Greetings, ladies, gentlemen, dragons, pterodactyls and assorted creatures of nameless dread. Alas -- for me at least -- it's that time of year again, the second annual blog fundraiser. (The first is here)
This is the one post in which I explain it all. From here on out, to the 16th of the month, I will just put a note at the end of the post and a link to this post for those curious.
If you're rolling your eyes and don't want to read the explanation, here are the short, (snorts "short") instructions:
1- If you wish to donate by the simplest, fastest method, the give send go from last year is still up: Here.
2- If you want to encourage my fiction writing as well as fund the blog, through subscribing to my fiction substack, Chapter House, go Here.
3- And if you want to subscribe to my other substack, Schrodinger Path, go Here. That second was supposed to be just my newsletter, but people started giving me money there, and so I excerpt stuff there too.
4- I also have a patreon and those who are paid members really should bitch at me about it, because I treat it worse than substack, but ... BUT I try, truly. (and explanation of what went wrong will come later. It's all one piece.) There will be more posts about cats, I promise. Anyway, go here to do that, if you're comfortable with Patreon.
5- If you want to donate via pay pal, please ping me in email and I'll send you the address. (I don't have it on the site, so as not to invite shut down due to unapproved political opinions, but I still have one, because some publishing houses pay that way.)
6- And if you want to donate by mail, please send to Sarah A. Hoyt, 304 S Jones Blvd #6771, Las Vegas, NV 89107. Note on the last we're also okay with you keeping it for Christmas cards (We're just really bad at sending responses) or catnip mice (not live ones!) for Indy or whatever. Those aren't donations, just friends keeping in touch.
AND if you still want to skip my analysis of what went right and wrong the previous years and why I'm doing this, what it means, and why yes I actually do need it, even though it's NOT a rescue blog and you shouldn't hurt yourself to donate, search for the words "I HAVE A QUESTION FOR EVERYONE NOW" capitalized, at the end of this blog, if you want to weigh in on that.
Now, for those of you who stayed around and don't mind my extensive bloviating: As you all know I hate doing this. Always have, always will.
Thing is I'm I'm still being threatened or at least nagged by people who care about me if I don't give them the chance to throw money at me for playing hostess for this very Odd living room we're all chatting in. And also, frankly, I still feel guilty for all the 15 or so years I refused to do this and took the family through some very tight times because I did the work but never got paid for it.
My main reason not to fund raise all those years was that I was afraid people would give too much and hurt themselves. I still am a little afraid of this, so for the record: THIS IS NOT AN EMERGENCY, DON'T HURT YOURSELF AND MAKE ME USE A CARP, OR WORSE THE CHANCLA ON YOU. You know I hate to live down to stereotypes.
So, because , I still feel guilty about it, and like I must explain the fundraiser, in its various forms, first be aware that even those forms of funding that encourage fiction writing are ultimately for the blog.
The blog, you see, is a harsh mistress. I can't remember the last time I took a break from it, though the posting gets really flaky at times. I think my last intentional vacation from the blog was ten years ago, when I used the time to paint and redecorate a bathroom.
Other than that, I wake up every morning and do the blog. Even on vacation. Or at cons. I tried to do it five years ago from Portugal, (with mixed success) and I did it while working on the house in Colorado to sell.
Even the minor things, like the meme posts, I know there are people waiting for them because they tell me it makes their weekend, and if I don't get to them late at night (It's been strange lately and I maybe can explain why) I do them in the morning while Dan waits impatiently, because Saturday is errand running day.
Remember to send me you book promos for Sunday (email to bookpimping at outlook dot com.) And don't sweat the wording. ALL I need from you is a link. I like doing that. I feel like it's some good I do in the world to give good people a chance to tell others their book is out.
The rest of the blog... Look, I realize no one is forcing me to do it. And I'm the worst of fundraisers, because I'm not going to pretend that I am going to stop the blogging if you don't donate. I probably should. I mean, it might be the sane thing to do. To stop blogging, I mean, not to threaten you.
