S.J. Pajonas's Blog, page 125

Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Me – Food Edition

These Top 10 Tuesdays make it easy to come up with good blog material, no? So today I’m going to give you the food edition of things you didn’t know about me. I don’t consider myself to be an extremely picky eater. I like a lot of different kinds of foods and I’m willing to try things with new flavors and textures, but I definitely have my own food quirks. Let’s get started!

1) I’m a pescetarian.

A lot of people have questions about this, so I’ll just put it out there. I’m a pescetarian. I used to be a vegetarian for over 10 years, and my husband used to be vegan. But a few years ago, I decided I really wanted fish back in my life. I grew up eating fish a lot and a lot of other meats but somehow I missed fish the most out of everything. I attribute this to being Japanese in a former life. There was a time when I sneaking fish into my diet behind my husband’s back (lol) while he was traveling, and then one day he confessed he was actually eating fish while he was traveling! We had a good laugh at each other and started eating it at home too. Now I cook fish regularly. My husband is still dairy free though. So I don’t eat meat excepting fish.

2) I could eat rice every day.

Yep, I love rice especially sushi rice and could eat it every day. I’m not sure I could ever grow tired of it. (See number 1 about being Japanese in a former life). My rice cooker gets a permanent spot on the kitchen counter.

3) Peanut butter is my life.

I’m really glad neither of my kids is allergic to peanut butter because I eat it every day. Every weekday morning I eat toast and peanut butter with a veggie sausage for breakfast. I love chocolate and peanut butter together. Peanut butter in waffles, on noodles, in pastries. I love it all. It’s my favorite thing ever.

4) I always eat the bottom of the bagel first.

I’m not sure when I started doing this, but when I eat a bagel on the weekends and it’s sliced in half, I always eat the bottom part first. The top is my favorite part so it’s a whole “save the best part for last” thing.

5) I actually hate cooking.

Really, as much as I love food (and I do love it), I think I’d be fine with food in pill form. I really do not enjoy cooking at all, even though I’m good at making a few standard dishes. I just hate how laborious it is, all the chopping, the cooking, the hot burning oil. If I had a million dollars, I would totally hire a personal chef. I’d rather clean than cook any day, but it’s my job, so I do it. I try to make the time of cooking enjoyable by listening to audiobooks while I do all the prep.

6) I’m allergic to avocado and cantaloupe and aspartame.

I became allergic to avocado after I gave birth to my oldest child. I would eat it and be in pain a few minutes later, all through my esophagus and my upper digestion area. It felt like really painful heartburn so I thought I would be fine if I ate Tums or Zantac prior to eating avocado because I really loved avocado! But no, that didn’t help either. It was just too painful. So I looked it up and it turns out that if you’re allergic to avocado, you can experience bad digestive pain. So I tried to stop eating it. I would try it and be in pain, wait a few months, try it, and be in pain again. This went on for several years before I gave up and stopped altogether.

Then recently it was melon season and I saw cantaloupe at Whole Foods. It looked so good and I hadn’t had it in a long time (cue doom music) so I got some. Oh my god, I thought the painful reaction to avocado was bad but cantaloupe was a hundred times worse! I was in so much pain I actually vomited it up and had to take Benadryl in the middle of the day and pass out before I felt okay again. Turns out that avocado and cantaloupe are related. Who knew? Well, I do now. Sigh.

I’m also allergic to aspartame, that artificial sweetener stuff they put in all the diet drinks and gum. I have to read labels now to make sure it’s not slipped into random foods. I wrote my first two books fueled on Coke Zero and one day I was drinking it and suddenly everything tasted weird. Everything I ate or drank tasted strange and sickening, to the point that even my sinuses were weird (I wish I could describe it more than “weird”). So I stopped drinking it for a few days and tried again. Again the same issue. I tried chewing gum and it was there too. That was when I realized it was the aspartame. And now I use Splenda in my tea and haven’t had a diet soda in several years.

7) There are several foods I used to hate but love now.

My husband likes to point out that I used hate mushrooms, HATE THEM, and now I love them and can’t get enough sometimes. I also used to hate olives and I love them now. This is why I continue to keep trying things I may not like or haven’t liked in the past. I always give it a try to see if my tastes have changed. I can be flexible like that.

