Here's what I need to find to regain my soul

Today begins week 2 of 'no writing' and I'm torn. On one hand I think the break is great. On the other hand I'm concerned about my financial future. In my experience, the writing train has to continue for my earnings to go up. Another author said it best when she said, "Publishing is like getting a raise every month." Write a little and it's just a few hundred more. Write a lot and you can double your earnings. But if you get lucky and hit the jackpot, it could mean an extra 10K a month. That makes it hard to ignore.

But this break was taken because my writing had gotten soulless. I still believe that. And it is amazing that although I worked 45 hours last week, I still found time to take a step back and look at myself. This break has been good. I can feel my soul slowly coming back. Certainly there are no quick fixes. Certainly I can't wait until I am a complete human being again before I restart writing. But if I can find my direction before I restart, maybe both my life and writing will become better.

I think what I'm actually going after in my search for my soul is an openness. As my blog posts will attest, I am in certain ways a very open person. But in other ways, I am like a locked box. I need to unlock that box. Today I figured out what I have to do to open that box. It would be an act that I have never taken before. I have been taught that making yourself vulnerable can only bring you pain. But some how I need to make myself vulnerable to others. And my characters need to do the same. That is what most people find hot. If I would like to write very successful erotica books, that is what my characters must do.

Another thing that I've been grappling with is what I should write next. I write in 3 different subgenres. One subgenre and series sells best on iTunes; another subgenre and series sells best in audio book; another subgenre and series sells best in German and another series sells best on Amazon. This makes it very hard to decide where I should focus my energy. A few months ago I decided to focus on what sells best for everyone else on Amazon because Amazon is everyone's biggest money maker, but those books have been my worst sellers on Amazon (and my best on iTunes).

So the question is, what do I write now that I'm pushing to gain a mainstream audience. Do I continue to chase the large audience now that I have the podcast, or do I write what my fan base likes? I continue to be torn.

I think that I will spend the rest of this week preparing 2 more episodes of my podcast. After that I will continue to do some thinking. I could record a couple of audio books, but something tells me that I should invest the time in continuing to work on myself.

Also, I didn't buy the scuba certification lessons as I said I would. I didn't because I was told by my current roommate that he would be moving out. He was a nice guy, but he has turned me off from ever having a roommate again. And now that I can afford to live alone I think that I will try it. Since I can only barely afford it right now, I'm thinking that I should wait until my sales increase a little before I pay for my lessons.

You know, I wish I could do something more dramatic like go for a little trip where I can leave my daily life behind. But I have so many self-imposed obligations that it will have to continue to be a dream. Oh well.

Coming back to vulnerability, I have to say that this whole vulnerability thing stumps me. I feel like I could do it, but it is like that first kiss, when do you do it? Finding the right moment to make your self vulnerable is such a hard thing to know. And searching for the appropriate time my entire life, I have never found it.

I know not to envy anyone else's vulnerability because most people have no control over it and become victim to it. But still, I envy it a little. It is the same way I envy the screwed up characters that I write about... actually vulnerability is probably the exact reason I some times envy my characters.

Hmmm... I have to think about that. I didn't realize that any of my characters had vulnerability until now. Oh wait, you know what? My characters are vulnerable because they are forced into exposing themselves. What I need to create are characters that are vulnerable in their curiousity. That's what people find hot. Hmmm...

My Brain is Starting to Fry!

First off, I would not make a good spy. In the last day I have twice published my pen name under my stage name. But that's Okay. I'm thinking about breaking down the wall that exists between the worlds anyway. The great thing about being self employed as a writer is that I don't have a boss that could fire me if the don't like something about me. The only people that I have to answer to are my readers. And it is my erotica readers that employ me so I have nothing to fear if I integrate my two worlds.

I think it will happen naturally though when the podcast airs. It's kind of hard to avoid it from happening the more my voice gets out there. And honestly, I would be comfortable with that. I will never print both names together, but I don't really care that much anymore if people know what I write.

On another topic, today was one of those draining days when by 2pm I was already asking myself, how other people do what I'm doing. It is always funny when I realize the answer. I asked myself how is it that other people are able to publish books while voicing their own audio books, while creating a personality test with a programmer in India while creating a podcast, and translating their books into foreign languages and creating audio books in those languages; and then I realize that there is no one else in the entire world doing that. What I am doing exceeds anything that any of the extremely successful romance authors are doing that it is ridiculous. Yet some how I keep thinking that I'm not doing enough.

