In France, I'm selling as many books as John Grisham

Holy Crap! Well, my intention for this blog was a lot different a few minutes ago. I will get back into what I was going to say, but just now I decided to find out the ranking of my lastest release in France so that I could reference it here.

Apparently my latest release has entered the top 100 at Amazon France. And I don't mean the top 100 erotica books, or the top 100 romance books. It has entered the top 100 best seller list on all of Amazon. My 30 page short story is just below John Girsham's latest 466 page, month old release and above Hunger Games... even with the latest Hunger Games movie just out. (Holy crap, did I just write that?) That's um... that's a new achievement for me.

That makes what I'm about to say even more tragic. A few days ago I decided to do something that I never do; I read a few pages by 2 of my bestselling colleagues. Both are stories that made it to the New York Times bestselling list. And you know what? I now understand why my stories don't make it to the bestselling lists in English. My stories lack something that I can't give them.

And you know what else is true, they lack something that I could never give them. I could probably write for another 10 years and never be able to give them what I read in those stories. Authors have styles and that style is outside of my capability... mostly because I'm not a woman.

But at least I understand it now. At least I get that I will never be great at what I do. I understand that I have the ability to do fine. After all, one of my short stories is one of the 100 most popular books in all of France. That's not nothing. But at the same time, that same story has only sold 13 copies in English this month. That certainly doesn't represent the beginnings of greatness.

But now that I have accepted my own lack of potential greatness, I feel a little bit more at ease with myself. I am barely more than ordinary. My writing is barely more than ordinary. Ok, fine. I accept it. And I think that I am reinforcing my ordinariness right now with the current story I'm writing.

It's interesting, with my new development team and their schedule, I have managed to return to the life that I had back in 2009 when I first started writing. I wake up in the morning and don't check my email until after I've completed my writing for the day. I'm not even writing that much, but it feels kinda good.

But what I am writing... Ok, a little background. I am in constant search of a hit in English. One of my bestselling friends told me that I should write a longer erotic romance with shape shifters in it. It is all the rage right now. I decided to do that. That is what I've been working on. But even as I'm writing it, I see its flaws.

It's not that the flaws are that I'm a poor story craftsman or that I'm not constructing great sentences. The problem is that my subject matter is not bestselling subject matter. I'm writing the equivalent of literary fiction for erotica, and lord knows nobody wants to read literary fiction.

But I can't help it. Either I can write erotica, or I can loosen my constraints and let loose what's in side of me. Does this current story have enough twists and turns? Yes. Am I filling it with enough real life experiences to round out its emotional breath? Yes. Does it hit the sub-genres that are popular? Yes.

But as I wrote the scene where the main girl is being beat up in the locker room by a group of thug girls and then is being bloodied by her mother, I wonder how I can expect anyone to want to read this. Granted, I'm writing a New Adult story and one of the defining characteristics of New Adult is that the main character is troubled, think Hunger Games. But the abuse that the characters usually experience doesn't appear on screen. Yet here I am putting the abuse front and center for all of my readers to squirm at. This is not good, but this is the story that is waiting to come out of me.

I can't stop writing it though. I can't just turn my attention to a sequel to the latest French bestseller because there is something deep inside of me telling me that writing this current story is a part of my greater path. For years now I've been planning on writing the story about the abused girl who in a moment of weakness abandons the only person who lovers her to explore the universe but then can't get back home. And in part, the erotic Werewolf story that I'm currently writing is practice for that.

My big future story is from the perspective of a young woman. I've had real hesitations about doing that considering I'm a man, and my current story is just that. I've hesitated because I didn't know how I would handle the fact that the girl is abused and in the current story I'm practicing handling that.

Of course, it's not like anyone will want to read my future story either. But I've been planning my future story for years. I am really trying to make those stories my legacy. I consider them my only real shot at immortality. The story line is grand enough to be loved, but there is no telling if I have the special something it takes to breath that unique flavor of life into it to make it wonderful.

There might not be anything I can do to make that series wonderful, but the story that I'm writing currently is at least an attempt to give my future project what it takes to thrive. I would like to think that by writing my current story, though it has no chance of success, I'm increasing the probability of future success.

