It Ain't Easy

If you talk to anyone who blazed a new trail or started their own business, they'll tell you how hard they had to work to get it off the ground. They can tell you stories about the nights where they got little sleep or the ulcers they got while working to make their dream a reality.  Having your own business is certainly not for the lazy or the faint of heart. Doing your own thing is hard.

My writing buddy and I have been on this journey for over a year; starting working on our first novel June of 2012, since that time we've released two projects with a third being edited right now and the fourth currently being written with a script for Amazon Studios also in the works. Not too soon after we started our endeavor, we discovered that the writing is the easy part.

One can not simply put their book on Amazon and wish it to sell, you've gotta hustle. Along with our day jobs, we have to write, and find time in our schedules to tweet, network, and blog. There are never enough hours in the day and any time you spend with trivial things can be time better spent building our brand.

Like crumbs to a starving person, we get our little signs that we're headed in the right direction. Maybe while out in about we'll see the exact make, model, and color car one of our character drives or maybe we'll one across someone with the same name living in the same location that our characters are from. Or happen to be driving behind someone with a vanity plate that says 'Author'. We don't see these as coincidences, but as mile markers on our journey.

The challenges one faces while working their dreams are there to weed out the weak from the strong. Nobody ever said pursuing your dream would be easy; ask the people who've been through it.  If you keep your eyes on the prize than it will be yours. One day this will all pay off, until then we'll just keep blogging, networking, and tweeting.

I am a serial complainer

My name is Joi and I'm a serial complainer.
Last October to celebrate the release of our first book,The Body Hunters, Von and I decided to go out to dinner. We went to a popular chain restaurant with a couple friends and our editor, Reggie. Now Reggie is blind (blind people have it going on by the way) and she had her guide dog, Brooks, who now is happily retired and lives with Von. I had some errands to run that day, so I showed up a little while after everyone else arrived.
When I get there, Von is talking about cutting a broad and she didn't say broad, I'm just keeping it PG. She's got her purse open and she's pulling out her scalpel, piano wire, and other tools of mayhem. I ask her what's wrong and she says the ignorant heifer of a hostess threw a hissy fit when Reggie walked in with Brooks. The girl screamed at them about how they couldn't come into the restaurant with pets. Von explained that Brooks, who's clearly on a harness for guide dogs is not a pet. Then the girl starts talking about how she hates dogs like they just walked in with a pit bull. Long story short, the girl made this blind, breast cancer survivor feel like she wasn't welcome in the establishment. I told Von to calm down, just let me shoot the corporate headquarters an email and all would be fine.
I sent the company an eloquently worded email that evening explaining the situation. A couple days later I got an email back from corporate and from the restaurant manager who assured me the situation would be taken care of. They even sent $25 worth of gift cards just to make it right. But they weren't fooling me, Reggie had a potential lawsuit, but we weren't interested in going that route. The gift card was fine. A few months down the line Von and her husband Ray go to the restaurant with the gift card and the waitress asks how they got it. Von explains what happened and the waitress said that the offending hostess was fired for that incident. Problem solved.
I have a habit of stopping almost daily at a chain of gas stations, right around the corner from work. Tuesday I went in and over hear one of the cashiers asking her manager if she can leave early. He says no, there's too much to do at the store. Not thinking anything more of it, I say Hi to one of the workers there who knows me as a regular. My mother's a dialysis patient the same as her boyfriend, so we happened to see each other at the Kidney Walk. We catch up and I grab my stuff and go to pay for it. Now the manager is outside grabbing trash, leaving the girl who couldn't get home early to ring up customers. She's taking her sweet time putting money in the safe, while the number of customers waiting in line behind me is multiplying. I've had enough attitudes in my life to know one when I see one. She's pissed because she couldn't leave, she's gotta work the rest of her shift and doesn't care if customers have to wait. As if for verification of the state of her attitude, she starts ringing my stuff up without a word and says nothing to me until she gives me my total.
I go to work and marinate on that situation and get a little irritated. I've worked customer service for years and know that you don't take out your frustrations on your customers. Like I did in the previous situation, I got home and sent an email to corporate. The next day they sent an email back and today I got a call from that store manager. Now he was very apologetic and didn't want to lose me as a customer. I assured him I just wanted him to know about the behavior and like always I went there to gas up before work.
If you never speak up, how do people know they're doing wrong? I'm not saying do it every time, your power to complain should be used sparingly, otherwise you're a nuisance. You don't have to be nasty and go on an expletive loaded tirade. If you have a complaint, it goes a lot smoother with courteous words. Your comments don't even have to be all negative. If you get outstanding service, the road goes both way. Let the person know you like how they did XYZ.
If I spend money somewhere and I don't get the service or the quality I pay for, then I have the right to complain. If I don't tell a manager right then and there, then I'm going to send an email to their HQ to get it rectified. Now being a complainer doesn't mean I just go around woe is me I hate my life, I hate my job. See that's getting into the realm of being a crybaby and nobody likes a crybaby.

