Soul Fascination & Diamond Girl...

Since both Soul Fascination and Diamond Girl have escaped from Amazon's Select (exclusive) program, they are now available at Kobo, Barnes & Noble and Apple! Dead End High School should be escaping as well in a few days. So glad to be able to offer them to more readers!

Wattpad...

I added an excerpt of Soul Fascination to my Wattpad page. Hopefully it will gather some new fans. I love reading the poetry over there - reminds me of myself as a teen:)

Again I Ask The Question - When Will It End?

Feeling very angry at the human race these days for all the misery and suffering they inflict upon each other. Why can't people follow one simple sentence: The Golden Rule? "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Why is that so hard?

Surviving Depression...

I'm not talking about those mild bouts of melancholy. Oh, you know, when someone says "I'm so depressed because my haircut turned out badly, or so-and-so didn’t call, or my favorite show was canceled” --- I'M TALKING ABOUT THE DARK SIDE --- LIKE VINCENT VAN GOGH CUTTING OFF HIS EAR, OR SYLVIA PLATH COMMITTING SUICIDE --- Or, less destructive but still paralyzing --- hiding in the bathroom to avoid certain relatives because you can’t bear how negative they are towards you, or having a panic attack after actually defying your parents at an age when most people have long since learned to make their own decisions --- or crying at every sad song, not being able to watch even the silliest horror movie without freaking out, etc ... MAYBE THE POEM BELOW WILL EXPLAIN:

TIGHTROPE

YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW DEPRESSION FEELS?
IT'S LIKE BEING ON A TIGHTROPE, ON WHEELS,
BELOW IS A BLACK, ENDLESS HOLE
BEYOND, ON EITHER SIDE, ARE TOLLS,
YOU PAY, ONE WAY OR THE OTHER
WHO CARES IF IT'S ONE WAY OR ANOTHER?
YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT ON YOUR OWN
ONLY YOU CAN TAKE YOURSELF HOME.
CAN YOU DO IT, CAN YOU GET OUT?
THERE'S ALWAYS WORRY, THERE'S ALWAYS DOUBT.
EVEN WHEN YOU SAFELY REACH THE END
YOU KNOW YOU'LL BE BACK TO DO IT AGAIN.
SOME JUST LET GO AND FALL AWAY,
NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF ANOTHER DAY.
THE REST OF US TAKE LITTLE PILLS
AND HOPE THAT'S ENOUGH TO CURE OUR ILLS.
WE SEE THE CLOUDS AND PRAY FOR SUN
AND CRY EVERY TIME WE COME UNDONE.
WE FACE TOMORROW NOT WITH A BLANK PAGE
BUT A LIST OF TROUBLES TO BE ERASED.
STILL, WE HAVE TO KEEP ON TRYING,
EVEN ALL THIS - IS BETTER THAN DYING.

You can get over depression, so they tell me, by taking medication, and using therapy. My poetry, writing and art are my therapy; they help me release all the feelings that get caught up in the trap, you know, the trap our minds set for themselves to keep out the pain, but the pain is necessary. It's telling us some change is needed in our lives - maybe it's that over-stressful job, or lifestyle, or that relationship that's all give and no take, maybe it's something from the past that was never resolved. Only you can figure out what's hurting you, and get rid of it. It's a struggle, I know. I'm still working mine out, but the poetry and the writing and the art really do help. Try it, and you'll see what I mean.

I took a generic form of Xanax - my doctor never once suggested I try to get off of them. She said they weren't hurting me - but I looked it up on the internet, and found out different - so - I dropped that doctor and weaned myself off the little pills VERY slowly. I am proud to say I'm free of prescriptions. Sure, I still get depressed and nervous once in a while, but natural cures like being outside or listening to music or watching favorite movies help so much, and they don't hurt me at all!

My Books Available At iTunes!

Several of my books are now available on iTunes! I will add more once they come out of Amazon Select. Really excited about finding Draft2Digital, who made the uploading so easy!

In Limbo...

I feel like I'm hanging in mid-air, and can't find a way to move forward. In the past few months I wrote and published several fast-paced romances under a pen name. They were selling, not an enormous lot but a handful a day (I am terrible about promoting things). 

Anyway, I decided to put them all in Amazon Select so I could do free promos. The first four did okay but when I put the fifth one up it was downloaded almost 5000 times before I stopped it. Then I started getting the kind of sales I had only dreamed of before. But Amazon yanked the book, and the sales, right out from under me, saying the book had 'formatting issues'. 

I couldn't access it to see what they meant but I bought two of my others in that series and they seemed fine on the Kindle for Android app on my tablet. I tried to fix whatever might be wrong and resubmitted but they still found problems, none of which I could see. 

Meanwhile, my sales for all the other romances died, probably because all but one are linked by series to the tainted book. I'm not in the best of health these days and this stress, added to the other stuff I've been dealing with, undid me. I have unpublished the romances, and am trying to get them to take down the offending book (which they stubbornly keep online, plastered with an ugly banner that says something about it having the aforesaid formatting issues). What is the point of that other than to humiliate me further?

Sometimes I think the universe has it in for me. 

There - I've got that off my chest! Maybe I can move forward now.

FREE EBOOK - EVENSONG!

Evensong is FREE on Amazon for a couple of days! It's a paranormal YA set in the pre-Civil War South. Grab a copy but watch out for the were-cats!