An Observation.

 You know you're a Highly Sensitive Person when you watch a sci-fi comedy movie and hate it because the writers kill off a mother and her little girl.

(Alien Trespass, in case you're wondering.)

No More "Wide"; Here's Why

About a year ago, I decided to make all of my novels available in every major ebook store. In the self-publishing industry, this action is referred to as “going wide.” That is versus being exclusive with the Amazon store. I had two reasons for making that decision.

First, I finally bought into the narrative the Amazon wants to control the world and shut down every other online store. That, of course, means Jeff Bezos must be the Antichrist and Christians should have nothing to do with him. I even wrote a blog post where I smack-talked author exclusivity with Amazon, and particularly their Kindle Unlimited program.

I bit the hand that had been feeding me, and it came back to bite me. I've discovered since that sometimes, exclusivity is a self-published author's best friend. More on that in a minute.

The second, and more compelling, reason that I went wide was that I learned that the Apple iBooks store had decided to make free digital (AI) narration available for authors… as long as their books were in their store.

I’ve been hearing for some time that audiobooks are the new ebook, that you’re only playing house if you publish ebooks but don’t create an audiobook for every novel that you write. You’re not “professional.” You won’t make “real” money.

But for most authors, handing a thousand bucks over to a voice actor to narrate a book is a financial risk we can’t afford to take.

So, I thought, great! Free audiobooks of my novels! I can finally do this self-publishing thing right.

And, I hoped, make a lot more money than I ever had.

Reality check.

Long story short, as far as I can tell, I’ve had zero sales of any of my novels in audio form from Apple. And that was even after getting a lot of downloads of my free Christmas novels. On top of that, during the past few months the money I made from the non-Amazon stores hasn’t even come close to equating what I used to make from the Kindle Unlimited fund.

Somebody might tell me I haven’t waited long enough. Or done enough promotions.

Maybe not. Truth be told, I don’t want to. I don’t want to do the leg work to become known enough so that I can make a decent income from the twenty percent of the population who purchase ebooks from a non-Amazon store.

“But I’ve boycotted Amazon!”

Some people will tell me (have told me, as a matter of fact) that Amazon is evil, and that anyone who goes exclusive with them is selling their soul to the devil.

Well. I hope that person grows all of their own food, grows or raises plants or livestock from which they make their own clothing, doesn’t own a car, doesn’t use a bank or credit union, is totally off the grid with energy and power, and never buys anything from any kind of store, because I wouldn’t want them to be a hypocrite.

Amazon is far from being the only imperfect corporation out there. It’s just one of the biggest, which is why it’s gotten bad press.

I’m going back to basics.

More truth: my life was simpler and less stressful when I was almost exclusive with Amazon. I say “almost” because all the first novels in my series are available wide, as are the boxed sets for each series.

However, from now on, all of my novels that are NOT the first in a series will be exclusive with Amazon, which means they can either be purchased individually from Amazon, or read through the Kindle Unlimited program.

I’ve already created paperback and hardcover versions for each novel, as well. They are priced so I earn around two dollars per sale of each print novel, which is actually less than what I make from ebook sales.

In addition, Amazon has just rolled out its own virtual audiobook narration program. The voices aren’t quite the quality as those of Apple, but they’re good enough. Within a few days – say, by the 20^th of January – all of my novels will be available in audiobook format in the Amazon store. I’ve priced them all at $7.99, just to keep things simple.

I’m done playing everybody else’s game. I want to enjoy writing, and I can’t do that if I’m stressing out over all the marketing rules.

So I’ve decided that I’m done trying to follow everybody’s rules.

It’s like I heard one six-figure romance author say: Kindle Unlimited is like the biggest library in the world, available around the world, and on whatever device you read books, there’s a Kindle app that allows you to read Kindle books on it.

I wish I would have stuck to that advice, and not wasted a ton of time last March following yet another shiny object that turned out to be fool's gold. 

The grass on the other side of the fence is not always as green as the cows are claiming.

Rediscovering A Childhood Love

 Most of the month of December, I did a huge total-house purge and reorganization, including furniture rearrangement and a bit of redecorating. As I shifted my creativity away from writing stories and toward the visual arts, a part of me that I buried somewhere deep in my soul after growing up wriggled its way out of the box I'd put it in.

I began to want to color again.

Before I say anything more, I must confess that I'm terrible at drawing people and animals. But when I was a child, I relished the mere creation of designs on paper. I enjoyed exploring with colors, and making something pretty.

