SquarePeg Books

First, an apology—this site was kattywampusbooks, a free blog on WordPress. In the adventures of creating a big girl author website and put some skin in the game, I purchased a domain and an email and so on. I did not purchase kattywampusbooks.com. as a domain name because, while it was listed as being “available,” my personal research showed that there was a book company by that name specializing in bilingual children’s books.

I am not bilingual. I do not write children’s books.

After much cursing, banging my head against the wall, and finally abandoning all efforts at being clever, poetic, or even vaguely cool, I settled on SquarePeg Books.

The apology comes in that KattywampusBooks is officially still listed on the Insecure Wrriter’s Support Group blog hop, but it forwards to SquarePeg Books, which is also newly listed on the IWSG blog hop website—so, an apology for the confusion. I don’t mind starting over again at the bottom of the list if the moderators choose to see fit, so that may or may not make things even more fun.

I suppose there’s also an apology for the few followers I have, suddenly looking at their email notifications and favorite links on confusion as well, so…sorry for the confusion.

Ahhhh….I guess I’m supposed to write about writerly stuff.

This month’s question is: November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not?

I tried once. I did not like writing with what felt like a metaphorical gun to my head. I have sworn to never attend that church again.

Onwards.

I’m currently saving money to pay for the next few steps in the Official Author’s Journey. PO Boxes, and lawyer fees, and ISBN blocks, and copyright fees and all that fun stuff. I’ve started playing with a YouTube channel as my social media outreach method.

I’ve miserably slogged through the dirty job of creating a manuscript style sheet, just to discover yet one more thing I didn’t address as I go back through several manuscripts.

I’ve slapped myself a couple three times because what I made out to be a Hugely Difficult and Super Scary Process of getting X set up was not nearly worth the angst.

I feel like I wasted that angst. Like I could’ve used it for something more appropriate, like a house fire or something.

I have been asked several times about why I’m going through all this to set up a small business entity to publish my work. Even several lawyers have commented that most authors don’t set up like this–they just start pushing stuff out through the great ‘ZON without too many problems.

The answer can be found in my angst.

One too many horror stories read about real author experiences who didn’t have things set up to protect their IP. A couple three articles about legal protections and lawsuits and copyrights unprotected and trademarks trod upon with disastrous outcomes. A few too many hours watching how the great ‘ZON is trending with their treatment of indie writers.

And lastly, the letters D and N are only ten away from each other in the English alphabet, and I refuse to kneel (this is an IBM=HAL conspiracy theory joke, for those I lost back there).

So while November is known for the great NaNoWriMo, I think my big goal this month is going to be all about accepting my baby-steps, and regularly publishing on Wednesdays.

All of this means I’m…putting another metaphorical gun to my head?

Or at the very least, I’m going on a social media detox, since YouTube seems to be my greatest distraction, at the moment.

Check out the Insecure Writer’s Support Group to see more writers dish about their concerns, their solutions to various problems, or how the odds are for those who want to bet on my YouTube detox.