Monday Musings: Offensive jokes, plagiarism, and paywalls

Posted on January 26, 2026 by Vania Margene Rheault

2,078 words
11 minutes read time

flat lay of pink turtleneck sweater, cup of coffee with cream in it and two cotton ball tufts text says:Monday Musings:
Offensive jokes, plagiarism, and paywalls

Hello, hello, from the frozen north. You know it’s cold when you have to warm up your car so when you actually have to go somewhere it will start. Of course, you get bonus points if you can do that wearing flip-flops and shorts and a tank top. Only two more months of this business and then hopefully spring will come, though that’s never a guarantee. I was equally inspired and disheartened that so many Minnesotans had to demonstrate in this weather but it makes me proud to live here. I saw a picture of Minneapolis’s mayor and he’s not looking too good. I would imagine he hasn’t gotten much sleep since ICE came into the city. Stay safe and warm, y’all. No matter where you are.

For the past few days I’ve been busy listening to Wicked Games. I find so many missing words and typos that no matter how clean I think my manuscript is, this step will unfortunately be part of my editing process forever. I re-edited Captivated by Her between the last read-through and this listening pass, hoping to keep from getting too bored and zoning out while “Samantha” reads to me. When I’m done listening and I have it formatted, I’ll re-edit Addicted to Her, the second in that duet, while I wait for Wicked Games‘s proof to come. I never used to work on two things at once, but it helps keep my eyes fresh. It will still be a couple of months before Wicked Games is ready for ARCs and I have my duet’s new files uploaded to KDP, but I should be able to start writing my hockey duet this spring. If all goes well, I’ll be done writing them by the end of the year.

Lately I’ve been thinking about paywalls and what the point is. I mean, besides the fact that they make a creator money (and I truly believe certain content creators deserve to be paid). I’ve been scrolling Substack a lot, the reciprocal patting each other on the back and the “you got this” attitude amusing at times. It’s like LinkedIn Lite, where motivation is plenty but solutions to real issues are vague or hidden behind paid subscriptions. What’s really funny is that all I hear on Threads is “Be careful where you put your money” then I’m over on Substack where I could become a paid subscriber until I’m broke. I mean, being a writer with limited funds myself, I get it, the hustle is real, but I also blog and create content, and I guess I just don’t think I have the information or life experience worthy enough to pay for.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t people who do, such as publishing insiders like Kathleen Schmidt and Jane Friedman, or nonfiction writers like Claire Taylor and Becca Syme (if they have paid subscriptions), I’m sure have content worth the cost. But then I see other authors set up a paywall for things that might not be valuable to certain audiences . . . or at all. There’s an author who gives marketing advice behind a paywall, but he’s a trad author, so how would his marketing advice help me? Even if trad authors have to do most of their own marketing, he has distribution channels and connections that I can only dream of as an indie. I saw another author offering a branding class, but he hasn’t published in close to three years, so is his class worth the money? I won’t name these authors because I’ve gotten in trouble for that in the past, and honestly, what they think their experience is worth is their own business. It just makes me wonder how people determine what their words are worth and how everyone else determines if their words are worth the price.

A couple of years ago I tried putting a Ko-Fi link at the bottom of my posts, but it felt kind of icky and I stopped doing it. Every once in a while I’ll get an email or comment that asks if they can pay me or thanks me for not charging for the information I post. I don’t charge because I don’t think my experiences are that valuable. I can tell you what my life is like as an indie author who does everything herself, but that’s only valuable if what I’m doing is working. My .26 cents might impress someone, as it proves a reader saw one of my books and liked it enough to download it and start reading, but I have a hard time believing that my .26 cents is worth your .26 cents.

It’s just interesting to think about, and of course, that’s Substack’s whole reason for existing. They want you to make money so that they make money. That’s not so difficult to understand, but not just anyone has experience and information worth paying for. Not in my opinion, at least. Especially since a lot of what you need to know about the publishing industry is free somewhere. Even if that means stitching together bits and pieces of ten different blog posts to figure out what you need to know. And, I guess it doesn’t need to be said, but just because you pay doesn’t mean that information is correct, either. So, I’ve just been mulling that around. As a writer and an author, you’d hope that what you have to say is worth something, but there are a lot of writers and authors out there. Especially on Substack who are very eager to pat you on the back and tell you to keep going.

Yesterday I was checking my email and came across an email from James Blatch who pretty much took over the Self Publishing Formula after Mark Dawson’s fall from grace. I left Mark Dawson’s Facebook group a couple years ago when he was outed by someone on Reddit for plagiarizing. Mark stepped back from everything that was Self Publishing Formula related, including the podcast. It’s not that I really cared if Mark Dawson plagiarized. I mean, people make mistakes, blah blah, but the fact that he never publicly apologized for it kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Authors get slammed for pithy “apologies” all the time, but even in that case, I’d think something would be better than nothing. So James took over the podcast, and then after a bit shut it down completely. He started up a new podcast with Cara Clare, and that lasted for a while, but in the email I got yesterday, James says she’s stepping back to focus more on writing. He says he’ll have another co-host on the Self Publishing Show, but I have a difficult time thinking that it will be Mark.

I really liked Mark and James’s podcast. They had a lot of informative interviews and their recorded intro, “There’s never been a better time to be a writer” always gave me chills. I don’t know if I’ll give the new podcast a chance. I like staying on top of the indie industry, and listening to a podcast while I did chores or ran errands was an easy way to do that, but Mark’s silence after the plagiarizing thing never sat well with me. Even just a “I’m learning, I’m listening” statement that authors issue when they’ve done something wrong ~~and got caught~~, would have been better than the nothing he gave us. And, you know, I just kind of feel like he was such a prominent figure in the indie community that he really did us dirty just going underground. If you have the balls to do it, have the balls to own it and apologize.

If you’re interested in the podcast, you can find it here on YouTube or wherever you regularly listen: https://www.youtube.com/@LearnSelfPublishing
James describes the first comeback show as (taken from my email):

Episode 434 (Feb 12th) I will introduce my new co-host! A closely guarded secret until then.
From that episode onwards we’ll alternate between discussing the latest issues and taking your questions with guests. I don’t want to do the type of separately recorded interviews I used to, so guests will join us as a third wheel in a more casual environment. I want the Show to add value to your indie life. If there’s a subject or a guest you want to see, just drop me a line support@selfpublishingformula.com and we’ll respond.
If you used to subscribe to SPS, it’s likely your subscription is still live and you’ll see episode 433 on your feed in two weeks. If not, just search The Self Publishing Show on your podcast platform of choice. I can’t wait to be back in the SPS hot-seat!

Probably curiosity (and my FOMO) will have me listening just to see what the podcast is going to be like–and who he chose as his new co-host. I’ve been searching for something that I can vibe with, the other podcasts out there not doing it for me. I will keep you posted and report back.

Threads isn’t short on drama, and I saw that author Ruth Stilling was getting slammed for something one of her characters said in the book, Within Range. The character says, “It’s Valentine’s Day, so I came to make sure that you weren’t. hanging from your ceiling.”

social media graphic. blue background. hockey stick and puck. sonogram pictures hockey skates illustrate couple. text on torn paper: "It's Valentines Day, so I came to make sure that you weren't. hanging from your ceiling." — taken from Threads post: https://www.threads.com/@pagesofpassionyxe/post/DT4F8M7jE4i

I like looking at something from both sides, and I can see how, with the right couple and the right set up, this could be potentially funny. We don’t know the couple from just that line. There could have been lots of jokes like this throughout the entire book and someone who hasn’t read it would never know that’s just how they are. On the other hand, I write about depression and suicidal ideation in my books, and in the first book of my rockstar trilogy, before Olivia met Sheppard, that’s how her fiancé killed himself. And I many many years ago, one of my friend’s husbands took his life that way. So, I can definitely see how it can be very tasteless as well.

I don’t think it would be difficult to choose a different “joke” but on the other hand, we can’t censor ourselves because we think we’re going to upset someone. If we truly did that there wouldn’t be horror or thrillers. I suppose you can say that with those genres you’d expect upsetting content and in what looks like what is a romcom, upsetting jokes could come out of nowhere. It really depends on the person. I was suicidal for many years, even landed in the ER once getting my stomach pumped, but that line didn’t bother me and it wasn’t triggering. I just think at some point everyone who writes is going to write something that upsets someone. I know with this blog I’ve made some people upset and there’s no putting yourself out there and avoiding it.

There’s no real answer to this, because for as many people who are bothered, there are going to be just as many or even more who aren’t. I think we’ve all written something and then thought, “Yikes. Maybe I need help.” But then we laugh it off because we’re just over here making shit up. In the way I bought Colleen Hoover’s latest book because I saw some people on Threads making fun of it, I kind of want to buy Ruth’s book to see what all the fuss is about. I’m writing hockey soon. I can call it research. I dug up the link for you if you want to read it too: https://www.amazon.com/Within-Range-Blade-Kings-Book-ebook/dp/B0FTTL3Q4M

That’s about all I got this week. I’m just trying to use every free moment I can to work on my books. Last week it felt like all my free time kept getting eaten up with chores, errands, and little things like getting my hair cut and a dentist appointment. The next biggest things I need to take care of are making us appointments at the post office to apply for our passports and getting my taxes done. I still haven’t added up all my book spend for 2025 yet, and I’m waiting for my work to release our W2s, but hopefully I can take care of that in the next couple of weeks. If life could just slow down for me, that would be great.

I hope everyone is doing okay during these turbulent times. Stay safe out there!

I’ll see you next week!