I thought, as the nights grew longer and I became more disillusioned with the increasingly paltry offerings on YouTube, why not? The fact that we have loads of paper and two boxes of little-used crayons that would otherwise sit idle for years, only served to spur me on.

And so, a few times a week, in the evening, I sit down at the table with a piece of paper and the markers and crayons, and I draw and color. Here's what I created the other night:

Drawing and coloring make for a nice rest away from the mental effort required for writing stories.

Speaking of that, you might be interested to know that I am around a quarter of the way finished with my third novel in my latest series, which will top off at four novels. It's another Christmas romance series, so I won't be releasing it until October, but sometime this summer I'll post the first chapter of the first book in the series, just to give you a taste. Follow this blog so you don't miss it!

In the meantime, why not sit down with some paper and a box of crayons one evening? You might be surprised at how joyful and grounding the activity of creating a colorful picture can be. Rediscover the artist you once knew you were before somebody told you otherwise!

Many blessings to you,

Emily Josephine

Six Benefits To Doing YouTube As A Hobby

 

I've been trying for years to build up one YouTube channel or another to the point where it would at least pay our grocery bills. I've finally decided to give that up.

If you've tried to go full-time with YouTube and become frustrated, or if you enjoy making videos and are wondering whether you should just stick with it as a hobby, the video above and this article explains the six benefits to doing YouTube as a hobby.

Benefit #1.

When YouTube is a hobby, there's no pressure or stress around it. Anyone who makes any decent amount of money from YouTube, whether it's a few hundred dollars a month or six figures a month, will tell you that pleasing both their audience and the YouTube algorithm is stressful. You have to look right, sound right, say the right things, be entertaining in some way, edit footage well, and continually come up with fresh content. All this encompasses both financial stress and psychological stress.

Then there are the negative comments, and social media and online forums where big YouTubers are often ripped to shreds by perfect strangers. In some niches, such diet and nutrition, people opposed to a particular lifestyle create channels dedicated to tearing down YouTubers who follow that lifestyle. If you're just doing YouTube as a hobby, you'll probably never get that big, and won't have to worry about that.

As a hobby YouTuber, you can upload as frequently or as infrequently as you want. Full-time YouTubers, on the other hand, are constantly under pressure to upload videos on a consistent basis.

Benefit #2.

Unlike a full-time YouTuber, a hobbyist isn't constrained to a single topic or a single video format. You can create whatever kind of video suits your current whim, about whatever topic is on your mind. You can do a lifestyle vlog one day, and two days later do a talking head video teaching about the best way to remove fleas from a dog. 

Benefit #3.

I've already touched on this, but it's such a critical issue regarding what you want to do with YouTube that it bears repeating.

If YouTube is only a hobby, you don't have to worry about consistency in uploading. Someone trying to make YouTube into a career HAS to have an uploading schedule, and keep it consistent. And at this point in time, you need to be uploading a bare minimum of once a week if you want to be seen by even a few people.

But as a YouTube hobbyist, you would be under no such constraints. If you want to upload every day for two weeks, then disappear for four months, it's fine.  

Benefit #4.

You can turn off comments. 

If you want to build a big channel so you can make big bucks from it, this is a no-no. One thing the YouTube algorithm looks for when recommending videos to viewers is engagement; i.e., likes, dislikes, and comments. So, turning off comments while trying to become a full-time YouTuber is like shooting yourself in the foot right before running a marathon.

But if you don't care about growing a big channel, you can turn off comments. And therefore, never have to deal with ugly or stupid people.

Benefit #5.

If you're doing YouTube as a hobby, you'll never obsess over your analytics. When I say "obsess," I mean, OBSESS. People trying to grow a YouTube channel are constantly worrying over a variety of numbers: those related to watch time, subscribers, and views. If those numbers are discouraging - which is inevitable if you're trying to start a YouTube channel in 2023 and beyond - they turn their brains inside out trying to figure out how to "improve" the numbers.

Ugh.

But as a hobbyist, you couldn't care less about all that. All the fun, none of the stress.

Benefit #6.

There's a fact that YouTube gurus keep locked at the back of a closet that is essential to understand when you're looking at the "YouTube: hobby, or career?" question. That fact is, unless you're a really huge channel (tens of millions of subs or more), your YouTube income is inconsistent and unstable. In fact, many YouTubers who have been full-time, in recent years have been forced to go out and get a real job because their income suddenly and inexplicably tanked.

Ha. Not so inexplicably. The more channels that are vying for advertising dollars, the less there is to go around. 

