, the bullshit that accompanies every retail job. I seriously considered quitting multiple times, but never went through with it. In the end, the actual work and most of the people I worked with won me over. The money wasn’t great (child learnin’ has been my main source of income), but it really helped fill in the gaps between the ends I needed to meet, particularly during the Christmas/New Year holidays when it’s the only day job I worked.

Now I need something else to fill the gaps.

I’m feeling strangely optimistic about this. A few years ago, I would have been depressed and panicky, woe-is-me-ly about this whole thing. I would have felt like it was the Universe taking another shot at me, kicking me when I was already close to down. Not so much now.

Now, I feel like this is the Universe giving me a push.

This is a push to do something new. This is a push to get out of my comfort zone. This is a push for a new adventure.

This is a push to really work my writing and make my writing work for me.

I don’t make a lot of money from my writing, but now what money I do make will be very important. It will help fill the gaps. Self-promotion is going to be key. I’m going to have to talk about my writing A LOT MORE than I already do and not in the “here’s what I’m working on, here’s how I write, here’s my writerly thoughts” fashion. I’m talking in the “HEY, BUY MY WORDS” fashion.

Right now I’ve got three writing revenue streams going at the moment: my self-published titles, the Storytime Jukebox, and the upcoming Patreon project Murderville. I realize that I’m going to have to start submitting in earnest once again, but I’m also going to have to push these three things a lot harder than I have in the past. In the past, I didn’t want to be annoying or insistent. Now I’m going to be.

When I first found out about this turn of events yesterday and posted about it on Twitter, the people I know there were very supportive. I think that contributes to my optimism. I am blessed with knowing some really awesome folks who are really supportive of my endeavors and also really supportive of me in general. I really do appreciate them.

So, the new year will be starting off with an interesting challenge.

For once in my life, I feel up to it.

I Do Not Christmas Well

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

cookiesYesterday, I made some sweet treats for the Christmas Eve get together that will happen later today at my mom’s. I normally do not contribute because between my mom and my nieces, plenty of sweet treats happen. But this year I told my mom that I’d made puppy chow for my sister and brother-in-law and she requested some.

And I also said that I’d make sugar cookies.

Here’s the deal.

At Thanksgiving, my great-aunt gave me two batches of sugar cookie dough that she’d made from my great-grandma’s recipe and colored red and green with food coloring. Now, I do not bake. I have no baking skill. I can fuck up cookies from a tube. But my great-aunt thinks that because I can cook, I can bake cookies from pre-made dough without incident. She also thinks that I will eat red and green cookies. I will not. My issues with that is worthy of another post.

However, red and green pre-made sugar cookie dough was right up my nieces’ alley. I was going to take the dough to my mom’s house for my middle niece’s birthday Sunday and let the girls bake them.

Then winter happened. Between the ice and cold, I wasn’t able to see my niece for her birthday (we have a plan B for after the new year; such is the life for us with winter birthdays).

When my mom requested the puppy chow, she also mentioned that my youngest niece wanted sugar cookies.

“Oh, I’ll bake the sugar cookies that auntie gave me and bring them up,” I said.

And so my fate was sealed.

In addition to my lack of baking skills, the stove in our house is questionable. My mom bought it for $100 at a yard sale in 1986. Really. It no longer heats quite evenly, you can’t tell when it’s pre-heated, can barely read the numbers on the knobs, and sometimes it will electrocute you. Really.

The potential for disaster was high. Just the kind of thrill seeking I like.

I baked the first batch of cookies, the red ones, which were more pink than red, and looked like I was trying to bake Laffy Taffy.

They…survived.

It was impossible to tell if they were done because red cookies don’t brown like plain sugar cookies. But the bottoms of them were browned to just before burnt, so they had to be done, even though the tops looked not done.

For the second batch, the green batch, which also looked like Laffy Taffy, I figured out that I had to put a second pan on the bottom rack to help diffuse the heat, rotate the pan of cookies half-way through baking, and pray constantly to a crotchety baking goddess.

The green cookies came out a little better, but any sort of browning on colored cookies just looks wrong.

