Work and Work and Other Work

And just as I started typing out that title I remembered something else I need to get done tonight!

Okay, I have a confession to make. For several years I've gotten two submissions out a month, no matter what. While I have sort of kept it up this year, the truth is that the last two novels and short story to the big publishers are ready to go... but they aren't gone. This is a novel from December and a novel and short story from January.

Why?

Because every cent we've made in the last few months has gone to keeping us afloat. We haven't had the money to send the material out. This month I've worked around that problem by suggesting two nonfiction books to Holly that she likes, so I'm good for February.

It's not as though I really believe that the books are going to sell, mind you, but I also believe that they don't have a chance if they never go out. They're good books.

Muse is a good book too. Really. I don't say that about a lot of my work, but this one... well, I think people will like it if they give it a chance. I had planned to send it to more print publishers, but the truth is that even if it only makes a dozen or so sales, it will be money enough to send the other material out. I needed something that might bring me a few dollars a month over our bare survival funds right now.

If I don't get some income soon I'm probably going to sell my new camera. I'll hate to do it -- it's the only really nice thing that's gone right for quite a while. But we bought it at a time when it looked like Russ had another job, but it hasn't quite panned out.

So, yeah, I'm looking at all the worse-case-scenarios right now. I've certainly lived through worse times when I was younger, so I'm not panicked, but I am prepared to do whatever we need to. That probably means that I'll be getting a job as well if I can't make some of the rest of this start paying.

And there's the bad spot, of course. Not the idea of getting a job again. I've done that in the past too, after all. No the problem is that I do so many things for free that take far too much of my time -- Vision, FM, Estand, even the photography. If I start working outside of the home again, then it's going to mean dropping some of that stuff. I've virtually stopped working on Estand already. I'm trying to set up all kinds of things at FM to get it moving, and with all the great moderators, I think it has a chance to go without much trouble. Vision is a problem because not only does it take time, it takes money to pay people.. I have some funds in PayPal still, so people who opt for PayPal payments will get paid first. Maybe some other funds will come in soon.

Being at this stage sucks, of course, but like I said -- I've lived through far worse.

But why does is always seem to get worse right before my birthday? (snarl)