You know what, after writing all of this, I'm actually feeling better about writing this Werewolf story that no one will read. I am not a great writer. I accept that. I need practice if I'm going to perhaps be better than I am right now. People usually spend money to attend school to become better at stuff. But not only do I have enough money coming in that I could afford to take this break, but there is a chance that I could make a few bucks when my current story is done. All of my stories make some money even if it's just $500.

So yeah, I actually feel good about what I'm doing now. The rest of this year I'm considering as time off to better my craft and better prepare myself for my shot at glory. And perhaps the software I'm creating will sustain my finances as my income dips due to lack of releases. Who knows. But hopefully when I end my current story, I will be a better writer because of it and my future story, the one that is supposed to make me immortal, will be better because of it as well. But, who knows.

Today I got one of my best compliments ever

Writing is an interesting thing. I clearly have a complex relationship with it. Because I grew up with a form of dyslexia I have a natural bias to think of myself as bad at it. The fact that the only class that I ever failed in my life was a class called Writing when I was 7 years old, gives me a certain bias against it. 

But yet, even before I became an author, I had made more money as a writer than anything else. I was a producer for many years, but even then I was a writer/producer. Logically I have to think that I don't suck at it, but in reality do believe that I suck?

I wrote an article today about what the erotica you purchase says about who you are. I had done it because I knew that I would get a minimum of 4,000 "reads" and that would mean 4,000 free, and targeted commercials for my erotica books. But I am surprised how good I feel about what I've written. It's very smart. I genuinely think that those who "read" it will learn something about themselves that could help to make their life better. I think it's really insightful while being quite effective marketing. 

So rereading that, I have to ask myself, 'could a bad writer write that?' I have to ask myself how bad of a writer do I think I am.

I guess the reason why this comes up is because of what I wrote the last time and the email I got this morning. The email was from someone who I'm sure did not read my blog post. It was a fan of my erotica work. She had written me before, but she wanted to write me again telling me that she had just gone back and given one of my books a 5 star review. It was the book that I described in the last past as the first erotica story that I ever wrote. It was the story that I described as being 'good'.

In the letter, the reader repeatedly told me how good she thought the story was. She mentioned how she cried hoping that the 2 main characters would get together. And she concluded it by literally thanking me for my "talented writing". 

How does one respond to that... especially since it's clear how I feel about my level of ability. It seems that there are a lot of great things that I can accept about myself. Lord knows that I'm not modest. But it kind of makes it hard to breath to think about what she wrote. 

As I think about it, this kind of reminds me of something else I used to experience. Up until a few years ago, I used to have the equivalent of a panic attack every time someone would gush about how good of a person I was. And believe it or not, I used to get it at least once or twice a year. See, I told you that I wasn't modest. 

But the last time I had a panic attack, it was after a Christmas party. I was with this woman who I was hanging with at the time. This was our 2nd party for the season and the first party had a few of the same people attending. 

At the first party I had done what I would often do back then. The conversation would turn to someone and their quibbles about life, and I would defend life. I would try to reshape the quibbler's understanding of their circumstances by giving them information about the way that the world works. But, like I said, this wasn't anything new for me. This was my standard routine.

But when I attended the second party, there was a woman there that I had had one of my talks with. She and the woman I came with, at one point, cornered me and proceeded to rehash our conversation. They both tell me how each of them had left the party and thought about everything I had said. They then proceeded to tell me how it changed the way they looked at life. And then they "gushed" about how great and wise they thought I was.

I did my usual response which was to smile and nod and do my best not to hear it while hoping it would stop, but it continued. But soon it came to an end and a little while later I left for home. Driving home I started to have my usual panic attack. I try to block out the memory of the situation but it won't go away.

When I get home, I sit in the chair I'm sitting in now and I can barely breath. Once my breathing returns I think about how ridiculous my response was. I then decide to do my little thing I do to reconnect emotions with difficult memories and I figure out why people telling me I'm a good person sends me into a panic. 

What I remembered was being 12 years old at a teen camp for young Christians. I remember that even then I wasn't about to follow the crowd and pretend that I believed something that I didn't. And I remember being a really good and moral kid. I used to be the absolute last one to leave church ever night out of respect for the preacher, but I was the only one who didn't pretend that I was being "saved" by what was being said. I was 12, but I knew who I was and what I believed and I wasn't about to fake it with anyone. 