8) Lunch is the hardest meal for me.

I often will stand in the kitchen and despair that THERE’S NOTHING TO EAT when in fact there’s plenty to eat, I just don’t want to make any of it (see number 5). The main problem here is that I’m often alone and have to make food just for me. Breakfast is easy because I eat the same thing almost every day. Dinner is a bit easier. Often my husband will mercifully tell me what to make so I don’t have to decide. But lunch? It’s all on me. I therefore try to buy things that’ll be easy to make. Salads are a mainstay throughout the summer but I often don’t want them in the winter. If I eat processed foods like frozen pizza or burritos, it’s mostly at lunch. Also, I try to eat leftovers at lunch though I don’t like leftovers much either.

9) I get nervous eating meals while out with other people.

I’m always afraid people will be confrontational about my lack of meat eating or I’m afraid I’ll have a reaction to the food (ala avocado or cantaloupe, because those came out of nowhere) or, this one is the worst, I’m afraid I’ll swallow too much food at once and it’ll get stuck in my esophagus. Does that ever happen to anyone else? I HAVE TO EAT SLOW and remember to chew really well or food gets stuck on its way down to my stomach. Not choking like stuck in your windpipe, but in my esophagus. This is also really painful and causes nausea because my body wants to get rid of it. Sigh. Thankfully it’s only happened at home because it’s not pretty at all.

You thought this was just going to be about the food I like and don’t like, right? HELLO.

10) I haven’t eaten McDonalds in over 15 years.

Yep. People talk about stopping off to get fries or a milkshake or a Happy Meal for their kids, and I think, “I haven’t stepped foot in a McDonald’s in over 15 years.” My kids only know Happy Meals from the TV. Lol. It’s for all the reasons you would imagine (see number 1 above): factory farming, chemical laden food, animal cruelty, etc. I’m a firm believer in voting with my wallet, so I don’t give them my business. This is how I deal with most everything I don’t agree with: certain books or authors I don’t agree with or like, certain companies I don’t like, certain charities I disagree with, etc. They don’t get a penny from me. McDonald’s is something I can live without. I should note that once or twice on a long road trip I have eaten at other fast food establishments but still not McDonald’s. It’s just the way it is. My husband is with me on this so it’s a family decision.

So there ya go! Ten food related things about me you probably didn’t already know! Drop your comments in below. Did you suddenly become allergic to foods out of the blue? Do you like to cook? Let me know!

Sunday Update – September 27, 2015

I’m sitting here on the couch this Sunday morning ignoring the Jehovah’s witnesses at the front door, as one does on Sunday mornings. It was quite a long week here. My husband was gone all week in Salt Lake City for week and I was taking care of everything at home by myself. Thankfully, nothing went wrong and we survived, but I’m exhausted this weekend. All I want to do is sleep, read, or sleep. But I’m forcing myself to get some work done and maybe once I shower I’ll be more motivated.

This week I concentrated on seasonal chores and organization. I did things like change the bedsheets on the kids’ beds from the lighter summer blankets to the warmer winter ones, I made toasted overnight oats, and I cleaned out old clothes from drawers around the house. I also worked on writing and organizing more of REVEALED.

Then I watched two free webinars: one on writing children’s books because I’ve had ideas for children’s books, and another on the software I use everyday, Scrivener. After giving it a bunch of thought, I decided to invest in the Scrivener training. Since it’s software I use every day and it’s how I run my business, I really want to be a Pro user at it. I’m already excited by some of the online video tutorials! My goal is to learn enough to make my process of writing seamless and easy. Right now, I get by with Scrivener (and I’ve been using it for 4 years now!), but I want to do even more. I’m super excited about that.

My kids had Wednesday off from school because of Yom Kippur, and it was nice to sleep in and take it easy that day. I even took them to an indoor play place for a while to burn off energy. They had a great time and we really enjoyed the day.

What else happened this week…

My local park is looking really gorgeous lately.

These toasted overnight oats are soooooooo good. I really love them. And they make either a great breakfast or, in a smaller amount, a tasty second breakfast after a trip to the gym.

