Ruth Ann Nordin's Blog, page 8

Updates on What I’m Doing

Things are going great with my two works in progress. It’s so nice to have my enthusiasm for writing back. Taking it down to two books at a time has really helped. I also am allowing myself days off from writing even if I scheduled the day down as a “writing day” in advance. Like today, for instance. It was supposed to be a writing day, but things came about that made the morning crazy, so I’m not going to worry about it. Instead, I’m writing this blog post.

Alright, so let me get to the meat and potatoes of this post.

I am halfway in Tagalong Bride.

I am still debating what to do with the hero’s sister. I know I’m going to base Book 2 off of her, but I am currently undecided as to who the hero will be. I can choose the rancher she’s supposed to marry (since she was a mail-order bride), or I can go with the deputy who has a big secondary character role in Tagalong Bride. I plan to bring in the Arizona rancher soon in Tagalong Bride. I’m hoping once he enters the picture, I’ll get an idea of what I want to do with him.

Also, someone had mentioned liking the older-than-average character finding their romance, and I want to do that in this series. I am just trying to figure out how to get this character involved.

As for the main story of Tagalong Bride, I’m very happy with how well things are going. I’m about to separate out the hero and heroine from the deputy who has been their guide up to now. I’m looking forward to that because I have some funny moments I expect to bring in that will be entertaining. The desert has all sorts of neat critters to work with when someone who is used to living in a city is exposed to them. The hero, it’s turning out, is the one who is far more squeamish than the heroine is, though I don’t expect her to be all that happy when confronted with a scorpion, either.

I’m getting close to the halfway point in Anyone But You.

Or at least I think I am. I’m not sure how long this will be. I’m at 23,000 words, and the hero and heroine have barely spoken to each other. The hero just let the heroine know she is welcome to put any of her things around the townhouse to make it “her” home, in addition to his, and she will take him up on that offer. Right away, I knew what object she would pick to put in the drawing room to test whether or not he’s serious in his offer. I won’t say what it is because I don’t want to spoil the book. I will say that what happened in Midnight Wedding will have some significance because of this object. I also believe this object will end up being the thing that will begin the transition from the heroine hating the hero to finding something redeemable about him.

Worth the Risk is in the final stages of edits.

I would like this out in May. *fingers crossed*

Janet Syas Nitsick and I made another post on our blog.

Open Discussion: “Well, that didn’t go as planned…”

This time, we discussed things that didn’t go as planned. I don’t know if anyone here would like to share their stories, but we would love to hear them if you have something on your mind.

I Don’t Get the “Bad Boy” Appeal

A friend tried to explain it to me years ago. She said that this particular trope in romance is popular because women like to think they can be the one to change him.

I thought that was one of the most illogical statements I’d ever heard, and it still makes no sense to me. If a woman were to change the bad boy, then he would be good, and if he was good, wouldn’t she lose interest in him? Then I thought, “Maybe being with a bad boy is like being in a movie where you wonder if he’ll ever commit or not.” (Let’s forget the notion that if he does commit to a woman, he might not stick with it since the bad boy image entails him being “bad”.) But maybe that is the excitement. Will he or won’t he? That’s exciting, I guess, but it doesn’t last longer than the end of the book.

I looked up the definition of a rake (a term I’ve heard a lot from Regency books. This is what I came up with in Google, “In a historical context, a rake (short for rakehell, analogous to “hellraiser”) was a man who was habituated to immoral conduct, particularly womanizing. Often, a rake was also prodigal, wasting his (usually inherited) fortune on gambling, wine, women, and song, and incurring lavish debts in the process.” (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rake_(stock_character))

Exactly what in that description makes a man appealing? He is given to sleeping around. That means he probably has an assortment of STDs. He possibly has children with other women. He does not have any intention of staying with the woman he sleeps with, which means he uses women for his own selfish pleasures. Even if he marries, chances are he won’t be faithful because of his past behavior. The only case I can see where a bad boy gets truly redeemed is if he has a “come to Jesus moment” which would involve serious repentance. But in books and in movies, we don’t often see him doing this. He is often portrayed as an egotistical jerk who, for whatever reason, the heroine finds sexy. He knows she finds him sexy and uses it to his advantage. He doesn’t care about morality. He essentially has been bad and has gotten away without facing the consequences of being bad, and he won’t really ever face them. I find it hard to believe that this is a man who will truly hold the heroine in high esteem for a lifetime, which is what marriage is about.