Anyway, at this camp I was in a cabin that shared a wall with the girls shower. So naturally, one of these god-fearing 15 year old boys drilled a hole in the wall so that everyone could take turns watching the girls shower. Of course. And there was once when a couple of the girls I knew was about to take a shower that I subtly walked to the girls cabin, subtly called my female friend over and told her not to react immediately but there was a hole into their shower and that she shouldn't go in there right away.

Her being fifteen, what did she do? She ran from me into the shower and screamed for everyone to get out and get dressed. Further proof that 15 year old girls don't understand what subtly is. 

Anyway, I wasn't about to run from what I did. I did it and that was that. I wasn't going to rat out the person who drilled the hole, but at the same time, I wasn't going to sell out my female friends' integrity for the "respect" of some dudes that I would never see again. And after all, wasn't what I did the Christian thing to do? Hypocrites!

So I did this and I was prepared to accept the consequences for it. The consequences were that every girl from the cabin came out and graciously thanked me telling me how good I was for doing it. And my older brother, who I came with, who I respected, who I looked up to, pulled me aside, looked at me disappointingly and told me that I shouldn't have done what I did. I looked at him hurt asking him how he would feel if his girlfriend were one of the girls being spied on. He said that she wasn't and he left it at that. 

I was 12. This taught me a valuable lesson. It taught me that being a good person resulted in rejection by the people you care about. So naturally, every time from that point forward when someone graciously told me how good of person I was, it would result in me having the equivalent of a panic attack. 

I was able to break that Pavlovian response of praise and panic. And it has also helped that people don't gush over how good of a person I am anymore. Hmm... as I think about it, I wonder if me not being a good person anymore is linked to residual effects of my Pavlovian response. I'm going to have to give that some thought.

Anyway, I write all of that to draw it into comparison with the feeling that I'm having right now about the praise over my writing. I don't know if it's exactly the same, because I have also gotten really horrible reviews about the exact same book. I feel like I should be able to say that the nature of art is it's subjectivity. In fact, the individual responses to work is what defines something as art. I feel like I should know and embrace this, but I just can't grasp it.

There is something in me that says that it's either all or nothing. Either everyone should love it or it has to be considered bad. Yes, I know it's ridiculous. And I would certainly dissuade other people from thinking that way, but that has been ingrained in me in some way. 

Ya know, maybe it's not the Pavlovian response that is leading to my feeling of praise panic, and instead the dichotomy of people loving and hating my work.  

Either way, perhaps I should consider another profession. Maybe I wasn't made to be an author. It really is a bitch of a process, especially the way I do it. My process is to mine every thing of emotional weight in my life and then wrap a story around it and hang it out exposed for everyone to read and critique. Why would someone do that to themselves? How could that not make a person crazy?

I think that at some point I need to pull the cord on my life and say 'this is enough'. I am always chasing after immortality. And I do it at the expense of everything. I have a great life, but man have I had to give up on a lot of things to have it. And the older I get, the more I realize that I will not be able to accomplish what I set out to do when I was a kid. 

Even back when I was 15 I wanted nothing less but to change the world. I wanted to create something that made people's lives better. Even then, when I was a struggling dyslexic, I thought it would have to do with writing. But as I get older and older, I am starting to realize that I'm just not good enough to make it happen. And I'm not talking about writing a hit book. I'm referring to writing something that helps to change many people's lives for the better. 

I know that I'm not out of time, but I feel like I'm approaching the limit of my ability and it isn't good enough. 

Don't cry for me though. My image has been immortalized in a life sized bronze statue of me. I was the first person ever to get a certain type of low budget movie theatrically released. I got to be a national champion at my sport. I have changed the self-perceptions and hence lives of hundreds if not thousands of people with a video I released. I'm about to release software that will reshape the way that self-publishers publish their books. I've done stuff. It's just that I'm going to have to start coming to grips with the fact that by my own definition, my life will be a failure. But I tried though. I think that's the important part. I tried really hard and I did, and will continue to do, the best that I can.

And hey, according to some people, I've already done something special. I've had completely original ideas and I've moved people to tears with my writing. I guess, though, I just expected more from myself.  