I tried to get as much work done as possible even though I felt like procrastinating. Why do I always slow down as I get to the end of writing a book? You would think I’d barrel into the end at high speed, but I usually crawl up to it. I’m so close. I think I can finish REVEALED today if I try hard enough. And I finally found an image I can use for the cover! Finally.

And that’s about it! I plan to update twice this week. I have a Top Ten Tuesdays list and a Book Chat planned, probably Tuesday and Thursday. We’ll see if I come up with any other posts!

Random Thoughts on… My Blog, Amazon, and Lifting Weights

I was thinking about how John Scalzi handles his website today. I like the fact that some days he just posts what he’s thinking about or what he’s doing or even a photo he took and that’s it. I should do that more often. So I am. I’ll throw all of these posts into the Random Thoughts Diary category here for future reference.

At the gym this morning, I was listening to the Sell More Books Show podcast and they were talking about how Amazon’s servers took a dump this past weekend and most of the site (and a whole bunch of other sites) struggled to stay online and working for a few hours until they fixed it. I’m sure a lot of people were saying it was an argument against exclusivity, but I’ll admit that it didn’t faze me one bit. I’m actually surprised Amazon.com stays online pretty much all the time. Downtime is to be expected and yet this was the first time they’ve struggled in a long time. I wasn’t worried at all. Look, if Amazon goes out of business tomorrow and closes up shop, I’ll just upload my books to the other vendors and pray the world doesn’t fall into an apocalypse. Trust me. We’re going to have bigger problems than just Amazon going out of business if it ever does. Think about how many online businesses depend on Amazon, not just authors? So keep calm and carry on, folks!

I was lifting weights and realized how far I’ve come there. I’m up to 90lbs on the tricep press, 50lbs on the chest press, 130lbs on the leg press, and I’ve increased on a bunch of others too. It always feels good to lift weights. I really enjoy it. I came home and had a second breakfast, though. Lol. I’m always hungry when I come home from the gym.

I promised myself I would work all day today! So I’m going to cut this diary entry off now and get back to work. Tonight is free as well from distractions, so I’m going to try not to poop out once the kids go to bed, and keep working then too. Wish me luck! And more tea.

The Mystery of Writing Mysteries – Diary Entry #1 – Where To Start?

Since I’m moving into a whole new genre I thought I’d post some of my thoughts about transitioning into something totally new and my progress along my journey.

Let’s first start by touching on why I’m starting something new.

When I told my friend, Amy Evans, that I needed a change because my books just weren’t selling or reaching their intended audience, she suggested maybe it was Japan I need to give up, and I could totally see why she said that. Japan is different and strange to people who don’t know it, and it’s possible that’s what’s turning people off from my books. I think romance in Japan was not really working for the vast majority of romance readers (for those that HAVE read it, they seem to love it and I thank them all for giving SUMMER HAIKUS and FACE TIME a chance!) But Japan is my heart, so I am definitely not leaving it behind.

The plain fact of the matter is I don’t want to take a break from writing about Japan and Japanese people and culture. Really, the only reason why I’m writing full stories is because I’m writing about something I love — Japan. Before I found the Japan angle for the Nogiku series, I struggled to complete stories I was interested in, and now my imagination is exploding with lots of Japanese stories. So I can’t see giving it up for some time.

But if romance wasn’t working then what could I do? My scifi did well, and I plan to go back to that (I’ve been brainstorming ideas for a whole new series about other ships that left Earth in the Nogiku Series), but maybe I should start a new series in a new genre, where being in Japan would be less of an issue.

I decided to go back to my roots of what I loved in my twenties — mysteries. I’m almost 40 now but mysteries comprised all of what I read for a good decade. James Patterson, Patricia Cornwell, these were the books I binged on from the library. My parents loved Mystery She Wrote and I watched hundreds of episodes with them and at the gym while working out. I loved a good Agatha Christie novel and the movies they were based on. Over time, I moved away from the real thriller mysteries because I had kids and they scared me. Lol. But I’ve always loved the lighter mysteries, so I started looking into cozy mysteries.

I like cozy mysteries a lot, though I feel a great number of them are very similar right now and it’s hard for me to tell them apart. Still, the formula is the same between them: a spunky heroine who’s an amateur sleuth, an unexpected murder, and usually they throw in another element like a cat or cupcakes or pie. I know this is an over-simplification, but I always try to boil down a theme or trope to its basic elements so I can see what I’m dealing with.

