Tiger Striped Hodgepodge

Meta AI created image of "tiger fudge"

Happy last week of July! I am participating in Joyce's Hodgepodge again this week by answering the following questions.

1. What was the last thing you celebrated? 

We celebrated a friend's birthday with a Friday dinner at BJ's and seeing The Odyssey. I enjoyed the film but it was very loud, very long, and very violent. I wore earplugs the whole time, which someone told me to do, and I definitely appreciated that advice. Saturday the party continued at the Orange County Fair where we attended the fabulous (and glittery) combo cover band concert of Kenny Metcalf as Elton John and ABBA LA. Very fun! I wandered around the fair for a couple hours, mostly staying indoors to see the exhibits because I enjoy them and also because the weather has been extremely hot and humid here. Sunday (today) my family got together for a pool party and to celebrate (a bit belatedly) my grandson's birthday. He seemed happy with the FIFA themed foosball tabletop game I gave to him.

2 July 29th is International Day of the Tiger. Besides the wild animal itself, when you hear the word tiger what's the first  person-place-thing-whatever that comes to mind? 

Tiger fudge. This ridiculously delicious treat is made with melted milk chocolate chips, melted white chocolate chips, and heated peanut butter. You pour each layer in a pan separately and then swirl a knife through the whole thing to make it stripey. Refrigerate it until completely cold and then cut it into little squares. Meta AI didn't know what tiger fudge was, but after I described it, I ended up with the above pic, which I think is adorable.

3. The expression 'eye of the tiger' describes someone with intense focus, determination, and the drive to succeed. What area of your life are you currently bringing that kind of energy to?  

I don't have this level of focus and determination any longer. I prefer to do things at a moderate pace, probably because when I was focused and determined, it didn't lead to the success I wanted, so why not enjoy life a bit more? For example, I no longer force myself to get up at 4AM and write for three hours before work. That didn't lead to publishing success, so I might as well get more sleep.

4. What was the last meal you cooked? 

Hahaha. I don't cook for one person (myself), except for the simplest things like an occasional omelet. It's too hot to cook now anyway, and I prefer salads and fruit bowls with yogurt or cottage cheese.

5. Describe your July using exactly five words. 

Hot, humid, exercising, reading, blogging.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

I had over 3000 views on this blog yesterday, which is disturbing, since I know they're almost all bots. What do they want from me? I think the massive view numbers began when I did April A2Z this past April, and they've been rising steadily. Before that, I hardly had any visitors, so the bots must scrape blog addresses from public lists, such as A2Z.

Pinch

Butterfly from Pixabay

A pinch of poetry, a cup of cats, a spoonful of peeves, a sprinkle of crafts: this is how I flavor my blog. I don't have a specialty, a niche, or a business; I am not writing a novel in 8,000 pieces; and my interests flit around like butterflies in a vast field of flowers, but in a shallow way, so don't bore me with stats or facts or (god forbid) podcasts.

Sometimes I do a prompt for three weeks in a row, and then I might quit participating for months, even though "they" say that readers like consistency. Oops, I guess I am writing only to please myself, my bad.

I tried for years (decades, heck) to please an audience, to get published, to find some way to get paid for my writing, even though it's always been a labor of love, and all that came to naught, so I decided to forget it and just say what I please when I want to say it right here on the blank blog page for no expectation of payment or fame.

If I ever announce that I have a publishing contract, someone should pinch me because I'd be dreaming.

~*~

Written for Denise's Six Sentence Story (pinch).

Lemony Hodgepodge

Lemon bars via Meta AI

I'm participating in Joyce's Hodgepodge again this week by answering the following questions.

1. Do your goals and dreams energize or exhaust you? Elaborate. 

It depends on specifics. I bought a cat feeder to program, and it's so complicated that it exhausts me to think about it, but I will do it. (I'm writing this on Sunday to post on Monday, and hopefully by the time your read this, the programming will be sorted out!) My exercise goals are both tiring and energizing simultaneously ~ I get tired from 30-45 minutes of aerobics, but it feels good, so I'm excited to do it again the next day. As far as dreams, I don't have them on a grand scale the way I used to (finding love, getting published, becoming wealthy, etc.), which is good because I'm happier if I stick with boring daily goals that I can actually achieve. I don't buy into the cliché that you're never too old to do X thing. Hell yeah I am too old to do a lot of things!

