Kitty Victory

Once upon a time there was a cat. She wasn't very brave, but what she lacked in courage she made up in physical appearance. I dare not say "beauty", as we all know beauty is relative. This little cat had elegance to spare, dainty little tail wrapped around her feet like a long puffy boa when she sat.

But back to her bravery...and this is important to note... she wouldn't take a leap to a couch from the arm of a chair two inches away. She would think about it, make herself ready to jump several times, and then hop to the floor and climb up the couch to get on it.

One day, she decided to be brave and she left her safe spot. She battled a man-made contraption and won, but there was a price for this battle. She lost her elegant tail. For weeks, she had to wear the undignified necklace of healing, and her mother and father made her take wretched icky flavored waters. One was probably retrieved from the evil human litter bowl, while the other water was assuredly from the instant rain maker. That's how bad they tasted!

But once the evil villainous healer humans felt the necklace of healing had done enough of its work, mother and father took off the necklace. The little kitty felt better than ever. She turbocharged around her territories, gained her strength, and soon was making jumps she never dreamed of. Today, she jumped five feet up to a spot on the tower, right from the floor. She had a hero's victory!

**Author message. Not all cats survive against the perils of reclining furniture. This is a reminder to protect your pets from electric and manual reclining furniture.

I still love you... A depressing story

I’ve been disowned…?

No…

I’ve been let go…?

That doesn’t feel right either…

Hurt. I’ve been hurt by unkind words I would never have thought I deserved.

Words that poured forth because I fell in love.

Words that would never have come if I hadn’t.

Does it hurt me?

Yes…

Forget this. You know what? It’s just me and you here, so I’m going to be completely open. This really sucks. A year ago, I was still writing. Or rather, I was finally getting back on track with writing. Now I’m dealing with shitty anxiety, heightened to the point where I feel like I need constant reassurances that I’m not totally sucking at life. Now, I’m dealing with ugly depression which makes me miserable and stashes even uglier thoughts in my mind like little landmines for me to stumble across and turn me into a batshit crazy, anti-social, hug the pillow kind of miserable.

Great descriptive, there, self. Clearly I must be winning at life.

But in better news, I’m making my attempt to cope with things. You know, like...medicine to regulate the something-somethings in my brain that need regulating, to keep me from acting on my mental crazies. I’m seeing a therapist who listens to me and is helping me work through this crappy, mental warzone. Hopefully we can, I don’t know… Neutralize these bombs. I think it’s going well.

But I don’t like it.

I’m hearing words like, “I really do still love you. But--I can’t come to your wedding reception, because it would upset your father.”

Are you being serious with me right now? Can you hear yourself speak, or is your mouth just flapping and words falling out without your knowledge? This is my happy occasion, and yet somehow I’m still managing to feel like I’ve done wrong. Like I’ve been a bad girl and need to be punished for it.

And I am being punished.

You know that moment in your life when someone else has decided what is right for you, and you can either please them and do it, or choose to take a different route and go with what you feel is right instead even knowing you’ll piss everyone off? Yeah, that moment came and went, without warning until suddenly when I tried to invite my parents to eat dinner with me and my then-fiancee, I received a very long email back that began, “Seriously?! This request should have come last February.”

So, you know, when I started dating, I should have taken my barely-known boyfriend to my parents and let them vet him. I guess I missed a lesson growing up by not having these dating experiences young. But that is par for the course, since my first date ever ended in my father threatening to kill said young boy who damn near pissed his pants and couldn’t leave fast enough.

I’m not to be trusted to vet my own significant others, because my own feelings are flawed.

The letter continues, “I no longer want to meet your sociopathic boyfriend or ever see either of you again.”

First of all, your use of sociopath is wrong. It doesn’t fit the character you’re trying to warp it around. A sociopath is a noun, defined as “a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.” He’s not at all antisocial. He’s the opposite. He’s not exactly a bar-hopping, man-whoring player, but he definitely displays the sort of attitude one has when they’ve got Jimeny Cricket on their shoulder and they’re listening to his little chirps about right and wrong behavior.

You can’t just stamp someone with the label of sociopath and expect it to stick, especially if it has completely incompatible glue on it. I get that you don’t want to see me, too, you’re upset and somehow I am behind your emotional turmoil. But you don’t stop your letter there, do you?

“Your entire relationship has been based on lies and manipulation. He is a vandal, a bully, and a liar. You may not be aware of everything he has said or done to me and my husband, but you confirmed that you knew about the cruel comments threatening that [your father] would never see his grandchild. You are actively participating in spreading lies and trying to hurt us.”

