Being social on social media: a cautionary tale

Dear Diary,

When I first created a social media profile back in 2015 (on Twitter, which also happens to be my favorite and the one I’m the most active on), I did so with a wide-eyed view of what social media really was. And yes, it really was my first social media account – before I started writing, I simply wasn’t interested in being social online. I mean, I had plenty of friends in real life, and I didn’t need the internet to date someone. I just didn’t see the appeal.

Basically, I avoided social media because there were other, more important things to do with my time. With my career. I was simply too busy making things happen to kick back and spend the day posting about what I was doing. The way I figured it, I could either be active on social media and reduce my productivity in half or skip social media entirely and be a productive beast.

I chose the latter. And I reaped the rewards.

Because of that, I had the option of becoming a full-time writer, and the paradigm shifted a bit. I wanted a way to have conversations with my (potential) readers, a way to be accessible to them. I never wanted to be the kind of person who let any sort of success go to my head; I wanted to be, you know, social. I figured if someone is going to spend some of their hard-earned money on something I created, the least I could do was banter with them for a bit. Just to let them know that I appreciate their patronage, and to see what they think about whatever it was they bought. You know, talk about the good and the bad. Be real. Share things. Teach things. More importantly, learn things.

So I created social media accounts for all the major platforms and began reaching out. I even created a Patreon, a place where I could sort of go creatively wild and cut loose a bit in a way I would never do on regular social media. So much fun.

I never expected the Fuckboi Army. The perverts. The men who probably have never in their life touched a (willing or conscious) female body. See, in the beginning, I used to be so much more social, so much more trusting with my personal information. I learned my lesson.

Storytime.

There was this guy. We’ll call him Steve. Through time, we became friends (I thought), and he convinced me to give him my home address so he could send me a birthday gift. He lived in another state, so I figured why not—no big deal.

Boy, was I wrong.

He started demanding more and more of my time (as guys always seem to do 🙄), and eventually, I just had to give him a reality check. I told him I’m a writer. I write. That’s the only reason I even have an online presence. He got mad, threw a tantrum, and said some terrifying things. So I blocked him. I was shook, I admit, but nowhere near as shook as I was when he showed up at my doorstep unannounced. There was never anything romantic between us (I mean, come on), and if my big brother didn’t happen to be home at the time (he took the day off to hang with me), I don’t know what would have happened. Steve scurried, and rightly so, as my brother is fucking ginormous and in excellent shape. Steve was neither.

Not long after, our windows started getting broken. My brother’s tires were flattened. I was terrified to leave the house because I was paranoid that he was watching, waiting, stalking.

You know what they say about paranoia: sometimes, you’re right.

I ended up getting a restraining order against him, which he violated when he tried to corner me at the bus stop. If it wasn’t for some friendly strangers there… to make a long story short: he went to jail, we moved, and I haven’t heard from him since.

This is why I don’t give out my real address to people. Or phone number. Or anything else. I don’t trust them. I can’t. There’s only one of me, and I like my life.

I learned my lesson well that day. I never give out my real phone number (I have several eNumbers I use instead), address (even my newsletter points to a library in Corpus Christi), or anything else to random motherfuckers online.

You shouldn’t either.

While there are a ton of genuinely good people out there, there are also some scary, unstable motherfuckers that are desperate for attention. People that, if you give them even a little of your free time, will completely misread the kindness as something much more involved and intimate.

Which is fucking insane.

It’s just not worth it. I know enough people in real life to risk something like that again. You do too. Just please remember when you’re online that you never know who you’re really talking to, or what their real motivations might be. Be safe. Be cautious. And have fun. Because the internet can definitely be a fun place – as long as you’re protecting yourself. Kind of like, you know, other things… 😏

#Alexa

“It’s intoxicating for a man to be waited on. Combine this with very, very skillful sex, and that will get them.”

– Doris Lilly

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission, at no additional cost to you. This is because I’m a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Innocently being creepy and dancing like a drunk white girl having an epileptic seizure in a full body cast…

Dear Diary,

So there I was, innocently being creepy and watching my big brother working out in his personal little mancave gym. My arms were crossed, and I was leaning against the doorframe, just standing there and thinking a million miles an hour (as usual) about Nephilim: Prisoner (book two of the Nephilim heptalogy and my current work in progress). I’ve given myself until the end of the month to finish it, and there are so many things I need to add thanks to my recently released Exitium Mundi series… I was watching him, but not watching him. If that makes any sense. I was more deep in thought than anything else.

