A word on words

 I remember when we entered “The Information Age.” It was around the late 90s. The internet was booming and data was the new big influence on the economy.

Then we entered “The Disinformation Age.” That started somewhere around 2010 or so, maybe earlier. We started seeing websites promoting conspiracy theories and actual “fake news.” Certain news agencies ramped up their political bias and began spreading outright lies or not reporting news that their political party did not like. There were a few major bad actors that most of this came from which were then spread far and wide. We began seeing “deep fakes” and photoshopped images. Over time, it became harder and harder to tell what was true, what was a reliable source.

And too many people don’t want the truth. They want comfort. They will believe anything so long as it aligns with their politics and makes them feel good about themselves. They’ll allow, ignore, or outright defend heinous acts because of some lie they read or watched. Hatred and bigotry became commonplace.

Then, in 2016, we entered “The post-Truth Era.” We are still there. Truth has become subjective to an absurd degree. If you repeat a lie loud enough and often enough, it “becomes” the truth in the eyes of those willing to listen. Little lies won’t cut the mustard; lies must be big and ridiculous. I have listened to conversations where otherwise intelligent people take some piece of untrue propaganda as obvious truth so they can vilify others. It is not commonplace for politicians to completely lie through their teeth and then get supported by their party’s media outlet to further spread the lies.

But words matter. Truth matters. You can’t make something true by simply repeating it constantly. It is high time we entered “The Consequences Age.” We need to know that telling lies is not acceptable, that you can’t just get away with lying because it sounds good.

If we don’t tell the truth, then words have lost their meanings.

Back on Track

 Hey-o, Hixonites!

I’m proud to say that I have my cover artist working on my novel’s cover right now! It’ll take a bit, but that’s just how things roll sometimes.

I’m a little behind where I wanted to be (before Halloween) but I think I’ll be able to start selling by Thanksgiving. At least online.

Speaking of, I have so much to do for Halloween yet! I haven’t decorated or bought pumpkins or planned the party or figured out costumes…. I plan on hosting my wife’s department Halloween party dressed as Sweeney Todd and she’ll be Mrs. Lovett. We’ll serve meat pies (of course)!

But unfortunately I’ve been sick. This is the second week I’ve had something keeping me from doing the Rundown or really being myself. Last week, stomach issues, this week it’s a nasty cold that just won’t go away (it’s not COVID at least—I still haven’t had COVID). It’s been giving me headaches that have made it hard to look at screens.

Here’s hoping I’ll be healthy the rest of the year, what little of it remains.

France pt deux

 So it has been a little bit since I was in France, but I promised a later update.

Since I stayed in Nantes for most of the trip, I did stuff in Nantes, not Paris.  I DID go to Paris for a little over a day, though.

While in Nantes, I got to tour a castle (which gave a history of the city as well, the kids "loved" it). It was right in the center of the city next to the cathedral (it's a shame the cathedral won't reopen until next year at the earliest). To make up for the lack of cathedral, I dragged the kids with me to the Church of St. Nicholas, which was actually quite beautiful. Although the kids resisted at first, I could tell they were awed the moment they stepped inside.

I also went to their Natural History Museum and completely geeked out over the specimens (none were huge or famous, but they were all very interesting).

The kids and I went to the Isle of Machines, a warehouse that houses a bunch of robots and machines, which all imitate nature. THAT WAS AWESOME. We saw a robotic chameleon catch a fly, drove a giant ant, flew in a mechanical heron, and got to ride on a truly massive mechanical elephant. The kids loved.  I loved it.  I highly recommend it.

When we went, they also had a race (might've been the first annual race) between 2 mechanical dogs. They were big (like car-sized) and one of them drooled incessantly. The entire town turned out to see it.

Of course, there's a lot of culture in France... I had to shove it down my kids' throats. We went to an art museum and at first they were bored and awful. But then I had an inspiration. I saw a painting of Jesus walking down stairs towards a crowd with light shining down on him, turned to my daughter, and said, "What's everybody looking at? Is there something on my face?"  She cracked up.  We started making commentary for most of the pieces and the kids ended up enjoying themselves. We also found a new favorite piece of art... a crowd of people celebrating while they have a cat in a purrito and are force-feeding it (while the cat glares at everyone like it is planning their destruction). THIS WAS IN THE 1300s! People don't change. And neither do cats.

