|
Who knows what's good or bad? Anyone who knows me knows that this is probably the saying I use most often. It’s the motto that I try to live my life by. It helps me to remember that we don’t have the capability to see an event through to the end result to determine whether the event is truly good or bad, so it’s best not to label it as such and just let life happen as it will. Here's the story behind that saying: Well, Monday morning was a good example of having this this story play out in reality. My daughter was next to me, asleep, as I dozed peacefully, and my dog was at my feet. Suddenly, I was popped in the nose by my daughter's flailing hand. It wasn’t a hard enough pop to make me see stars, but it was hard enough to jolt me awake. After I made sure all was well with my face, I relaxed and managed to doze again, apparently long enough to fall into a resting state. While I was in that state of not quite asleep but not quite awake, my mind wandered. "Not all those who wander are lost ..." ~J.R.R. Tolkien In The Fellowship of the Ring is a poem known as the “Riddle of Strider.” Its well-known second line, "not all those who wander are lost," tells us that the mysterious ranger, Strider, is more than who he appears to be. He is, in fact, Aragorn, the rightful king of Gondor. The poem is hinting that although Aragorn is wandering Middle-earth, his rightful place is on the throne. But just because he's wandering, that doesn’t mean he’s lost, or that he’s wandering aimlessly without a purpose. Like Strider in Tolkien’s epic story, my mind wandered during this time of light dozing after that fateful bop in the nose, but it didn’t wander aimlessly or without a purpose. Let me go back and explain something before I continue with my bop-in-the-nose experience. My publishing company is called Dreamwriter.earth because I get most of my story ideas from my dreams. If you read my last blog post, you might remember that I was concerned that I had a lot going on inside my brain. The Noodle Motel, as I called my overtaxed brain, needed a “No Vacancy” sign. As I was struggling to find the time to get the books written that I want to write and to publish my backlog of already completed books, I had a dream. In that dream, I saw three women working on building a deck on the back of a house. Inside the house, there was a person watching them working. Somehow, I realized that these three women were witches and that the person inside the house was a werewolf. That’s all the dream gave me. It was up to my noodle to manufacture the rest. Ever since that dream, I’ve been doing research on witchcraft because, admittedly, I know very little about the subject. Since this will be one of Lyra Zonder’s books, the three witches won’t just be followers of the peaceful Wiccan earth religion. Oh, no. These are going to be real, badass, spellcasting witches. And since they belong to the coven called The Sisters of Bella Luna, I knew that this story would, somehow, relate to my Chosen of Bella Luna series. Which, coincidentally, are some of the books that I was hoping to write and publish, so I could free up some rooms at the Noodle Motel. Anyway, I’ve been reading and researching, but until Monday morning, I hadn’t come up with a plot for the books that I was happy with. I knew that I wanted the books to be about witches and werewolves. I knew that the three main female protagonists of the trilogy are named Bianca, Amber, and Ebony. I also knew that a werewolf hired these women to build a deck off his house. But that was all I had to work with. I didn’t know who the werewolf was, why he would hire three witches to build his deck, or how he and his pack fit into the Bella Luna series that I’m currently writing. I’m unsure if it’s just going to be related content but not part of the main story, or if it’s like Gypsy Moon, in that the storyline and characters of this related book will become part of the Bella Luna series somewhere along the line. Then, I got bopped in the nose.  One might think that the bop in the nose was a bad thing. But not me. I let life take me where it will, and it took me on a very exciting journey. When I was fully awake, the details of the wandering road trip my brain had taken me on became clear. I had not only a purpose for the trilogy, but also the details of the three main male protagonists. I even had the antagonist they would all ultimately be fighting against. I came downstairs, pulled out my journal, and began writing. I’m one who handwrites out my book ideas. I always have. I love the flow of the pen on paper, and how it encourages my brain to slow down. When the book ideas begin flowing and churning, my brain is like a very fast Italian sports car, and my hand is like a 1972 Ford Pinto trying desperately to keep up.
Fun fact: My mother actually drove a Pinto when I was young, and I seem to remember that it went very slowly. Or maybe it was just my mother who drove slowly. Either way, my uncle had a Saint Bernard, and the combination of the dog and the Pinto made Stephen King's Cujo absolute nightmare fuel for me. I still shudder when I think about it. Old cars and rabid dogs aside, I spent the morning writing down my ideas for these untitled witch books. I’m actually still plotting them out. I’ve decided to plot out all three at once, because, to me, they'll all be part of the same story. The first book will represent the waxing moon, or, for the Triple Goddess imagery in Wicca and other pagan spiritualities, the Maiden. The second book will represent the full moon, or the Mother. And the third book will be for the waning moon, or the Crone aspect of the Triple Goddess. I’m still doing my research, but I’m pretty excited where this trilogy is going so far. I love to write out my story ideas, and I have boxes of old journals filled with notes from past books. After I brainstorm ideas, I’ll plan out and handwrite an outline. Sometimes I write the outline on paper, and sometimes I write it out on notecards that can be rearranged or shuffled as needed. These books feel as though they’re going to be pretty straightforward without too many storylines aside from the main one, so I’ll probably write the outlines in my journal. I rarely stick to the original outlines I come up with, because my characters often take over and lead the story in directions I never intended. But, again, this wandering, or veering from the outline, isn’t purposeless. It’s a beautiful process of letting my mind take me on a journey. Sometimes I don’t know where my mind and I will even end up. I just modify the outline as I go and let the story take me where it will. Anyway, that’s the story of where I am right now with these new books, and how a bop in the nose started an avalanche that will make my already overcrowded Noodle Motel even more crowded. But that’s okay. I can double up a few guests to make room for these seven new people looking for a place to stay. After all, who knows what’s good or bad? I sure don’t.
0 Comments
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” ~ Isaac Asimov, Life Magazine (1984) I read this quote and couldn’t help thinking of all the stories I’d leave untold if I had only six minutes to live. As I’ve written on the introductory page of my website, I get most of the inspiration for my books from my dreams. When I wake up, I’m left with images of untold stories and, in some cases, the names of characters. Oftentimes, those dreams that turn into stories appear in my brain at the worst possible times.
