Easy

For the first thirty-five years of my life, I was absolutely convinced I always had to follow the most difficult path, just because it was the most difficult. The AP version of a course? That's the one I needed to take. Electrical engineering? That must be my major. Life on hard mode was a core part of my personality.

At some point, I realized that there was absolutely nothing wrong with taking it easy. You don't have to read James Joyce's Ulysses just because it's the book nobody else can read. Especially if you've tried a couple of times. You don't have to enroll in an MFA program to write fiction. You don't have to go the traditional publishing route of finding and agent and waiting for them to sell your book. You can buy the frozen pie crust if you don't enjoy making your own.

Sometimes — most times — the easy way is the better choice.

Anyhow, I was thinking about this tonight as I was taking the trash bin to the curb for the weekly pickup. For years, I forced myself to remember what day the trash pickup was, which meant that half the time I was dragging the bins to the curb in my pajamas at 6am after I was woken by the sound of the garbage truck. Or I missed the pickup completely.

And then one day I created a reminder on my Google calendar. Now it emails me on Tuesday evenings. (It's a little passive aggressive, though, with its "Have you taken out the trash?" but that's a separate issue.) It's one less thing I have to remember. It's life on easier mode.

Honestly, if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be that taking the easy road isn't a bad thing. (But I never would have listened.)

Pet Picture of the Day

This is Molly (of the Rivers of London foster kitten gang). She's a ringleader whenever they get up to mischief, but she has a purr that will lull you to sleep. The fosters are going back to the shelter tomorrow, which is good, because they are getting big, but I will miss them.

Accomplishments of the Day

• Spent an hour cleaning stuff in the dining room area. I still need to clear off some stuff on the table, but it's better than it was.
• Remembered Holidailies again!
• Added 800 words to Theoretical Magic.
• Mastermind group meeting.
• Yesterday's total step count: 24,328. Today's will probably be a bit less.
• To-do: Another 900 words on the urban fantasy book. (I did make it to 1700 yesterday.)

Monster of the Week

Well, at least I made it three whole days before having the "what the heck am I going to blog about?" thought.

Monster of the Week

No, we're not talking romance novels today. (Though, yeah, if I wrote romance novels, that's probably the kind I would write because they are absolutely bonkers.) Instead, I'm talking about the style of TV show I most enjoy.

Monster of the week doesn't imply a real monster — it just refers to there being a new problem that has a complete plot arc during each episode. Think of the old style Batman show. Every week, there was a new villainous plot, and everything was resolved at the end. A lot of popular shows do this, especially police procedurals like all of the Law & Order clones. Star Trek did this. 

Sometimes they will also have a series arc, but for me, that's usually when a show gets into trouble. I don't mind character subplots with people forming new relationships like you would expect in real life, but I don't want a Big Bad who is slowly stalking the main character's family during the entire season. Just give me the monster of the week and let me feel like everything has been resolved when the closing credits play.

Pet Picture of the Day

This is Lady Tyburn (of the Rivers of London foster kitten gang) and Freeway, the cockatiel who loves kittens. I have had this cockatiel for 22 years, and she has flown toward every cat she's ever seen. How she survived in the wilds of the SF Bay Area long enough to nearly starve to death, I will never know.

Accomplishments of the Day

• Sent "Preparing for Winter with Special Guest Baba Yaga" to my Patreon supporters.
• Remembered (again!) that Holidailies exists and wrote this blog entry.
• Added ~700 words to the urban fantasy novel.
• Spent an hour breaking down boxes in the back room as part of getting the house ready for the pet sitter.
• Yesterday's total step count: 22,204. Today will likely be about the same.
• Did not pick up the medical foster kitten from the shelter. (I mean, I offered, but I waited long enough to reply to the email that someone else had already taken her.) Trust me, this is an accomplishment.
• To-do tonight: add another 1k to the urban fantasy novel. (If I can write 1,667 words every day during November, surely I can manage it at least once during December, right?)

Glitter Makes Everything Better

If you, too, have no talent at drawing, a short attention span, and a love for creating colorful and shiny things, let me introduce you to acrylic paint pouring with glitter paint!

It's a little hard to photograph these things, so you'll have to use your imagination. But I'm telling you, I walk by my wall of art and think "ooh, shiny!" at least five times every day. They make me happy.

Pet Picture of the Day

This is Nightingale (from the Rivers of London kitten gang). He may look innocent, but he's planning world domination. And that's okay, because he is so soft I will forgive him anything.

Accomplishments of the Day

• Wrote the rough draft of a short thing for my Patreon supporters. (Preparing for Winter with Baba Yaga) I'll give it a day to settle before I try to make it funnier and then send it out.
• Edited and posted the episode for Dragon Fortune on Kindle Vella.
• Remembered (again!) that Holidailies exists and wrote this blog entry.
• To-do: Add words to the urban fantasy
• Yesterday's total step count: 21,487. Today should be about the same.