Not So Hardcore Anymore

Posted on January 19, 2026 by Vania Margene Rheault

2,298 words
12 minutes read time

male-presenting shirtless weightlifter holding dumbbell. kneeling with one knee on a weight bench. text reads: not so hardcore anymore. — This isn’t exactly what I meant, but he’s yummy to look at.

There are a lot of things that I just don’t care about anymore, and maybe with what I’ve seen and what I’ve been through, how I’ve been treated and where I am now compared to where I wish I was, that you would consider that statement as apathy. But I don’t think I’ve fallen that far. It’s more like, I’ve lost the will to put out all the dumpster fires I see every day and would rather just step back and roast marshmallows with the flames.

As we get older, it’s common that what used to be important no longer is, and I can tell every day when I see fights online that I’ve softened. There are a lot of indies out there who speak with their whole chest about things that matter to them, and their version of facts can either be right or wrong or somewhere in between.

I’ve written this blog for ten years now, and when I dare scroll backward that far, I can feel the heat on my face from my own flames. I was very “This is how you do it if you want to do it correctly” and I didn’t leave a lot of grey area. It was my way or the highway, and man, I don’t even have a highway anymore. I have a path, through the woods, that goes to a lake, where I sit and watch the ducks.

Going back and reading my older blog posts is almost cringe in a way. That you had conviction is supposed to make you proud, that you had the nerve to stand up for yourself, or in my case, the industry/readers, but usually all I sounded like was a pompous idiot who hadn’t been in the trenches long enough to realize that I’m not going to be right all the time. Not even some of the time. I only thought that I was.

Here are some of the things I’ve stopped fighting about.

Craft is a personal choice: I’m not going to argue with you (anymore).
Probably one of the biggest things I don’t care about anymore is how people write. Especially romance. In 2019, I was pretty against writing romance in first person. Not because I didn’t like reading it–I enjoyed Hunger Games and Twilight like everybody else–but from a craft point of view, I didn’t like the dual first person idea of a romance. The “I” belonged to one person, not two. Which, fine. I can see where I was coming from, but then what the fuck was I thinking when I started Zane and Stella and what would become my King’s Crossing serial in December of that year? I couldn’t have been that appalled by it.

Now days, I don’t care who writes what. Write a chapter in first, then the next in third, then the next in first if you want. Some authors actually do that. I don’t care anymore when the idea before would have made me throw up in my mouth a little. The thing is, I don’t have to pay for it. I don’t have to read it, and I don’t have to write like that. So live and let live. If you want read that stunning piece of craft critique, you can do so here: https://vaniamargene.com/2019/07/22/changing-your-point-of-view-how-you-write-and-thoughts-on-1st-3rd-past-and-present-tense/

Trigger Warnings: To add them or not to add them.
Another thing I don’t care about anymore is trigger warnings. You may be surprised to know that I was against them, or at least, I wasn’t for them, and I’m not sure when I changed my mind. This year? Last? I used to say stupid shit like, “Life is triggering.” I was callous and agreed with people who said to “Just get over it.” I didn’t consider them spoilers–I have never thought spoilers ruined books–only that books about life can be hard. But that’s the whole point. Life is hard, and if a warning can help a reader avoid more hard, why not add it?

The only thing with adding triggers anywhere to your book now is that Amazon takes that to mean it’s full of naughty, filthy things, and they’ll bury it. Or so some authors say. Publishing a book on KDP is like playing Russian roulette, so I never wanted to take my chances adding something to the blurb or author’s note in the front matter that could get my book locked in the dungeon or taken down completely. I should make up a list and put it on my website, but the only list I have there so far is for my King’s Crossing serial because yeah, those books are full of some shit.

Do I think you should add trigger warnings to your books? I think they should be somewhere accessible for your reader to find so people can choose if they want to read your books or not. It’s okay for people to self-select out. It’s the best way to keep readers happy and avoid bad reviews.

When should you redo a book? Whenever you want.
Back when I first started writing, I would get frustrated when I saw authors redoing their books after they were already published. I had this kind of purity rule that I followed and believed that once you published a book you shouldn’t go back and re-edit it or change the cover because people had already spent money on that edition. It was kind of a strange stance, especially since I’ve re-edited and re-covered many books since I’ve been publishing. In fact, re-editing and updating the cover and blurb is encouraged these days to give older titles a little breath of fresh air. It’s smart marketing when you have time to circle back to older work. I’m re-editing my Cedar Hill duet now, and I have new covers made that look fabulous. And of course I’m going to do the whole cover reveals and ads and treat them like new releases because these are good stories and mediocre covers and so-so writing was holding them back.

My blog post, When Should You Redo a Book, https://vaniamargene.com/2017/08/08/when-should-you-redo-a-book/, goes a little deeper and discusses old books completely redone with new titles, covers, and ISBN numbers. I’ve known indie authors who have done this too, trying to give their debuts a better second chance. I always figured that was too much work–to pull a book, waste an ISBN, get a new cover and title. I figure, let that one go and just write a better book next time. The blog I linked to was written back in 2017, a year after I jumped into the indie trenches with both feet. I should probably just unpublish it because I talk about trad authors like Robyn Carr, and when their backlist gets revamped and re-released, they probably don’t even get a say, or if they do, they agree because who wouldn’t want to breathe new life into a thirty-year-old book? New cover and title could mean thousands of new readers who weren’t familiar with that particular story.

So, yeah. My viewpoint has definitely changed. Do I think you should go back and redo a book from top to bottom? You do you, boo, because one day ten years from now, I might wanna do it too.

Should you write a series? If you can handle the commitment.
Because I started publishing back in 2016, I repeated, and believed, a lot of the advice that was thrown around back then. There was no reason not to when you could listen to any six-figure author tell you how they built a readership and made all their moola. But, as Exposé sings, seasons change, and 2026 isn’t the same as it was back in 2016. When I wrote this blog post– https://vaniamargene.com/2019/09/02/why-i-wrote-a-series-and-why-you-should-write-one-too/— back in 2019, I was very much in favor of writing a series, and a lot of what I believed is still somewhat true. Read-through is good, if you can get it. More ways to market–free/discounted first in series, boxed sets.

But since then, I’ve changed my mind (you can read why here: https://vaniamargene.com/2025/09/22/is-writing-a-long-series-worth-it/). I put a lot of time into my King’s Crossing serial. Five years, to be exact, and while I love love love Zane and Stella and Gage and Zarah, it’s really nothing I want to do again. Even if there is nothing to support my theory that short attention spans and second-screen syndrome are keeping readers from wanting to read a long series, with the way my life is now, that level of commitment doesn’t even seem possible.

Do I think you should write a long series? It depends. Do you want instant gratification? If you do, a series is not the way to go. It takes time to complete a series, and with the number of complaints I see online about readers waiting until a whole series is available to start (which is completely understandable, in my opinion), if you don’t want to write the entire thing first, definitely adjust your expectations. You might find it’s not worth it. You have to go into writing a series for yourself–because you love the world and love the characters. If you think you’re not going to have the motivation to finish, don’t start. A six book series could be six standalones, two trilogies, three duets, or a four-book series plus two standalones, etc. Easier to chew through, yeah? As for me, it will be a long time, if ever, before I decide to do another long series. I still have two out of six of an interconnect series that I wrote during COVIID on my computer, so, we’ll see. I’m not dead yet.

You can be consistently inconsistent, and it’s perfectly fine.
I still think if you want to get anywhere, content is king and consistency is queen. Showing people you’re in the game to stay is pretty important with so much content out there now. Lots of authors are flash-in-the pan. Their debut sinks, they lose heart and disappear. I talk a lot about where I am in this industry and how sometimes it feels like it’s not far enough, but I wouldn’t have all that I do if I hadn’t built it on ten years of consistent work–this blog and my books. But. But, you can be consistent in lots of different ways. Consistency isn’t the same for everyone, nor should it be. Maybe in this blog post I wrote back in 2021 I was just a little too hardcore about making sure readers know what to expect from you (https://vaniamargene.com/2021/12/20/buzzword-consistency/), especially since I’ve stopped being that consistent too. I’ve done billionaire for a bit, but I’ve been kind of moving into romantic suspense and small town. I’m going to write hockey next. The important thing is you don’t lose your joy. Stay happy. That’s the only consistency that matters.

I’m not really sure what other hills I was ready to die on nine, ten years ago. There are some things I still believe, maybe not super hardcore like I used to, but there are still things that make sense to me, like not cross-posting the same content everywhere. Twitter isn’t Threads, Threads isn’t Facebook, Facebook isn’t Instagram, Instagram isn’t Lemon8, and Lemon8 isn’t Pinterest. There are different ways those audiences consume content and certain content does better than others. Don’t give the algorithms even more reason to ignore you. Besides, if you have the same people following you everywhere, give them something different to look at.

I still think books should be formatted properly, but with tools like Vellum and Atticus and free software on sites like Reedsy and Draft2Digital, that’s not so much of an issue anymore. I just bypassed one book the other day because he put spaces between every paragraph. That’s okay for nonfiction, but his book was a thriller. I wanted to buy it to support him, but I wasn’t going to read it formatted like that, so there was no point in spending the money. I would have said something, but he didn’t ask and I’m not that person anymore who gives out unsolicited advice. Maybe someone else will tell him. Otherwise, he’s probably going to miss more sales than just mine.

I suppose the only other thing is that I still believe in buying stock photos. There are a lot of authors putting free stock on their books, from sites like Unsplash or Pexels, or using stock from Canva if the have Pro, but I just would never chance it. I use Canva Pro photos on here sometimes, for the graphics, but I’m not trying to sell anything using them. Book covers are different, and it’s part of the “do things professionally and cover your butt” philosophy I’ve always had. Selling books is a business, and Amazon gets a bad rap for trying to cover their own butts and regulating the authors who publish there. Honestly, I can’t even imagine what a headache it would be, policing hundreds of thousands of authors. So yeah, I still think it’s better to buy your stock from a reputable source. It never hurts because you never know when KDP will ask for copyright proof.