So where do I start if I want to write in this genre?

I need a few things: an amateur sleuth, a fun location that will allow for people to come and go over the course of the series, and an evolving situation that will allow for the murders or crimes to take place.

For a month or two now I’ve been brainstorming these three basic elements, and I had great ideas for the first two, my heroine and my location, but I was stuck on the evolving situation FOREVER. But that was okay because even though I was brainstorming this mystery, I was working on REVEALED as well. I knew I couldn’t start writing something new until REVEALED was done.

I let the idea sit for the longest time. It felt like an age but was probably only a week or two in real time. Lol. Time is usually exaggerated in my own head. And then, I saw a fascinating news segment on NHK Newsline about how towns in the Japan countryside are dealing with the depopulation of farms and smaller hamlets. Boom! It sparked the idea for my evolving situation! Now I have all three elements and plenty more ideas.

I have a place to start! And once I’m done writing REVEALED I’ll be plotting out my first mystery!

What makes the plot of a mystery? Well, I’ve been doing research and I’ll talk about that in my next diary entry.

PS) I’m torn between calling this series by heroine’s name or the town’s name. I’m not sure yet. So as soon as I’ve decided, I’ll let you know the series name and come back and tag this post accordingly. I don’t think I’ll know the title of the first book until I write it!

Sunday Update – September 20, 2015

Last week I talked about updating my blog more often and wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t update at all last week! Though I have been thinking about more things to blog about, so it’s not that far from my mind. I’m going to participate in more discussion posts, top 10 Tuesdays, and I’m going to write about my transition to writing new genres as well. Hopefully I can get some of those going this week, but I’m working on finishing REVEALED so I’m not sure if I’ll have the extra time. We’ll see how much I get done! I’m still really glad for these Sunday Updates because they always give me a chance to blog.

This past week flew by. My kids were home from school on Monday because our district observes Rosh Hashanah, and then the rest of the week was a blur. I worked on REVEALED and planned out the last few chapters I would have to write for it. I exercised several days, ran errands, and kept up with my usual work. Last night, my husband and I celebrated our 11 year wedding anniversary! We ubered a car into NYC for dinner and drinks together while our awesome babysitter took care of the girls at home for us. It was so nice to have a night out. We don’t do that often and it felt very deserved.

What else happened this week?

I really love going to the gym and lifting weights. It feels awesome to get stronger every week.

Instead of watching the GOP Presidential Debate, I tucked in and watched the first half of Anne of Green Gables. Ahhhh. It was great to get back to a childhood classic. My husband will be traveling this week so I plan to watch the rest while he’s out of town.

One of the best things about having free time every day now is that I can get things done early in the morning and have the rest of the day for other things. I dropped the kids off at school at 8:30 and went straight to Whole Foods to grocery shop. I was done by 9:20 and able to meet up with Amy Evans for writing by 10:00. That’s so nice. I much prefer shopping while no one else is at store and getting things done and out of the way early. Somedays, I wish I could just sleep in, but I’m slowly getting used to being up early every day.

And I put on new Jamberry wraps! These are from the new catalog, Ribbon Dance. I recently switched to the Cold Application Method, which is putting the wraps on cold then applying heat and pressure, instead of heating the wraps first and after placement. I really like this method a lot more and the last two wraps I put on lasted longer than 10 days each with no lifting at the tips! That’s pretty big. I usually have some lifting on my right index finger since I use that nail a lot. Anyway, I get better at my Jamberries every time I use them.

Have a great week everyone!

Sunday Update – September 13, 2015

This was the week that I saw freedom for the first time in eight years. I passed by our usual crossing guard on the way home from dropping the kids at school, and he said, “Don’t look so happy.” Lol. I told him, “I’m happy with my life.” And I truly am. I managed to get two kids all the way from birth into school and I didn’t screw it up. That’s amazing. I never thought I’d make it to the day when my youngest went into kindergarten, but here we are! I have off 8:30am to 2:30pm everyday. Six whole hours to do what I want or need to do. It’s awesome. It’s freedom like I’ve never had. Before I had kids there was work and before that college and school. This is a whole new level of awesome.

