Hello and Happy Holidays to my dear Spectacular Subscribers and Ravishing Random readers! Soooooo you may have noticed I took a WEE little tiny 4 year hiatus here! Can I just say a HUGE thank you for you 29 subscribers who forgot you were subscribed to me and didn’t clean me out of your subscriptions!! ❤ You are double the population of my twitter followers for the book I just published last month! (#sadirony). And yes! I wrote a book!!! I think it’s lovely but no one is buying it (see woeful 2nd half of today’s blog below). If you would like a link to see my book on Amazon, please feel free to message me and I will supply it! It’s really quite an entertaining read (I say not humbly whatsoever)!
So, for my blog reboot I am going to continue along the same themes of books, beauty, homelife, food, and of course writing. Some of you will notice from previous articles I am no longer married, but did in fact, after almost 4 years of being single, trade up for a far superior man I will henceforth call Captain Wentworth. (You Austenites out there know what I’m talking about, right?) {{Sly gangster style nods of appreciation happening towards phones and laptops by book nerds everywhere in cyberspace.}} In fact! Captain Wentworth just gave me a beautiful 1869 first edition of Northanger Abbey/Persuasion for Christmas. The awesomeness of the gift is only comparable to the even MORE lovely, “kindest and best of men” himself. And with that, you can now wipe all the vomit off your phones and keyboards. I will gush no more. I think.
DIY mani
Anyhoo! If anyone has any requests of things for me to discuss or review coming up, please feel free to comment down below, as I’m always looking for new items to discuss! I’m thinking the next post will be a holiday wrap up! And I really need to get back to documenting my diy manis. I did a great one for Christmas and only one finger is still nice so here it is! As always, I used Sally Hansen base + top coat, and in this mani I used a basic red OPI polish and the new “Resting Grinch Face” China Glaze glitter polish that just came out for the holidays! Also, very nice over black or a pewter shade if you wanted to work it into NYE!
Now see below for my new Author rant!
I bid you all adieu until the next installment! I hope you all had the very Merriest of Christmases / a Happy Hanukkah, and that we are all looking forward to a most fabulous and prosperous New Year 2019 filled with love and fun!
And with that…
Time for a coffee!
–Mmmaddy
Confessions of a Nom de Plume
December 2018
I wrote a book! HUZZAH!!!
No one is buying my book! Boooooo. Hiss.
Aaaah the aching, empty, anticlimax of the (mostly) unread published author. For why do we write if not to be read? I suppose there is still the joy and catharsis in reading your own writing — in exercising your own demons and living your own fantasies spawned from the myriad facets of your subconscious self. But, damn it all to hell, I want the public to read my 20,000 words! My lovingly crafted, very much edited, painstakingly translated from my brain to the page over years and through much procrastination — 20,000 words. I don’t care if it’s just free at the library! Someone read it! I can’t even tell you right now the many reasons I want people to read it beyond the basic gratification of being read, because then I might expose myself, as I wrote the book under a (gasp) pen name. There goes the glory! You wrote a book, and NO ONE EVEN KNOWS YOU WROTE THE BOOK. You are published, but it pretty much feels like it didn’t happen.
Which begs the question — so why did I use a pen name? Why a pen name when the days of female authors being unread and discredited simply for a female name are long gone? Did I write some scandalous or salacious novel that would shock my friends and acquaintance? No.
Some embarrassing topic? Maybe? Sort of? Not really.
Did I canvas a subject that may potentially get me sued for defamation of character and spawn entirely misguided Puritanical conclusions about my behavior? Yeah, it’s pretty much that last one there. Aaaand thus was born the pen name. So, what do I do about this? How can I market myself without exposing my identity? The answer is basically, I can’t really. Well, that’s not true. I tweet about my book using my pen name. I even wrote a tweet that had over 5,000 impressions on twitter! Sadly, of the 5,000 twitter streams being penetrated, it only got 3 likes. And 7 info clicks. And no sales or additional page reads whatsoever. Read as: viscerally, totally, and painfully — anticlimactic.
By the way, did it weird you out that I used the word “penetrated”? ‘Cuz if it did — right there, there’s the Puritanical thing surfacing from the deepest recesses of your mind — feign to deny it! See. That’s why. No negative personal assumptions garnered = pen name. Were I 23 instead of 43 and didn’t have a daughter (who’s friends, and moms have library cards and whatnot) this would be a different story. I am not one to put my aspirations above my family’s domestic tranquility. Domestic tranquility is a damn fine thing! Anyone who has been divorced and has kids can back me upon this!
Thusly, my author self, on this one occasion, languishes in anonymity. However, a goal was completed. Personal pride was won, and new lessons have been learned. First and foremost of those being: do NOT use a pen name. :- p
Fin
Carpe Capulus 