As time goes on, I’m sure more of my beliefs will change. Sometimes there’s a better, or best way, to do things, and sometimes . . . there just isn’t. Or if there is, that “best way” varies from person to person. I think in the end, we all want the same thing: happy readers. It’s the way we get there that can be different, and I’m happy minding my own business and doing things the way I want them done.

Do you have any hardcore beliefs? Let me know!

I’ll see you next week!

Under Fire: Talking about Hot Takes

Posted on December 8, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

2,077 words
11 minutes read time

bonfire in the dark on some rocks. mountain silhouettes in background

I’ve seen a lot of hot takes online recently and I thought maybe it would be fun to talk about some of them. I know most hot takes are just engagement or rage bait (like arguing that a romance doesn’t need a happily ever after–if you don’t want to write a happily ever after ending, your novel is a love story–see the movie that is actually called Love Story with Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal where she freaking dies at the end) but there are are some hot takes that are worth discussing. When we talk about writing, publishing, and marketing, there is no one way to do things, and we can get caught up in the drama of opinions equalling fact or causation equalling correlation which usually is never true because there’s always going to be an exception that proves the rule.

Let’s go over some of the ones I’ve seen recently, and I’ll give you my opinion.

Releasing quickly doesn’t always mean writing fast or using AI
I’m kind of surprised more people don’t realize this–that an author can write a book or five, get them all prepped, and not do anything with them until they want to publish them. I think a lot of this stems from the idea that authors don’t sit on books, only because their own impatience dictates that they publish the second their book is ready.

If you’re a slow writer and have been working on a book for the past three years or whatever, I can understand the excitement of releasing the second your book is put together (edited, formatted, and cover done and blurb written), but for some people, waiting until they have a launch strategy is normal. Also, some authors like to rapid release books in a series to drive read-through. And while we, okay, I mean I, think it’s a pipe dream, there are authors out there who do this for a living and have the time to write for eight hours a day. They aren’t scrolling Threads or Twitter–they’re getting their books written because their paychecks depend on it. If you’re going to accuse someone of using AI because they released six books this year, take a step back, check your jealousy, and admit there are plausible reasons for how that’s possible.

Prologues and epilogues are fine . . . if done correctly
Talking about prologues and epilogues is always going to irritate some people because it’s not only a matter of preference, it’s a matter of craft.

Of course there are going to be prologues written by new authors who think they need to use one to “set up” the story rather than sprinkle in the details readers need to know throughout. They haven’t written enough to understand how to do it, so they info dump all the “important” parts first thinking a reader needs to know all that before they start reading the “real” story.

I’ve only written two prologues in my life, and that was in books one and five of my fantasy series I’ll never publish. Did it work? I’d like to think so. The series is about a women who gets pulled back in time because she’s a Healer and a sorceress needed her power. Then I added another prologue to the end of the last book where her ex-boyfriend also gets pulled back, and then later finds her living it up engaged to a prince. I thought it was quite clever, actually (don’t tell me it’s not), but then I switched to contemporary romance where prologues aren’t used as much.

Romance authors like to use epilogues, and there those make sense. Readers love a glimpse at the happy couple years later, and a lot of romance authors write more than one epilogue and use them as bonus material for newsletter signups. Sometimes I label my epilogues epilogues and sometimes I just label them the last chapter and put “three years later” or whatever at the top. I don’t think it really matters. With the way my “newsletter” is a blog on my author website now, it doesn’t make too much sense to write bonus material unless I wanted to pay for email collection on Bookfunnel. I don’t care about it that much and by the time I get done writing a book, I’m really not in the mood to write ten different endings. It’s one of my greatest faults as a writer is to say “See ya!” practically before I type the last period.

Whether you love or hate prologues and epilogues, either writing them or reading them, that’s personal taste. If you write a prologue make sure it serves purpose beyond an info dump, like letting us into the head of a murderer in a thriller, or letting your reader take a peek into the foundation of a world like GRRM’s prologue in Game of Thrones when the book opens beyond the Wall and the men of the Night’s Watch encounter the White Walkers.

When it comes to prologues and epilogues, it’s essential to know where your story starts and where you want it to end. Make each word count.

Tropes don’t take the place of stakes
A while back there was a lot of heated discussion about those book graphics that have the cover of the book on it then the squiggly arrows that point out the micro-tropes. Like this:

black background. cover of Twisted Alibis by VM Rheault. man looking down, stage in background. arrow graphics pointing to hot, wounded rockstar, slow burn, betrayal and murder, rating (four stars) reconnecting with family and friends, depression rep — made with a template in Canva

People were saying that they love them because they give you a quick glance into what the book is about, others said they hated them because it’s just a long list of spoilers. I’ve been of the mind that spoilers don’t spoil a book. After all, a happily ever after in a romance is the biggest spoiler of all–it’s the couple’s journey to get to that point that matters. And that’s where stakes come in. There’s no hook, there’s no exciting plot, without stakes, motivation, and consequences. What will the couple lose choosing love? What will they gain? What will they lose if they go their separate ways? Is what they will gain be enough to make up for that loss?

It wasn’t that long ago that I read a romance blurb that was packed full of mini-tropes. Small town, second chance, fake dating. You name it, and it was in there. But what the blurb lacked was stakes. What did they lose if the fake dating scheme didn’t work out? What did that couple stand to lose if the MMC didn’t stay in the little town he left so long ago? What would she lose if he leaves? Her heart? The blurb sounded exciting until you dug just a little deeper and realized that blurb could have been the blurb of any small-town, second chance book out there. Nothing made it that author’s. Nothing in that blurb screamed, “I’m different! Read me!”

I think arrow graphics can definitely be used as a quick “at a glance” vibe for your book, especially if you add something that is unique to your characters. And I wouldn’t worry about spoilers. If a little spoiler can ruin your entire book, you better rethink that plot.

Not everything is Amazon’s fault
I’ve defended Amazon quite a few times in the past on this blog. I know they have their flaws, just like any other employer or company that you do business with, but a lot of what I see isn’t just Amazon, it’s authors refusing to take responsibility for their actions, like missing a preorder date and having their privileges taken away or not ordering stock in time and blaming Amazon for not getting their books to them during the busy holiday season. I actually saw someone on Threads complaining that it will take six weeks for their books to come, and that it happened to them last year. Like, if you know this is going to happen but don’t take the steps to avoid it, then all you’re doing is blaming someone else for your own mistake.

I know that Amazon isn’t perfect. They’ve shipped my books with a body lotion order and that could have had a poor outcome. I have also seen pictures of books coming damaged because they weren’t packed correctly. I’m not saying they’re entirely blameless, but instead of making Amazon the eternal bad guy, it would be nice to see some people just taking ownership of their actions like the adults they are.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should
Indie authors have a lot of freedom, and that can be great. We can re-edit a book and upload new files or change our covers whenever we want. We can run ads or not, use social media to promote our books or not. We can take five years to put out a book or we can publish twelve novellas in a year. We have 100% say in how we run our businesses.

But we should use that freedom wisely because I see a lot of hot-take behavior from indie authors that makes me squirm. I see authors canceling preorders, airing their dirty laundry on social media, making fun of readers for their reviews, making fun of other authors for what they like to write. The list is endless.

We are in an era where nothing online seems real. There is so much AI and so many scammers out there that it’s difficult to parse through for real and true information. I read a Substack article by Claire Taylor and she was saying that one of the most important things readers will be looking for going forward is trustworthiness and integrity from the authors they choose to read. I think this is a valid point and really important. Do what you tell your readers you are going to do. Have follow-through. And be kind while you’re doing it.

Your peers and coworkers need to know they can trust you too. Don’t say you’ll send out author copies for an event if you don’t think you can. Don’t sign up for book conventions and then back out. Don’t say you’ll help a fellow indie and then change your mind. I know life happens, and so does everyone else, but at some point you have to look at yourself and ask if you’re dependable. If not, you need to figure out why and what’s going on in your life that you need to change.

I think Claire is on the right track when she says that trustworthiness, integrity, and dependability is going to be your number one marketing strategy next year. How are you going to show up to your readers? As 2025 draws to a close, it might be a great time to think about that.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. And what kind of person will you look like if you do?

Hot takes are hot for a reason: they spark debate and can hurt feelings. They can ruffle feathers, not only for their basis of truth (or not), but because they force us to question ourselves and our beliefs. And what do we think of the people who have a different opinion than we do? I like listening to hot takes. Some of them are valid, some are pure BS, and some challenge what I think.

In the end we all make our own choices–write a prologue or not, save up your books before publishing or not, follow through with that promise or not–but remember, hot takes were made to get attention, so keep your cool . . . at least where people can see.

As part of my “favorite things” segment I’ve been including until Christmas, I want to highlight the Authors Guild YouTube channel. They have great content like where to find your readers, querying tips, and how AI is changing the publishing industry. You don’t have to be a member of the Authors Guild to watch these videos.

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to learn about the publishing industry, this is a great channel to subscribe to. There are some videos geared more toward traditional publishing, but as an indie, I think it’s important to keep up to date on what’s happening in publishing as a whole.

Look here for a list of their videos and you can subscribe to their channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AuthorsGuild

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That’s all I have for this week! Thanks for checking in and I’ll see you next Monday!

