What a wild week! Highs and lows, joy and anger, giggles and growls. In the end, it was more positive than negative.
Finally published Vivi#2 aka Ain't No Queen. Thanks again to Candy Girl and Mustang Sally for their help preparing the book. In Candy Girl's case, she helped edit the book, pick the cover, and work on the blurb. She's a badass friend.
I'm currently working on four books. I have a sickness, I tell ya! Still slowly writing Blue Awakening. Fellow author and super sweet friend Lauryl gave the first Blue a shout out. Having gotten a taste of her newest horror book Schiessl House, I can say she's writing one heck of a freaky novel. The cover alone has me salivating for its release.
My writing focus is mainly on the romances. This week, I started Dmitri for my Carys Marie pen name. I had worried about Dmitri being too much of a pig or having a personality that would naturally lead to cheating. I hate cheaters. I wrote the first scenes when Dmitri meets Catalina and they hit just the note. Dmitri was the right amount of strutting bad boy without being a Cooper ripoff.
Working on Damaged and the Cobra too and I am loving how Aaron is coming along. Less certain about Lark. How strange that I was so worried about the H and it's the h who is giving me trouble now. I hadn't been able to figure out Tawny either initially, but she ended up being my favorite Smith sister.
The fourth book is one for my new pen name Etta Simone. I had initially planned to release it under Bijou's name, but I decided to make the characters older. Thirty! One foot in the grave really. The working title is The Rebound Biker and I'm still in the plotting phase.
My goal is still to get Dmitri and Cobra out next month. Unsure if I'll make both books. Really unsure if I can get Blue done. I do know in September I'll start editing Scattered, the third book in the Angelic Redemption series. It's finished but needs deep editing before it'll be ready for the beta readers.
Blogging took up a lot of my week. On Where Zombies Come to Read, I interviewed author R.J. Spears. I had an interview for Indie Angie with New Adult romance author Chantal Fernando. I was also lucky enough to share excerpts from God Attacks! by J.R. Kiefer and Schiessl House by M. Lauryl Lewis. Plus, I worked on several posts for the Whisperer blog. There were so many lies to sort out and bullies to profile that it took awhile to organize. Agent M kept me focused and tracked down the info. As usual, we made a great team.
One of the butthurt authors I've put in the mocklight has decided to make herself the victim (shock). A few months ago, she used a slur against the disabled and said she used bats to deal with them. She claimed later to be kidding. Then, she claimed she liked saying the slur for the attention she received for her blog. She proceeded to use the slur a few more times. Now, she's decided she's the victim.
She even had her friends message me to say how she's the nicest person ever and I'm mean and should never speak for the disabled. Let them speak for themselves. Though her friend who wrote this comment claimed to have autism, I assume he doesn't have much experience with others with spectrum.
Communication difficulties are a common problem for those with autism. Even those with strong verbal skills can have trouble explaining their feelings or standing up for themselves. I know a teenager who is essentially nonverbal. His only speech is parroting. One word he parrots when upset is the slur this author used so lightly.
While I doubt he knows the meaning behind the R-word, he understands enough. When he was called this slur, he was six-year-old. Ten years later, he still uses the word when angry. He knows it meant the woman thought he was defective and inferior. He knows it meant he was bad.
Explaining otherwise does no good because he lacks the cognitive skills to rationalize what happened. He can't tell himself the person who used the slur was wrong. He certainly couldn't stand up for himself as a child or even now as a teenager. I suspect when he's sixty that he'll still call himself the slur. It's burned into his mind.
Yet, the author and her friends think I should lighten up. After all, she was just being funny. They claim it's a common thing to say. Maybe it's a cultural difference. Possibly, these people live in a place where using slurs against others is acceptable. However, I live in the US where it's considered cruel and wrong.
It was disheartening to see how far people will go to defend the indefensible. There is a lot of talk of bullying lately and I can't imagine anything worse than mocking those unable to defend themselves.
As you can see it was an emotional week. The upside is I've published my fifth book this year. I'm writing again and no longer have to focus on boring editing. This week, I enjoyed promoting positive professional authors while Agent M and I showcased the badly behaving ones. As I wrote above, the week was more happy than sad so I'll end with cute Boo...
