Toasty

 The room I use for my office gets 90% of the heat from the furnace. If I close the door, I can easily have it be 85°F in here while the rest of the house is under 60°F. Thank you terrible housing design and construction from the 50s!

But I can't actually close the door because I have cats. The dogs are also an issue, but the cats just make it impossible. And Guido is personally offended by a door that isn't all the way open -- if I leave just enough room for the cats to walk through, the big dog can't figure out how to get out, and Guido will be sure to push it open all the way. I needed a door that opens from the bottom, not the side.

I'm not the genius that I sometimes think I am

So I was thinking about how to attach some sort of blanket to the door frame so the heat stays in and the critters can go under it. Then I remembered that every time I think I'm being terribly clever, it turns out that most of the world is already ahead of me, and I googled "door blanket".

Technically known as a magnetic insulated curtain, but it's a door blanket

The darker stripe in the middle is actually an opening that is held together with magnets. Once you walk through it, it reseals on its own. The whole thing is attached to the door frame with velcro, so I can take it down if I need to. I left an eight inch gap at the bottom on one side so the cats and the little dog can go through, and also to get some fresh air. The big dog has figured out how to get through in one direction. I'm sure he'll figure out the other direction one of these days...

Anyhow, it's nice and toasty in here, and I had to turn down the heat in the house a bit because I was getting too hot. That means I may need to move the birds to a different room since they are in the coldest part of the house, but it's not like it really gets that cold here.

Look, this dog can figure out what to do with her legs:

So much fluff it's hard to find her legs

Pros and Cons of Independent Publishing

Here was the traditional publishing path for many years:

1. query multiple agents until you sign with one, 
2. then have that agent sell your book to a publisher, 
3. then have that publisher line up an editor, and 
4. hope the book gets published before the publisher goes out of business, then
5. return to step one or two with the next book, depending on whether you and your agent are still together

 I realize that for a lot of people, the decision whether to go the traditional publishing route is determined by trying and failing to get an agent interested. I'm not going to lie -- that played a part for me as well. Querying agents is a skill that has little to do with writing a book, and I finally decided I just didn't want to bother learning that skill.

But that's not the only reason to choose to independently publish. Look, I made a list!

Not a vanity press

Before we get to the pros and cons of independent publishing, let me just point out that I'm talking about independent publishing, not hiring a vanity press. The line between the two can get a little blurry, but if you're handing your manuscript to someone and they magically publish it and charge you thousands of dollars, you're being conned out of a lot of money unless you just want to have a bound copy of your manuscript to put in your bookshelf. (If that's your goal, I'm not judging you, but you're still wasting a lot of money!)

As I'm defining it, with independent publishing you are driving the bus. You may pay someone to do parts that you either aren't as good at, or don't have the time to do, but you're making the decisions and setting everything up. The goal is to pay other people for specific services, as needed, in order to publish the version of your book that has the best chance of being read by the right audience. 

Reasons to go the independent publishing route:

1. You get to choose the name of your publishing house. Okay, this is a pretty weak reason, but this is how Speculative Turtle Press was born!
   
   
2. You get to choose what to write. If, as a completely random example that certainly doesn't apply to me, you first publish an urban fantasy novel, and then just want to work on this cozy mystery novella that you kind of love but that probably needs to get published under another pen name so as not to completely confuse the brand... you can do it! Nobody can stop you! Ha ha! You have the power!
   
   
3. You set your own schedule. Nora Roberts (traditionally published!) had to create other pen names because she was writing quickly and her publishers didn't want her competing with herself. With independent publishing, you can publish on any schedule that works for you.
   
   (Some readers might have issues with that, but this week has shown us that some readers just have issues. Lots of issues. If you hadn't heard, someone complained on Nora Roberts's own blog that a year was much too long to wait for a book and that NR needed to change her release schedule. And then this person proceeded to fansplain publishing to NR, a woman who has written more books than God. It's been a well-known fact for a very long time that the last person you want to have go after you is Nora Roberts because she is like an avalanche. The result in this case was not pretty. Expect a character named Debra to die a very horrible death in the next JD Robb book.)
   
   
4. You get to pick your own title. In my case, I whine to my writing group that I still don't have a title, and then listen to them make bad puns and dad jokes for ten minutes until someone comes up with the perfect thing.
   
   
5. You get to pick your own cover. Traditionally published authors don't get to do this. If they absolutely hate the proposed cover, they might be able to have some input, but in general someone else chooses the cover and that's the end of it. With independent publishing you do it all -- find the artist, work with them to put it all together, and sign off on the final product. This is a bit of a double-edged sword because you can screw everything up by having the wrong cover, but at least it's something you were responsible for.
   