That’s not to say I just sit on the couch and eat chocolate and watch Oprah. This week I dropped the kids off and exercised, ran errands, and wrote or edited every day. On Thursday, my routine with Amy Evans started up again and we sat at Panera and had breakfast and lunch together while we worked and talked. It wasn’t a full week because Monday was Labor Day, and next week won’t be a full week either because tomorrow, Monday, is Rosh Hashanah, and even though we aren’t Jewish, our school system has the day off.

This week I was working on REVEALED and it’s coming along well. I wrote a thousand new words into it yesterday and I plan to work on it again later today. I was also beta reading for Tracy Krimmer this week and that took up some leisure time. Now that all of my beta reading duties are done, I’m going to go back to reading about writing mysteries!

What else happened this week?

We had our last day at the pool and now it’s closed. It was a beautiful day last Sunday and we soaked it all up outside with friends.

I put on new Jamberry wraps! Love these. This is the Nepal Relief wrap that was on sale just for fund raising for Nepal when they had that giant earthquake a few months back.

I bought a flute! I had a Gemeinhardt flute growing up, and I sold it in college to pay for books. Sigh. College is so expensive. Anyway, I bought this ABS plastic student flute to check it out, and it plays well and sounds pretty damned good for a plastic flute. Someday I’ll get myself a new silver Gemeinhardt but this will do in the mean time. I want to make time to play more often.

And my Hobonichi Techo planner came! I’m making a commitment in 2016 to journal more and this is my incentive to do it. I’m really glad I take Instagram pictures every day and I do this update every week otherwise I wouldn’t remember everything I do. My memory is so bad lately! So I’m hoping that daily journaling will help too. I don’t want to forget all the amazing stuff that happens in my life!

And that’s it! See you around these parts later this week.

Happy 2nd Anniversary in Publishing!

Happy anniversary to me! I’ve made it through 2 whole years of being a published author and I’m super pleased with how far I’ve come in such a short time. (Read last year’s anniversary post). I say “short time” even though sometimes it feels like an absolute AGE since I started this journey. Considering I was writing my first Nogiku book in 2011, I’ve actually been at this thing for over four years now, so it definitely feels longer than it’s been. Let’s get straight to the nitty gritty…

State of the Author

Before I get into some numbers and graphs, I want to talk a little bit about expectations, dreams, goals, and education. I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing career lately, since it’s so new and I have the awesome ability to shape it in any way that I can since I prefer to be indie published. When I look back on my previous career (1998 to 2008) as a web programmer and designer, I had a whole ten years to build something really fantastic. In the beginning, I was at small dot.com firms, building websites and learning new tricks and programming languages. I struggled for 3 years to find my place before I came upon the ultimate working situation for me, a position at HBO.com. Over the years I was a programmer I learned many different things: Javascript, Perl, PHP, SQL, etc. Each year, I challenged myself to take on a new goal and achieve that goal, showing my employers that I was a valuable employee. I took my education seriously.

This summer it dawned on me: my writing career is and should be NO DIFFERENT. This past year I challenged myself to learn more writing craft and how to write short stories. Both of these things I took to heart and worked really hard at. I read a few books on story structures and I wrote a few short stories, both of which I really enjoyed. And now I can say I accomplished those things, can do those things, and can move on to learn even more!

Diversifying

For this third year of my writing career, I’m setting another goal. I wonder sometimes if I haven’t found success yet, like I did in my first three years of my previous career, because I’m not writing in the correct genre for me (read my post On Not Fitting In). I love scifi romance and contemporary romance, and I’ll continue to write books in those genres because I like having a diverse backlist, but I want to try something new I’ve never tried before.

This year I’m challenging myself to learn to write mysteries. I love mysteries and have always been a fan of Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, and Murder She Wrote, so this seems like something that would be fun to try. Heck, if I fail, it’s okay too! I remember trying to learn Java, and man, I just did not get it. Lol.

So it’s quite possible you’ll be seeing some very different (but still Japan-inspired because I can’t get away from it) books from me in the near future.