I’m told from my taste tester that the cookies are fine. Which is good. I hope the nieces enjoy them.

But they look better in the container.

“Stop Working for Free in 2017!”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

flame box elder penThe title of this post came from a tweet in my feed. No, it wasn’t spam or some other kind of sponsored content, though it can read that way, I suppose.

To me it reads as the truth.

I have often struggled with the concept of getting paid for my writing. I feel like I’m imposing on people by asking them for money to read my work. “You’re an artist!” a voice in my head yells. “You’re not supposed to be doing it for the money!” And then another voice pipes up and says, “Dude, seriously? You’re writing all of this shit anyway. Get paid, man.”

But still, I struggle.

The second voice is right, though. More right than the first voice. I don’t write for the money. If I did, then I’d be writing to the trends, pumping out thin stories with excellent dressing, capitalizing on whatever looks like it will be selling in the next few months. Publishing trends can be hard to predict, but they’re pretty easy to get in on, especially now with the convenience of self-publishing (not at all putting down self-publishing as that has been my primary means for the majority of my writing career). Writing, revising, and self-publishing a decent novel in a few months that fits in with a going trend is possible.

But I don’t do that.

In fact, when people ask about the nature of my career and why I don’t sell more books and why I don’t have an agent and all of that, I tell them that my biggest hang-up is that I don’t write what other people want to read. I write what I want to write, what I want to read. And my tastes are apparently far from the mainstream. It’s hard to find any traditional success when you write stuff that can only find a small audience, no matter how loyal. Publishing, after all, is a business. They are very motivated by the money.

Still. I should get paid for what I do write. There is no shame in this. I’m not asking for a handout. I’m asking to be paid for my work. It’s no different than when I get paid for child learnin’ or working floorset. Just because the paycheck isn’t as regular doesn’t mean that I don’t deserve it.

This is the mantra I’m carrying into 2017. I’m not working for free. This doesn’t mean I won’t be doing anymore freebie stories on occasion. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to start charging you guys to read these wonderful, informative blog posts.

It means that I’m not going to act like I don’t deserve to ask for money for my work. Because you know what? I do. Because writing IS work. It IS my job. It’s the job I’d like to be living off of instead of my day jobs. How do I do that? By insisting that I get paid.

The Patreon project is a step in that direction. Adjusting the prices for my existing self-published works will be next. Working on something to get traditionally published is on the To Do List.

Come 2017, I will get paid.

Patreon Project! Murderville

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

MurdervilleAs I’ve mentioned a couple of times in the past couple of months and as I’ve been plotting for the last several, I’m putting my Patreon to better use and that better use starts in January.

Murderville was originally conceived as a short-season TV series. I don’t know why, since I don’t know the first thing about writing TV shows, but that’s how it came into my head and that’s how I outlined it and how I was going to write it. I’m all for learning and practicing different writing mediums. I never got around to writing it as an actual TV show, but the outline remained and the idea of it never really left me. Particularly the characters featured in the first “season”.

You know me. I don’t get rid of anything. Writing hoarder to the end. So, when I decided that I really needed to do something productive with my Patreon instead of just letting it sit there collecting dust and no money, I came back to Murderville.

I wrote the first “season” as a novella called Murderville: The Last Joke and then broke the novella into eight “episodes”. One episode will be posted each month starting in January. At the end of the year, I’ll put out the novella as an ebook.

Nifty, yes?

So….What is Murderville?

“Murderville” is the affectionate (or not-so-affectionate) nickname given to the industrial city of Munsterville. Because even though there’s not a whole lot of violent crime in the city, it seems that people have a tendency to die in really strange ways. Can’t just have a plain old shooting or stabbing, not in Murderville. There’s always a twist.

The Last Joke features Pam and Drew Bendixen, a couple hit hard by the economy and struggling to rebound. To add to their woes, Pam finds a dead man on the doorstep one morning. The one positive about this is that the deceased was a successful business man and there’s now a $25,000 reward for information that leads to his killer. That money could really help Pam and Drew out and since they did find him on their doorstep, surely they could work in a little detective work between their  multiple jobs and family demands. After all, what do they have to lose? Oh, and they could also help a family get closure and obtain justice and all that.