I am literally doing 3 different things that no one else in the world is doing. Literally! Yet here I am saying that I'm not doing enough. What the hell man!

Come to think of it, I think I was supposed to be taking this week off, wasn't I? I knew that I couldn't because of the podcast, but I didn't suspect that I would actually be working. I'm not sure what I thought I would be doing, but I thought that because I wasn't writing, I would have all of this extra time to think about my life and grow as a person. Yeah right, my brain was fried after only 10 hours of work. That's how much I worked today; after only 10 hours, I was fried.

Today, me, the writer/voice over guy/sound producer/business owner, had to figure out a problem going on with the server 'A records' that my software programmer created to upload the mysql database onto my server. Damn mysql! By 9:30pm when I stopped working, my brain felt like it was melting. At one point I was on the phone with Godaddy.com trouble shooting two different web hosting problems and once that was done I had to deal with 2 other problems having to do with 2 separate businesses that I own. And all of this was while I was Skyping with my programmer in India answering his questions. MY BRAIN WAS MELTING!

I guess what I should remember is that this too shall end. I will not continue to be this busy. Once this program is done I won't have to go through this again, and I will sell sooo many more books. But let me tell you, if I don't end up selling a ton more books, I will be so depressed. If this doesn't double my sales, in a shorter time period than usual, I will know that I really don't know what the hell I'm doing.

I can't imagine that it won't happen though. All of my author friends think that what I'm doing is an amazing idea and all of them keep saying how great it will turn out for me. All of them without exception. That's got to mean something, right?

I think what I'll do to help me better relax is pay for my scuba certification. How awesome will it be for me to go over to Catalina Island and go scuba diving? Doesn't that just sound like one of the coolest things ever? Aren't there seals and seaweed beds over there. And I'm from the Bahamas so maybe it's time that I got back into the ocean. Man, I can feel myself relax just thinking about it. Ok, it's a plan. This weekend I'm paying for my scuba certification lessons. Awesome!

Oh yeah, and I write books. Here they are.

I'm being forced to grow personally. Here's why.

It has been a while since I've posted here. The truth is that I have been blogging under my pen name about my erotica books and I consider this one my personal blog. Business before pleasure, of course.

But now I have a dilemma. I have realized that I have lost my soul. And it's not because of what I'm writing, it's because of my life. I have a bit of an obsessive personality. I like to keep my mind busy so that I don't have to think about my life. There are aspects of my life that I absolutely love, but I have to say that my lack of sexual connections is affecting me. And I don't mean, lack of sex. That could be better but it's fine. No, it's the intimacy thing. I need more intimacy in my life.

I think what has really kicked it over the edge for me is the fact that I write about intimacy all week. Thinking about intimacy is my job. Figuring out how to get people into intimate situations is what my fans (I love saying that) come to expect from me. And therefor my lack of having it is seriously affecting me. I have long started to envy the characters that I write about. I sometimes write about some screwed up individuals, but more often than not I find myself wishing that I were them.

So scooting ahead in the story, I wrote something last week and it was dark. It was kind of soulless. It was a bit angry. It was not hot. It wasn't even porn. It was something else entirely. I guess it was, as I said, soulless.

That happened because I am starting to lose the softer part of who I am. I guess I'm trying to protect myself by shutting that part of myself off. But when writing erotica/romance you can't do that. You absolutely can't disconnect with that aspect of yourself. So now, I have a serious problem.

After realizing that, I declared that I will stop writing until I reconnect with myself. That's good. This weekend I took some very strong steps in that direction. It was even a personally phenomenal weekend. But where do I go from here? I do have to do some work this week. I absolutely have to publish my podcast. But how much do I do past that? My audio books are selling very well. Do I take this time to record 2 of the books that I would consider a risk instead of a sure thing? That's not writing, but it will again take away my time to think and feel stuff, and having time to think and feel stuff is what made this weekend so powerful.

So I'm torn, I tell ya. This is exactly how I've been my entire life. I never took vacations because to me vacations were the time to do the work that I couldn't do while working. Something tells me that it would be better for my mental health if I didn't work, but I took a look at my fellow writers' sales numbers. Some of the writers that started at the same time as I did are now making more than twice what I am.

I know that the reason for it is because I only wrote 1 new book in January and 1 new book in February. During those months I was doing my translation experiments and audio book experiments. Granted, I'm now making a good profit because of both, but probably not as much as if I continued at the same writing pace that I was at in December. And now if I choose not to do any writing until "I find myself", I will fall even further behind. I was once the fastest one in my group to a $1000 in earnings. Now I'm amongst the slowest to $5K. I'm very competitive and that does not feel good to me.