Let’s remove the womanizing from the equation. What makes a man given to wasting his money away appealing? What woman wants to wonder if the bills are going to be paid because this carefree and wild man is reckless with money? I don’t care if he’s the most charming person on the planet; if he doesn’t provide for his wife and kids, he’s not worth respecting.

But the bad boy trope is one that sells very well. I can’t argue that this is a fantasy that is popular in the romance genre. It’s not my cup of tea, and this is one of the reasons I started writing my own romances. I got tired of heroes that had notches on their bedposts.

Let’s talk about the “good guy”. I looked up “define good guy” on Google and came up with this, “…someone you can rely on, someone with a bit of backbone and courage, someone with integrity, someone who is generous and giving. A good guy is someone to be admired.” I looked up “good boy” as well and came up with this, “treating others with kindness and respect, avoiding being vulgar, and showing a kind interest in people.”

So that’s what popped up in Google, and I realize there is a slang for “good boy” that has to do with some sexual thing, but that’s not what I’m talking about in this post. I am talking about the “good boy” trope. This is the boy next door thing.

Let me Google “boy next door”. This is what came up, “If you refer to someone as the boy next door or the girl next door, you mean that they are pleasant, respectable, and likeable.” (source: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/the-boy-next-door-the-girl-next-door)

When I think of the “good boy” in romance, these are the traits I think of. Someone you can rely on. Courageous. Willing to help others. Selfless. Honorable. Kind. Polite. Genuinely cares about the heroine. He doesn’t just see her as a sex object. She is someone he’ll be faithful to. He will give her his name and take care of her. She doesn’t have to wonder if he loves her because she’s secure in the relationship. He doesn’t compare her to other women because he is complete with her. He works hard. He doesn’t boast of himself. He might have a sense of humor, he can be outgoing, or he might be quiet. Regardless, he will put her needs first. I don’t see how a woman can resist loving someone like this.

One might argue, “But that is so BORING.” It’s only boring to read if you can’t think of a plot to throw at the couple to make things interesting. Years ago (okay, more like decades ago now that I’m 49), one of my biggest gripes with romance was how unrealistic they were. I couldn’t see how any woman could enjoy being with a man who treated sex casually. I also couldn’t see how any couple could have a “happily ever after” after spending pages and pages in angst with each other. In real life, marriage is about working together to overcome the obstacles in life. So that’s what I set out to resolve when I started writing my own romances. In July, I’ll be married for 24 years. I realize love isn’t always easy. Yes, there will be arguments. There will be times when you wonder, “Why did I pick this person?” The truth is, he’ll wonder why he picked you, too. You can’t have happy sunny “it’s all perfect” every day of your marriage. We’re imperfect people. There will be storms. But the commitment of marriage is what makes the relationship so beautiful. The vows are sacred. If you have a good guy, you have someone you can count on no matter what. That is why I love the “good guy” trope so much. It’s realistic. You don’t have to change him into someone who is good because he was that way all along. And if you can fall in love with this kind of guy to start with, you will have a happily ever after ending in books and in real life.

So give me the “good guy”. The bad ones aren’t worth it.

On the Topic of Burnout

I am planning on writing a book about burnout. I don’t expect it out any time soon. I want time to gather my thoughts on the topic, but it’s one that I think is necessary to add to .

I suspect that burnout is one of the biggest obstacle a writer could ever face. The thing that makes it difficult is that it’s hard to detect. I don’t know about other writers, but it snuck up on me. I didn’t realize I was in the middle of it until I hit a point where I could not make myself write. My mind was a like a dry well. There was nothing to pull from in my creative brain. I technically knew what to write next because of the formula portion of storytelling, but I could not make myself write it. I had no enthusiasm for writing. I wanted to walk away from writing and never return. I thought I was done. I never imagined I could get my enthusiasm back. This was rock bottom.