Ha! You know it takes a certain level of skill to take the most generous compliment that I've ever gotten about my writing and use it to further the idea that I'm not good enough. I guess I should give myself credit for that as well. I have the ability to stick with an idea in the face of overwhelming evidence. I say that that's also quite the skill. :-)

Anyway, I really do need to consider choosing another profession. This one might make me too raw. And on a positive note, maybe if I ended my all consuming pursuit of immortality, I might actually find someone who I could be happy with and life a happy content life. Ha! Who am I kidding? It would take more like a miracle for something like that. But meanwhile, I will just push on. 

I'm off to have a conversation with my software developer in China. Even at 2:30am, my work day never ends. 

I'm returning to writing good books

I am often confronted with my lack of success as an author. Just the other day I learned that at least 3 more of my fellow erotica authors are making over $200k a year. And they don't earn their money the way I do it, with business sense and smarts. They just write books that readers want to read. Man, if I had to rely on that, I'd probably still be an office assistant.

But every so often I get a review that confuses me. Ok, I've accepted that I'm not that great of a writer. I get that I lack that instinctual understanding of what a reader wants to read. I understand that I am not a woman and that it truly takes a woman to know what a woman wants. I get all of that. But some times I get reviews that make me think that I don't understand what I don't understand.

I'll probably sell about 40,000 books this year, but relatively speaking, my readership is small. But yes, with that many books sold, I certainly have fans. But I can't understand why my fans like my books when so many others reject it so clearly.

A couple of days ago I had a fan write me and say:  "I have read one of you books before and STEAMY and GOOD was an understatement." Seriously? If that's true, why do I struggle to sell more than 100 of any of my books in English on Amazon? Another fan wrote: "Pen Name, please keep writing these wonderful stories that give us that ever beautiful glimpse into another life and time." Come on, really?

How can these people feel this way? How could they like these stories so much when so many others won't even give me the time of day? If they were to get a glimpse of my $200k friend's stories would they be gone like yesterday's trash? Do they only like my stuff because they haven't found the really good stuff yet? Because I tell you that my retention of readers after reading one of my free books isn't as high as the most successful writers on my forum.

Anyway, that's what I have been thinking about for a while; my ineptitude as a writer. And those constant thoughts of inadequacy have not made it easy for me to get back to writing. But I am getting back to writing. My last story, which was my first story in almost a year, is not selling well. It is doing as well as the last one that I wrote before that. Both have not performed well.

But in spite of all of that, I am actually going to return to writing. And not short story writing that has given me my living for the past 2 years, but real writing. It probably won't be very steamy, or sexy. But it will have interesting characters with clearly drawn goals. Every chapter will end with a cliff hanger, and I'm going to try and make the reader cry. 

The story is going to mean something to me like the first erotica story that I ever wrote. I thought that story was good back then, and I still think it is. I'm hoping that I will feel the same way about this new one. I don't know how good of a writer I am, but I'm going to give it my all.

Ya know, writing is a funny thing. I've hit #1 in my categories 4 different times in three different countries, yet it couldn't be clearer to me how inadequate my writing is. And I'm sure that people reading this will say, "you've had four #1's? Doesn't that mean that you're a good writer?" But the answer is, no it doesn't. There are a number of people that make a lot of money on my forum. I am not one of them. Readers let you know how they feel about your work with their dollars. And clearly I'm just not that good. I try, but I'm just not. 

But maybe the next book though. Maybe with this next book series English speakers will say to me,  "We like your stuff. And we like it so much that we've told our friends and they bought it too." I don't know. Maybe it's too much to ask. But maybe.

I just came back from watching the movie 'Ender's Game'. I read the book. The movie isn't good. It's like cliff notes from the book. The bigoted author of Ender's Game really understands how to tell a story. Thinking about that is what brought this on. I guess that i just lack that story structure instinct. I can recognize it, but I just can't get myself to replicate it... And that kind of sucks.

I have officially lost my ability to have original thoughts. Here is how I know.

Ok, I don't want to sound dramatic but I just realized that I'm losing my ability to have original thoughts and my life is over! I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Yes, I'm losing my ability to have original thoughts, but my life isn't over. It just feels like it's over.

This realization stems from the fact that 2 years ago I started thinking about writing my next book under the name Cristian YoungMiller. Over 2 years I've laid in bed at night kicking around ideas. And then when I think I have it and I go to write it, I immediately get writer's block and I realize that I haven’t finished flushing out the idea enough. 