What I keep telling myself though is that eventually the German market will grow and I would have been there on the ground floor making me one of the most successful authors there. And I also say to myself that audio books is also an emerging market and I would have been on the ground floor for that rise as well. (Those that were on the ground floor with Kindle ebooks in the US are now making a mint.) I also say to myself, now that I have the audio books and German books, the result of my podcast will be amplified. This is what I keep telling myself so that I don't feel back about slacking. But I'm not positive that I can continue to tell myself that if I just stop doing all work.

Like I said, I'm torn.

Oh, and remember my books. Check them out here.

I'm Not Boring! & I'm Creating Audiobooks

Words: 6,100
Time: 1:30 - 10:30 (2 hr break)
Impression: not sure
Mood: Pretty good

I've been doing a few things since I last blogged. I haven't been writing much since Christmas, but have been doing other things. I made the decision that I was going to start going after foreign markets. A lot of writers talk about the heydays of being a Kindle publisher. Those days were late 2010 through 2011. I missed that. So I figure that it's 2009 somewhere in the world.

I have translated my best selling book into Spanish, German and now French. The French hasn't been published yet, but out of the other 2, German is clearly the leader. So now I'm going to do some investing and get at least one of my complete series in German.

On top of that, I have decided to make the big plunge into audiobooks. I was a professional actors for over a decade and a producer for a number of years so this should just be a slam dunk for me. It should be a slam dunk but it isn't. I did a practice read of the first page of one of my books and it was pretty awful.

I'm no longer expecting to be good at this off the bat. I'm not sure why though because I recorded a reading of the prologue of Run From The Reaper (including it in the book) and the first few pages of Happiness Thru the Art of Penis Enlargement and both were quite good. I'm not sure why my reading of this new book is so bad. Perhaps it just seems that way because the other 2 have been edited while this one has clearly not.

In either case, I'm looking forward to the challenge. As I've said a number of times before, I'm not in love with writing. But now that I will be mixing in some production work and performing as a part of my routine, my future seems less daunting. I think I could get into my future now. They might sell well or they might not, but I'm looking forward to the opportunity to trying.

On a personal point, I was watching the TV show 'House' yesterday. In it House says to 13, "so what. You realized that you weren't boring in the 4th grade and decided that you didn't want to be anything else." That's a paraphrase. But even though I had seen the show before and heard that before, there was something about it this time that really sunk in.

My entire life I have strove to be unique. I could barely stand feeling like everyone else. It wasn't enough that I was taller than everyone and good looking, I had to be unique in almost every way. But at the same time, there has always been things about me that were naturally unique that I tried to hide so that I could seem like everyone else. So there has always been this back and forth in me where I wanted to be boring while at the same time being not boring.

Here's the deal, I'm not boring... and it's a great thing. So long I spent time worried what other people would think because I wasn't boring. But after watching that show I thought, wait, why do I care what boring people think about my not boring life. For the first time last night I thought, fuck them. Why in god's green would I possibly want to be like everyone else, ie. boring. I'm not boring. I am unique! I have always valued uniqueness. I have never valued an ordinary life. And if boring people don't value the fact that I'm not boring, then please just keep on walking because guess what, my life is better than yours because it is not boring, and why would I ever want to spend time with someone boring if you they can't see that too!

It was like a revelation when this thought hit me last night. Seriously, if you don't value my not boring-ness, I don't want to know you. The whole idea is liberating. I don't think I would feel this way if I wasn't now independently employed. I'm sure some of my desire to be normal comes from the fact that I had to live in a world where I had to fit within a mold so that I can afford life. But now that I'm on the outside of the rat race looking in, I am coming into my own. I think that this is probably the person that I was always meant to be. I just took me a little while to get here.

Coming to grips with becoming a Bestselling Author

Words: 5918
Time: 1:30 - Midnight (2 hrs break)
Mood: Good
Impression: It's all blending together for me

Belated Merry Christmas everyone. I was very lucky to have a great Christmas. And the thing that started me off in a great way was that I found out on Christmas day that my book Everybody Masturbates had become a category bestseller on Amazon. In the Sexuality section, my book had made it to # 5 on the list. I can't even tell you how good that felt?

You know it's amazing. A few months ago I was in the depth of despair. My world wasn't even making sense to me. Where as I had the feeling that I was a good writer that wrote about interesting things, no one was buying my books. I had always believed that if people knew about my books they would buy them but I couldn't figure out how to tell people. Now, a few months later, my life is what I always imagined it to be.