It’s hard to explain what this feels like. All I can say is that during that time, I hated writing. I never thought I’d ever say that I hated writing, but I found myself at the point where it was true. The very thing I most loved since I was a teenager had become the thing I most hated. I wanted nothing to do with my characters ever again. I didn’t want to look at my books. I didn’t want to talk about story ideas. I just wanted that part of my life to go away. The irony in this is that, at my core, I’m still a writer. If I’m not a writer, then I have no identity. This left an alarming void in my life that scared and depressed me. I had lost my life’s purpose. That is rock bottom. And honestly, you can’t write through it. The only solution is to give it up for a season and do something else. In my case, I took a lot of walks. Other people at rock bottom will find other ways of coping.

I don’t see how you can get your enjoyment for writing back without putting a full stop to it when you’re in burnout mode, at least if the burnout is as severe as it was in my case. I barely did anything with books last year. I managed to finish the two books I was only a couple of chapters away from finishing. I had to keep telling myself these were my last books to get that task completed. At the time, I meant it because I didn’t think I’d ever want to write again. I even modified portions of one of those books to tie up all loose ends that could come back to haunt me. I dropped a romance I was planning for a secondary character who is now not getting a story, at least not with the plot I originally intended to give him. I rewrote a scene about another character (this one a lady) to leave things open enough to go without answering it in another book. It’s strange that I still had ideas for characters while not being able to write those ideas on paper. I guess creating ideas and writing them are really two different beasts.

I think I could have avoided this point of burnout if I had given myself longer breaks. An author friend did recommend I take half a year off from writing back when I started feeling exhausted when writing. I thought a month would be long enough, so I took a month instead. That didn’t work. All I did was kick the can down the road. That’s probably why I hit rock bottom.

So why didn’t I take a longer break? Because I am the main provider in my family. I was afraid that if I stopped writing, we wouldn’t be able to pay the bills. Making a living with your writing is a double-edged sword. The thing I hear most from writers is how much they want to make a living with their writing so they can quit their day job. It might be easy to get to that point, but when you have to keep writing books to keep the income up enough to pay the bills year after year, it takes a toll on you. I had no trouble writing romances when I started them in 2007. In fact, I couldn’t write fast enough to get all of the stories down. That streak lasted for years. I didn’t start having serious difficulty keeping up the momentum until about 2018. I started losing income in 2016, but I was able to keep the interest level up.

The desire to write because you have stories bursting to get out is not the same as having to write because you need to pay the bills. The former gives you energy. The latter takes it away. It is hard to write when you have to. The longer you write because you have to, the harder it is to keep the enthusiasm up for storytelling. Looking back, I believe this is the early stages of burnout. It’s doable. You can work through it. It’s easy to think, “This is a job. Butt in chair. Get those words out.” You just brush this off by thinking that every job has it’s ups and downs. You just happen to be in a “down” day. Then the “down” days get to be more frequent. You take a week off here and there, but eventually, that doesn’t help. You take a longer period of time off, but you can’t do that for too long because you have bills to pay. You can market your books, but publishing a new book is typically the best way to make the most money. And the faster you can get the books out, the better you’re able to pay your bills. This is a cycle that could end up with you feeling trapped. You have no choice. You have to write. And you start to realize you hate this job. This is nature of burnout if you don’t address it sufficiently. If you are going to make this your day job, save up money first so you can give yourself all the time you need to get out of burnout mode.

Anyway, I am going to look at the different aspects of burnout and see if I can figure out a way to put them into a book to help writers who might be facing the same thing I did. If anyone can think of a topic that fits within the burnout topic, please let me know.

Why I Write Sex Scenes in My Books

So once again, the topic of sex scenes in a romance came up a while back while I was talking to someone. It made me analyze a subject I haven’t thought about in a long time. I believe it was back in 2009 when I was at a crossroads in what to do with my romances. I had just started writing romances, and I had to decide what kind of romance writer would I be? Would I be the traditional Christian romance writer who did the “squeaky clean” policy, or would I veer off into a path that very few Christian romances writers would pursue? Originally, I did write them without the sex scenes. The problem was that the stories felt incomplete to me.

