“Black Cat” is a story about a guy named Marcus, who is deathly afraid of cats. I have no particular desire to write about or think about this story, but I've scheduled a blog post about it for this week, so here we are.
Honestly. You get into writing because you're a neurotic egomaniac and they don't even have the decency to market your books for you. You gotta do it yourself, which goes against every instinct and inclination you have.
I'm supposed to hype up my own writing? Jesus.
It's garbage. It's all garbage. But it's my garbage.
This story about cats? It's decent. Kind of funny. I sort of remember some funny parts, but I'm not about to reread it because I'm done with it and it's dead to me. In a civilized world, I'd hand it off to a publicist who would dutifully sell it to the world while I go make up some other stories that never happened.
Failing that, I'm churning out these weekly blog posts where I pretend to be interested in all these stories I wrote five years ago. Come on. They're five years old now, they should be able to wipe their own asses without my help.
And blogging ain't exactly an untrammeled joy, either. Just like social media. It's another of those things I only do because it's necessary to move product. But God forbid you be up front about the fact that you're only doing it to move product, because people find it disingenuous.
They find it less disingenuous if you pretend you're doing it out of some other motive.
Listen, listen. I have nothing against people, provided they have good manners and are at least five miles away from my person. I'm not advocating for the liquidation of the human race here. I'm just saying what good is it to me that people exist if they're not doing what I want them to do?
I don't want you to get the wrong idea here. I realize I'm coming off as a bit hostile, but what do you expect? I have a strong inclination to avoid people, and here I am spending a chunk of my weekend writing self-promotional blog posts so I can sell enough books to quit my day job. Wouldn't you be a little irritated?
And the last thing on earth I want to do is go in for the traditional marketing route, where you pretend your book is gonna make your male readers into blowjob magnets and get your female readers whatever women want. Or connect it to some noble-sounding and highly abstract cause–you know, freedom, equality, diversity, and sustainability. The classics.
First of all because I don't genuinely care about any of those things (except freedom, maybe), and second of all because what I really care about is getting you to pay $3.99 to buy my book on Kindle.
It's a decent book, it's cheap, and there are several stories in it that involve cats. And make sure you leave a review on Amazon when you're done!
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The Invisible Woman and Other Stories is available on Amazon Kindle.
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