We ate a lot of crepe. We all had snails. We ate well. I was proud of the kids for trying new foods. Which, incidentally, McDonald's in France is very different. Reusable cups and french fry holders, bleu cheese burgers, different sauces on the burgers... it had a patisserie inside it!

As I said, we did spend a day in Paris, but I didn't realize that the Rugby World Cup started that weekend and Paris was FULL. We were able to walk the Champs des Elysee and get to the top of the Arc de Triomph, and went at the perfect time. While we looked out over the city, the Eiffel Tower lit up for us. It was awesome.

Unfortunately, pretty much everything else was booked. And they were booked for like a month out. Still, we walked around Paris, got to see Notre Dame (it is looking pretty good, only the central pillar collapsed, they saved the ceiling, and they plan on opening it to tourists again maybe next year), went to the Louvre (which was chaotic, huge and chaotic), got to be grifted (yeah, I saw you reach into my wallet and take that 20 out. I took it back and if I ever go back and they try that fake charity stuff with me again, I will absolutely go no-holds-barred on them), strolled along the Seine... It was a pretty good day.

So that was my trip to France in a nutshell. Thank you, Google Translate app, for the few instances where I actually needed you.

Setbacks

Writing a novel is fun and I love it.

Publishing that novel is definitely a job.

In the last week I was supposed to get my manuscript back from my editor and have amazing cover art for it.

Instead, my editor needed an extension because she had to go to the hospital. On the plus side, she said that so far my novel is "brilliant." But it still means having to wait a little longer.

And this morning my cover artist canceled the contract because he is sick and cannot continue it. I will give them both the benefit of the doubt, as I think they are both talented and their work history is at a professional level. I am a bit concerned for the artist though; if he is sick enough to have canceled the contract outright and not ask for an extension, he could very well be seriously sick. 

I do hope they both get better soon. Hopefully I will be able to consider him for a future project.

But this does mean I need to find a new cover artist.

Now, I have a rather robust imagination. Apparently it is unusual to be able to not only hear your own inner monologue, but also "see" detailed, colored scenes as well as "smell", "taste", "hear," and "feel" them. This is a serious advantage when I am attempting to describe a scene, emotion, or situation. I can attack it from various angles, easily rewrite it, go as in-depth as I wish.
But for me it is also a disadvantage when it comes to art.

I don't think in *still* images. What looks good in my head might not look good on paper because in my head, nothing is static. I also default to "photorealistic" things; figuring out an art style is completely foreign for me.

What this boils down to is that I end up scanning through hundreds of examples/samples of artists' works and rejecting the ones I know I don't want. That's easy... the first go around. But then I have to do it again on the ones that are left, and so on, until I have it narrowed down to one. That part is not so easy, partly because I'm not set on any specific style. And it all takes time.

I can't take weeks to decide this time. So wish me luck. My busy schedule just got busier.

France

 As I write these words, I am sitting on the couch of a 5th floor apartment in Nantes, France.

I do love traveling, though doing so with kids is a challenge.

For starters, I have to find food they will eat, which is hard enough to do in out own country.

They also aren't so interested in some of the awesome museums and churches to visit, or in walking around (which, at the moment, is the way we are getting around).

But there are some pleasant surprises here.

First, though I did expect to find lots of people who speak English, even those who claim they don't can speak enough English to communicate. Lots of signs and menus are in both French and English. When I enter an establishment where someone doesn't speak English, they almost immediately direct me to their coworker who does.

Second, we showed up at an interesting time. There was a "dog race" between two giant, mechanical dogs that pulled in a huge amount of people. It was interesting. There's also a carnival next door to our apartment for the next week, which, of course, the kids want to go to and remind me of this constantly.

Sadly, the Cathedral is closed until 2024 or 2025 because someone started a fire in it back in 2020. :(

I was not expecting most places to be closed on Monday. I understand why many places advertise being open 7 days a week. They also have odd hours, often opening at 1 or even 4. 