2. July 23rd is national lemon day. Are you a fan of this flavor? What's a favorite dish or beverage you enjoy that calls for lemons? 

I am a huge, huge lemon fan! I don't care for lemonade though, strangely. I love lemon desserts, such as the surreal lemon bars pictured up top. Lemon cake, lemon cookies, lemon sorbet, all delicious.

3. "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade"...is this something you're pretty good at managing? Have you had to do this recently? If so tell us about it. 

Absolutely, and I think it's the only way to be happy unless you're incredibly lucky to get everything you want. Life is full of disappointments, and you have to be able to adapt to them, change your goals, lower your expectations, etc., if you don't want to spend all your time moaning about what might have been. I try not to go down the "if only" road too often, and my personal motto/ mantra is more in line with it is what it is, so now deal with it.

In the last few years, I decided to completely give up on the idea of being paid to write in any way at all. Some of my writer friends still struggle to eke a few bucks out of the various self-publishing platforms, but to me it's not worth bothering with. First, I despise marketing. Second, even when I forced myself to do some, it had minimal results. Third, I don't want to write to please an audience; I much prefer writing to please myself. How did I "make lemonade" out of this? I self-published two final poetry books just to satisfy my OCD with zero expectation of sales, and also I returned to blogging ~ fun writing that makes me happy!

4. Something you love that is lemon yellow in color? 

I adore lemon-yellow roses, even if they set off an allergy attack. I think they're prettier than red roses.

5. How would you describe your attention to detail? 

Insane. That doesn't mean I don't make mistakes, but I am relentless about catching/ fixing them. This doesn't only apply to typos, but also includes consistency in various forms. I also obsessively straighten stuff up and make sure that all objects are either at right angles or deliberately and pleasingly off-center.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

For an introvert who needs a lot of alone time, I sure have a lot of social plans coming up!

Zero Down (triolet quadrille)

Zero down and zero debt

I have no skin in this game 

Never gamble, never bet

Zero down and zero debt

Slipping through their sticky net

They don’t even know my name 

Zero down and zero debt

I have no skin in this game 

~*~

I wrote this for a dVerse prompt, but I am not dealing with Mr. Linky, so if only three people read it, that’s fine. This is my new blogging zen: shrugging off stats means I don’t have to jump through hoops to participate. When I feel like writing something, I do, and it’s irrelevant how many views it gets. The “zero down” phrase kept rattling around in my brain until the rest of the lines arranged themselves into the required 44 words, and a triolet form felt right. Coincidentally, I am currently reading a little book of zen parables on my Kindle app, and the latest story was about a box of nothing being the most valuable. Why? Because it’s no burden to carry on your journey. 

~*~

There’s a new scam making the rounds, and it targets authors with books on KDP that don’t sell. Some of the emails sound legit, with the sender babbling on about details of my book as if she has actually read it. Then she wants to promote my book on Medium or BookTok or wherever and give me better keywords for SEO. These emails never mention costs to me, but you know that is the point. Let’s find people making no money and ask for some, hey what? I doubt Stephen King is getting these solicitations. The weird thing is how all of a sudden I am getting multiple emails per day with this nonsense as if some master scammer has just put me on a list. Most of the emails are trash and sound completely fake, but a few sound like someone or something has done a bit of research. Too bad for them, since I got the fake ones first and now mark all as spam.

~*~

So, Inky and I had our weigh-in on Monday, the first of the month. I’m pleased to report that Inky has lost one-half pound in two months, which is a nice, steady rate and puts her at about 33% of her goal. I also lost one-half pound from October 1, which puts me at about 7% of my goal. Clearly, I need to take some lessons from my cat ~ perhaps I should chase toy mice around the house for an hour every day. On an unrelated note, my migraines have improved lately, which could be from a better pillow/ reduced neck pain or less junk food or the cooler weather or some other random thing I will never figure out.

This and That

This week has been busy, with a bunch of ups and downs, which is why I haven't blogged, even though I can't wait to tell you that Inky is now a big cuddler! She is soooo sweet and affectionate and even sleeps on my bed with me during part of the night. She's curled on my lap right now and purring as I'm typing. I haven't forgotten about Gatsby, my soulmate kitty, and I will always love him, but Inky is helping to heal my heart. I love her too and think about her when I'm at work; my condo feels like a home again now that I have a sweet kitty waiting for me.