Monday’s Author Update

Posted on September 15, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,617 words
9 minutes read time

higher view of a state park in autumn. browns dull greens and oranges over a hilly field. lake to the left a murky green water. — Maplewood State Park, Maplewood, MN October 2024

It’s cooling down in the evenings and the leaves are just beginning to change colors, which is lovely. We’re tiptoeing into my most favorite part of the year, the yummy months when it isn’t summer but it isn’t winter. In Minnesota, no one can accurately guess how long that time will last, but I’ll enjoy it for however long it stays.

My editing and proofing is done!
I finally finished proofing my Christmas novel that I was re-editing in time for the holiday push. I ordered a second proof just to make sure the formatting is still okay, but I’m not reading it over again. I changed a lot of word choices and phrasing, just like I did for Faking Forever, and going forward I’ll be trying to sound more conversational while staying true to my voice.

One of the things I had in the back of my mind when I re-edited those three standalones (Rescue Me, Faking Forever, and A Heartache for Christmas) was those books not sounding like me if I made too many changes. But, I’m trying to lighten up because since I’ve been reading a little bit more I’ve noticed that popular romance books just don’t get too deep with the prose and vocabulary. Whether this is a conscious choice of the author or just their own light writing style, I’m going to try to meet in the middle. I can only write how I write . . . but I can be mindful of word choices and syntax and maybe my books will be a little easier to read. I wrote a blog post on the changes I was making in A Heartache for Christmas and you can read it here: https://vaniamargene.com/2025/08/18/when-dumbing-down-your-writing-isnt-dumb/

I’m going to set up an Amazon ad for it, I think, and maybe set up a Facebook ad for it at the end of October. I really let up on the Facebook ads this year, and the only ad I’ve purchased was for getting my ARCs of Loss and Damages seen. I did manage to give away quite a few ARCs of that book through the ad, but since I gave them away on good faith (meaning no Google form to fill out and no email collection), I doubt much will come of it.

Goodreads giveaway update.
My Goodreads giveaway is doing well, though I guess I don’t have a gauge to tell. I have 1,150 entries at the time of this writing, and I’m pretty happy with that. Like the ARC giveaways through my FB ad, I doubt much will come of it, but if you don’t get your name out there somehow, no one will know who you are. It’s especially true these days with so much content to choose from.

New book and new editing project.
I’m 6,563 words into Bitter Love, but I’m going to have to table that for now. One of my friends I edit for has the next book in her series ready for me, and I’ll be putting Jesse and Jordan aside to take care of that. Because of the changes at my work and just basic free time slipping away, it will take me a while to get that editing project done and I probably won’t get Bitter Love finished this year like I wanted. My day job has just been stressful overall, and I’m at the point where I’m not sure what would be harder: staying and toughing it out or finding something new after twenty-four years. All I’m grateful for is that I’m feeling better physically every day, so if/when I decide to jump into the job search I can at least handle the change. It still won’t be easy because change is hard, but at least I won’t have the physical stuff to deal with if it come to pass.

Posting on social media.
I’ve still been trying to post on socials, and though I’ve pulled way back on FB ads, I’ve been boosting posts on IG a little more. That hasn’t translated to sales as far as I can see, but I have gained a few followers pushing me close to 500 after having the account for thirteen years. I only post graphics, not reels, so I don’t know if growing my IG account will do anything for me, either in the long or short runs, but I think I prefer posting on IG rather than my FB author page. I have come to realize I hate that page. I have three friends who like all my posts and besides that, reach is non-existent. I wonder if it would be smart to start over, but I’ve had that page for almost as long as I’ve had Instagram so I have no idea where that link is out in the world. I hate broken links so I’ll keep it up and just repurpose my IG posts for it. I started a new TikTok account and just named it something generic that has to do with books. I’m testing to see whether a “book” account will do more for me than an “author” account, like my reader page on Facebook I run ads off of when I bother. It doesn’t seem so advertise-y, so we’ll see what comes of it. Content creation is still the main issue, but I’m good with Canva and just try to juggle creating on my laptop and posting on my phone (I have the Canva app). Even if I’m stuck in what’s considered the TikTok dungeon, the low views (my last carousel got 353 views) still beats what I get on FB and IG combined, even when I boost a post on IG. I don’t want to try to be everywhere, just where I can have the most eyes without a lot of work.

Blog cleanup.
Speaking of broken links, I’ve been cleaning up my blog posts and trashing some of my older ones I did with other authors who have since flaked out or have changed their own links (or even author pen names!) making the post useless or obsolete. I didn’t like doing that, but some of my relationships with those authors have gone so far south I didn’t like having them on my blog anymore anyway. So if you happen to run into a link that doesn’t work anymore, you weren’t missing much and there’s a reason why the post no longer exists. I’ve also gone back and updated a few older posts that kept getting hits even though they were six, seven, or eight years old. Back then I had no idea what I was doing and the posts are only getting hits because my SEO on this site is actually pretty good. So, I updated those older posts with actual relevant information and now I won’t feel bad when people are reading them to find out about something.

Library distribution of Kindle Select books.
There’s been a lot of talk in indie circles about KDP letting ebooks into libraries even if you’re enrolled in Kindle Select (the author side of Kindle Unlimited).

I didn’t jump on this bandwagon for one simple fact: you still have to be selected by a librarian to be in a library. Your books don’t just automatically show up there because they’re available. And with the deluge of indie books now being available, your chances of being selected are that much worse. So, no I didn’t go upload all my books to Draft2Digital to use their site as a distribution service to libraries, and I probably won’t. My paperbacks have always been available through IngramSpark and as far as I know a library has never purchased one of my books. Like being in a bookstore, being in a library has never been a dream of mine, and I just don’t care. If you care about being in the library system and want to take advantage of that for your Kindle Unlimited ebooks, you can make an account with Draft2Digital and when selecting storefronts, select library distribution only. This article gets a little more detailed: https://newshelves.com/kindle-unlimited-authors-can-now-distribute-to-libraries/

What’s on the blog next week.
I was going to get into if writing a long series anymore is a good idea and talk about some current information I’ve run into that has possibly proved that it’s not. But right now, this blog post is already eight minutes long, so it’s probably better if I wait to talk about it another day.

Peak leaf-looking season will be coming in a couple of weeks and I’ll be taking a day off to go to a state park near here with my sister and daughter. We went last year and I took some amazing pictures. It’s nice to spend the day outside in cooler temperatures and then we go out to dinner after we get back into town. Things will change a lot for me if I have to get a different job, but change doesn’t have to be bad. It’s the getting-through-it part that’s uncomfortable, but with my health issues, the past five years have been hellish and maybe finding a different job will be a piece of cake after that. Anyway, I will keep you posted on all that as I know more.

Next week, let’s say I’ll write that blog post on whether or not it’s worth an author’s time to invest in a long series. With attention spans dwindling and a reader’s need for instant gratification, I feel the old advice of writing a long series is slowly becoming as obsolete as some of my old blog posts.

Chat more about that later! Have a great week!

murky photo of a lake through dark brown and black tree branches. brown and orange trees off in the distance — Maplewood State Park, Maplewood, MN. October 2024.

Monday’s Author Mashup

Posted on April 21, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,782 words
9 minutes read time

easter desk flat of cappuccino, white chocolate bunnies, ribber and chocolate covered, i'm not sure. coffee beans, peanuts. gold ribbon and a white keyboard. text says Monday's Author Mashup

Slow news week this week or maybe I’m just doing my own thing and not really paying attention to what everyone else is doing. I’m editing Wicked Games still, even though I said I would let it breathe. I wanted to read it one more time before I put it aside, and I’m halfway through. Though, I’m taking my time and not working as hard on my books as I used to. I don’t really feel the need anymore, and my King’s Crossing “splash” has pretty much died since the launch of the last book last week.

It seems authors can’t get enough of using AI, and another one was “caught” with an AI suggestion in the text of her book.

screenshot of paperback book. text reads: Hezra's jaw tightened, her voice dropping to a serious note. "Div-
ination witch... maybe blood magic."
Irene's impatience flared. Her gaze turned to Zahra. "The ashes?" [Highlights start]This is already quite strong, but it can be tightened for a sharper and more striking delivery while maintaining the intensity and sardonic edge you're aiming for. Here's a refined version: [End Highlight]
Zahra stood, holding up the necklace of ashes she was using to decipher the maps. Irene's eyes locked onto it. "Keep them in your sight at all times," she ordered. "We'll take turns guarding you—and the ashes—while you work."
Zahra nodded, but Irene's sharp tone didn't waver. "So? Where
are we?"
Excitement flickered in Zahra's eyes. "The history of the sapphire runs deep... Wars, legends, empires-all tied to the goddess Nehelan-nia. These words I decipher... they almost sing in my heart. This isn't just a treasure hunt. Hundreds have died for this sapphire. It all began—"

end of screenshot text — Thanks to @alicebrookswrites on Threads. https://www.threads.net/@alicebrookswrites/post/DIk846FoqxM?xmt=AQGzcVDaz2vhgILosC41iWzu1mlJcXVGPJo2wIgvZboAvA

Apparently, she’s blaming a beta reader for inserting that without her knowledge, but the fact is, authors are responsible for what they put out into the world. I’ve had betas and editors look at my stuff, and maybe comments can get in the way during formatting, especially if you’re not resolving the comments as you go through them, but there is no excuse for things to be in your manuscript you don’t want there. I’m not going to judge her for using AI, don’t care either way what she’s doing, and I think this is going to be more common as time goes on. There are so many authors in favor of AI, Facebook group after Facebook group that want to encourage and help you write with AI that this is never going to go away. Even ProWritingAid has an AI beta-reading helper who will give feedback on your entire manuscript. And I get it, I really really do. Not just because I want to defend my own past use of Al, even if it was only with brainstorming and nonfiction stuff, but because I’ve been in this industry for a really long time and know how difficult it is to find people who are willing to help you. Not even for free or trade, but people you can trust who won’t steal your ideas or your manuscript. Someone who won’t ghost you after saying they’ll help you, or change their minds and pull out of your project halfway through when you were counting on them. If you can’t find someone you can afford and/or who won’t sell you out, Al can start looking pretty good. He’s not going to publish your book under his own name or pirate it or flake on you when he decides his time is worth more than your project. Whether you use that as validation to turn to Al and his help, that’s on you, but it’s also on you to give your readers a good book because once they know you use AI, the readers who don’t like that will never read you again. I’ve written a blog post on why you should proof your proof. You can read it here: https://vaniamargene.com/2025/01/30/five-reasons-why-you-should-proof-your-proofs/