Ya know it's funny, if you look at my list of books on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, you will see a hell of a lot of 5 star reviews. That's pretty awesome. And if you were to see my erotic books you would see a lot of bestsellers. Until Christmas day, I hadn't been able to get good reviews on a bestseller, but finally I've broken through. Yay!

It's actually kind of funny to see how many bad reviews I get on my erotic titles. In the beginning it really bothered me, and then I realized that they don't really hurt sales that much. But I'm glad to say that sometimes even when my book gets bad reviews, the reviewer gives the author praise. It's true that not everyone can like everything, but I had 2 star review on a book say that the book turned them off more than on. But within the next two sentences the reviewer said that I was a skilled author because I perfectly painted everything into the readers mind. It just so happened that they didn't like what I painted.

Well, that's not complete true. They said the book would be great if it were a tragic romance, but she just didn't care for it as erotica. But of course on the same book I've gotten two 4 star reviews calling the book excellent and a 5 star review calling it outstanding. Erotica, even more so than other books, are about personal preference in terms of... well, in every way. And I've never read another erotic book, so I'm not sure, but I get the impression that my style is kind of unique.

On another topic, approaching pretty quickly is my 3 week vacation. I just have to finish at least 30 erotica stories and I'm good to go. But I have to say that the idea that my sales will decline for 3 straight weeks is kind of hard to stomach. I know I need and deserve a break. I have been working almost non-stop for a year and will have published something like 38 titles since February. There are a lot of people that would consider that worthy of a break. I would like to be one of those people but I don't know if I can be.

There are also a lot of people that would say that performing the almost impossible feat of earning a living from writing is worthy of treating yourself to a rest that will prevent you from losing your mind and your ability to keep writing. I wish I could be one of them.

I guess what I should really remember is that guy who become the first person to make it to Arctic Circle. He rested, unlike the team that left at the same time and then died on the way back. He did his march for the day and then rested. Even when he could get more done in a day, he was disciplined enough to say "enough." And if I want to be the first person to make it to the Arctic Circle, that is what I will have to do... as well as eat my dogs to stay alive, but let's focus on one thing at a time. Maybe I should take this 2 weeks thing off seriously. Maybe I shouldn't even write my non-fiction book during that time. Hmmm... I have to seriously think about this.

Dating as a international author: Step 1

Words: 5,600
Time: 1:30 pm - 1:30am (3 hrs of breaks)
Mood: Good
Impression: Ummm... does it matter? Good I guess

It's been a while since I've blogged. I'm doing it today as penance. I was supposed to finish my story today but lost steam. I probably have a 800 words left, but it's the hardest 800 words and I think I'll leave it for tomorrow.

I will resist the urge to beat myself up about it. It just means that now I have to work through Christmas. Tiny Tim will just have to do without their father for Christmas. But hey, I already wasted a bunch of time by being sick for almost a week and trying to get my books translated into German and Spanish as well as getting my books onto an Indian Amazon styled website. (It seems that my book 'Everybody Masturbates' is already on the site. So, I guess that makes me an international writer. :-) )

I have to say that either the euphoria of being a full time writer is wearing off or since the fact that I've only gone out into the sun twice in about 3 weeks, I might be running low on my stock of vitamin D. I don't think that I mentioned here that I was deficient for years without knowing it leading to what was a pretty miserable life most of the time. But once I got on it, everything became brighter.

I think I was over doing it for too long and my body was having a strange reaction that I couldn't explain. But then after I got off of it for a few weeks it went away. It could just be coincidence but probably not. But my spark is starting to dim a little so now, I'm back on the buggers. It is going to take a few weeks before I get back to my sparky normal.

I am glad to say that I have cut back on the amount of work that I've been doing since December. I no longer work 15 hours a day 6 to 7 days a week. I now work between 10 & 12 hours 7 days a week. It isn't quite as harsh but I'm still definitely wearing down. Tonight for example. I couldn't write a simple 6,500 word story in one sitting. I did it with my last story, but I just couldn't today.

And because I haven't only published 3 stories so far this month, my sales haven't risen as they could have. They're up, but only by $10 a day instead of the $20 that I had hoped. Also, I was hoping to have 30 books done by the end of this month but I will be lucky if I have 27. Remember 30 is the magic number. After that everything turns into candy canes and rainbows. It's magical! But I guess I will have to complete it some time in January. My plan was to take 3 weeks off starting on Dec 20th. But if I can't get my work done, I can't play outside with the other kids.

