prep « Robin Writes

Naturally, the first thing I did after finishing REDUCED was to send it to a few beta readers. I also queried half a dozen agents. And heard zip.

So, after making a few tweaks as per my readers’ suggestions, I simply published the book.

I really had no plan. I wrote it, yay, I wrote A BOOK! And I was done. I used CreateSpace, picked a cover template (but used my own photo), and I was good to go!

And then someone said, well, great, but what happened next?

Next? How should *I* know??

So I sat down to write REUSED. But this time, I had a plan. Sort of.

A couple days in, I got stuck. And then more stuck (stucker?). So I gazed around my office, trying to find something to do to avoid writing this book.

And then it hit me—I’d publish OTHER people’s books! Really, how hard could it be? I’d fielded so many questions about my CS experience, so yeah, that’s it. Start a publishing house.

So I did. Rocking Horse Publishing.

I planned to release 6 books in 2013, including the one I was writing and was stuck on—I wasn’t even sure I’d get any submissions.

I got one. Then another. Then a virtual flood of manuscripts.

RHP published 12 books that year; we did 17 this year, and have 14 scheduled for 2015, so far.

REUSED? Oh, yeah—after I got done with the flurry of starting the publishing house, I sat down and wrote non-stop for four weeks. REUSED came out in December 2012.

And then someone said, well, great, but what happened next?

Crap.

So I scheduled RECYCLED to come out in March 2013. I had nothin’. Zip. Postponed the launch.

July arrived, suddenly and without warning somehow, and I had promised my fans, er, fan, or well, something like that, that the book would ABSOLUTELY be available in July.

Finally, I sat down to write. Three weeks later, RECYCLED saw the light of day.

Whew. A trilogy. I DID IT!

And then someone said, well, great, but what happened next?

Darn. Repeat. Oh, yeah—REPEAT! That’s it!

Coming in March 2015 . . .

Good grief. Realtors are nuts—apologies to those I know. I’ve seen so many listings with either no pictures, pictures of neighboring property, or artistic pictures which look pretty but tell you nothing. Also, if a realtor doesn’t give an address, it’s really flippin’ hard to find on Google or wherever.

And clients. Sheesh. We made an offer on that property I talked about last week, a verbal one; no sense in doing reams of paperwork if the seller isn’t interested. Sheesh. Yes, I said it again.

So here’s what happened:

We told our agent to make the offer at $1,000 per acre. I’m not stupid, I researched first, and what I came up with was that land in that area averaged $975 an acre. By the way, the asking price was $65,000, or $1,548.

It took 10 days for the seller to respond. Hello? Email? Whatever. She said it was too low to counter, that other properties were around $1,700 per acre, it was “cleared,” and besides, it was “beautiful.”

Yeah, so?

Realtors, you know the drill—people have attachments to their homes and land, they think it’s awesome, etc., etc. I clearly remember a house we looked at a few years ago that boasted “new carpet!” It was bright blue. Bright. Blue. Hideous, to probably everyone but the seller.

Well, this chick is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. “Beauty” has little to do with the value; the picturesque barn is a white elephant; “cleared” is not the same thing as two small tracts of pasture. And yes, the price is too high—it’s been on the market for six months. The property she thinks is comparable has usable outbuildings, or wells, or septic, etc.

Well, in the interests of buying a piece of property now, because we’re running behind schedule, we upped it to $50K with a formal offer. Guess what? We can’t do that until the listing agent re-ups it on the MLS. The listing expired. Go figure. The agent is a 20-something who appears to be working for Daddy. Fine, just do the damn job. And quit taking those artsy-fartsy pictures!