Whereas, if you're doing YouTube as a hobby, getting your living income from some other source, you don't have to sell your soul to sponsors or care about YouTube advertising glitches, and the usual advertising dollar ups and downs. 

I've decided to tap into the health-giving benefits of doing YouTube as a hobby. How about you?

If You Feel Like A Failure, Read This!

I am a big, fat failure. Okay, so maybe not so much the fat part. But you get my drift.

I know I'm not alone in having thought, multiple times for multiple reasons, that I'm a failure. Likely as not, you clicked on this video because you are, right now, feeling like a failure.

In this post, I hope to change your mind about being a failure by sharing a bit of my story, as well as a few bits of wisdom that will help you shift your perspective about your worth as a human being.

How have I failed? 

Let me count the ways. 

**I didn't pursue my performing art dreams.

**I went into a career that, in hindsight, feels like a huge waste of thirteen years.

**I failed at getting a traditional publishing contract.

**I failed at blogging.

**I failed at making a full-time income with my self-published books...so far.

**I failed at choosing a place to live with optimum conditions for growing fruits and vegetables.

**I failed at YouTube.

And that's really what drove me to make this video at this point: a few days ago, for the hundredth time, I was going to quit one of the over dozen YouTube channels I've started since 2011.

And, why shouldn't I? On my original channel, over the space of 12 years, I haven't able to grow it to more than 4,160 subscribers and never made more than $80 in a month month. And that was one time. Then, a couple of years ago, YouTube changed the requirements for monetization, and it demonetized my channel.

And now, in 2023, it's extremely difficult to build even a modest following on a YouTube channel, even if you follow all the rules.

Back to the channel I was about to quit. It wasn't this one, though if you've been watching all of my videos for the past several months and noticed weeks between uploads and three distinct changes in topic, you might have gotten the hint that my frustration with the lack of growth on this channel had me on the edge.

As you can see, I haven't given up on this channel. Nor did I quit the other one. The reason? 

I watched a video about failure and ADHD.

Whether or not you have ADHD, the tips that Jessica shared in her video, as well as the thoughts I had afterward, might very well be your ticket out of the failure mindset.

In the video in question, one of the things Jessica points out that's specific to those of us with ADHD is that it's nearly impossible to succeed at anything when you've always got ten projects going on at one time. We need to learn to quiet our minds so we can enable ourselves to focus on just one thing at a time. If you're like me and get bored after a few days of doing just one thing, then make sure to schedule time to play and to work on hobbies. Or take one to two day breaks from the main project, during which you work on a less important project.

Jessica also explains that when we see others succeed where we feel like we're failing, we need to realize that they are different. They may have more time, or more money, or a different personality, or a larger resource pool, or more knowledge or innate skill. That circles back to the principle you've probably heard more than once, but if you're like me, need constant reminding of: though success is really a subjective concept, which each person can define as they like, we've been taught to equate it with some level of wealth and fame, and/or uncommon achievement.

I'll talk more on that in a minute.

The last thing that Jessica discusses in her video felt like a punch in a gut, but I needed to hear it: if you're failing at a thing, maybe you're simply not meant to do that thing. No matter how badly you want it. After I finished watching that video, which I've linked below in case you want to check it out, I pondered over Jessica's words for a while. I thought about all the ways in my fifty-three years that I've considered myself a failure, and realized that what I needed was a change in perspective. 

First and foremost, I need to drop the idea, once and for all, that success equals a lot of followers and/or a lot of money. I know that mindset is paralyzing and discouraging, have known it for years. But for personal reasons I won't get into, it's been next to impossible to rip the deeply rooted belief out of my soul. But for my own sanity, I need to. And I finally decided to do the inner work necessary to get it done.

My first step is to define success, in part, as having achieved something most people never do. I've written over thirty novels. I've given birth to a child and, along with my husband, raised him to be a decent young adult. I've stayed married to the same man for eighteen years, despite going through issues in our relationship that would send many couples to divorce court. Including Christian couples. 

I succeeded in holding onto the same teaching job until I got pregnant thirteen years into my career, in a school district with a notoriously high turnover rate. And though I know that until I get to heaven, I won't know the full extent of the positive impact I had on the lives of all the children who walked through my classroom door, I do realize that I made at least a small difference in each one.

I know that if I wasn't here, my husband and son would struggle. And not just because they'd have to do their own laundry and prepare their own meals. So somehow, despite my mistakes and shortcomings, I've succeeding in forming a small family with tight bonds, who love, care for, and depend on each other.

I've wildly succeeded in learning about nutrition and healthy living, and thereby in creating a healthy home for my husband and son. 

