Writers are a funny breed.
Virtually every other art form has a million approaches, and no one seems to question this.
Perhaps it's because writing requires some degree of education, and holding a reader's attention for possibly many hours to read an entire book involves creating more fascination than a 45-second TikTok video of a hot young chick swallowing whipped cream.
Whatever it is, writers seem to always want to be right about what writing well requires (note my audacious use of an adverb there).
Check back regularly as I reveal how I not only do not have "imposter syndrome," but consider myself to be a bit of an unrecognized genius.
Having just submitted the thirteenth formatting revision to my company that does that stuff, I am pleased to say that the 93K word guts of my upcoming geopolitical thriller/historical fiction novel will be put to bed and all tucked in before the holidays.
The company that does my formatting is a former British colony, and therefore takes an insane amount of time off at Xmas and New Year's. I'm used to it, having worked for nearly a decade for a British news op in the past.
All that will remain when they finally get their eggnogged derrieres back to work will be to design the spine for the paperback and case laminate hardcover, and the back of same. These are relatively simple steps compared to finalizing cover art and formatting the guts, and shouldn't take long.
Then we have to upload it all onto Amazon for broad distribution (it will be available globally on Amazon's many sites, albeit only sold in English) and just wait for the big money to come in.
To all who have followed my long and arduous journey writing this novel inspired by my own family's time with the US State Department in Cold War Europe and the Balkans, my humble gratitude is yours.
I hope the finished product will meet your hopefully very high expectations.
This is a topic that certainly applies beyond writing, but let's start as authors.
I had a book publicist who told me I shouldn't swear and shouldn't post any opinions, because it might lose me an interview or a reader. Perhaps she is right, but on the other hand, it might also gain me a reader.
At the end of the day: I don't really care. I trust my books will sell based on the quality of the writing and its contents, not my views. I mean, I'm not running for office lol.
I think being authentic is way, way undervalued, ESPECIALLY FOR WOMEN. How dare we say what we really think? We are raised to keep our opinions to ourselves-- it would be unladylike and offensive to do otherwise.
I was raised with the same direction in this regard as all y'all. I mean, my mother died when I was five, but the one thing my father was somewhat obsessed with was "how to behave in polite society." He'd worked in the State Dept., after all.
The only thing he cared about in my wedding planning was that I had a receiving line. That really summed him up in a nutshell. Protocol and order.
Right.
I am a funny person, because in some ways, I am actually very traditional. The ways in which I am untraditional are mostly untraditional haha--I love to shoot, I speak my mind, I am very, very bad at following orders.
Many years of being told how to behave made me go the other way as an adult. I don't think it was an instant process, but here I am on the back nine, not really giving a shit what anyone thinks about the fact that I like to speak my mind.
If we don't speak our truth as writers, who will? I would like to see more women be more outspoken, and not just the insane libs like AOC and the screaming loon who is the Palestinian Congressional bitch from Michigan.
And I am very happy to see that more conservative women ARE speaking up, like Riley Gaines and Mace from South Carolina.
So I will take my chances on losing readers, because honestly, who cares? I don't think trans men who think they're women or pro-Ham Ass idiots are probably my reader demographic anyway.
Speak up, ladies. Be bold.
As Goethe said, " Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."
Can you even imagine a woman writing about the quest to find a man of means as part of her personal journey now?
Back in the early 19th century--when Jane Austen wrote most of her now-iconic novels about impecunious young women of good breeding but dire prospects--this was a reality for the gentry class. If you were a woman, who you married framed most of your life, and it was a decision not to be made lightly for that reason.
If you could happen to find a really rich landowner who was also hot, slightly edgy, and a tad vulnerable beneath his dour exterior (Mr. Darcy), well--why not? And if he fell in love with you despite himself having far better financial prospects (because even rich men had to think about the astronomical expenses of maintaining an enormous, drafty estate and manor), so much the better.
And they all lived happily ever after.
Now we are swimming in stories about equity and diversity that have about as much romantic jjzzzjj as a Walmart greeter.
As with almost anything else, literature has had its soul sucked out by the DEI movement. I attended an online authors' conference today where a publisher spoke with glee about an upcoming book about a transgender kid. Is there really a big audience for this? Are plain ol' straight kids who know what sex they are even allowed to celebrate that reality anymore? I wonder.
I grew up reading great literary fiction like Dickens, Tolstoy, and Harper Lee. Life was certainly not easy in the times these authors wrote about, but they managed to portray it with some kind of dramatic elan that made it delicious to read.
Now authors would be told to refer to poverty as "experiencing financial insecurity," which just doesn't roll off the tongue the same way.
Looking for love? You are "emotionally underserved." Beautiful? "Visually privileged." A bastard? "Born into nuclear insecurity."
DEI is killing the fucking English language, and if authors don't push back, who will save it? I implore writers everywhere to reclaim language like a buried treasure, polish it up and put it back on display, before the linguistic Titanic on which we are all sailing hits its last iceberg.
One that even climate change won't save.
It was around this time last year--in the devastating wake of Oct. 7, 2023--that I made the decisive decision to delete all my social media accounts.
Facebook was long gone for me by then, after being dissed by some "friends" going back to 2017. But I had 3,000+ followers on just-turned-X and a small IG account. A really small IG account lol.
Obviously, X was the one that theoretically could have been detrimental to leave. And to be fair, in my four years on there at that time, I had made some amazing writer world connections.
But the antisemitism and just plain stupidity were giving me hives. Mind you, I used to post a LOT. Probably five or six times a day at times. I thought I would feel more withdrawal than I did.
It turns out, I didn't and continue not to miss it at all. As a former news editor, I never got my news from sm anyway.
But the really hilarious part was how my author website hits SOARED after I disappeared. I have no idea why. Some months I've had 300+ site visitors, which for zero advertising is pretty crazy.
Are they all at Langley or the DoD? After pulling up hundreds of declassed State and Agency memos for my about-to-be-published historical fiction geopolitical thriller, I have often wondered what lists I must now be on.
On top of which, when you are researching the dark arts of wet working for a Cold War novel, you have to, um, do some digging that might not sound right out of context.
I remember doing one on how deep you'd have to plunge a knife into the victim's neck for near-instant death, and what you'd have to hit to boot. That shit wouldn't look good in a court of law lol. I better live a super clean life, eh?
There's an old joke among novelists that you should be careful when you talk to us cause you might show up in a future story. It's true, we sock away all kinds of information. It's almost like we're operatives, except we write with what we find out about people.
And for anyone contemplating leaving sm, I say, just do it. Elon may be selling it some day anyway, now that's he's all toasty with the new/old prez-to-be.
I have my own marketing campaign mapped out starting Spring of 2025. No, I have no fucking budget, that's for sissies! You just have to do it and pray lol.
Miranda Armstadt
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