I can almost deal with that, though. What is killing me is that what I do have isn't particularly original. Yeah, the whole concept is kind of original, but there are no alcoholic, verbally abusive penises in this story. There are no masturbating, fruit headed children. It isn't even a brilliant channeling of deep inner pain to literary allegory like in Samurai Zombie Hunter.

All I’ve come up with is a story about a girl that wishes out of her life and ends up in the body of an alien who was dealing with the most difficult thing in her alien life before she requested escape from her own life.

Have I really been reduced to this type of story?

Last night I lay in bed trying to think of which of my many pains and struggles I could weave into the fabric of the story to give it the life that readers instinctually respond to and I could think of nothing. You know what I blame this on? Reading.

Did I read fiction before I wrote Happiness Thru the Art of…? No, I didn’t. In fact I avoided it on purpose. And what resulted is a story, that someone could look at as a truly original work. But I’ve been “reading” so much recently that all of it is starting to seep into me. They are adulterating me with their structure and exploration of personal strife.  And the bad thing is that I can’t unread what I’ve read. It’s there and I can’t get rid of it.

Say what you want about my ‘Everybody Masturbates’ books, but in 10 years, people will still be buying it. They might even still be buying them in 20 years. Do you think anyone is going to give a god damn about my new series 10 minutes after they finish reading it? No chance.

And meanwhile I’m reading these books by these authors who have or will transcended their deaths and yet when I sit and think of why these are good so I can replicate them, I can’t figure it out. So these books have robbed me of my ability to freely associate my wild ideas and they bewilder me as to why they’re good.

I imagine that this is a problem that a number of great writers have. They write their first book and it’s a vomit of all of their original ideas that have been bottled up for years. People respond to it and they’re loved for it. But time goes by and they read more and they learn more and their second book lacks that spark of genius that the first book had.  They have educated themselves out of originality.

You know, this is at the heart of why I truly appreciated Picasso. Picasso started out learning the basics. He was actually a very talented fine artist. When I was in Barcelona, I saw a work he did when he was 15 and it rivaled the paintings done by the best realistic painters of 200 years before his time.

But he didn’t stay with that style. He lived in a cave with an artist friend when he was 16 and just painted. And somehow he took everything he had been taught and then he let it go. He truly thought differently. He let his mind go to crazy places and the result was he twice reshaped the landscape of art. That is the greatest representation of genius that I could possibly think of.

Instead, what do I do? I conform. I second guess myself. I learn more and what I learn makes me worse. It makes me more ordinary and boring. I have all of these calculated crazy rules like how I have no limit on what I say on facebook and my blog so that I can loosen up my ability to free associate. And yet, all it does is make me write a story about a girl, who in a moment of weakness abandons her little sister, the one person who truly loves her, to the will of man who had been molesting her for years.

Is this seriously the best that I can do?

All I can think of is that I’m pathetic. This story is crap. And unless I can figure out some inner demon that I can expunge into the shadows of this story, or some angle to this story that makes someone do a double take when I tell them the plot, I’m going to abandon it.

Ugh! It makes me disgusted to think of how pathetic and awful that story is. I truly have lost the heart of me. And now, all I have left is all of the superficial things about me that diminish even as I type this.

I have to stop this here. I am now too upset to continue.

Today I started a new business and this one is kind of awesome!

Today I started a new business. It all started about 6 weeks ago with the convergence of 3 events. The first event was when my lovely publishing assistant/project manager decided to go back to school. She was still willing to work for me at the same time. But she's a friend and I could tell that she was overwhelmed, so I started doing everything myself again. I thought about hire someone else, but whoever I hire, I have to trust with financial info. That limits my options greatly.

The second event happened around the same time. I was at a friend's birthday party and I was talking to someone I know. They were telling me how they wanted to create software for authors. He didn't know what that software was, but he mentioned how he was planning on coming up with the perfect software idea. Having had a few drinks, I immediately told him he was doing it wrong. I told him that he needed to come and watch me work and then figure out how he could make my publishing life easier. He thought that my idea was better so he asked me if he could call me the following Monday to chat more about it. I told him he could.

I always like to be prepared for everything I do, so on that Monday I decided to put some time into coming up with ideas that I could tell this guy. I came up with 2 very solid ideas that would make my publishing life a lot easier. I sent them over to him suggesting that we chat. He never got back to me. He was drinking at the time, so I just assumed that while talking to me, he was writing a check that his courage couldn't cash.