Serials

Coffee shop character of the day:

There was a guy (white, over 6', bulky, short grey/black hair, in his 50s (?), American accent) on the patio who asked us to watch his stuff while he went to the restroom.

His stuff consisted of a laptop and a carton of eggs.

The eggs might have made sense in the summer when the farmers market is just down the street, but the farmers market is closed for the winter. So... where did the eggs come from? Anyhow, then he came back and got on a phone call speaking in... Danish maybe? It was one of those Nordic languages they speak in the bleak mysteries where there is a lot of snow and the detective is slowly drinking himself to death.

So why the eggs? These are the important questions in life, and I'll never know.

Serials

Do you read serialized fiction? Since you're reading a blog, I'm guessing the answer is no. I'm not saying you're old or anything, but... Chances are, you're well over forty.

Anyhow, the young kids these days read serialized fiction. There are a ton of apps out there (Royal Road, Wattpad, Radish, and Kindle Vella to name just a few) and the idea is that you can read an episode or two while standing in line or on your break — stories for a world where many people don't have the time to spend reading longer form fiction.

Some authors make a lot of money writing serials. Most of them write steamy romance. But then again, that's true for novels as well. Romance is big, and there are rewards for writing what people want to read. Though I often have a romantic subplot in my books, I don't write pure romance. Don't get me wrong — I'd love to. But if I tried, soon there would be ghosts and a murder and... the end result wouldn't fit in the genre of romance.

So I've been writing a few serials on Kindle Vella, mostly because Amazon was giving big bonuses to authors even if nobody was reading the serial. Amazon has done a terrible job with Kindle Vella. If they'd done it correctly, they'd have taken over the American market by now. As it is, I suspect they'll shut down the platform at some point. But it's hard to be sad about Amazon falling on their face.

In any case, I'll probably stop loading episodes on Kindle Vella after I finish the current serial. It's too much effort for very little gain and I think I have maybe two people reading the episodes. Marketing fiction can be a challenge in general, but I have no idea how to market serials. With a book, I can discount the first one in a series and advertise that. A small percentage of readers will buy the rest of the series, and as long as you end up net positive, it's all good.

With serials, the price is fixed, based on the word count, so you can't discount it. Novel and serial readers are two separate circles on a Venn diagram, so the 2k people who get my newsletter every month aren't interested. How do you advertise to a cold audience?

The big problem here is that I am old (and terrible at marketing) and serials are a younger person's format. Oh well.

Picture of the Day

Here's my foster kitten, the lovely Lady Tyburn. Her right eye is looking really good these days — at one point, I thought the whole eye was toast, so the fact that it's comfortable and she can see with it is awesome. Ty is super friendly and loves to run up to me and boop me in the face with her nose. It's very cute.

Accomplishments of the day:

• Remembered Holidailies existed and wrote this post!
• Wrote the Dragon Fortune episode (1300+ words). I'll give it a quick edit tomorrow and then throw it up on Kindle Vella.
• Went to a write-in at the local coffee shop. It was a little chilly on the patio, but not too bad.
• Took pictures of Lady Tyburn's eyes and sent them to the foster coordinator.
• Yesterday's final step count: 25,592. Today will probably be a bit less, but that's fine.
• To-do still: I'd like to add some words to the urban fantasy novel I worked on in November.

It's Holidailies 2023 Time!

Welcome to the blog! It's time for Holidailies, the daily blogging challenge that runs every December.

In case you don't know me, I'm Theresa, and I'm a full-time author. My cozy mysteries are published under the pen name Tess Baytree, and my science fiction & fantasy books are published as T.M. Baumgartner. (See below for more info if you want to see what I write.) I have an author website, but I try to be more professional over there. This blog gets the random stuff that may or may not be related to my books.

Other things in my life that I tend to talk about:

• My dog, Georgie, is an adorable grump. Despite being an Alaskan Husky mix, he doesn't like cold weather, so he's mostly curled up on the couch at this time of year. The best thing about have an 11-year-old dog who doesn't like bad weather is that I don't have to leave the house when it's raining.
  
  
• I foster kittens for my local county shelter. Currently, I have four, named after various characters in Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London urban fantasy series. Peter, Nightingale, Molly, and Lady Tyburn have been with me for nearly two months now, but I think we've finally got their upper respiratory problems under control, so they'll probably be going back to the shelter for adoption on Wednesday. In the meantime, here's the link to the kitten cam!
  
  
• We just finished National Novel Writing Month and I have a bunch of great writer friends, some of whom I see in real life every once in a while.

So... yeah. If you're looking for deep thoughts, this probably isn't the right blog. But if light slice-of-life is your thing, or you've always wanted to know what a full-time-author-who-will-probably-have-to-get-a-job-next-year does, this is the place to be!