Eye of the Beholder was the book that convinced me to add them in. I tried writing that book without those scenes, and it just wasn’t working. There was a void in the story. The love scenes between Dave and Mary needed to be there in order to understand how his love made her feel beautiful. She needed to be desired on an intimate level. And I had to show it in order for that to come across. After Eye of the Beholder, I wrote His Redeeming Bride, and that also needed those scenes to show how healing intimate moments were for Neil and Sarah. I could have “told” you it brought them closer together, but showing it added a lawyer of depth that made the story stronger.

Since then, I have realized that I learned a lot about the characters by the way they treat each other in the bedroom. Sometimes I realize they learn something about the other they didn’t before. At other times, I learn something about the character through the scene. For example, in The Convenient Mail Order Bride, I wrote, “He’d never felt so close to another person.  For the first time in his life, he was whole.  All along, a part of him had been missing and he didn’t know it until now.” The truth is, I didn’t know that about him, either, until that moment, and I never would have known it if I hadn’t written the intimate scene that accompanied those sentences. My point is that writing those scenes are important to the story because they add a layer to the characters I can’t otherwise show (or even learn from). Those layers aren’t always serious. Sometimes they are lighthearted, like in Taming the Viscountess. I write them for what is right for the characters in the story.

This is where I went off-tangent for a bit, but I think this should be addressed, so I left this in my blog post:

It’s sad that in the Christian sphere, people have taken something beautiful that God created and decided it’s wrong to write about it. I also think a lot of Christian writers should add more depth to the thrillers and horror stories they write. They don’t go dark enough for the story lines they are using. Life can get dark. There’s no sense in avoiding it. If you are going to reach deep into the human experience and make a story about it, then it needs to resonate on the written page. In my opinion, Christian fiction would be a lot more interesting if Christians weren’t afraid to address mature themes. Regardless of the genre, I like to see Christians taking a story and diving deep into it instead of brushing over it with a “Pollyanna” approach. I’d love to consume more Christian content that wasn’t watered down. Watered-down stuff is boring. Boring is forgettable.

Back to the subject of the actual post:

I understand if a writer decides to leave sex scenes out. I have no problem with that. But I don’t understand why those people think all Christian writers need to approach their romances the same way. I’m not writing these scenes to arouse. I’m writing them to advance the story. I realize that they can arouse simply by the nature of the subject, but then, I think about other subjects a person can write in their books and how those subjects also bring forth some response within us.

I spent a couple of chapters writing Loving Eliza and feeling hungry because she hadn’t had a full stomach in for days. I would even eat a full meal before writing those scenes and would feel like hungry. To this day, I still think that’s the strangest thing I ever experienced as a writer. I remember being really angry after writing scenes in The Fugitive’s Bride because Wade was so mad at Charles. After writing those scenes, I had to stop myself from banging doors or snapping at my family. It took effort to separate out what my character felt from my own personal life. (I was actually happy so it was weird how writing changed that.) The same is true for depression. When a character is sad, I’ll cry and be all melancholy. I was relieved when Amanda finally started feeling like it was okay for her to accept Richard’s love in Wagon Trail Bride. That meant I no longer had to feel so depressed. My husband thought I was crazy. He never understood why I was moping around the house during that time. When I wrote Return of the Aliens, I spent weeks nearly jumping out of my skin because the characters were so spooked, especially Alex who had those episodes of terror. My point in this rambling is that it doesn’t matter what the topic is. If a writer is fully emerged in the story, the writer will experience every single thing the characters do. That’s what makes for good writing. It’s a plus if the writer can make the reader feel that way, too.

So I write sex scenes for that reason. I feel the stories are more complete when I add them to the book. If that’s not your cup of tea, you don’t have to read them. There are a ton of romances out there without sex scenes in them. But I find very few Christian romance writers who do add them in. It makes it hard to cross promote when you don’t find others like you. It’s unfortunate that Rose Gordon stopped writing because she was one who did. I don’t know of any others. If anyone does, I would love to find their books. Hopefully, they will be on audiobook so I can listen to their work.