I have instead decided that I will take my break after I've completed my 30th book. After that I will take 3 weeks off. During that time I think I'll write another book called: '10 things that every kid should know before 18... and how to teach them.'

It will be a book about what I truly believe every kid should know before they turn 18. And not cutsie things. Real things that help to make an adult's life better and easier. These are things that schools don't think to teach and most parents don't know so that can't teach it. It is sort of my penance for wasting my skills earning a living writing erotica. I have a lot of penances to pay off. Wow, I must really be a horrible person.

I think after that book, I'm back to work on my erotic short stories. After I write another 30 I will allow myself another break. During that break, I will start making serious plans for writing my YA books. It is starting to come together in my head. These are my legacy books. I'm never sure how much time I have left in my life. But these are the books that I will leave behind and say, look, this is what I did with my life. Judge me on it.

I have noticed a sad thing though. With my current stories, every time I wrote a story that I was sure was going to do well, it did really poorly. So I have to write something that might do well, but that I am not sure will do well. It's too bad that what I consider my best stuff, everyone else feels blah about. But hey, all of the stuff I thought was OK at best is earning me a living. Since I rarely love anything I write, it bodes well for me to continue making a living.

I guess I should probably also mention something that's happening in my personal life. Well, I made a promise to a friend of mine that now that my financial woes are lifting I will start dating. What I promised her was that the next time I went out to a group thing with strangers, I was going to ask someone out for coffee. I was actually at something a few weeks ago that had a ton of beautiful women at it, but it wasn't the right place for scoping.

But soon everything will be right and I will again have a dating life. Do you like the way I said that as if I ever had a dating life? I dated more as a 22 year old than I ever did in my 30's. I'm not sure why that is. I guess beautiful women stopped expressing an interest in me. Oh course, I meet less black women now. That might have had something to do with my ease of dating back then. Hmmm... something to think about.

How I sold 1,000 books this month; and Fixing Cupid giveaway numbers

Words: 4,224
Time: 3pm - Midnight
Mood: Good
Impression: It pretty good

So it seems that I was pretty much a slacker this month. I spent the first 10 days of this month focused on Run From the Reaper, Fixing Cupid and Samurai Zombie Hunter, and I only wrote 6 shorts this month. But the last 4 days I have been working on one story. I remember writing 2 stories in one day. This month 4 days for one story. Slacker!

On a positive note, since the last time I blogged Fixing Cupid became the most downloaded humor book on Amazon on Black Friday. That was nice. After that I contacted a couple of agents and today the first got back to me. It is actually one who has requested material from me before. He specializes in turning books into movies. We'll see how it goes.

On another positive note I sold over 1000 erotic books this month. Yep, over one thousand. I did give away 16,000 copies of Fixing Cupid in less than a week but we won't focus on that. 1,000 is a lot, right? Sure it is.

My goal for next month is to sell 1,400 books. They could be erotic or not. I don't care. To that end I am going to try and write 7 books in December. Theoretically I can do it. I wrote 10 in October. But I have to say that the ideas aren't coming quite as quickly anymore. Certainly my last few books have been slow going because each have been in new franchises.

What I do is I come up with subject matter that sells. Let's say for example that there's a big market for stories about guys that dress up in plush anime costumes designed to look like sticks of dynamite. I would call the franchise something like Anime's Big Bang. I would then write 4 stories around the same subject and then package them as a bundle making them 5 separate salable titles.

That has been working very well for me because once someone buys and likes one, they will more than likely buy the other 3. But the trick is creating that first title. A lot of thought has to go into that first book to make sure that the most important aspect of it can be mirrored into 3 other books. And coming up with that can wear a guy out mentally. My last 3 books were the first books in three different franchises. Tiring.

One of those 3 has been a great success. The other 2 are slow. I'm going to write at least one more book in each of the 3 franchises. One I will definitely write the 4 books to complete the bundle. For the other bundle I will have to wait and see which one sells best between the two. One has been selling slowly but has been doing OK. The other one might just need some time to grow. We will have to see.

My goal for December is also to get all of my writing done by the 20th and then take the next 3 weeks off. I will have 31 titles if I stay on course and 30 is always thought of as being the magic number for sales. If I sell 1,400 copies that will be magic enough for me. But we will see. 31 copies would also mean that I have 5 bundles. And personally think that just seems very cool. So that will be the goal.

Oh, also I got another good review for Fixing Cupid today on Amazon. It's title was 'Hilarious, Dry Wit.' It was pretty complimentary.