Multiculturalism in dogs

Does my Labrador Retriever know that he is? do my Chihuahua's know that they are just that?  At what point do we go from being proud of our culture and ethnicity to ethnocentrism? That we devalue all others and exclude people and other ways of life.
The line is fine and easily crossed. Those of us who are blessed enough to live in melting pot areas of the country like I am, that can find Arabic bakeries and Asian markets along with Polish and Italian meat markets, Soul food restaurants, Mexican restaurants, Indian food and everything in between (My taste buds should never get bored) have an opportunity to enjoy many cultures without ever having to get on a plane. Now you would think that with all these ethnicities I live in a utopia where everyone gets along. Yeah, no! I have heard phrases like 'marry your own culture' and witnessed people who will not talk to you because even though they are living in the land of a really humongous statue that says 'Bring me your huddled masses', huddle only with their own. Birds of a feather.......
My Labrador is yellow and weighs 80 pounds. He is a retired Guide Dog for the Blind. He is smart, playful and loves to...you guessed it....retrieve. He still tries to Guide on occasion forgetting that he is retired and I am not blind. So I wonder what is his culture? Guiding was taught to him so that is not part of his culture, that was his job. Maybe  retrieving, killing and destroying toys is part of his true culture. (hover your mouse over the pictures)

Brooks the ex-Guide dog toy destroyer

My Chihuahua's were there first and Brooks had to adjust to their way of life, much like the Chi's had to adjust to feline culture when they arrived. The Turkish Angora's (Yes we are a multiracial feline/canine household) showed the then 1lb puppies the ropes and how things were done in their feline Arab American household. They grew up speaking cat and had an overwhelming love of them even though cat was not in their DNA.

Cat culture

Brooks never got a chance to learn the ancient and honorable feline culture from the elder statesmen of the feline tribe since all the cats have passed on, but the Chi's have done their best to educate and depart the time-honored feline knowledge and culture of their feline Arab American brothers and sisters to him. Sleeping anywhere he pleases is one of his favorite adopted cat culture activities he's learned.
Now Chihuahua's it's been rumored are not descendants of wolves but from Fennec foxes from Mexico. An interesting theory because that would mean over the many years Chihuahua's have been human's pocket companions we have been forcing a domestic canine culture and silly clothes on a native desert animal. Sound familiar in human history? Do my Chi's tolerate domesticated wolf culture, sparkly shirts that say grrrl power or tuxedo t-shirts for the boy Chi, or do they pine for the desert life of their ancestral homeland? That would explain the burrowing in blankets and sunning themselves in 90 degree temps while their much larger canine companion enjoys air conditioning. Labs are after all from Newfoundland not as the name might imply Labrador, where colder temps are normal.

Psst! We're actually foxes!

Yo no soy un perro! (I am not a dog!)

My 4 legged household companions can teach us all a lesson in diversity and getting along. Enjoying and learning from each other's differences and recognizing that we all share in one universal culture, human culture. We all want ultimately the same things, family, faith, love, a nice place to live and enough to eat, a bright future for our children and to be able to carry on our legacy through them, plus small dogs to dress up. Be proud of who you are and the heritage you came from, take the positive lessons of your ancestors and the good things of your culture and move them forward, share them with others and enjoy the diversity and history of another. Mix it up a little, I'm a firm believer in once you learn about it, you end up respecting it and your world is a richer place for it.
Then again maybe I'm being Pollyanna. (an excessively or blindly optimistic person.)

Part of Chihuahua culture is staring, giving off subliminal messages till you give up the coveted object. Something they learned from their feline Arab American upbringing.

Why Do I Feel Like a Drug Dealer?

The Body Hunters by Raven Newcastle http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009X971ME/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_kkARrb04JYMQ1 … via

My customer gives me a barely perceptible nod across the room, like she's a pitcher at a baseball game. She's got that glazed look in her eye and I know she wants the 'product'. She's practically starving for it. The side effects are the same for all my customers; the sleepless nights, mood swings, and euphoria are what they want.