The Earl’s Jilted Bride is now available!

After what seems like forever, I finally have a new book out. I am hoping to get four books out total this year. Let’s hope the writing continues to flow so I can do that.

I want to take a moment to thank Shelley, Bonnie, Erica, Eris, and Lauralynn for helping me get this book together because they had to do the heavy lifting of polishing this book up in order for me to protect my eyes from too much strain. Thank you, ladies, so much!

The Earl’s Jilted Bride is Book 3 in the Marriage by Obligation Series.

Worth the Risk is currently in edits. I am writing Anyone But You. I am hoping to have these two books out this year.

Now for The Earl’s Jilted Bride:

Lady Carol was supposed to marry the Duke of Augustine. Then, shortly before the wedding, the duke committed suicide, citing her for the reason he couldn’t go on living anymore. While there was no love lost between them, her situation is not any better when her guardian threatens to send her off to a convent unless she finds someone else to marry. Marriage to a gentleman she barely knows is a risky venture, but with nothing to lose, she accepts Lord Wright’s hasty proposal.

Grant Carnel, Lord Wright, did everything he could to make everyone think he had a wonderful first marriage. He did it to protect the young child that isn’t really his. He is determined that no one learn the truth. Her life will be free from scandal. With his first wife gone, he is free to marry again. But marriage would mean opening up old wounds that he thought he left behind.

If interested, you can find it here:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Apple

Google Play

Smashwords

Everand (used to be Scribd)

Radish (in serialized fiction form) – episodes start today

Note: I am currently getting it into a digitally narrated audiobook on Google Play and Apple. I will post links to those when they’re up.

A Cute Idea Janet Syas Nitsick and I Had

Janet and I get together quite a bit, and we thought it would be fun to create a blog together. I don’t know how often we’ll post in it. The current goal is once a month. We wanted to offer something short to read that would be like a “tabloid” sort of thing. That idea evolved into a short post that would feature one character per book we have in the works. That character is allowed to say whatever they want about the book. Maybe seeing it would be better than explaining it.

Let me link to it below:

What the Characters Are Saying (February 2024 Post)

If anyone has anything they would be interested in seeing us do on that blog, please let me know.

Updates on What I’m Doing

I’m going to have to dust off the cobwebs of this blog. I know I’ve made a couple of posts, but it feels like it’s been forever since I really did anything over here.

The long and winded version of how I dragged my way through the past year

I’m finding that my burnout is going away. I guess there are some situations where you just have to take a complete break from writing. The process took a long time. I was burned out for probably two years before I finally gave myself permission to quit. I think God sent me the dry eye thing to force my hand on the issue. All of last year, I pretty much didn’t write anything. I might have gotten 20,000 words in so I could finish up The Earl’s Jilted Bride and Worth the Risk. I even added a couple of thousand words to two new books. Overall, that was essentially writing nothing because the year spans 365 days, and I was used to writing at least 20,000 words a month up to that point.

I think when an author starts to come back from burnout, it’s slow. I would get a spark here and there, but it wasn’t anything that led me to the computer. I decided to let these moments flicker then fizzle out. The more time went on, the more sparks would come, and without realizing it, they stopped going out so fast. I dictated a couple of chapters in Tagalong Bride and one chapter in Anyone But You during these moments.

Necessity is a good kick in the pants that brings me back to seriously writing

I’d love to say that money doesn’t influence a writer’s motivation. It’s more romantic to think of authors writing books solely for pleasure. But I guess we live in the real world, and in the real world, money matters. I am fortunate enough that my writing brings in enough to take care of the house and car repairs. And I have had to take car of two cars last month. This month, I discovered stains on my bedroom ceiling that made me call a roofing company. I don’t know if there’s something serious going on or not yet, but my dwindling savings account alerted me to the fact that I need to work. In this economy, my husband income just isn’t viable. So I decided to stop feeling sorry for my dry eye situation and the fact that I was in burnout for a long time. It’s time to get to work. And if I need to work and if I can do work I love, then I might as well get back to the computer. Perhaps the repairs are God’s way of telling me it’s not time to retire the writing gig. I do believe God uses circumstances to give us a message.