For many of my stories, I have multiple plot lines going on at the same time. So to keep these plot lines separate and organized, I’ve taken to writing the different ideas down on colored notecards. That way, I can make sure the various plot lines get more or less equal time, unless I want it otherwise, and I disperse the plot line evenly throughout the story. Now that brings up a point I want to make about my writing: Each story, in my mind, has a single theme, which is the overall point or purpose of the story. Theme and story for me are used interchangeably. Finishing the theme, or story, often takes several books. Within the main theme, there can be many plot lines, which are the metaphoric highways that I take the reader down to get to the end of the story. And just like physical highways, there are many roads that one can take on or off the highway. Similarly, my plot lines can, and often in my stories do, intersect with various subplot lines, or metaphoric roads that allow the reader take a more leisurely trip to the end of the story. Keeping these all organized for each story can be quite taxing but is essential for the book to make any sense to anyone other than me. It's the map the reader follows that delineates the path to the ending destination.
While I was working on the outline for Green, I had some ideas pop into my brain about my ever-present Project 13 book. I had to have started and stopped this book at least a dozen times over the past few years. It isn’t that the story is uninteresting. Quite the opposite. I’m eager to work on it and finish the book, but something else always seems to pop into my brain to derail the process. I’m about two-thirds done with it and have the remaining one-third already detailed out and outlined. I simply need to sit and finish writing the darned thing. But, of course, this won’t be a standalone book. This is only the first book of probably five that will need to be written to complete the overall story I hope to tell. As I was contemplating my thoughts for finishing Project 13, some ideas popped into my head for the next book in the Chosen of Bella Luna series. Book Eight of this series was derailed by the appearance of General Lokun Abakkus several years back (See The Arkainian Chronicles, 7/2/25). Now, instead of next writing Book Eight of this series, I’m planning to write an adjunct book completely dedicated to Killian's taking over of the Lupine Council because that is the entire purpose of the series. It is the story, or theme, and I don’t think I can do it justice if I simply add it as a plot line in Book Eight. It needs its own dedicated book. And the Council needs to be under Killian’s leadership before I can conclude the story with the plot lines that I want to follow in books eight and nine. Book Nine will officially conclude the story, and as much as I will be saddened to see my beloved characters go and live out their Happily-Ever-Afters, I want to get the story finished. I see the nine books as one long story. So far, I’ve completed only seven of the nine, and so, to me, the story is unfinished.
This post, however, has begun getting ideas percolating in my mind about the untitled book I’ve started regarding a gargoyle named Claude Pierre, who finds his purpose in guarding Aimeé Reid. The book takes place up in Maine and follows the plot line of the two characters mentioned. As of right now, I think the book is just under halfway written, but I have copious notes about it scattered among several notebooks. Once I gather the ideas I’ve written, I’m pretty sure I will have jotted out enough ideas for the second half of the book. I really want to finish this one, too, as well as the others that I envision for the story. Also insisting on his story getting finished is the ever-present and ever-demanding General Abakkus. I have three of the five books written in my Arkainian Chronicles series. This story follows Lokun and Star as they fulfill their part of the Rukkus Prophecy, which is the theme of the series. And I could leave it at that one plot line, but no. My brain has to work two other plot lines into the story, and each of those other plot lines have multiple subplot lines woven through them. This year, I wrote Book Three, Blood Blessed, which I hope to publish either later this year or at the start of next year. To keep the plot and subplot lines organized, I used a stack of notecards with three different colors to represent the three main lines. By the time the outline was done, I had a stack of cards nearly an inch and a half thick. I know Lokun very well, and he won’t let me rest until the story is finished. He’s most annoying that way. I already have the next book in the series, Blood Battle, worked out in my head, though I’ve not started writing anything down just yet. For now, it's just another big part of the constant goings-on inside my head.
Now, to add to all of that, I had a dream the other night that has gotten still more ideas percolating for yet another story. This story, as of right now, is only three books. I don’t have many details worked out about the plot lines yet, and I haven’t quite figured out the theme, but I have the three main characters as they’ve appeared to me in my dream. The story is connected somehow to the Chosen of Bella Luna series, as it centers on three women who are part of a coven of witches that goes by the name of The Sisterhood of Bella Luna. I have the first names of the three women, and I know that they own a company that does home repairs, maybe a handyperson service. Or maybe they just do odd jobs. In the dream, I see them building a deck on the back of a house, but I have no ideas yet why, or whose house it is, other than there’s a werewolf inside the house watching them work. That’s all the dream gave me, so now I have to let my brain do its thing and work up all the details.
How am I supposed to get all these stories out of my head and into print? I simply don’t have enough hours in the day to accomplish it. My thoughts right now are to spend the remainder of this year publishing as many backlog books as I can, so I can focus next year on writing. My books tend to be on the larger side. They're more like extended novels of around 120,000 words, some bigger and some shorter. So using 120,000 as the average, I have six books that are in need of my immediate attention. So using math to figure it out, the six books will be, in total, about 720,000 words. There are 365 days in the year, so that means I’ll have to write about 2,000 words every day next year to get the six books written, which, of course, isn’t realistic. I’ve never been able to write more than two novels in any given year, simply because I need time to plot out the book and handwrite the outline. Given that, it will take me a maybe two years to write the six books, since a few of them are already partly written. It will take at least another seven to eight years to finish the remainder of the stories for those six books. That’s all assuming that I don’t have another dream in the next decade that leaves more books and story ideas swirling around inside my head. And that’s not even all the books I have in process. Those are just the ones that are dominating my immediate thoughts. Additionally, those are just the ones from the one pen name, Lyra Zonder. I also have books from my second pen name, Annie Rife, which are mainly thoughts on the Visions series with Xander and Dani. With them, the story could go on for seven or more books until I conclude the theme I want to finish. I’ve completed writing three books and have published the first one so far. I’ve deliberately tried to not think about that story because it’s so involved. It simply has to be the only book in my mind at the time, or else I’ll get too overwhelmed.