A second part of my new definition of success is about personal fulfillment and serving others. If I work on a YouTube channel, or write a book, I am successful if it brings me and/or others joy in some measure. For example, you're watching this video. If I help you in even a small way, I've succeeded with this channel. That's the way I've decided to see it.

See, the success-failure thing is simply a matter of perspective. In everything we do, there's always somebody better than us, and there's always somebody worse than us. Nobody can be good at everything, and when you find one of those things you're not good at, consider yourself at having succeeded in the discovery, and being one step closer to living a more simple, more fulfilling life where you're not trying to be a super hero, but just the best you that you can be.

In every encounter you have with another person, if you strive to be positive and encouraging, you succeed at helping the world become a better place. Even if you hate your job, if you do it well, it ultimately ends up helping people in some way.

Okay, unless you're a hitman for hire. But, let's not get off track here. 

The fact of the matter is, when you're full of real joy and peace, you don't give a hoot about the world's definition of success. You find true joy and peace by connecting with your Creator, and learning to walk moment by moment with Him. I teach you the best way to do this in my free ebook, So Long Stress. 

Even though I sometimes still struggle with following the principles I lay out in that book, I'm telling you, I would be much worse off today than I am if I hadn't begun applying them to my life. 

Want to hear a real success story? I've succeeded at staying alive, even though there have been many times I wanted to check out of this life. Because I know that feelings are fickle and temporary, but the truth that God wants me lasts forever.

Peace to you, and may blessings abound in every area of your life.

I Think I Finally Get The Ridiculous Misunderstandings in Romance Novels

 

As a reader of clean romance, I have been continually frustrated with the misunderstandings that many romance authors create for their two main characters, the big misunderstanding that is meant to pull them apart.

Of course, some of these misunderstandings – many of them, perhaps – really and truly are ridiculous, arbitrarily pulled out of the air by an author desperate to create drama and lacking the skill or patience to think of how to do so in a way that won’t make the reader roll their eyes.

In other words, the misunderstanding is unrealistic from anyone’s point of view.

However, the other day I realized that perhaps an equal number of these misunderstandings make perfect sense… to neurotypical people.

I am not neurotypical. I am autistic. I want people to speak to me with directness, no beating around the bush or polite white lies. And if I had a friend whom I knew could potentially get deceived by a former colleague, I would tell that friend outright, even right in front of the colleague, if necessary. And I wouldn’t care one whit about hurting the former colleague’s feelings. If they were a jerk known for making new friends, then using them and wringing them out like old rags when they were through, I would warn my friend about it right in front of the person.

Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t anyone? Jerks and con artists should be called out on their jerkhood so that they can stop victimizing people.

The scene that started it all.

That’s why, in a recent novel that I read, I got ticked off at the male protagonist. David’s old boss, Martin, had shown up to some corporate ball. Martin was notorious for stealing women away from the men who loved them, using them, then tossing them away, causing heartbreak all around.

So when Martin made a comment, out of Ellie’s earshot, about her beauty, David made it sound like he and Ellie were just friends and co-workers, at the ball as part of their job. He knew that if he let Martin have an inkling about his real feelings for Ellie, Martin would go after her and end up hurting her.

At that point, Ellie didn’t know how David felt about her, either. She only knew that she’d fallen for him sometime ago.

What happened was, Ellie was returning from the restroom at the time and overheard David’s callous remark. Instead of rushing to explain what Martin was about, David remained polite and simply introduced them.

Of course, after Martin was out of earshot, David tried to explain to Ellie, but in her mind he was too late. She refused to let him speak. Understandably so.

My autistic brain doesn’t get that kind of cow poop. Why are we worried about hurting the feelings of someone who is not only not a friend, but also a living turd? Who made the rule that you had to be polite when someone’s life might be at stake?

Then, I realized: it's a brain thing.

However, as I’ve been learning about how the autistic brain works and thinks, I’ve come to realize that one of the major reasons that autistic people struggle to make and keep friends is that they think literally. White lies aren’t part of literal thinking, or literal speech. All the social niceties and games that neurotypicals play for the sake of keeping the peace are also beyond the scope of literal thinking. This is why neurotypical people tend to consider autistic people as rude.

Blunt honesty hurts their feelings. If someone’s feelings are hurt, then by default the person who spoke the truthful words must be rude.

Don’t get me wrong. I know some things are unkind and unloving to say, true though they may be. But even if we autistics judge a certain truth not to be unkind, we learn to keep our mouths shut. We put on neurotypical masks so that we can make and keep friends. We learn what neurotypical people consider to be insulting or offensive, and we refrain from speaking our mind.