Anyway, out of nowhere, he goes, “Come get some,” in that slight country twang of his.

My initial reaction was to raise my eyebrows. See, my mind is *way too corrupted* by the internet, but I know he isn’t like that, so I just laughed and asked what he meant. Here’s how the conversation went down.

“The weights. Don’t just stand there, put em to use.”

“I don’t lift weights. I do cardio. Running and calisthenics. You know that.”

“And? Get your dainty ass over here and give it a try.”

Now see, my big brother knows one of the ways to get under my skin is to make fun of my diminutive size. I get little woman syndrome. 😅 I’m not even that short – I’m 5’0, 100lbs! Not exactly tiny. I’m huge. Practically a monster compared to most five-year-olds.

So I gangsta-strolled over to the weights and told him to bring it. Mind you, I wasn’t even dressed to work out: I was wearing a baggy cookie monster shirt and light green man boxers (so comfortable, don’t judge me). The first thing I approached was his deadlifts. After calculating all the weight he had on that thing (five times my body weight!), I quickly gave up on that option. So I went looking around for something a bit more realistic.

He ended up having to adjust the weights on this weird monstrous contraption he was sitting at just so I could make it rattle. 😅

I am not a weightlifter.

But I wasn’t about to just let him one-up me. So I challenged him to a dance-off using Just Dance 2019 on my Switch. I’ve never once seen him dance, so I felt confidant in this (even though Anne tells me I dance like a drunk white girl having an epileptic seizure in a full body cast). (Bitch.)

In the end?

I smoked his ass. It was so much fun, too, especially watching him struggle through the more feminine moves. I almost peed myself. 😭

I also realized halfway through his dance-murdering that it had been forever since we spent time together like that. I mean, thanks to the lockdown situation, we’ve spent a lot of time together, yes, but we were both kind of doing our own things, not truly enjoying each other’s company. That’s going to have to change. We have such a rare opportunity here to be all up in each other’s business, and we’ve been kind of wasting it. I mean, he’s the most important person in the world to me, and I can probably count on one hand the number of hours we’ve actually spent together together.

The pandemic is horrible, yes, but it’s given us a once in a lifetime opportunity.

So tonight? I’m kidnapping his ass for some movie watching: a supernatural horror flick a friend of mine hipped me up to called V/H/S. It’s supposed to be scarier than Anne’s hair when she wakes up in the morning, so I’m really looking forward to it.

What about you? Have you been fully taking advantage of this lockdown by spending time with the people that mean the most to you? What have you done? I’m really curious. Let a hood rat know!

#Alexa

💡 The More You Know 💡

Mrs. Caroline Squires of Cincinnati filed for a divorce from her husband in 1949 on grounds of desertion. She testified he’d stepped out “for a beer” on the Fourth of July 1917, and had never come back.

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission, at no additional cost to you. This is because I’m a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Anxiety… and letting go.

Dear Diary,

I’m not going to lie: last month was a hard month for me. I took the latter part of it off, largely secluding myself from the real and digital world to cocoon myself with love and positivity, and when I came back from my glorious vacation… I was hit with all kinds of strangeness I usually don’t have to deal with. Online trolls. Losing someone I thought was my friend. Senseless death. Violence. Looting. Almost every single tweet and interview from our president. (🙄) I think the best word I can use to describe everything would be pandemonium.

I even tweeted about my mindset on my favorite social media network, Twitter:

This was not me throwing in the towel, of course. I’m far too stubborn for all that. I was venting. I had to. More on why in a moment.

See, when all of this first started, I admit I was largely caught off-guard. I wasn’t fully prepared to maturely and intellectually process everything as it seemed to spontaneously manifest. In truth, that is one of the few ways someone can truly upset my equilibrium: by catching me completely off guard. That is harder than you may think, as my mind never seems to shut off (even when I’m trying to sleep), but most of this did.

And it pisses me off. For several reasons.

The first of which is because it ripped me out of my creative zone and made writing almost impossible. Writing is my therapy, you see, the way I vent all these chaotic emotions swirling around in my crazy little head so they don’t become toxic to not only myself but the people I care about the most.

And I found myself unable to do it. I tried. I really did. I sat down, put my headphones on, and tried to find my writing Zen, but… it just wouldn’t come. Day after day. No matter how hard I tried, it just would not come. It felt like trying to force yourself to go to sleep – you know you need it, you know it’s good for you, but you just can’t make it happen.

So I quit trying.

I let go.

