Two things to mention after a long stretch of non-blogging. I wish I could say I was working hard and that’s why I hadn’t blogged. Truth be told, I’ve been in a slump after NaNoWriMo. I seem to recall this happened last year as well. Perhaps NaNo throws me for a loop. Perhaps I should think twice about participating next year. Back on the horse, however. Trying to sleep so that I can do my 4 AM writing.

So, what’s new? I was recently nominated for an award! No, it wasn’t the Big Jerk Award (although I would fuckin’ rock that category), nor was it Competitive Cookie Eating Champ, though I’d take home a trophy for that for sure. It was a Reviewer’s Choice Best Paranormal Read of 2014 award through LSOR (Little Shop of Readers, for those not in the know.) for the Marnie Baranuik Files. No, for reals! I didn’t make the final cut, but I’m still pretty damn tickled about being nominated. I’m gonna just go ahead and print myself out a nomination certificate and frame it for my office. Don’t tell anyone, Internet.

Secondly, I’m going into hospital briefly for a little “routine surgery,” which to me inspires a mental image of my surgeon and his nurses doing some sort of synchronized dance whilst I’m unconscious. I’m comfortable pretending that’s what’s going to happen. Scalpels flying, butts wiggling in unison. Can one twerk and slice at the same time? Hope so. I’m packing a hidden camera. I’m packing a lot of things.

Viking: What’s all this?

Me: Just the bare essentials.

Viking: I thought they said no fragrances.

Me: I’m sure they didn’t mean incense. Who doesn’t bring their lucky incense?

Viking: No incense. What–what is that thing?

Me: What does it look like?

Viking: It looks like a frozen chicken carcass.

Me: Don’t worry, it’ll thaw.

Viking: What could you possibly need that for?

Me: For voodoo. Or chicken stock. Chicken soup HEALS, dude. That’s just science.

Viking: When did you get this trophy?

Me: I made it for myself. If I die, I want it to be the last thing I see, so I can go into the great beyond feeling like a winner.

Viking: A winner.

Me: It’s a Competitive Cookie Eating Champ award. Also, a Big Jerk Award. It’s a two-fer!

Viking: You gave yourself third place.

Me: I didn’t wanna be presumptuous. There’re a lot of big jerks out there.

So, in answer to your obvious next question, no, I’m not going in for a lobotomy. I’ll be back and fighting fit by the weekend, I’m sure. From here on out, I hope to blog more often than I have been lately. Wrath & Bones is still limping along, but I need a fresh infusion of sleep and inspiration to kick my muse into overdrive. Maybe the rest will do me good.

Until then, this is Writerghoulie signing out! Be good, folks.

I suppose this blog entry will be less snerk-snerk-swear-word than most of my entries. I won’t go into the less pleasant aspects surrounding the end of my day job, but I will say this: I can no longer call myself a bookseller. I’m choosing a different career path.

<Hrmmm, maybe not this one.>

It’s unfortunate, because for a very long time I considered “bookseller” to be a big part of who I was; not only did I write books, but I helped readers find other writers they might fall in love with. Putting other people’s books on the shelf was a joy to me, and, in the beginning of my career, taught me a lot about the arena in which I hoped someday to play.

Then my own books were on the shelf, both physical and digital. The books started making money. Enough money, which is a subjective term, the point at which a writer says “yep, I could still eat donuts every Friday on this kinda pay.” I could have left the workaday world then. Months went by. A year. Two. Still, the day job got me up at oh-four-hundred and kept me connected to the industry, made me feel like an integral cog in the reader-writer relationship. It was about love. Passion swaddled in paper. I walked among the wordsmiths quietly before dawn, slipping between the stacks in the store’s half-light, making sure writers who needed my help had it, feeling some importance there. I have no way of knowing if I made any difference in the big picture, but I felt I did. It’s hard not to have great reverence for the seductive powers of other authors when you deal so closely with the results of their hard work. I like the dance, the offering of a premise and a style, the way a reader might, if the chemistry was right, willingly slip under a writer’s spell. This is a beautiful exchange. As a writer myself, it was intriguing to watch the process of a reader shopping the stacks, wandering, gazing at cover art, reading blurbs, flipping pages, contemplating their next love affair. Connecting. Even when the customers weren’t there, I could feel that connection, I could take the temperature of the reading world, check its pulse, sense the shifts in trends and see the winning or losing results of various campaigns. My book store work was never a retail job to me. It really was about love.