And it’s stressful. Very stressful.

Many other autistics, like my middle sister, never mask and say exactly what’s on their mind. Ironically, until I started to be too tired to mask a few years ago – especially until I discovered that I’m autistic – I considered that sister to be tactless and rude.

Now I know the truth. She’s never been capable of playing the social niceties game.

Back to romance novels. I now understand that my frustrations with the kind of misunderstanding I illustrated above have come from my brain being autistic. From now on, I will read such misunderstandings with better understanding.

That is, I will understand that the author is writing from a neurotypical point of view.

I guess I’ll never set the pond on fire with my romance stories, because I can’t make my characters flat-out lie for the sake of protecting a jerk. For the sake of creating tension and drama.

Even though I get it, really, I don’t get it.

You've Got Love All Wrong

Love. In any language, it's the most positive word that has ever existed. Scientists have even discovered that speaking the word can transform energy fields, even the molecular structure of water. 

Everyone thinks they know what love is. 

Most of them are wrong. 

Including most Christians. 

I have ample evidence to back up this claim. In Western society, if you ask most couples why they got married, they will respond with, "We fell in love." Eighteen years ago, I would have given the same response. But once you are with someone for a number of years, that feeling of being "in love" dminishes. Often, it disappears altogether.

This is the point where many people get divorced, claiming that they no longer love  their spouse.

Before I go on, I want to make it perfectly clear that I don't believe that anyone should remain in a marriage where the spouse turns out to be an abuser, a cheater, or an addict who refuses to rehabilitate. I'm talking only about people who walk away from a marriage, from the vows they made to God, simply because they lost that lovin' feeling.

And that gets us to the crux of the problem.

Most people believe that love is a feeling. Even if you have sat in a Sunday morning service and been told otherwise, chances are high that you persist in acting on the belief that love is a feeling. I understand why. For hundreds of years, cultures around the world have taught that the emotions surrounding romance, and that feelings of affection, whether toward one's children, friends, or pets, are equivalent to love. 

Nothing can be further from the truth. In fact, brain researchers now know that the feeling of being "in love" is nothing more than a physiological reaction that occurs in the amygdala. This is the same part of the brain responsible for our basic instincts, such as feeling fear when facing an enemy, or anger when your life has been inconvenienced, or excitement when you're presented with a potentially big and positive opportunity.

In other words, the feeling of falling in love is not spiritual. It's not a sign from God that this person is "the one." It's a primitive response to a person whom you instinctively sense could make healthy babies with you. That is it. 

Now that I've destroyed my writing career by ruining romance novels for you...😉

 ...let's explore the truth about love. God so desired for you to understand it, that He inspired one of the original apostles to pen an entire chapter about it in the New Testament. It's found in the book of First Corinthians, chapter thirteen, and is commonly known as "the love chapter." The Apostle Paul defines love as follows:

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in inquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

Love never fails.... [1 Corinthians 13:4-8a]

I ask you: where in that passage is there the slightest hint that love is a feeling or an emotion? The answer is, nowhere. This passage reveals that love is action, action the results from a state of perfect peaceful being.

You might say, "Emily, those verses are talking about the agape love, the unconditional love that God has for people. We mere human beings are incapable of that kind of perfection."

I completely agree. Mere human beings, in their current fallen state, are incapable of that kind of perfection. But human beings who have connected with their heavenly Father have the power within to produce that kind of love. I would dare to say that even atheists who believe that living by the Golden Rule have the ability to show real love to a certain extent. They have been, after all, created in the image of God as much as any Christian has.

But living a life completely free of sin, in perfect harmony with the Holy Spirit every second of every day, is not the issue at stake here. What I want you to understand - what the world needs you to understand, especially if you call yourself a Christian - is that love is not a feeling. It has nothing to do with physical intimacy. Rather, love is the Golden Rule in action, but not from a sense of duty or obligation. Not from a sense of "I should" or "I have to." Instead, it's the natural outflow from a heart that desires to please God in all things. 

I want to make it clear that there is nothing wrong with wanting or feeling the pleasurable buzz that comes from romance. There's nothing wrong with feeling affection for other people. But in the ideal world, these feelings and desires should be grounded in a firm understanding of true love. Then, and only then, can the romance and affection be free of selfishness and manipulation.

Peace to you, and may blessing abound in every area of your life. 

And before you go, share in the comments a time when you experienced real love at the hand of another person.