Today is my divorce anniversary (the second divorce; I don't remember the exact dates my brief first marriage began and ended). Fourteen years ago today, July 11, the dissolution of my 21 year marriage (plus two years of legal separation) was finalized, which was a huge relief. For five years afterward, I tried to find someone new, and I stayed pretty optimistic about my chances until 2016. That's when I started to accept the idea that a new romantic relationship wasn't going to happen and it would be better to stop dating altogether, as the process was increasingly depressing. It took a couple years longer for me to feel fully comfortable being single and not looking.

I have made a new Substack account: lightmotifs.substack.com. Please follow me and I will follow you back. The reason I made an account is because one of my writing friends invited me to contribute to his poetic series on the body, and I wrote a poem about hair. It turned out well, and he is going to publish it on his Substack soon. I didn't have to make my own account to get credited, but why not? Maybe I will be in the mood to write more poetry on my own stack (or whatever you call the pages there). Last time I joined, I found it confusing and way too political, so I deleted my account, but every form of social media is stuffed with politics 24/7, so I have to take responsibility for avoiding it and focusing on what I do enjoy (same with Bluesky). That said, my first comment on the app was about Pete B (love him). LOL!

(I still find the app confusing, btw. When I logged on, it said hey how about these four friends we found for you? I said, OK, I will follow them all, but now they have disappeared. What's up with that?)

I read The House of a Thousand Lanterns by Victoria Holt and gave it four stars. It's a romance mystery novel, and I found both aspects very intriguing. A chunk of the book takes place in Hong Kong, and the local color was fabulous. I have no idea whether it was accurate, but I enjoyed it regardless. 

Earlier in the week I finished The Weight of Blood by Tiffany Jackson, a horror novel and an homage to Carrie by Stephen King. I wasn't sure at first if I would like this book because it's partly told in podcast format (which is apparently a "thing" now), but I did like it ~ I gave it four stars! The story involves a lot of racism and cruelty and some fantasy elements as well. 

Finally, I read The Only One Left by Riley Sager. Shades of Verity abound in this psychological thriller about a caregiver, Kit, who who is "forced" to take a job working for an alleged murderer at the crazy mansion on the edge of the cliff. Everyone in the story is a potential or actual murderer or victim, and though the story is basically well written, I found the pacing tedious at times. I kept wondering why Kit simply didn't walk away from the mess and begin again somewhere else where people didn't know her. The ending was so convoluted that I gave up trying to understand what motivated everyone to do what they did. Three stars.

Recollections May Vary

That's the name of my new poetry collection that I put up on my KDP bookshelf Sunday night. I am not going to give a link or do any wretched marketing ~ I do not expect anyone to buy my book/s. The publication was merely to satisfy my OCD: I had 11 KDP books shelved (after I unpublished Anna's erotica/romance), and as everyone knows, I do not like eleven. So now I have 12, a nice even number, possibly the best even number, and I am satisfied. I wanted to write more poems, but I didn't have time because I noticed a few weeks ago that as of today Amazon is no longer going to accept the "mobi" file format, which is what I have been using all these years. They gave an explanation of what they would accept, and it might as well have been in Klingon because blah blah blah techy stuff. Instead of trying to understand it, I decided to fling my last book up on KDP with only 24 poems total and be done with the whole kit and caboodle (whatever that is). The main theme centers around the unreliability of memory, which is something that has interested me for a long time. Or has it? 

Anyway. That's the end of that. Now I can focus on reading and painting and other hobbies that don't stress me out like writing always did.

I read Losing Sophia by Sara Ennis, which could have been an excellent book if it had been written in third person, past tense and structured differently, but it was what it was, so I gave it three stars. The plot doesn't make a lot of sense because we aren't given much of a glimpse into the bad guys' (plural) motivations, since the chapters keep hammering us with the two sisters' POVs. I don't know what it is with thriller writers that they can't get this point of view business straightened out, not to mention eliminate the ridiculous obsession with present tense. The story takes place mainly in New Orleans, which satisfied my 2025 Reading Challenge requirement of a big city location. NOLA is big, right? Not everything has to be New York or London.