   
6. You get to pick your own editors. This is important. You have to trust your editor in order to not resent the things they're telling you about your precious manuscript. Even if they are absolutely wrong about... okay, fine, they're right again.
   
   
7. The whole process is much faster than traditional publishing. Getting a book out in under six months after finishing the first draft is not too difficult. That would be nearly impossible in traditional publishing where it would be multiple years.

Reasons you might want to think twice:

1. All those choices you made above might come back to bite you. Oh well. Live and learn.
   
   
2. You have to learn about the important publishing stuff. No, it's not that hard to figure out, but that sort of learning is not as fun as watching TV.
   
   
3. You have to learn how to market your book. There's no getting around this, if you want the book to sell. The good news is that as long as you don't expect your first book to sell millions of copies in the first week (spoiler! it's not going to, no matter what you do!), you can figure this part out as you go along.
   
   
4. You have to figure out how to deal with all the distributors. I'm not saying that it's impossible to have the same ISBN for the same paperback at two different distributors, but yikes, it is difficult.
   
   
5. You have to fund it all. It doesn't need to be too expensive, but you're paying editors and cover artists.  You may also be buying ISBNs and paying for formatting software. That money has to come from somewhere. Ideally it will eventually come from the previous book's profits, but there's no guarantee when or if that will happen.
   
   
6. You have to make a bunch of decisions about things that you don't feel qualified to make decisions about. Holy crap, what do I know about cover art? (Answer: more than I used to!)
   
   
7. You have to keep track of your finances for tax purposes and stuff. Uh, yeah, I need to get my act together on this.

Daily picture of the big dog with his legs all funny:

This is still amusing to me.

Oblivious

 When asked to describe myself in one word, I usually go with stubborn. And it's true. Stubbornness is baked into me. I get through challenges purely because I won't quit. (Cf. eight years of NaNoWriMo)

Another word that could also be used is oblivious. I often just... don't notice things. This is especially true if I'm concentrating on something else.

Who, me?

This afternoon, for example, I was working in my home office, and there was a bunch of really loud noises in front of the house. I will attempt to recreate my thought process below:

Is anyone still using this table? What are the dependencies? Oh, I think I can --

BANG...BANG... BANG BANG BANG

Weird, that sounded like a gun, or maybe a backfire, but it was too loud to be truck backfires and the rhythm was all wrong for that... But I think I can get rid of this table and that will be one less thing I have to worry about with the upgrade this weekend.

I had completely forgotten about what were clearly gunshots right in front of my house until about fifteen minutes later when I noticed red and blue lights out front. They had the street in front of my house blocked for an hour while they were looking for something (bullets? some other weapon related thing? I have no clue).

But I notice the important things...

I had (of course!) gone back to work, and the police were still there when I got up to get a Diet Coke from the stash in the living room. Then I saw a big black dog trotting down the street, with nobody near him. The cops were ignoring the dog while they searched the gutters, so of course I went outside to grab the dog, because I always go outside to try to grab the loose dogs that run by my house so they don't get run over. Only after I was on my front lawn did I realize that it was a police dog on a long lead searching for evidence. Oops.

So, anyhow, I'm sure I'll be the first to go when the zombie hordes ravage the countryside, but that's just the way it goes!

In other news, look who was awake during picture time today!

NaNoWriMo WrapUp

 As mentioned a few posts ago, November was National Novel Writing Month, and this was my eighth year participating. (At least, I think it's year eight. The website says eight, but literally every other piece of information they copied over from the old websites when they rewrote and consolidated is wrong, so I may be foolish to trust this fact. But it's got to be close.)

We'll Have a Plague Old Time!

Last year a death in the family meant I was scrambling to catch up at the end. This year I finished a day early. It was a little odd, not having any in-person write-ins. I miss hanging out with my local group at crepe restaurant in Davis, or the coffee shop here in Woodland. There are usually around 5-10 people that show up fairly consistently during November, and some of them I don't see during the other eleven months of the year. Still, we got together for virtual write-ins, and hopefully I'll see them all next year.

Let's Talk About Stats, Baby

To make it to 50,000 during the month, it's an average of 1,667 words per day. I know some people who can dash off 1,000 words or more during a 20 minute sprint. They can put in a couple of hours on the weekend and stay on top of things.

Not me. I'm a plodder. If I'm not distracted, I can hit 500-700 words per hour fairly consistently, but that's about it. So the only thing I can really do is put in the time. And that means every day. Thus, it's probably not a big surprise that my daily graph looks like this:

The light blue line is the 1,667 per day suggestion; the dark blue line is my word count. Sometimes boring is just fine.