So, how do I get all the stories out of my head? I do it the only way I know how, and that is to write. As Charles Bukowski once said: “He asked, 'What makes a man a writer?' 'Well,' I said, 'it’s simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.'” I don’t know how many years I have left on this planet, but I can say without hesitation that I have no plans to jump off any bridges. I might have many years to live, or the cancer could come back, and I might have only a precious few. I can’t dwell on that, though. I need to focus on today. I have my office, which is my creative bubble. The plan is to spend maybe two to three hours every morning writing. The morning is my quiet time. I get up before either my husband or daughter do, and so I can go in my office and write before they get up for the day. I’ll get done what I get done. I’ll pick a book and focus on that one book until it’s done, and then I’ll move on to the next one. Although in some cases, I could easily spend the entire day writing until my fingers are too cramped to type any longer. It may come to that some days, but most days I’ll have other things that I need to do. First, I have my daughter’s schooling to focus on. My husband and I homeschool our fourteen-year-old daughter, and that needs to occupy several hours every day. Plus, I need to cook. Recovering from cancer as I am, nutrition needs to be the main thought for very meal, and this means cooking as much as I can from scratch to avoid ingesting potentially hazardous additives or preservatives from processed foods. I love to cook. It relaxes me. So I have to make time for meals. I like to plan at least one meal a day where we sit at the dining room table as a family and connect. I have a rule of no electronics at the table so we can talk to one another. Communication is so important to a happy and healthy family. I also have an old, persnickety hundred-and-fifteen-year-old house that needs cleaning and maintaining. After a century, things tend to break down and need attention. I also detest clutter, and in a nearly 3,000-square-foot house, clutter seems inevitable. Along with clutter, dust and dog hair seem to multiply on the furniture and floors overnight. I think on any given day, I can sweep up enough dog hair off the floor to form a small furry animal. And, as if all of the non-writing things aren’t enough, I have my neglected painting that I would like to get back to. I haven’t set foot in my art room all year. Painting is therapy for me and helps me relax. I'll get there. I hope. Every day, we all have 24 hours, which breaks down into 1,440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds. That’s an awful lot of time every day in every year that I still have left on the planet. That being said, if I was told that I only had six minutes left to live, I wouldn’t type a little faster. I’d type a lot faster.
On January 3, 2021, I was scrolling through Instagram. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this event would forever change the scope of my writing. I saw a picture posted by the very talented artist and sculptor Kevin Cassidy. I thought that it was a cool picture and saved the image in a folder called “Awesome Art.” I figured that was going to be that. I might look back and admire the picture once in a while, but I had no idea just how much that picture would change my life.
Finally, I figured that if I just jotted some ideas down, I could get my mind to release the thoughts of the picture, and I could get back to writing my outline. I thought wrong. The quick thoughts I'd planned to jot down turned into something that launched me outside my comfort zone with regards to my writing. I love romance and I love stories, so you can imagine that I absolutely love romantic stories. That’s why I write in the genre that I do. But there’s so much more to my books than just romance. There’s often suspense and mystery. There’s always some humor. And then there are the characters I create. I may be biased, but I think I’ve created some pretty amazing and realistic characters.
What I’m trying to say with this long-winded explanation is all of these books, even the ones in a paranormal subgenre, were all well within my comfort zone. All of the characters were more or less human, or humanoid. All of the stories took place in the present time and all of them took place on planet Earth. The image that Kevin Cassidy brought into my life burst that little comfort bubble. “The most interesting things in life happen just on the other side of your comfort zone.” ~ Michael Hyatt.The thoughts in my mind about this picture I’d saved not only caused me to step out of my comfort zone, but it also forced me to do more as a writer than I had for any other book thus far. To create the story that was forming in my mind, I had to step off planet Earth and go even further than that to take a trip outside our solar system. This is how General Lokun Abakkus and Star Shine Miller were created. The image I saved in Instagram was of a being that was definitely not human. The artist was making an image for Loki, the giant in Norse mythology. I decided to honor the art by using Loki in the name, and thus Lokun was the name I chose for the character. Star was so named because I envisioned what humans would be like if we discovered the ability to travel in space to visit other places. Star Shine has two brothers, Hal and Al, Halley Comet and Alpha Centauri.
And from my imagination a story began to develop. The Arkainian Chronicles is the story about Lokun and Star. It’s a story of how they met, how they fell in love, and how they ended up changing the world.
It took nearly a whole year to get the story where I was happy with it. I continually read it and edited it, always finding things to change. When I read the book to my favorite beta reader, my husband, he helped me develop the Arkainians even further. Adrian’s background is in English, and he finds linguistics fascinating. He came up with the idea that the Arkainian language was much more formal and rigid than English. I already had in the story that they were a literal race of beings. They didn’t understand metaphors, nor did they understand sarcasm. They spoke efficiently and didn’t use any superfluous words. This became a running joke among the humans in the story. Our language is rife with metaphors. I actually didn’t realize how much we use them in everyday conversation until I wrote this book. Blood Bound was finally published in March of 2023.
The goal of NaNoWriMo was to write 50,000 words in November. I almost always achieved that goal, but 50,000 words never completed my novel. I tend to write big books and rarely are my novels less than 100,000 words, so I made the decision to utilize two months for my PerNoWriMos. My personal goal is to write 100,000 words between June 1st and July 31st. I chose June and July mainly because nothing is really happening for me during those months, and I can dedicate the time needed for writing. In addition to writing a new novel this year, I've made it my goal for 2025 to publish four of my backlog novels. The four I've chosen have already all been laid out, and I either have the copy to proof, or it has been ordered and will arrive soon.
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers. ~ Isaac Isamov
 So wish me luck in my writing endeavor for my PerNoWriMos. By the end of July, I hope to have put a decent dent in Blood Blessed. I plan to continue writing until the book is done, and then I will spend time editing it and reading it to my favorite beta reader, my husband. He’s not normally a reader of romance books, but he's been kind enough to listen to almost all of mine and offer editing advice or other modifications he believes makes the story better. He's taken a particular liking to my Arkainian books. There’s just something quirky about my created race of aliens that tickles his fancy. The Arkainians are very literal, and they are often confused by English idioms. My husband isn't necessarily as literal as the Arkainians, but he does work with words for a living and enjoys exploring the ideas they convey. I normally write a post on Facebook encouraging anyone who reads my post to join me in my journey, but to date, no one has. I've written those posts because I believe stories are meant to be shared. There are so many beautiful stories just waiting to be written. So if you’ve ever had a thought to write a book, now is the time. Take it from me: It will be such a rewarding experience to hold your book in your hands and to know someone else's life was touched by your imagination. 
