For Indie Authors and Poets

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Does this sound like you and your work?:

  • Self-published or published through a lesser-known publisher
  • Your art does not pay the bills
  • You don’t have a following yet (or it is small)
  • Reviews are sparse, if they exist at all

Then I have a proposal for you: send me an email or comment below with a link to your website, the book you most would like me to review, and information on how or where I can purchase the copy. I’m not asking or wanting free copies, but I am collecting a list of books and e-books to review and showcase on this website for my own practice.

Since I don’t have any reviews up as examples yet, I want to give folks an idea of what I’m going to be looking at:

  • Is this a novel or collection I would read again?
  • Would I recommend this to others and what audience(s) do I think would most enjoy the work?
  • Top three likes and dislikes about the book.

All reviews will include a link to the author’s website or any page that gives readers a place to go to learn about you, your work, and purchase your book(s). If you send along a brief bio as well, I’ll use it!

Goals for 2020-2021

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This is a list mostly for myself for what I’m thinking about moving forward with the website, but I thought I’d share it. This is also highly my own wish list for my hobby. I intended this site initially to be a showcase / portfolio but it’s mostly about me having fun with words and other creative interests that catch my eye. I geek out about random subjects at various times – it’s my joy!

  • New digital camera (I’d really like to get some photography, audio, and maybe videos on the site)
  • Paid web hosting
  • Define a new publishing plan (which might honestly be define a publishing plan at this point)
  • Possibly consider ko-fi and other platforms as I refine my content goals
  • Offer more chances for interactive engagement (social mediaaaaahhh, dahling!)
  • Have fun, be safe, be kind

What would you most like to see in the next few months? Topics, types of posts, you name it. Let me know what your goals are, if you’d like – whatever it is on your mind! Comment below!

Leadership Goals

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I obviously don’t know what company Tim Bray is going to go to next, but I think I might like to work there and learn from him. At the very least, I think I might try my best to support them if he’s got any leeway with the company’s operations given his own ethics. Moral ethics in business are, I promise you, supposed to be the norm and not the exception.

Even so, I greatly appreciate that he referred to evil (perhaps idiocy is more likely but… it still sounds pretty evil to just fire protesting workers at this time) from Amazon’s upper leadership during this pandemic as ‘chickenshit.’ He used other, more eloquent, phrases, but honestly – they don’t deserve them. These horrible individuals deserve to be shrunk down as small as possible in the public eye. Why should we ever reward these people with our money? We might not be able to do much for controlling our taxes going toward these bloated and greedy MNCs but we definitely can vote with where we spend our own money and time.

2020 has brought with it some awful events, but we can start to move toward more mindfulness and purpose with our next steps. That’s where I find myself, at least. I don’t have answers yet, but I’m learning to be at peace with taking each day as a new experience. I hope you’re all being as safe as you can and enjoying each breath with some measure of ease. If not, I hope you’re at least being able to be gentle with yourself when the fear or the isolation is too much.

Early April 2020 Update

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Yesterday meant the end of shared work for me while on standby. I had the option to remain on standby to collect emergency unemployment due to COVID and so I took it as did many of my fellow co-workers. I have been assured that there will be no negative penalty for this, but should that prove not to be the case, I am going to assume I still made the right choice. I think there has been a shift in consciousness in the world now – the power is not at the top, and it never has been.

It should matter to all of us that the wealth in this country is created at the bottom and that is where the power really resides – we just need to leverage it. The ivory towers need to fall and businesses that can’t or won’t compensate their workers properly especially in a crisis need to crumble into memory. They don’t deserve our labor or our dollars. There are other options. The fact that it has taken Amazon this long to stop being tone deaf in Seattle and New York means they deserve to see a severe drop in revenue. That’s one example, and I’m sure many have others. We need to listen to them all.

I never want to hear the talk again about people working “certain jobs” deserving not to make enough to live. Not when those are the very industries we’re relying on for survival as. a. species. If a job exists, the wage should be livable for the locality. The fact that minimum wage or even above minimum wage is not enough at full-time wages to support a house, a family, and investments as well as shopping in the marketing means that capitalism has become debt-dependent and is going to continue to fail under such a weight. It is also ethically unconscionable. We all deserve better than to be fed to the Dow-Jones.

Burn the yachts in the harbors. Raid the corporate coffers. Cut the oligarchy with their shiny crowns off at the knees. Be Americans again, like we were at the start. And let’s start caring for each other as communities rather than using warm bodies for rungs on a ladder to one day kiss those blood-stained jeweled hands.

Plague concerns

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I didn’t sleep much last night and the morning came too early. Last day of work before my employer is closed under the state requirements. I’ve been becoming increasingly numb the past two months. I knew what we had awaiting us if it hit here. I have a friend stationed in South Korea – and they’re the only country who seems to be handling this particularly well. Certainly better than what happened in Italy, at least.

I’m giving myself a couple of days after I clock out this afternoon to decompress, to apply to whatever aid I’m allowed that the city may be offering. I may be considering any of the needed open positions at grocery stores right now. It’s money and it’s a needed service to my community. As long as I’m well, I can help. But the numbers of the infected are going to keep growing especially if we aren’t able to keep things reasonable and keep social distancing as a practice.

The buses are going to be a little more empty today and the days following, I’ve no doubt, and it’s eerie. Empty streets of Seattle and no one should enter the city if they don’t need to be here. I am glad for people what’s best for all of us, and sad for the effects this virus outbreak is having on this city that I love. For those who are still working essential jobs, I raise my coffee tankard to you today.

Stay safe and be well.