I also read Allegedly by Tiffany Jackson, which was for my book club and also satisfied the requirement of being told from a teenager's POV. It's about a mentally unstable yet very smart teen girl in a group home who may or may not have committed a murder. Everyone around her is horrible, from the other girls to all the adults who have screwed her over (except one or two). For a smart girl, Mary keeps making the dumbest choices, but she is only 15 and hasn't had any kind of good role model. Her mother is a nightmare. I normally would not read a story like this because it's just unpleasant, but part of the benefit of being in a book club is to read outside my rut of romance and mystery and possibly discover new genres/writers that I might not have on my own. The book was well written and very suspenseful, so I gave it three stars, but I didn't enjoy it.

OK then. Tomorrow's Wednesday already. I've been surprisingly busy both at work and socially. It's not a bad thing, but I do need to make sure to recharge with alone time.

Second Time Fail

A few more of my friends have joined Substack, and since these are people who write about “whatever,” as opposed to a professional niche, I thought heck why not give it another chance. I can write about “whatever” too! I first joined Substack a few years ago when the guy who published my Medium poetry said we should move there, but it was a big frustrating mess, so I quit and deleted my account. Well, guess what? I discovered that nothing has changed, and Substack is still a big frustrating mess, at least to me, so yesterday I deleted my new account. 

I don’t even have the bandwidth to get into the weeds about the experience there. Suffice to say, it’s a PITA to edit posts once published (I always find typos post-publication), there are a kajillion settings for fonts and notifications and all kinds of tedious shit, and almost all the popular stuff is about politics. Barf! Not to mention that the whole setup forces you to obsess over stats and comments and restacks and subscriptions until you feel crappy all over again that your writing isn’t grabbing people’s interest. Or I do anyway.

I would rather continue to jabber away right here to my five loyal readers. Blogging here doesn’t trigger my OCD  ~ I know myself well enough to recognize when something is bad for me. At WP, it wasn’t obvious for several years that I was in too deep until I ended up in a community of dedicated bloggers, which made me feel constant pressure to blog several times per day, get more views, increase my follower count, etc. This also explains why I feel OK about self-publishing at KDP with very low expectations of sales, but running ads or promotions or doing any kind of marketing fills me with dread.

Creativity Noodling

I love art walks, and I really enjoyed seeing some totally interesting art yesterday in Carlsbad. There was such a wide variety of artistic expression, from traditional oil paintings of scenery to sculpted vases with tentacles that appeared to be dredged from a pirate's chest to pictures of leopard faces from dyed dried grasses broken into tiny pieces. There was glass art, including jewelry, 3D collages, and loads of depictions of the beach/ocean/waves in various media. It was all so amazing! 

My own creative impulses careen from one extreme to the other when I confront all this excellence. On the one hand, I want to paint, paint, paint. I am filled with a longing to express myself with wild colors and swirling lines. I want to paint the crashing sea, vibrant sunflowers, a Halloween cat, a wolf howling at the moon. I want to dot paint on the canvas and have it turn into a lush garden party or a pond full of lilies. In my mind, I envision spectacular results. But I am also aware of the reality that I am no good at it. It's OK to paint just for fun, I tell myself, and every once in a while a piece turns out nice enough that I stick it up on my bedroom wall, but mostly my paintings suck. I don't have the patience to toil away at the craft for decades to develop a technique and all that; I'm in my 60s! Irrationally, I imagine that a couple hours of dabbling on a Saturday afternoon turns into a masterpiece. Ridiculous, of course. So, I get depressed and don't paint again for a long time. 

The same goes for writing. I am willing to put in the time ~ and I have ~ but my results are not quite what I had imagined. I have an idea, I flesh it out, and it turns into something, but the something never feels as profound as I thought it would. SSC: everything I have written, even the romance, was intended to be meaningful and deliver an important message. The results have fallen short though; the message is too subtle. In general, I am happier with my poetry than with other forms of creativity. While I know my paintings and novels are meh, I have the absurd conviction that some of my poems are really good. Is that arrogant? LOL. Maybe. 

Sometimes I think I tell myself my writing sucks because I'm lazy and no longer feel like putting in the effort, so I am giving myself an "out" by saying why bother when it's no good. Other times I think, no, I really am not that good (except at poetry). If I were good, my writing would have sold more when I was trying to market it. Someone would have discovered me and sent my books viral. Of course, there could be loads of great writing moldering away in the dark corners of KDP without anyone noticing it. How do we know the Great American Novel isn't tucked away on a dusty Amazon shelf just waiting for recognition? We don't/can't know that.