If you sign up to read Murderville through Patreon, you pledge either $1 or $2 per episode and you can read the episodes right there. You also get the novella at the end of the year. $2 patrons also get sneak peeks at the other projects I’m working on. Gotta sweeten that pot somehow.

Don’t want to be a patron? No problem. For the low, low price of $8 (the minimum amount the $1 patrons will pay) paid through PayPal, you get the password that will allow you to read all eight episodes here on the blog.

The episodes will also be readable on Google Docs.

So don’t miss out.

The fun officially starts on January 10th.

December Writing Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Milwaukee Christmas treeShit kinda got wacky last month, I will not deny. Cubs World Series parade, the election, the world on fire, NaNoWriMo. Just unforeseen craziness. And so outside of NaNo, my writing really didn’t get a whole lot of attention. I was going to try write, revise, and submit a short-short to a contest, but that didn’t happen. I got it started and it ended up being abandoned in the chaos. The essays I’ve been writing for practice met the same fate. Only NaNo and a rough revision on my Patreon serial idea happened.

And now it’s December and the holiday season is upon us and if this isn’t my well-documented least favorite time of year. I automatically call a mulligan every December because it takes so much of my energy to find and maintain any little dribble of holiday spirit.

But I still got shit to do.

The Patreon serial project is going to be my main focus this month. I’m getting a beta read on it right now, I’ll do another revision on it, and then go from there. The goal is to have this little thing going starting in January.

Which means I will also be pimping this thing. If this sort of self-promotion annoys you, let me remind you that I don’t work one of my jobs for like a month because of Christmas/New Year’s. I don’t work, I don’t get paid. Any little bit of coin I can scrape together helps to ease that pain.

Speaking of, you may or may not (probably not) have noticed an update to the Storytime Jukebox. You can now read the short stories on the blog. You drop in your coins like usual (via PayPal) and I’ll send you a password to use on the story link. Nifty, yes? Sure. The novellas are still only available on Googledocs, though. Or you can buy the short story collections they’re in. That’s good, too.

Though Patreon will definitely be my main gig this month, if I have any spare brain power, it’s going to be spent organizing my plan for next year.

Because I’m going to need some kind of plan for 2017.

That’s Another NaNo Win

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

NaNo 2016 winNaNoWriMo was in the bag at a little over 50,000 words on November 19th and I got around to validating it on the 26th. I reconciled pretty early on in the story that I wasn’t going to hit 60,000 words like I usually do for my NaNo novels, but I sort of knew that was going to be the case. The story I had was a little thin, to be honest. As I wrote I saw places that will probably be fleshed out whenever revisions happen, but I didn’t bother following any of those tangents. More than any other NaNo, I just wanted to be done.

This was a sort of wild NaNo. For the first time in many years I didn’t make my usual 2,000 word minimum every day. Taking off for the Cubs World Series parade, I settled for only writing 500 words two days in a row, which set me back not only by my standards, but also by the NaNo daily need to stay on target.

I only made 4,000 words a couple of days. I usually hit that mark easily on the weekends, if not a couple of other days during the week. The fallout from the election really kinda consumed my existence for a solid week, week and a half. Most of my time was spent reading articles and being active on Twitter spreading information (I’m sure I was muted/blocked/unfollowed by scores of people because I wasn’t entertaining anymore and I’m sure the few people who know me in my offline existence were the first to go). I didn’t want to write anything, let alone some stupid novel about a conjurer that will probably never be revised and/or see the light of day, even if I do love my conjurer and her friends.

But I wrote it anyway.

Because that’s kinda the point of NaNo. Writing when real life intrudes. Writing when you don’t want to. Forcing yourself to make time for your words. This is my 13th NaNo. You’d think I’d have gotten that drilled into my brain by now. I guess it sort of is because that is what made me push to get my words written. I admit that some days were more of a struggle than others.

My final push saw me hit 6,000 words two days in a row. Like I said, I wanted to be done.

And I am and I’m glad and it’s win number 10.

Hallelujah.