Here's a picture of Molly. She is a wonderful & friendly kitten.

For the record, here are my accomplishments of the day:

• Got more kitten food from the shelter. (Very important. These kittens are gigantic now.)
• Wrote 500 words on how the rest of Theoretical Magic, the urban fantasy novel I started during NaNoWriMo, is supposed to go. Some people might call it an outline.
• Made proofreading changes for the new Penelope Standing novel (Death Paints a Picture), wrote the acknowledgements, formatted the thing, and uploaded the final version to all the retailers 15 days ahead of the release, which is a new record. Some authors don't release books in December, but who am I to learn from the mistakes of others?
• Remembered that Holidailies starts today and wrote this blog post.
• Still to-do today: Figure out what happens in the next episode of the dragon serial on Kindle Vella, and figure out what the digital bonus will be for my Patreon supporters. Yes, it's nearly 6pm, but I set my own hours.
• Step count for yesterday: 21,781. Today will be similar because I've been writing this while walking on the treadmill at 2 mph.

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to reading the other Holidailies blogs!

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Want to check out what I write? Here are some series starters that are either free or $0.99:

• Death Walks a Dog, book one in the Penelope Standing Cozy Mysteries. She's a dog walker in her fifties who accidentally ends up in the middle of a murder investigation headed up by her boyfriend, Jake. One of my reviews says "Greatest couple since Nick and Nora Charles." (Ugh, this sounds very sales-y, but I'm trying to get better at marketing.)
  
  
• The Chaos Job This is science fiction or maybe space opera or possibly a space western. (Are you starting to see why I need to practice marketing?) There are AIs and hidden gods and sheep. My friend Sierra live-emailed me as she was reading and you can see her comments here.
  
  
• All Gremlins Great & Small A veterinarian in a changed world...

Musing About the Future

Assuming I don't get better at marketing my books, I'll probably have to return to working for someone else at some point in the next few years. (This is not a surprise — I quit my last job when my writing income was just barely above zero, knowing I'd likely have to go back when the money ran out. My writing income is higher now, but still not enough to live on.)

The real question now — because this isn't an emergency — is: what do I want to do?

I actually liked writing software for the puzzle aspect of it all, but there's just so much baggage with the environment that I doubt I'll ever work in the field again. First off, I'm not spending hours every day in my car. I just can't. And I'd rather work part-time, which is a near impossibility in the field.

But I've changed careers before. No, I will never go back to being a veterinarian, if only because I haven't maintained my license. (That's actually reason number 47, but it's the easiest to articulate.)

This feels a bit like being in high school and trying to decide what to do with my life. Except a little lower stress because I'm old enough to know that I can always change my mind later.

So... Developmental editor for fiction? Overnight grocery stocker? Barista? (I'd probably be terrible at that last one.)

Maybe I should just get better at marketing my books...

Crackpot Alley

Have I mentioned that I'm a regional leader for National Novel Writing Month? Anyhow, this year we're trying something new in letting people know it exists — we have a table at the Davis Farmers Market. (Credit for this idea goes entirely to my co-leader, because it never would have occurred to be that a) the farmers market existed, b) we could get a table there, and c) we could sit at a table for five hours on Saturday mornings. Not so sure about that last part, though.)

The Davis Farmers Market is a fun place to be, with lots of vegetables, crafts, and hot food. They also allow non-profits to have tables at the end of the park, and NaNoWriMo is a non-profit, so tada! Outreach!

What's not quite so obvious is that the non-profit spots are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis, and apparently people start lining up well before 7am.

So we were pretty far from the actual farmers market. Worse, we were at the crackpot end, along with the flat earthers (no, really!) and certain political groups who walked off the edge of that flat earth long ago. Luckily, the high school drama club got their assignment even later than we did, and they were a good bunch.

I'd been hoping to see college students who were interested in learning about NaNoWriMo (Davis is very much a college town), but for about three hours we mostly talked to retired people who clearly viewed the non-profit tables as captive audiences for whatever random thoughts they thought we needed to know. Though weirdly, they stayed away from the flat earthers and fringe political groups, which I thought was a little unfair. The students showed up after 10am, which seems about right for a Saturday morning.

Anyhow, after sitting in the sun and interacting with people for five hours (yeah, it got up in the 90s today), I got no writing done. Also, I never want to see anyone ever again. But I did figure out how to make the propulsion flames show up a bit (cutout opacity = 1.00, luminance = 0.00, glossy layered weight = 0.00) and I think I may call it good... Maybe?

(Oh, and because someday I may need to figure this out again, I fixed the hair problem yesterday by not telling it to upgrade to version 9, but instead parenting the hair to the figure's head. Then I had to mess around a bit to get it in the right place, but at least the pony tail wasn't disconnected and sideways.)

Now I just need to go back and fix the typography that I threw together a few days ago.