Eight Months Later

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I realize I’ve not been the best with keeping up with this blog after I started it to be a writing portfolio (of sorts). I’m still not sure where I’m going with Dead Cat Bounce ultimately, but here’s the run down of how the bulk of my first year in Seattle has gone:

I had three weeks of panic upon my first arrival here, because my spouse had lost the job that had gotten us through the move and into an apartment on my first day in the city. I took the first job that I was offered, grateful, albeit a little daunted, but it turned out to be the best decision I’ve made in a long time. I was promoted to an assistant manager position after six months.

My mental and physical health had taken a dive back in Kansas and it had worsened since I wound up in a position of shouldering the bulk of the household expenses in a city notorious for its high cost of living. Enter company health insurance and actually taking care of my own health for the first time in probably twenty years. For the first time in a long time, I’m living with a thought on the future, instead of bare-bones survival running on nothing but adrenaline, caffeine, top-notch fiction, and cheap whiskey. At the end of this journey, I hope to ease the nightmares and start to appreciate myself as a person, as well as hopefully survive my next decade without wearing down my organs anymore than is necessary.

In short, I stopped writing and creating for a while. I no longer had a taste for it, so this is a move back toward making art (or something in that general direction) and growing as a person. I’m not sticking to a regular writing schedule yet, but it is happening again. I’ve been working on my programming skills and I have a game concept that I’ve been poking at when inspiration strikes. Baby steps, as they say.

At this point, I can’t honestly promise I’ll keep up with the site like I originally intended, or that it won’t take on a new direction in the future, but thanks for popping in on occasion to read! I hope to have more to share in the coming weeks. Let me know in the comments if you have any places in Seattle you want me to review, photograph, and/or mention. Or anything that strikes your mind on what you’d like see next on readcatbounce.

Some Like It Hot

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A Seattle summer may not hold a light to the humid, triple-digit, nightmare that was Kansas but for a city that doesn’t have air conditioning as a norm, it’s been too hot the past few days for this cat.

Our lovely high-speed fan died last night – a casualty to several years of heavy usage – so it was a sweaty evening filled with strange dreams and a yearning for ice cream around my humble abode. At least the sun doesn’t burn as cruelly here. I can tolerate a hot day here and I have endured worse. Make no mistake – I am much happier to be here in summer instead.

Perhaps some really do like it hot, but I reserve that feeling for spicy food rather than the daily temps. I intend to burn my tongue to cool my skin as I used to as a kid, growing up first just shy of southern Appalachia and then in the Midwest – both of which offered oppressive weather and rhetoric thinly veiled in hospitality and friendliness that occasionally slashed like a dual-edged paper blade.

I find the genuine attitudes refreshing, perhaps enough to blot out any unexpected discomfort here. Even so, I find myself clinging to old traditions and expectations even if I choose to employ them in new ways.

I’m hardly going to be managing a spicy seafood boil on the apartment complex’s rooftop for hours drinking cheap beer and shooting the shit with folks until night fall when everyone shows up to eat. But there are always better options – at least better suited for this city and my current circumstances.

Best Laid Plans

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I had full intentions of keeping up with this blog more regularly but the past couple of weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. I picked up a new day job and I think I’m almost through with my training. I imagine next week I’ll be flying solo and getting used to a (hopefully short) bus commute since my assigned location is not the one I’m training at. The whole experience definitely has been pushing me out of my comfort zones. Growth is always uncomfortable, right?

Since I have the day off today, I’m trying to get an e-book editing project off my plate. I’m waiting on approval from the client and then I should be done. I might spend some time working on personal projects today. I think I’m starting to resemble Kafka’s quote regarding what happens to writers who do not write. It’s been too long since I put fingers to keyboard for anything other than mundane matters or editing others’ work and I’m starting to turn monstrous.

Perhaps all writers are monsters anyway – barely contained in cages to exhibit social niceties and other requirements of being a modern “civilized” being – but this one needs to stop courting insanity or they just might implode. I’m starting to feel a little less rough around the edges already from this short blog post, but I’ve a need for more time spent in my own invented worlds. What are your favorite tips or tricks for keeping enough time for your own creative outlets? Asking for a friend. Or an enemy. Or both.

The Move

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I safely made it to Seattle, WA after a three day move with cats that refused any calming medication of any kind and who might have acted a little like rock stars at the hotels. Nothing damaged, thankfully, although I can’t imagine what the pizza delivery person thought when a gray-and-white tuxedo cat with attitude slipped out and sauntered down the hallway as if he owned the place. The same cat also thought it was amusing to sit in the window to “wave” (raise his paw) at everyone who walked by in the hotel parking lot.

This is the official start of my second week in the Emerald City and I adore it here, especially now that the record-breaking heatwave I brought with me from Kansas has abated. The city is beautiful and the people are friendly enough while still making a point to mind their own business. I’m still getting a feel for the pace here while I try to figure out my next moves on this journey.

I have a few friends in the city, but this is a new adventure and one that I’m excited to continue in the time ahead while I meet new people, find new places. Look for more writing from me in the near future as I get back on a regular publishing schedule now that the exhaustion from the move has finally sloughed off me.

Is there anything you want to see or hear about in the Seattle area? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll do my best to show you interesting things about my new home.

Camaraderie

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I could write poetry in her beauty

Singing praises against her soft waves

Whispering desire’s spell into her bare skin

Her eyes stop me, haunt me, across lifetimes

Quick-witted, sharp-tongued, but those eyes glitter

With laughter

With understanding

With regret

We can’t go back to those ancient glory days

But I am here, should you need me

Like a spirit in a mirror

Or a close friend kept just at arm’s reach

“Sit by my fire –  

Let me tell you a story…”

The story ends exactly as you remember it