We Can No Longer Deny What We Are

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

We can no longer deny what we are as a country.

We can no longer claim that hate and ignorance, bigotry and misogyny and racism, the homophobia and Islamophobia and xenophobia, belong to loud minority when the quiet majority has spoken in agreement with it.

This is who we are. We are a bigoted, hateful, lazy congregation of humans contained within an imaginary boarder. And we have elected a leader that represents that very core, that truly embodies the nation we are, the nation we deny. Because we like to think we’re great. We like to think that we’re inclusive and tolerant and underneath it all, not bad folks.

But that’s not the truth, is it?

Not everyone who voted for Trump is racist, you say. They’re not all homophobic and misogynist. They’re not all bad people.

Sure.

But they decided they could live with it.

He wasn’t Hillary, so they decided they could live with it.

He had an R next to his name, so they decided they could live with it.

They’re not black or Mexican or Muslim or Jewish, so they decided they could live with it.

They’re not gay or lesbian or trans or bi or in any way queer, so they decided they could live it.

They’re not women, so they decided they could live with it.

They’re not feminist women, so they decided they could live with it.

They’re not disabled, so they decided they could live with it.

They’re not mentally ill or otherwise sick, so they decided they could live with it.

They thought that it wouldn’t effect them, so they decided they could live with it.

Now we all get to live with it.

Even if the best case scenario were to come to pass (which in my simple mind would be an avoidance of total financial ruin, not being obliterated by a war started in the course of a hissyfit, and somehow some of our rights being left intact), we are still left with ourselves.

We are left with those of us thrilled by this victory because they’ve been made to feel uncomfortable about their hateful thoughts for the past few years, being called out as bigots, being shouted down for their inappropriate “jokes”, and now they feel vindicated. They’re “oppression” is now over because they have a leader that supports their views. Those that have been dying at the hands of political correctness have been given a second life.

We are left with those of us who will now exist in fear because of the realities that “living with it” will entail. The threat of deportation, restriction of rights, loss of rights, sexual violence, physical violence, incarceration, torture, loss of health care, the destruction of our planet are some of those realities.

We are left with the knowledge that we sacrificed the well-being of many for the interests of a few hoping that we would be one of the few.

We are left with the knowledge that we did this to ourselves. Because this is who we are.

So now that we’ve gone past the Rubicon here, now that we’ve looked into the mirror, now that we’ve seen the monster that is our soul, now that it is, in effect, too late, NOW we finally ask ourselves a question we’ve been avoiding for centuries because we’ve been very skilled at avoiding our own reflection…

Is this who we want to be?

…And Then I Went to Chicago to See a Cubs World Series Parade

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

World Champs“Hey, do you wanna go to the Cubs World Series parade?” I asked my roommate Carrie upon waking her up Thursday afternoon.

“What?” she asked, groggy.

“Do you wanna go?” I repeated.

“When?”

“Now. We have to leave, like, now.”

“…Okay.”

And so began the whirlwind.

I haven’t been to Wrigley Field since 2012 when I saw the Cubs lose their 100th game that season. Time and money constraints have prevented my return. I didn’t luck out in the postseason ticket lotto and couldn’t afford them on the secondary market (honestly, I couldn’t have afforded them if I’d won the lotto, but that wasn’t going to stop me this time). I felt like I’d missed out on everything during this magical season. The least I could do was find a way to get to the victory parade. This feeling was cemented when I found myself in tears on the drive home from work Thursday afternoon because they’d played the Harry Caray call/final World Series out mash-up on the radio. Of course, I’d been bursting into tears regularly since their win Wednesday night.

When I got home, I DM’d my Cubs bestie Harry and asked if he was ditching work to go to the parade and when he confirmed that he was, I told him that I was trying to work it so I could go to0.

“If you can get up here, I’ve got a hotel room for you by Wrigley.”

Harry had booked the room for his mom to attend the celebration, but she unfortunately couldn’t make it.

But I could.

Kiki and HarryCall it serendipity. Call it fate. Call it divine intervention. Whatever name you want to put on it, fortune smiled on me for once and I was more than beaming back.