I calculated all the writing/author time I would typically do for the week (35 hours, in case you’re curious), set a countdown timer for it, and just kicked back and said fuck it and played around on social media. And watched some anime. And read. And ignored bedtimes. And, of course, played the hell out of Skyrim.

And then my eyes started drifting to my timer…

I figured, OK, let me just knock a few things out really quickly and I’ll get back to my fuck it vacation. So I turned on the countdown timer, knocked some things out… and then a few more things… and wrote some… and wrote some more… and knocked out tasks that weren’t even due yet… and played around with Patreon content… and wrote again…

And before I knew it, my time had all run out.

Interesting how things like that work, isn’t it?

I guess there’s a lesson to be learned somewhere in there, but I dunno. I’m no teacher. Just a student. Always a student.

Hopefully, the month hasn’t been too bad for you, and you’ve managed to keep it together. This will all pass. It really will. You just have to hang in there. Or not: you can do like I did and just, you know, let go. Accept your feelings for what they are and just express them. Vent them out. And then see what happens. It may do you some good. I know it did for me.

Just a thought. ✌💖😷

#Alexa

“I really think that people’s right to happiness shouldn’t be dictated by some policymaker in Washington, D.C. I’ve come to know a lot of people that – sexual orientation is such where they’re in love with people from the same sex, and I just don’t think it’s our role in the government to say, ‘No you can’t be married.’”

– Jon Tester

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission, at no additional cost to you. This is because I’m a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Don’t be a sea cucumber!

Dear Diary,

Something most people know about me: I’m a sensitive person. Things can quickly get to my heart, often before I have a chance to filter them through my mind. Which means I’m quick to feel a whole bevy of emotions: anger, love, disappointment, elation, excitement, fear.

Something you might not know about me: I’m a very list-oriented person. I have a task manager filled with repeating tasks, make checklists for the things I want to do even on my days off, and absolutely will not stop until every single one of them is done. I’m analytical to a fault, something the people close to me remind me on a near-daily basis.

Some call me a contradiction. They’re not wrong.

You may be wondering how the two traits live in the same house, and the answer is: not very well. When something affects me, I immediately start analyzing it, extrapolating what caused the event in the first place, why I feel the way I do, and if my emotions and reactions are justified or not. It’s insane. Of course, I eventually calm down and become (somewhat) wiser because of it. But while I’m going through all of that? It’s mind-numbing.

Something happened a while back that I shared with a close fine of mine, and it kind of illuminates me as a person. And my brother:

I was feeling miserable. Mentally and emotionally. I don’t know why, I just started having a mild panic attack. I get those sometimes. Anyway, I was in the bath, soaking, being miserable, and in walks my big brother. (No, this is not weird. He’s probably seen me naked more than clothed at this point, so nothing about me phases him anymore. 😅) Anyway. He sat on the floor beside the bath and kind of just chilled for a bit, his big bald head resting on the bathroom wall inches away from mine.

For the longest time, he didn’t say anything – he just sat there. It was comfortable with him there, and I felt the panic and negativity kind of just drain out of me. All because he was there. Finally, he turned to me with that constant stoic expression of his and said: “You know I love you, right?”

I said I knew.

He kind of just nodded and stared back at the wall.

Then he said something that threw me: “Don’t be a sea cucumber, alright?”

I kind of laughed and asked him what the fuck he was talking about.

He told me to go look up how they defend themselves. He then kissed me on the side of the head (a rare show of affection from him!) and got up and walked out.

When I got out of the bath, I jumped on the computer and looked up how the fuck sea cucumbers defend themselves. Well. Apparently, sea cucumbers shoot their intestines and organs at an enemy to disorient them and escape. It’s called evisceration, or autotomy (the removal of your own body part). This doesn’t kill them, strangely, because they can dedifferentiate cells. To simplify, they end up regrowing all their lost organs. But it takes time.

I mulled this over. I think what my brother was trying to tell me was to not bleed so much of myself into what I do, into my life, and to take things easier and more light-hearted. Because I always recuperate when I do, but… you know… it takes time. Time I could avoid taking if I didn’t always go 1,000%.

He’s like a big white Yoda sometimes, I swear. 😅

So why am I writing all this? Because we’re going through crazy times right now, and my initial reaction was to panic and go into sea cucumber mode. But I didn’t. And you shouldn’t either. This, too, shall pass, it’s simply a matter of time. As Brandon Lee says in one of my favorite movies of all time, The Crow: “It can’t rain all the time.”