What wasn’t announced until recently was the financial state of the organization. I watched the video from the acting executive director, Kilby Blades, as she explained why NaNoWriMo had to shut down. One of her comments was that the organization didn’t collect, or encourage, enough community funding. One thing that struck me is that she said most participants were under the impression that what they did on the site was free, meaning that people took part in the activities the site had to offer but didn’t provide any financial contributions. I’ve been coming to the NaNoWriMo site for over 15 years, and never have I seen anything other than a banner suggesting donations. The organization never, to my recollection, suggested membership fees or solicited annual contributions. I’ve contributed as I can, but I didn’t ever get the impression that I, and other participants, should have been donating continuously to keep the organization afloat. The financial state of the organization has been declining, and it’s been operating in a deficit for four of the past six years. The only reason it didn’t report an operating loss in 2020 was that the leadership took out a COVID loan of $150,000, most of which hadn’t been paid back three years later. Most of the funding for the organization came from merchandising and sponsorships, instead of community donations. And the sponsorships began to seriously decline after 2023, when there were accusations that one of the moderators was grooming young participants on an offsite forum. NaNoWriMo was a big supporter of young writers. Many educators provided material in their classrooms and created programs in schools to allow students to participate. The problem was the organization didn’t watch over this area closely enough. It didn’t verify that the people who said they were educators were actually educators. It didn’t even require participants or moderators to use their legal names. In fact, when the accusations came out about the problematic moderator, the organization was slow to react, and when it did finally report the case to the FBI, it couldn’t produce the accused moderator’s legal name because no one knew what it was. Even the acting executive director’s name, Kilby Blades, is her pen name, not her legal name. This failure to protect young participants didn’t set well with many people. Adding to the problem is that there were forums on sites such as Discord and Facebook, created outside the organization, that used NaNoWriMo’s credentials but were in no way created or monitored by the organization. In some of these outside forums, participants were criticized and/or ridiculed. When complaints were presented to the organization, it didn’t do anything because it had no control over these outside forums. The problem is that the NaNoWriMo website hadn’t been updated in over seven years and was unable to support any inside forums like the ones created on the outside platforms. The organization admitted that technological advancements made up a very small portion of the annual budget. As it became apparent that the organization was in serious financial danger, the acting director started actively looking for other similar organizations to merge with, but the organization’s precarious financial position made it a poor candidate for any kind of buyout. The director and board then started looking for sponsors who could help support the organization. When the topic of artificial intelligence came up, several AI sponsors presented their offers. The acting director, in the video announcing the NaNoWriMo shutdown, says the organization ended up turning down the sponsorships because AI went against what NaNoWriMo believes. If that’s the case, why had NaNoWriMo previously come out in support of the idea of AI-assisted writing? That stance had caused two well-known, nationally best-selling authors to resign from the NaNoWriMo Board of Directors. Between the moderator issues and the fallout from AI support, the organization made the decision to shut down. As I said, I’m saddened by the news but not surprised. But as H.G. Wells said, “If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.”
Of course, before I can sit down to write a novel, I need to get my office organized. Over the past year, I’ve used my office very little for anything other than a place to store things to be gone through later. My office is out of the way — a small area off the kitchen that, for the previous owners, served as an apartment for an elderly relative. There’s no door separating my office from a tiny kitchen area that was part of the apartment space, and I’ve often entertained the idea of creating a secret bookcase door leading into my office, for no other reason than I think it would be eccentric and look cool. And it is, after all, the place where I create books. My office is my bubble of creativity. I took a class once on colors, and the instructor said the color blue fosters creativity and outside-the-box thinking. For this reason, I’ve always painted my home office spaces blue. Blue isn’t my favorite color — that honor goes to purple — but my blue office does seem to allow me to create amazing stories. I have so many ideas packed in my head, having not written much in this past year while undergoing cancer treatment. My energy has been devoted to recovering. But now that the hardest part of the treatment is hopefully behind me, I can get back on track with both my writing and my painting. I miss creating. Creating is therapeutic for me. As Aristotle once said, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” I use my writing to express my inmost thoughts and to deal with problems in the world my way. Every character is a part of me. There’s something about each of them that represents a quirk in my own personality. In a way, then, my characters are an extension of me. Though I’ve never created a character specifically based on me, meaning I’ve never put myself in the place of any character, each one is distinctly some little piece of me. My painting allows me to express my moods with colors. I do abstract paint pouring, and each painting to me is like a Rorschach test in that you can examine one of my finished canvases 10 times and sometimes see 10 different images. On a related note, I’ve been reading up on art therapy recently, and I find the idea fascinating. I know that I almost always feel better after I finish a painting. There are some that just turn out terrible, and I end up pouring new paint over them. But even those failures can be a lesson. And the lesson is: Don’t give up. Something good can come from something bad if you allow yourself the opportunity to see it. That’s something I’ve learned in a very personal way over the past year. I have in my art room a bucket full of broken glasses. I entertained the idea of using the broken pieces to create new art — to create something beautiful from something broken. That idea hasn’t come to fruition … yet. But the idea is still sitting there in my mind, and until it goes away, it’s always possible for it to become reality. As author Lauren Oliver observed: “You don't reach points in life at which everything is sorted out for us. I believe in endings that should suggest our stories always continue.”
Needless to say, that didn’t happen. I did two blog posts in 2022 and three in 2023. From the pattern, you might think I did four in 2024. Well, you would be wrong. How many blog posts did I do in 2024?