Artificial Intelligence

There's a lot of AI hate going around social media, but I am not jumping on that bandwagon. I find that AI, as with most things, has positive and negative aspects.

1. It's fun to give AI a few keywords and have it create cute fantasy pictures, such as otters having a birthday party or unicorns playing poker. Is this taking money away from "real artists?" Not as far as I'm concerned, as I would never pay for this stuff ~ it's just fun to look at for a few seconds. Back when I had my WP blog, I used these AI creations sometimes. Otherwise, I uploaded my own photos or images from free sites, such as Pixabay, but I never spent money on images for a hobby blog.

2. It is not fun to see people using AI to create nasty images of other folks, deceptive political ad/memes, and revenge pr0n videos. This is becoming a real issue now that AI is so "good" you can't tell if someone is really in a photo/video or not without forensically analyzing the metadata or whatever, and obviously bad people are using these fakes for political propaganda and other nefarious purposes. Most of us don't have FBI labs on premises to figure out what is real.

3. When I do a Google search, AI pops up first now with a summary of the results, which is convenient. I don't see how this is costing anyone money. Sometimes the AI blurb is enough; other times I scroll down to see what else is there and visit a site. It depends upon what I seek ~ a definition vs info about a movie or whatever. I guess it's possible I see fewer ads this way? Boo hoo. 

4. AI is used by advertisers to market to us more specifically, so instead of seeing a bunch of garbage ads I'm not interested in, AI combs through my texts, emails, etc., to serve me ads I sometimes click on. This doesn't bother me as much as it seems to bother other people. It's still my choice whether to buy a thing or not, same as it always was, even when I was tempted by actual products in a meatspace mall. And as far as the intrusiveness aspect, for most of us that bird has flown once we enter cyberspace, unless we take extreme, time-consuming measures to defeat all the spying.

5. Obviously fraud/identity theft is a huge problem and getting worse. It angers me that AI can be used to facilitate crime, but so can a lot of modern technology and conveniences. I am angrier at the actual criminals and the lack of consequences for them though than I am at the technology itself. I mean, I am not mad at gas stations for letting us pay at the pump; I am mad at the thieves who use credit card skimmers and the lack of the death penalty for same. Sorry not sorry, but if we lined up a bunch of thieves/scammers and shot them, I bet that would discourage others.

6. AI's editing/reminder functions are useful. From spell/grammar check to asking me if I want to reply to an older email I may have forgotten about, I appreciate these tools, both for work and for home. I mean, we've had spellcheck forever, so I don't think anyone objects to that, and I’m grateful that AI helps me to send clearer emails too. Sometimes the suggestions are silly, of course, but that's why we have "natural" intelligence to allow us to accept or ignore the suggestion. Apparently, educators are now utilizing AI to grade student papers and check for plagiarism, which causes problems when the automated features are too general. Again, there is an easy fix: use human intelligence to review the results. 

7. Some "enterprising" folks are using AI to write their entire 50K NaNoWriMo output, which I guess is annoying, but only because NaNo has changed from a fun way to help us get a bunch of words on paper to a slick, corporate organization. I've had nothing to do with NaNo for years, mostly because I can no longer summon up the motivation to stare at the screen from 4am to midnight and be an exhausted zombie for a whole month, but back in the day you could still fake your output by simply copy/pasting any glob of words into your document. Why though? To get a sticker? Now maybe it’s more than that with real prizes and contracts up for grabs. Idk. However you cheat, you're only robbing yourself of the opportunity to learn to write faster via stream of consciousness. 

8. Finally, let’s talk about creative writing. I have no problem with AI-generated prompts/ideas to stimulate a story or poem, and I already said I have no issue with spell/grammar check. But what about a piece of work entirely written by AI? Welp, I don’t like it, mostly because it offends my sense of creativity, and not so much because it takes money from “real” writers, since there are many other things I resent in that department before I get to AI, such as the ridiculous monopoly the big publishers have on Amazon. If I search for “paula light books,” it’s like I don’t exist at all because of all the popular/sponsored titles/authors that contain light. I am more pissed off at that than by some clown who decides to use AI to generate a children’s story about elephants or whatever. I understand why this makes other writers upset, but I just can’t get all wrought up about it when I was selling nothing to begin with. PFFFT!