She leaves her desk and I make my move. With the 'product' in hand I pick up a notebook sitting on her desk and leave the merchandise up under it. I'm not worried about payment. She's a returning customer and I know she's good for it.

Like I predicted, she meets up with me at lunch and palms the money into my hand with out a second glance. Unless you were looking for it, you never would know that a transaction just took place.

This is how it is with all my customers at work who are begging for the 'product'. I've set up clandestine transactions in the ladies bathroom, the lunch room, and the trunk of my car. Whatever it takes to get my merchandise out on the street. I'm a born hustler.

If you think I'm talking drugs you're dead wrong. I'm talking about selling my book in the workplace. At some point someone at my job came up with this rule where you couldn't um..how did they put that? Distribute or solicit, whatever. It's a pain in the butt when you're an indie author.

So, I have my superfans who even now are waiting on me to bring contraband into the work place. It's not that I'm breaking the rules. The customers who have internet access go ahead and buy the book online. For those that don't have internet access and still want to support me, I purchase the book and give it to them at work. I'm pretty sure givesies backsies is legal. They're just paying me back for money I spent on purchasing the book, but I want to be off the boss's radar, so I'm stealthy with how I handle it.

One day when I'm sitting on Oprah's couch, we're going to laugh about this story. Until then, I'll be smuggling books in my purse for my clients who badly need a dose of drama.

The Trials and Tribulations of Publishing

This was a very eventful week, the release of the second novel, The Body Hunters: Paradise Denied in our series. It's been an exciting week and I feel like a little kid who got what the wanted for Christmas. One of our Superfans is nearly done with the novel and she is loving every bit of it. She's started a chain reaction with our other fans who are just as excited to get their hands on the book and I can't wait for their reactions as well. There is nothing better as an author when someone loves your work and is as enthusiastic about the characters as you are.

 Though we anticipated a release of maybe January or February 2013 initially, due to a few challenges, it was released a bit later then expected.

After our editor sent us her final changes, my co-author, Von did her final read through before sending it on to me last Thursday. I started on Thursday after work, with my personal deadline of Monday at the latest. I had a pretty normal weekend, all the while going on with my final edit. I was two-thirds of the way through in the wee hours of Monday morning, when I had the brilliant idea to close my laptop and move to another room.  Big mistake.

When I got to the other room and started my laptop again, the screen was completely black. No problem, I told myself, I had this little issue before. Like I learned when I had this issue over a year ago, you just hold down the power button, pop out the battery, pop it back in, turn on your computer again and voila! Wait a minute. Let me try it again. Hold the button down, take out battery, put it back in, hit the button, and....
Okay, what the heck is going on here?

Needless to say, my laptop monitor was completely dead to the world. Nearing panic mode, I decided to put my computer repair class knowledge to the test. I open up the thing, take a look around, and still can't get the monitor to work. Ready to throw the dang thing out the window, I put all 1,099 screws back where they belong and decided to just hook the computer up to my tv and use that as my monitor. But I must have rearranged something when I put it back together because now the power button isn't even working.

I'm tempted to text Von and rant to her, but I remember that it's not even 8 o'clock and she has to work today. Borrowing my mother's laptop which has none of my work stored on it, I start looking for computer repair places in my neighborhood. I can't do anything until the computer place opens so I decide to take a nap.

My rest is kind of broken because the computer is on my mind and that's what's plaguing my dreams. How am I gonna get the book out without my computer?

I wake up a few hours later and text Von since it's now a decent hour. I tell her the devil is messing with us, since when you're close to your breakthrough, he has a tendency to throw a few road blocks and spike strips in your path. For some reason, someone was conspiring against us getting this book published. I call my mother and tell her the same thing, she tells me not to give the devil any power and put him under my feet.

I get to the computer store and whine about the issue I'm having and what I'm trying to do today. The clerk sells me a little box that holds my laptop's hard drive and allows me to continue my work while my computer is in the shop. Ecstatic, I spend the rest of the day finishing my edit.

I did have some other internet issues, but late that evening or early the next morning, whichever you prefer, I was able to finally submit our book to Amazon. Exhausted and giddy at the same time, I finally crawl into bed while the digital book and paperback novel are being published by Amazon.