But as I told a friend last weekend who asked me why I did it and what difference it made: What I do is analyze things and get the thoughts out there. I'm under no illusions that I'm making a big difference in the world. And I'm certainly not saving the world. (There isn't a trapper-keeper that big.) However we're in a time of vast and catastrophically rapid change. Those of us with a tendency to think (perhaps as everyone accuses us of, "too much.") need to know what's going on and how to mitigate the worst. And all the lies (so many lies) we've been told... well, our whole lives, really. And while it doesn't make a big, instant difference, I believe my thinking through issues in public is like throwing a pebble in a big lake. Sure, most of the pebbles will vanish with only little ripples, but sometimes -- maybe -- the ripples might go all the way to the shore, and raise other ripples (look, the metaphor breaks a little, okay) which might be the difference between a really bad road and a less bad one. One that allows a chance for human freedom and sanity in the future.
And maybe I'm lying to myself. Maybe this is the part where the blog also serves to keep me what passes for sane around these parts. But I hope not. I hope those ripples count for something.
I personally have long felt the truth is part of whatever it is that we are on earth to do.
While on that, and in the sense that at least to me the blog is a machine for understanding our rapidly, catastrophically changing world, I want to thank everyone who sent me guest posts in their specialties the last year. Not only did it allow me to run fewer blasts from the past when I'm sick or really exhausted, but it also added knowledge I don't have and therefore can't share.
Now, if I'm not going to stop blogging, why should you donate? Well, I'll be honest: at this point mostly so I can write more, particularly more fiction. And so I don't accidentally drive myself into the ground.
Let me explain: I'm sixty one. That seems like a thoroughly unlikely thing to write, much less to be true. Which I suspect is part of my problem.
My mind still thinks I'm at most 30 and I try to do the same level of work I always did. Which means ... well, that I end up doing things much slower, because what used to take me a day now takes me a week (not the writing but any physical work) and then I spend a week recovering. Which is very annoying of my body.
But the problem with that is not by body as such, but Dan's. Until he can have knee replacement, I must do pretty much all the work of house maintenance and yard care as well as my normal housekeeping, cooking, laundry, and other normal stuff. And the problem is that things like painting the porch, which should take me three hours and then I'm fine, is taking me 2 days and I'm a wreck after. (The other problem being we moved three years ago and I'm still unpacking/setting up, which also take forever and are exhausting.)
Anyway, none of this would matter, except that it takes away time that should be spent writing. That I want to spend writing. At Liberty Con last week, people asked for the second of Rhodes or Deep Pink, for the next Dyce, the next DST, the next Shifters. And all of them are started and in some measure of finishing, except.... well, except we suddenly need to clean or setup something (say, so we can put the car in the garage because there's hail coming, so we must unpack everything that has been crammed in the garage for two years) and there go two weeks. Some of you who are on various groups with me have seen this happening. Even with No Man's Land, the book that MAKES me write it, the last two weeks sometimes I only get a sentence done, because I have maybe ten minutes at night to write.
Look, I need to pay people to paint, to tuckpoint, and maybe get a couple of helpers (to be fair, probably younger son and younger DIL, but still. They are good kids and help all the time, but he has a more-than-full-time job and she's started a business and I don't feel I can steal their time without at least some payment.) to help me move stuff around so I can unpack my library and have A living room without killing myself.
It's been borne upon me -- by one of you yelling at me this weekend (in a very nice way) -- that I'm not a skilled laborer for tuckpointing and painting or yard care, including weeding the thrice d*mned flowerbeds and that I'm foregoing the opportunity to write books and make money to do this, which isn't a rational economic decision.
And that's true, but the thing is before I hire someone I need to have money in hand. So I need money to make money. Which is the big point of the fundraiser this year. (In addition to being money for work done.)
And this segues neatly into what went wrong the other years. And why the updating on even Chapter House is sporadic.
It's mostly time. I'm supposed to be doing my blog posts in the evening while Dan watches TV (Look, he works a more than full time job and that's how he rests. By blanking the mind.) Sometimes it even works. But if I've been running around, weeding and shredding fallen branches or tuckpointing, painting -- and here I admit I've never got on the roof to figure out how we get a damp patch on my bathroom ceiling. Need to, but I'm terrified of heights. -- of a dozen other things, I might manage a chapter or two paragraphs of NML but I can't write a blog. And so here I am at almost 3pm writing my blog. And I just realized I forgot to update the substacks and patreon last night. I meant to.
Now, there are other things that went wrong in the other years, because this fundraising thing is a process of figuring out the best way to do it, I think.
I figured out after the first year that there are problems with emailing things out (mostly anti-piracy stuff) and also that I suck at mailing out physical books. I will try again to send the USAian shorts collection out soon (I did not forget) and now that we've ALMOST unpacked the boxes of books formerly in the garage, I need to send out the physical books before the end of summer. I just suck at this, because I run out of time and forget. I also haven't tuckerized of mass-killed (or math killed) people due to running out of time and energy. All I can say is my assistant is compiling lists, and I will get to it, I promise.
