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" I went from 19 years of trying to get through the traditional publishing doors, to selling thousands of books practically overnight," says Theresa Ragan. On her blog she explains how in five months she sold 40K books.

The link won't work for me, Andre, though it could be the anti-depression device built into my computer that's stopping me from reading it.

Heh-heh. Try

Nope, the A-D.D. is working really good! :(

Can anyone else see it?

I'm getting it Andre. The link works for me. Katie I was having problems last week because of my "cookies". Do you know how to fix that?

Margie wrote: "I'm getting it Andre. The link works for me. Katie I was having problems last week because of my "cookies". Do you know how to fix that?"

Eat them?

No, I've cleared my cookies and I'm still not able to get in. I wonder if it's Firefox? I'll go try IE...

Edited to add: Still can't access it. My computer must have looked at my sales figures for these last few months, calculated the difference between them and 40k and predicted an imminent crash - in confidence. My computer cares!

Modify your mindset, Katie. She's not putting you down. She's showing you an opportunity. It's a challenge!

Sorry - makes me want to eat a lot of chocolate and listen to suicide-inducing Country Music.

I am the only person who thinks of Country Music as 'music to cut your wrists by?'

Kat wrote: "I am the only person who thinks of Country Music as 'music to cut your wrists by?'"

Hell no! Farking heck but country music sucks worse than having to...I don't know...waiting for toe nails to grow?

Nah, if you're going to top yourself, you should at least go out to decent music, not some wailin' willie whining about his unrequited love for Suzielou, the chinless Asheville advertiiiisement for incest.

I suggest Alfred Schnittke's piano quintet, a requiem for his mother. This is what I wrote of the Irish premiere in 1998, when Schnittke was still alive:

***
After this we heard Alfred Schnittke's Piano Quintet, composed between 1972 and 1976. Schnittke was born in 1934 and is now incapacitated by a stroke and unable to compose. That is a great pity.

His Piano Quintet was composed in response to the death of his mother. One is tempted to draw comparisons with the Brahms piano trio but that is a false trail, except in depth of feeling. ... Above all, Schnittke has an idea, and emotion, and passion, and a respect for communicating with his audience.

Joanna MacGregor and the Vanbrugh String Quartet rendered it unadorned and unexpurgated, with the passion not bowdlerised one whit, to live in the memory for a very long time indeed. The elegiac passion, the pain indeed, is too great to want to hear this piece more than once a year or every few years, and one suspects it is not easy on the performers either, but it is utterly safe to forecast it will enter the repertoire and become a standard.

--Originally in the Irish Examiner and papers around the world, this copy from
[EDITED TO GIVE CORRECT REFERENCE. SORRY!]
***

It is noteworthy that Amazon threw off bestselling British novelist Stephen Leather for fewer and less offensive remarks about suicide then either Kat or I made here.

Seriously? They threw him out? WTF....

Not only threw him out, went back and erased literally hundreds of his posts, including the most innocuous.

The resident scum had anyway been persecuting Stephen so hard, he was reduced to answering comments with "Cough" because whatever he said, someone would claim to find offensive and then report to Amazon.

Wow. That's FUBAR. I love the man's work!! For them to take such offence is just mindboggling.

Okay Alfred Schnittke's Piano Quintet - is it on Pandora?

"Stephen Leather for fewer and less offensive remarks about suicide then either Kat or I made here."

Wow, they must be real Country Music Fans....

True story - there was an old lady who lived down the street from the bar Mom owned. She would come in and play George Jones, drink and cry for hours. "He Stopped Lovin' Her Today" was her favorite.

She'd say to me "Kathy, Poppa aint never coming home again!" and sob. When I managed the place they would call me to take her home.

Andre Jute wrote: "Modify your mindset, Katie. She's not putting you down. She's showing you an opportunity. It's a challenge!"

Well if I could read it, Andre, maybe I'd be able to work out what she did and set myself the challenge of doing the same. But right now, when I'm getting up every morning to the same miserable figures, the news that someone else is selling 40k challenges nothing but my sanity.

And to really corkscrew in the letter opener of mixed metaphor, she isn't even counting the 25K free copies she gave away.

Andre Jute wrote: "And to really corkscrew in the letter opener of mixed metaphor, she isn't even counting the 25K free copies she gave away."

*jumps in the car and drives straight to the funny farm*

Katie - do you have a short story tucked away somewhere that you could polish up and give away?

MAKE SURE YOU PUT THE BLURB FOR YOUR NOVEL IN THE BACK!!!

I did that with 'Impressive Bravado' and started selling copies of 'Let's Do Lunch' two weeks later.

I don't have any sales data on it, but the free 'Impressive Bravado' was in the low 20k on B&N.

I do have some very short shorts, but they're not the same genre as my books. In fact I'm not really sure what genre they are! I need my real life to settle down before I can do anything, though. Can't think straight most of the time.

Collect a couple - polish them up.

You just need eyeballs on your name. If you can put your work in 100 hands a month - you will get some sales on your book.

Yeah, I've got problems with Real Life, too. I'm so stressed I can't see straight some days.

However, GOALS are different than SHOULDA's. It is good to have goals, 'shoulda's suck.

After five years, I finally found the piano piece on YouTube.