Greetings, readers!
As you know, I'm a reclusive sort of person, with few friends (and few acquaintances, too, for that matter, outside those I used to know at work). As a result, I have no outlet for my griping, so you're it! This is admittedly dangerous, because a little bit of my griping has to do with the writing, Helen, etc., and the last thing I want to do is to alienate you folks, who I assume are the ones who most of all appreciate my writing!
The first, and most interesting, problem I have is with my nom de plume. Kay Hemlock Brown is not my real name, since I do not want it known that I am an author, even if my writing is really quite sterilized, compared to the raw form in which it sat in my computer. Secondly, I began writing a few years ago--actually a couple of decades ago--when alternate preferences were not as widely accepted as they are now, and some of the hangups I had with being identified with those alternate preferences are now stuck in my mind well and truly. Lastly, I think I have a tiny bit of name recognition, and there's no way I can get anyone to pick up a book of mine under any name except Kay Hemlock Brown. Remember: it used to be just Kay Brown, but I could never find my stuff, on Barnes and Noble, or anywhere else, because of all the other Kay Browns who cluttered up my search results.
Anyway, because Smashwords got a nasty letter from the Internal Revenue Service, saying that they could not find a decent Social Security Number associated with my pen-name, and that Smashwords is forbidden to send me any money without a good SSN. I had not given them my actual SSN, because of my desperation to remain anonymous, even to Smashwords, who could turn into blabbermouths any minute. So, from the time my paycheck was frozen at the level of $23.26 (Tee hee! I don't earn very much at this racket!) I have been offering the books for FREE. Those of you who have gone to the Smashwords website already know this, of course.
There is a way around this problem, I believe. I have to create a formal business, and the Federal Government will assign a SSN to that business, which I can then give the IRS, who will gather taxes on my $23.26 with great delight, to which they are perfectly welcome. I do not write these books for the income, though pretty soon I might find the additional income very useful indeed.
One reason I want to charge a nominal amount for the books is to find how many of the books are actually being read. I suspect that people obtain free books, and never read more than a couple of pages!
I went through and figured out how many books had been actually sold, and it is a grand total of 631. If you're among those who actually shelled out cash for my books, I am sincerely grateful. I'm even more grateful if you read the book, or books! I wish there were some way to allow you to tell me your thoughts. I mean, there is; you can write to me privately, via this Blog, I'm pretty sure.
There were far more downloads of samples : a total of 8363. I have been having stories published for seven years (I counted), and even that statistic is not impressive for such a long stretch of time.
I know the reason, and I have blogged about it before. The net I cast is too narrow. You have to be interested in classical music, and within classical music, early and Baroque music; you have to be interested in violin; you have to be interested in soprano vocalist, and out-of-control lesbian ones; you have to be interested in kids; you get the idea. If you're interested in all these things, I would probably really like to meet you! Just kidding; I'm a people person only in my mind; I purge myself of all my people fascination by all this writing, and then avoid people as hard as I can.
Helen at Westfield
My latest project is a story called Helen at Westfield, which describes the first year or so after Helen starts teaching at Westfield, a fictitious college in the imaginary wilds of northwestern Pennsylvania.
So many things happen to Helen during this period that it is impossible to fit all of them into the periods I have allotted to them. This happens because the school year is a quite rigid time-frame; various things have to happen: tests, Homecoming, Thanksgiving, and so on, and all Helen's excitement has to happen around these landmark events. (I think I'm succeeding, but I'm not sure.) What I have to do is--I thought--just shuffle the material I already had, maybe re-sequencing it a little, and there you go!
For this purpose, I think I have the ideal tool: a piece of software about which I have written before--Scrivener. This is a program like a cross between PowerPoint and Word, in that you have a window on the left that looks like the PPt outline pane. (Or even the Index Pane of Acrobat Reader.) Then, you write your story in little packets, and each packet becomes an independent file. It is given a name, and the Outline is a list of all these little files, which are actually called Texts.
When you're finished, and you want to combine the whole lot into a single continuous document, you tell Scrivener to compile. You also tell it into what form you want it compiled: pdf, text, docx, ebook, html, etc.
This is a total winner, for most cases. However, in my case, I need to rewrite each lump of the story, to make it fit into the time-frame!
Anyway, it is both less fun, and more fun, to do this than it might seem from my description! Mostly because this part of the story is about some of the most beloved of my characters: Sophie, Nadia (an elderly Belgian professor), the kids: Gena, Erin, Alison and James; the kids at the college (who are a lot less annoying than some undergraduates I have met), and not least, Rain--Lady Evelyn Woodford--and her parents; and Lorna Shapiro.
Well! Now to get started!
Kay
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