Indiest of indie

I'm not the best of indie. If I was, my books would be selling off the shelves even as I've sat here, distracted by other life matters, and unable to keep up my relentless self-marketing, pounding my own drum. No, I get distracted, I have ten kids and three more kind of hanging on, and I have to do other stuff, and my ratings reach their little plateau, the one they hit when nothing has been happening, and I get a truer idea of my self-worth.

I do, however, have a lot to be proud of. I have thirty titles on the market (about to remove three), with more coming, albeit gradually. I have done everything myself: proofreading, covers, marketing, dealing with Amazon. That's why I call myself 100% indie. I literally pay nobody to do any of this crap for me. And it wears on me a little. Times like now, I'm a little tired. I haven't published anything since fall. The other work I've been doing has sapped my creativity and attention span to the point that I'm not sure I can sit and write a novel like I used to be able to. I'm determined not to do it until I have a solid plan anyway, and I have about five started without a solid plan, but that's what happens when you don't have a plan. You get into it, you have characters, they do stuff, it gets interesting, then it gets mired in lack of plan. Or at least that's what happens to me.

For a while I was chatting with marketers. They are absolutely relentless, wanting to be your friend and collaborate with you to make sure your books reach the worldwide market they are intended for. For all I know, some of these folks could be effective. One of them promised me a whole crew of at least twelve "GoFundMe" experts; from Nigeria, their whole focus is to use their internet skills to somehow siphon some real money off unsuspecting victims back here in the land of milk and honey. This is what I'm sure they'd do for me in the marketing realm too. I'm not biting. My computer keyboard broke and I had trouble making a, s, 1, ! and a few others. I used it as an excuse to stop talking to them. I just don't need it. They didn't really want to be 'friends' anyway.

Broken keyboard and all, I took a break. But now, I'm coming back, in some form or another. More soon!