I’m hoping now that the chemotherapy is done, I might start to slowly regain the sharp mind I’ve enjoyed and underappreciated my entire life. I’ve been doing the things suggested to regain a clear mind. I find Sudoku almost comical with how easy it is. I managed to complete a nightmare level in 20 minutes or so. I’ve always been a number person and numbers make sense to me, but numbers aren’t what I needed help with, so I took to doing crossword puzzles, Wordle, and word scrambles. My favorite app is Wordscapes. Are these brain exercises working? I have the clarity of mind to write this blog post, so maybe it’s doing something. I’m not setting another time goal to finish writing Project 13. I made the decision on January 1st that the only New Year's resolution I was going to make for this year is to get a cancer-free diagnosis. That being said, I would like to finish the story and maybe get it published this year. Though I didn’t write anything in 2024, I did publish four novels during the year. All four books have been added to my underappreciated arsenal of books available for sale. Shameless plug: If you click on the individual book covers, it’ll take you to where you can buy them on Amazon. Of course, you can always see what books are available and what’s upcoming here on my newly updated website.
I have several novels in backlog that are written and have been minorly edited. They’re not publish-ready yet, but they can be edited and published with less mental clarity than it takes to plan out and write the novel. In case you haven’t read any of my novels, I tend to write long books that have many interweaving storylines. Anything less than a sharp mind will flub something up and leave something dangling. There’s nothing more annoying to me as a reader than to have a concept or idea brought up in a book and have the author either never address it again or change the idea to fit into a concept in a later book. I guess the only thing that bugs me more as a reader is for a great story to have a terrible ending. Fun fact, that was one of the motivating reasons for me to begin writing my own stories. I couldn’t stand a lousy ending. If I write the book, it'll never have an ending I don’t like. Simple solution. Except when I have chemo brain, and I can’t write more than two sentences in a day.
If you want to see any of my paintings, you can hop over to DeviantArt.com and check out my gallery. I miss painting. I miss art in general. I have an art room in our basement that is my sanctuary. Aside from my office, my art room is my favorite room in the entire house. I have in that room anything and everything you can think of, and probably several things you might never associate with art. I have drawers of broken glass, containers of bits and bobs, even a basket full of pistachio shells. They make great flower petals. Don’t judge me. Anyway, down in my art room is where the magic of my painting comes to life. But it is downstairs, and undergoing my cancer treatment sapped my energy.
So, to answer the question I asked at the start of this post. What the heck have I been up to? Unfortunately, not much except resting and recovering the best I can. I am optimistic, though, that 2025 will be more artistically productive for me. Because as Pablo Picasso said: Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. I’m ready for some dusting to happen and for my mind to once again be my friend instead of my enemy.
When I was in college, word processor typewriters made it possible to print my stories, but I was—and still am—a terrible typist. Fun fact: Typing was the only class I ever failed. To this day, I type with my index fingers, my middle fingers, and my thumbs, all the while staring at the keyboard to make sure I hit the correct letters. It was not the way I was taught to type, but I’ve typed over two million words with these six fingers, and I’m okay with that. When personal computers became popular, I bought one and wrote more often. I think I still have a journal that I typed out back then. The problem is, the file is saved on a 3.5” disk, and how do you play that nowadays? Back then, I rarely shared my stories with anyone, figuring others would find them either remedial or ridiculous. The aforementioned turbulent childhood left me with some self-confidence issues. Anyway, I wrote the stories that I wanted to read, and they were my treasures to keep. It wasn’t until much later in life that I realized stories weren’t meant to stay hidden. They’re meant to be experienced by as many people as possible. And who knows how much one story might change the world?
The second novel I wrote was during my first NaNoWriMo participation in 2009. Taking part in it helped me focus on setting word-count goals. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words during the month of November. There are 30 days in the month, so that means I’d achieve my goal if I wrote at least 1,667 words every day. That didn’t seem so hard, and most times it hasn’t been. Words tend to come easily for me once I get my mind focused on a book. I don’t have any trouble starting a book. I rarely have trouble ending one. I tend to write series of books, so most of my endings are soft endings, as I call them. They end the book, but not the story. So my stories can go on for a long time. “The end of THE END is the best place to begin THE END, because if you read THE END from the beginning of the beginning of THE END to the end of the end of THE END, you will arrive at the end.”
I realized after writing my first novel that I needed to make the characters a little more like me, or at least more like real people. To do that, I began adding just a bit of my personality into each character. Now when I create a character, I create his or her entire life. How else can you create a person you know as well as you know yourself? Still, some of my characters can be demanding, and I have to be willing to take them in a direction I wasn’t planning to. When that happens, I have to be able to realistically write how my character would react, or what he or she would say in a given situation, or why the character would behave in a specific manner, or even why the character is the way he or she is today. Xander Bruinski, the main male protagonist in Visions of Murder, is probably the one character of mine who is most like me, in terms of personality, anyway. Adding these traits to my characters was difficult for me at first. It’s hard to open up and put a little part of myself into the characters of my novels. It made me feel vulnerable. But it has to be done if the story is going to be honest. As Neil Gaiman said in his Masterclass, putting yourself out there is akin to walking down the street naked. I’ve participated in nearly every NaNoWriMo since that first year. I’ve missed a few, but I do try to take part every year. As I mentioned earlier, I tend to write longer stories. I’ve actually never finished a novel with only 50,000 words. I think my smallest novel is around 80,000 words. Of course, there’s no punishment if I can’t get to the 50,000 mark by November 30. The goal is self-imposed. Either way, when I get to the end of the month, I just keep writing until I get my first draft done.
I think we need stories in the world. Stories help us relate. Even though my books are works of fiction, they seem real enough to me, and that matters. No, the characters don’t actually exist. The situations I put my characters in never happened. The places I write about are ones you generally won’t find on any map. And though I feel a little like Slartibartfast in creating an entire alien world, the planet of Arkainia doesn’t exist. But even though the characters, situations, and often the places don’t really exist, the stories I tell are real. The struggles my characters go through are real. The emotions they feel—and evoke in the reader—are real. That’s the most amazing thing about being a storyteller. I get to create something real from something unreal and share it with the world. That amazing feeling is something I want everyone to experience. I encourage anyone who has ever given thought to a literary idea to make that thought a reality. Every year I put a post out on social media imploring everyone to participate in NaNoWriMo with me. I offer any assistance I’m able to give to help others facilitate their dream of wring, whether it be a book of memoirs, a book of poetry, or even a book of bad jokes. And I do that because the world needs stories. We have enough reality. What we need is a little magic.