Amazon

I remember a year ago how I wanted my books to be everywhere on the planet and on every vendor I could find. I researched a ton of solutions to get my books everywhere and even opened my own web store. And then I realized just how crappy other vendors were, how difficult it was to get to them and how badly they managed their businesses. Heck, Smashwords this past week announced they won’t work with Flipkart in India anymore because they were so slow to list, delist, and change prices. Last year, iBooks gave me the runaround and denied Reunited five times (they denied a Revealed short story a number of times too), and Barnes & Noble screwed up all my books’ listings. Sigh.

Now that I have two years of data to look at and have been through the Scribd debacle, I’ve made an important decision for 2016 and beyond. I moved all of my books exclusively on Amazon for the foreseeable future. I just do not have enough readers on other vendors to be excluding Kindle Unlimited from my income stream. I apologize to those of you who have found me via iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and the two people who have bought my books on Kobo or All Romance eBooks. Lol.

Read more about my decision and learn more about my Kindle to ePub exchange program.

Sales Stats

Last year, I shared with you my book sales stats and I will do so again this year. Since next year will include Kindle Unlimited data, I’ll need to come up with a new chart. I hate Excel! But I’ll do it for you, my dear friends.

I am still not making a living off my writing. Not even close to minimum wage. I want to make a living solely off of writing fiction, so I don’t think that will happen for another few years. (FYI, for anyone else looking to make a living off of writing fiction, it’s a long game. Be prepared to invest 10 years or more). These sales numbers are just numbers, and most of the higher bar graphs are when I was running a sale, which means my income was even lower than usual.

Click to make bigger.

As you can see, I’m definitely selling more books in quantity than I did last year, but in the end, I didn’t make any more money than last year. And I definitely spent more this year in expenses. My All Romance eBook income this year was zero, and I think I sold less than 10 paperbacks, so those numbers are not included.

Blog Stats

Here’s one area where everything improved! I wish my blog were as easy to grow as my fiction. I did increase some traffic to my blog this past year with some timely posts and Facebook ads, but I believe my readership grew because I took the initiative to blog regularly and honestly.

Click to make bigger.

Let’s look at some comparisons…

Last Year’s Sessions – 13,060. This Year’s Sessions – 69,656. Increased by 433%!

Last Year’s Users – 9,711. This Year’s Users – 57,408. Increased by 491%!

Last Year’s Page Views – 20,736. This Year’s Page Views – 89,945. Increased by 333%!

Pages per session and Duration is down and Bounce Rate is up a little, which means people are coming and looking and leaving quicker than they did the year before, but I’m not concerned by that because the top numbers have increased so much. Overall, I’m happy, and there’s still more tweaking to do on my site.

Review Stats

I thought it was a good idea to highlight review stats last year, and although I don’t mind negative reviews anymore (I’ve had some desensitization this year), my review numbers are just so low, I don’t even want to talk about them. Despite having a great ARC reading team and doing everything I can to ask for and plead for reviews, my numbers just do not budge. REMOVED has been free since April and only accumulated 3 reviews since then. What am I doing wrong? I’m still selling books, so it’s not like people aren’t buying. They’re just not reviewing. I even put my books on NetGalley! I don’t know. I’m trying not to focus on it, so I won’t post any numbers here and we won’t do this feature next year either.

Looking Back On Last Year

I learned a lot this past year, but my biggest lesson is that I have to just not give a fuck about the stuff I can’t control. (Excuse my language but it’s necessary). I have to not give a fuck about my sales numbers, my review numbers, what other people think of my books, etc. Those are all things I can’t control and I have learned to let go of them. Same with my Facebook reach. Same with my Bookbub rejections.

What do I need to do?

Yes. That.

But there were some awesome things that did happen this year. Let’s take a look at some images…

There was writing, there was “the end”, there was vacation and reading and planning. There were paperbacks and there was UtopYA. There were a lot of great things that happened this year! I’m really most impressed with the books and short stories I wrote. I really love them. I published RECLAIMED and SUMMER HAIKUS, and all of the Kami No Sekai short stories. I’m really proud of all of them.

What To Expect Next Year

This is a little nebulous because I’m working on several project at once and I’m taking my time with each. You see, sometimes I work really really hard at a project, I pour my heart and soul and hard earned cash into getting it out to the public, and then I watch it flop. That’s so hard. So I’m in the Give No Fucks mood now. I’ll write what I want to write, when I want to, publish it and move on because I’m having fun. This is another reason why I’m moving to Amazon only. Because I need to optimize my ROI since I’m publishing from my heart, not based on what’s popular or hot.