But as I drudged through my added administrative work, I really started thinking about the ideas that I sent to the guy. I decided that I really wanted software that could do these things. So having some extra money to invest, I posted the job on a web developer site and found a software developer. I told him what I wanted and he quoted me a reasonable price. I put him to work.

But as soon as I hired him, I started thinking about what else I currently do which would be better, and more easily done by a piece of software. They were things like updating my website and creating newsletters. Those things help me to sell more books, but it takes hours every week and is very tedious. And because they are tedious, reality is that my site is never up-to-date and I don't always send out the newsletters announcing my new releases. By neglecting those duties, I am pretty much leaving money on table. So I figured, why not expand my software to do that for me as well.

This is when I started thinking, 'well, if I would find this software useful, then wouldn't other self-publishing authors?' I went back and forth on this quite a bit. The reason is because my publishing company is unique. I have to manage 170 titles which include working with 7 translators in 6 different languages. This means that I have different business requirements than your average author. And if I just sold the system to medium sized book publishers, I wouldn't sell very many. The authors that publish 4 or 5 titles a year are the ideal market. What I was designing would be overkill for those authors. So I would end up spending a lot of money trying to reach a market, when my market wouldn't be very large to begin with.

This was when a third event happened. I had hired a web development company for another website I have. They did a horrible job and I fired them. In turn, they hacked my server and deleted all of the files for RememberTheBahamas.com, my retail website that sells products from the Bahamas.

I had the website files backed up on my laptop, so I just re-uploaded the site. But it started me thinking about RememberTheBahamas.com. I started that company 6 years ago with my mother. But 7 months ago, my mother left the business. Since she used to ship many of the products out from the Bahamas, I had to discontinue about 100 products (80% of my inventory). The site was designed many years ago and the site was hard to deal with, so I never really took the products off the site. I thought that this could be a good time to do it.

The roommate who I had my roommate war with, used to design websites for a living and he told me about WordPress. It sounded like the right fit for Rememberthebahamas.com and I always thought that I would research it more if I ever had to redesign the site. Now was that time, and I decided that I would figure how I could use WordPress to build the new RememberTheBahamas.com.

It took a while to learn but I did it. And once I figured it out, I liked the whole ecosystem for selling WordPress Plugins. Basically, if a person wants to create a website, they can do it on WordPress for free. But if you want to do something special like create an eCommerce site, you have to pay for a webstore plugin. If you then wanted to ask your customers to join your mailing list right before checkout, there was another plugin you could buy to do that. It's really a great system. It's very consumer friendly.

That's when the idea for my new venture started coming together. I was batting around the idea of selling the new publishing software, but I didn't want to have to create a website and convince authors, who are really tech-ignorant to learn it. But most authors with websites have WordPress websites. So if I create this software to work with WordPress, I would have a whole ecosystem to sell within that authors are already familiar with.

That's when I had the idea of breaking my software up into different modules (or plugins). If an author just wanted to manage their books and advertising links, they could just get the first module. If they then wanted to have their website updated automatically with their new titles, they could get the website module. If they wanted to use it to automatically create their newsletters, they could buy the Newsletter module. Each would be sold separately, and the author wouldn't have to learn anything new to do it.

Even with this realization, though, there were still 3 things that made me hesitant. I wasn't actually sure who would own this software after it was done. Would I or the developer? Another issue was that the developer was currently creating a desktop app and not something that could easily be turned into a WordPress plugin. And third, I still wasn't sure if authors would want to buy this.

But I was chatting with the most successful self-publishing author I know. She had mentioned that she had just hired her first assistant. I decided to mention to her that I was creating my first digital assistant, and I told her what the software would do. Without hesitating for a second, she asked me if I was going to be selling it to others, hinting that she would want to buy a copy. Granted, she would also qualify as a medium sized publisher, but her quick reply, gave me a little confidence that others would want the software.

The other 2 questions were answered today. I have actually been having a lot of problems in getting stage 1 done. There are problems that I shouldn't be having. Every time my developer has sent me the latest draft, it has been riddled with errors. I didn't understand why, because at its heart, the software is pretty standard. It's just what I'm using it for that's unique.

