A Work in Progress

Ever find yourself asking that question? I do. All the time. And I'll tell you usually what it has to do with: language and vocabulary. I know slang is (unfortunately) a huge part of our vernacular because of social media, and music, and trying to be cool and all. But here are three things I can't stand to hear. And if I hear them once more, it will be way too soon. Epic: As in, "that was a WAY epic bike ride I had." Okay. Epic needs to be reserved for one thing: books. As in, the category of book that has a zillion pages, and takes about three years to read. Epic this. Epic that. If everything is so Epic, why haven't we transcended to heaven yet? I'm sick of it. Stop using it. Try incredible or stupendous, or outstanding. Even the old standbys of amazing, or great will suffice. Epic is overused and overwhelming the air waves, radio and television waves. It's also so very 2012. Don't date yourself. Love on somebody : Holy Mackerel. Since when di

It's pretty fun pretending to be one of the bigwigs. Because truthfully, I'm so far from it.  Really hard to see, but my book is # 57 between The Yearling and The View from Saturday. When I list my book free for a day on Amazon -- and every self-pubbed author can attest to this -- you turn into this "top-selling" author ... but only temporarily. When a book is free, people tend to take it. Great. That equals thousands of "sales" for me. (Unpaid sales). But the hours and days immediately after the book is free are filled with stragglers. They're the ones who check to see if the book is still free, see it isn't, and still buy it. Those stragglers make me a super-author, because their purchase turns me into a "Top 100 paid children's book" in the classic, or social situations category, in which my book sits on Amazon. Where else can my dinky, little book place next to the top rankings of Bridge to Terabithia , or The Yearlin