This template is settling with me

I mean, I don't hate it. And it doesn't look like hippies threw up all over it. The colors are close to what it was, and I dig the pink--Da Tabbies are right, I think Skeezix would have liked it, and that makes it worth keeping.

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And yeah, I don't blog as much as I used to. Seems like no one does. I do post on Facebook almost every day and those link to the right sidebar here. No FB account is necessary to click through to the longer ones.

I would really like to figure out how to get those posts to pop up here as a blog entry, and not just the sidebar, but I think I'm limited by the Blogger interface. Hell, I'd like to use the FB commenting system, too, but that for sure doesn't work here.

Not sure I could make any of that work of if I migrated to Wordpress, either.

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What's irritating me today?

Well...the Woman likes to go outside and ride her bike, like, a lot. And I can live with that, she needs to sweat a lot. But tonight she rode one of those contraption IN THE HOUSE. Right when it was time for my snack. MY SNACK WAS LATE BECAUSE OF THAT PRETEND BIKE.

I had to wait 4 extra minutes.

I almost passed out.

FOUR MINUTES.

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On the upside, there was a shopping bag full of cans for me. I even got to pick what I wanted.

Y'all know what? When you have 20 to choose from, it's HARD. And if you pick the wrong one there are no do-overs.

Well, not unless you sound pitiful enough. If you can meow just right without whining, someone will be all oh fine you forking little furbag* and they'll get you something else.

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*Okay, not really. You just have to ask really nice and you get a better selection.

Oy.

Somehow, I borked my template and in trying to fix it I made it worse, so...

Yeah, this place is going to look all kinds of Not Right for a while. It might take a few days before we can find the right combo of background colors and text colors that won't make your eyes bleed...it'll take that long because the Woman loves eye-gouging colors and she gets all ooooh that looks good when, in fact, it does not look good and will cause 90% of everyone else to get a headache.

We'll also get a new Wick short up soon.

Maybe we won't fark that site up, too...

This is cross-posted to The Wick Chronicles...excuse my venting as I explain...

Let's talk.

I've been going back and forth with a few people, one on Facebook, and a couple in email, about how inconvenient the way I'm offering up the short stories is. There are complaints that I'm not offering them in print, complaints that I'm not offering them as a download, and complaints that the formatting here is not book-standard and it should be.

So, I'm addressing these issues.

• It's cost-prohibitive for the reader if I sell these in print. Who wants to pay $5 for a 5-10 page short story? I don't. That would be seriously unfair of me.
• Also, my editor said no. 
• I've been accused of wanting the money (? I don't get this one) because I apparently won't earn enough from print. No...I don't want to charge you for these shorts. I want you to get them for free.
• These stories will appear in print at a later date, in a single volume. Right now--and it's right there in the sidebar--I'm offering up things that are just barely 2nd draft material. They're almost where I want them, but the final draft will wait until all the stories have been finished and the order determined.
• I can offer them as a download via Bookfunnel. If there's enough interest, I absolutely will do that. 
• It's not easy to format here and have it book-standard; I went with what will look decent across multiple browsers. If the font is too small (and I get that, I'd like it bigger, too) you can hit CTRL + scroll and the size will increase. That works on pretty much every web page. 

Look. Anyone who has stuck with me this far knows that my royalties go toward buying as many toys at Christmas as we can, and those toys either go to Toys for Tots or toys for foster kids. (Despite my frequent whining about the people spending my money...the Man really does pay for the care and feeding of the creatures in the house, thusly can I afford to use the royalties that way.) This isn't and has never been about the money for me. But I also can't spend money out of pocket to print these and give them away (as has been suggested) nor can I offer print copies as donor gifts (as has been suggested) to dozens of people.

All I really wanted when we started kicking around the idea of a Wick website was to give something for free, something for my readers, and not as a way to make a lot of money. This site isn't monetized. I could have done that; we thought about doing that by way of advertisements, to generate the purchase of a few more toys. But damn, doods, I really wanted to do this because so many of you have been there since the beginning of The Psychokitty Speaks Out, you've bought my books, you've followed me on Facebook, and you've made doing all of this so much fun.

I want to continue doing this. But at this moment, the fun has been sucked out of it, and I feel like I'm banging my forehead on the keyboard.

I know I can't make everyone happy.

And you know what started the worst of this? The Woman's nephew is doing a charity walk, and she made the offer on FB that if he hit X-number of dollars by the end of the weekend, we'd put Wick After Dark up for free as a download. And the complaints started. One woman wanted print copies (though she didn't donate a damned thing.) Someone else complained that they'd read those already so why can't they have something else...and it went on. And on.

I have tried really hard to not lose my chit over this, but tonight someone declared they are done with me because--and I am not even kidding--I'd answered her question but apparently not the way she wanted. And all I did was explain why I can't do the shorts in print yet.

Doods, I'll bend over backwards to make things easy when I can, but I'll only take so much.

So. 

If you would like the shorts available as a download via Bookfunnel, speak up. I can do that.

If you want them in print, please be patient. I have to write them all first.

And if you think I suck, well, sorry. Not much I can do about that.