Substack and Medium and KDP – Oh My

Fandango (not sure if he wants a link after his WP disaster) has the dubious honor of being the first commenter here on my resurrected blog. He’s also the only commenter (so far), but I expect that to change eventually. This blog is not a secret even though I haven’t made a BFD about restarting it. I kept it off the Google index, but that doesn’t mean people can’t find it, though it doesn’t appear anyone is looking. Isn’t that funny? I am completely public, yet barely a soul peeks in… and when I tried to be discreet, I screwed it up and was discovered. That’s when I learned that nothing is reliably private on the internet, and you should proceed accordingly. If you would be embarrassed to have your sweet little grandchildren read your words, think twice about publishing them, even on your supposedly “locked down” Facebook account. This is why I have unpublished my romance novels (aka erotica); I don’t want my grandchildren to find those books someday, and since the books don’t sell anyway, pffft. This isn’t a guarantee of course ~ a few people have my novels languishing on their Kindles and know my pseudonyms, but since I’m not planning to run for President, I doubt anyone will bother “outing” me. I have 11 books available as Paula Light anyway, soon to be 12. Buy those. :)

So, Fandango mentioned that I had been writing for Medium. Yes, I dabbled there for a little while. My friend D recommended the site, but unlike D’s savvy political essays, my angsty poetry and pointless rambles didn’t do too well on Medium. I spetd a ton of time liking and commenting on others’ work to get only a tiny return, and it just wasn’t worth the energy/time investment. Most months, I didn’t even make back my $5 subscription fee, not that money is the most important thing, but I didn’t feel it was the right place for my writing in any case. Many of the Medium writers had been there for years and already swallowed up the small available audience for poetry/fiction (same as on Twitter/X ), and I was grabbing for the crumbs. The exact same thing happened on Substack, so I’m not even going to bother starting a new paragraph to describe it. While I gave Medium several months to work for me, I said bye to Substack much faster.

It’s like dating. At the beginning, you’re all upbeat about finding love (or an audience), so you have the emotional energy to persevere when things aren’t going well. But as time goes by, you’re less and less inclined to give a dating/publishing site a second, third, or fourth chance, so eff it. I am all about the ROI, baby, and if I am not seeing results, after trying to contort myself into the parameters, then forget the whole thing. I might as well just babble into the abyss because it makes no difference either way. I am not going to find either a soul mate or fame/fortune as a writer by gadding about the internet. Some have, of course, but I’m old and late to the games, plus I no longer have the mindset to force myself to do unpleasant things for the remote possibility of achieving my goal someday. I refuse to chat with 99 creeps to find that one nice guy, and I refuse to spend 25 hours a day marketing my writing to get one sale. If only I had jumped onto Match.com in 2002, after my ex and I split the first time and I was still in my 40s, or if only I had written monster erotica for Amazon in 2005 before the market was saturated, then we would be having a different conversation now. (Maybe.)

That brings us to KDP. I like it! Publishing my books directly to Kindle via Amazon satisfies my OCD impulses of finishing a project, creating a perfect cover, and having everything neatly organized in one place. I rarely sell anything, but that’s OK because I don’t expect to. The writers who sell have specific niches or are repped by agents and houses in the dead tree world as well as online, and/or they simply have connections. I sold a handful of books when I was willing to do a smidge of promo, but I hated hawking my work, so now I sell nearly nothing. I’ve never been comfortable with tooting my own horn, whether in an interview or on a dating site or to my blog readers/FB friends. It just feels icky. Similarly, I resent being marketed to by friends, except minimally. Sure, it’s fine to let us know that you have a new book out or some cute bracelets on sale at Etsy or an enormous, unexpected vet bill you need help with, but this has to be rare. Anyone who is constantly in my face with their marketing/begging gets muted ~ pin a link and be done with it. Is that unreasonable? I don’t think so. And don’t get me started on new followers at Bluesky, people I’ve never interacted with, whose entire purpose seems to be a cry for funds. Perhaps they truly need help, but perhaps they’re just a scammer. How would I know? I block them.

Maybe that sounds harsh, but I don’t have money to blow and already give to legit charities.

Speaking of charity, I will always laugh at the writers who ask me to “buy me a coffee” or subscribe to their Patreon. Hey guys! I too am a writer… why don’t you buy me a coffee?! It cracks me up especially when we’re talking about people I’ve known for years, who know I am a writer because we have had conversations about writing and publishing. Why do they think I should give them money for staring at the screen when they haven’t given me any? Where is the logic? It escapes me.