So far, I've been able to use Apple Pay pretty much everywhere. I doubt it will work at the carnival, though.

I'll update more later.

Yay Capitalism.

 Hello Hixonites!

Yes, I just came up with that term. You can all call yourselves that now.

I have been working hard to get this book done, though I'm working on other projects as well, and I'll be on vacation in a week so I'm trying to get done what I can before then.

As such, I thought it would be nice to finally utilize the domain name I've been paying for for several years now. I have a free site using Wix, and that's the same place I purchased my domain through.

What I find awkward is that I cannot use that domain, even though I'm paying for it, without upgrading from a free site to a not-so-free site. So what should cost something like $15/year will end up costing more like $219/year.

... yay.

Here's the rub. I want to be a successful writer, And making money takes money. I have no delusions that my debut novel will be some amazing, runaway bestseller or get any movie deals (but, honestly, it would make for an awesome movie or series). But I have to keep costs in mind.

If I sell my book at $15 and it costs, say, $7 to publish, that's a supposed net profit of $8. Let's take taxes out of that, assume 1/3, and that gives me a profit of about $5.33 per book sold. Now, there's going to be a cost to ship the book, most likely, and I don't know what that would be.
But now let's add in the cost of an editor and cover artist. For the sake of easy calculations, I'll estimate it all to $1200. Yeah, not cheap.
In order to pay for that, I need to sell about 225 books. BUT I also need to pay for advertising and I haven't looked into that, yet. How many more books must I sell just to break even?
Except now with this website nonsense, I wouldn't be breaking even. I'd need to sell at least 3 books per month to pay for the website.
If I go to a convention, I would need to pay for the table. Let's say it's $300. Just to pay for that table would require I sell 56 books.

I'm a new author, with a debut novel, no agent, an indie press, and minimal fame (if you can call 3.3k subscribers to the Board Game Rundown "fame").

Seems fairly obvious that breaking even with one book it not going to happen for a long time, if at all. I *need* to get more books and gain an audience. If I can sell 1k books online, I'd be cooking.

But all this ignores one, final, deadly calculation.

My value. I did the calculations. My first novel took a long time to write, probably about a year, give or take, if you only count the days I was able to write. And taking the time spent, that could've been 6 months full-time. But my second novel took about 4 months to write, but that wasn't full-time. If I wrote it full time it might have taken a month. That's ~160 hours.
If I want to make just $15/hour, I'd need to sell 452 books per month BEYOND what I would need to sell to break even.

This is kinda daunting and depressing, is it not? Writing has been my life-long dream. It was always in my plans, even when I wanted to be a paleontologist. But unless I write a LOT or make it big, there really isn't much money in it. I'm blessed that I have a loving, supporting wife who makes a lot more money than I'll ever make (I'd need to sell well over 1k books a month just to get close). And I do know and have met authors who earn 6 figures writing.

If I lived in a society that places human values over money, artists would get a stipend. But how do we do that? Well, everyone is an artist deep down inside. Instead of subsidizing oil and corn or throwing ungodly amounts of money at military contractors (and before you claim that we need to have a strong military and lowering their budget would make us weak, I'll have you know that the Defense Department is the ONLY federal agency that has NEVER passed an audit), we should just give everyone enough money to survive.
Some of us would be happy just having enough to get by, but most of us would want to earn more than that. However, having enough to get by means we can take risks. If I wasn't married to my wife, I would need to have a full-time job and write on the side, which is very difficult to do. If I didn't have to worry about having food and shelter from the elements, I would probably just write books because I know that if I fail, I'm not going to starve to death or end up on the street.

Sadly, we have decided that human value is directly tied to your income. By that rubric, I am worthless scum, for I cost a lot more money than I bring in. Forget the fact that I'm a stay-at-home dad who does chores around the house all day, volunteers at numerous nonprofits, and plays music for my church pro bono. According to capitalism, none of those things matter.

I like to think that they do. And so does art. Even if I touch just one person, I've made a difference with my writing. One of the things that keeps me going is the idea that my book(s) will be someone's favorite(s), they just don't know it yet. 

