Mean-Spirited Tales

My book cover is complete.  ‘Mean-Spirited Tales’ is on there twice but I like it like that.  I just have to proof the interior. Create Space mailed it to me.  I hope it’s not  jacked up on the inside.  I had trouble formatting it on their site.  The people at Create Space tried to help.  A couple of the ‘specialists’ there had poor communication skills and talked over me, or cut me off before I could finish saying what my problem was.

I learned some communication skills from How to Win Friends and Influence People (I know it’s funny, right?), so I wouldn’t do that if I had that job.  Today I was sarcastic to a visitor at the gallery, so I don’t always practice what I learned in that book.  I was repentant, so that’s good.  I have tingling in my face after having my tooth pulled two weeks ago which makes me irritable.  I think I have nerve damage or worse.  I don’t want to be around people as much.  I’m going to the doctor today.  I was unhappy about having to go to the doctor, and I’m  upset because I might have to postpone a movie date with a friend because of it and I need my playtime.

I’m overwhelmed, but still taking care of my agenda.  I take the steps and look back to see that another task is complete.  I promised that I would put my short stories on Kindle during my hiatus from work.  I’ve been here for seven years.  It’s a great gig.  But with the economy tanking things shifted around, so I moved to the gallery which is closed between December and March.  I didn’t know if I would be called back, but didn’t look for work during this time.  I wanted to use the opportunity to publish my book.  I’ve been back since April.  My job is not stressful so I have energy for ‘marketing’ my book.  I had one story published but got tired of waiting for literary journals to publish my other work.  In the old days, self-publishing was considered cheesy, so I didn’t want to do it.  It is a lot of hard work to ‘do it yourself’.

Sometimes I feel like I’m doing all this for nothing.  But I need to get it out of my system.  I have a novel called “The Unavoidable” that I want to publish then I need to move on and write something else.  I’m spending more time blogging and wrapping up book issues.   At least I can say that I wrote a book.  After writing these stories I thought, these stories aren’t going to read themselves — I have to publish a book.