I actually got my butt out of my apartment the other day and went for a walk.

black and white photo of a single duck floating on a choppy river. — The Red River, Gooseberry Park. Moorhead, MN

It was nice out and I wanted to get some fresh air and also feed the stray cat that I think is still living at the city park close to where I live. I’m still putting food out, but at this point, I don’t know for sure it’s the cat that’s eating it as I know there is a raccoon that lives in the park too. My daughter and I went out a couple weeks ago, and I saw something that could have been an orange Maine Coon, or it could have been a fox, but I think it moved too slowly to be a fox unless it was injured. At any rate, I still have plans to go out there with some tuna and see if I can catch it. It’s been out there since October or so, but I need to wait until it dries out a bit. It’s way too muddy and there’s nowhere to sit to wait it out.

Anyway, so I was listening to some podcasts that I had marked and I tried the Indie Writers Club with James Blatch, a podcast he started with Cara Clare after the one he was doing with Mark Dawson ended. I was hoping for a good indie author podcast I could sink my teeth into, but unfortunately, that podcast will not be it. Maybe it could be for you, but not for me. The episode I listened to was about writing a series versus a standalone, a topic I really like to talk about as I love writing a good standalone when everyone tells you to write a series, but the first half of the episode was them talking about insider stuff like a writing retreat in Aruba and getting help with your writing from Al. I’m not for or against Al and what he can do, so that part of it wasn’t terrible, but if an episode is only forty-four minutes long, maybe it’s best not to crap up the first half with junk. It didn’t seem very professional, at one point James leaving the taping to let his dog out letting Cara ramble alone, and well, I’d rather listen to nothing than that. So I flipped over to Print Run, as they released a new episode a couple of weeks ago. I like the hosts, Erik Hane and Laura Zats, an editor and agent, respectively, based in Minneapolis who own their own literary agency. Even though they’re geared more toward writers who want to query, I find that their industry talk is useful and I enjoy their banter. The episode I listened to was particularly interesting as they were talking about Trump and his tariffs, and whether or not his administration was going to inspire “the big book.” (If you’re interested in listening to the episode, you can listen to it here or find it on your podcast app of choice. https://soundcloud.com/printrunpodcast/episode-177the-jimmies-the-rock-the-tariffs.)

I like what Erik had to say when he began hypothesizing what “the big book” was going to be about. He hasn’t read the Hunger Games books, and they talked a bit about that, I guess because Sunrise on the Reaping came out last month. Anyway, so he started talking about scarcity and how he thinks that’s going to play into what “the big book” is going to be about. But not like, actual food, like it is in the districts, though that could play into our everyday struggles as food costs rise in the world’s retaliation against us, but in other ways. In technological ways. This made me start thinking about what’s scarce right now, and you know, you think privacy for one. There are cameras everywhere and even if it’s not a public camera like a street cam, CCTV, or a security camera, someone is always on their phone filming, right? So we definitely don’t have privacy. We don’t have security, as anything we put online can be stolen at any given second. We see that with people who steal viral content hoping to go viral themselves (and they often do), pirates who steal our books, companies like Meta and Amazon who go on to steal that content. Books get stolen and sold by others, book cover concepts get stolen. Human connection is also disappearing. Not the kind online but in person. If you don’t have a significant other, people can go days, weeks, or even years without a hug. In fact, online connection is replacing in-person connection, so you could say that affection is turning into a scarcity, and for some it already is.

I don’t want to write and query “the next big book,” but it did get me thinking about how scarcity affects my writing, or rather, what I’m writing about. In my book Wicked Games, Seth’s son is abducted and killed, and Avery’s sister is involved. The lack of privacy influenced just how the kidnappers were able to get away with the murder, how my characters deal with lack of privacy in the media, whether they choose it or not (he’s a billionaire and she’s an essayist who blogs), and lack of affection and love both my characters deal with because their exes cheated and left them for other people.

I don’t want to write a book that specifically tackles scarcity in its many forms, but it’s interesting to think it’s there anyway, even in the background of my writing.

My quest to find other podcasts will be long and painful, I’m afraid, as I’m pretty picky about where I give my time, especially when it comes to noise, since I have voices constantly in my ears during my day job. I know it’s why I don’t like videos, listening to people rattle on about stuff that I don’t care about. I used to listen to The Sell More Books Show with Bryan Cohen, but I dropped that after his co-host, Jim Kukral, left. Maybe it’s a brain thing, but I don’t like change, and after he left, I had a difficult time staying engaged. I might have to go back and see what his weekly podcast is like now. I’ve been exploring Bookfunnel’s podcast, but, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just better not to listen to anything. We’ll see.

That’s about all I have for this week. I can’t stay focused in the evenings, jumping around from my book to a movie then back to my book. I want to take a break sometimes, but I put a movie on and then I’m not happy watching it, so I’ll go back to my book and edit a few paragraphs, then jump over to Threads and scroll. I know I’m bored with my book because I’ve already read it a few times, and I should have let it breathe when I said I was going to. There’s also no urgency to finish it because I’m no longer on the hurry-up-and-write-and-publish treadmill that so many other authors seem to be on. I have my books scheduled out giving me a cushion, but it also takes away the excitement of publishing. I really don’t know how trad authors stay excited. Wicked Games won’t be out until January of 2026 and that seems impossibly far away.

I hope you have a good week this week. Today my sister is coming over for a late Easter thing, so I’ll be offline most of the day. I hope you are having a good day whatever you are doing, and that you have a pleasant week ahead.

Until next time!

Indie News Roundup

Posted on April 7, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,417 words
7 minutes read time

The indie publishing space online last week was hopping with news, and there was some good mixed with the bad. Let’s jump in!

KDP will now allow customers to read a sample of a book on preorder
KDP will now allow customers to read a sample of a book on preorder like they do with books that are available for purchase or to be borrowed in Kindle Unlimited. I think this is great, though not everyone was happy about it. A few people I saw who were arguing might have just been eager to jump on Amazon about something, one going so far as to say this will cheat us out of KU reads–I just rolled my eyes–but most had a positive reaction to the news. This is what my email said:

Hello,

We’re excited to share that Amazon will test allowing customers to read a sample of your eBook pre-order starting the week of April 14. This feature will work exactly like the “Read Sample” feature that displays for books on Amazon today. It’ll show a preview, up to 10% from your current manuscript’s content to engage potential readers.

If you’ve already submitted your manuscript, Amazon will automatically generate the reading sample. If no manuscript is currently uploaded, then no reading sample will be shown.

I think this will be a game-changer for preorders. Before, unless you posted a sample somewhere or tried to generate buzz with excerpts, there was no way for a reader to know if they were going to like it and that might have dissuaded a reader from preordering. I’ve never put much stock in preorders because my books are in Kindle Unlimited and readers will wait until the book is live to read–meaning, I don’t get many sales. But I’ve been putting books on preorder more and more, usually just a couple of weeks so that I can have the buy-link for promo graphics and whatnot and it also frees up my mind to move on to other things. I’ve always uploaded the finished files because I don’t want accidents to happen, like the wrong file to be pushed out to readers or being locked out of editing during their quality check because I miscalculated. Some authors will put a book on preorder without a finished book or even a finished cover. I wonder if this will prompt authors to at least have the first chapter written and available for the sample. However authors end up using it, I think this was long overdue, and I’ll be watching to see if it makes a positive impact on authors’ sales.

KDP has been terminating accounts (again).
I’ve heard in various author spaces that KDP is terminating accounts again, though whether those authors have done something to warrant it, you never know. Because KDP doesn’t like to tell you if you’ve done something wrong, shooting first and asking questions….never, you won’t always know if you’ve accidentally done something to make them mad, either. Author CD Reiss has put together a Google doc that outlines the steps you should take when trying to get your account back.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PKd94sSvgD3XoFFWHaUC6Gxey2GOU6WH7cRLNpb3428/edit?tab=t.0 Various authors have said that CD Reiss is okay with this being shared, so I thought I would post it as well in case you want to bookmark it. I have it saved, but this is pretty much the main reason I’ve invested in an Alliance of Independent Authors membership. I don’t want to take on Amazon alone, and I write off my membership every year when I do my taxes as a business expense. But, if you can’t afford a membership to an author organization like Alli or the Authors’ Guild, then having a step-by-step of what to do is the next best thing. Thanks to Zoe York for reminding me it’s out there and able to be shared.

NaNoWriMo goes out of business
NaNoWriMo issued a statement last week that said they were closing their doors. I’m not surprised because of the various scandals they’ve been involved in recently, but it seems like it’s an end of an era for a lot of authors and writers who got their start participating in NaNo. I didn’t know NaNoWriMo was a thing until a woman at my day job found out I was writing something and invited me to participate. Back then, I was writing my fantasy series, but for that year’s NaNo, I stopped and started a sports contemporary romance that turned into my Tower City trilogy I published many years ago. Since then, a lot of the people she introduced me to have stopped writing, but it was a fun experience to meet at Perkins, order pie and coffee, and just sit and write a few times a week. That was really the only time I participated, actually counting my words in the website. I’ve always had plenty of time and drive to treat every month as a NaNo month, and actually November was really difficult to write a lot because of my birthday, my daughter’s birthday, and Thanksgiving. For the past year or so since NaNo has been involved in some shadiness, such as the grooming incident and a pro-AI stance, other challenges have taken its place.