But these errors have been going on for 4 weeks, until finally on Friday he was one function from being done. I was doing a final check of the software when I noticed this glitch. He told me it would be fixed in an hour. An hour turned to 4. 6 hours later I got an email saying that he needed to think about this seemingly simple fix over night. I didn't hear from him all of the next day, so I emailed him this morning. He explained to me that this simple fix, can't be fixed. This function is something super basic, so I decided to call him to discuss it.

It was then that he told me what the problem was. It turns out that when he first advised me about making it a desktop app instead of a web based app, he made mistake. If this was a web based app, like something that could easily be turned into a WordPress plugin, it would have been done in a week. The desktop app software he was working with was made by Microsoft, but was free and hence, filled with errors.

That's when I asked him how hard it would be to turn it into something I could sell on WordPress. He told me that not only would it be easy, but it would solve all of our error problems. I then asked him if we could next build the website module and newsletter module so that we could sell them separately. He said that it wouldn't be a problem. So that answered that question.

The only question I had left was who would own this software once we were done. This was something I had to dance around. At one point I suggest that "we" could develop it. And his response kind of gave me my answer. He told me about 3 other apps that he had developed for others. They paid him, and he developed it. His client then sold it in the Android App store and other places. This told me that he was a 'work for hire' guy. Like his other clients, I would owe it.

So there you have it. We are now using the heart of what he already developed, but he is turning it into a piece of software that users can purchase in the WordPress store to make their publishing life a ton easier. And initially, it will be developed for me. But for only a few hundred dollars more, he will turn it into something that can be sold in the WordPress store.

I'm making the app anyway, and I suspect it will pay for itself with my increased sales. But I will also be able to sell the software and at least make back my money. Best case scenario is that it gives me an addition passive income for the next few years.

But there you have it. Today I started a new business. And unlike any of my other companies, it is for something that people actually need, instead of what they want, or don't need at all. It's for something that will help authors make more money, while making their publishing process easier.

In truth, I'm not looking forward to starting the business as much as I am of having this super cool software that will make my publishing process so much easier. But hopefully, as a friend said, this business will also pay for a house in the hills. From that friend's mouth to god's ear.

My stories are outselling the owner of Amazon's and here is how that fact has changed me.

I had a unusual realization just now. I was watching Charlie Rose like usual and Charlie had as a guest the wife of the owner of Amazon.com. She is a novelist and has released a new book. The conversation was interesting, and as an author myself, I like to know what other authors' experiences are like.

Mckenzie Bezos' passion impressed me. She wanted to be an author since she was 12 and she met Jeff Bezos years before he opened the largest book store in the world. Mckenzie is really passionate about writing. She went to Princeton so that she could be taught by Toni Morrison and she worked on her first novel for 10 years.

After the interview I couldn't help but go to Amazon and check out her book's ranking. An author's Amazon ranking is basically the measure of an author. It is how we judge each other. That, and the money, are how we keep score.

Well, what I found out from her ranking is that I have about 4 short stories that are outselling her novel. When I saw that I got a quick rush of satisfaction. But it was only for a second. What followed quickly was a feeling of guilt. I had felt good because I was outselling the wife of the owner of the biggest book store in the world. She had all of the advantages in the world, including promotional opportunities like being on Charlie Rose, and I was outselling her. Some might say that that is a legitimate reason to gloat.

But the guilt I felt was because, for the first time, I saw being an author in a different way. I've said many times that I don't enjoy writing. I enjoy having written. I'm a story teller and writing is the only way that I can do it. But take a way the billion dollars and Amazon advantages and she is just like me. She desperately wants to write. But more than me, she lives and breathes it. She is so passionate about it.

And staring at her book ranking, I suddenly saw her, not as part owner of Amazon, but as an author who is struggling to capture the heart and imagination of readers. In the core of her being, it doesn't matter if her family is worth a billion dollars, because no amount of money will truly satisfy her soul like the chance to make someone laugh or cry from reading her words. And having the opportunity to make someone laugh or cry is not a life experience that you can buy.

Her internal measure of self is exactly the same as the poorest of my author friends. We all write for similar reasons and because I am currently succeeding at it more than someone else, isn't something to gloat about. It doesn't seem right to point at another author, who wants nothing more than to enrich someone else's life and put them down because they haven't figured out how to accomplish this generous act of spirit. I'm naturally competitive, but suddenly competing about how successful you've been at taking someone on a journey of imagination, just seems wrong.