I started this blog post nearly two months ago now, ranting about my troubles with ISBNs for my upcoming books. I was frustrated about how expensive they were and wanted to get that frustration out the only way I knew how. I’d complained about it to my family, and they were sympathetic. But I was still left with the discontent inside me that I couldn’t make go away, so I thought if I put my frustration into words it might help. So I started a blog post. It just has taken me this long to finish the darned thing.
Unlike most of the other posts I’ve done, this one is kind of informational. When I started the post, I had knowledge of what an ISBN is. I knew ISBN is an initialism for International Standard Book Number, and that it is a unique identifier that is on every piece of literary work made available to the public. That way, whether the book is on the shelf at Barnes & Noble, or on the shelf at a local library, or on the cyber shelf at Amazon, or even on the shelf at a small store advertising books written by local authors, it can be identified. Each book deserves to be treated equally with an equal voice, so to speak. Each book for sale gets an ISBN whether it’s 5 words or 5 million words, whether it’s written by Stephen King or unknown author Steven Smith.
I knew WHAT an ISBN is, but what does it mean? What do all those numbers say? Well, I found out. Below is the ISBN for the paperback version of Blood Bound. 
The ISBN is 13 digits long: 979-8-9867837-0-3, and each number, or group of numbers, represents information. Although useful to some, the numbers on the ISBN are pretty useless to the average reader. I’m the author of the book and I have to admit, the numbers are pretty useless to me. And that is precisely why I decided to figure out what the heck they mean.
All books published before 2007 only have a 10-digit ISBN. After 2007, the industry adopted the 13-digit number you see today. The numbers are in sections separated by a hyphen. The first section, called the prefix element, identifies when the book was published. Since the inception of the 13-digit ISBN, the first three numbers have only ever been 978 or 979. The second section, called the registration group, indicates geographically where the book is published and what language it’s published in. Historically, all books with the number 0 and 1 will indicate that the book is published in any English-speaking country. Recently, since the introduction of the 979 numbers, the first two sections of 979-8 will be unique to books published in the United States. Since all my books are published in the United States, all of my ISBNs begin with 979-8. The next section, called the registration element, indicates the publisher of the book. Each country that assigns an ISBN will assign publishers in that country their own registration number. In my self-publishing career, I have used 2 different publishing companies. I started out using Purple Flower Publications and recently started a new company called Dreamwriter.earth
I will get into the purchasing of ISBN a little later in the blog, but I purchased 2 separate blocks of 10 ISBNs, the first using my initial company of Purple Flower Publications and the second under the current name of Dreamwriter.earth. As a result, I have two separate publisher numbers. Some of the earlier books use the original number of 9830839, but the recent ones use the registration number assigned to Dreamwriter.earth, which is 9867837.
The next section, called the publication element, identifies the book title and edition. Each title and edition will have its own unique number. Blood Bound has the number 0. Since I purchased 2 separate blocks of 10 ISBNs, each of the publishing companies will have assigned the unique numbers of 0-9. I have yet to purchase a second block of ISBNs under the same company, so I am eager to see what those numbers will be. The ISBN is only 13 digits, so the next block I purchase for Dreamwriter.earth cannot use 11-99 as the publication element since that will make the ISBN 14 digits. So, what, then, will be used? Stay tuned for that because I don’t know the answer but will hopefully soon find out. The last number of the 13-digit ISBN is the check digit. This is basically a calculation to validate the ISBN. In other words, it’s used to make sure the ISBN is legitimate. At the price they charge, I can imagine the inclination to just make up a number and save yourself the cost. 
If you’re not a number person, I won’t be offended if you want to skip this next section and read the rest of the post. Hint: scroll down and look for Shaun the Sheep and start reading after that.
I am a number nerd. I always have been. Math was my favorite subject in school and numbers have always made sense to me. I love Sudoku and other number puzzles. I once took a class on how many things in nature depict the Fibonacci sequence. What the heck is the Fibonacci sequence, you ask? Well, check out this short video and find out.
Okay, now let’s bring the post back to the subject of ISBNs because I’m going to geek out and explain how you calculate the check digit. It’s a 5-step process, and really isn’t all that complicated, despite the need for algorithms to figure this number out quickly. The algorithms are used because people are lazy and want an easy way to verify the ISBN is legit. For this example, we will go back to the ISBN for the paperback version of Blood Bound.
First, we will need to identify the odd numbers and the even numbers. Sounds easy, but we’re not figuring out which of the first 12 numbers are odd. We are using the odd-numbered places. For example, of the first 12 numbers, 9799737 are all odd numbers, but what about 0? Is zero an odd or even number?
Fun fact: zero is actually an even number. Here’s my inner number geek fully emerging. According to Merriam-Webster, an even number is a whole number that can be divided by two into two equal whole numbers. This means if you take the number (N) and divide it by the divisor (D), which is 2, you will get an integer (I). An integer is defined as any of the natural numbers, the negatives of these numbers, or zero. Let’s test this. N = 0, D = 2 If N/D = I, then N is even. 0/2 = 0, which is an integer (I), which means 0 is an even number.
Okay, back to the check digit. We were talking about the odd and even numbers. Now, we don’t take just the odd numbers of the first 12 numbers in the ISBN, we take the numbers in the odd places. So, we add together the first digit (whether it’s an odd or even number), the third digit (whether odd or even), the fifth, seventh, ninth, and eleventh. For my paperback Blood Bound ISBN, the odd places are the following numbers: 9, 9, 9, 6, 8, 7. And the even places are the following numbers: 7, 8, 8, 7, 3, 0.
