I'll just sum up the week…

So, this week was better than last week. I've solved some of my more pressing problems, and yet I've been presented with another. GoDaddy supports SOPA. Well, I was planning to renew my domain and hosting account with them. Now, I'm not so hot on this. I'm scouting down a new host, and I hope to have the new account set up in January, making it a great month to start a new contract anyway. Still, I expect that in February, my blog might go down a few days. Also, my branded email could go down. I have a mirror blog, and a backup email at zoe_e_w (at) live (dot) com, so this is not that big of a deal. Well, I mean except my site host has taken the wrong stance on personal freedoms in our electronic age. But whatever, I'll move on without too much bitching. I will be explaining in my parting email why I'm leaving, but I will be avoiding salty words like motherfucker and cocksucker.

Amazon has not had problems putting up Blood Relations, but just as I was about to celebrate a problem-free re-launch, they put The Life and Death of a Sex Doll on hold in review to ask if I'm sure I own the copyright. Try to appreciate how stupid this is. My account at Amazon is under my name, the same name that's on the book. I'm using an email address with my full name, and they have tax forms in my legal name. The only other copy of the book they have is listed as discontinued by the publisher, but they STILL need to send me a letter asking for proof that the book is mine. My response…was not polite, and so if the book doesn't show up, I will ignore this and just publish other stuff. Two tears in a bucket and fuck it.

I am not changing my mind on the giving up thingie. This despite the fact that I got some positive comments from people who just finished older stories of mine. (And I do appreciate both you reading and commenting, y'all. Really, thanks for that.) I gave it my best effort, shot my full load, and didn't hit anybody with enough impact to create a chain reaction. I've got a lot of stuff planned and a lot in the queue, but nothing I have faith in to change my present circumstances. I thought briefly of releasing every book using the same tweet: "I released another book, or whatever: (link) Pretend there's a tag line here." But that was actually one level of pessimism too high for me…or maybe one too low. In any case, I'm more comfortable just releasing what I have and walking away from the catalog. I also gave thought to dumping everything now, without editing any farther. But I know in some cases that would result in really ugly books. And bitter as I am about this whole experience, I still don't hate readers badly enough to drop a rough draft on them. (Or even a second draft. Third draft…no, that's nearing "beta reader" stage, but it's still not "ready for primetime.")

I wish I could say that one day I might write something that's a hit, but even if I know I can continue to come up with new stuff, it's all going to be working the angles that are exciting to me, and apparently that's not working for anyone strongly enough to build a fan base on. Which frustrates me, because I really wanted to get around the story of Agrona and Miguel's second lifetime together. But there were something like 20 other episodes that would go between her story and the present timeline of Mystical World Wars, and even if several of the books got positive comments, the series has gone nowhere. At least with season one being near a closing point, I can just finish a few books and give up on it before I have fifty books in a series that no one will read, much less recommend to others.

I can't say I'll never write again. I probably will continue to write in a diminished capacity. I just know that the desire to push for a reaction is gone, and whatever hopes I had of achieving even small-scale indie success are gone. So if I continue to write, it's only because I've had an idea come up, and I'm morbidly curious to see where it leads. (Even if no one else cares to see where my mind can go once I'm in total pants mode.)