Um...what? Disregarding your allusions to what my relationship is based on--which you have no idea because you refuse to hear anything anyone but my father tells you--you called my significant other a vandal, bully, liar. I’ve been the one with him for long enough to sensibly witness his interactions with multiple people. Waitresses, my own friends, his friends, my grandparents, his parents, service workers...ME. Perhaps in all of that, he could have fooled me into believing he was good and righteous but actually not have been. But don’t mistake the major power of logic in witnessing how someone deals with the rest of the world. He was raised to be respectful and mindful of others. To understand that wait staff aren’t smiling at you because they want to, but rather because if they don’t, their finances will suffer. I do not suffer degradation in front of his friends. It is the opposite, in fact. I am treated respectfully, and as an equal, to his friends. He respects and honors my relationship with my friends too, even the male ones. He doesn’t feel like he has to be along any time I want to hang out with my male friends, because he respects me and he trusts me. The same goes for him from me. I trust him to go out into the world on his own, have hobbies and friends on his own, and not cheat on me or spend his entire paycheck binging on cigarettes and alcohol.

As for “cruel comments” about “grandchildren”... I was getting harrassed at work, told I was a fuck up because I failed at college all those years ago. Mistakes I had made were being thrown in my face left and right, leaving me in emotional distress at work and causing my job to suffer. You admitted to me that my father needed to let go of certain mistakes I had made. Now you turned a 180 and chose to ignore the way I was being treated by my own father. So, my boyfriend did say my father wouldn’t see his grandchildren if he kept up acting the way he was toward me. Not because my boyfriend didn’t want my father in my life. Instead it was because my father was being too bullheaded to realize that if he kept up the way he was going, I was going to push him away. It totally became a self-fullfilling prophecy. You both have pushed me away. And now I’m sitting here in my little mental basketcase mind, writing or ranting, I’m not sure which.

I also never spread lies or tried to hurt you. I don’t know what exactly made you think that, but telling lies gets you nowhere and I learned that lesson the hardest way possible many years ago during one of my “mistakes”. Now, I do my best to be truthful because the truth always comes out, doesn’t it? It also doesn’t make sense that I would ever bother trying to hurt you both when I just want you both well. Regardless of the circumstances, I wouldn’t wish pain on you.

Your letter goes on to state things that are incredibly backwards. Things like how I should have continued dating x-person because my father liked him and knew about his past so it was okay for me to date him. You wanted to vet my boyfriend now, but you haven’t properly vetted x-person if you think I could bring a registered sex offender into my life. I don’t care what that person did, if it was mutual or circumstantial or what, there’s no case in which I would have continued. I had a few texts with that person, and never actually went out with them. Due to my history of “mistakes” I do background checks on people, as fully as I can, before letting them into my life like that, and I asked x-person about his issues. I got the story and then things ended.

But my father came up to me with coworkers and my boss around to hear it and demanded to know who I was dating in his department and why I thought I could do so. So I snapped and said that who I see really isn’t his nevermind. It isn’t easy for me to stick up for myself like that, but damn it, I was quite old enough at 27 to make up my own mind. Everyone seems to know it, with you both as exceptions to the fact.

The further your letter goes, the more vulgar the suggestions become of what my boyfriend got up to. It illuminated my father as a hero, as honest (remember him lying to you as he cheated on you), and family oriented (family nights at the bar while he gets drunk). Do you see what I did there? I brought up dad’s mistakes, because you seem to hold heavy stock in them. Mistakes apparently can’t wash away, so explain to me why I should listen to my father’s cries of, “I tried my best.”

Trying your best shouldn’t involve ignoring your past, but instead, learning from it. Yes, I made mistakes. Almost failed highschool, got kicked out of my birth mother’s, started to fail college, ran away from home. I also learned from my mistakes and moulded myself into a stronger person.

You close the letter by stating you didn’t gain a son-in-law when I got married. You lost a daughter, and I lost a father, a mother, and a friend. You explicitly state I’m not to contact you again and that you won’t respond even if I do. You called me a master manipulator, just like my birth mother, and that I believe my own lies and suck the lives out of the people around me. You state you will never sit down to a meal with us.

“You have made your decision, and so have we.” You state.

You know, I was going to analyze the entire letter line-by-line, but it’s not necessary at this point. Somehow you have been led to believe the horrible things in the letter. But we both know that the truth comes out eventually, and when it does, I’ll still be here with my respectfully chosen life partner who has been holding me up through this depression since your letter. Who drives me to the therapist so I can understand my mental crazy. Who holds me when I’m too emotionally disturbed to hold myself.