The book (second in what I've been calling the "sheep heist space opera" series, though this book has no heist, few sheep, and takes place on a planet) is not done. I think it will end up somewhere around 70-80k words, though the barf draft may end at 60k since there are a few chunks that will need to be wedged in later. Someday I may figure out a planning process that works for me. This is not that day.

But this is a win for 2020. I'll take it.

Unrelated Dog Picture

Somebody needs to explain to me how he manages to sleep in these poses. I just don't understand how this can be comfortable. But he's snoring right now, so I guess it is.

Holidailies Returns!

 It's December, which means it is time for Holidailies, during which I write a blog post every day for the month (plus, apparently, one on January 1st, a fact that I did not catch in the first couple years I participated).

Who am I? (Why did you ask?)

If you are new to this blog, welcome! I am your host, Theresa. I live in Northern California with two dogs, two snuggly inside cats, two inside cats that literally run out of the room whenever they see me, and two birds. All the pets that don't run away from me are a bit elderly, so I expect the two-by-two state of affairs won't last for much longer, but I'll enjoy them while they're here.

For money I do things on a computer. No, not like that. I mean I'm a programmer. I've also been a veterinarian. This year I published my first novel. There are more books on the way! The only other thing that you might want to know is that I'm kind of terrible at following directions.

What's in store this month?

Coming up with blog topics for 30 days in a normal year is sometimes a stretch. This year is definitely going to be a challenge. The only thing that hasn't been virtual since March is agility with the big dog. After a long break we restarted a few months ago. However, my trainer broke her leg, so now we aren't even doing that.

So that's me! I'm guessing a lot of blog space will be devoted to talking about the ridiculousness of independent publishing, mostly because I have to laugh at myself when I'm actually trying to follow directions.

Anyhow, welcome to the blog! Feel free to leave comments and questions. And go check out the other Holidailies participants!

NaNoWriMo 2020

 It's November, so that means it must be time for another round of National Novel Writing Month, during which I aim to write at least 50,000 words during the month.

This year I am back to my normal plodding progress. If I'm concentrating, I can write up to about 700 words in an hour, so really the only thing for me to control is how much time I spend. I hate getting behind, so I try to hit the 1,667 quota every day. I usually go a bit over, which gives me a good buffer for days when, say, I have to take the dogs to agility right after work.

You can tell it's cold because otherwise the big dog would have barked and flounced when Guido sat down next to him.

(Agility has been restarted, but it's at my trainer's facility 45 minutes away, in dueling banjos territory. I'm not sure if people who post 8 foot tall signs with misogynistic and racist sayings about political figures just naturally get shoved out of more polite society and end up in the hills with no close neighbors, or if being out in the middle of nowhere just addles people who are prone to it, but the narrow roads are scary for more than one reason.)

Anyhow, this is how things are going for the novel currently referred to as "Sheep Heist 2", which doesn't have a heist and not many sheep. (I mean, I have to call the file something, and the first book did have sheep and something like a heist, so there is logic being followed here.)

Dark blue is my progress, light blue is the progress needed to make it to 50k.

Because November and NaNoWriMo are traditionally a time to work out new ways to procrastinate, yesterday I made candied lemon and orange slices.

The orange slices didn't hold up as well structurally -- they were harder to cut to begin with -- but they tasted great. The lemon slices looked better. I chopped some of them up and used them in lemon cake today in place of the lemon zest, and it was quite good. (I also made a few other substitutions, some intentional, some because I forgot to read the recipe before I started, but it all worked out, so there!)

Anyhow, that's what is going on these days. I won't be traveling this December, so I'm going to try to get another book close to being ready to publish. And also hanging out with the animals, including this majestic fluff ball:

Her agility days are behind her, but she still enjoys doing all of her little dog things.

Adventures in Advertising

 Remember in my last post when I said I didn't have much of a marketing plan for my new book? That's still true, but I decided to join the 5-Day Amazon Ad Profit Challenge just to learn something about Amazon ads.

Mostly what I've learned is that I have no idea how anyone sells anything. I currently have eleven ad campaigns running. It took three days for Amazon to even show anything to anyone. (That's known as an "impression".) I don't have to pay anything until someone actually clicks on the ad.

It's been nearly a week and a half, and I have 418 impressions and 0 clicks. Most people see about 1000 impressions to get each click, so I may owe Amazon 30 whole cents sometime before the end of the year. On the plus side, this is a cheap gamble.

I did sell six books to other authors in the challenge, so I guess that's something.

Anyhow, I've learned a bunch, so it was worth the time. I'll probably stop obsessively refreshing the webpage someday soon. And maybe after I publish a few more books I'll have to start taking it seriously.

Pimping out my cats to sell my book probably works better...