The Forever Family Emergency

Hello dear reader,

I do say "reader" because if you are reading this, you are probably the only one.

Something I've been going over with my therapist (yes, I have a therapist, everyone should have a therapist) is the fact that I tend to give myself far too much to day and then get overwhelmed. I need to give things a priority.

Priorities change.

As I'm getting ready to finish editing a novel on Friday night, I essentially get a desperate plea for help from my sister 250 miles away. Like a good person, I pack up and make the 4+ hour trek in the middle of the night.

To truly understand this situation, you're going to need some background.

My dad has hydrocephalus, which means there is essentially water on his brain, which is leading him to have dementia and what is more than likely Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's runs in his side of the family, so watching him deteriorate is like looking down the barrel of a gun that'll go off in 40 years.

My mom has had... issues her whole life, and I recently discovered that they are all symptoms of a mental disorder called "OCPD" - Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. This is not OCD. If you have OCD, you are compelled to do something but you don't really have a reason for it, you don't even want to be doing it but you don't have a choice. You must do it and if you don't it'll eat you up until you do. But with OCPD there is a thing you are compelled to do because it is Right and Good and only You can do it and Your Way is the Only Way to do it and No One Else can help you and God Help Anyone who tries to stop you. Another way of seeing it is that someone with OCD might seek treatment while someone with OCPD doesn't believe they have any condition at all and will likely resist treatment. It also comes with fun comorbidities, like hoarding. My mom has an issue with cleanliness... but she also has piles of crap everywhere, they're just sterile piles of crap. Oh, and then there's the manipulation, including breakdowns, lying, gaslighting, "I'm the victim" mentality, and undermining.

She believes she can care for dad, but she can't. Even the doctors said it is not a safe situation. For instance, 3 weeks ago, he blacked out and had to go to the hospital, which turned into dangerous, life-saving surgery and a 20-day stay. In the end, this was going to be a good thing, as it meant dad was going to have the treatment he needed. But some social worker put in some hospital notes that my dad was being belligerent. Well, yeah, it's called "sun-downing" and "recovery from brain surgery." But because of that note, the social worker pretty much ensured that no memory-care facility will take him now. And while my mom and sister were checking out the only one that would take him (which turned out to be a hard no), another social worker tried to get dad discharged, which meant he would have to go to the terrible facility or home. 

So I drove there to try to help get him home. Of course they decide not to discharge him when I arrive, and I end up wasting a whole day just trying to deal with my mom's OCPD. I gave up writing, I gave up playing music for church, I gave up recording the Board Game Rundown to help get my dad home, and of course an hour after I leave, mom is trying to force my dad to do things he doesn't want to do and they are yelling at each other. If he gets too defensive or belligerent, he could seriously hurt her and not mean to.

This is the problem.  I would call APS but now I know it will do absolutely no good. And my mom still insists on doing this all on her own. She needs help, in-home care at the very least. But she'll never accept it. She won't give us enough information to start an insurance claim. She won't let us assist her. She can't give up her obsession with things being clean. She utterly refuses to do anything about the piles of junk that have sprung up (oh my word, this story is the TIP if a massive shitberg that I just don't have time to write here). And she almost immediately started to lie to me and my sister and try to gaslight us. If you know me and my history, you'll know I find lying to be abhorrent. It's bad enough my son does it, but he's 7. My mom!? 

This situation is much larger than I've revealed here. When I tell people (generally professionals, like therapists or the Alzheimer's Association doctors, what have you) the whole thing, the reaction is always the same: "That's a really tough situation you're in." Yeah, I know. I'm watching my dad's brain deteriorate, knowing that may well be my fate, while my mom just makes it all infinitely worse and prevents us from helping. Tough doesn't come close.

This is all happening as I'm trying to get my first book published, starting an animation project with my brother and eldest sister, and trying to write/film a how-to-play. I'm feeling overwhelmed and my depression keeps trying to take hold again.

I can't wait for writing to become a priority again.

Editor Established!

I have procured an editor!