I love you all. Thank you for reading.

Stay safe.

And smiling. 😊

#Alexa

🛑 DO THE FIVE

Help stop coronavirus

HANDS: Wash them often.

ELBOW: Cough into it.

FACE: Don’t touch it.

SPACE: Keep safe distance.

HOME: Stay if you can.

💡 The More You Know 💡

There’s a reason you can’t stop thinking about that special new guy or girl in your life: MRI scans have shown that falling in love sends blood rushing to the “pleasure center” areas of the brain—the same areas that are responsible for obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Falling in love also lowers serotonin levels, which is common in people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, says Mary Lynn, DO, co-director of the Loyola Sexual Wellness Clinic at Loyola University in Chicago. “This may explain why we concentrate on little other than our partner during the early stages of a relationship,” she says, and also why we tend to idealize new partners and turn a blind eye to their faults.

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission, at no additional cost to you. This is because I’m a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

The hardest thing for me to do, changes, and finally getting to finish!

Dear Diary,

I think the hardest thing to do as an author – and, if I’m being completely honest, as a person – is to focus on just one thing and see it through to completion. I always seem to get distracted by different projects, different stories, even when I’m neck-deep in working on one that I have a deadline for. It drives my beta readers mad, and my editor as well. I can’t help it through. I keep coming up with all these strange story plots that I want to explore, and they always seem to tug at me as I’m working on my current project.

The longer I ignore it, the stronger the tug.

Eventually I find myself outlining, drafting, and revising this new story while the story (or series) I was working on gets left in the dust. And then, when I go back to what I should have been working on, I have to re-read everything I wrote just to regain the flow of the narrative.

Not so bad when it comes to one book, but a flat-out nightmare when dealing with a series.

So, from now on, I’m changing that. I’m going to force myself to focus on the project I’m supposed to be working on, and if I get the bug to begin something new, I’ll just find a way to include whatever idea I had in the story I’m writing.

That being written.

I’m currently in the process of finishing up the Exitium Mundi heptalogy (seven-book series), which took way longer than I intended because I got, you know, sidetracked and ended up writing two completely different stories set way in the future of my Alexaverse. (Erotic Urban Legends: Pulse, and Erotic Urban Legends: Paramnesia) Pulse is currently available to my Patreon peeps of the Initiate tier and up here, while Paramnesia will be available to them soon. The rest of the world will get them in August and December of next year. I can’t wait. 🙌

Anyway, both stories are finished, but the cost of that is I had to go back and re-read all six books I’d already written in the Exitium Mundi series just to start on the seventh. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but I kept finding things I wanted to change, add, and deduct… it took forever. 😭 But I finally finished, and I’m in the final stages of revision for the last book. So excited. This shit will not be happening again!

Wish me luck, my loves.

I may need it. 😅😭

#Alexa

“I have never, ever talked about my orientation or sexuality because whether I am heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual, it is my concern. I refuse to talk about it… I have not been brought up to talk about my sex life.”

– Karan Johar

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission, at no additional cost to you. This is because I’m a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Who I did during my vacation…*

Dear Diary,

This year has, so far, sucked proverbial balls. I’ve gotten into a wreck, had a screaming match with a Medicaid driver (twice!), was hit by a strange sickness that caused my temperature to shoot up to 103°, had half a dozen arguments with the people closest to me, already broke one of my three new year’s resolutions, had a severe pay cut due to a big misunderstanding (that I will fix by the end of next week) and to top everything off: I was attacked by a migraine for several days, one that I’m only just now getting over. And it’s only the sixth day of the year, y’all. 😭

This is why it’s strange that my writing career, almost in defiance, is going fantastic. The output is beautiful, ideas are flowing, creativity is spurting all over the place. This is probably due to taking the last two weeks of December entirely off. No internet, no social media, not doing anything online except spending way too much money on gifts and ordering fast food. Oh, and of course talking to my Patreon subscribers, cause they were the sole exception to my online vacation. So much fun.

About my vacation. It was mainly spent with family and friends, and hanging out with the big brother unit/Anne doing the following: reading Twilight, reading the Kiss X Sis manga, trying to catch up on all the electronic magazines I have built up, playing The Witcher 1, Resident Evil Revelations 2, Skyrim (of course), Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster, Dragon Quest 1 (Super Nintendo version), and The Sims (1/2/3/4). I also watched the anime Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist, several movies, and The Witcher series on Netflix (which I completely adore). I even spent a little time writing on a secret project that I’ll spring on you guys soon, my first erotic fantasy series. It’s turning out really good so far. Loving it.