Whenever I decided to get out of bed the next day, the first thing I do is check on our books progress as far as Amazon. The first thing I notice is the size of the file. Take a wild guess as to how many KB made up our file. Go ahead, take a guess. No, go on and guess. Nope, you got it wrong.

Our book was exactly 666 KB. No, I'm not lying. A story this crazy you cannot make up. I told Von and she had the same reaction I did. Somehow weirdness has a way of following us. Knowing there was no way in the world I was going to live with that number, I republished the novel, throwing in a few of our blog short stories for good measure. Now our story is at a robust and healthy 706 KB.

When somebody throws road blocks and road hazards in front of you, just push on through. You never know what's on the other side.

Here's another one of those character interviews that was so much fun!  I hope you enjoy it.  This time we're interviewing our hero, Aiden Stone, featured in our novel, The Body Hunters.

 Maurella Stevens interviews FBI Special Agent Aiden Stone

MS: Aiden Stone, I've been so looking forward to interviewing you!

AS: No problem, Maurella.   You can call me Aiden:

MS: Thank you Aiden.  I noticed in the book you took to calling  Danielle , Nani.

AS: Yes, she hated it at first but it grew on her!

MS: Didn’t she think you were being very forward at first calling her beautiful in Hawaiian?

AS: Yeah but she likes it!

MS: Speaking of what were you thinking when you blurted out “the” statement to her.

AS: Honestly, I don’t know, my mouth took over my brain, I had no other good reason to keep her in Dallas, I panicked and I said what I said.

MS: But you know what they say about stressful utterances, in the heat of the moment comments?

AS: No Maurella, please educate me!

MS: That when you utter something out of fear, passion, or stress it tends to be the truth. Was it Aiden?

AS: Um, well you may have got me there!  Of course by that point I felt something strong for Danny, and I know she  felt it for me!  She was walking back into a hornet's nest and I just didn’t want to see her hurt. I knew it could be explosive.

MS: And it was wasn’t it?

AS: Well, yeah! I was right! But I certainly couldn’t take any pleasure in being right; I had to face the fact that I had also with held information and that put her in danger in the first place.

MS: Was it a case of too little to late?

AS: Yes and of course Lucius getting in the way.

MS: Ah, yes Lucius, let’s talk about him a bit.

AS: Forget about the King of the Vampires.   I’d rather talk about you!

MS: Aiden! I see you never quite stop flirting!

AS: Just one of the things the ladies love about me!

MS: Back to Lucius if you don’t mind! He never really quite believed you . You had a major fight with him about Danny’s safety why do you think he reacted the way he did.

AS: He has his own agenda, and unfortunately no one is clear what that is! He acts like her father sometimes. Just because he was her dad's old partner, he’s really not that much older than her. Or me for that matter.

MS: Not a Braddah huh!

AS: Nope not a Brah! Look at you speaking my language! I see I'm leaving an impression on you!

MS: Ok Aiden, let’s not get carried away!

AS: Well you’re the one with the ticket to the gun show! (Aiden flexes his arm muscles)

MS: You are incorrigible!

AS: I believe Danny called me a jackass!

MS: I don’t know if I’d go that far just yet! But you also have your soft side too, you held real emotion for the women being killed and for Danny's feelings when things got heavy

AS: Well of course, there's a time and place for everything.  I may joke around but I know when its time  to be serious.

MS:  Do you feel it brought you two closer?

AS: Look what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and a shared harrowing experience is going to bring any two people closer. I would like to think that it did anyway

MS. Now we know you are psychic, that’s not a secret. Do you feel its hindered you any or have you come to accept who you are now?

AS: With Danny’s help I have been able to not only accept my gift, but expand on it and control it. At first I didn’t want it.  I thought I was nuts you know? Now I understand there are things that cant be explained and to use the gift for the betterment of others.

MS: Good philosophy!

AS: Now don’t get me wrong .  You've got to have great investigative skills and do a lot of leg work.   Cases just don’t solve themselves because I've got this gift so to speak. It doesn't work that way. There are still a lot of  forensics involved and putting all the pieces of the puzzle together.

MS: Yes I can imagine!

AS: But I always make room for play! Can’t be work all the time! 

MS: That brings me to your reputation as a ladies’ man, you are quite the player!  Has that changed now?

AS: Let me take you to dinner and you tell me!

MS: Sure, can my husband come too?
AS: Husband? Ugh! Look of course I have feelings for Danielle, more than I want to admit. But you’ll have to stay tuned.