I am excited and I very much hope she is worth the cost. I'm also a bit nervous. But now, it is the waiting game.

Once she finishes, I get to go through all her notes and fix things. Hopefully that won't take too long. Then, COVER ART!

Of course... as I'm writing this, I realize now that I had intended to fix all those hyphens (- ) into m-dashes ( — )...

I thought I would give a quick overview of some of the ideas I have rattling around in here that I want to be made into books:

• An urban fantasy set in the same universe about a man trying to change his fate. (in editing stages as well)
• A sequel to the previous book. (currently writing)
• A sequel to my FIRST book. (been in the outlining stages for a while) which will bring in the previous two books as well.
• Potential sequel to that one.
• A creative nonfiction piece about my sister and having to deal with psychosis. (ALSO been in the outlining stages for a while, but I've got some research done on this one)
• A fantasy book/series about a dragon cursed to live as a human. (rough)
• A sci-fi about living on a planet that has been ejected from its star (rough)
• A tongue-in-cheek non-fic about adulting
• A fantasy series that I started writing ages ago.

So there's certainly not much need for inspiration as far as what the next book will be...

Welcome to Life

I know only a handful of people will read this (unless I somehow become extremely lucky and gain fame and notoriety that would put Beyonce to shame). I know I have a lot of work ahead of me if I’m going to start gaining a readership. I once had a good 80 or so people reading this thing you know!

But I’m going to do it.

It’s scary. I remember hearing someone say “you aren’t really afraid of failing, you’re afraid of succeeding.” Well, no, I’m definitely afraid of failing. I’m afraid that I’m either a terrible writer whose beta readers, friends, and family have all been lying to, or that I will become just another story of an amazing author kept down by his inability to market himself. But in a sense I am also afraid of succeeding.

I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to marketing and self-promotion. I used to be internet savvy, back when Numa Numa was still a thing. Not so much any longer. I’m using a few guideposts while looking for more. But I know I have my work cut out for me. I know it will be a ton of work that I’m unfamiliar with and might not be good at if I am going to succeed. And if I succeed, what will that do to the family dynamic? Our schedules will become complicated.

As an example, I am also one of the co-hosts of the Board Game Rundown on youtube and we’ve earned over 3.2k subscribers as of this writing. We’re talking about turning this gig into a paying job with hours and everything… which will mean writing and marketing and publishing and selling will all have to happen on off hours.

If I am successful, life will get complicated.

But I think it’s time for that. I’m 42, never had a real career, always had a hard time holding on to jobs (apparently have some self-respect is not something employers actually want), and have been spinning my wheels for 10 years. It is time I got my professional life started. I might be a late bloomer, but by God I’m going to bloom.

Paying the Piper

So I've done it.

I pulled the trigger.

I finished removing passive voice from my story and have inquired 7 editors for quotes.

I got 5 of them back.

Now I am sad.  One of the problems with starting out on a venture is you have no idea what a good ballpark figure for expenses is.

I was told by some that they have good editors who will look at work for $200. The last time I got a quote from an editor (nearly 10 years ago), it was around $500. These professional editors, however, are looking more like $1,500 - $2,000 for my 100k novel. 

This starts to become an issue in terms of pricing.  I do not want to take a massive loss on my first book (well, more than I have already but I will explain later). I have a publisher lined up who will charge $7 per copy, pretty much wholesale.

Let's assume I sell this book at $15.

I have to include any money I spend on advertising and other costs. So let's say in the end I have about $5 profit.

I will need to sell 300-400 copies of my book to break even from the editing alone.

Ouch.  For a first book from an unknown author, that is ouch.

On top of that, there's the cost I haven't included...

my own worth.

I have to take into consideration what my time is worth and how long it took to write the book. It's a $/hr thing.

Granted, my first book took a while, but my second took much, much less time. As I continue down this road, the time will likely decrease which will increase my $/hr. 

I eagerly await the estimates of the final two editors, and I will continue my search. There may yet be a decent editor out there who will charge a lot less.

But at least one good thing came out of it. One of the editors, whose specialty is my genre, said the sample I gave her was entertaining. That's got to count for something.