I think, from this point forward, I'm going to pull back on how often I tell people that I'm an international bestselling author. I know that I bring it up so often, and so quickly, because I struggled for so long. But somehow, after watching that interview with a struggling author who wants to write for all of the correct reasons, I feel that I need to show a little more quiet gratitude. She's not out trying to crush the competition like her husband. Her greatest satisfaction in life comes from bringing other people joy. That is at the heart of being an author. Because I am who I am and have gone through what I have, I never truly understood that humble desire before. But I do now.

I make my living as an author. There are those that are moved by my work. It doesn't matter how many or why they're moved. I have been granted unrestricted access to the imagination of people. It is almost a sacred act if you think about it. And for that, I am grateful.

And in the wee hours of this quiet night, I wish my brotherhood of authors, including Mrs. Bezos, the same privilege that I have been granted. Being an author isn't a competition; it's a connection. And as long as you're able to financially sustain yourself, it isn't the masses that matter, it's the connection you make with one individual. That individual is the person that is reading your book. Nothing else really matters. I learned that tonight and I'm glad that I did.

It was a good interview. I think that watching it has made me a different person.

The Days of My Life Having Value Might Not Be Over

I can say without reservation or ego that at the heart of who I am, I am a person that wants to help people better understand themselves and life, and to help people feel better about themselves. That was who I was when I was 14 and it's who I am today. I think that one of the reasons that I began writing was as a way to fulfill that purpose. Writing was my forum for helping people.

A lot of things have changed over the years, though. My bright-eyed openness of spirit has really dimmed. Looking back on it, it wasn't even real event that closed my open heart. It was my perception of reality. Looking back on it, my reality was pretty great (comparatively speaking), but I couldn't escape my expectations and interpretations of my life. And it wore me down. It batted me around. And as a result, I am now only a shadow of the good person that I used to be.

Still though, at my core, I am a person who wants to help people. So now I do it in less grandiose ways. Perhaps I only help my friends to understand their life better. Perhaps, I teach a relative something that gives them a sense of empowerment. I'm always looking for the opportunities and I usually take them when my greatly diminished generosity of spirit allows me.

In the last few years, though, I've had a couple of opportunities to change literally thousands of lives. I'm grateful for those opportunities. I released a couple of YouTube videos that according to the comments, really shaped the way people viewed themselves. And my 'Everybody Masturbates'  books have been a surprising positive influence on a couple hundred lives.

I say all of that because, I think that today, I might have been able to once again 'do good'. At this moment in my life, I am an erotica author. That's all I am. I'm not the greatest or most successful, but I am an international bestseller. Don't get me wrong, I am extremely grateful to be that. But my job is simply to get people to masturbate. I accept that my life doesn't have much social value at this point.

Granted, I have received a few really wonderful emails from fans that have been very emotionally moved by my erotic stories. And granted, I have had a few fans tell me how my stories have played a role in gaining a greater sense of intimacy with their spouse. And, for that, again, I'm grateful. But hey, when I set out in this life, I had visions of reshaping the world, so, needless to say, I have fallen pretty far from the person that I was and who I was hoping to be.

But I say all of that to say that today, I think that I did something special. Today, while outlining my next erotica story, I think that I came up with something that is "good". It's subtle. And anyone that knows me knows I don't do subtle very well. But this is and this is a greater good.

Outlining the story, it was like I could put myself in the mind of my readers. There, I could feel the way the reader's view of herself could change. I hit "it" with this story. Yes, the story is just as likely to make the reader masturbate as the other books in this series. But this one is special. This erotic story has the potential to reshape the way the reader looks at herself. It's a good thing. I'm really proud of it.

Compared to any author whose name you know, I don't sell very many books. I make my living from being prolific. So, it's not like very many people will read the story. But for the first time in a while, I think that I am once again doing good. And that feels good. It makes me believe that perhaps the remainder of my life might be of use to someone past myself and the people immediately around me. And perhaps I have an opportunity to be "good" even as I work really hard to get people to get themselves off. I have to admit, that would be a nice thing.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about anything. I have been lucky enough to do enough good for a life time. I could die now and be assured that my life has been an incredible net positive. So I know that I should just be grateful for that. But it certainly feels nice that perhaps my days of helping to change people's lives isn't all behind me. So today was a good day for me. Yep, today was a really good day.