Step 1: Add all the numbers in the odd numbered places: 9+9+9+6+8+7=48 Step 2: Add all the numbers in the even numbered places and multiply by 3: (7+8+8+7+3+0)x3=(33)x3=99 Step 3: Add the results of Steps 1 and 2 together: 48+99=147 Step 4: Divide the result of Step 3 by 10: 147/10=14 with a remainder of 7. Step 5: If the remainder in Step 4 is 0, the check digit is 0. Otherwise, the check digit is the remainder in Step 4 subtracted from 10: 10-7=3. So, the check digit in my ISBN is 3. To summarize, the Blood Bound ISBN of 979-8-9867837-0-3 tells anyone who understands the confounded things that the paperback version of Blood Bound is published in the United States (979-8). Furthermore, it is the 10th ISBN used by Dreamwriter.earth (986737-0). And lastly, the check figure of 3 tells everyone that the ISBN is legitimate and not some made-up, bootleg number.
Whew! What a lot of information in just a few numbers.
Now that my number-geek section is over, I’m going to go on a rant about how ridiculously expensive the ISBNs are. First of all, you NEED one to publish a book. Sure, you can use the free ones that Amazon will give you, but you can only sell your book on Amazon. If you entertain the notion of having a few of your books on a physical store bookshelf or in a library, you have to get an ISBN.
Passed in 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act banned business from merging to form monopolies. Additionally, it prevented these groups from dictating, controlling, and manipulating prices in a particular market. The definition of a monopoly is a commodity controlled by one party. Guess how many companies sell ISBNs in the United States? Ready for this? One. Bowker Company is the only place you can buy an ISBN in this glorious country of ours. So, how exactly is that not a monopoly? 
I get that they want to limit the places that sell these little highly sought-after morsels to ensure integrity and uniformity, but why should this unique identifier be so expensive?
I can go into a definition of what capitalism is, but it basically comes down to something (hereafter known as “S”) that many people (hereafter known as “P”) want under the control of very few people (hereafter known as “VFP”). The VFP who have control of S can, and will, extort as much return as possible from P to feed their greed. They have S and they are going to demand as payment for S as much as they want, knowing that P has no choice but to comply with their demands because P needs S and can only get it from VFP. That, right there, is what is broken about our world. The desire for money above the desire for better circumstances.
On Bowker’s website, you have the option of purchasing (a) 1 ISBN for $125, (b) 100 for $575, or (c) 1,000 for $1,500. Seriously? Going back to simple math, the price per unit is (a) $125, (b) $5.75, and (c) $1.50. Why is 1 ISBN so much more per piece? Is it a benefit of bulk purchase? No. It’s because a small, self-published author might need 1 or 2, but certainly not 100 or 1,000, so he or she will most likely purchase that option at a much higher cost per unit. To me, that just seems like the small, self-published author is being taken advantage of, and as a small, self-published author, I feel victimized by this capitalistic greed.
Furthermore, this price is just for the ISBN number. If you want to download the actual barcode to put on your book, Bowker extorts an additional $25 per bar code out of you. With publishing costs so high already, it’s no wonder that it’s so hard for self-published authors to make any money. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe this is a conspiracy between Bowker and the publishing companies to discourage self-publishing. Because why would you self-publish when you can be taken advantage of by a publishing company? Reading back, I find that this blog post sounds uncharacteristically pessimistic of me. Anyone who knows me, knows that I tend to be optimistic about things. Is my view becoming skewed as I age? Maybe. Is that good or bad? Who knows? 
Well, that’s all I have to say about ISBNs. Together, we’ve learned what an ISBN is, what all the numbers mean, and how to verify that the ISBN is not a bootleg. Additionally, we’ve discovered that they’re expensive but necessary. But, hey, what isn’t anymore?
Right now, I’m working on getting my fourth book set to publish. This one was expected to be released last November, but I had an idea when reviewing it that changed a lot about the book and required copious revisions. I suppose it’s better to get the book exactly the way I want it before it is released than to release it in haste and later regret it.  But while I was waiting for the proof of the book to come back, I got two other books set in InDesign and in the proof stage. I was amazed at how quickly the process went. When I was first learning to use the features in InDesign that would allow me to get a book laid out, I found it problematic to say the least. Every feature I needed had to be learned. That was just the layout. I won’t even go into the problems I had with doing the book covers. That will be the topic of another blog post. Thank goodness for the Internet and YouTube. That’s all I have to say about that. Having an easier time with InDesign the second time around reminds me of a moment from my earlier days. When I was in college, I studied accounting. I went to a very strict and well-respected private college. It taught accounting, finance, and business. That was it. My electives weren’t fun things like learning a foreign language or how to create macrame plant hangers. We had Learning the Stock Market and Investing for Retirement. Studying for mid-terms and final exams was ... not fun. In one of my earlier college classes, I was introduced to the concept of cost allocation. Briefly, allocating is the accounting process of taking overhead or indirect costs and allocating them to the direct costs to better analyze the amount needed to break even and make a profit. Back in college, I found the concept difficult to learn, and I struggled with it more than any one person should.  I managed to get through the subject with most of my hair still intact and hoped like heck I wouldn’t need the knowledge in whatever job I had in the future. Anyway, fast-forward ten years and I’m working at a company as a controller. I have reporting to me two accounting clerks, one for receivables and one for payables. My accounts payable clerk was still in college and was having trouble in a few of her subjects. She asked me if I would tutor her. I agreed, and we sat down during our lunch break, so I could pass along my knowledge and expertise. One of the subjects she was struggling with was cost allocation. Having been in the workplace and, unfortunately, doing allocations on a regular basis, I was now very familiar with the process. I explained everything to her. She didn’t get it. I was amazed at how much my thinking had changed. I had been in her exact place ten years earlier, struggling to understand. Now I was frustrated explaining something I found quite simple and having her not understand. That was how I felt recently with laying out my books in InDesign. Publishing my first books years ago, I struggled with every aspect of doing the books. Not that I’m an expert by any means, but when I began using InDesign again after years of being away from it, I didn’t find the task quite as daunting as I had during my previous adventure in self-publishing.