Like I said, it just seems like an end of an era, for me, too, since this comes on the heels of some of my favorite podcasts stopping, like Mark Dawson and James Blatch’s Self Publishing Formula, and earlier, Six-Figure Authors hosted by Lindsay Buroker, Andrea Pearson, and Jo Lallo, not to mention all the issues at the Romance Writers of America that I used to be a member of for a very long time. Things change, time goes on, but no matter what kind of trouble NaNo had fallen into recently, they will be missed. For more information on the closure, you can look here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/02/creative-writing-nanowrimo-to-close-after-20-years and here:

All that being said, I saw one author who said she went on to nanowrimo.org and deleted her account. She wanted to be in control of her information, and that seemed like a good idea. Though I didn’t have much under my profile, only one book, and I’m not sure how many connections, I went ahead and deleted mine too. You just never know, so I did that before I forgot.

Potential eight-figure deal for a thriller written by James Patterson and MrBeast
I didn’t even know who MrBeast was when I first heard of the deal, not that I was impressed when I looked him up. No one was happy that James Patterson was involved in a book that was generating so much attention, saying all that money could have been used to lift up mid-list, BIPOC, and marginalized authors. It’s just another piece of evidence that publishing is in a bad place and doesn’t seem to be getting better any time soon. Considering that James Patterson has a net worth of 800 million and MrBeast aka Jimmy Donaldson is said to be worth close to a billion dollars, I think they could leave some crumbs for us little people. Whether the book and potential movie will earn out that much money remains to be seen. If you want to read more about it, look here: https://deadline.com/2025/03/james-patterson-mr-beast-novel-1236352620/

There were other things that happened last week, like romance author Tori Woods getting arrested after her book Daddy’s Little Toy was rumored to have pedophilia in it–https://www.ndtv.com/feature/australian-author-charged-for-child-abuse-material-over-daddys-little-toy-book-8005994–but I’m a little tired between all that and the government BS that has been going on lately. I’ve had friends ask how I’m doing, and I’ve said I’m staying close to home. Writing, taking care of my kids and making sure we have what we need. Working. Still getting used to how I’m always going to feel, I don’t have a lot of mental energy for extra things. I’ve stopped posting on my FB author page again, don’t have any motivation to post there. I have a TikTok video made, and it’s been made for a week, but I can’t decide on the music, so I just exit out of the app in frustration and don’t post at all. I don’t want to get too much more into what I’ve been doing–I’ll save that for a proper author update next week–but I have an author interview coming up that I’m excited about and I’m almost done writing Wicked Games. Anyway, I’ll fill you in on all that next week.

Have a great Monday, everyone, and I’ll see you next time!

When Good Advice is Bad

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,681 words
9 minutes read time

picture of framed text that says when good advice is bad. generic white vases and a bronze bowl flanking the frame

There’s a lot of advice out there, some of it good, have decent covers, write an exciting blurb, and some of it’s not so good, like doing whatever you want just because you can (which is advice I actually see a lot online).

What’s disheartening is when you hear good advice that doesn’t fit you, for whatever reason, like rapid releasing/writing quickly when you don’t have the life that lets you, or writing a long series when maybe you don’t have the patience to invest in several related books. It can be good advice, and I’ve given my fair share on this blog too, like trying to afford some ads to reach new readers, but it just isn’t going to be for you. Ads can be expensive and time consuming to learn, for example. So I get it, especially when I’ve touted the advantages of Facebook ads then turned around and shut them off due to burnout.

There was a bit of advice I got from someone in one of my romance groups, and it’s advice you might have heard before too. When you want to find hooks in your books to make graphics, they say to borrow your book in KU or buy the Kindle version and look at the parts other readers have highlighted. This is the example in the book I’m reading now, Dea Poirier’s Next Girl to Die. To find the highlights in the book you’re reading, press the three dots on the upper right. I’m using a Kindle Fire, so I’m not sure if the way to find them is the same on all devices. There you’ll see the Popular Highlights. I apologize for the glare. No matter where I moved in the room I couldn’t get rid of my shadow.

screenshot of my kindle. screens indicate where you can find the highlights of a kindle book. — I’m reading Dea Poirier’s Next Girl to Die. You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QDC7Y6B

I think this is great advice, as I’ve read books that have the highlights and it would be so easy to use those as hooks on graphics for Instagram and TikTok. So, I figured I would look at the book I’ve sold the most of and check out those highlights. Now, let me tell you, the book I chose was Twisted Alibis. I’ve sold 132 combined paperbacks and ebooks, had the equivalent of 821 books read in Kindle Unlimited, and gave away 3,130 copies during a promo last year. I thought those numbers would give me the best chance of giving me the most highlights, and you know how many sentences I had highlighted? None. Not one person who read Twisted Alibis thought a sentence or paragraph was worth highlighting.

At first I thought I wasn’t looking in the right place, and I Googled how to find the highlights in a Kindle book. Where the option should be wasn’t and it took me a few minutes to understand that the option wasn’t there because I didn’t have any highlights.

To say I was disappointed is an understatement and it’s easy, very easy, to take something like that personally. Even now I can feel the shame. That book is 107k words long and not one of them touched a person enough to highlight them. Then I thought maybe it was a fluke and looked up Rescue Me. That book has sold 429 ebook copies, I’ve given away 4,916, and I’ve had the equivalent of 572 books read in KU. Nope, not one highlight. I was so embarrassed after I looked that I didn’t look at any other books.

There’s a lot you can take away from that, not any of it good, if you want to be honest, and I was still stinging when I saw someone on Threads ask how they grab hooks on a newly released book and one of the responses was to wait a few days then look at the highlights. I felt compelled to tell that person that they might not get any at all and to have a thick skin just in case they don’t. I guess I don’t have to say that I bristled with the assumption that if you just wait a few days readers will love your book so much they’ll highlight the hell out of it. Some authors don’t even get readers, let alone highlights from those readers.

I don’t actively read my reviews because I’m just not up to reading why someone (or many someones) didn’t like my book, and that’s okay. After that highlighting debacle, I’m not going to look for my highlights anymore either, because obviously, I might not like what I find.

So, what can you do when stuff like this happens? When what works for someone else is just a dumpster fire for you?

What you have to do, first and foremost, is to remember that your books are good. Know that deep in your heart. My books sell, and Twisted Alibis has 87 reviews on Amazon and a 4.5 star rating. Rescue Me has 112 with a 4.4 rating on Amazon. That may not be much to some, but it means the world to me. Just because they don’t have any highlights doesn’t mean readers didn’t enjoy reading them.

Remember that you are not the only going through this. There are a lot of books out there that for some reason or other don’t have highlights (or reviews). They aren’t being read or like in my case, those authors just didn’t have the readers who were into highlights for whatever reason. It helps to know you’re not alone even if you feel like you are.

Find alternatives. If something isn’t working for you, find a different way to do things. The highlights are easy because you can just go through your book and find the ones YOU like and flash them all over. Maybe those quotes will get people excited enough to read your book. Brag. You wrote the damn thing and loved it enough to publish it! Who cares what others think? In the case of reviews, ask a friend to go through them for you, or choose an hour to scroll, pick a couple that you like, and then close out of Amazon–and look on Amazon! Stay off of Goodreads for all that’s holy. Reward yourself for not falling down the rabbit hole of bad reviews and have a piece of chocolate or a glass of wine, them remember you don’t have to do that again–at least, not for that book. I understand the value in having a review or two for social media purposes, and I noticed this review of Twisted Alibis when I was on Author Central skimming the reviews coming in for my King’s Crossing series:

Verified Purchase
If you like the rockstar romances, this is one, true, BUT it is more. Lots of social issues addressed, done in a delicate way, no raging reality tv tropes, more like addressing things we all face with a nice romance tucked inside.It's heavy in places, prepare for that, but you'll come out better for it at the end.Gitcher readin glasses out and enjoy.

Text on white background. Verified purchase in red

Like everyone else where bad things are concerned, I’ll probably carry that shame for a long time. Everyone makes it sound so easy to get and use highlights, and I feel like I’m missing out on something big. Maybe I do have highlights somewhere, but I think it’s best if I don’t look because if I don’t, that’s only going to make me feel worse. I don’t put up a lot of graphics anyway, so I guess in the scheme of things I’m not missing out on much. But in the future I’ll definitely be taking everyone’s advice with a grain of salt.

I suppose that’s all I have for this week. I’m 66k words into Wicked Games even though I said I would be taking it easy writing this book. I am, I don’t stress so much about it if I don’t feel like writing, but I guess it helps I’ve been thinking about this book for a long time and I know what I want to write every time I sit down. I was worried this book would be short, but after I ironed out a kink in the plot, I’m back on track and it will probably hit somewhere in the 90k range. After I reach 50k and swim through the murky middle, I really don’t care how long my books end up but I was a little worried about it when I didn’t know how to fit in what I needed without a setting change. They’re in a small town right now, but I just can’t finish it without them moving into the city where they both live, so that eased some of my worries. We’ll see how it turns out.

