Pen Name?

I've thought about pen names for a long time. I know a lot of authors have them. Probably most authors at this point. There are many reasons authors chose to have pen names, privacy being one of the top reasons. I wondered for a long time if I should have a pen name. The idea of a pen name seemed promising enough. I don't really share much about myself with people I do know, it would feel funny sharing myself things about myself with people I didn't know. There was also the fact that my last name is unspellable (yes, I know that's not a word, but it sounds trendy) to most people, which would make it harder for me to sell books. I bounced around a lot of names, but in the end I couldn't imagine being called anything else. I wondered if maybe I should just change the last name. I couldn't think of anything I wanted for a last name. The characters I write about seem to name themselves and I can't even think of a name to go by so I can still have my privacy. In the end I decided to go with my first name and only the first few letters of my last name. Maybe someday I'll change my mind. Maybe someday I'll think of something I want to be called, maybe before I publish my first ebook, but for now I can't think of anything that fits me.

McFail

I'm a huge fan of Spiderman, and just comic book heroes in general, so yesterday when I saw the post about gendered Spiderman toys I had to check it out. I was kind of shocked to find that the toys were pink and heart covered. Why can't the girls have action figures? When I was little I remember having some gendered toys, but summer movies usually were gender neutral. I remember getting every power ranger toy, and even buying some of the special action figures they offered. If they just included a Gwen Stacey action figure they could appeal to males and females without offering pink sticker books. I can't even tell what some of these things are. Also, it's worth noting that I read an article about Pokemon toys coming to Mcdonalds and Mcdonalds offering another option for the girls. Really? Pokemon is gender neutral. They could have an option for kids who don't like Pokemon, but they shouldn't genderize the toys.

Goodreads.com

I joined goodreads.com years ago. I liked finding new books on there, and I even won two of the giveaways. Now I can't even get on the site. It might be my computer, but everytime I try to get on a sign in box for facebook appears. The site doesn't sign me in, and the box keeps popping up over and over again. It's ashame that I can't get on goodreads. I think the site is such a great tool for both readers and authors.

Not the best at expressing myself

It's not a big surprise that I'm horrible at expressing myself. I had a whole relationship where both my boyfriend and myself didn't think the other party liked us. I liked him, but I'm fairly sure he didn't like me all that much. What does this have to do with anything? Well, this translates to my blog as well. Like I've written before, I'm not very good at blogging. I keep a journal and write my personal feelings/thoughts in there, but that's different from a public blog about writing. I know how to express myself in writing, and that's pretty much the only place I know how to express myself. Actually, I know how to let my characters express themselves, I'm still not to sure about myself. While I am good at essay style writing, I'm not so good at blogging. Sometimes what I mean gets lost in what I am trying to express. Writing a blog isn't the same as writing an essay. I don't take the time to read over and rewrite if I want to. Once I press the publish button it goes public. It's live on the internet, even if no one decides to read it (which seems like the case in this blog). I think a few things were lost in translation during one of my last posts. I wrote about my thoughts about the business angle of Amanda Hocking. I don't really have thoughts on her personally, as I have never met her. I think her success story is wonderful, and I always like to see a writer doing well. The part of my post where things may have been mistranslated was when I was talking about her story being more about her fans than her. It's her fans who made her what she is. I think it's amazing that a group of people could make someone so successful. I know she's been posting a lot less lately, and that's understandable. Everyone needs a break, and there are things people need to keep to themselves. I actually wish some celebs would take a break, but anyway, it seems like her break means less sales for her. I don't know much about the business side of amazon (yet), but it looks like she's selling less. There are less reviews on her newer books. That could just be because the books are newer and people are waiting for a price drop before purchasing, or it could mean that her fans are moving on, or at least not as interested. That's pretty much what I meant to say. I'm trying to learn a little bit about the business side of self publishing before I release my own self published novel into the world. Her story is a rare success story that I enjoyed reading.

Darkly Disappointing Dexter

I finally watched the last episode of Dexter. I guess I held off so long because I heard how disappointing the ending was. There are still a few Dexter books that I haven't read through, so my adventures in Dexterland are far from over, plus I haven't picked up the comic book either. I always considered the tv show as something different from the books. The only book I ever compared was the first book to the first season. There are a lot of things from the books I would have liked to see included in the tv show, but that's a post for another time. Right now I'm going to talk about the season finale. There were things I liked in the finale, Dexter killing Saxton with an ink pen was one of them, but as rewarding as it was to see Saxton finally get what he deserved, it was nothing like an old Dexter episode. The old Dexter was careful, and would never have taken the risks the new Dexter took. The part where Dexter threw Deb overboard made sense, she was sort of his victim, but the part where Dexter through his phone overboard and faked suicide made no sense. Dexter stated that he no longer felt the urge to kill. He had basically found his humanity with Hannah and Harrison. All of Dexter's problems were because he had the urge to kill. He could have just lived a peaceful life with his son and girlfriend, but instead he isolated himself as some sort of punishment. It didn't make sense. It would have made more sense if he would have killed himself. The only point I can see to Dexter living an isolated life if because the urge to kill came back. Maybe this time he'll see the ghost of Deb instead of the ghost of Harry. On another note, someone needs to hire the actor who played Saxton in one of the terminator films. Watching him walk around with no emotion really reminded me of the terminator.

My thoughts on Amanda Hocking

It's hard to be involved in the self-publishing world without knowing who Amanda Hocking is. She got rich by self publishing young adult books similar to Twilight. I tried to read one of her books, but I couldn't. I think it just wasn't my cup of tea. I don't normally read young adult novels. I remember hearing about her sometime in 2011, when I first started to research self publishing. This was way before I decided to self publish. Her story was one of the reasons that I decided to self publish. Not because I think I could make a fortune doing so, but because I could control my publishing experience. I'm one of those people who likes to experience things for herself, even if I'm not successful. Every now and then I google Amanda Hocking to see what she's up to, and it seems like she's disappeared. No more blog posts, no more twitter remarks. Is she forgetting that her interactions with her fans are what made her so rich and somewhat famous? She got to live her dream because of people she now ignores. Maybe she doesn't have time for all the posting anymore, but she also has an attitude that I don't like toward her publishers. Someone at a publishing house sent her flowers and she dismissed them by saying they were from 'people'. She failed to mention that those people were now busting their butts to promote her stuff. Her old blog posts are mostly about her wanting to get published. She doesn't go into detail about why she decided to self publish. I think Amanda Hocking only made it so far because of her fans. She was able to reach out to the younger crowd and sell them a product they were looking for at the time. Her story is one about her fans more than it is about herself.

My 'playlist'

A lot of authors post the play lists that they listened to while writing a book. I used to listen to music when writing, but for some reason I stopped. That doesn't mean that I write in silence, it just means I write to something different. I leave the tv on when I write. It's usually old episodes of the tv show face off, the show from syfy where they create monsters using movie make up. I would love to be able to do that, and the people on the show are extremely talented. I pick this show because it's a rerun. I'm not going to be interested in doing more than glancing at the tv from time to time. I don't have the longest of attention spans, in fact, that's why I stopped listening to music. Sometimes I can leave the tv on syfy original movies, since they don't usually interest me, but most of the time I'm writing to face off.