But I need to be smart about this because I don’t want to aggravate my eyes. They are doing great. I have barely had any issues with them. I occasionally will have the “sand in the eye” sensation or a day where it waters up more than usual, but considering where I started, this is a huge improvement. I haven’t needed eye drops in about a month. I’d like to keep that up. The son who is in college is using my laptop that has the microphone feature on the keyboard. So I have decided to try my hand at typing with my eyes closed. I am typing most of this post that way. Once in a while, I open them to make sure I’m not messing things up, and the strategy seems to be working pretty well.

I still need the help of the people who have graciously offered to help me. I can’t do the edits like I used to, and I’m afraid if I were to try to do them, it would set my eyes back to where they were last year when I had to quit. It’s possible to listen to books as a way of editing, but you find a lot more when you can read the content. Listening doesn’t find punctuation issues, improper spacing, or homonyms.

Anyway, to sum an exhaustive tale, I am getting back into a writing routine. Here is my plan moving forward:

The Earl’s Jilted Bride (Marriage by Obligation Series: Book 3) still comes out on the 15th.

I have most of the stuff done to get it ready for its release day.

I need to get Worth the Risk (Marriage by Obligation Series: Book 4) ready for the editor.

I will have to ask my editing team what their timelines are like to determine when I will put this up on pre-order.

I have gotten to Chapter 3 in Anyone But You (Marriage by Obligation Series: Book 5)

And I discovered that the heroine of this book isn’t as nice as I originally thought she’d be. I was surprised, but I think it will make for a much better story because I will have to work with redeeming her and Felix at the same time. I am still working on how much he damaged her reputation. I haven’t decided how far to go in how much she’s been tarnished. I have to balance the two out so that they’re on equal “footing” with what needs redeeming.

While writing in it, I also discovered two (possibly three) gentlemen I want to write about in a future series. Their stories just popped in my head while I was writing. I was originally tempted to let Horatio (the brother of the heroine in Secret Admirer) remain single forever, but, deep down, I feel like he needs a story, too. I thought it’d be fun to do a series where characters are using a lab to find a “love potion”. Yeah, it’s farfetched and make corny, but it’s something that piques my interest, so I’m going to run with it. I’m hoping I can put a lot of humor in this series.

I am in Chapter 5 (almost at Chapter 6) in Tagalong Bride (Love Under Desert Skies: Book 1)

I believe this is going to be a funny book. The hero is nice to our heroine, but he only married her for her family’s fortune. They are now in Arizona to find his sister. (They had to leave right after their wedding because the sister was kidnapped by bandits.) I’m at the point where they are an the inn where he is having to confront the official wedding night. He really doesn’t want to do it. And because it’s fun to build up the sexual tension, he won’t have to because a brawl is gong to erupt downstairs where men will start shooting. However…(and this is where my sense of humor kicks in)…there will be a time later in this book where the hero will want to consummate the marriage but won’t be able to because of all of the circumstances that will pop up. I’m looking forward to watching him squirm. But it’s what he gets for being so reluctant to do things to begin with.

I am not going to have the sister fall in love with one of the bandits. I haven’t decided who she should end up with yet. It’s either the clumsy but lovable deputy who only has his job because he’s related to the sheriff OR the man she was supposed to marry (because she is a mail-order bride). There’s a possibility that I can work with another character I introduced, but I have to see how things go between her and the deputy before I settle on that decision. I would like to make this series three books.

***

I am going to start posting on the monthly blog that I haven’t touched in much too long again. I’ll start on that when The Earl’s Jilted Bride comes out.

BookFunnel Promo: February Historical Romance

This month, I have chosen to join the February Historical Romance promotion on BookFunnel.

I have to say that I am really impressed with the covers that authors are making for their books. They are gorgeous. Some of these look like exciting reads.

I chose to put Breaking the Rules in for this promo.