As far as anything else, my sales have all but slowed to a stop, even with the few Amazon ads I have going. I got my tax returns back and have a little “fun money” as my dad likes to call it, but I’m not too eager to start up my Facebook ads again. If I did that, I would only start one or two and push readers toward my King’s Crossing series as I have gotten good reviews on the books so far and the read-through would be amazing. Plus I might get a few sales here and there, especially since the first three are on sale right now. But we’ll see how that all shakes out after I pay all my bills and stash what I want to stash in savings. I could probably set aside a couple hundred and see what works, but I’d have to keep a close eye on clicks and be ready to pause if it looks like cost-per-click is greater than sales. I’m not into spending 5k to make 5k anymore. I really didn’t get anything out of it when I did that. Readers were reading but I didn’t see any evidence of an uptick in blog subscribers or read-through to other books in my backlist.

That’s all I have for now. The first day of spring is March 20th, so I’m looking forward to some warmer weather and more consistent sun. I hope wherever you are in the world the weather treating you okay, and my thoughts are with the people in the south who are dealing with tornadoes and their aftermath.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week!

Monday Update: What a Mess

Posted on March 10, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,641 words
9 minutes read time

cleaning supplies. black spray bottle and plain bottle. two white tubes of paper towels with a sprig of baby's breath (god knows why)

Text says, monday author update. what a mess

There are so many things that are baffling me right now, and I just don’t know where to start or if I should even write about any of it. Let me start with what I’ve been doing and then I’ll see if I’m brave enough to write anything else or if I’ll just call it good.

First, my fifth book in my King’s Crossing series launched on the 3rd. I made a handful of pennies because there were a few people who preordered it, then I made another handful because I had a couple people read it in KU. Honestly, this is not what I was hoping for launching this series, but I’m barely doing anything to promote it, so I guess the blame falls on me. On March 5th I paid for a Fussy Librarian bargain ebook promo, and I sold 15 copies on the day and two more the next and then sales sank to nothing, which is to be expected. Here’s what the promo looked like if you’re interested:

I paid 26.00 USD, so the results were fine for how much it cost. Plus there is always read-through potential to the other five books, so we’ll see what happens. Generally speaking it could have been better, but I’m glad I remembered at the end of the blurb to mention that it was a first in series and that the book ends in a cliffhanger. Not everyone likes those, so it’s good to keep that out in the open and may account for why I didn’t sell that many. I should have also put in there the series was complete as many readers won’t start a series unless they’re all available and I’ll remember that for future promos.

I started some very low cost-per-click Amazon ads again and unpaused some of the ones I turned off months ago. Those never got the traction back they had when I turned them off, and the new ones aren’t doing much because the bid is too low for Amazon to show them. Don’t know why I’m bothering if I’m going to half-ass it like that, but sometimes I think doing a very little is better than doing completely nothing, though it’s probably not true. I don’t have anything else planned besides releasing the last book in my series in April, then all I have left this year is the launch of my next book in September. (I’ve been telling people it will be live September 15th and plan to stick to that.) But that’s too far ahead to think about because I’m not rushing through summer. I hope it’s hotter than hell so I can lie on my balcony and bake. Your girl is tired and needs a break.

My Rocky Point Series giveaway went okay. I mailed out copies to the one winner who emailed me back. I should have probably chosen someone else as a second winner, but if I would have done that, the actual second winner would have emailed me (that’s how my luck goes) and I would have needed to purchase more copies which would have taken a while. So I have a paperback set the second winner didn’t claim and I’ll figure out what to do with those later. I didn’t expect huge results and mostly it gave me things to write about on my FB author page and my newsletter.

Speaking of my FB author page, since I’ve been boosting posts, I’ve gotten a deluge of followers who just want to make me book trailers and others who didn’t look like they would care about a billionaire romance author. So, I took a couple of hours and culled my followers from 270 to 210. I know it’s better to have quality instead of quantity, but it really gave me the feeling (again) that my FB author page isn’t worth the energy and I haven’t posted since I did that. It’s something I can’t get rid of because over the years I’ve shared that link in various places and I hate beyond reason broken links. I may post on it every couple of days, just so it looks somewhat active, but it’s one of those things where I can’t measure ROI, I can only measure how I feel. I really don’t know what to do with myself in that regard because the motivation to post on social media just is not there, and I’m not really sure what would inspire me to post more. Sales, probably. Not engagement. Everyone yells about how much they want engagement, but if you’ve known me for a while, you know how special you are if you DM me and I answer you back. So, I’ll figure something out. The only good part about posting at all is that Canva makes it so easy, and I have to pay for that until I die because I have a lot of assets trapped there and I’ll never stop doing my own book covers.

Right now I’m about 60% done with WICKED GAMES but at 58k words I’ve lost motivation to work on it. I’ll finish it, no doubt about that because I still love Seth and Avery and want them to have their HEA, but I’m not running a sprint or a marathon and I work on it when I feel like working on it. It’s part of the “new me” I have going on for 2025, but I also think some of it has to do with hormones and the lackluster feeling I have sometimes of just being old and still alive. I mean, it’s not serious, I don’t have depression. I used to have depression, before my son was born, so I definitely know how that feels. This is more of a “meh” feeling, and it will pass. Spring is actually kind of gloomy here right now, the snow melting uncovering all the dog poop people didn’t pick up and the air stinks like dead things. Once it gets warmer and the sun shines more consistently and starts drying things out, that will perk me up.

My despondency is actually opening me up to reading a few books, but it’s a sad thing because these authors are on social media asking readers to share and I just can’t. I want to refer people to good books, and one book I read has so many commas they could have prevented the Titanic from sinking and the other has an info dump at the beginning that’s so boring that I cut out after 5%. Luckily one I had picked up during a free promo and the other I borrowed in KU and returned it, but still. While we’re complaining about the Amazon boycott and how people feel trampled because of what’s going on in the state of the world, I think it’s important to remember that as authors who might have people listening to our opinion, we shouldn’t waste our readers’ time and money. I want to recommend books that blew me away, that made me feel something other than annoyance. So, while I’m feeling listless, I’ll be going through my TBR which is a nice change from feeling like if I’m not writing to publish I’m not moving forward.

This Amazon boycott everyone (on Threads) is talking about is a real downer, and it’s interesting how all that blows up only to eventually disappear and never to be spoken of again. A friend told me that she hasn’t seen any of it on Twitter, and I have no idea if it’s made its way to BlueSky or not as I don’t scroll there. But personally, I think it’s all just talk because even if there are a few who actually do cancel their KU subscriptions or whatever, it’s not going to make a dent in the number of readers who use Amazon to buy and read their books. It’s frustrating to have to read that when I’m on social media. If your book sales are low or non-existent, again, it’s something you need to take responsibility for. I mean, I get it. There are ebbs and flows to publishing and any author who has been publishing for a while can tell you that. The political and economic climate also is not helping, but something isolated like this isn’t going to cause the collapse of sales for hundreds or thousands of authors. My sales stopped the second I stopped running ads. My experience might not mean anything to you, but to me it means that I actually do control my sales (not to be confused with royalties). No one can buy your book if they don’t know it exists, and I think it’s easy to forget that. If you truly are concerned about something like this and its effect on your sales, take a look at what the big-time authors who write in your genre are saying. If they are taking a hit and can trace it back to something like this, then maybe it’s time to be concerned. But if they’re carrying on as business as usual, then what you are experiencing probably isn’t caused by whatever people are talking about that day. We have to keep things in perspective. As I say, there’s a big world out there and it’s always a good idea when you get to caught up in the day’s/week’s/month’s drama to step out of that bubble and touch some grass. (Just avoid the dog poop. Gross!)

I think that’s all I have for this week. Thanks again to Brandi Easterling Collins for the interview she so graciously said she’d do that I posted last week. If you missed it, you can read it here.

No clue what I’ll write about next Monday, but I’ll be here with a smile on my face!

Have a great week!

Thursday Thoughts: The world is a large place

Posted on February 13, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

917 words
5 minutes read time

When I get up in the morning, I have a routine. I go to the bathroom, start a pot of coffee, and go out and feed the squirrels, bunnies, and the crows if they come. I have a bowl I use and fill it with cat treats (for the crows) bird seed, and peanuts in the shell, and toss it outside in my apartment complex’s parking lot. There is an empty parking spot and the animals, because we live in a quiet building, don’t mind picking around there for food. Anyway, so I toss the food out while the coffee drips, go inside and pour a cup, and scroll social media for a few minutes before I shower.

I always see some goofy stuff, some Amazon hate, politics (of course), the Cat Distribution System at work, that kind of thing. Today I saw a post that said (paraphrased), that if you’re bummed about sales there’s a Stuff Your Kindle Event going on and that could be why your sales are low.

I mean, I get it. I’ve gone through my own pity parties before (it seemed like mine went on for all of 2024) and I can get behind whatever you have to tell yourself to feel better. But, lying to yourself also does your books a disservice. The world is not that small that a Stuff Your Kindle Day would hurt your sales, especially if you don’t write romance.

That’s one thing that being stuck in the writing community will do: it will box you in to the point where you think nothing else is going on outside that bubble, and let me just remind you that’s not the case at all. I’ve joined Stuff Your Kindle Days, and out of respect for the person putting it together I’m not going to spew the numbers she shares with us, and I have no idea what Stuff Your Kindle event this is anyway. There are so many now it’s hard to keep track of them all. I hadn’t heard there was one going on today, but let’s just say there are 500 books available. That seems to be an average number where these things are concerned, so that means 500 authors are taking part. Some authors’ newsletters subscribers and social media followings can get pretty high, but if those 500 authors had 1,000 newsletter subscribers, that’s half a million readers this event is going out to. Not everyone opens their emails, so we can subtract a few thousand from that number but we can also add them in again to make up for authors posting on their social media. I would think a half million readers is pretty generous as authors just starting out can have as few as a hundred newsletter subscribers, and some none at all, using the event to jumpstart their writing careers.

