As you have probably noticed, I have switched my blog commenting system from native Squarespace to Disqus. And you have also probably noticed that if you hang out on my site for a while, a popup will tell you not to kill me for a popup but instead to subscribe to my fabulous newsletter. This is all part of what I told you I'd do: focus on selling my books. You see, this May 15th it's been 5 years since I started writing full-time, and though I soared at first (there was lots of interest in my first trilogy, even from agents), I then painfully crashed into the gulch of despair of not-making-money-as-an-author. For a while I waited for something miraculous to happen, as in, somehow magically Rosehead would get on all bestsellers lists and I wouldn't have to do squat. Well, no miracle happened, and eventually I had to collect myself back together, bone by bone, and climb out (the perfect crisis of the Hero's Journey, by the way). And now I'm on my way back up. I'm not up yet, but I'm getting there. Because my plan is to:

I'm in some kind of a rut these last few days. Maybe I've made a leap with Janna? Somehow crossed over to a higher level of writing? Or maybe it's just wishful thinking, an illusion. Or maybe the idea of sandwiching drafts from two different novels was a big fat mistake...whatever the reason, I can't shake off the feeling of dismay and disappointment and disgust when I got done reading the third draft of TUBE. When I was writing it, I was so excited about the whole idea, and when I finished reading it after a three-months break, I thought, "Well, if I were an agent reading this as a submission, I'd have rejected it after the first page." And then I thought, "Or, if I were an editor, I'd rip the writer a new asshole for sending me this shallow glitzy bit of story."

So I asked myself, "Why? Why don't I like it anymore?" And then I remembered an experience I had once seeing two movies in a row. I went to see an independently produced film at SIFF and some minutes after it ended I went to see Moulin Rouge!, and after sitting through a couple opening scenes I felt nauseated and wanted to walk out. The festival movie has moved me so profoundly that the Hollywood movie right after it seemed superfluous, needlessly pompous, juvenile, empty.