2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,300 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Vampire Invasion’s Maalox Moment

As I progress through “Vampire Invasion”, book three of the Vampire Syndrome Saga, I recall the days of 2012, when I was pitching Vampire Syndrome to New York publishers.

One of my rejection letters said V.S. wasn’t “innovative” enough. A vampire with Down Syndrome battling his own kind, and aliens, wasn’t innovative enough? 😉

Now that I’ve checked out what this same company released for paranormal titles in 2013 and 2014, I can see the opposite is true. Vampire Syndrome was too innovative. This company subsides on paranormal comfort food, light reading to fill the mass market racks at general retailers. Vampire Syndrome would have been a diamond in their coal mine… which doesn’t work so well when the company runs on coal.

When I was writing Chapter Six of “Vampire Invasion”, I had a moment of realization. After the leader of the alien Pure Vampires makes a dramatic disclosure of a huge secret kept quiet for decades, I flash back to 1951, in another character’s POV. This is a moment that might have caused a New York editor to reach for their antacids. 😈

When I told our editors about this, my chief editor replied “You don’t have to worry about it.” I truly appreciate my publisher’s willingness to support innovation, down to the ‘minor’ details. Thank you, PDMI Publishing!

And here’s a sneak preview for you. Remember, this is what comes right after the leader of the alien Pure Vampires has made his big dramatic reveal. And yes, the end of the flashback will tie in perfectly… 😉

Lilith:

Dear Diary, Sunday, June 24, 1951

Another day in the doldrums. Difficult to fathom that I could succumb to such boredom, being who I am. The first woman to serve as President of the Council of Thirteen, yet I feel like my own secretary. Listless. Perhaps I have performed my duties too well, for our community has been orderly as the Normals’ new swaths of suburbia. I peer out the window at my new Cadillac convertible. Detroit’s finest shining manifest of overhead-valve Hydramatic glory, yet with none of the handmade soul of my 1930 Cadillac Sixteen roadster. Even the Normals realize what they’ve lost, redefining those cars of true elegance crafted in the pre-war glory times to be “classics.” Automobiles destined for car shows and museums instead of the highways, the latest generation of Normals destined to be forever blind to the heights of hand-craftsmanship that ruled the roads but a score ago. I would take my Sixteen out on this lovely day and display its full mechanical finery, the type of which now eludes the Normals’ routine sights, but alas I would be accosted by throngs of enthusiastic Normals at every filling station. Even the pump attendants never fail to inquire if my Sixteen is for sale, as if they could afford it. But I know full well, at times those of superior structure will have to conceal themselves from the humdrum and mundane. Yet the ennui of the everyday Normal routine is ever reaching out its hand of blandness to me, as if the tedium of post-war Normal life is ready at every turn to suck even us bloodsuckers into the empty eye of its silent storm.

What Are the REAL Odds of Being a Successful Author?

Published authors are “one in a million”, even if it’s more like “one in a hundred thousand” in literal terms of the population…
Success is a ladder you have to climb one step at a time! 🙂

Kristen Lamb's Blog

Image via Flikr Creative Commons Hakan Dalstrom

I didn’t even consider becoming a writer until 1999 after my father passed away suddenly. Funny how death can make us take a hard look at life, right? Anyway, I recall feeling soooo overwhelmed. I mean my odds of even getting published were about as good as winning the lottery. And the odds of becoming a best-selling author? Well, mathematically speaking, I had a slightly greater chance of being mauled by a black bear and polar bear on the same day.

It was all I could do not to give up before I began.

But, after over 14 years doing this “writer thing,” I have a new perspective. Often it feels like we are the victims of fate, at the mercy of the universe, when actually it is pretty shocking how much of our own destiny we control. The good news is that…

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