For now, however, I need to finish another Erotic Urban Legends story, Paramnesia, (the sequel to Erotic Urban Legends: Pulse) and then throw all my creativity into the last book in the seven-part Exitium Mundi series, as it is due to be released towards the middle half of this year. I am so excited about both of these projects, and I can’t wait until you guys read them. The last part of Exitium Mundi is a bit of a trial, however. I’m going back and forth on how I want to end it. I have the outlined ending, of course, but the way the story is unraveling is making me want to change it… I dunno. #WriterStruggles

Back to the lab, y’all.

Thank you for reading.

I love you all…

#Alexa

* Oops, I meant what, not who. Typo. Sorry. You got clickbaited, motherfucker, deal with it. 😅

“Separate inherently is not equal. There’s a reason why $45 million was spent against marriage equality. It’s because people understand the word does have meaning. And equality comes when we accept the same notions and the same institutions for everyone, regardless of race and gender and regardless of sex orientation.”

– Gavin Newsom

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission, at no additional cost to you. This is because I’m a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Anne’s murderous vagina, outsourcing, and projectile vomiting!

Dear Diary,

So, Anne’s vagina nearly killed me today. See, I was sitting at my writing station eating an orange, being the normal innocent halo-wearing angel I usually am. You know, editing erotica and watching adult videos for, uh, reference and stuff. And then out of nowhere Anne busts out with-

“Pikachu said hi.”

I nearly died.

I choked on the orange slice I was chewing and had to spit it across the room to get it out of my throat. It was horrible.

You see, Pikachu is what she calls her, um, lady bits. 😅

That little life-threatening event pretty much sums up my month so far.

I have a ritual, see. On the first of the month I take care of over a dozen time-consuming author tasks, which usually take the entire day. Once they’re finished I’m pretty much set, which means I can spend the rest of the month doing what I really love: writing.

Not this month.

One of the things I do is place the next book in line up for preorder for three months in advance. This gives Amazon time to effectively advertise it and readers time to become aware of it before its official release. I also get the paperback produced (which takes far longer than I’m about to admit publicly) and hire a professional narrator for the audiobook version.

This month, Amazon decided to try and test my gangsta.

See, this should have been really simple. The book is simply a collection of three stories Amazon is already selling. But for some reason, they blocked it. I was baffled. I wrote customer support and received a form letter in response (which is not shocking). I wrote another email, trying to concisely explain the situation because I know almost everyone that works in the book division of Amazon customer service is outsourced/barely English-speaking individuals. I received the same form letter in response. So, I tried a different tactic: I called them. After speaking with the (barely English speaking) agent, she promised she would get it resolved on my behalf by contacting the appropriate channels and explaining the situation. The next day, I received the exact same form letter they had already sent me twice before.

So, the book is now available for March 1, 2020 preorder on Smashwords. 😭 Which also means there will be no audiobook version, and the paperback will be… interesting. If I can figure out a way to make a paperback version without using Amazon, I will. Otherwise, flip it.

I thought the insanity of the month was over. Finally, I could get back to writing the handful of books (Pulse, Paramnesia, Exitium Mundi, Nephilim 2) so I could take a much-needed mini-vacation. I mean, what else could happen, right?

In slides Patreon with a quick “Hold my beer.”

Apparently, they decided out of nowhere that some of my older posts violated their community guidelines, so I had to change or remove them so my account could be acceptable again. This took a little over a week of back-and-forth. I will say this, however: working with Patreon’s customer support is leagues better than Amazon’s. Patreon actually works with you, sending personalized emails until the problem is solved. And they don’t just ban your account or even place it in suspension – they work with you first. The only time they suspend your account is if you refuse to contact them… why can’t Amazon’s book publishing division be even half as good as Patreon? Anyway, after I removed a few posts, changed the header pictures on others, and heavily edit a few entries for being too lewd. (I know what you’re thinking: ALEXA? LEWD?! 😋) I was good to go. Now everything is hunky-dory.

Well, except for running seemingly endless errands this past week and Anne projectile vomiting like it’s an Olympic event (too much eggnog) this morning.

Hopefully, your month’s been better than mine…

#Alexa

“For the speedy reader paragraphs become a country the eye flies over looking for landmarks, reference points, airports, restrooms, passages of sex.”

– William H. Gass

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission, at no additional cost to you. This is because I’m a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.