A half million readers might seem like a lot, but according to Visual Capitalist, in 2020, there were five billion eighteen million adults in the world between the ages of 20 and 79. That’s a lot of readers that we might be forgetting about when we hear there’s a Stuff Your Kindle Day.

I think instead of being bummed there’s an event going on, or trying to blame your low sales on holidays (that not everyone celebrates) or a time of year that doesn’t affect all parts of the world at the same time, like summer (we have summer in the US while Australia has winter for a quick and harmless reminder), we could just use that energy to figure out how to reach readers all over all year round.

That’s easier said than done, of course, as my own sales being what they are don’t put me in a position to preach to anyone. But, I’m also realistic in that I don’t blame my lack of sales on things like Christmas. I take full responsibility for it.

It’s a better use of your time and energy to think of ways to reach those 5 billion plus readers such as write a reader magnet and build your newsletter list. Join a Facebook group of authors who write in your genre and introduce yourself. Networking is a great way to build relationships for newsletter swaps down the road. Experiment with some ads, they don’t have to be expensive. Double check that your categories and keywords are correct. The correct meta data will help Amazon position your book and help your ads work better too. Write another book, preferably a series. As much as I say how difficult they can be and how much energy they take, if you write a strong first book, read-through can lift your sales by more than you’d think.

When we place the blame of low sales on something like a Stuff Your Kindle Day, you’re taking power away from yourself. I know marketing can feel painful and not everything you do is going to work, but you can explore options to get the word out about your books.

Anyway, this was just a quick thought I had today. I hope you’re all staying warm where you are. It was a chilly -20F this morning when I went out to feed my animals. While I’m waiting for it to warm up I’m busy writing WICKED GAMES, but next week I’ll update you on what I’ve been doing.

See you on Monday!

QUICK LINKS:

I wrote about Stuff Your Kindle Days in a different post, and if you write romance or a romance subgenre and want to participate, you can find the list here.

If you’re interested in buying a promotion David Gaughran has a huge list, and some aren’t that much money. You can find the list here.

Remove What Doesn’t Serve You (or something like that)

Posted on February 10, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,698 words
9 minutes read time

beige background text says. letting go and finding your joy

I’ve heard this phrase a lot, and it makes sense. Remove the things in your life that aren’t a help to you, that drain you, that serve no purpose. I agree with it to an extent. I’ve never had a problem throwing stuff away, so much so that sometimes I’ve regretted it, not holding on to it long enough to find out if I’ll have a need for it later. Then I do need it and I regret throwing it away. I guess that’s where the meme about old cords comes in, saving a VCR cord from the eighties, just in case you might need it for something twenty years later.

But I also find the phrase somewhat selfish and self-serving, and it puts a bad taste in my mouth. Not everything is meant to serve you. Not every relationship you have will cater to you and your “needs.” What if, hear me out, you are put in the place you’re in to help someone else?

Before you Marie-Kondo your life, maybe think for a minute about just what you’re trying to accomplish.

I’m famous (no, not really) for keeping people in my life who don’t belong there. I’ve had friends in the past who have made our friendship all about them. Everything was about her life, her writing, her plans. Even if I was able to mention something, she wouldn’t acknowledge it, and I came away from every conversation I had with her drained. I’ve had other friends who have treated me badly, and I hung in there, hoping things would get better. I’ve thought a lot about why I let this happen, up until the point I just explode and say, “Forget it,” and I think it’s from getting bullied in school. I would latch on to people who were just a little bit nice to me, and this went on until I graduated high school. The need for friends, the need to create a connection with someone, is human nature, and once you meet someone with whom you think a sincere friendship can be made, it’s difficult to admit that they aren’t such good friends at all. As the years pass and I realize what’s important, I would rather be alone than have a “frenemy,” and I’ve learned to stop talking to people who take advantage of me and my kindness. I think anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time knows about my fiancé and how I let him lie to me for years before I finally cut him off. Maybe it wasn’t years, or maybe it was and I just didn’t realize it until they were too blatant to ignore. You really don’t know when people turn if you trust them and they’re good at hiding it. What stretched on for over five years could have ended in two or three and saved me a lot of pain.

I’m always willing to give people a second chance because we all make mistakes, but it’s in cases where having a relationship with that person isn’t a positive experience or makes your life worse than assumably it already is that you have to reassess why you’re keeping them around. I think there’s value in giving people the benefit of the doubt, not cutting people off without some kind of explanation. There was an article I read on Buzzfeed about a woman who ghosted her best friend of twenty years because she turned too needy, then regretted it after she found out her friend passed away. Rather than having an honest conversation with her friend, she just cut her friend off, blocked her, and well, when you look at a situation like that, who’s the bad friend? The person who thinks you can help and has the courage to ask, or you blocking that person because you thought she was using you? Remove what isn’t serving you. Yeah, she did. She cut her friend off, but she found out later that it didn’t come without consequences.

I understand the concept, I really do, but I’ve been unfriend and unfollowed after I’ve purchased other authors’ books to support them. Maybe I never said anything, maybe I thought being acquaintances on a platform like Twitter was enough, but it’s definitely not enough for some people, who, I don’t know, expect you to comment on everything they post. You know, that says more about them than it says about me who was quietly supporting them and didn’t think I needed to shout it around (because honestly, I think that just makes you look like you’re looking for praise and I don’t need to be patted on the back for supporting someone).

This isn’t just all about people, though I think that can have the most damning effect. I’ve seen a lot of people who regret deleting their TikTok and CapCut apps off their phones because they thought TikTok wouldn’t be around anymore (and all the apps ByteDance created). Turns out that TikTok barely went away and now those apps can’t be re-downloaded. I didn’t get rid of mine, relatively certain that TikTok was here to stay, though I don’t post on TikTok much at all and the only thing I use CapCut for is to add captions to videos I rarely make. But I don’t impulsively do stuff like that and whether or not the apps are eligible for updates, I’m rather proud of myself for my restraint.

Whenever you think about that phrase, I think it’s important to understand just what you’re relating it to. Overall I think that phrase is selfish, and maybe in these times we have to be. No one will take care of you but you. The US government is in shambles, and he’s only been our president for a month. Everyone has kind of a “fend for themselves” attitude, which I guess makes this saying a perfect slogan for the next four years. But I also think that we can combat what’s ahead by being kind, not doing something just for what you can get out of it. Not everything or every person on this earth was put here to serve you, but finding the balance between keeping things that aren’t working and keeping things that are is crucial.

I turned off my FB ads, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Ironically, my sales haven’t fallen, and now those royalties are mine, free and clear. I may not make the 5k I made last year, but I won’t be spending 5k either. So, in that instance, yes, removing something that was not serving me was the way to go and I feel lighter, mentally, than I have in a long time. I also removed the idea that I deserved (maybe deserved is too harsh a word, but not sure how else to phrase it) readers and royalties for all the work I put into my writing and publishing, and that’s not the case at all. Going back to basics and writing because I love it has also done wonders for my mental health and like I told a friend, I feel like I did five years ago, creating content for the joy of it, and for no other reason.

So, after all that, I would caution you. Think before you jettison someone out of your life–not everyone is there to kiss your feet. Sometimes you are in their lives, and they are making the same choice about you. Are you being a good friend? Are you upholding your part of the friendship, because relationships go both ways. If you treat people like trash, expect to be removed. No one has time, energy, or heart for that. Think before you turn off your ads or delete that social media profile. Think before you unfollow or block someone. You never know who is silently supporting you and you could be snubbing them without realizing it. If being in a group on Facebook isn’t beneficial, leave. I’m in 89 groups, and not all of them give me something. I could probably remove myself from half those and be just fine. But being in them doesn’t hurt me either, since I’m not on Facebook all that much anyway. Pick and chose where you want to give your time. Maybe you could leave some and that would open up space to join others that would serve you better.

There is a ton of products and services out there for indie authors and my FOMO goes crazy when I think of all the classes there are to buy, podcasts and webinars there are to listen to. Every time K-Lytics sends me a new report, I think I need to buy it. I can’t afford to buy every report they send out, nor do I need to because not all of them are about romance. I don’t even need the ones that are about romance because I think I keep a pretty good eye on industry information in other ways. Remove the noise that gives you a headache, but think about what’s beneficial first. That may mean trying an episode of a podcast you’ve had your eye, uh, ear, on and finding out you don’t mesh with the hosts. Maybe that means actually sitting down with the craft book you’ve been wanting to read, and finding out that it does have some valuable information in it.

There are are less callous ways to figuring out what you want than what this saying implies. Gently sweep what’s not working for you out the door, but realize what might not work for you is something that makes someone get out of bed.

Go easy and be gentle. Extricate yourself if you must, but do it with intent and if you’re doing it to person, use sensitivity, compassion, and empathy. And remember, you may be what people are removing from their own lives, so accept their decision with grace and honesty, and like with the coworker who ghosted me, it may be the best thing that ever happened to you. And I didn’t have to do a thing.

	Vania Margene Rheaul… on What do you NEED to be a write…
	Anonymous on What do you NEED to be a write…
	Vania Margene Rheaul… on Not So Hardcore Anymore
	Brandi Easterling Co… on Not So Hardcore Anymore
	Vania Margene Rheaul… on Ten Years in the Industry. Ref…

Vania Margene Rheault

Independent Contemporary Romance Author & Blogger

Category Archives: indie publishing news

Monday Musings: Offensive jokes, plagiarism, and paywalls

Not So Hardcore Anymore

Under Fire: Talking about Hot Takes

Monday’s Author Mashup

Indie News Roundup

When Good Advice is Bad

Thursday Thoughts: The world is a large place

Remove What Doesn’t Serve You (or something like that)

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