Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means....

So, I signed up for a June writing workshop on short stories under the tutelage of Kristine Katherine Rusch (award-winning writer and editor), among others. It was a week-long exercise is reading and writing and reading and writing and more writing. Or so I hear.

I didn't make it. I couldn't get the time off from my day job. I didn't get my time off request in soon enough for what is, unsurprisingly, prime vacation time real estate. I was disappointed, but frankly it may not have been a bad thing. I'm not sure I was in the right headspace to work at my writing last month. So maybe it's just as well I couldn't go.

I can't complain about not getting the time off--my bosses have been very accommodating about my need for time off--just over a month after I was hired--for my surgery last November, and for the trip back to Virginia (again, on very short notice) for my father's funeral.

I'd already paid for the workshop, so I wrote to them and had them apply the fee to a different week-long workshop in October...which was cancelled this week for lack of interest (only half a dozen of us had signed up). So I'll be applying the fee for some other workshop once they announce the schedule for the remainder of 2012 and the first half of 2013 later this month.

But in the meantime, I didn't get the boost of enthusiasm and confidence I always have when I've spent a week with other aspiring (and accomplished) writers. And I won't get one in October now, either. So I need to find that somewhere else. I also need a first reader (or two, or three) for my fiction. My wife used to do it, but I think I need some input from other people.

So I'm looking for a writing group.

I know a number of local writers (for various flavors of "local") are on my friends lists on Dreamwidth and LiveJournal. I'm in the Portland Metro Area (Clackamas, to be specific). For that matter, it doesn't HAVE to be a local group. People who are willing to share work and responses by email could prove helpful too.

If any of you are in, or know of, a writers group that could use another member, I'd be interested in knowing about it. I write erotica, romance, science fiction, and fantasy for the most part, with the occasional mystery or crime/adventure story. Short stories and novels, both. I've had a number of short stories published by Cobblestone Press, an epublisher, and have published more under my own publishing name (Gelastic Press).

Any help anyone can offer will be greatly appreciated.

It's been more than two weeks since I last killed a man posted to my journal. I just don't feel the urge to post that much these days, but I do mostly so my lovely and talented wife can keep up with my thoughts and feelings. (I communicate much better in writing than verbally.)

So...just got back from another trip to the mall right across the street. Twoson and I are pounding the pavement (or the tiles) looking for work. I've been instructing him in the fine art of making cold calls on mall stores. He's getting better at it, and finding it easier to do. The first time I providing an incentive--when we finished our quota of calls I'd buy us lunch in the food court. This time we didn't do that, but we still did our quota of calls, and a couple more for good measure.

I've got an interview next week with one of the big anchor stores for a "sales associate, part-time" position (I'm looking for part-time work so I still have time to write) which would be a stocking position. That suits me fine. Stocking and restocking is more my speed than sales anyhow. I'm hoping to get it. It would be almost perfect: part-time, across the street from the apartment, and nothing too mentally or socially taxing.

Today we got a very encouraging response at a jewelers. The lady behind the counter urged us to go their website and fill out the application online ASAP as they're hiring. So that's first on our agenda, ahead of all the other online applications. Virtually all the stores simply give us a website address to apply to. We can haz the future.

Later today I have a therapy session. Snippy asked me to consider therapy a few weeks back. She was under the impression (and, I think, correctly) that I was depressed. What with all the change in our lives in the last year (selling our house, moving to the apartment, my father being in hospice care, Snippy and I being deathly ill in May and June, my hospitalization, etc.) I've definitely been off my game. And she needs me functioning so I can take care of her; that's a big part of my raison d'etre around here--and I wouldn't have it any other way.

So I agreed. I've had three or four sessions now. I think they're helpful. The first couple of sessions I talked about my writing, or the lack thereof lately, and my resistance to sitting down and writing, though I enjoy it when I finally do it (and really enjoy the feeling of accomplishment when I am productive). That's just old-fashioned anxiety, and something I'll probably always have to battle. Most writers (most people, for that matter) do.

Last week we went into an argument Snippy and I had, and why it happened. That was more difficult. It required more self-analysis, which is...not my forte, shall we say? I expect we'll talk more about it today.

My writing is going better, though not as well as I'd like. I'd like to be producing more words (and more finished stories), but I'm definitely trending upward, so that's good. I'm even seeing some money from my writing now. Nowhere near enough to constitute even a part-time job's worth (if that were the case, I wouldn't need an outside job), but that too is trending upward as I publish more material, and that should continue.

I started self-publishing in January of this year. Dean has written repeatedly that you won't REALLY know how you're selling for months. Smashwords, for instance, publishes your work to a bunch of other retailers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel, Apple, and others) both domestically and abroad. Some of those sites report monthly, others quarterly. Then Smashwords has to report to you. If one or more sites are slow to report, it could be near the end of the SECOND quarter (or even the one after that) before you find out how well you sold in JANUARY.

I've made money in three digits (excluding cents) so far this year. Not a lot, but it's a start--and I'm only just starting to see results from downstream sites (as explained above). Plus, in January I only had a couple of stories up. Now I'm up to over a dozen; given months and months to wait before all the sales on all of those are reported and...there's no telling. In the mean time, I need to write, write, write and publish, publish, publish.

I'll be attending a workshop on self-publishing in October. I got my first assignment for that class by email today. I was to read Dean's "How To Think Like A Publisher blog posts (done); choose a publisher name (Gelastic press--long since done), and establish accounts on Smashwords (ditto), PubIt (ditto), Amazon (ditto), and Createspace (done), register my Publisher name with the state as a DBA (done today), and establish a bank account I can use with all the above publishing account (also done).

I've started running again. The Couch Potato to 5K program. I downloaded an app to my phone that tells me when to run and when to walk, and keep track of mileage and pace. I'm going to have to get an audio & music-streaming bluetooth headset, though. Carrying the phone is a pain in the ass when I'm running, and when it's in its belt pouch I CAN'T HEAR IT. Still, it's a useful app; I don't have to carry a stopwatch and try to remember which intervals I'm doing on a given day. My legs are very sore; after being bedridden for a while, and very low energy for so long afterward, I have no stamina and no strength.

But that's why I started running again, so I can get that back.

Time for lunch now. I didn't eat breakfast.