In case someone reading this post hasn’t read this book yet, it is a second chance at love romance. Miss Lilly Lowell’s biggest regret is that she rejected the only gentleman who loved her unconditionally. Now she sets out to win him back, but it will take breaking some rules to do it.

Here is the direct link in case the one I put in the header doesn’t work: https://books.bookfunnel.com/historicalromancefreebooks/i45s2ohy0m

I hope you find a fun new read from this promo!

A special note: I am going to put The Outlaw’s Bride and The Rancher’s Bride in my next BookFunnel promo. I was going to do it this month, but I ran out of time because I was sick and dealing with getting taxes ready for the accountant.

Heads Up to All of You Authors Who Have an LLC

I recently received a notice from my accountant that a new reporting rule went into effect January 1, 2024. I no longer own an LLC. Years ago, I did, but I found it to be pointless so I dissolved it. However, I am aware that many authors still have LLCs, so I thought I’d pass this information along in case you weren’t aware of this. (I spoke with an author the other day who didn’t know about it. That made me wonder how many others might not know.)

Basically, you are required to to file a form with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The information is pretty basic. Your name, birthday, address, a picture, etc. (There was no link offered in the letter. I suppose you have to search for it or ask your accountant about it.) Anyway, I scanned the notice in and will post it here for you to read the details.

If you are a sole proprietor, you do NOT have to worry about this. (I double checked with my accountant on this one. Yeah, I know it specifies in the letter that this is only for LLCs, but I like the verbal assurance of the person who files my taxes. I’m the kind of person who will ask the dumb questions, but I have also been on the IRS’s bad side in the past so I get paranoid with this type of stuff.)

I’ll be publishing The Earl’s Jilted Bride in February and other minor updates

I was originally going to publish this book in January, but I realized that I need a full month to get this uploaded and ready for release. Long story short, my eyes need the extra time. I have set the release date to February 15.

The ongoing saga with my eyes

And I’m having trouble finding a happy medium between giving my eyes the break they need while also maintaining this whole “writing business” thing. I have already cut off social media. This blog, my website, my email list, and BookFunnel are all I’m doing now to get word out about my books so people know what books I have. That takes up a surprising amount of time for what I need to do with my eyes. You really don’t know how much you do with your eyes until you’re unable to do it anymore. It doesn’t help that sometimes I need the computer and my iPhone for things that aren’t even related to my books. It’s frustrating, to say the least. I am on this computer for the entire morning as I’m trying to get The Earl’s Jilted Bride uploaded, and I can already tell I’ll need a full week away from the computer after this to give my eyes time to recover from the strain.

An update on Worth the Risk

I do have Worth the Risk with a beta reader (who has become a friend) at the moment. After that, I am sending it to another friend. And then it’ll go to my editor. I don’t know when I’ll get this out. A couple of months ago, I thought it would be out in June, but given how slow I am at everything these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if this won’t be out until 2025. We’ll see how things go.

Scribd is now Everand

I keep forgetting to address this, but Scribd has changed its name to Everand. I wish these companies would pick a name and stick with it instead of changing names after we have all gotten used to the old ones. Facebook changed its name to Meta. Twitter changed its name to X. And now this. I have about 100 books in all, and it would be a huge pain in the rear to change “Scribd” to “Everand” on all of my links, especially given the situation with my eyes. I checked a few links, and they still take you to my books on that site. That’s the important thing. I can’t afford to pay someone $30 an hour to take care of this stuff for me, and I’m not going to waste the little computer time I have in changing the links myself. So for the people out there who like to tell me things that are “wrong” on my site, the Scribd name is going to stay “Scribd” on my previous books. I’ll change the Marriage by Obligation “Scribd” links to match Everand’s new brand, but that is the extent of the work I’m doing with it.

The next BookFunnel Promo will be in February

Since my attention is going to getting The Earl’s Jilted Bride up and ready for publication next month, I don’t have the time to work anything out for BookFunnel. I thought I could run something in January, but I’m already straining my eyes enough as it is. I do have something planned for February, though. If anyone has a book I’ve done that they would like to see in a BookFunnel promo, let me know.