I’m moving like a crab. Sideways.

[I tried scanning a picture of a crab I took on a Jamaican beach but my scanner doesn’t want to work.  So I inserted ‘ol faithful up there instead.]

I’m moving like a crab.  Sideways.  I’m dragging my ass about reading the proof copy of my book to check formatting issues.

I have an agenda.  I need to finish reading so that I can order copies to take with me to readings; then I have other things to take care of.   (Ooo, mysterious right?)

The last few months have been a whirlwind.  I never ever wanted to go on facebook and I would never have considered blogging.  I’ve participated in both for my marketing effort.  If it weren’t for my book and blog I wouldn’t be on facebook.  Facebook is, well it’s…I won’t go there.  It’s everything I thought it would be and worse.  Even though I get caught up in the madness myself.  I’ve learned a lot about people from facebook.  I keep swearing I’ll disable my account once my marketing effort is exhausted — whatever that means — but that would be stupid.

I promised to put all that I could behind publishing my book then move on.  I think I might be moving slowly because I’m afraid of the other side, that it will be anticlimactic.  I feel the opposite of that stupid song I hate from the eighties, where the guy says “My future’s so bright.  I need to wear shades.”  I don’t like the song but I wish I could say what he said —  I feel like my future’s so dark, I need to get in a coffin.

I like that I am moving forward despite misgivings though.  But I’m moving forward through bug laden molasses, sideways like a crab.   I do indeed look forward to getting to the other side so that I can take care of other things in my life.  I ain’t gettin’ no younger!

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.

Misplaced modifier

I edited the hell out of my book of short stories, so I was surprised to spot a misplaced modifier a couple of days ago.  A few friends read some of the stories before they were published but they were just proud that their lovely friend Sandee had written pretty stories.  Grammatical errors and structural defects weren’t on their radar.  They read it and said, “Yay!  Sandee wrote a book!”

I’ve been a writer and editor at different jobs.  While I know it’s hard to spot grammatical and structural errors in your own work, I thought I was up to the task. The editor at Calliope made just a couple of changes to my short story for the sake of clarity, so I was confident in my editing ability.

I fixed the error for the hard copy version of the book.  If I hadn’t used all of my book budget money for advertising, I would have purchased an editor, a big, hunky 25 year old who wouldn’t mind working in my apartment sitting on my lap.   I’m looking into it for my other book.