Obviously in the world of publishing, whether that be music or books, audio or photos, reviews are important. We all want to know whether other people liked something or not, even though we realize others may have totally different tastes from ours. We have that "keeping up with Joneses" factor to consider don't we? If somebody else liked it and enjoyed it, we want to like it and enjoy it as well. Or hate it, whatever the case may be.
There are millions of books on Amazon, thousands going for free on any given day of the week. The hope is that you'll download the book, read it, and give a struggling artist a review. When it sits there, doing absolutely nothing, you become bitter and twisted, wondering if there's an industry for wine-bottle cork art or if there are just another thousand people out there, just like you, building up their wine cork collection.
I realized this morning, doing more research on marketing, that I should spend at least one hour a week reading and leaving a review for some hopeful author on Amazon because if I'm not doing it and my own success depends on it, then how can I ask others to? So I've downloaded two books from Amazon's Top 100 Free in horror>>comedy section and I'm going to review at least one of them today. Maybe I'll start a movement?
My goal here is to give authors an honest review, without prompting, that could start the ball rolling for them. I deliberately zoomed past the ones with reviews because their star is already rising, or should be. I headed straight for the ones with ZERO reviews. Maybe I'll discover the next super-awesome must-read book? Let's see how it goes. :)
Thursday, July 14, 2016
Friday, July 8, 2016
Seizures, or why I had to escape my own cage...
Seizures began as a "what-if". After watching one of America's favorite zombie shows just after having a seizure that sent my brain into overload I had a bit of an epiphany. For over a year I'd been hiding from the world, afraid to go out because I might have a seizure. When people stare at you, accuse you of being a drug addict, or wonder if they should shove something down your mouth you start to become a bit paranoid about going out into a world full of seizure-triggering dangers. Someone will SEE you.
It was much safer, and less starey, if I stayed in the house. Facebook became my lifeline and I joined several groups for people with seizure disorders. I noticed that a lot of people felt as though their lives had never actually started, or with new seizures, that their lives were over. I recognized that feeling, I knew it well, we were BFFs and had tattoos to prove it. Right over my heart. In my head it was the word COWARD in big old yellow letters. I was afraid of the world and afraid for the world.
I felt like a failure as well as a coward; as though I'd given up on life. When I watched that episode of said show I felt like even more of a coward. What would I do, how would I survive, could I survive? I was barely surviving real life without zombies, how would I survive that? That's when I realized I had to find that backbone I used to have and stop hiding from the world.
I learned what triggered my seizures and have become an expert at avoiding most of it. I went back to school and earned a master's degree. I moved to an entirely different country and then another. Then I started writing even more. I've now written my way through three keyboards, smudging the letters off or just pounding them into submission with daily use. I've written professionally and for my own pleasure. I've written several stories, two books in different series, and quite a bit more.
I'm not an expert, by any means, and I'm certainly not Emily Bronte but I am getting by. I'm learning, I'm researching, and most of all I'm living again.
Life became almost unbearable, in the dark, hiding, afraid of someone witnessing a seizure and freaking them out. I was terrified, not of being harmed, but of harming someone through injuring them, through their uninformed actions that could leave me injured, or just scaring them. People don't react well to seeing someone have a fit and the uninformed can do some damage in the process of trying to help. I didn't want to be someone's emotional scar.
Now, I try to live in the light. I have to still deal with seizures, I have to deal with the outcome of a seizure, and live with a heart defect that causes two of the valves in my heart to leak. Life can be tough some days. Some days I wonder if I'll even make it through to the end. But I keep going, determined that I'm not going to live in survival mode, there's no need to. I have a disability. I'm not dead yet. And neither are the people walking around outside. They're just like me, trying to get through each day, hoping for the best.We have to live life, it's all over before we know it. Hiding works for a little while, it gets you through that initial "OH MY GOD" moment when you realize your life is far different from others. After a while, though, when you're ready, you have to step out of that dark hole you're hiding in, that refuge, and become an uncaged bird.
It was much safer, and less starey, if I stayed in the house. Facebook became my lifeline and I joined several groups for people with seizure disorders. I noticed that a lot of people felt as though their lives had never actually started, or with new seizures, that their lives were over. I recognized that feeling, I knew it well, we were BFFs and had tattoos to prove it. Right over my heart. In my head it was the word COWARD in big old yellow letters. I was afraid of the world and afraid for the world.
I felt like a failure as well as a coward; as though I'd given up on life. When I watched that episode of said show I felt like even more of a coward. What would I do, how would I survive, could I survive? I was barely surviving real life without zombies, how would I survive that? That's when I realized I had to find that backbone I used to have and stop hiding from the world.
I learned what triggered my seizures and have become an expert at avoiding most of it. I went back to school and earned a master's degree. I moved to an entirely different country and then another. Then I started writing even more. I've now written my way through three keyboards, smudging the letters off or just pounding them into submission with daily use. I've written professionally and for my own pleasure. I've written several stories, two books in different series, and quite a bit more.
I'm not an expert, by any means, and I'm certainly not Emily Bronte but I am getting by. I'm learning, I'm researching, and most of all I'm living again.
Life became almost unbearable, in the dark, hiding, afraid of someone witnessing a seizure and freaking them out. I was terrified, not of being harmed, but of harming someone through injuring them, through their uninformed actions that could leave me injured, or just scaring them. People don't react well to seeing someone have a fit and the uninformed can do some damage in the process of trying to help. I didn't want to be someone's emotional scar.
Now, I try to live in the light. I have to still deal with seizures, I have to deal with the outcome of a seizure, and live with a heart defect that causes two of the valves in my heart to leak. Life can be tough some days. Some days I wonder if I'll even make it through to the end. But I keep going, determined that I'm not going to live in survival mode, there's no need to. I have a disability. I'm not dead yet. And neither are the people walking around outside. They're just like me, trying to get through each day, hoping for the best.We have to live life, it's all over before we know it. Hiding works for a little while, it gets you through that initial "OH MY GOD" moment when you realize your life is far different from others. After a while, though, when you're ready, you have to step out of that dark hole you're hiding in, that refuge, and become an uncaged bird.
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