As for Chapter house, I had someone upbraid me here for not having done as much in that as I meant to. I confess that I launched the Chapter House, with the idea that it would give me a deadline to force myself to write consistently. I had high goals of finishing two novels there, in a year.
Instead it turned out to be a window into my writing process, complete with discovering several chapters in that one of the books I was struggling with was from the wrong point of view and has to be completely rewritten, dry spells for various health crisis, and a very pushy novel has decided now, after decades, that it must be written or I am not allowed to write anything else. So I have been putting No Man's Land up there.
To be fair that thing has to be done soon (If I can do a chapter a day again, as I was doing through May, about 10 days from now, I think.) And then I can finish Witch's daughter which is hanging by a thread, and then go back to Winter Prince and make it make sense. If you subscribe to Chapter House (or Schrodinger Path) you'll get basically unedited e-arcs at the end of this. "What the writer turned in." And maybe a chance to buy an edited/etc. copy before it goes on Amazon. (Mostly because I know a few of you don't do Amazon. And that's fine.) I just wish I were faster, etc.
As for what I did with the fundraiser from last year. Well. I did do some stuff, even if we didn't hire someone to tuckpoint and paint. Besides allowing me to take care of the end-of-life cats, including boarding them when we travel, to make sure they get meds, and helping friends and family with some urgent needs....
Last year's fund raiser allowed me to pay a... sort of office manager. You know her as Holly Frost.
Younger son was sort of doing this the last 3 years in Colorado (as well as helping with cleaning, house repairs, etc.) But... well, he got a job, moved out and got married. And since I hope for grandkids, that's a good thing. So with the fundraiser money, I hired Holly Frost, who is why fewer of the guest posts have gone missing, why more of the comments get fished out of the delende of wordpress, and who organized hiring and project management to get Mad Genius and ATH fixed up on the back end so they run better, even with WordPress's updates. And also have my most recent books on the side, and not the ones from 10 years ago.
She's currently trying to get a web designer to do my writers' site which has been empty for years. Yes, I guess that will cost more money.
Her insane work also involves reminding me to take the cats in to the vet and reminding me that I am not, in fact, twenty years old, and I cannot, in fact, work for 18 hours moving heavy boxes and bounce back with four hours of sleep. My "bounce back" is closer to a week, and is needed after only eight hours, or driving for a weekend, or someone attacking a voodoo doll in Peru and giving me another autoimmune outbreak. Getting old is not for the weak.
So, she also nags me to eat and "drink some water already" and "have you SEEN a vegetable this last week." (Sigh. I just realized I'm paying someone twenty years younger than me to be my mom.)
In addition money went for professional copy-editing, and this year I'd like to get structural editing as well. It's not something I often need but NML (Aka the d*mned book) is driving me bonkers.) I'm not paying for copy editing for the blog because you guys told me not to. Let me know if you change your minds.
We should have got new computers last year at close of year, because well, it's cheaper on the taxes and it was getting to that time. But between my getting sick and our being really busy, we didn't. Which is why I'm writing this with a keyboard atop the laptop keyboard. And why a new laptop is on the docket soonest.
To reiterate, same as last year, there will be three main routes for fund raising.
GiveSendGo, for which I make no promises; Chapterhouse, for which I will give you my fiction that is in process, yes there will be typos; and Patreon, for which I give you cat pspsps posts. For the more exotic reasons: email me for paypal address or email address. The book promo email at will do: bookpimping at outlook dot com.
I HAVE A QUESTION FOR EVERYONE NOW: WordPress is obviously jealous of substack and now gives me the option of having paid subscribers posts.
I haven't done anything with it, because, well.... I haven't. It's one more thing, right? But one thing that has disappointed me about substack (which I do not intend to abandon!) is that while admirable as a newsletter because it is emailed out there is far less engagement than when I excerpted Witchfinder here. And I like the engagement and the back and forth. So, should I enable the paid posts, and would some of you like to follow fiction here that way? (Advantage of using it for fiction is that if they track the paid posts they really will have trouble finding anything political/objectionable in them.)
What say you, assorted creatures of mystery?
And now, with apologies for this overlong and very late post, I'm going to try to write a chapter.
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