So, what can you expect from me? More short stories in the Kami No Sekai series. Hopefully the beginning of my new mystery series. Possibly something else in the Nogiku world (either a prequel or a new series!) I’m way up in the air here because I have lots of ideas and I won’t know they’re working until I start writing them.

That’s it from me! Thanks for sticking around for two years and I hope to see you back here next year with happy thoughts and great news all around.

xo, S. J.

On Not Fitting In

This is one of those blog posts where I speak frankly about my own feelings and is meant to shed light on the human side of writing. My Moderator Mallet will be out in the comments. Please be nice.

In the days coming up to my two year anniversary as a published author I’ve had time to do a lot of soul searching. You probably saw my blog post about switching to Amazon-only for my books and already I’m happy with that decision. Not because it’s brought me a ton of money or anything, but because it lifted a huge weight from my shoulders I’ve carried for sometime.

Here’s another weight I carry with me that I hope to lighten this next year: the fact that I don’t fit in anywhere in my writing universe. I used to think being unique made me stand out in the crowd. I used to think being unique meant I could do things people would appreciate for their creativity. But no, creativity is not something that’s rewarded. Creativity is risky, and most people are risk-adverse. People/readers want certainty.

So I took a hard look at the circles I spend time in online to figure out where I fit the best. I belong to a really great group of New Adult writers and I don’t fit in there. My work is too foreign. It’s not sexy enough. It’s not mainstream. It’s not billionaire rocker step-brother romances. Though all the authors I know that write those wonderfully edgy books welcome me, I sit on the sidelines and watch them all succeed while I go unnoticed.

But I think, “That’s okay! They’re doing well and that’s what matters. I also belong to this romance writers group…” But I don’t fit in there either. I don’t write hard core romance. I’ve never been traditionally published. I don’t write M/M romance or Navy Seals or Small Town or Paranormal Shifter Werewolf romances, all of which seem to be popular lately. They’re all awesome genres to those that write them but I just have never had ideas for those genres so I sit on the sidelines and watch everyone else succeed.

Same goes for this awesome dystopia group I belong to that’s all zombies and apocalyptic genres. Same goes for the science fiction romance group I belong to that’s mostly aliens and spaceships. I even quit a chicklit group I loved because I didn’t fit in so badly it was painful.

Boo hoo, right? Lol. No. It’s time to put on my thinking cap! So what do these observations mean? The clinical observer in me points out that this is a good indication that I’m still not writing in the “right genre for me.” I’m gaining lots of great experience in indie publishing, learning a whole lot about marketing and advertising. I’m learning about story structure and editing, and I’m meeting other awesome and supportive authors along the way. But I’m still not applying those lessons to a genre that’s really my home.

Where is my home? If it’s not New Adult, Romance, Dystopian, Magical Realism, or Science Fiction, what is it?

Two months ago, I would never have considered writing in a new genre because in a lot of cases, this means you start over as an author. Plenty of authors will even start a new pen name for a new genre because they don’t want to confuse their readers. Many readers will not follow an author to a new genre no matter how much they loved their other books. It’s a big risk to take and one that shouldn’t be taken lightly (Remember, readers are risk-adverse. They want to know what they’re getting when they pick up a book.)

I’ve been agonizing over my place in this author world now for two years. I’ve known I don’t fit in for quite some time, and it’s been hard to come to terms with up-ending everything I’ve worked hard for.

But it’s time for another change. I’m keeping my Japan-inspired brand but I’m going to give a new genre a try this winter. Once I publish Revealed, I will be working hard crafting something new. How new? I want to dip my foot in mysteries. Mysteries as a book market is crowded but diverse, and I’m going to see if it’s a place I might be comfortable in since there’s more leeway for uniqueness and variation. I will keep up my Nogiku world and my Kami No Sekai world, but I plan to focus on this new genre and give it a real go, really try hard to make it work. Since it will be Japan-inspired, I hope to carry over those that came to me because of the Japan angle, and since I still love romance, I’ll include a romance subplot for those that still want that.

