I’ve never confessed to know it, really. But I think people have assumed that I believe I do sometimes. I’m imperfect, I make mistakes, but that never stops me from trying my best and learning more things. So, today I’m going to write how I feel. Which happens to be a combination of sassiness, frustration and gloom. I’m sure the gloom is due to the weather outside being rainy and grey.

Anyways, I’ve been the target of a few misguided missiles the last couple of days. The first is that my one of my husbands sisters decided to take to Facebook and be disrespectful by cursing us out. When I sent my husband the screenshots of the comments she made, he was a lot more understanding than I had been. He simply said: “Well, I’m glad she’s expressing her feelings for a change.” Now, because I know my dear spouse, I wasn’t really expecting him to be raging mad and fly off the handle, but I was expecting him to have a little bit more of a reaction than he did. It raised a question in me: Could anyone just curse me out and he just be completely fine with it? I think it was more to the effect that I actually didn’t deserve the heat for what was even happening, and at first I tried not to take it personal. Now, I won’t go into great detail about the situation, but, I don’t think anyone would disagree that I tried to help. The sister ended up deleting the post, but, once things are said, they’re said. I always wondered why my husband never had a relationship with his siblings, then I quickly found out why.

Moving on to the next item on the docket.

I really hate people who prey on young, inexperienced, or first-time authors. Like, it really grinds my gears. Granted, I fell into some pitfalls when I first started out, made some bad investments, or got down on myself for not being perfect. I get it. What I don’t get is the people who thrive from that. The people who push their own agenda. The ones who see first-time authors as a money truck.

About a month ago, I was invited to join this event as a featured author. I was excited because the event sounded like a good thing. Now, I should probably mention that I’m at a point in my career now where I’m not pressed about reviews, features, interviews or any of those things, especially not enough to pay for them. In fact, I only think things like that exist is because people ARE paying for them. Why would I pay you to review my work? Either take a free copy and do it for the love of the craft or get out of my inbox. With this particular event, they wanted me to pay over $300.

You should have seen my face.

So, I asked them the questions that you should always ask when going to these kinds of events:

• Is this a first year event?
• What is the anticipated turn-out?
• What is the refund policy?

Or any other question that will help you have a clearer understanding of the purpose, or intention for the event. In this case, the end didn’t justify the means. There was a no refund policy, the turn out was less than 100 and it was a first year event. All of those things were huge red flags. Paying them $300 for a feature for an event that no one knows about was absurd. So, I politely declined and was scheduled for another event that would happen on the same day. Later on, I found out that the event had indeed go cancelled and everyone who had signed up essentially lost their money.

But looking at the roster of people who had forked over the cash, they were all first-time authors who were just happy to be included in something and trying to get their name and book out there. These little pop-up events are almost as bad as Vanity Presses.

I’ll save my rant on Vanity Presses for later.

Anyways, that kind of leads me to the next docket item: people with hidden agenda’s. I was recently informed that a project I had worked on wanted to be pulled from digital and print media. Doesn’t really sound like a big deal, right? Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be. Of course, I had to ask for a cause that would produce this effect–that’s when I came to find out it was because of one bad review the book had received.

Because I’ve just decided that I no longer care about it, and I mean just as in right in this instance of typing, I’m choosing not to pour any energy into it. *shrug

One thing I will say is that you live and you learn. Some times we can defeat ourselves.

I may not know everything, but I do know a lot of things. Things that I’ve learned from experience. Things that have helped me to grow. Things that I haven’t allowed to stop me from achieving my goals.

I do have good news though! Let’s Talk will be coming back soon. I’m so excited to get back to connecting my VLOG. I may do an episode on this topic in more detail.

Also, have you entered the Sweet Savage giveaway? No? What are you waiting for? Fill out the form below for your chance to win a signed copy of the sequel of To Mend a Broken Heart.