We’re busy being jobless today.

Here’s a semi daily shot of Whiskey - so majestic lol

Stupid crankshaft position sensors…

Do you like contemporary fantasy w/ a heaping serving of romantic angst, a dollop of growing beyond trauma, a dash of healing together, and a generous sprinkle of high stakes? Well, have I cooked up a book for you 👀

If Notion and Pinterest had a baby… extra.email/8ad003

RIP Sophie Kinsella

This is the perfect time to grab book 1 of my NA contemporary fantasy romance trilogy for yourself or a friend ⚔️ (or read in KU!)

Anyone else see that Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite is jacking up the rate to $69.99 a month? That’s $840/year, for software that if sold in a box, wouldn’t have been more than $400, and would have lasted you several years before having to upgrade.

Hope everyone had a lovely few days off to relax a bit! I brought out the who-hash (funeral potatoes) and the cheese ball for our annual dinner and we still have leftovers. Turkey was dynamite and fell apart just like always. Abso-freaking-delicious.

Campbell's Foods owns Rao’s, Prego, Angelos, Swanson, Lance, Snyders, Peppridge Farms, Archway, etc. Wow.

Campbell’s Soup VP mocks ‘poor people’ who buy its food in secret recording

Just threw out all of our Campbell’s Soup products including Prego and Raos pasta sauces. They had bioengineered ingredients (fake meat) in all of it. They used to be a good brand. Now? Can’t trust them.

Fun game: Is my protagonist’s anxiety a character flaw I need to address or is it just MY anxiety leaking onto the page because <gestures at everything>?

Writing is my escape from reality. Reality is my escape from realizing I haven’t written in three weeks. This is fine. Everything is fine. Nothing is fine.

The nonfiction author experience: Spend 6 months researching. Write 200 pages. Editor says “this needs more research.” Question every life choice that led you here.

My book proposal: 50 pages, annotated bibliography, chapter outline, marketing plan, comp titles, platform metrics, and my soul. Agent response time: 6-18 months or heat death of universe, whichever comes first.

My book’s comp titles are “Star Wars meets The Hunger Games but make it cozy.” No, I will not be explaining this further because I don’t understand it either.

Bet you didn’t know I possess the superpower of knowing all the words to the Osmond Family Christmas albums (regular and extended). Rather chuffed about that.

Can’t write because the world is ending. Can’t doomscroll because then I’ll never write. Can’t touch grass because I have a deadline and currently live in sand. This is what they mean by “the writing life.”

The muse wants literary brilliance. My mental health wants to stay in bed. My deadline wants 3000 words by Friday. We compromised: I wrote 500 words in bed while the muse read them disapprovingly over my shoulder.

Writing romance during the apocalypse feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic except the deck chairs are my fictional people and they WILL get their happy ending even if I won’t.

Real nonfiction problem: Having an existential crisis about whether to use Oxford commas consistently when your entire argument about human nature hangs in the balance. (The commas matter more.)

The drafting process: Write sentence → Question existence → Rewrite sentence → Check if world ended yet → Delete sentence → Stare at wall → Repeat

The four horsemen of author marketing: Algorithm Changes, Comparison to Authors With Actual Budgets, Imposter Syndrome, and That One Goodreads Reviewer Who Hated Everything Including Your Font Choices

Me: *writes vulnerable essay about mental health* Also me: *has panic attack about posting vulnerable essay about mental health* The content cycle is a flat circle.

The muse arrived with champagne and a perfect essay structure. I was in my depression hoodie eating cereal for dinner. We meet in the middle: I write one paragraph and we both call it a win.

Writing nonfiction at night with whiskey means I write things I’d never admit in daylight. Good thing my editor works during the day and asks fewer questions.

“Authenticity is key to author branding” say the experts. So anyway, here’s my carefully curated, authentic brand: perfectly imperfect, relatable but aspirational, literary but accessible. I am a walking contradiction and my therapist is exhausted.

Deep focus writing session status: Managed 47 words before remembering everything happening <vaguely gestures> so now I’m lying on the floor reconsidering my entire premise and also capitalism.

Book signings are just sitting alone at a table while people avoid eye contact, but make it ✨professional networking✨.

Nonfiction research: Read 200 scholarly articles. Nonfiction writing: Synthesize into accessible prose. Nonfiction marketing: Make a YouTube where you point at text on screen. The academy is weeping.

Productivity tip: Turn off notifications. Me: Turns off notifications. Also me: Physically checks every app every 90 seconds in case something happened in the 90 seconds since I last checked.

Spent 3 years writing a nuanced exploration of complex socioeconomic factors. My marketing hook has to fit in a 300-character post. The dumbing down is coming from inside the house.

Author events are 90% “So what’s your book about?” and 10% you dissociating while trying to summarize 80,000 words into one compelling sentence that doesn’t make you sound unhinged.

The nonfiction tax return experience for a typical indie author: Income from book: $847. Expenses: Research materials, coffee, home office, conferences, therapy specifically about the book. Net: -$4,293. Living the dream.

Instagram for authors: Post aesthetically pleasing photo of your book → Watch other authors like it → All of you buy each other’s books → Convince yourselves this is “building readership” and not just a support group.

It never ceases to amaze me how, in Arizona, we can go from needing air conditioners one week to instantly needing space heaters the very next within 1 day of a temperature drop. And it’ll stay this way until oh, about, April.

Can’t focus on writing because everything is terrible. Can’t stop writing because then I’d have to fully confront that everything is terrible. This is called “the artist’s dilemma” and also “a mental health crisis.”

Took my muse out for fancy cocktails to discuss the memoir. She got drunk and said “what if we just made it all up though.” Ma’am, that’s called fiction and it’s too late to pivot.

Caught coyotes on my RV security cameras tonight! They’re out hunting! So cool.

My writing routine: Responsible daytime writer who plans and outlines. 10pm: *pours whiskey* Chaotic night goblin who writes the good stuff I was too scared to write sober.

Day writing: coffee, discipline, proper posture, track my word count. Night writing: whiskey, chaos, terrible posture, delete half of it tomorrow. Both are valid processes.

Depression brain: You can’t write today. Muse: But I have IDEAS. Depression: Cool, file them under “things we’ll feel guilty about not writing later.” Muse: *orders us both another latte and sighs*.

I’m having one of those “it helps if it’s plugged in“ mornings.

My therapist says I should examine why I only feel brave enough to write the truth after dark with whiskey. My muse says shut up and pass the bottle, we’ve got work to do.

My search history: “how to write when world is ending” “is it normal to cry at keyboard” “can protagonist just give up” “how much caffeine is too much” “existential dread word count”.

Chapter 1: Brilliant. Chapter 2: Decent. Chapter 3: What is language. Chapter 4: *incomprehensible screaming* Chapter 5: Actually perfect somehow? The writing process is chaos and I am its prophet.

Writing about mental health while having mental health is like being a mechanic who has to fix their own car while driving it off a cliff. But the cliff is a metaphor. Or is it.