I wish things were different, but there’s no going back to the way it was. There is only forward. You’re absolutely right. I made my decision.

I have chosen the family who lifts me up.

The friends who hold my hand in times of darkness to keep me from straying too far.

The man who has asked to be by my side, to wipe away pained tears, to kiss me every night, to tell me he loves me for me, and who accepts my love equally in return.

I’m holding my head up. I’m going to work through these issues. There is no shame for having anxiety and depression, but there is suffering. With help, I’ll overcome the burden of your letter, your feelings. I hope you seek help too, because it sounds like you both could use it.

I still love you…

Goodbye.

Questions on Editors and Self-Publishing

These are a couple questions I was posed by a fellow writer on a scifi fantasy writer's group. I thought I would just copy-paste the questions and answers here so that everyone who finds it useful can see it. Sarah B. posed the questions to me. I've had limited experience with publishing before and figured I could be of some help to her here.

1. Do you use a developmental editor or other types of editors? How did you pick them and what does it cost? I've looked at various people's websites. They are quite expensive, which is to be expected, and there are so many, it's hard to know which are reeealllly good.

~~When I was more heavily involved with publishing (right now, I'm doing more of the attempt at writing process than I am the publishing process) I needed to start editing. Because at some point when you think a book is ready to start the publishing process, it's usually barely there.

First was the beta run. My list of betas might be anyone free or sometimes cheaply paid but willing to do a good job and has a record of beta work to prove their legitimacy. Usually my beta is someone close to me who is willing to look for story structure, analyze my work, find obvious spelling or grammar type errors for free because they truly have an interest in my success. The betas are people whom I can trust to discuss details of the short story, book, article, or whatever I'm working on. They help me find flaws that could be degenerative to my work. They help basically work out kinks in your first draft. If you have really good betas and they're doing free work and willing to do a second beta run, then after your first draft is reworked or rewritten, then you might consider using them again. Otherwise, I highly recommend using a new set of betas for the second/third/fourth/eighth drafts until the book is in tip-top shape. It's a long process and you should never underestimate the value of making contacts with new people, writers or readers.

Writer betas are excellent. Why? Because they're used to picking apart work just like you are. The difference between you and another writer is their eyes are fresh, and their red pen is full. Make sure they know that you're not going to shrivel up like a dried berry when they critique your work. But more importantly... follow through and don't shrivel up like a dried berry, because the best critique can be very hard and you cannot let yourself lose heart in your work! This is what you do, this is who you are, you are a writer because you write. Natural talent is falsely advertised as something that makes you good. You get good at writing because its something you want to do and you worked hard at it.

Reader betas are excellent. Why? Because they're going to be far more likely to pick out unique details they find important, and some of those things they notice will surprise you. And why will it surprise you? Because it's very likely you didn't even notice you put that insignificant seeming detail in there. And every reader will notice things. It's nice to see the contrast of what a reader finds important to the story versus what a writer believes is more significant.

Readers versus writers will each have a different take on your writing but there may be writers who can fill the reader role while doing the writer role, and vice versa.

After you've satisfied the beta runs and the many drafts you choose to do with betas...after the book is as perfect as betas can make it, then I'll run over to odesk which is now upwork (a website for freelancers like writers and editors). It isn't hard to create a client account.

It's very important that you understand there are many different features of editing. Finding one who can do structure with plots and the like is just as important as finding one who can place or erase a comma.

Hire an editor, and do interviews. Make sure you get a person who has a degree in editing specifically. This is where you pay good money to someone. You'll create a job posting and people will bid on the job. The editor I chose had a 30usd per hour wage, with a background in editing, teaching, and a degree in those fields. She was an older woman and completed her jobs quickly. Upwork can track her doing her job on her screen so I could verify that she wasn't wasting my precious money or wasting time doing her edits.

After she was finished editing, I was then able to go over her fine tooth combing and fix more structure/plot/various other issues with the book. If there was a serious issue, she was able to offer suggestions on how to fix things. Editors read the entire manuscript once before they begin serious editing (typically, though I cannot speak for all of them and it could be something to ask at the interview which you do entirely via webcam). Editors can be worked with multiple times, but it doesn't hurt to have fresh eyes once in a while. There is an issue with having too many editors, however, because this could affect the style of writing.