I had not immersed myself in laying out books over the years. I had not dedicated a large amount of time to the task of preparing a book for publication. I hadn’t even opened the program in nearly five years. So, why was the process so much easier this time around? Mainly, I think it has to do with the quote that starts this post. I learn by doing. I know this about myself. Someone can tell me a hundred times how to do something, and I will scratch my head when left to my own devices. I’ll struggle to complete the project, and probably use some colorful language in my pursuit to complete what I am trying to complete. Someone can show me how to do something until next week. I will remember how to do it, and maybe complete the task on my own with some success, with or without the aforementioned colorful language. But the information will probably not stick inside my noodle, and I’ll be back to the head scratching and colorful language when I try to do the task again. But when I do the process myself, that’s when I learn. By doing, I break down whatever barrier I have inside my head that allows the information to stick. I always used to joke that I have a file cabinet inside my head. When I try to do something I’ve only been told how to do, the file cabinet drawer doesn’t even get opened and the knowledge gets misplaced. By doing something I’ve been shown how to do, the information might or might not make it into the file cabinet, and if it does, it gets filed under “Q” instead of “L.” It’s not accessible when I need it. By doing something myself, I file the information in the correct drawer under the correct letter, and it is available to me when I need it. That’s kind of an odd analogy, but this is my noodle I’m talking about. Off topic, but that reminds me of the Stephen King book Dreamcatcher. I haven’t read the book, but I have seen the movie. I saw it a long time ago and don’t remember much other than aliens come to Earth and take over humans. The main character hides from the alien inside his mind in a locked room. His mind is filled with file cabinets. In one of the cabinets is the solution on how to get rid of the aliens. He has to sneak out of his locked room when the alien inside his mind isn’t paying attention. He’d run from the room, look through some files, and run back before the alien knew he was there. It was a weird movie. Anyway, back to self-publishing, which oddly enough includes one book involving aliens. But more on that in a bit. When I got serious about self-publishing this second time around, I took the time to learn some of the features that would help me. I found this course on InDesign. In the course, the instructor (who explains things extremely well) explains the concepts, then shows you how to do the concepts. What sets this apart from most tutorials is he then assigns homework. He encourages you to create the same project on your own that he created in the lesson. By doing, I learned. There were several projects in the course that were irrelevant to my goal, but I have used several of the tricks he shows in the course. If you’re interested in learning InDesign, I highly recommend the course. Anyway, now for the alien bit, I’m going to finish up proofing my fourth book for publication. I hope to have it out by the end of the week. This book was out of my comfort zone when I originally had the idea to write it. I saw an image from a fellow artist on Instagram that just refused to leave my mind. A story took root and I now have the Arkainians, a species with their own appearance, language, history, and culture. Oh, and they just happen to live on another planet.  You can read a chapter of the book as well as get updates of when it will be available for sale. Just click on “Lyra Zonder” at the top of the page.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this post. It has been the first one so far this year. I will try to be better about blogging more often, but I make no promises. I tend to write when the mood strikes me, and I have learned over the years that it is pointless to argue with myself. I almost never win. "From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere." ~ Dr. Seuss I started out self-publishing. I published my first novel all the way back in 2010. Back then, there weren’t as many of the vanity press publishers as there are today. Many of the publishing contracts, when I originally was thinking of publishing my book, were not very advantageous for the author, but rather lucrative for the publisher. So, unless you sold millions of copies of your book, you really weren’t going to make much profit.  The idea came to me to self-publish. I knew absolutely nothing about the process and admittedly, my husband did most of the work for the first book, so I will not write about that experience. But the second and third books I published were all me. I did everything from writing, to layout, to cover design, to promoting. It was a lot of work and I sold very few copies of my books. It was a challenge to learn new software. I used Adobe InDesign for the layout. Luckily, there were a lot of YouTube videos on how to do things because it was very frustrating. Adobe Photoshop was worse. The program itself was fine. The error was with the user. Maybe that’s not entirely fair. The program is so extensive, unless you use it often, there is so much that can be done it’s overwhelming. I ended up just watching videos on the specific things I wanted to do. Otherwise I got too confused. Once I finally managed to get the book laid out and the cover conceptualized, I needed to figure out how I was going to print the book. I chose to use Amazon’s CreateSpace, which I think now has changed its name to Kindle Direct Publishing, though if I type in "CreateSpace" in the internet search bar, I get to where I’m wanting to go. CreateSpace is pretty easy and there are many helpful links. You can use this site to do everything. It’s an a-la-carte type of thing where you pay for the services you use. They have folks who will copyedit the manuscript, lay out the book, and even design the cover, depending on how much money you want to spend. I did everything myself and used their service simply to get my book for sale on their site. The three books I self-published didn’t make me enough to allow me to pursue writing as my career. Admittedly, I got a little discouraged, and thought I might as well not put forth all the effort if no one was going to read the books. Once the three books went up on Amazon’s site, I focused on writing and stopped thinking of publishing. Fast-forward ten years. During that time, I not only added my daughter to the family, I wrote something like fifteen novels. And by novels, I mean extended novels. Ernest Hemingway I am not. I tend to write BIG books. My average novel is a hundred thousand words. Some are between eighty and ninety thousand, and some are a hundred fifty to a hundred eighty thousand words. “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” While I was busy writing, tons of vanity press publishers sprang up and the idea came to me to give one of them a try. My mom saw a television commercial for one such publisher and encouraged me to give them a call. With naïve hope, I did and decided to give them a try. I went with Newman Springs out of Red Bank, New Jersey. The problem with this is all the costs had to be paid by the author. Their contract stated they wouldn’t take any royalties until a hundred percent of my investment was returned, which sounds like a win-win, and it probably would be if enough books sell to actually recover the cash outlay. For me, that wasn’t the case. I was out thousands of dollars and did almost as much work as when I had done it all myself. Needless to say, I didn’t use their services for a second book.  Fast-forward another five years, and here I am now. We left the busy, over-crowded, and expensive area of Seattle and moved to a small town in North Idaho. The housing is manageable, and the people are friendly. I now have the luxury to be retired at a fairly young age. I get to be a full-time mom and unschooling guide for my daughter. I never stopped writing and added a few more novels to my unpublished bookshelf. As the calendar flipped over onto my 50th birthday, I decided it was time to give self-publishing another try. "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." ~ not Albert Einstein Turns out Albert Einstein never actually said this quote. Funny how things get mixed up.
|
Blog
AuthorThis is my blog about my adventures in self-publishing. Archives
October 2025
Categories |
RSS Feed
|
|
