Publishing Tiara Dates on KDP

The fourth book I wrote about our life situation is the one I published first.

I can hear you thinking - "I don't want to read about this chick's saga of personal growth." This isn't that. I think. Well, maybe. Anywhoo, here's how it went.

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I was on the porch and Sharon had sent me one more spreadsheet from her perch in the second floor bedroom we call "the office", exceeding my capacity for numbers in general and her marketing madness in particular.

"You're making me crazy down here," I messaged her. "I don't care about projected impact on dolphin lovers or tourists wearing tinsel."

The S key on my mac fell off as I wrote "lovers".

"We can't sell to a market we don't understand. You're the boss. You need to know this stuff to make decisions."

"I'm not the boss!" I may have made noises.

I replaced the "S" key twice to complete "boss".

I opened my writing app (Pages on my Mac) and started rambling, using as few "S"s as possible, about how we got here and why I hate spreadsheets and business and all that stuff that I've had to digest so this group of hooligans can maybe stay together.

So I wrote our origin story, and called it Tara Vibes. It's risqué'. Not for everyone. Not very well crafted. And probably bannable in six states. It's not published.

That gave me a place to hide off and on for about three months.

By then, things were staring to click for us. We had settled into the routine in Heaven, also known as Key West, and Kona hadn't been arrested, Sharon was down to three panic attacks per week, and Gus had learned how to surf fish. And I had a new Mac with a keyboard that didn't shed keys at random.

That's how I came to write book 2 - Tiara Goo. A series of short essays that probed uncomfortably close to truth and secrets best left hidden. Better prose than Dates, but still questionable, and capable of launching street protests in the midwest if it got out in the wild.

Goo kept me porched for about a month.

By then, evening porch time had become a thing, with all of us gathering to review the day, review each other, and generally float ideas and adult beverages around the zone. Memories made appearances, and because of that, I wrote a throwback short and called it Tiara Pressure. Still not safe for mixed company, small dogs, or children. But it did do something important. It showed that we had stories to share, and ongoing life events that were amusing if held up 'just so' and looked at with squints and pursed lips.

It was while I was writing Pressure that Kona did her thing that she always does and landed us in the mess that I would later document in Tiara Dates.

And that's how the fourth book about us became the first to make it out into the world. Spicy but not full NC17. Fun, because, well, it's us.

I published Dates on KDP and sat back, waiting for the systems in the sky to do their thing and calls from publishers to start demanding exclusive access to "the next one". Three months later, zero sales, and zero pages read, I started wondering if I'd made a huge mistake.

Someone out there is surely asking by now "What's the point of all this?" It's a fair question.

As a writer, you're going to create a bunch of stuff that you believe (with all your heart) is the story of stories, and will take the world by storm.

It's not going to, but that belief is critical.

Because that belief will carry you to your second, third, or fourth book, and one of those will be good enough to publish. And, eventually, you may find there are some people out in the world who connect with you, and do want to read the next big thing you push out into the technosphere. At least, that's what I believe.

If you want to read about what happens when Kona auctions us for dates to the highest bidder, the story is here.

Tiara Dates. Probably fiction. Certainly over the top. Classic Tiara. May cause spontaneous snorts.