It's important to find an editor you can work with, and who will work with you. Shopping around with short stories you want edited for children's books, or articles or short pieces for a blog can be an ideal method of finding the right editor for you. It's a short term project, so you're not dishing out mega bucks, but you can get a feel for the editor and how they'll be while working with you. And remember, you can fire an editor at any time. All you have to do is find a new one. It's better to put a project on hold if you know you can't work with your editor until you find a new one than to spend more money.

Illustrators/artists can also be found on odesk/upwork website. There are multiple other freelance websites where you can find freelance workers such as artists, editors, and people with experience in formatting books. Is it different to find a cover artist verses an artist for interior art? Yes, it really is. A cover artist has specifically worked with books and is capable of formatting the artwork for optimal use on the front/back cover. Dimensions of the artwork is very precise. You don't want half your title getting hacked off, and you don't want a dozen fonts on the cover.

In fact, cover artists typically understand the aesthetics behind an attractive cover, and this is something you won't always find in the untrained individual. You want a unique book cover to your work. Readers don't realize it, but certain fonts on a cover can turn a reader off the book. You also do not want to get stuck with a boring, overused cover style. For example, Twilight set off a trend of covers of that style. Fifty Shades of Grey set off a trend of black/white/red/grey in the erotica genre to the point where every book looked the same and it got very boring to look at.

But I've gotten off track... hopefully I answered your question suitably.

2. Do you have any recommendations for someone who doesn't know anything to get started on the process of learning about self-publishing?

~~My recommendation on getting started to learn the process of self-publishing is first to complete the book from start to finish.

You write it.

Your betas read it x amount of times.

You rewrite x amount of times.

Hire an editor.

First draft, second draft, etc, gets edited until the book is perfect.

Hire illustrator for any desired interior art if needed.

Choose the dimensions of your book. At this point, you'll need accounts with companies like IngramSpark, CreateSpace, or Lulu. There are others.

You need a sales permit for your state, and you can get that usually directly from the Department of Revenue for your state for the most effective value. Don't get caught up by those weird legal let-us-do-it-for-you websites. They'll charge you extra.

Register your business for your publishing company which may require registration at the city/state levels, have a logo artist make a logo for your book.

Logo goes on the cover, and your cover artist will be able to help you ensure it is attractively placed.

A book formatter will be able to help you design your book which means put the cover and the interior together in the accepted format for the company you chose to work with. IngramSpark allows you to create hardcover books. CreateSpace does not, so be aware of that.

Purchase ISBNs directly from BOWKER, the company who handles ISBNs. Do not get them from any alternative source. You want to own your own ISBNs. BOWKER will sell you the ISBN and a barcode which goes on the back of the book. It's cheapest to buy the ISBNs in bulk at 10 at a time. If you have even a little thought of publishing 2 or more books, get the deal of 10 ISBNs. Your cover artist will help you get the ISBN and barcode on your book.

Once you have a completed manuscript/book fully formatted, you'll submit it to your chosen company who will return it with any issues they see in the book's production on their equipment. You will have a chance to fix those errors. Order a few proof copies before publication, and wait for their arrival. Check the proofs for errors in formatting that the company didn't catch. For instance, my company didn't catch the offset of the page numbers right away. We got that corrected so the numbers are uniform in the book.

Once you've been fully satisfied with the proofs (get more sent if you had to make adjustments), then publish. The company will distribute where you've requested they go. Physical stores will not automatically get your book from IngramSpark, because it is non-returnable. While you can assign books to be considered "returnable", it is not recommended by me because you have to refund that money if the book is returned, and you're only earning a small amount off the book.

Good luck, and let me know if you have further questions.

The danger of reclining furniture

We don't often have to think about pet-proofing our houses...

Okay, so while I don't like to post bad news often if at all, this merits sharing for the warning. Yes, this is a shaved cat butt.

Why is my cat's butt shaved? Because her tail was caught in our reclining couch. What happened when this occurred? About 4 inches of tail was torn off, while 3 more inches of tail was degloved. She required an amputation to her tail. She requires a variety of medicines and has to use a cone for weeks.

Reclining furniture can crush pets, cut off or deglove their head or limbs, and can result in death or severe injury as a result.

Cats are stealthy creatures. Please know it is NOT good enough to be 100% positive they're not under the reclining furniture before using it. Unless you can SEE your cat, please don't use the reclining feature.

Cat proof your reclining furniture with a combination base made of plastic mesh and fabric. Once cat proofing is complete, check the fabric/mesh regularly for defects to ensure your cat or small pet cannot get under your couch.

Please, please share this information. What happened to my baby can be prevented with knowledge and action. Keep your veterinarian for preventative health measures by eliminating things like this from becoming an emergency.