My goal is to fit in as an author but stand out as a storyteller. And hopefully this is the first step in my journey towards finding the right audience for my work. I hope you’ll join me in my quest to find my place and I promise to share the experiences with you a long the way.

Sunday Update – September 6, 2015

I need to get back on my blogging game. I have a whole list of things I want to blog about in Evernote and just haven’t gotten around to it but I do have summer to blame. I only had a few hours each day to get all my work done and last week my kids were home for three days before they finally went back to school. Now that I have most of my days free, I can get back into my routine. My goal is to blog at least twice per week besides Sunday Updates.

This past week, my kids went back to school. My oldest is in 3rd grade and my youngest is in kindergarten now. This means I have from 8:30 to 2:30 free every day. That’s 6 whole hours! I’ve decided that I will prioritize writing and writing-related chores and exercising in that time span each day. I can also grocery shop in less than an hour so I can fit that in too. But if I have house cleaning to do, it can wait till after the kids are home. Six hours per day is a respectable work day! I can get a lot done in that time and even eat or take a nap if I need to. Score!

Speaking of work, I’ve started working on REVEALED. I’m reading through all the chapters I previously published as short stories and when I get to the parts I never published I’ll start making notes on new scenes to write. I have both REVEALED and REMOVED loaded onto my iPad and I flip back and forth between them to see what I’ve written and what I can fill in. It’s a lot of fun! And I really miss these characters. It reminds me that I want to write a Mark Sakai prequel (I already have a title for it!) and I want to write about Sanaa and Jiro’s kids.

What else happened this week…

Tried to enjoy the pool the last few days it was open.

Got the new Jamberry catalog in the mail! It inspired me to write about my top 10 picks for next year!

I got whole red snapper at Whole Foods and we had an awesome dinner last night.

That’s about it! Tomorrow is a holiday here and today we’re going to enjoy the pool. This is the last weekend it’s open for the season.

My Top 10 Jamberry 2016 Picks

I decided recently that I’m going to blog more about the stuff I love since this is something I used to do more frequently and slacked off on this summer since I was, you know, enjoying summer.

Yesterday the Jamberry 2016 catalog was announced and I spent a good portion of the day looking over all the wraps and deciding what I’m going to order first.

First, let me explain why I love Jamberry, and there are many reasons. I love the creativity of the wraps and how each individual person can put their own spin on the wraps by mixing and matching or layering. I love that the company is run by mostly family, they have clear goals and share a lot of their journey with their reps and customers. I love that I don’t NEED a rep to buy anything from Jamberry. Sure, I have lots of friends that are Jamberry reps (I can think of 5 off the top of my head), but if you don’t want to deal with ANYONE, you can just buy directly from the website. And Adam Hepworth from Jamberry won a E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year in 2015 in the Emerging category. That’s a pretty big deal, and it shows they are committed to good business practices.

I recently was interested in an essential oils company but I HAD to buy my oils through a rep and always be hearing about their products and guilted into sales, and UGH. No. That experience made me love Jamberry even more. I have never been guilted into buying anything and I could just buy what I want when I want. It probably doesn’t help that I want new Jamberry wraps pretty much every day. Lol.

ETA: I also love Jamberry because the wraps are non-toxic and you can remove them safely with oil. You don’t need to use chemicals to put them or take them off, so they are gentle on your nails, which is important to me. And Jamberry has also empowered a lot of my friends to make some money on the side to help pay off college loans, keep them afloat between jobs, or keep them active while taking care of kids. There’s a lot to love about this company!

Speaking of which, since the new catalog is out, let me show you my top 10 Jamberry 2016 picks!

From top left: Ombre Lotus, Candy Cane Lane, Faux Fox, Satin Gold Chevron, Renaissance, Broken Arrow, Ribbon Dance, Playground, Disoriented, and Flash.

I’ve obviously got a thing for chevrons and THE FOXES! I’m going to buy at least two of those because I NEVER WANT TO BE WITHOUT THEM!

If you’re considering buying some Jams, please consider buying through any of the following ladies (or you can just buy direct from the website): Leah Shapiro, Skylar Bliss, Fit N Fancy Nails with Tracy, Emily O, Paloma Borrayo.

Are you into Jamberry? What are your favorites from the new catalog?