Within ten minutes I was waking up Carrie and throwing things into my overnight bag (notebook and pen first, of course; writer life). By 3:30, we were on the road to Chicago. Three hours later, driving through rush hour traffic on Lake Shore Drive, I pointed out the buildings lit up in celebration of the Cubs winning the World Series. Carrie took pictures of them through our unfortunately dirty windshield.

After picking up Harry and getting settled at the hotel, the three of us went out for a celebratory dinner. The mood was giddy edged a bit by the surreal. Despite all of the tangibles, there was still a misty fantasy quality about the whole thing. The Cubs had won the World Series and we were going to the victory parade in the morning. That’s probably why I struggled to sleep Thursday night. A long held dream had finally become reality and it was just hard accept.

Friday morning, we walked around the block from our hotel to stand on Addison and watch the parade. Here, less than a mile from Wrigley, there was a crowd lined up against the barricades, but not nearly as suffocating and dense as what was around Wrigley or lined up along Lake Shore Drive or packed into Grant Park. The morning weather was pleasant, a little chilly, but really perfect for a parade. The crowd vibe fed into the surreal joy and the three of us stood there, soaking it all in.

BryzzoThe parade itself happened so fast. Part of it was that the buses were going by at a quicker clip since this wasn’t prime parade real estate and they’d left the gate late to begin with; the huge crowds on Lake Shore and at Grant Park were waiting. The other part, the more personal part, is that when you’ve been waiting for something for a long time, be it an hour for a parade to begin or since you became a fan in the late ’80s for a championship to be won, when the moment arrives for you to experience, it feels like it happens too fast. Like even at a snail’s crawl, it still wouldn’t happen slowly enough to be thoroughly enjoyed.

But I managed.

To see the guys that I’ve been cheering for all season, to see the guys I’d cheered for in past seasons that almost feel like past lives, to see the coaches and the front office and the families, the whole shebang that had to come together just perfectly to make this one incredible thing happen, to see them all go by in total victory put my heart into a state of bliss that it won’t forget. This is a memory that won’t be corrupted.

After the parade, the three of us went back to the hotel room to watch the rally for a few more cheers and tears of joy. We bid Harry farewell and then Carrie and I left the city. It took us over an hour to get out of city, almost like Chicago was begging us to stay. And I wish we would have. I would have loved to have spent the weekend there, walking around Wrigleyville and soaking up that vibe until my seams split and I burst with joy.

Instead, happy and exhausted, I drove back to the cornfield, content that I had the pleasure to experience just a little bit of history.

World Series Champions

November Writing Projects aka NaNoWriMo

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

nanowrimoIt’s that time of year again. Oh yes. Time to write 50,000 words (okay, 60,000 for me) in thirty days.

I finally figured out that I should just write another Outskirts novel. This one will feature truther (not THAT kind of truther) Maisie Day, conjurer LittleJessie Witt, and famed hunter Sister Mary Valle. The working title is To Tell the (Conjurer’s) Truth, which isn’t great, but not great titles are my thing. I’m not married to it by any means, so I can easily change it if I ever revise it.

Naturally, I say “if” because (Vampires) Made in America and The End of the (Werewolf) Curse still sit waiting. I’ll get around to them one day, I’m sure.

I’ve only outlined the first ten chapters of To Tell the (Conjurer’s) Truth, the idea being that for every chapter I write, I’ll outline the next. You know. Write chapter one and then outline chapter eleven. I don’t want to get too far ahead with this story because I only have a vague idea of what I’m doing with it.

Reassuring, no?

This could be a potential disaster, but I’m all in as always, baby.

Though my main focus will be on NaNo as my Novembers are usually spent (I think this is number 13 maybe), I did finish the first “season” of my Patreon serial idea. I’m going to attempt to revise at least the first episode or two during the month. Fingers-crossed that it’ll be something worth trying come the new year. As usual, I was feeling way too ambitious to think I’d have it ready to go before then.

I’ve also been writing essays on the side for the last month or two. Just another practice thing. A page a day of learning is good for my brain, I think.

Let’s hope I have some brain left after this month.