Then the day came when I knew I was done. It didn’t happen suddenly, but there were changes, and it rattled my bliss. The joy became fleeting. It might have been easier to rip the Bandaid off… but like everything I do, I had to do it the slow and painful way. I don’t ever do a thing without thinking about it for a bazillion years. I’m a true coward, a weasel in a chicken suit. I’m scared of the future, I’m scared of myself, I’m scared of failure and success and everything that comes with the slide into either. My writing began to suffer as my mind became preoccupied with the if/but/whens of quitting. Should I? Could I bear to? The stress increased. I started to resent my alarm clock. My writing dried up entirely, and a non-writing writer is not a fun creature to be around. I started to obsess about other things (the news, mostly) to relieve some of the pressure, but in the end, my stress always came back to chew on this question of work, and by extension, who am I, if not a book seller? I started tossing around the words “early retirement” to judge people’s reactions. I doubted the sanity of anyone who thought it was a good idea, but resented the lack of faith from those who thought it was a crazy plan. My husband looked at the income from the books, gave a shrug, and offered, “If it helps, I’m behind you.” There were buts, of course, and more months dragged by while I stewed them over.

There was a final straw, but it doesn’t matter what it was. The point is, I jumped. Full time writing. Up at 4, yes, but to write. My own boss. That hasn’t happened since I was a young teenager. I’ve always had a boss. I like having a boss. I like schedules and rules and protocols. I’d go so far as to say I need them. Now I set them for myself. I hope I’m not a wishy-washy boss.

 <I use plenty of tools and fire at my desk, actually>

I haven’t cried yet about giving away this part of me. I will. That’s coming. I hadn’t realized how deeply that vein throbbed until I put words around it. And that’s how my world works, I suppose; putting things into words on paperspace. Maybe I only understand how I feel about them when I read them back. Good bye, Bookseller Al. What a fabulous job for a writer to have had, and what a blessing it was. We have only one job now: to make more words of our own.

WOOHOO! This is me doing my happy dance today, because Wrath & Bones, Book 4 of the Marnie Baranuik Files, is officially live! You can get it from Amazon for your KINDLE.

Marnie Baranuik is confident that her new psychic detective agency will be a great success, and she has eight million business cards to prove it. But before the paint even dries on her open for business sign, she’s summoned to face the Demon King Asmodeus in His own playground, the revenant court, home of the undead nobility, to participate in a conclave of the most powerful immortals on Earth.

Orc prophets have forewarned her that danger is looming in the far north. In her most ambitious adventure yet, Marnie must harness her powers, gather trusted friends to wade into battle, and complete an international treasure hunt that would make Indiana Jones break into a cold sweat, before raising a new revenant house to rule from the Unhallowed Throne… and do it all without getting her heart or legs broken. Storms are brewing, threats are piling up, and the stakes are higher than ever, but Marnie is determined to dance with danger to the very end. There’s only one thing left to do: deal with it, Baranuik-Style. Does anyone know if yetis like take-out? And when you’re on a date with a mummy, who picks up the check?

For a limited time, pop over to 3 Partners in Shopping for a chance to win a free copy! Also check out our tour at Roxanne’s Realm for a chance to win paperback copies (US/Canada only).

Another Marnie Baranuik “Between The Files” short story is dropping just in time for Hallowe’en, my pretties. Go ahead and dirty your Kindle on Monday, October 21, 2013! It’s a fun little romp with some of your favourite characters, perfect for a one-evening read or a trip on the train. If you like epic fails and big ol’ dirt monsters (what kinda whackadoodle doesn’t?) then you’ve gotta get Dirt Nap! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Jail probably would have been a better place to spend a Thursday afternoon, but when a preternatural expert is needed, there’s no one else who can fill Marnie Baranuik’s Keds. Beset by a rampaging stone monster and a furious quarry owner, trapped between a rock and a hard-ass, Marnie faces her biggest challenge yet, and discovers once and for all if size really does matter.

(Editor’s note: A.J. Aalto is hard at work on the third instalment to the Marnie Baranuik Files, if by “hard at work” you mean lurking in graveyards, eating all the Hallowe’en candy, and lookin’ for trouble.)